Trump as yet another "bait and switch" artist:
Trump foreign policy after April 2017 is a neocon policy
Trump foreign policy as the continuation of the neocon foreign policy, including the role of the USA as the global policeman with
penchant for gangster capitalism; not that different from policies of Obama administration
"There is one political party in this country, and that is the party of money.
It has two branches, the Republicans and the Democrats, the chief difference between which is
that the Democrats are better at concealing their scorn for the average man."
-- Gore Vidal
“The Democrats are the foxes, and the Republicans are the wolves – and they both want to
devour you.” So what does that make Libertarians? Avian flu viruses?”
-- Leonard Pinkney
The race is no contest when you own both horses. That is why no matter which political party
is in power nothing really changes other than the packaging. The puppets who drink at the champagne
fountains of the powerful do the bidding of their masters. The people are superfluous to the process.
In the “democracy” that America has evolved to, money counts more than people.
In past elections, the votes were counted, now they are going to start weighing them.
“(T)he rich elites of (the USA) have far more in common with their counterparts in London,
Paris, and Tokyo than with their fellow American citizens … the rich disconnect themselves
from the civic life of the nation and from any concern about its well being except as a place
to extract loot. Our plutocracy now lives like the British in colonial India: in the place and
ruling it, but not of it.”
Trump conducts neocon foreign policy. "There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare." Sun Tzu
While formally neocons are aligned with Republican party, they feel at home at Democratic Party too as
it became the second War Party in Washington. And war (cold or hot are OK, as long as neocons personally do not need to fight
in the trenches and somebody else need to die in wars of neoliberal empire expansion) is all they
want. Neocons are, in essence, MIC lobbyists. Playing chicken with a nuclear power for the sake of
providing MIC with outside profits and maintaining the US global dominance is a crazy policy that
exhausts country resources, and impoverish population, like previously was the case with British and Spanish empires.
Neocons rule the roost in both parties, which essentially became a single War Party with two
wings. They completely appropriated formulation of the US foreign policy and dominate the State
Department and Pentagon. In this sense Trump is a real outlier (or was, before he was elected).
Simplified his foreign policy platform includes two simple and very attractive for the US population
slogan, that are completely opposite to Washington official foreign policy doctrine, enforced by
"deep state"
F*ck neocons and their wars of neoliberal empire expansion. That is probably the most
important part the meaning of his famous slogan "America first" borrowed for
paleoconservatives.
F*ck globalization. This is the second part of the meaning of his slogan "America
first".
So the Russiagate color revolution (classic "Russians are under
every bed" hysteria, supported by all neoliberal MSM, including WaPo, NYT, CNN, ABC, MSBNC, etc) was
not about Russia, it was about the danger that the current neocon-driven foreign policy that was a
hallmark of the US forign policy during the last four administrations (Bush I, Clinton, Bush
II and Obama) will be abandoned by Trump administration.
"Making America first" without isolationalism is essentially the same as "Deutschland
Uber Alles" -- a neocon foreign policy with extreme version of nationalism instead of neoliberal
empire building as the only difference. Even though the 1871 meaning of "Deutschland
Uber Alles" was of "Unity, not division, of German states" when the Nazi used it, they gave it
the meaning of world domination by military conquest. The same as the dream of US neocons - a
global empire dominated by the USA as the sole superpower. With the only difference that in Nazi
interpretation that included exterminating certain Undermensch people because of their nationality (Slavs,
Jews, Gypsies).
After Trump's 180 degrees reversal and launching Syria rocket attack (which is attack of sovereign
nation and as such represents a war crime) Trump positioned himself as typical neocon. The same is true
about Trump position on Yemen, so this is not an accidental change of policy. Not that different
from Hillary Clinton. trump actions were instantly lauded as bipartisan! The Neoliberal, Neocon,
corporate alliance has come out of the closet, in a show of war mongering solidarity.
Before he was elected he has only one war hawk "point": Saber rattling again Iran. May be two (Iran+Korea).
Now he is a typical neocon. Here are signs of his 180 degrees turn in foreign policy:
Appeasing Israel
Attack of Assad forces in Syria.There was no investigation, not even a hack job to
frame Assad up like Bush II did in 2003 with Colin Powell UN address. Trump himself spoke out
against the airstrikes in 2013. He demanded a formal declaration of war by congress “unconstitutional
if not”. Pointed out just how stupid and destructive such a decision would be…
There are so many "petty dictators" in the Middle-East, I wander why all the concentration is
on the removal of Assad by US and its allies. Is it not because:
Although Saudi and (Persian) Gulf Arab dictators are worse than Assad in all aspects, it
is of the interest of US to protect these dictators.
US policy solidified by Bush II was articulated beautifully and honestly as “either you
are with us or against us.” That means either you serve my interest or the consequence will
be your destruction and removal.
Arab dictators serve US interest so in return there will be a guarantee that they will
be protected by mafia boss, namely US.
Main US partner, Western Europe is also the share holder in this so called humanitarian
endeavor to bring peace and stability in the Middle East. Whereas the truth is mafia boss and
its Western gang are after exploitation of the neighborhood while they have traitors who work
for them (Turkey and Arab dictators)
Why Assad? Well, Assad is Nuisance to Israel’s expansion. He opposed Israel contrary to
Turkish and Arab beggars who constantly lick the rear end’s hole of the Jewish State.
Assad helped Iran to block Israel from further atrocities in Lebanon and hopefully in Palestine.
could go on and on. It is the story of Western domination and exploitation were it
is being collaborated by Turk and Arab traitors so that like dogs, a loaf of bread somehow
will be thrown at them by their master and owner, USA.
This bastard dog is one-eyed.He can only see the crime of ASAD not others in the ME.
The best analysis of Trump betrayal in foreign policy (which means betrayal
of his voters in best style of the "king of bait and switch" Obama) was done by Justin Raymondo. The reason is the Trump
is a puppet of Israel lobby, and always was:
Trump came into office touting his “America First agenda,” disdaining NATO, and asking “Why is it
a bad thing to get along with Russia?” He told us he abjured “regime change” and held up Libya as
an example of bad policy. Now he’s turned on a dime, bombing Syria, and welcoming tiny (and troubled)
Montenegro into NATO. His intelligence agencies are even
accusing Russia of having advance knowledge of the alleged chemical attack in Syria (although
the White House
disputed that after it got out). And all this in the first one hundred days!
How did this happen?
It’s easy to explain, once you understand that there is no such thing as foreign policy: all policy
is domestic.
That’s the core principle at the heart of
what I call “libertarian
realism,” the overarching theory – if such a grandiose term can be applied to what is simply
common sense – that explains what is happening on the world stage at any particular moment. And there
is no better confirmation of this principle than
the recent statement by Eric
Trump, the President’s son, who said: “If there was anything that Syria [strike] did, it was to validate
the fact that there is no Russia tie.”
Oh yes, and Ivanka was “heartbroken” – and so it was incumbent upon the President to change course,
break a major campaign promise, and declare via his Secretary of State that “Assad
must go.”
Got it.
Trump’s Syrian turnabout is clearly a response to the coordinated attack launched on his presidency
by the combined efforts of the Deep State, the media, the Democrats, and the McCain-Graham-neocon
wing of the GOP – a campaign that still might destroy him, despite his capitulation to the War Party.
Vladimir Putin has
likened the current Syria imbroglio to what happened in Iraq, with claims of “weapons of mass
destruction” and a war fought on the basis of false intelligence, but there is one major difference:
this time, the bombing came first, with the “evidence” an afterthought. You’ll recall that in
the run up to the invasion of Iraq there was an extended and quite elaborate propaganda campaign
designed to make the case for war. Now, however, that process has been reversed: bombing first, “evidence”
later.
Speaking of which, Bloomberg national security reporter Eli Lake
tells us that the US is about to release a “dossier” explaining the rationale for the Syria strike:
it is “short on specific intelligence” but long on “its refutation of Russian disinformation.” As
in the case of the “Russian interference in the election” narrative, we’ll doubtless be told that
protecting “sources and methods” precludes us peons from seeing the actual “intelligence.” Ours is
not to question why, ours is but to do and die, as the old saw goes: but is that – not to mention
the moral imperative of safeguarding Ivanka’s fragile emotional state – really enough to justify
a 180-degree shift in US foreign policy?
The real significance of this “dossier” has little to do with justifying the Syria strike insofar
as actual evidence of Assad’s alleged crime is concerned, and more with signaling to the heretofore
hostile “intelligence community’ and political actors in the US that the days of President Trump
trying to achieve détente with Russia are over. As Lake points out:
“But it is really the report’s condemnation of the Russian response that is most striking.
Trump has sought to reset the relationship with Moscow, as President Barack Obama hoped to do in
2009 and 2010. Now, one U.S. official tells me, Russian officials in phone calls with their Trump
administration counterparts repeated in private the same propaganda lines their government was issuing
in public. ‘That has led to a lot of frustration at the highest levels of the government,’ this official
said.“
Translation: Forget getting along with Russia – just call off your bloodhounds.
We now have Putin
warning
that more “provocations” are in store, with some pretty specific details supplied. It wouldn’t surprise
me in the least, but we’ll have to wait and see if that pans out. In the meantime, however, three
factors are percolating in the mix:
Our spooks, not content with having turn around of the Trump administration on Syria
policy, won’t let up on the alleged “Russian foreknowledge” angle. These guys mean business.
The previously stalled effort to overthrow Assad by funding and arming the Islamist savages
championed by McCain, Graham, & Co. will recommence, with some success, and
The campaign to smear Trump as a Kremlin tool will continue, unabated, with both the House
and Senate investigations barreling full speed ahead, with plenty of help from the “former intelligence
officials.” They aren’t about to let Trump off the hook quite so easily.
What all this shows is how far removed the making of US foreign policy is from actual facts on
the ground, and the rational calculation of American interests. What it all comes back to is how
it serves the political interests of those in power – and those who aspire after power. Facts have
nothing to do with it except insofar as they can be manipulated – or created – so as to fit a preexisting
agenda.
There are very few good arguments for striking out at the Syrian government. One of the pseudo-credible
ones is that the use of sarin and other similar weapons, if allowed to go unpunished, would hurt
our legitimate interests, since their use would then become pandemic. The riposte is that anyone
who would even consider using such weapons is not likely to be deterred by US retaliation, no matter
how swift.
In any case, this raises the question: did Bashar al-Assad drop sarin gas on a bunch of civilians
at Idlib? Despite the rush to judgment, we don’t know the answer to that question, but several factors
make it unlikely. He was winning the civil war, and this, if you’ll pardon the expression, seems
like overkill. Furthermore,
for years
the Syrian rebels have been doing their damnedest to frame Assad for just such a heinous crime in
order to provoke US intervention on their behalf, to little avail – until now. Their record speaks
for itself.
If indeed Assad is guilty, then it’s conceivable – although I would disagree – that one could
make an argument for a one-off warning strike. Yet that is not what we’re seeing at all: already,
Secretary of State Tillerson is echoing that old Obama-Clinton slogan, “Assad must go.” This isn’t
a one-off: it’s a complete reversal of what candidate Trump said he’d do once in office.
As I said in
my last column, the silver lining is that many of Trump’s prominent supporters – and former supporters
– are waking up to the importance of non-interventionism as one of the pillars of “Trump_vs_deep_state.” Their
former hero’s betrayal is putting them on a learning curve – and the best of them will come out the
other side with a new awareness of what “America First” really means.
On the other hand, we are going to have to live with the consequences of this terrible turnabout
– not all of which are readily apparent, and none of which redound to the benefit of the United States
and its citizens.
Instead, the western powers have followed the example cited by Machiavelli: "in order to prove
their liberality, they allowed Pistoia to be destroyed."
... ... ...
Cedar
In late 2015, Eren Erdem, a Turkish MP, said in Parliament that the Turkish state was permitting Da'esh to send sarin precursors to Syria. He had a file of evidence, so was accused of treason
for accessing and publicising confidential material. The investigation into the people responsible
for the transfer of toxic chemicals was shut down.
That surely ought to make us at least ask evidence-seeking questions about the Idlib gas attack
before yet again demanding regime change.
Al-Assad is certainly capable of murdering opponents, and not bothering too much about collateral
damage, but strategically it makes no sense for him to do this now, when peace talks under the
aegis of Russia and Iran have begun, and the world is watching. Also, Assad has been engaged in
a reconciliation process, allowing members of the FSA to return to the Syrian army, and Aleppans
remain in Damascus if they didn't wish to go to Idlib. At such a juncture, using chemical weapons
would be counter-productive. If Sarin was used at his command, he should be properly prosecuted:
but bombing a Syrian air base merely assists Da'esh and its cronies.
unsouthbank
I have just watched the press conference in which Trump labelled Assad a butcher, and went
on again about dead babies. I just wish that someone at one of these conferences would have the
guts to point out to Trump his own butchery. Anyone watching this performance would think that
US forces had never been responsible for killing innocent civilians, men, women, children and
babies. To listen to Trump, you wouldn't think that US forces had ever killed over 150 civilians
in Mosul, dozens in Raqqa, or had bombed hospitals in Afghanistan, or schools in Iraq, or were
supporting the Saudi blockade of Yemen resulting in the starvation of children and babies, or
had destroyed wedding parties with drones,.....I could go on. If Assad is a butcher, he is only
a junior, apprentice, corner-shop butcher. Trump is the real thing, the large-scale, wholesale,
expert butcher.
The attack on Syrian airbase without any serious investigation, done purely as PR stunt (as somebody
called it "military twit"). Which was probably dictated by desperation from unrelenting attacks of neocons
and globalists along the lines "Trump is the Russian agent". Trump witch hung became the pasture
of Democratic Party, which during Hillary Clinton campaign successfully converted itself into the second
War Party, competing with Republicans in jingoism "on equals"..
Now after Syria was hit with tomahawks neocons and subservant to them MSM like CNN and MCNBC (with
this despicable military-industrial complex pressitute Rachel Maddow really excited about this attack)
are happy and are less Trump problem. But political calculation directed on making peace with
neocon "at any cost" have consequences for Trump.
It is clear to everybody that Trump bowed to NeoCon pressure. He was supposed to be different. But
then so was Obama. 300,000 people have died in Syria during Obama presidency. Were deaths of those killed
by bombs and bullets any less tragic? Who is funding, arming and supporting ISIS? Are not those countries
America allies?
So it is logical to assume that Trump "retaliation" was not about dead children. It was a signal
to allies such as Turkey and KSA that the course is unchanged and the USA will continue to pursue
anti Assad/Iran/Russia policy in the region, no matter what will be the costs. Again, 300,000
have died already under Novel Peace winner who initiated this Syrian quagmire and destabilized yet another
ME country. All according to PNAC plan.
First of all Trump voters have memory. On April 6 he might completely lost anti-war right, which
was an important part of his base. As well as a large part of paleoconservatives. To say nothing that
his administration demonstrated absolute, utter incompetence dealing with Obamacare.
Russians also have memory. They still remember the stunts the US pulled under Reagan, Bush I and
Clinton. Especially attempts to dismember the country and convert it into vassal state under Clinton,
using corrupt puppet regime of drunken Yeltsin and his neoliberal "advisors" from Harvard as a
tool (aka economic rape of Russia). Of course after being weakened to the standard of living dropped
to $1 a day per person -- the level of object poverty. all due to Harvard "friends" like Sachs
( see Harvard Mafia, Andrei Shleifer and the economic
rape of Russia.) Russia needs time to recuperate and restore its economics. So it is not interested
is premature skirmishes with Uncle Sam.
In 2012 U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton decided that she knew best what was good for the
people of Syria. She decided that President Assad "had to go" Calling
off America's Bombs (Common Dreams: Jeffrey Sachs, 9-5-13)
In coordination with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar she launched a war to invade Syria and overthrow
the government. Huge military bases were set up in Jordan and Turkey for puppet armies.
Before the U.S. got involved, this was a war with casualties in the 1,000's. Yet now around 150,000
people have died and cultural and archaeological treasures have been destroyed. The U.S. has inflamed
a conflict that may have been ended quickly by the Syrian government, had we not chosen to get involved.
The other fact is that a majority of Syrians (55%) support Assad. Is it right for the U.S. to oppose
the will of the Syrian people? Jeffrey Sachs discusses this more in an article below:
So far it has turned into an utter disaster. Over 300,000 people have been killed by Clinton's
policies. Assad remains in power. Hilary's ridiculous "Syrian Free Army" is in
chaos. Meanwhile, Islamic extremists backed by Hilary's allies have invaded Iraq.
Only few undisputed facts are know about Khan Sheikhoun attack
On Tuesday April 4th 2017, videos and images emerged from sources within Syria showing what is
claimed to be a chemical weapon attack that targeted Al
Sheikhun south of Idlib.
The attack occurred in the city Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province, an area on the Turkish border
mostly controlled by al-Qaeda affiliated rebels.
British Doctor from Khan Sheikhoun who reported about the attack previously held on terror charges
False flag sarin attacks happened in Syria before. They are part of rebels strategy to
weaken and isolate internationally Assad government, which coicides with the desires of the USA and
its allies such as Turkey and KSA.
The "known unknown" area is much larger. Even basic facts are disputed (was it "sarin";
was it air attack of munitions depot explosion? what is staged event (aka false flag operation) or a
blunder by Assad forces which accidentally hit chemical depot in a school or close to a school.
Here is attempt to collect the most interesting questions about this event that I have found in various
forums (collected from foreign sources, mostly from British and German):
Is not unilateral military intervention in a sovereign country that does not threaten the
USA constituting an act of aggression, a war crime by the UN statute? Or, as an exceptional
nation, the USA is above the UN...
How can journalists and Western diplomats be so lacking in the desire or ability to question
what they are told?
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2017/04/its-wmd-all-over-again-why-dont-you-see-it-.html,
The Kremlin issued a statement saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin found it "unacceptable
to make groundless accusations against anyone without conducting a detailed and unbiased investigation."
Cue bono? Effectively the USA acted as Al Nustra (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Nusra_Front)
air force. Which promptly initiated an attack on government forces in Palmira. Does this means
that the USA foreign policy in Syria is now aligned with Gulf monarchies policy and Israeli policies
of dismembering this country and establishing a permanent Al Nusra Caliphate on the part of the territory
as well as possibly Kurdish enclave ? The Syrian regime may not have had a compelling
motive, believes Günther Meyer, the director of the Research Center for the Arab World at the Johannes
Gutenberg University in Mainz. "Only armed opposition groups could profit from an attack with chemical
weapons," he told DW. "With their backs against the wall, they have next to no chance of opposing
the regime militarily. As President [Donald] Trump's recent statements show, such actions make it
possible for anti-Assad groups to receive further support."http://www.dw.com/en/is-assad-to-blame-for-the-chemical-weapons-attack-in-syria/a-38330217
Is not Israel the major beneficiary of this bombing? Syrians shot down an Israeli jet a week before
using this airbase. Now this airbase is destroyed.
On April 3, the USA government announced that the US is no longer insisting that Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad has to step aside. The attack happened on April 4th, a day after. On April
6 after the attack, but before any investigation, the USA goverment changed its mind. Did Trump
reneg on his promises to fight ISIS and establishing détente with Russia after unprecedented attack
by neocons in Washington and folded? Removal of Bannon might be connected. Does this
mean that Trump metamorphosed into Hillary Clinton in around 100 days in office? Or does that mean
that the president does not matter and deep state rules the country?
Previous sarin attack was a false flag: The attack took place while UN weapons inspectors
were in the country, on Assad's invitation, said Meyer. Assad had asked them to investigate a chemical
weapons attack from March 2013 outside Aleppo, which killed Syrian soldiers. Former weapons inspector
Richard Lloyd and MIT professor Theodore Postol cast further doubt on Assad's role in the Ghouta
attack. They reported in 2014 that the chemical weapons could have only been fired from rebel-held
territory, with a range of up to 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles).
The Nusra Front's weapons include chemical weapons and they inflicted casualties on Syrian
army. This Al Qaeda affiliate is today the most significant rebel group in the northern
Syrian province of Idlib. Along with other jihadi groups, it has turned itself into the "de facto
ruler of Idlib." Syrian government reiterated the claim, echoed by Moscow, that the tragedy occurred
because the rebels had been stockpiling sarin gas, and the Syrian army had no way of knowing it was
there.
What will be consequences (other then deserved Nobel Peace Price for Trump) for the USA if
the investigation implicated the rebels? BTW none of "volunteers" treating victims died from
poisoning, despite working without HASMAT suits, which suggest that at least "sarin" version is bogus.
What was the function of the buildings hit by air strike (hitting a depot of chemical weapons
is the Russian version of events)? it is clear they they were in or close to residential area
were those private residences or not is unclear. What was exact time of Assad forces attack?
Rebels are known to store munitions in schools and mosques to protect them from air strikes. Why
so many children were affected if only two houses were hit. Outside school, in Syria
children are usually accompanied by women. There were less victims among adults.
Under the pact, the two countries have traded information about flights by
a U.S.-led coalition targeting the Islamic State and Russian planes operating in Syria in support
of the Assad government. Moscow was taking its action, the Defense Ministry said, because it sees
the U.S. strike “as a grave violation of the memorandum.”
In terms of foreign policy, and even during the transition before Trump's inauguration, there
were other, more disturbing signs of where Trump would be heading soon. When Fidel Castro died on
November 25, 2016,
Trump seemed jubilant as if he had somehow been vindicated, and took the opportunity to
slander Castro as a "brutal dictator" who "oppressed his own people" and turned Cuba into a
"totalitarian island".
Trump could have kept quiet, and lost nothing. Instead what he was attacking -- and the
irony was missed on his fervently right wing supporters -- was someone who was a leader in
the anti-globalist movement, from long before it was ever called that. Fidel Castro was a radical
pioneer of independence, self-reliance, and self-determination. Castro turned Cuba from an
American-owned sugar plantation and brothel, a lurid backwater in the Caribbean, into a serious
international actor opposed to globalizing capitalism. There was no sign of any acknowledgment of
this by Trump, who instead chose to parrot the same people who would vilify him using similar
terms (evil, authoritarian, etc.). Of course, Trump respects only corporate executives and
billionaires, not what he would see as some rag-tag Third World revolutionary. Here Trump's
supporters generally failed, using Castro's death as an opportunity for tribal partisanship,
another opportunity to attack "weak liberals" like Obama who made minor overtures to Cuba (too
little, too late). Their distrust of "the establishment" was nowhere to be found this time: their
ignorance of Cuba and their resort to stock clichés and slogans had all been furnished to them by
the same establishment they otherwise claimed to oppose.
Just to be clear, the above is not meant to indicate any reversal on Trump's part regarding
Cuba. He has been consistently anti-communist, and fairly consistent in his denunciations of
Fidel Castro. What is significant is that -- far from overcoming the left-right divide --
Trump shores up the barriers, even at the cost of denouncing others who have a proven track
record of fighting against neoliberal globalization and US interventionism. In these regards,
Trump has no track record. Even among his rivals in the Republican primaries, senators Ted Cruz
and Rand Paul had more of an anti-interventionist track record.
However, when he delivered his
inaugural address on
January 20, 2017, Trump appeared to reaffirm his campaign themes of anti-interventionism. In
particular he seemed to turn the government's back on a long-standing policy of
cultural imperialism , stating: "We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone". In
addition he said his government would "seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the
world," and he understood the importance of national sovereignty when he added, "it is the right
of all nations to put their own interests first".
Russia
Yet when it came to Russia , Trump could have instantly removed sanctions that were imposed by
Obama in his last weeks in office -- an irresponsible and dangerous act by Obama, where
foreign policy was used as a partisan tool in the service of shoring up a crummy conspiracy
theory about "Russian hacking" in order to deny the Democrats any culpability in their much
deserved defeat. Instead, Trump continued the sanctions, as if out of meek deference to Obama's
policy, one founded on lies and antagonism toward Trump himself. Rather than repair the foul
attempt to sabotage the US-Russian relationship in preparation for his presidency, Trump simply
abided and thus became an accomplice. To be clear,
Trump has
done precisely nothing to dampen the near mass hysteria that has been manufactured
in the US about alleged -- indeed imaginary -- "Russian intervention". His comments,
both during the electoral campaign and even early into his presidency, about wanting good
relations with Russia, have been replaced by Trump's admissions that US relations with Russia are
at a low point (Putin agreed: "I would say the level of trust [between Russia and the US] is at a
workable level, especially in the military dimension, but it hasn't improved. On the contrary, it
has degraded
" and his spokesman called the relations "
deplorable ".) Rather than use the
power of his office to calm fears, to build better ties with Russia, and to make meeting with
Vladimir Putin a top priority, Trump has again done nothing , except escalating
tensions. The entire conflict with Russia that has developed in recent years, on the US side, was
totally unnecessary, illogical, and quite preventable. Russia had actively facilitated the US'
war in Afghanistan for over a decade, and was a consistent collaborator on numerous levels. It is
up to thinking American officials to honestly explain what motivated them to tilt relations with
Russia, because it is certainly not Russia's doing. The only explanation that makes any sense is
that the US leadership grew concerned that Russia was no longer teetering on the edge of total
socio-economic breakdown, as it was under the neoliberal Boris Yeltsin, but has instead
resurfaced as a major actor in international affairs, and one that champions anti-neoliberal
objectives of enhanced state sovereignty and self-determination.
WikiLeaks
Just two weeks after violating his promise to end the US role as the world's policeman and his
vow to extricate the US from wars for regime change, Trump sold out again.
"I love WikiLeaks -- " -- this is what Trump exclaimed in a speech on
October 10, 2016. Trump's about-face on WikiLeaks is thus truly astounding. After finding so much
use for WikiLeaks' publication of the Podesta emails, which became incorporated into his campaign
speeches, and which fuelled the writing and speaking of journalists and bloggers sympathetic to
Trump -- he was now effectively declaring WikiLeaks to be both an enemy and a likely target
of US government action, in even more blunt terms than we heard during the past eight years under
Obama. This is not mere continuity with the past, but a dramatic escalation. Rather than praise
Julian Assange for his work, call for an end to the illegal impediments to his seeking asylum,
swear off any US calls for extraditing and prosecuting Assange, and perhaps meeting with him in
person, Trump has done all of the opposite. Instead we learn that Trump's administration may
file
arrest charges against Assange .
Mike Pompeo , chosen by Trump to head the CIA, who had himself
cited WikiLeaks as a reliable source of proof about how the Democratic National Committee had
rigged its campaign, now declared WikiLeaks to be a "
non-state hostile intelligence service ," along with vicious personal slander against Assange.
Trump's about-face on WikiLeaks was one that he defended in terms that were not just a
deceptive rewriting of history, but one that was also fearful -- "I don't support or
unsupport" WikiLeaks, was what Trump was now saying in his dash for the nearest exit. The
backtracking is so obvious in this
interview Trump gave to the AP , that his shoes must have left skid marks on the floor:
AP: If I could fit a couple of more topics. Jeff Sessions, your attorney general, is
taking a tougher line suddenly on Julian Assange, saying that arresting him is a priority. You
were supportive of what WikiLeaks was doing during the campaign with the release of the
Clinton emails. Do you think that arresting Assange is a priority for the United States?
TRUMP: When Wikileaks came out never heard of Wikileaks, never heard of it. When Wikileaks
came out, all I was just saying is, "Well, look at all this information here, this is pretty
good stuff." You know, they tried to hack the Republican, the RNC, but we had good defenses.
They didn't have defenses, which is pretty bad management. But we had good defenses, they
tried to hack both of them. They weren't able to get through to Republicans. No, I found it
very interesting when I read this stuff and I said, "Wow." It was just a figure of speech. I
said, "Well, look at this. It's good reading."
AP: But that didn't mean that you supported what Assange is doing?
TRUMP: No, I don't support or unsupport. It was just information .
AP: Can I just ask you, though -- do you believe it is a priority for
the United States, or it should be a priority, to arrest Julian Assange?
TRUMP: I am not involved in that decision, but if Jeff Sessions wants to do it, it's OK
with me. I didn't know about that decision, but if they want to do it, it's OK with me.
First, Trump invents the fictitious claim that WikiLeaks was responsible for hacking the DNC,
and that WikiLeaks also tried to hack the Republicans. Second, he pretends to be an innocent
bystander, a spectator, in his own administration -- whatever others decide, is "OK" with
him, not that he knows about their decisions, but it's all up to others. He has no power, all of
a sudden.
Again, what Trump is displaying in this episode is his ultimate attachment to his class, with
all of its anxieties and its contempt for rebellious, marginal upstarts. Trump shuns any sort of
"loyalty" to WikiLeaks (not that they ever had a working relationship) or any form of gratitude,
because then that would imply a debt and therefore a transfer of value -- whereas Trump's
core ethics are those of expedience and greed (he admits that much).
This move has come with a cost , with members of Trump's support base openly denouncing the
betrayal. 6
NAFTA
On NAFTA , Trump claims he has not changed his position -- yet, from openly denouncing
the free trade agreement and promising to terminate it, he now vows only to seek modifications
and amendments, which means supporting NAFTA. He appeared to be
awfully quick to obey the diplomatic pressure of Canada's Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, and
Mexico's President, Enrique Peña Nieto. Trump's entire position on NAFTA now comes into question.
While there is no denying the extensive data about the severe impacts of NAFTA on select states
and industries in the US, witnessed by the closure of tens of thousands of factories and the loss
of hundreds of thousands of jobs, there is little support for the claim that Canada and Mexico,
as wholes, have instead fared well and that the US as a whole has been the loser thanks to them.
This really deserves to be treated at length, separately from this article. However, for now,
let's keep in mind that when Trump complains about Canadian softwood lumber and dairy exports to
the US, his argument about NAFTA is without merit. Neither commodity is part of the NAFTA
agreement. Moreover, where dairy is concerned, the problem is US overproduction.
Wisconsin alone has more dairy cows than all of Canada . There is a net surplus , in
the US' favour, with respect to US dairy exports to Canada. Overall,
the US has a net surplus in the
trade in goods and
services with Canada. Regarding Mexico, the irony of Trump's denunciations of imaginary
Mexican victories is that he weakens his own criticisms of immigration. Since NAFTA was
implemented,
migration from Mexico to the US skyrocketed dramatically. US agricultural industries sent
millions of Mexican farmers into food poverty, and ultimately drove them away from agriculture.
As for per capita GDP, so treasured by economists, NAFTA had no positive impact on Mexico --
in fact,
per capita GDP is nearly a flat line for the entire period since 1994. Finally, Trump does
not mention that in terms of the number of actual protectionist measures that have been
implemented,
the US leads the world .
To put Trump's position on NAFTA in bold relief, it is not that he is decidedly against free
trade. In fact, he often claims he supports free trade, as long as it is "fair". However, his
notion of fairness is very lopsided -- a trade agreement is fair only when the US reaps the
greater share of benefits. His arguments with respect to Canada are akin to those of a looter or
raider. He wants to block lumber imports from Canada, at the same time as he wants to break the
Canadian dairy market wide open to absorb US excess production. That approach is at the core of
what defined the US as a "new empire" in the 1800s. In addition, while Trump was quick to tear up
the TPP, he has said nothing about TISA and TTIP.
Mexico
Trump's argument with Mexico is also disturbing for what it implies. It would seem that any
evidence of production in Mexico causes Trump concern. Mexico should not only keep its people
-- however many are displaced by US imports -- but it should also be as dependent as
possible on the US for everything except oil. Since Trump has consistently declared his
antagonism to OPEC, ideally Mexico's oil would be sold for a few dollars per barrel.
China
Trump's turn on China almost provoked laughter from his many domestic critics. Absurdly, what
figures prominently in most renditions of the story of Trump's change on China (including his
own), is a big piece of chocolate cake. The missile strike on Syria was, according to Wilbur
Ross, the "
after-dinner entertainment ". Here, Trump's loud condemnations of China on trade issues were
suddenly quelled -- and it is not because chocolate has magical properties. Instead it
seems Trump has been willing to settle on
selling
out citizens' interests , and particularly those who voted for him, in return for China's
assistance on North Korea. Let's be clear: countering and dominating North Korea is an
established favourite among neoconservatives. Trump's priority here is fully "neocon," and the
submergence of trade issues in favour of militaristic preferences is the one case where
neoconservatives might be distinguished from the otherwise identical neoliberals.
North
Korea
Where North Korea is concerned, Trump chose to manufacture a "
crisis ".
North Korea has actually done nothing to warrant a sudden outbreak of panic over it being
supposedly aggressive and threatening. North Korea is no more aggressive than any person
defending their survival can be called belligerent. The constant series of US military exercises
in South Korea, or near North Korean waters, is instead a deliberate provocation to a state whose
existence the US nearly extinguished. Even last year the US Air Force publicly boasted of having
"nearly destroyed" North Korea -- language one would have expected from the
Luftwaffe in WWII. The US continues to maintain roughly 60,000 troops on the border between North
and South Korea, and continues to refuse to formally declare an end to the Korean War and
sign a peace treaty . Trump then announced he was sending an "armada" to the Korean
peninsula, and boasted of how "very powerful" it was. This was in addition to the US deploying
the THAAD missile system in South Korea. Several of his messages in Twitter were written using
highly provocative and threatening language. When asked if he would start a war, Trump glibly
replied: "
I don't know. I mean, we'll see ". On another occasion Trump stated, "There is a chance that
we could end up having a
major, major conflict with North Korea. Absolutely". When the world's leading military
superpower declares its intention to destroy you, then there is nothing you can do in your
defense which anyone could justly label as "over the top". Otherwise, once again Trump posed as a
parental figure, the world's chief babysitter -- picture Trump, surrounded by children
taking part in the "Easter egg roll" at the White House, being asked about North Korea and
responding "they gotta behave". Trump would presume to teach manners to North Korea, using the
only tools of instruction that seem to be the first and last resort of US foreign policy (and the
"defense" industry): bombs.
Syria
Attacking Syria , on purportedly humanitarian grounds, is for many (including vocal
supporters) one of the most glaring contradictions of Trump's campaign statements about not
embroiling the US in failed wars of regime change and world policing. During the campaign, he was
in favour of Russia's collaboration with Syria in the fight against ISIS. For years he had
condemned Obama for involving the US in Syria, and consistently opposed military intervention
there. All that was consigned to the archive of positions Trump declared to now be worthless.
That there had been a change in Trump's position is not a matter of dispute --
Trump made the point himself :
"I like to think of myself as a very flexible person. I don't have to have one specific
way, and if the world changes, I go the same way, I don't change. Well, I do change and I am
flexible, and I'm proud of that flexibility. And I will tell you, that attack on children
yesterday had a big impact on me -- big impact. That was a horrible, horrible thing. And
I've been watching it and seeing it, and it doesn't get any worse than that. And I have that
flexibility, and it's very, very possible -- and I will tell you, it's already
happened that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much. And if you look back
over the last few weeks, there were other attacks using gas. You're now talking about a whole
different level".
Bending to the will of the prevailing Cold War and neo-McCarthyist atmosphere in the US, rife
with anti-Russian conspiracy theories, Trump found an easy opportunity to score points with the
hostile media, ever so mindful as he is about approval ratings, polls, and media coverage. Some
explain Trump's reversals as arising from his
pursuit of
public adulation -- and while the media play the key role in purveying celebrity
status, they are also a stiff bastion of imperialist culture. Given his many years as a the host
of a popular TV show, and as the owner of the Miss Universe Pageant, there is some logical merit
to the argument. But I think even more is at work, as explained in paragraphs above.
According to Eric Trump it was at the urging of Ivanka that Donald Trump decided to strike a
humanitarian-militarist pose. He would play the part of the Victorian parent, only he would use
missiles to teach unruly children lessons about violence. Using language typically used against
him by the mainstream media, Trump now felt entitled to pontificate that Assad is "evil," an "
animal
," who would
have to go . When did he supposedly come to this realization? Did Assad become evil at the
same time Trump was inaugurated? Why would Trump have kept so silent about "evil" on the campaign
trail? Trump of course is wrong: it's not that the world changed and he changed with it; rather,
he invented a new fiction to suit his masked intentions. Trump's supposed opponents and critics,
like the Soros-funded organizer of the women's march Linda Sarsour, showed her
approval of even more drastic action by endorsing messages by what sounded like a stern
school mistress who thought that 59 cruise missiles were just a mere "slap on the wrist".
Virtually every neocon who is publicly active applauded Trump, as did most senior Democrats. The
loudest
opposition , however, came from Trump's
own base , with a number of
articles featuring
criticism
from Trump's
supporters , and one conservative publication calling him outright a "
weakling and a political ingrate ".
Members of the Trump administration have played various word games with the public on
intervention in Syria. From unnamed officials saying the missile strike was a "one off," to named
officials
promising more if there were any other suspected chemical attacks (or use of barrel bombs --
and this while the US dropped the biggest non-nuclear bomb in existence on Afghanistan); some
said that
regime change was not the goal, and then others made it clear that was the
ultimate goal
; and then Trump saying, "Our policy is the same, it hasn't changed.
We're
not going into Syria " -- even though
Trump himself greatly increased the number of US troops he deployed to Syria ,
illegally, in an escalation of the least protested invasion in recent history. Now we should know
enough not to count this as mere ambiguity, but as deliberate obfuscation that offers momentary
(thinly veiled) cover for a
renewal of neocon policy .
We can draw an outline of Trump's liberal imperialism when it comes to Syria, which is likely
to be applied elsewhere. First, Trump's interventionist policy regarding Syria is one that
continues to treat that country as if it were terra nullius , a mere playground for
superpower politics. Second, Trump is clearly continuing with the
neoconservative agenda and its hit list of states to be terminated by US military action, as
famously confirmed by Gen. Wesley Clark. Even Trump's strategy for justifying the attack on Syria
echoed the two prior Bush presidential administrations -- selling war with the infamous
"incubator babies" myth and the myth of "weapons of mass destruction" (WMDs). In many ways,
Trump's presidency is thus shaping up to be either the seventh term of the George H.W. Bush
regime, or the fifth straight term of the George W. Bush regime. Third, Trump is taking ownership
of an extremely dangerous conflict, with costs that could surpass anything witnessed by the war
on Iraq (which also continues). Fourth, by highlighting the importance of photographs in
allegedly changing his mind, Trump has placed a high market value on propaganda featuring dead
babies. His actions in Syria will now create an effective demand for the pornographic trade in
pictures of atrocities. These are matters of great importance to the transnational capitalist
class, which demands full global penetrability, diminished state power (unless in the service of
this class' goals), a uniformity of expectations and conformity in behaviour, and an emphasis on
individual civil liberties which are the basis for defending private property and consumerism.
Venezuela
It is very disturbing to see how Venezuela is being framed as ripe for US intervention, in
ways that distinctly echo the lead up to the US war on Libya. Just as disturbing is that Trump's
Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, has a clear conflict of interest regarding Venezuela, from his
recent role as CEO of
Exxon and its conflict with the government of Venezuela over its nationalization of oil.
Tillerson is, by any definition, a clear-cut member of the transnational capitalist class. The
Twitter account of the
State Department has a battery of messages sternly lecturing Venezuela about the treatment of
protesters, while also pontificating on the Venezuelan Constitution as if the US State Department
had become a global supreme court. What is impressive is the seamless continuity in the nature of
the messages on Venezuela from that account, as if no change of government happened between
Obama's time and Trump's. Nikki Haley, Trump's neocon ambassador to the UN,
issued a statement that read
like it had been written by her predecessors, Samantha Power and Susan Rice, a statement which in
itself is an unacceptable intervention in Venezuelan internal affairs. For Trump's part, from
just days
before the election, to a couple of weeks
after
his inauguration, he has sent explicit messages of
support for anti-government forces in Venezuela. In February, Trump
imposed sanctions on Venezuela's Vice President. After Syria and North Korea, Venezuela is
seeming the likely focus of US interventionism under Trump.
NATO
Rounding out the picture, at least for now (this was just the first hundred days of Trump's
presidency), was Trump's outstanding reversal on NATO -- in fact, once again he
stated the reversal himself, and without explanation either: "
I said it was obsolete. It's no longer obsolete ". This came just days after the US missile
strike against Syria, and just as
Ivanka Trump was about to represent his government at a meeting of globalist women, the
W20 . NATO has served as the transnational military alliance at the service of the
transnational capitalist class, and particularly the military and political members of the TCC.
7
Saving Neoliberalism?
Has Trump saved neoliberal capitalism from its ongoing demise? Has he sustained popular faith
in liberal political ideals? Are we still in the
dying days of liberalism ? If there had been a centrally coordinated plan to plant an
operative among the ranks of populist conservatives and independents, to channel their support
for nationalism into support for the persona of the plant, and to then have that plant steer a
course straight back to shoring up neoliberal globalism -- then we might have had a
wonderful story of a masterful conspiracy, the biggest heist in the history of elections
anywhere. A truly "rigged system" could be expected to behave that way. Was Trump designated to
take the fall in a rigged game, only his huge ego got in the way when he realized he could
realistically win the election and he decided to really tilt hard against his partner, Hillary
Clinton? It could be the basis for a novel, or a Hollywood political comedy. I have no way of
knowing if it could be true.
Framed within the terms of what we do know, there was relief by the ousted group of political
elites and the liberal globalist media at the sight of Trump's reversals, and a sense that
their vision had been vindicated. However, if they are hoping that the likes of Trump will
serve as a reliable flag bearer, then theirs is a misguided wishful thinking. If someone so
demonized and ridiculed, tarnished as an evil thug and racist fascist, the subject of mass
demonstrations in the US and abroad, is the latest champion of (neo)liberalism, then we are
certainly witnessing its dying days.
Is Trump Beneficial for Anti-Imperialism?
Once one is informed enough and thus prepared to understand that anti-imperialism is not the
exclusive preserve of the left (a left which anyway has mostly shunned it over the last two
decades), that it
did not originate with the left , and that it has a long and distinguished history
in the
US itself , then we can move toward some interesting realizations. The facts, borne out by
surveys and my own online immersion among pro-Trump social media users, is that one of the
significant
reasons why Trump won is due to the growth in popularity of basic anti-imperialist principles
(even if not recognized under that name): for example, no more world policing, no transnational
militarization, no more interventions abroad, no more regime change, no war, and no globalism.
Nationalists in Europe, as in Russia, have also pushed forward a basic anti-imperialist vision.
Whereas in Latin America anti-imperialism is largely still leftist, in Europe and North America
the left-right divide has become blurred, but the crucial thing is that at least now we can speak
of anti-imperialism gaining strength in these three major continents. Resistance against
globalization has been the primary objective, along with strengthening national sovereignty,
protecting local cultural identity, and opposing free trade and transnational capital.
Unfortunately, some anti-imperialist writers (on the left in fact) have tended to restrict their
field of vision to military matters primarily, while almost completely neglecting the economic
and cultural, and especially domestic dimensions of imperialism. (I am grossly generalizing of
course, but I think it is largely accurate.) Where structures such as NAFTA are concerned, many
of these same leftist anti-imperialists, few as they are, have had virtually nothing to say. It
could be that they have yet to fully recognize that the transnational capitalist class has,
gradually over the last seven decades, essentially purchased the power of US imperialism.
Therefore the TCC's imperialism includes NAFTA, just as it includes open borders, neoliberal
identity politics, and drone strikes. They are all different parts of the same whole.
As argued in the previous section, if Trump is to be the newfound champion of this imperialism
-- empire's prodigal son -- then what an abysmally poor choice he is. On the
one hand, he helped to unleash US anti-interventionism (usually called "isolationism" not to call
it anti-imperialism, which would then admit to imperialism which is still denied by most of the
dominant elites). On the other hand, in trying to now contain such popular sentiment, he loses
credibility -- after having lost credibility with the groups his campaign displaced. In
addition to that, given that his candidacy aggravated internal divisions in the US, which have
not subsided with his assumption of office, these domestic social and cultural conflicts cause a
serious deficit of legitimacy, a loss of political capital.
A declining economy will also deprive
him of capital in the strict sense. Moreover, given the kind of persona the media have crafted,
the daily caricaturing of Trump will significantly spur anti-Americanism around the world. If
suddenly even Canadian academics are talking about boycotting the US, then the worm has truly
turned.
Trump can only rely on "hard power" (military violence), because "soft power" is almost
out of the question now that Trump has been constructed as a barbarian. Incompetent and/or
undermined governance will also render Trump a deficient upholder of the status quo. The fact
that nationalist movements around the world are not centrally coordinated, and their fortunes are
not pinned to those of Trump, establishes a well-defined limit to his influence. Trump's
antagonism toward various countries -- as wholes -- has already helped to stir up a
deep sediment of anti-Americanism. If Americanism is at the heart of Trump's nationalist
globalism, then it is doing all the things that are needed to induce a major heart attack.
As for Trump's domestic opposition, what should be most pertinent are issues of conflict
of interest and nepotism . Here members of Trump's base are more on target yet
again, when they reject the presence of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner in the White House ("we
didn't elect Ivanka or Jared"), than are those distracted by identity politics. As Trump
leverages the presidency to upgrade the Trump family to the transnational capitalist class, and
reinforces the power of US imperialism which that class has purchased, conflict of interest and
nepotism will be the main political signposts of the transformation of the Trump presidency, but
they could also be the targets for a refined strategy of opposition.
The first and the most important fact that there will no elections in November -- both candidates represent the same oligarchy,
just slightly different factions of it.
Look like NYT is controlled by Bolton faction of CIA. They really want to overturn the
results of 2020 elections and using Russia as a bogeyman is a perfect opportunity to achieve this
goal.
Neocons understand very well that it is MIC who better their bread, so amplifying rumors the simplify getting additional budget
money for intelligence agencies (which are a part of MIC) is always the most desirable goal.
Notable quotes:
"... But a new assessment says China would prefer to see the president defeated, though it is not clear Beijing is doing much to meddle in the 2020 campaign to help Joseph R. Biden Jr. ..."
"... The statement then claims: "Ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections, foreign states will continue to use covert and overt influence measures in their attempts to sway U.S. voters' preferences and perspectives, shift U.S. policies, increase discord in the United States, and undermine the American people's confidence in our democratic process." ..."
"... But how do the 'intelligence' agencies know that foreign states want to "sway preferences", "increase discord" or "undermine confidence" in elections? ..."
"... But ascribing motive and intent is a tricky business, because perceived impact is often mistaken for true intent. [...] Where is the evidence that Russia actually wants to bring down the liberal world order and watch the United States burn? ..."
"... Well there is none. And that is why the 'intelligence' agencies do not present any evidence. ..."
"... Is there a secret policy paper by the Russian government that says it should "increase discord" in the United States? Is there some Chinese think tank report which says that undermining U.S. people's confidence in their democratic process would be good for China? ..."
"... If the 'intelligence' people have copies of those papers why not publish them? ..."
"... Let me guess. The 'intelligence' agencies have nothing, zero, nada. They are just making wild-ass guesses about 'intentions' of perceived enemies to impress the people who sign off their budget. ..."
"... Nowadays that seems to be their main purpose. ..."
But when one reads the piece itself one finds no fact that would support the 'Russia
Continues Interfering' statement:
Russia is using a range of techniques to denigrate Joseph R. Biden Jr., American intelligence
officials said Friday in their first public assessment that Moscow continues to try to
interfere in the 2020 campaign to help President Trump.
At the same time, the officials said China preferred that Mr. Trump be defeated in
November and was weighing whether to take more aggressive action in the election.
But officials briefed on the intelligence said that Russia was the far graver, and more
immediate, threat. While China seeks to gain influence in American politics, its leaders have
not yet decided to wade directly into the presidential contest, however much they may dislike
Mr. Trump, the officials said.
The assessment, included in a
statement released by William R. Evanina, the director of the National
Counterintelligence and Security Center, suggested the intelligence community was treading
carefully, reflecting the political heat generated by previous findings.
The authors emphasize the scaremongering hearsay from "officials briefed on the
intelligence" - i.e. Democratic congress members - about Russia but have nothing to back it
up.
When one reads the
statement by Evanina one finds nothing in it about Russian attempts to interfere in the
U.S. elections. Here is the only 'evidence' that is noted:
For example, pro-Russia Ukrainian parliamentarian Andriy Derkach is spreading claims about
corruption – including through publicizing leaked phone calls – to undermine
former Vice President Biden's candidacy and the Democratic Party. Some Kremlin-linked actors
are also seeking to boost President Trump's candidacy on social media and Russian television.
After a request from Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's personal attorney, a Ukrainian
parliamentarian published Ukrainian
evidence of Biden's very real interference in the Ukraine. Also: Some guest of a Russian TV
show had an opinion. How is either of those two items 'evidence' of Russian interference in
U.S. elections?
The statement then claims: "Ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections, foreign states will continue to use covert and overt
influence measures in their attempts to sway U.S. voters' preferences and perspectives, shift
U.S. policies, increase discord in the United States, and undermine the American people's
confidence in our democratic process."
But how do the 'intelligence' agencies know that foreign states want to "sway preferences",
"increase discord" or "undermine confidence" in elections?
The mainstream view in the U.S. media and government holds that the Kremlin is waging a
long-haul campaign to undermine and destabilize American democracy. Putin wants to see the
United States burn, and contentious elections offer a ready-made opportunity to fan the
flames.
But ascribing motive and intent is a tricky business, because perceived impact is often
mistaken for true intent. [...] Where is the evidence that Russia actually wants to bring
down the liberal world order and watch the United States burn?
Well there is none. And that is why the 'intelligence' agencies do not present any
evidence.
Even the NYT writers have to
admit that there is nothing there:
The release on Friday was short on specifics, ...
and
Intelligence agencies focus their work on the intentions of foreign governments, and steer
clear of assessing if those efforts have had an effect on American voters.
How do 'intelligence' agencies know Russian, Chinese or Iranian 'intentions'. Is there a
secret policy paper by the Russian government that says it should "increase discord" in the
United States? Is there some Chinese think tank report which says that undermining U.S.
people's confidence in their democratic process would be good for China?
If the 'intelligence' people have copies of those papers why not publish them?
Let me guess. The 'intelligence' agencies have nothing, zero, nada. They are just making
wild-ass guesses about 'intentions' of perceived enemies to impress the people who sign off
their budget.
Nowadays that seems to be their main purpose.
Posted by b on August 8, 2020 at 18:08 UTC |
Permalink
"There's no difference between John Bolton, Brian Hook or Elliott Abrams," Iranian Foreign
Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said in
a tweet with the hashtag #BankruptUSPolicy on Friday.
"When U.S. policy concerns Iran, American officials have been biting off more than they can
chew. This applies to Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump and their successors," Mousavi added.
Indeed in perhaps one of the greatest symbols or representations of the contradictions and
absurdity inherent in US foreign policy of the past few decades, and a supreme irony that can't
be emphasized enough: the new US envoy to Iran who will oversee Pompeo's 'maximum pressure'
campaign remains the most publicly visible face of the 1980's Iran-Contra affair .
Elliott Abrams has been named to the position after Brian Hook stepping down. This means the
man who will continue to push for the extension of a UN arms embargo against Iran once himself
was deeply involved in illegally selling weapons to Iran and covering it up .
Most famously, or we should say infamously, Abrams pleaded guilty to lying to Congress in
1991 following years of the Iran-Contra scandal engulfing the Reagan administration; however,
he was also pardoned by outgoing president George H.W. Bush at around the same time.
"Pardoned by George H.W. Bush in 1992, Abrams was a pivotal figure in the foreign-policy
scandal that shook the Reagan administration, lying to Congress about his knowledge of the plot
to covertly sell weapons to the Khomeini government and use the proceeds to illegally fund the
right-wing Contras rebel group in Nicaragua ,"
NY Mag reviews.
Some are noting this heightens the chances that Washington could get dragged into a war
involving Israel and Iran.
Recall too that Abrams has been Trump's point man for ousting Maduro from Venezuela, and it
appears he'll remain in the post of special envoy for Venezuela as well.
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The Grayzone journalist, Anya Parampil, who has frequently reported from Venezuela, alleged
this week that Abrams will "try and destroy Venezuela and Iran at the same time".
https://www.dianomi.com/smartads.epl?id=4879&num_ads=18&cf=1258.5.zerohedge%20190919&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fmarkets%2Fno-difference-between-john-bolton-brian-hook-or-elliott-abrams-iran-fm Wild Bill Steamcock , 14 hours ago
Abrams is a disgrace. This Administration should be dying in it's own shame bringing this
swine back into government.
He's a leach. He's about lining his own pockets. He can't even own a .22 single shot, yet
he's shaping international policy.
This country is dead. And the fact Trump has democrat and zionist Kushner as advisor,
bringing in guys like Bolton and Abrams, Reince Priebus, H.R. McMaster and that Ukranian pet
goblin of his, in not firing Comey et. al day 1 means he's not the answer. Face it.
And to be fair, it doesn't matter anymore who is POTUS. It hasn't really mattered in quite
some time. The Plan rolls along.
Kinskian , 15 hours ago
Trump is a clumsy and transparent Zionist stooge.
PT , 14 hours ago
Gotta admit, if you're going to have a Zionist stooge then you are better off having a
clumsy and transparent one.
Dank fur Kopf , 14 hours ago
Elliott Abrams is a moron. He's been running the exact same stupid coup strategy for
decades, and can't conceive of a world where the enemy has worked out how to defeat that.
Venezuela was set to be US foreign policies most embarrassing failure--but maybe Iran will
be worse.
Dank fur Kopf , 14 hours ago
Let's predict what Abrams will attempt:
Running out of the US/UK embassies, Abrams will attempt to identify a potential
alternative leader who is corrupt and controllable. They'll throw political support behind
this false leader, and try and find enough military to support him. Then, protests in the
streets, and the small faction of the military--supported by foreign forces--will attempt to
establish control.
Counter: China and Russia will import anti-coup specialists. Individuals in the Iranian
military will pretend to be on board claiming to have thousands at call, and when the false
leader gives the call, they won't answer. All the conspirators will be caught out on the
street, and have to flee to embassies for political asylum. Like what happened in Venezuela
recently, and Turkey in 2016. This will allow Iran to do a purge of all the real threats
(remembering that Iran has the death penalty for sedition), and give them enough
justification to end diplomatic missions in the country that are being used as launch
pads.
Ambassador John Bolton hinted that he doesn't like being called a hawk, since foreign policy labels are simplistic.
But first of all, he labeled libertarian Sen. Rand Paul an isolationist, rather than say, a non- interventionist. And after
nearly 500 pages (all but the epilogue), what you will absorb is absolutely the worldview of a geopolitical hawk. He is not technically
a neoconservative (like, say, Paul Wolfowitz) because the latter were more focused on nation building and spreading democracy.
Bolton sees what he's promoting as defense, but it requires a constant offense.
Bolton is very bright, as Jim Baker noted decades ago, and very well-read, even endorsing his fellow Baltimorean and my teacher
Steve Vicchio's book on Lincoln's faith. But his intelligence is all put into an ideological reading of situations. As Aristotle
would put it, the problem is not lack of theoretical wisdom, but the deficiency in practical wisdom and prudential judgment. Certainly
there are bad actors in the world, and vigilance is required. But when is aggressive action called for, and when is it better
to go with diplomacy? In this book, I find few cases of such restraint. For Bolton, it seems that the goal of peace and security
requires the constant threat of war and presence on every continent. All this intervention around the world requires troops, soldiers,
real men and women and their lives and those of their families, requiring lots of sacrifice. At times, his theorizing seems distant
from these realities on the ground.
So Bolton is critical of the "axis of adults" in the Trump administration, the "generals", but not Kelly and not much on his
predecessor McMaster, much less the eccentric Flynn. So his beef is with Mattis, another fine student of history. Bolton says
he went by the rules, as James Baker had said that Bush 41 was "the one who got the votes". He tried to influence Trump within
the rules, while Mattis, Tillerson and Haley pursued their own foreign policy. I'm sure that Mattis was sometimes right and sometimes
wrong, but I would trust his prudential judgment above that of the equally bright Bolton, because of his life experience, being
the one on the ground and knowing what war is like.
When Bolton was considered for secretary state right after the 2016 election, I said, well I don't care for the guy, but at
least I've heard of him and we know what we're dealing with. His opponent in GOP foreign policy is the libertarian and non-interventionist
Sen. Rand Paul. What does Bolton say about the big players in the Trump administration? Nikki Haley is dismissed as a lightweight
who was posing for her political future. Well, that's basically what Trump, "the one that got the votes", put her there for. But
it's interesting that Bolton is so anti-Haley, when she was for Rubio and the more hawkish platform.
Tillerson's successor Mike Pompeo had sort of a love-hate relationship with Bolton.
Steve Mnuchin is the epitome of the globalist establishment, along with Javanka. Jared Kushner is dismissed as no Kissinger,
but when it comes to China, his soft stance is blamed on Kissinger! While Bolton didn't testify in the impeachment, Fiona Hill
is mentioned only with respect in this book.
Everybody's flaw, from Bolton's point of view, is being less belligerent than Bolton. (Even in the Bush administration, the
only name I can think of would be Michael Ledeen). He even defends the concept of Middle Eastern "endless wars" on the grounds
that we didn't start them and can't dictate when they end. Obama was a dove, but in 2016 the GOP marked a shift, with Trump, Paul,
Ben Carson and even Ted Cruz opposing the "invade every country on earth" philosophy that this book promotes. It's true that Trump
is not an ideologue and thinks in terms of individual transactions. But the movement I see is a dialectic of alternating between
aggression and diplomacy, or as he sees it, friendly relationship among leaders.
Bolton is a superhawk on North Korea and Iran throughout, while China and Russia are our hostile rivals. Other matters are
Syria, Iraq and ISIS, Venezuela, Afghanistan and finally Ukraine, which by the end of the book I had almost forgotten. If Bolton
is dovish anywhere, it's on the Saudis, the rivals with Iran in the Sunni-Shiite dispute chronicled recently in the book "Black
Wave".
You can learn a lot from this book, but just keep in mind that it's filtered through the mind of a strong ideologue, so other
people's faults are seen through that lens. But he has great knowledge of the details of policy. Bolton would like to be an inter-generational
guru like Henry Kissinger or Dean Acheson, but both parties have turned away from the "endless wars" philosophy.
If you are looking for anti-Trump material, I don't really see the point of investing this time and intellectual effort. The
more sensational parts have been reported-the exchanges involving Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un, and to a lesser extent Erdogan.
As most reviewers have said, it's about 100 pages too long, but Bolton is looking for a scholarly work like Kissinger's Diplomacy
or World Order, and this is the one that he hopes people will read.
John Bolton, on some fundamental level, is a brilliant, dedicated conservative intent on improving the future of the country
he and I love. THAT similarity is probably the only point we share.
I wanted to love this book, because I knew it would be jam-packed with juicy tidbits that justify me derision of the biggest
failure ever to assume the office of POTUS. Instead, quite early on, I realized the reason Trump became President was the enormous
ineptitude of those otherwise brilliant people who, in short, simply felt that somebody opposing those the person they despise,
on principle, was better for America than the other guy or gal.
Throughout this book, Bolton reminds us of Trump's inability to focus attention on the information provided by his handlers.
Yes, Trump is naive and intellectually lazy. Yes, so, too, are many of those aiding and abetting Mr. Trump. But, yes, Mr. Bolton
also suffers from gross naïveté, and, is just plain foolish. His ego led him to join the Trump Administration, as he admits in
"The Room Where It Happened."
Bolton's greatest error, however, was in refusing to tell the country what he chose to sell to the public through this book.
The writing is, mechanically, quite good. But, Bolton comes across as thinking he is the only person of intelligence. That
becomes clear by page two, and never changes, except for his insight that he was wrong about Trump.
Unfortunately, Bolton also was wrong about Bolton.
Whoa. Hold on. Just about everyone in both political parties is no better than Bolton. A few exceptions would be Former governor
John Kasick and Utah Senator Mitt Romney. Oh, and former Vice President Joe Biden, I believe. Yet, to be honest, I need to see
him prove me right. I would hate to make the same mistake regarding Biden as Bolton did regarding Trump.
Americans need to take a good, hard look at how we are governed and at those whom we support.
BOTTOM LINE
Writing quality, passable. But don't expect to gain a great deal of new knowledge.
P
resident Donald Trump's third National Security Advisor opens his memoir with this quote from the
Duke of Wellington at Waterloo: 'Hard Pounding, this, gentlemen. Let's see who will pound the longest.' And
pound for pound, that's the (nearly) 500 page memoir in a nutshell. Unremitting pounding is both the theme
and the style. As John Bolton urged the White House to take a 'harder line" on Iran and North Korea, Trump's
chief of staff "urged me to keep pounding away in public, which I assured him I would.' China 'pounded away
during my tenure, sensing weakness at the top.' As with Bolton's mission, so too with America's statecraft,
that must 'keep moving and keep firing, like a big grey battleship.'
From his infamous unsubtle moustache to his bellicosity,
Bolton traffics on a self-image of straight shooter who sprints towards gunfire. He does not set out to
offer a meditation on a complex inner life. This image is also slightly misleading. For all the barrage,
Bolton turns out to be a more conflicted figure, especially when his supporting fire is most called upon.
The Room Where it
Happened
is Bolton's account of his part in
the power struggles within Trump's almost medieval court, his attempt to steer the executive branch towards
the right course, unmasked supremacy everywhere, and his failure and disillusion with Trump's chaotic,
self-serving and showbiz-driven presidency.
The memoir itself is a non-trivial political event.
Other reviewers have assailed it for being turgid. Bolton, though, has at least done the state some service
by habitually recording and recounting every meeting. This is an important record of an important eighteen
months packed with the escalating brinksmanship with Iran, an impeachment inquest, the return of great power
competition and a fierce struggle to control the policy levers in Washington itself. For that detail,
especially when contrasted with the exhausting melodrama of the era, Bolton deserves a little credit. The
Trump administration's determined effort to suppress it on the grounds of classified information suggests
there is substance to Bolton's allegations of corruption and turmoil at the heart of government.
It is also, though, a work of self-vindication. Bolton's
life is an adversarial one. A former attorney, he became a policy advocate and a Republican Party
institution, consistently taking the hardest of lines. He was ever drawn to aggressive combatants – like
Hillary Clinton, in his formative years he supported Barry Goldwater. He interned for Vice-President Spiro
Agnew, the "number one hawk." As a measure of Bolton's faith that war works and that co-existence with
"rogue states" is impossible, he advocated attacking a heavily (and nuclear)-armed North Korea in 2018, an
adversary that lies in artillery range of Seoul and thousands of Americans as effective hostages, and
offered up a best-case scenario in doing so.
Bolton brought to government a world view that was
dug-in and entrenched. For Bolton, the world is hostile, and to survive America must be strong (wielding and
brandishing overwhelming force) at all times. Enemy regimes cannot be bargained with or even co-existed with
on anything less than maximalist terms dictated by Washington. The US never gives an inch, and must demand
everything. And if those regimes do not capitulate, America must topple or destroy them: Iran, Syria, Libya,
Venezuela, Cuba, Yemen and North Korea, and must combat them on multiple fronts at once. In doing so,
America
itself must remain unfettered with an absolutely free hand, not nodding even hypocritically to law or custom
or bargaining.
If Bolton's thoughts add up to anything, it is a general
hostility, if not to talking, certainly to diplomacy – the art of giving coherence and shape to different
instruments and activities, above all through compromise and a recognition of limits. The final straw for
Bolton was Trump's cancelling an airstrike on Iran after it shot down a drone. An odd hill to die on, given
the graver acts of corruption he as witness alleges, but fitting that the failure to pull the trigger for
him was Trump's most shocking misdemeanour.
What is intended to be personal strength and clarity
comes over as unreflective bluster
This worldview is as personal as it is geopolitical.
Importantly for Bolton, in the end he fights alone, bravely against the herd. He fights against other
courtiers, even fellow hawks, who Bolton treats with dismissive contempt – Nikki Haley, Steve Mnuchin, Mike
Pompeo, or James Mattis who like Bolton, champions strategic commitments and views Iran as a dangerous
enemy, but is more selective about when to reach for the gun. The press is little more than an "hysterical"
crowd. Allies like South Korea, who must live as neighbours with one of the regimes Bolton earmarks for
execution, and who try conciliatory diplomacy occasionally, earn slight regard. Critics, opponents or those
who disagree are 'lazy,' 'howling' or 'feckless.'
For a lengthy work that distils a lifetime's experience,
it is remarkably thin regarding the big questions of security, power and order. The hostile world for him
contains few real limits other than failures of will. He embraces every rivalry and every commitment, but
explanations are few and banal. 'While foreign policy labels are unhelpful except to the intellectually
lazy,' he says, 'if pressed, I like to say my policy was "pro-American".' Who is lazy, here?
The purpose of foreign policy, too, is largely absent.
Armed supremacy abroad, and power-maximisation, seems to be the end in itself, regardless of what is has
wrought at home. This makes his disdain for Trump's authoritarian ways especially obtuse: what does he think
made possible an imperial presidency in the first place?
There's little room for principled or reasonable
disagreement. What is intended to be personal strength and clarity comes over as unreflective bluster, in a
town where horse-trading and agility matter. Unintentionally, it is a warning to anyone who seeks to be
effective as well as right, and to those of us who debate these questions.
The most provocative part of the book comes at the end,
and points to a man more conflicted than his self-image of the straight shooter. Bolton issues an extended,
uneasy defence of his decision not to appear as a witness before the House impeachment inquiry against a
president he believed to be corrupt. Having celebrated the need to "pound away" with inexhaustible energy,
it turned out his ammunition was low. 'I was content to bide my time. I believed throughout, as the line in
Hamilton
goes,
that "I am not throwing away my shot".' Drawing on a characteristic claim to certainty, 'it would have made
no significant difference in the Senate outcome.' How can he know this? And even if the odds were long, was
there not – for once – a compelling basis in civic virtue to be that relentless grey battleship, pounding
away? He now hopes "history" will remember Trump as a one-term president. History needs willing agents.
Other reviews have honed in on Bolton's decision to
delay his revelations for a book pay-day. But consider another theme – the war-hawk who is in fact torn and
agonised around combat when it comes to himself. It echoes his retrospective rationale for not fighting in
Vietnam, a war he supported, and (as he has recorded) the detailed efforts he made to avoid service in that
tragic theatre after being drafted. It was, he decided, bound to fail given that the anti-war Democrats
would undermine the cause, a justification he later sheepishly regretted.
So twice the advocate of forceful confrontation refused
the call to show up, generously awarding to himself a rationale for non-intervention that relieves him of
commitment. He refuses to extend that same exonerating, prudential logic to his country, when it debates
whether to wade in to conflict abroad. Neither does he extend it to other Americans who think the nation,
like Bolton, might be better off sometimes holding its fire, biding its time, dividing its enemies, and
keeping its powder dry.
Given that Bolton failed in the end to attend the "room
where it happened", his title is unwittingly ironic. In his favour, Bolton's testy defence of his absence at
least suggests something. In contrast with the front cover of another
forthcoming,
Trump-era memoir
, he retains a modest
capacity for embarrassment.
By middle of last week
we observed of the Russian bounties to kill American troops in Afghanistan story that "at
this point this non-story looks to be dead by the weekend as it's already unraveled."
Indeed by Thursday and Friday, as more Congressional leaders received closed door
intelligence briefings on the allegations which originated with an anonymously sourced NY Times
report claiming Trump supposedly ignored the Russian op to target Americans, the very Democrat
and Republican lawmakers previously hyping it as a 'major scandal' went conspicuously silent
.
Recall too that John Bolton, busy with a media blitz promoting his book,
emerged to strongly suggest he had personal knowledge that Trump was briefed on the matter
. The former national security adviser called the Trump denial of being briefed "remarkable".
Well, look who is now appearing to sing a different tune. A week ago Bolton was all too wiling
to voluntarily say Trump had "likely" been briefed and that was a big scandal. The whole story
was indeed dead by the weekend:
Bolton: 'Fickle' Trump would sell out Israel for photo op with Iran's leaders
U.S. should consider sanctions if bounty reports true: Bolton
Bolton book hits shelves, bruises Trump's ego
Viral Finland PM quote about US being under Russian control 'not true' | #TheCube
Bolton's New Claims
Bolton Claims Trump Asked China's XI to Help Win Re-Election
Bolton book creates shockwaves
Senator Who Voted Against Bolton Testifying Is Now Angry Bolton Didn't Testify
Other reports said Bolton has been telling people he had personally
briefed the president :
Former national security adviser John Bolton told colleagues that he personally briefed
President Donald Trump about intelligence that Russia offered Afghan militants bounties to
kill American troops , U.S. officials told the Associated Press .
Bolton briefed Trump on the matter in March of 2019, according to the report, a year
earlier than previously
reported by The New York Times . The information was also included in at least one
presidential Daily Brief, according to the AP,
CNN and
The Times . The AP earlier reported that it was also
included in a second presidential Daily Brief earlier this year and that current national
security adviser Robert O'Brien discussed the matter with Trump.
His Sunday refusal to even address the question - again after he was all too willing to
speak to the issue a week ago when it was driving headlines - speaks volumes.
Now that even The Washington Post
awkwardly walked back the substance of much of its reporting on the 'Russian bounties'
story, Bolton has conveniently gone silent .
"... the essential backdrop for the timing of this story. It really reveals how completely decayed mainstream media is as an institution, that none of these reporters protested the story, didn't see fit to do any independent investigation into it. At best they would print a Russian denial which counts for nothing in the US, or a Taliban denial which counts for nothing in the US. And then and this gets into the domestic political angle because so much of Russiagate, while it's been crafted by former or current intelligence officials, depends on the Democratic Party and it punditocracy, MSNBC and mainstream media as a projection megaphone, as its Mighty Wurlitzer. ..."
"... That took place in this case because, according to this story, Donald Trump had been briefed on Putin paying bounties to the Taliban and he chose to do nothing. Which, of course Trump denies, but that counts for nothing as well. But, again, there's been no independent confirmation of any of this. And now we get into the domestic part, which is that this new Republican anti-Trump operation, The Lincoln Project, had a flashy ad ready to go almost minutes after the story dropped. ..."
"... They're just, like, on meth at Steve Schmidt's political Batcave, just churning this material out. But I feel like they had an inkling, like this story was coming. It just the coordination and timing was impeccable. ..."
"... And The Lincoln Project is something that James Carville, the veteran Democratic consultant, has said is doing more than any Democrat or any Democratic consultant to elect Joe Biden. ..."
"... the Carter Administration, at the urging of national security chief Zbigniew Brzezinski, had enacted what would become Operation Cyclone under Reagan, an arm-and-equip program to arm the Afghan mujahideen. The Saudis put up a matching fund which helped bring the so-called Services Bureau into the field where Osama bin Laden became a recruiter for international jihadists to join the battlefield. And, you know, the goal was, in the words of Brzezinski, as he later admitted to a French publication, was to force the Red Army, the Soviet Red Army, to intervene to protect the pro-Soviet government in Kabul, which they proceeded to do. ..."
"... What he means is by basically paying bounties, which the US was literally doing along with its Gulf allies, to exact the toll on the allies of Assad, Russia. So, let's just say it's true, according to your question, let's just say this is all true. It would be a retaliation for what the United States has done to Russia in areas where it was actually legally invited in by the governments in charge, either in Kabul or Damascus. And that's, I think, the kind of ironic subtext that can hardly be understated when you see someone like Dan Rather wag his finger at Putin for paying the Taliban as proxies. But, I mean, it's such a ridiculous story that it's just hard to even fathom that it's real. ..."
"... just kind of neocon resistance mind-explosion, where first John Bolton was hailed as this hero and truthteller about Trump. ..."
"... And then you have this and it, you know, today as you pointed out, Chuck Todd, "Chuck Toddler", welcomes on Meet the Press John Bolton as this wise voice to comment on Donald Trump's slavish devotion to Vladimir Putin and how we need to escalate. ..."
"... This is what Russiagate has done. It's taken one of the most Strangelovian, psychotic, dangerous, bloodthirsty, sadistic monsters in US foreign policy circles and turned him into a sober-minded, even heroic, truthteller. ..."
Max Blumenthal breaks down the "Russian bounty" story's flaws and how it aims to prolong the
war in Afghanistan -- and uses Russiagate tactics to continue pushing the Democratic Party to
the right
Multiple US media outlets, citing anonymous intelligence officials, are claiming that Russia
offered bounties to kill US soldiers in Afghanistan, and that President Trump has taken no
action.
Others are contesting that claim. "Officials said there was disagreement among
intelligence officials about the strength of the evidence about the suspected Russian
plot," the New York Times reports. "Notably, the National Security Agency, which specializes in
hacking and electronic surveillance, has been more skeptical."
"The constant flow of Russiagate disinformation into the bloodstream of the Democratic Party
and its base is moving that party constantly to the right, while pushing the US deeper into
this Cold War," Blumenthal says.
Guest: Max Blumenthal, editor of The Grayzone and author of several books, including his
latest "The Management of Savagery."
TRANSCRIPT
AARON MATÉ: Welcome to Pushback, I'm Aaron Maté. There is a new supposed
Trump-Russia bombshell. The New York Times and other outlets reporting that Russia has
been paying bounties to Afghan militants to kill US soldiers in Afghanistan. Trump and the
White House were allegedly briefed on this information but have taken no action.
Now, the story has obvious holes, like many other Russiagate bombshells. It is sourced to
anonymous intelligence officials. The New York Times says that the claim comes from
Afghan detainees. And it also has some logical holes. The Taliban have been fighting the US and
Afghanistan for nearly two decades and never needed Russian payments before to kill the
Americans that they were fighting; [this] amongst other questions are raised about this story.
But that has not stopped the usual chorus from whipping up a frenzy.
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC: Vladimir Putin is offering bounties for the scalps of American
soldiers in Afghanistan. Not only offering, offering money [to] the people who kill Americans,
but some of the bounties that Putin has offered have been collected, meaning the Russians at
least believe that their offering cash to kill Americans has actually worked to get some
Americans killed.
FORMER VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Donald Trump has continued his embarrassing campaign
of deference and debasing himself before Vladimir Putin. He had has [sic] this information
according to The Times, and yet he offered to host Putin in the United States and sought
to invite Russia to rejoin the G7. He's in his entire presidency has been a gift to Putin, but
this is beyond the pale.
CHUCK TODD, NBC: Let me ask you this. Do you think that part of the that the
president is afraid to make Putin mad because maybe Putin did help him win the election and he
doesn't want to make him mad for 2020?
SENATE MINORITY LEADER CHUCK SCHUMER: I was not briefed on the Russian military
intelligence, but it shows that we need in this coming defense bill, which we're debating this
week, tough sanctions against Russia, which thus far Mitch McConnell has resisted.
Joining me now is Max Blumenthal, editor of The Grayzone, author of The Management of
Savagery . Max, welcome to Pushback. What is your reaction to this story?
MAX BLUMENTHAL: I mean, it just feels like so many other episodes that we've
witnessed over the past three or four years, where American intelligence officials basically
plant a story in one outlet, The New York Times , which functions as the media wing of
the Central Intelligence Agency. Then no reporting takes place whatsoever, but six reporters,
or three to six reporters are assigned to the piece to make it look like it was some
last-minute scramble to confirm this bombshell story. And then the story is confirmed again by
The Washington Post because their reporters, their three to six reporters in, you know,
capitals around the world with different beats spoke to the same intelligence officials, or
they were furnished different officials who fed them the same story. And, of course, the story
advances a narrative that the United States is under siege by Russia and that we have to
escalate against Russia just ahead of another peace summit or some kind of international
dialogue.
This has sort of been the general framework for these Russiagate bombshells, and of course
they can there's always an anti-Trump angle. And because, you know, liberal pundits and the,
you know, Democratic Party operatives see this as a means to undermine Trump as the election
heats up. They don't care if it's true or not. They don't care what the consequences are.
They're just gonna completely roll with it. And it's really changed, I think, not just US
foreign policy, but it's changed the Democratic Party in an almost irreversible way, to have
these constant "quote-unquote" bombshells that are really generated by the Central Intelligence
Agency and by other US intelligence operations in order to turn up the heat to crank up the
Cold War, to use these different media organs which no longer believe in reporting, which see
Operation Mockingbird as a kind of blueprint for how to do journalism, to turn them into keys
on the CIA's Mighty Wurlitzer. That's what happened here.
AARON MATÉ: What do you make of the logic of this story? This idea that the
Taliban would need Russian money to kill Americans when the Taliban's been fighting the US for
nearly two decades now. And the sourcing for the story, the same old playbook: anonymous
intelligence officials who are citing vague claims about apparently what was said by Afghan
detainees.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: This story has, as I said, it relies on zero reporting. The only
source is anonymous American intelligence officials. And I tweeted out a clip of a former CIA
operations officer who managed the CIA's operation in Angola, when the US was actually fighting
on the side of apartheid South Africa against a Marxist government that was backed up by Cuban
troops. His name was John Stockwell. And Stockwell talked about how one-third of his covert
operations staff were propagandists, and that they would feed imaginary stories about Cuban
barbarism that were completely false to reporters who were either CIA assets directly or who
were just unwitting dupes who would hang on a line waiting for American intelligence officials
to feed them stories. And one out of every five stories was completely false, as Stockwell
said. We could play some of that clip now; it's pretty remarkable to watch it in light of this
latest fake bombshell.
JOHN STOCKWELL: Another thing is to disseminate propaganda to influence people's
minds, and this is a major function of the CIA. And unfortunately, of course, it overlaps into
the gathering of information. You, you have contact with a journalist, you will give him true
stories, you'll get information from him, you'll also give him false stories.
OFF-CAMERA REPORTER: Can you do this with responsible reporters?
JOHN STOCKWELL: Yes, the Church Committee brought it out in 1975. And then Woodward
and Bernstein put an article in Rolling Stone a couple of years later. Four hundred
journalists cooperating with the CIA, including some of the biggest names in the business.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: So, basically, I mean, you get the flavor of what someone who was in
the CIA at the height of the Cold War I mean, he did the same thing in Vietnam. And the
playbook is absolutely the same today. These this story was dumped on Friday in The New York
Times by "quote-unquote" American intelligence officials, as a breakthrough had been made
in Afghan peace talks and a conference was finally set for Doha, Qatar, that would involve the
Taliban, which had been seizing massive amounts of territory.
Now, it's my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, that the Taliban had been fighting
one of the most epic examples of an occupying army in modern history, just absolutely chewing
away at one of the most powerful militaries in human history in their country for the last 19
years, without bounties from Vladimir Putin or
private-hotdog-salesman-and-Saint-Petersburg-troll-farm-owner Yevgeny Prigozhin , who always comes up
in these stories. It's always the hotdog guy who's doing everything bad from, like, you know,
fake Facebook ads to poisoning Sergei Skripal or whatever.
But I just don't see where the Taliban needs encouragement from Putin to do that. It's their
country. They want the US out and they have succeeded in seizing large amounts of territory.
Donald Trump has come into office with a pledge to remove US troops from Afghanistan and ink
this deal. And along comes this story as the peace process begins to advance.
And what is the end-result? We haven't gotten into the domestic politics yet, but the
end-result is you have supposedly progressive senators like Chris Murphy of Connecticut
attacking Trump for not fighting Russia in Afghanistan. I mean, they want a straight-up proxy
war for not escalating. You have Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign
Relations, someone who's aligned with the Democratic Party, who supported the war in Iraq and,
you know, supports just endless war, demanding that the US turn up the heat not just in
Afghanistan but in Syria. So, you know, the escalatory rhetoric is at a fever pitch right now,
and it's obviously going to impact that peace conference.
Let's remember that three days before Trump's summit with Putin was when Mueller chose to
release the indictment of the GRU agents for supposedly hacking the DNC servers. Let's remember
that a day before the UN the United Nations Geneva peace talks opened on Syria in 2014 was when
US intelligence chose to feed these shady Caesar photos, supposedly showing industrial
slaughter of Syrian prisoners, to The New York Times in an investigation that had been
funded by Qatar. Like, so many shady intelligence dumps have taken place ahead of peace summits
to disrupt them, because the US doesn't feel like it has enough skin in the game or it just
simply doesn't want peace in these areas.
So, that's what happened here. That's really, I think, the essential backdrop for the timing
of this story. It really reveals how completely decayed mainstream media is as an institution,
that none of these reporters protested the story, didn't see fit to do any independent
investigation into it. At best they would print a Russian denial which counts for nothing in
the US, or a Taliban denial which counts for nothing in the US. And then and this gets into the
domestic political angle because so much of Russiagate, while it's been crafted by former or
current intelligence officials, depends on the Democratic Party and it punditocracy, MSNBC and
mainstream media as a projection megaphone, as its Mighty Wurlitzer.
That took place in this
case because, according to this story, Donald Trump had been briefed on Putin paying bounties
to the Taliban and he chose to do nothing. Which, of course Trump denies, but that counts for
nothing as well. But, again, there's been no independent confirmation of any of this. And now
we get into the domestic part, which is that this new Republican anti-Trump operation, The
Lincoln Project, had a flashy ad ready to go almost minutes after the story dropped.
THE LINCOLN PROJECT AD: Now we know Vladimir Putin pays a bounty for the murder of
American soldiers. Donald Trump knows, too, and does nothing. Putin pays the Taliban cash to
slaughter our men and women in uniform and Trump is silent, weak, controlled. Instead of
condemnation he insists Russia be treated as our equal.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: I mean, maybe they're just really good editors and brilliant
politicians who work overtime. They're just, like, on meth at Steve Schmidt's political Batcave, just churning this material out. But I feel like they had an inkling, like this story
was coming. It just the coordination and timing was impeccable.
And The Lincoln Project is something that James Carville, the veteran Democratic consultant,
has said is doing more than any Democrat or any Democratic consultant to elect Joe Biden.
They're always out there doing the hard work. Who are they? Well, Steve Schmidt is a former
campaign manager for John McCain 2008. And you look at the various personnel affiliated with
it, they're all McCain former McCain aides or people who worked on the Jeb and George W. Bush
campaigns, going back to Texas and Florida. This is sort of the corporate wing of the
Republican Party, the white-glove-country-club-patrician Republicans who are very pro-war, who
hate Donald Trump.
And by doing this, by them really taking the lead on this attack, as you pointed out, Aaron,
number one, they are sucking the oxygen out of the more progressive anti-Trump initiatives that
are taking place, including in the streets of American cities. They're taking the wind out of
anti-Trump more progressive anti-Trump critiques. For example, I think it's actually more
powerful to attack Trump over the fact that he used, basically, chemical weapons on American
peaceful protesters to do a fascistic photo-op. I don't know why there wasn't some call for
congressional investigations on that. And they are getting skin in the game on the Biden
campaign. It really feels to me like this Lincoln campaign operation, this moderate Republican
operation which is also sort of a venue for neocons, will have more influence after events like
this than the Bernie Sanders campaign, which has an enormous amount of delegates.
So, that's what I think the domestic repercussion is. It's just this constant it's the
constant flow of Russiagate disinformation into the bloodstream of the Democratic Party and its
base that's moving that party constantly to the right, while pushing the US deeper into this
Cold War that only serves, you know, people who are associated with the national security state
who need to justify their paycheck and the budget of the institutions that employ them.
AARON MATÉ: Let's assume for a second that the allegation is true, although, you
know, you've laid out some of the reasons why it's not. Can you talk about the history here,
starting with Afghanistan, something you cover a lot in your book, The Management of
Savagery, where the US aim was to kill Russians, going right on through to Syria, where
just recently the US envoy for the coalition against ISIS, James Jeffery, who handles Syria,
said that his job now is to basically put the Russians in a quagmire in Syria.
JAMES JEFFREY: This isn't Afghanistan. This isn't Vietnam. This isn't a quagmire. My
job is to make it a quagmire for the Russians.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Yeah, I mean, it feels like a giant act of psychological and
political projection to accuse Russia of using an Islamist militia in Afghanistan as a proxy
against the US to bleed the US into leaving, because that's been the US playbook in Central
Asia and the Middle East since at least 1979. I just tweeted a photo of Dan Rather in
Afghanistan, just crossing the Pakistani border and going to meet with some of the Mujahideen
in 1980. Dan Rather was panned in The New York in The Washington Post by Tom
Toles [Tom Shales], who was the media critic at the time, as "Gunga Dan," because he was so
gung-ho for the Afghan mujahideen. In his reports he would complain about how weak their
weaponry was, you know, how they needed more how they needed more funding. I mean, you could
call it bounties, but it was really just CIA funding.
DAN RATHER: These are the best weapons you have, huh? They only have about twenty
rounds for this?
TRANSLATOR: That's all. They have twenty rounds. Yes, and they know that these are
all old weapons and they really aren't up to doing anything to the Russian weaponry that's
around. But that's all they have, and this is why they want help. And he is saying that America
seems to be asleep. It doesn't seem to realize that if Afghanistan goes and the Russians go
over to the Gulf, that in a very short time it's going to be the turn of the United States as
well.
DAN RATHER: But I'm sure he knows that in Vietnam we got our fingers burned. Indeed,
we got our whole hands burned when we tried to help in this kind of situation.
TRANSLATOR [translating to the Afghan man and then his reply]: Your hands were burned
in Vietnam, but if you don't agree to help us, if you don't ally yourself with us, then all of
you, your whole body will be burnt eventually, because there is no one in the world who can
really fight and resist as well as the as much and as well as the Afghans are.
DAN RATHER: But no American mother wants to send her son to Afghanistan.
TRANSLATOR [translating to the Afghan man and then his reply]: We don't need
anybody's soldiers here to help us, but we are being constantly accused that the Americans are
helping us with weapons. What we need, actually, are the American weapons. We don't need or
want American soldiers. We can do the fighting ourselves.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: And a year or several months before, the Carter Administration, at
the urging of national security chief Zbigniew Brzezinski, had enacted what would become
Operation Cyclone under Reagan, an arm-and-equip program to arm the Afghan mujahideen. The
Saudis put up a matching fund which helped bring the so-called Services Bureau into the field
where Osama bin Laden became a recruiter for international jihadists to join the battlefield.
And, you know, the goal was, in the words of Brzezinski, as he later admitted to a French
publication, was to force the Red Army, the Soviet Red Army, to intervene to protect the
pro-Soviet government in Kabul, which they proceeded to do.
And then with the introduction of
the Stinger missile, the Afghan mujahideen, hailed as freedom fighters in Washington, were able
to destroy Russian supply lines, exact a heavy toll, and forced the Red Army to leave in
retreat. They helped create what's considered the Soviet Union's Vietnam.
So that was really but the blueprint for what Russian for what Russia is being accused of
now, and that same model was transferred over to Syria. It was also actually proposed for Iraq
in the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998. Then Senate Foreign Relations chair Jesse Helms actually
said that the Afghan mujahideen should be our model for supporting the Iraqi resistance. So,
this kind of proxy war was always on the table. Then the US did it in Syria, when one out of
every $13 in the CIA budget went to arm the so-called "moderate rebels" in Syria, who we later
found out were 31 flavors of jihadi, who were aligned with al-Qaeda's local affiliate Jabhat
al-Nusra and helped give rise to ISIS. Michael Morell, I tweeted some video of him on Charlie
Rose back in, I think, 2016. He's the former acting director for the CIA, longtime deputy
director. He said, you know, the reason that we're in Syria, what we should be doing is causing
Iran and Russia, the two allies of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, to pay a heavy
price.
MICHAEL MORELL: We need to make the Iranians pay a price in Syria. We need to make
the Russians pay a price. The other thing
CHARLIE ROSE: We make them pay the price by killing killing Russians?
MICHAEL MORELL: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: And killing Iranians.
MICHAEL MORELL: Yes, covertly. You don't tell the world about it, right? You don't
stand up at the Pentagon and say we did this, right? But you make sure they know it in Moscow
and Tehran.
MAX BLUMENTHAL:What he means is by basically paying bounties, which the US was
literally doing along with its Gulf allies, to exact the toll on the allies of Assad, Russia.
So, let's just say it's true, according to your question, let's just say this is all true. It
would be a retaliation for what the United States has done to Russia in areas where it was
actually legally invited in by the governments in charge, either in Kabul or Damascus. And
that's, I think, the kind of ironic subtext that can hardly be understated when you see someone
like Dan Rather wag his finger at Putin for paying the Taliban as proxies. But, I mean, it's
such a ridiculous story that it's just hard to even fathom that it's real.
AARON MATÉ: Let me read Dan Rather's tweet, because it's so it speaks to just
how pervasive Russiagate culture is now. People have learned absolutely nothing from it.
Rather says, "Reporters are trained to look for patterns that are suspicious, and time and
again one stands out with Donald Trump. Why is he so slavishly devoted to Putin? There is a
spectrum of possible answers ranging from craven to treasonous. One day I hope and suspect we
will find out."
It's like he forgot, perhaps, that Robert Mueller and his team spent three years
investigating this very issue and came up with absolutely nothing. But the narrative has taken
hold, and it's, as you talked about before, it's been the narrative we've been presented as the
vehicle for understanding and opposing Donald Trump, so it cannot be questioned. And now it's
like it's a matter of, what else is there to find out about Trump and Russia after Robert
Mueller and the US intelligence agencies looked for everything they could and found nothing?
They're still presented as if it's some kind of mystery that has to be unraveled.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: And it was after, like, a week of just kind of neocon resistance
mind-explosion, where first John Bolton was hailed as this hero and truthteller about Trump.
Then Dick Cheney was welcomed into the resistance, you know, because he said, "Wear a mask." I
mean, you know, his mask was strangely not spattered with the blood of Iraqi children. But, you
know, it was just amazing like that. Of course, it was the Lincoln project who hijacked the
minds of the resistance, but basically people who used to work on Cheney's campaign said, "Dick
Cheney, welcome to the resistance." I mean, that was remarkable. And then you have this and it,
you know, today as you pointed out, Chuck Todd, "Chuck Toddler", welcomes on Meet the
Press John Bolton as this wise voice to comment on Donald Trump's slavish devotion to
Vladimir Putin and how we need to escalate.
CHUCK TODD, NBC: Let me ask you this. Do you think that part of the that the
president is afraid to make Putin mad because maybe Putin did help him win the election and he
doesn't want to make him mad for 2020?
MAX BLUMENTHAL: I mean, just a few years ago, maybe it was two years ago, before
Bolton was brought into the Trump NSC, he was considered just an absolute marginal crank who
was a contributor to Fox News. He'd been forgotten. He was widely hated by Democrats. Now here
he is as a sage voice to tell us how dangerous this moment is. And, you know, he's not being
even brought on just to promote his book; he's being brought on as just a sober-minded foreign
policy expert on Meet the Press . That's where we're at right now.
AARON MATÉ: Yeah, and when his critique of Trump is basically that Trump was not
hawkish enough. Bolton's most the biggest critique Bolton has of Trump is, as he writes about
in his book, is when Trump declined to bomb Iran after Iran shot down a drone over its
territory. And Bolton said that to him was the most irrational thing he's ever seen a president
do.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, Bolton was mad that Trump confused body bags with missiles,
because he said Trump thought that there would be 150 dead Iranians, and I said, "No, Donald,
you're confused. It will be 150 missiles that we're firing into Iran." Like that's better!
Like, "Oh, okay, that makes everything all right," that we fire a hundred missiles for one
drone and maybe that wouldn't that kill possibly more than 150 people?
Well, in Bolton's world this was just another stupid move by Trump. If Bolton were, I mean,
just, just watch all the interviews with Bolton. Watch him on The View where the only
pushback he received was from Meghan McCain complaining that he ripped off a Hamilton
song for his book The Room Where It Happened , and she asked, "Don't you have any
apology to offer to Hamilton fans?" That was the pushback that Bolton received. Just
watch all of these interviews with Bolton and try to find the pushback. It's not there. This is
what Russiagate has done. It's taken one of the most Strangelovian, psychotic, dangerous,
bloodthirsty, sadistic monsters in US foreign policy circles and turned him into a
sober-minded, even heroic, truthteller.
AARON MATÉ: And inevitably the only long-term consequence that I can see here is
ultimately helping Trump, because, if history is a pattern, these Russiagate supposed
bombshells always either go nowhere or they get debunked. So, if this one gets forcefully
debunked, because I think it's quite possible, because Trump has said that he was never briefed
on this and they'll have to prove that he's lying, you know. It should be easy to do. Someone
could come out and say that. If they can't prove that he's lying, then this one, I think, will
blow up in their face. And all they will have done is, at a time when Trump is vulnerable over
the pandemic with over a hundred thousand people dead on his watch, all these people did was
ultimately try to bring the focus back to the same thing that failed for basically the entirety
of Trump's presidency, which is Russiagate and Trump's supposed―and non-existent in
reality―subservience to Vladimir Putin.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: But have you ever really confronted one of your liberal friends who
maybe doesn't follow these stories as closely as you do? You know, well-intentioned liberal
friend who just has this sense that Russia controls Trump, and asked them to really defend that
and provide the receipts and really explain where the Trump administration has just handed the
store to Russia? Because what we've seen is unprecedented since the height of the Cold War, an
unprecedented deterioration of US-Russia relations with new sanctions on Russia every few
months. You ask them to do that. They can't do it. It's just a sense they get, it's a feeling
they get. And that's because these bombshells drop, they get reported on the front pages under
banners of papers that declare that "democracy dies in darkness," whose brand is something that
everybody trusts, The New York Times , The Washington Post , Woodward and
Bernstein, and everybody repeats the story again and again and again. And then, if and when it
gets debunked, discredited or just sort of disappears, a few days later everybody forgets about
it. And those people who are not just, like, 24/7 media consumers but critical-minded media
consumers, they're left with that sense that Russia actually controls us and that we must do
something to escalate with Russia. So, that's the point of these: by the time the
disinformation is discredited, the damage has already been done. And that same tactic was
employed against Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, to the point where so many people were left with the
sense that he must be an antisemite, although not one allegation was ever proven.
AARON MATÉ: Yeah, and now to the point where, in the Labour Party―we
should touch on this for a second―where you had a Labour Party member retweet an article
recently that mentioned some criticism of Israel and for that she was expelled from her
position in the shadow cabinet.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Yeah, well, you know, as a Jew I was really threatened by that
retweet [laughter]. I don't know about you.
I mean, this is Rebecca Long Bailey. She's one of the few Corbynites left in a high position
in Labour who hasn't been effectively burned at the stake for being a, you know, Jew hater who
wants to throw us all in gas chambers because she retweets an interview with some celebrity I'd
never heard of before, who didn't even say anything that extreme. But it really shows how the
Thought Police have taken control of the Labour Party through Sir Keir Starmer, who is someone
who has deep links to the national security state through the Crown Prosecution Service, which
he used to head, where he was involved in the prosecution of Julian Assange. And he has worked
with The Times of London, which is a, you know, favorite paper of the national security
state and the MI5 in the UK, for planting stories against Jeremy Corbyn. He was intimately
involved in that campaign, and now he's at the head of the Labour Party for a very good reason.
I really would recommend everyone watching this, if you're interested more in who Keir Starmer
really is, read "Five Questions for [New Labour Leader] Sir Keir Starmer" by Matt Kennard at
The Grayzone. It really lays it out and shows you what's happening.
We're just in this kind of hyper-managed atmosphere, where everything feels so much more
controlled than it's ever been. And even though every sane rational person that I know seems to
understand what's happening, they feel like they're not allowed to say it, at least not in any
official capacity.
AARON MATÉ: From the US to Britain, everything is being co-opted. In the US
it's, you know, genuine resistance to Trump, in opposition to Trump, it gets co-opted by the
right. Same thing in Britain. People get manipulated into believing that Jeremy Corbyn, this
lifelong anti-racist is somehow an antisemite. It's all in the service of the same agenda, and
I have to say we're one of the few outlets that are pushing back on it. Everyone else is
getting swept up on it and it's a scary time.
We're gonna wrap. Max, your final comment.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, yeah, we're pushing back. And I saw today Mint Press
[News], which is another outlet that has pushed back, their Twitter account was just
briefly removed for no reason, without explanation. Ollie Vargas, who's an independent
journalist who's doing some of the most important work in the English language from Bolivia,
reporting on the post-coup landscape and the repressive environment that's been created by the
junta installed with US help under Jeanine Áñez, his account has been taken away on
Twitter. The social media platforms are basically under the control of the national security
state. There's been a merger between the national security state and Silicon Valley, and the
space for these kinds of discussions is rapidly shrinking. So, I think, you know, it's more
important than ever to support alternative media and also to really have a clear understanding
of what's taking place. I'm really worried there just won't be any space for us to have these
conversations in the near future.
AARON MATÉ: Max Blumenthal, editor of The Grayzone, author of The Management
of Savagery , thanks a lot.
Bolton is just "yet another MIC puppet", who has complete vacuum in his head as for morality
and decency. In other words he is a typical Washington psychopath. Like many sociopaths he is a
compulsive liar, undeniable careerist and self-promoter.
This week on Empire Has No Clothes, we spoke with Elizabeth Shackelford, a former Foreign
Service Officer and author of
The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age . Kelley Vlahos, Matt Purple
and I talked about demoralization in the department, the reasons for her resignation, U.S.
policy in South Sudan and Africa, and the need for greater accountability in our foreign
policy. We also covered John Bolton's new book, his outdated foreign policy views, and whether
anything he says can be trusted.
Listen to the episode in the player below, or click the links beneath it to subscribe using
your favorite podcast app. If you like what you hear, please give us a rating or review on
iTunes or Stitcher, which will really help us climb the rankings, allowing more people to find
the show.
This is an attempt to move Trump in the direction of more harsher politics toward Russia. So not Bolton's but Obama ears are
protruding above this dirty provocation.
Notable quotes:
"... According to the anonymous sources that spoke with the paper's reporters, the White House and President Trump were briefed on a range of potential responses to Moscow's provocations, including sanctions, but the White House had authorized no further action. ..."
"... Bolton is one of the only sources named in the New York Times article. Currently on a book tour, Bolton has said that he witnessed foreign policy malfeasance by Trump that dwarfs the Ukraine scandal that was the subject of the House impeachment hearings. But Bolton's credibility has been called into question since he declined to appear before the House committee. ..."
"... "Who can forget how 'successful' interrogators can be in getting desired answers?" writes Ray McGovern, who served as a CIA analyst for 27 years. Under the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques," Khalid Sheik Mohammed famously made at least 31 confessions, many of which were completely false. ..."
"... This story is "WMD [all over] again," said McGovern, who in the 1980s chaired National Intelligence Estimates and prepared the President's Daily Brief. He believes the stories seek to preempt DOJ findings on the origins of the Russiagate probe. ..."
"... The bungled media response and resulting negative press could also lead Trump to contemplate harsher steps towards Russia in order to prove that he is "tough," which may have motivated the leakers. It's certainly a policy goal with which Bolton, one of the only named sources in the New York Times piece, wholeheartedly approves. ..."
"... Not only did CIA et al.'s leak get even with Trump for years of insults and ignoring their reports (Trump is politically wounded by this story), but it also achieved their primary objective of keeping Putin out of the G7 and muzzling Trump's threats to withdraw from NATO because Russia is our friend (well his, anyway). ..."
"... Point 4: the whole point of the Talibans is to fight to the death whichever country tries to control and invade Afghanistan. They didn't need the Russians to tell them to fight the US Army, did they? ..."
"... Point 5: Russia tried to organise a mediation process between the Afghan government and the Talibans already in 2018 - so why would they be at the same time trying to fuel the conflict? A stable Afghanistan is more convenient to them, given the geographical position of the country. ..."
"... As much as I love to see everyone pile on trump, this is another example of a really awful policy having bad outcomes. If Bush, Obama, trump, or anyone at the pentagon gave a crap about the troops, they wouldn't have kept them in Afghanistan and lied about the fact they were losing the whole time. ..."
"... the idea is stupid. Russia doesn't need to do anything to motivate Afghans to want to boot the invaders out of their country, and would want to attract negative attention in doing so. ..."
"... Contrast with the CIA motivations for this absurd narrative. Chuck Schumer famously commented that the intelligence agencies had ways of getting back at you, and it looks like you took the bait, hook, line and sinker. ..."
"... And a fourth CIA goal: it undermines Trump's relationship with the military. ..."
"... Having failed in its Russia "collusion" and "Russia stole the election" campaigns to oust Trump, this is just the latest effort by the Deep State and mass media to use unhinged Russophobia to try to boost Biden and damage Trump. ..."
"... The contemporary left hate Russia , because Russia is carving out it own sphere of influence and keeping the Americans out, because it saved Assad from the western backed sunni head choppers (that the left cheered on, as they killed native Orthodox, and Catholic Christians). The Contempary left hate Russia because it cracks down on LGBT propaganda, banned porn hub, and return property to the Church , which the leftist Bolsheviks stole, the Contempaty left hate Russia because it cracked down on it western backed oligarchs who plundered Russia in the 90's. ..."
Bombshell report
published by The New York Times Friday alleges that Russia paid dollar bounties to the Taliban in Afghanistan to kill U.S
troops. Obscured by an extremely bungled White House press response, there are at least three serious flaws with the reporting.
The article alleges that GRU, a top-secret unit of Russian military intelligence, offered the bounty in payment for every U.S.
soldier killed in Afghanistan, and that at least one member of the U.S. military was alleged to have been killed in exchange for
the bounties. According to the paper, U.S. intelligence concluded months ago that the Russian unit involved in the bounties was also
linked to poisonings, assassination attempts and other covert operations in Europe. The Times reports that United States intelligence
officers and Special Operations forces in Afghanistan came to this conclusion about Russian bounties some time in 2019.
According to the anonymous sources that spoke with the paper's reporters, the White House and President Trump were briefed
on a range of potential responses to Moscow's provocations, including sanctions, but the White House had authorized no further action.
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said in a statement Saturday night that neither Trump nor Vice President Pence
"were ever briefed on any intelligence alleged by the New York Times in its reporting yesterday."
On Sunday night, Trump tweeted that not only was he not told about the alleged intelligence, but that it was not credible."Intel
just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP" Pence, Trump wrote Sunday
night on Twitter.
Ousted National Security Advisor John Bolton said on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday that Trump was probably claiming ignorance
in order to justify his administration's lack of response.
"He can disown everything if nobody ever told him about it," said Bolton.
Bolton is one of the only sources named in the New York Times article. Currently on a book tour, Bolton has said that
he witnessed foreign policy malfeasance by Trump that dwarfs the Ukraine scandal that was the subject of the House impeachment hearings.
But Bolton's credibility has been called into question since he declined to appear before the House committee.
The explanations for what exactly happened, and who was briefed, continued to shift Monday.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany followed Trump's blanket denial with a statement that the intelligence concerning
Russian bounty information was "unconfirmed." She didn't say the intelligence wasn't credible, like Trump had said the day before,
only that there was "no consensus" and that the "veracity of the underlying allegations continue to be evaluated," which happens
to almost completely match the Sunday night statement from the White House's National Security Council.
Instead of saying that the sources for the Russian bounty story were not credible and the story was false, or likely false, McEnany
then said that Trump had "not been briefed on the matter."
"He was not personally briefed on the matter," she said. "That is all I can share with you today."
It's difficult to see how the White House thought McEnany's statement would help, and a bungled press response like this is communications
malpractice, according to sources who spoke to The American Conservative.
Let's take a deeper dive into some of the problems with the reporting here:
1. Anonymous U.S. and Taliban sources?
The Times article repeatedly cites unnamed "American intelligence officials." The Washington Post and The
Wall Street Journal articles "confirming" the original Times story merely restate the allegations of the anonymous
officials, along with caveats like "if true" or "if confirmed."
Furthermore, the unnamed intelligence sources who spoke with the Times say that their assessment is based "on interrogations
of captured Afghan militants and criminals."
That's a red flag, said John Kiriakou, a former analyst and case officer for the CIA who led the team that captured senior
al-Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in 2002. "When you capture a prisoner, and you're interrogating him, the prisoner is going to tell you what he thinks you want to hear,"
he said in an interview with The American Conservative . "There's no evidence here, there's no proof."
Kiriakou believes that the sources behind the report hold important clues on how the government viewed its credibility.
"We don't know who the source is for this. We don't know if they've been vetted, polygraphed; were they a walk-in; were they
a captured prisoner?"
If the sources were suspect, as they appear to be here, then Trump would not have been briefed on this at all.
With this story, it's important to start at the "intelligence collection," said Kiriakou. "This information appeared in the
[CIA World Intelligence Review] Wire, which goes to hundreds of people inside the government, mostly at the State Department and
the Pentagon. The most sensitive information isn't put in the Wire; it goes only in the PDB."
"If this was from a single source intelligence, it wouldn't have been briefed to Trump. It's not vetted, and it's not important
enough. If you caught a Russian who said this, for example, that would make it important enough. But some Taliban detainees saying
it to an interrogator, that does not rise to the threshold."
2. What purpose would bounties serve?
Everyone and their mother knows Trump wants to pull the troops out of Afghanistan, said Kiriakou.
"He ran on it and he has said it hundreds of times," he said. "So why would the Russians bother putting a bounty on U.S. troops
if we're about to leave Afghanistan shortly anyway?"
That's leaving aside Russia's own experience with the futility of Afghanistan campaigns, learned during its grueling 9-year
war there in the 1980s.
The Taliban denies it accepted bounties from Russian intelligence.
"These kinds of deals with the Russian intelligence agency are baseless -- our target killings and assassinations were ongoing
in years before, and we did it on our own resources," Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, told The New York Times
. "That changed after our deal with the Americans, and their lives are secure and we don't attack them."
The Russian Embassy in the United States called the reporting
"fake news."
While the Russians are ruthless, "it's hard to fathom what their motivations could be" here, said Paul Pillar, an academic
and 28-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, in an interview with The American Conservative. "What would they
be retaliating for? Some use of force in Syria recently? I don't know. I can't string together a particular sequence that makes
sense at this time. I'm not saying that to cast doubt on reports the Russians were doing this sort of thing."
3. Why is this story being leaked now?
According to U.S. officials quoted by the AP,
top officials in the White House "were aware of classified intelligence indicating Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban
for the deaths of Americans" in early 2019. So why is this story just coming out now?
This story is "WMD [all over] again," said McGovern, who in the 1980s chaired National Intelligence Estimates and prepared the
President's Daily Brief. He believes the stories seek to preempt DOJ findings on the origins of the Russiagate probe.
The NYT story serves to bolster the narrative that Trump sides with Russia, and against our intelligence community estimates and
our own soldiers lives.
The stories "are likely to remain indelible in the minds of credulous Americans -- which seems to have been the main objective,"
writes McGovern. "There [Trump] goes again -- not believing our 'intelligence community; siding, rather, with Putin.'"
"I don't believe this story and I think it was leaked to embarrass the President," said Kiriakou. "Trump is on the ropes in the
polls; Biden is ahead in all the battleground states."
If these anonymous sources had spoken up during the impeachment hearings, their statements could have changed history.
But the timing here, "kicking a man when he is down, is extremely like the Washington establishment. A leaked story like this
now, embarrasses and weakens Trump," he said. "It was obvious that Trump would blow the media response, which he did."
The bungled media response and resulting negative press could also lead Trump to contemplate harsher steps towards Russia
in order to prove that he is "tough," which may have motivated the leakers. It's certainly a policy goal with which Bolton, one of
the only named sources in the New York Times piece, wholeheartedly approves.
Barbara Boland is TAC's foreign policy and national security reporter. Previously, she worked as an editor for the Washington
Examiner and for CNS News. She is the author of Patton Uncovered , a book about General George Patton in World War II, and her work
has appeared on Fox News, The Hill , UK Spectator , and elsewhere. Boland is a graduate from Immaculata University in Pennsylvania.
Follow her on Twitter @BBatDC .
Caitlin Johnstone was the first journalist to question this NYT expose' several days ago in her blog. After looking into
it, I had to agree with her that the story was junk reporting by a news source eager to stick it to Trump for his daily insults.
NYT must love the irony of a "fake news" story catching fire and burning Trump politically. After all, paying people to kill
their own enemies? That is a "tip," not a bounty. It is more of an intel footnote than the game-changer in international relations
as asserted by Speaker Pelosi on TV as she grabbed her pearls beneath her stylish COVID mask.
I was surprised that Ms. Boland could not think of any motivation for leaking the story right now given recent grousing
on the Hill about Trump's inviting Putin to G7 over the objections of Merkel and several other NATO heads of state. I even
posted a congratulatory message in Defense One yesterday to the US Intel community for mission accomplished.
Not only did CIA
et al.'s leak get even with Trump for years of insults and ignoring their reports (Trump is politically wounded by this story),
but it also achieved their primary objective of keeping Putin out of the G7 and muzzling Trump's threats to withdraw
from NATO because Russia is our friend (well his, anyway).
That "bounty" story never passed the smell test, even to my admittedly untrained nose. My real problem is that it's a story
in the first place, given that Trump campaigned on a platform that included bringing the boys home from sand hills like Afghanistan;
yet here we are, four years later, and we're still there.
Point 4: the whole point of the Talibans is to fight to the death whichever country tries to control and invade Afghanistan.
They didn't need the Russians to tell them to fight the US Army, did they?
Point 5: Russia tried to organise a mediation process between the Afghan government and the Talibans already in 2018 - so
why would they be at the same time trying to fuel the conflict? A stable Afghanistan is more convenient to them, given the
geographical position of the country.
This whole story is completely ridiculous. Totally bogus.
As much as I love to see everyone pile on trump, this is another example of a really awful policy having bad outcomes. If
Bush, Obama, trump, or anyone at the pentagon gave a crap about the troops, they wouldn't have kept them in Afghanistan and
lied about the fact they were losing the whole time.
Of course people are trying to kill US military in Afghanistan. If I lived in Afghanistan, I'd probably hate them too. And
let's not forget that just a few weeks ago the 82nd airborne was ready to kill American civilians in DC. The military is our
enemy too!
Moreover, the idea is stupid. Russia doesn't need to do anything to motivate Afghans to want to boot the invaders out of
their country, and would want to attract negative attention in doing so.
The purported bounty program doesn't help Russia, but the anonymous narrative does conveniently serve several CIA purposes:
1. It makes it harder to leave Afghanistan.
2. It keeps the cold war with Russia going along.
3. It damages Trump (whose relationship with the CIA is testy at best).
Then there's the question of how this supposed intelligence was gathered. The CIA tortures people, and there's no reason
to believe that this was any different.
1. Russia wants a stable Afghanistan. Not a base for jihadis.
2. The idea that Russia has to encourage Afghans to kill Invaders is a hoot. They don't ever do that on their own.
3. Not only do Afghans traditionally need no motivation to kill infidel foreign Invaders, but Russia would have to be incredibly
stupid to bring more American enmity on itself.
Contrast with the CIA motivations for this absurd narrative. Chuck Schumer famously commented that the intelligence agencies
had ways of getting back at you, and it looks like you took the bait, hook, line and sinker.
Either that, or you're just cynical. You'll espouse anything, however absurd and full of lies, as long as it damages Trump.
I don't have a clue if this bounty story is correct, but I can imagine plenty of reasons why the Russians would do it. It's
easy enough to believe it or believe it was cooked up by CIA as you suggest.
There will be one of these BS blockbusters every few weeks until the election. There are legions of buried-in democrat political
appointees that will continue to feed the DNC press. It will be non-stop. The DNC press is shredding the 1st amendment.
Not shredding the First Amendment, just shining light on the pitfalls of a right to freedom of speech. There are others
ramifications to free speech we consider social goods.
These aren't buried-in democrats. These people could care less which political party the President is a member of. They
only care that the President does what they say. Political parties are just to bamboozle the rubes. They are the real power.
The best defence that the WSJ and Fox News could muster was that the story wasn't confirmed as the NSA didn't have the same
confidence in the assessment as the CIA. "Is there anything else to which you would wish to draw my attention?" "To the curious
incident of the denial from the White House", "There was no denial from the White House". "That was the curious incident".
I note that Fox News had buried the story "below the scroll" on their home page - if they had though the story was fake,
the headlines would be screaming at MSM.
Pravda was a far more honest and objective news source than The New York Times is. I say that as someone who
read both for long periods of time. The Times is on par with the National Enquirer for credibility, with the
latter at least being less propagandistic and agenda-driven.
Having failed in its Russia "collusion" and "Russia stole the election" campaigns to oust Trump, this is just the latest
effort by the Deep State and mass media to use unhinged Russophobia to try to boost Biden and damage Trump.
The extent to which the contemporary Left is driven by a level of Russophobia unseen even by the most stalwart anti-Communists
on the Right during the Cold War is truly something to behold. I think at bottom it comes down to not liking Putin or Russia
because they refuse to get on board with the Left's social agenda.
The contemporary left hate Russia , because Russia is carving out it own sphere of influence and keeping the Americans out,
because it saved Assad from the western backed sunni head choppers (that the left cheered on, as they killed native Orthodox,
and Catholic Christians). The Contempary left hate Russia because it cracks down on LGBT propaganda, banned porn hub, and return
property to the Church , which the leftist Bolsheviks stole, the Contempaty left hate Russia because it cracked down on it
western backed oligarchs who plundered Russia in the 90's.
The Contempary left wants Russia to be Woke, Broke, Godless, and Gay.
The democrats are now the cheerleaders of the warfare -welfare state,, the marriage between the neolibs-neocons under the
Democrat party to ensure that President Trump is defeated by the invade the world, invite the world crowd.
"The Trumpies are right in that this was obviously a leak by the intel community designed to hurt Trump. But what do you
expect...he has spent 4 years insulting and belittling them. They are going to get their pound of flesh."
Intel community was behind an attempted coup of Trump. He has good reason not to trust them and insulting is only natural.
Hopefully John Durham will indict several of them
Interesting take. I certainly take anything anyone publishes based on anonymous sources with a big grain of salt,
especially when it comes from the NYT...
Control freaks that cannot even control their own criminal impulses!
...They suffer from god-complexes, since they do not believe in God, they feel an obligation to act as God, and decide the fates
of over 7 billion people, who would obviously be better off if the PICs were sent to the Fletcher Memorial Home for Incurable Tyrants!
Bolton, of course, dismissed the entire concept of diplomacy from the very start. He never
bought into the notion that North Korean officials could be talked to sensibly because they
were, well, insane. Bolton's version of North Korea diplomacy was to tighten the
economic screws, brandish the U.S. military, and wait until one of two things happened: 1) the
Kim regime surrendered its entire nuclear weapons program like Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi, or
2) the Kim regime continued to spur Washington's demands, in which the White House would have
no option but to use U.S. military force. Bolton's
record is analogous to a stereotypical linebacker on an obscene amount of steroids -- smash
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The only problem:
North Korea isn't some helpless punter with string bean arms and a lanky midsection. It's a
nuclear weapons state fiercely proud of its independence and sovereignty, constantly on guard
for the slightest threat from a foreign power, and cognizant of its weakened position relative
to its neighbors. This is one of the prime reasons Bolton's obsession with the Libya-style
North Korea deal, in which Pyongyang would theoretically discard its entire nuclear apparatus
and allow U.S. weapons inspectors to take custody of its nuclear warheads before flying them
back to the U.S. for destruction, was
unworkable from the start. The Libya-model trumpeted by Bolton was a politically correct
way of demanding Pyongyang's total surrender -- an extremely naive goal if there ever was one.
When one remembers the fate of Qaddafi 8 years after he traded sanctions relief for his weapons
of mass destruction -- the dictator was assaulted and humiliated before being executed in the
desert -- even the word "Libya" is treated by the Kim dynasty as a threat to its existence. As
Paul Pillar wrote
in these pages more than two years ago, "Libya's experience does indeed weigh heavily on the
thinking of North Korean officials, who have taken explicit notice of that experience, as a
disincentive to reaching any deals with the United States about dismantling weapons
programs."
One can certainly take
issue with Trump's North Korea policy. Two years of personal diplomacy with Kim Jong-un have yet to
result in the denuclearization Washington seeks (denuclearization is more of a slogan than a
realistic objective at this point, anyway). But Trump's strategy aside, Bolton's alternative
was worse. The president knew his former national security adviser's public insistence on the
Libya model was dangerously inept. He
had to walk back Bolton's
comments weeks later to ensure the North Koreans didn't pull out of diplomacy before it got
off the ground. Trump hasn't forgotten about the experience; on June 18, Trump tweeted
that "Bolton's dumbest of all statements set us back very badly with North Korea, even now. I
asked him, "what the hell were you thinking?"
Personally he is a bully and as such a coward: he can attack only a weaker opponent. His new
book shows that however discredited and intellectually thin his foreign policy views are, they
always rise to the top. To Bolton the country is simply a vehicle for smiting his enemies
abroad.
Notable quotes:
"... Bolton's hawkishness is combined with an equally striking lack of originality. It is possible to be an unorthodox or partisan hawk, as we see in populists who want to get out of the Middle East but ramp up pressure on China, or Democrats who have a particular obsession with Russia. Bolton takes the most belligerent position on every issue without regards for partisanship or popularity, a level of consistency that would almost be honorable if it wasn't so frightening. No alliance or commitment is ever questioned, and neither, for that matter, is any rivalry. ..."
"... Bolton lacks any intellectual tradition or popular support base that he can call his own. Domestic political concerns are almost completely missing from his book, although we learn that he follows "Adam Smith on economics, Edmund Burke on society," is happy with Trump's judicial appointments, and favors legal, but not illegal, immigration. Other than these GOP clichés, there is virtually no commentary or concern about the state of American society or its trajectory. Unlike those who worry about how global empire affects the United States at home, to Bolton the country is simply a vehicle for smiting his enemies abroad. While Bolton's views have been called "nationalist" because he doesn't care about multilateralism, nation-building, or international law, I have never seen a nationalist that gives so little thought to his nation. ..."
"... Bolton recounts how his two top aides, Charles Kupperman and Mira Ricardel, had extensive experience working for Boeing. Patrick Shanahan similarly became acting Secretary of Defense after spending thirty years at that company, until he was replaced by Mark Esper, a Raytheon lobbyist. Why working for a company that manufactures aircraft and weapons prepares one for a job in foreign policy, the establishment has never felt the need to explain, any more than it needs to explain continuing Cold War-era military commitments three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union. ..."
"... The most important question raised by the career of John Bolton is how someone with his views has been able to achieve so much power. While Bolton gets much worse press and always goes a step too far even for most of the foreign policy establishment, in other ways he is all too typical. Take James Mattis, a foil for Bolton throughout much of the first half of the book. Although more popular in the media, the "warrior monk" slow-walked and obstructed attempts by the president to pull out of the Middle East, and after a career supporting many of the same wars and commitments as Bolton, now makes big bucks in the private sector, profiting off of his time in government. ..."
The release of John Bolton's book today has become a Washington cultural event, because he
is, by all measures, Washington's creature.
Those who dislike the Trump administration have been pleased to find in The Room Where It
Happened confirmation in much of what they already believed about the Ukraine scandal and
the president's lack of capacity for the job. Some accusations in the book, such as the story
about Trump seeking reelection help from China through American farm purchases, are new, and in
an alternative universe could have formed the basis of a different, or if Bolton had his way,
more comprehensive, impeachment inquiry.
While Bolton's book has been found politically useful by the president's detractors, the
work is also important as a first-hand account from the top of the executive branch over a
19-month period, from April 2018 to September 2019. It also, mostly inadvertently, reveals much
about official Washington, the incentive structures that politicians face, and the kind of
person that is likely to succeed in that system. Bolton may be a biased self-promoter, but he
is nonetheless a credible source, as his stories mostly involve conversations with other people
who are free to eventually tell their own side. Moreover, the John Bolton of The Room Where
It Happened is no different from the man we know from his three-decade career as a
government official and public personality. No surprises here.
There are three ways to understand John Bolton. In increasing order of importance, they are
intellectually, psychologically, and politically -- that is, as someone who is both a product
of and antagonist to the foreign-policy establishment -- in many ways typical, and in others a
detested outlier.
On the first of these, there simply isn't much there. Bolton takes the most hawkish position
on every issue. He wants war with North Korea and Iran, and if he can't have that, he'll settle
for destroying their economies and sabotaging any attempts by Trump to reach a deal with either
country. He takes the maximalist positions on great powers like China and Russia, and third
world states that pose no plausible threat like Cuba and Venezuela. At one point, he brags
about State reversing "Obama's absurd conclusion that Cuban baseball was somehow independent of
its government, thus in turn allowing Treasury to revoke the license allowing Major League
Baseball to traffic in Cuban players." How this helps Americans or Cubans is left
unexplained.
Bolton's hawkishness is combined with an equally striking lack of originality. It is
possible to be an unorthodox or partisan hawk, as we see in populists who want to get out of
the Middle East but ramp up pressure on China, or Democrats who have a particular obsession
with Russia. Bolton takes the most belligerent position on every issue without regards for
partisanship or popularity, a level of consistency that would almost be honorable if it wasn't
so frightening. No alliance or commitment is ever questioned, and neither, for that matter, is
any rivalry.
Anyone who picks up Bolton's over 500-page memoir hoping to find serious reflection on the
philosophical basis of American foreign policy will be disappointed. The chapters are broken up
by topic area, most beginning with a short background explainer on Bolton's views of the issue.
In the chapter on Venezuela, we are told that overthrowing the government of that country is
important because of "its Cuba connection and the openings it afforded Russia, China, and
Iran." The continuing occupation of Afghanistan is necessary for preventing terrorists from
establishing a base, and, in an argument I had not heard anywhere before, for "remaining
vigilant against the nuclear-weapons programs in Iran on the west and Pakistan on the east."
Iran needs to be deterred, though from what we are never told.
Bolton lacks any intellectual tradition or popular support base that he can call his
own. Domestic political concerns are almost completely missing from his book, although we learn
that he follows "Adam Smith on economics, Edmund Burke on society," is happy with Trump's
judicial appointments, and favors legal, but not illegal, immigration. Other than these GOP
clichés, there is virtually no commentary or concern about the state of American society
or its trajectory. Unlike those who worry about how global empire affects the United States at
home, to Bolton the country is simply a vehicle for smiting his enemies abroad. While Bolton's
views have been called "nationalist" because he doesn't care about multilateralism,
nation-building, or international law, I have never seen a nationalist that gives so little
thought to his nation.
The more time one spends reading Bolton, the more one comes to the conclusion that the guy
just likes to fight. In addition to seeking out and escalating foreign policy conflicts, he
seems to relish going to war with the media and the rest of the Washington bureaucracy. His
book begins with a quote from the Duke of Wellington rallying his troops at Waterloo: "Hard
pounding, this, gentlemen. Let's see who will pound the longest." The back cover quotes the
epilogue on his fight with the Trump administration, responding "game on" to attempts to stop
publication. He takes a mischievous pride in recounting attacks from the media or foreign
governments, such as when he was honored to hear that North Korea worried about his influence
over the President. Bolton is too busy enjoying the fight, and as will be seen below, profiting
from it, to reflect too carefully on what it's all for.
Bolton could be ignored if he were simply an odd figure without much power. Yet the man has
been at the pinnacle of the GOP establishment for thirty years, serving appointed roles in
every Republican president since Reagan. The story of how he got his job in the Trump
administration is telling. According to Bolton's account, he was courted throughout the
transition process and the early days of the administration by Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner,
ironic considering the reputation of the former as a populist opposed to forever wars and the
latter as a more liberal figure within the White House. Happy with his life outside government,
Bolton would accept a position no lower than Secretary of State or National Security Advisor.
Explaining his reluctance to enter government in a lower capacity, Bolton provides a list of
his commitments at the time, including "Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute; Fox
News contributor; a regular on the speaking circuit; of counsel at a major law firm; member of
corporate boards; senior advisor to a global private-equity firm."
Clearly, being an advocate for policies that can destroy the lives of millions abroad, and a
complete lack of experience in business, have proved no hindrance to Bolton's success in
corporate America.
Bolton recounts how his two top aides, Charles Kupperman and Mira Ricardel, had
extensive experience working for Boeing. Patrick Shanahan similarly became acting Secretary of
Defense after spending thirty years at that company, until he was replaced by Mark Esper, a
Raytheon lobbyist. Why working for a company that manufactures aircraft and weapons prepares
one for a job in foreign policy, the establishment has never felt the need to explain, any more
than it needs to explain continuing Cold War-era military commitments three decades after the
collapse of the Soviet Union.
Ricardel resigned after a dispute over preparations for the First Lady's trip to Africa, an
example of how too often in the Trump administration, nepotism and self-interest have been the
only checks on bad policy or even greater corruption ("Melania's people are on the warpath,"
Trump is quoted as saying). Another is when Trump, according to Bolton, was less than vigorous
in pursing destructive Iranian sanctions due to personal relationships with the leaders of
China and Turkey. At the 2019 G7 summit, when Pompeo and Bolton try to get Benjamin Netanyahu
to reach out to Trump to talk him out of meeting with the Iranian foreign minister, Jared
prevents his call from going through on the grounds that a foreign government shouldn't be
telling the President of the United States who to meet with.
The most important question raised by the career of John Bolton is how someone with his
views has been able to achieve so much power. While Bolton gets much worse press and always
goes a step too far even for most of the foreign policy establishment, in other ways he is all
too typical. Take James Mattis, a foil for Bolton throughout much of the first half of the
book. Although more popular in the media, the "warrior monk" slow-walked and obstructed
attempts by the president to pull out of the Middle East, and after a career supporting many of
the same wars and commitments as Bolton, now makes big bucks in the private sector, profiting
off of his time in government.
In the coverage of Bolton, this is what should not be lost. The former National Security
Advisor is the product of a system with its own internal logic. Largely discredited and
intellectually hollow, and without broad popular support, it persists in its practices and
beliefs because it has been extremely profitable for those involved. The most extreme hawks are
simply symptoms of larger problems, with the flamboyant Bolton being much more like mainstream
members of the foreign policy establishment than either side would like to admit.
Richard Hanania is a research fellow at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace
Studies at Columbia University.
"... Bolton's account sheds light on how it happened: hawks in the administration, including Bolton himself, wanted U.S. forces in Syria fighting Russia and Iran. They saw the U.S.-Kurdish alliance against ISIS as a distraction -- and let the Turkish-Kurdish conflict fester until it spiralled out of control. ..."
The drama eventually ended with President Donald Trump pulling U.S. peacekeepers out of
Syria -- and then sending them
back in . One hundred thousand
Syrian civilians were displaced by an advancing Turkish army, and the Kurdish-led Syrian
Democratic Forces turned to Russia for help. But U.S. forces never fully withdrew -- they are
still stuck in Syria defending oil wells .
Bolton's account sheds light on how it happened: hawks in the administration, including
Bolton himself, wanted U.S. forces in Syria fighting Russia and Iran. They saw the U.S.-Kurdish
alliance against ISIS as a distraction -- and let the Turkish-Kurdish conflict fester until it
spiralled out of control.
Pompeo issued a statement on Thursday night denouncing Bolton's entire book as "a number of
lies, fully-spun half-truths, and outright falsehoods."
"... let us not forget that bolton threatened a un officials kids because they guy wasn't going along with the iraq war propaganda. ..."
"... Close -- the threatened official was Jose Bustani, at that time (2002) the head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)as he had been for five years. ..."
"... Bustani had been working to bring Iraq and Libya into the organization, which would have required those two countries to eliminate all of their chemical weapons. ..."
"... The US, though, had other ideas -- chiefly invading and destroying both of those nations, and when Bustani insisted on continuing his efforts then Bolton threatened Bustani's adult children. ..."
The political establishment in Canada appeared dismayed at the prospect of Bolton as National
Security Adviser. See these interviews with Hill + Knowlton strategies Vice-chairman, Peter
Donolo, from 2018:
So Bolton gets in, Meng Wangzhou is detained in Vancouver on the US request (that's
another story), and in time, Canada appoints a new Ambassador to China - Mr. Dominic
Barton.
Close -- the threatened official was Jose Bustani, at that time (2002) the head of the
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)as he had been for five
years.
Bustani had been working to bring Iraq and Libya into the organization, which would
have required those two countries to eliminate all of their chemical weapons.
The US, though, had other ideas -- chiefly invading and destroying both of those
nations, and when Bustani insisted on continuing his efforts then Bolton threatened Bustani's
adult children.
let the lobbyists with the most money win... that's what defines the usa system, leadership
and decision making process... no one in their right mind would support this doofus..
At least the one saving grace about John Bolton's memoir is that it might be a tad closer to
reality than Christopher Steele's infamous dossier and might prove valuable as a source of
evidence in a court of law. Maybe
Yosemite Sam himself should start quaking in his boots.
Yes why not? If Obama awarded the Noble prize even before he begins serving his first term
I can't see why Bolton not nominated now. America is a joke, not a banana republic. It
deserves Obama, Trump, Bolton or Biden another stoopid joker.
@ Jpc
When faced with Trump's behavior of employing warmongers, including several generals, some
observers opined that Trump wanted people with contrasting opinions so that he could consider
them and then say "no." He did more with Bolton eventually, sending him to Mongolia while he
(Trump) went to Singapore (or somewhere over there).
re Ian2 | Jun 17 2020 23:08 utc | 19
who hazarded : My guess Trump went along with the tough guy image that Bolton projected in
media and recommendations by others.
Not at all, if you go back to the earliest days of the orangeman's prezdency, you will see
Trump resisted the efforts by Mercer & the zionist casino owner to give Bolton a gig.
He knew that shrub had problems with the boasts of Bolton and as his reputation was as an
arsehole who sounded his own trumpet at his boss's expense orangeman refused for a long time.
Trump believes the trump prezdency is about trump no one else.
Thing was at the time he was running for the prez gig trump was on his uppers, making a few
dollars from his tv show, plus licensing other people's buildings by selling his name to be
stuck on them. trump tower azerbnajan etc.
He put virtually none of his own money into the 'race' so when he won the people who had put
up the dosh had power over him.
Bolton has always been an arse kisser to any zionist cause he suspects he can claw a penny
outta, so he used the extreme loony end of the totally looney zionist spectrum to hook him
(Bolton) up with a gig by pushing for him with trump.
It was always gonna end the way it did as Bolton is forever briefing the media against
anyone who tried to resist his murderous fantasies. Trump is never gonna argue for any scheme
that doesn't have lotsa dollars for him in it so he had plenty of run ins with Bolton who
then went to his media mates & told tales.
When bolton was appointed orangey's stakes were at a really low ebb among DC warmongers, so
he reluctantly took him on then spent the next 18 months getting rid of the grubby
parasite.
div> Yosemite Sam did it better. I would prefer a Foghorn Leghorn-type
character, for US diplomacy.
Real History: Candidate Trump praised Bolton and named him as THE number one Foreign Policy
expert he (Trump) respected.
Imagine the mustachioed Mister Potatoe (sic) Head and zany highjinks!
Bolton and one of his first wives were regulars at Plato's Retreat for wife swapping
orgies. The wife was not real keen on the behavior, but she allegedly found herself verbally
and physically abused for objecting.
Trump is at fault for hiring him to appease the Zionist lobby. We all knew the guy was a
warmonger and a scumbag. It's not a surprise. Trump surrounds himself with the worst people
Did John Bolton put his personal interests above the will of congress in an attempt to extort
the Ukrainian government? You're making a false equivalence. You seem to have a soft spot for
Trump. Bolton is an in-your-face son of a bitch, but Trump, Trump is just human garbage.
Pretty much a nothing burger if thats all he has got. Just a distraction. Trumps outrage just
meant help Bolton sell some books. Lol. People are so easy to fool.
I still think Bolton managing the operations as COG in Cheneys old bunker. Coming out for
a vacation while next phase is planned
Bolton is just another American arsehole. Nothing new. When they do not get their way, the y
always turn on their superiors, or those in charge. Bolton is just another "Anhänger"
personal gain is what motivates him.
He should have been a blot on his parents bedsheets or at least a forced abortion, but
unfortunately that did not happen...
The self-appointed Deep State has pretty much thwarted him (Trump) and his voters.
Posted by: bob sykes | Jun 17 2020 20:55 utc | 11
Trump thwarted Trump. Before he got elected, Trump mentioned his admiration of Bolton more
than once. Voters of Trump elected a liar and an incoherent person -- at time,
incomprehensible, a nice bonus. But it is worth noticing that Trump never liked being binded
by agreement, like, say, an agreement to pay money back to creditors, or whatever
international agreement would restrict USA from doing what they damn please.
Superficially, it is mysterious why Trump made an impression that he wants to negotiate
with North Korea with some agreement at the end. Was he forced to make a mockery from the
negotiation by someone sticking knife to his back?
Some may remember that Trump promised to abolish Affordable Care Act and replace it with
"something marvelous". The latest version is that he will start thinking about it again after
re-election. If you believe that...
Granted, Trump is more sane than Bolton, but just a bit, unlike Bolton he has some moments
of lucidity.
In conclusion, I would advocate to vote for Biden. If you need a reason, that would be
that Biden never tweets, or if he does, it is forgettable before the typing is done. Unlike
the hideous Trumpian productions.
"men fit to be shaved," Tiberius, on Bolton and Friedman.
he is the best & brightest we have. when a dreadful mouth is called for. his insights
into the Trump WH are probably as deep as his knowledge of VZ, Iran, Cuba, etc. he's a useful
idiot, a willing fool. like Trump, he's the verbal equivalent of the cops on the street, in
foreign "policy." another abusive father figure
reading the imperial steak turds - an American form of reading the tea leaves or goat
livers or chicken flight or celestial what have you. an emperor craps out a big hairy one
like Bolton and the priests and hierophants and lawyers and scribes come for a long, close up
inspection and fact-gathering smell of another steaming pile of gmo-corn-and-downer-cow-fed,
colon cancer causing, Kansas feed-lot raised, grade A Murkin BEEF. guess what they in their
wisdom find? Trump stinks.
Scotch Bingeington @ 6 -- "Take a look at his face. It's obvious to me that even John Bolton
does not enjoy being John Bolton. That mouth, it's drooping to an absurd degree. Comparable
to Merkel's face, come to think of it.
At last, someone who notices physionomy!
That face drips with false modesty, kind of trying to make his face say, "... look at
harmless old me..."
That walrus bushiness points at an attempt to hide, to camouflage his true thoughts, his
malevolence.
That pretended stoop, with one hand clutching a sheaf of briefing papers, emulating the
posture of deferential court clerks, speaks to a lifetime of a snake in the grass "fighting"
from below for things important to himself.
But those of us who have been around the block a couple times will know to watch our backs
around this type. Poisoned-tipped daggers are their fave weapons, and your backs are their
fave "battle space". LOL
This statement by Jeffrey Sachs may as well also describe America's leadership crisis: "At
the root of America's economic crisis lies a moral crisis: the decline of civic virtue among
America's political and economic elite."
GeorgeV @ 8 -- "It's like standing on a street corner watching two prostitutes calling each
other a whore! How low has the US sunk."
And the US "leadeship" sends these types out to lecture other peoples on "values"? on how
to become "normal nations"? on how to "contain" old civilisations such as Iran, Russia,
China?
It is axiomatic that the stupid do not know they are stupid. Same goes for morals. The
immoral do not know they are immoral. Or, perhaps, as Phat Pomp-arse shows, they know they
are immoral, but do not care. Which makes one rightly guess that people like Bolt-On and him
must be depraved.
Yes, it may take centuries before the leadership in this depraved Exceptionally
Indispensable Nation to become truly normal again.
Of course, Trump actually campaigned to leave Afghanistan and Syria, and he was elected to do
so. The self-appointed Deep State has pretty much thwarted him and his voters. by: bob sykes
11
I wondered about He King claims that Trump actually attempted to do those awful things, .
.. , I looked for evidence to prove the claim.. I asked just about every librarian I could
find to please show me evidence that confirms the deep state over rode Mr. Trump's actual
attempt to remove USA anything from Afghanistan and Syria. thus far, no confirming or
supporting facts have been produced. to support such a claim. Mr. Trump could easily have
tweeted to his supporters something to the effect that the damn military, CIA, homeland
security, state department, foreign service, federal reserve, women's underwear association
and smiley Joe's hamburger stand in fact every militant in the USA governed America were
holding hands, locked in a conspiracy to block President Trumps attempt to remove USA
anything from Afghanistan or Syria.. If Mr. Trump has asked for those things, they would have
happened. The next day there would have been parties in the streets as the militant agency
heads began rolling as Mr. Trump fired them each and everyone.. No firings happened, the
party providers were disappointed, no troops, USA contractors or privatization pirates left
any foreign place.. as far as I can tell. 500 + military bases still remain in Europe none
have been abandoned.. and one was added in Israel. BTW i heard that Mr. Trump managed to get
17 trillion dollars into the hands of many who are contractors or suppliers to those foreign
operations. I can't say I am against Trump, but i can ask you to show me some evidence to
prove your claim.
Trump searches for new slogan as he abandons Keep America Great amid George Floyd and covid
turmoil
The president has taken to inserting the term 'Transition to Greatness' into his remarks.
His 2016 slogan was 'Make America Great Again'. After election he polled audiences on whether
to go with 'Keep America Great'. He told CPAC this year and said at the State of the Union
'The Best is Yet to Come'. Tweaks come as he trails Biden in new NBC and CNN polls, as the
nation struggles with the coronavirus and protests over police violence.
Ukrainian police seize $6 Million in bribes paid to kill the new case into crooked
Burisma.
This money is a Followup to the multi-millions in bribes Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and
President Poroshenko earned to leverage their offices to kill the original case.
goals that you consider important are different from personal interests.
What personal interests has Trump actually advanced during his time as president. Leaving out
the fake allegations, I'm hard put to think of any. If you look at Trump's actual behaviour
rather than his bullshit or the bullshit aimed at him, I'm also hard put to think of anything
illegal he's done while in office that wasn't done by previous administrations.
US President Donald Trump sought help from Xi Jinping to win the upcoming 2020 election,
"pleading" with the Chinese president to boost imports of American agricultural products,
according to a new book by former national security adviser John Bolton. The accusations were
included in an excerpt from The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, which is set to
be released on June 23. Bolton also wrote that Trump demonstrated other "fundamentally
unacceptable behaviour", including privately expressing support for China's mass interment of
Uygur Muslims and other ethnic minority groups in Xinjiang.*This video has been updated to
fix a spelling mistake.
@42 Mao I'm struggling to see how "pleading" with any country for it to purchase more US
goods is "fundamentally unacceptable behaviour" from a US President.
Pleading to Xi for China to give, say, Israel preferential access to markets, sure.
I have lived in the United States for a total of 24 years and I have witnessed many crises
over this long period, but what is taking place today is truly unique and much more serious
than any previous crisis I can recall. And to explain my point, I would like to begin by
saying what I believe the riots we are seeing taking place in hundreds of US cities are not
about. They are not about:
* Racism or "White privilege"
* Police violence
* Social alienation and despair
* Poverty
* Trump
* The liberals pouring fuel on social fires
* The infighting of the US elites/deep state
They are not about any of these because they encompass all of these issues, and more.
It is important to always keep in mind the distinction between the concepts of "cause" and
"pretext". And while it is true that all the factors listed above are real (at least to some
degree, and without looking at the distinction between cause and effect), none of them are
the true cause of what we are witnessing. At most, the above are pretexts, triggers if you
want, but the real cause of what is taking place today is the systemic collapse of the US
society.
Don't really want to take sides between those two odious characters, but I think there's a
difference in what the paper is saying.
One is about someone pursuing policy goals they favour, the other "personal interest".
From what I have seen so far, Bolton's main definition of Trump's "personal interest" is his
chances for re-election (rather than any personal business interest).
I think Bolton was happy for Trump to pursue the policy goals he favoured, at least when
they coincided with Bolton's!
How many people have cashed in on Trump so far? Countless numbers of them. An ocean of them.
Scathing books about Trump is one way to cash in on thr Trump effect, and the authors, many
of whom don't even write the book themselves, get promoted and their books promoted in the
mainstream media and elsewhere.
There is nothing new under the sun when it comes to Trump. We know everything there is to
know about Trump. Some of us knew everything there was to know about him before he became
POTUS. And yet, there he is, sitting like the Cheshire Cat in the Oval Office, untouchable
and beyond reproach. Meanwhile, even more scathing books are in the pipeline because there's
money, so much money, to be made don't you know.
Bolton is a shitbird every bit as much as Trump is and in fact an argument can be made
Bolton is even worse and even more dangerous than Trump because if Bolton had his druthers,
Iran would be a failed state right about now and America would be bogged down in a senseless
money-making (for the defense contractors owned by the extractive wealthy elite) quagmire in
Iran just as it was in Iraq and still is in Afghanistan.
Colbert is all into the Bolton book because he and his staff managed to secure an
interview with Bolton. Bolton, of course, has agreed to this because it's a great way to
promote his book to the likes of Cher who is the perfect example of the demographic Colbert
caters to with his show. Some of the commercials during Colbert's show last night? One was an
Old Navy commercial where they bragged about how they're giving to the poor. The family they
used for the commercial, the recipients of this beneficence, was a black family. Biden is
proud of Old Navy because don't you know, poor and black are one and the same. In otherwords,
there are no poor people except black people. No, that's not racist. Not at all. Also,
another commercial during Colbert's show was for the reopening of Las Vegas amidst the
spreading pandemic. This is immediately after a segment where Colbert is decrying Republican
governors for opening southern states too early. The hypocritical irony is so stark, you can
cut it with a chainsaw.
Mao @ 45 quoting The Saker -- ".... the real cause of what is taking place today is the
systemic collapse of the US society."
And the cause of American societal collapse has been corrupt US leadership.
In my 50 years of studying American society, I have learned to watch what US leaders do,
not what they preach. More profitable is to look at what declassified US documents tell us
about the truth, not what the presstitudes of the day pretend to dish up. Also, what other
world leaders might, in a candid moment, tell us about America.
And the cause of American societal collapse has been corrupt US leadership.
I would argue that this is a symptom or a feature versus the root of the problem.
Afterall, a system that allows for creeping entrenched endemic corruption, is a crappy
system. It's the system that's the root of this and it's not just isolated to the United
States. It's civilization itself that's the root and what enabled civilization -- the spirit
in our genes as Reg asserts.
I'm fully expecting the Dem "left" to try and praise the monsterous Bolton for "going
against Trump", as they did with war criminal Mad Dog Matis and Bush. Bolton has to be one
of the most evil mass murders on the face of the Earth. The world will be an infinitely
better place when he and his ilk like Netanyahu, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Chertoff..etc finally go
back to hell.
I agree. They would, because they already have and continue to do so, coddle and provide
apologia for any and all monsters who decry Trump. Hell, I'm convinced they would clamor for
Derek Chauvin's exoneration if he vocally decried Trump. Chauvin would make the rounds on the
media circuit excoriating Trump and telling the world, contritely of course, that it was
Trump who made him do it and now he sees the error of his ways. He'd be on Morning Joe and
Chris Cuomo's and Don Lemon's shows not to mention Ari Melber and Anderson Cooper and
Lawrence O'Donnell. The conservatives and their networks, who have provided apologia for
Chauvin thus far, would now be his worst enemy. Colbert and Kimmel would have him on and
guffawing with him asking him how it felt to choke the life out of someone, laughing all the
way so long as he hates Trump and tells the world how much he hates Trump.
This world is an insane asylum, especially America. All under the banner and aegis of
progress. And to think, humanity wants to export this madness to space and the universe at
large. Any intelligent life that would ever make its way to Planet Earth, if ever, would be
well-advised to exterminate the species human before it spread its poison to the universe at
large. Not that that is possible, but just in case the .000000000001% chance of that does
miraculously manifest.
Concerning Trump "pleading" with Xi, it is only right for a leader to request others to
buy more US farm produce. We have only Bolton's word that the request was a plea. We also
have only Bolton's word that the request / plea was to seek "help from Xi Jinping to win the
upcoming 2020 election". Too early to believe Bolton. Wait till we see the meeting
transcripts.
Bolton also alleged that Trump exhibited "fundamentally unacceptable behaviour" concerning
the Uygurs. Again, only Bolton's word. Even so, saying it is "unacceptable behavior" presumes
that China does wrong to incarcerate Uygurs. If not, ie, China either does not incarcerate
them, or if China has good moral grounds to do so, then Bolton is wrong to disagree with his
boss for uttering the right sentiment. Judging by how the anglo-zios shout about China's
"crime", I tend to think the opposite just might be the truth, and that says that Bolton is
simply mudslinging to sell books; score brownie points with the anglo-zios, virtue-signalling
for his next gig.
NYT writes Bolton direct US policy to fit his own political agenda,
while Bolton emphasizes Trump direct US policy in the way that pocket him most money.
Politician Bolton is consistent with his politician job (like it or not), Trump is
corrupted.
@56, I would argue that if one person could be both at the same time, that one person would
be Donald Trump. He's already proven, like Chauncey Gardner, he can walk on water. Seriously,
that excellent movie, Being There , starring the incomparable Peter Sellers, was about
Donald Trump's ascension to the Oval Office.
Using this 'quod licet jovi ...' the author apparently knows quite a bit of Latin, the dead
language!
But seriously, the nomination of Bolton who had always behaved like 2nd rate advisor, a 3rd
rate mcarthist cold warrior was a surprise to me. Such a short sighted heavily biased person
could be, yes, chosen a Minister or advisor in a banana Republic but was picked up by the
United states.
One can only conclude such a choice was driven by very specific interests of the deep
state.They needed a bulldog and got it for one year and half and threw the stinky perro soon
as the job was done.
And the cause of American societal collapse has been corrupt US leadership.
I would argue that this is a symptom or a feature versus the root of the problem.
Posted by: 450.org | Jun 18 2020 12:30 utc | 52
The primary cause of corrupt leadership is corrupt and corruption-accepting
population.
Without a population that is fundamentally corrupt and immoral, corrupt leadership is
unstable. Conversely - and this is important to recognise as the same phenomenon - democracy
cannot exist if the population accepts and takes for granted corruption, as the two are
mutually exclusive. In other words if you root out the corrupt leadership without dealing
with the mentality of the population, the corruption will quickly come back and any
democratic experiment will collapse very quickly.
There is one important qualifier - an overwhelming external influence (since WWII always
the USA, either directly or as secondary effect) can leverage latent corruption so that it
becomes more exaggerated than it normally would be.
What is clear from only this account of the crucial role of big money foundations behind
protest groups such as Black lives Matter is that there is a far more complex agenda driving
the protests now destabilizing cities across America. The role of tax-exempt foundations tied
to the fortunes of the greatest industrial and financial companies such as Rockefeller, Ford,
Kellogg, Hewlett and Soros says that there is a far deeper and far more sinister agenda to
current disturbances than spontaneous outrage would suggest.
Bolton pretended to be President, screwing up negotiations with his Libya Model talk,
threatening Venezuela (and anywhere generally) and directing fleets all over the world
(including Britain's to capture that Iranian oil tanker). Vindman revered "Ambassador" Bolton
because he was keeping the Ukraine corruption in Americans (and Ukrainian Americans') hands,
and daring the Russians to "start" WWIII. Bolton might have been a bit more bearable if he
had ever been elected, but was happy to see him go. Trump seemed mystified by him.
b has presented us (knowingly or not, but I wouldn't put it past him) with the Socratic
question of the presumed identity between the morality of the State and personal morality, as
best encountered in Plato's dialogue, 'The Republic' ['Politeia' in the Greek] That dialogue
begins by examining personal morality, but changes to an examination of what would bring into
being a perfect state. In doing the latter, however, it is how to create public spirited
persons, in the best sense, which is the actual concern, and the conversation ranges far and
wide, becoming more and more complex.
I've always thought that to consider the perfect state had to be an impossibility if the
individual, the person him or herself isn't up to the task - and that is the point of the
Politeia enterprise. Like the ongoing relay race on horseback that is happening at the same
time in the Piraeus, the passing of the argument one person to another that happens in the
dialogue demonstrates that what is most crucial for the state as well as for the individual
is personal integrity.
I take as an example the message of Saker's essay, linked by Down South and commented on
above by others. Saker is pointing out that the protests have been seized upon by the
anti-Trumpists who have been disrupting things from the beginning of his administration. But
he also says:
"My personal feeling is that Trump is too weak and too much of a coward to fight his
political enemies"
Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? The discussion of different kinds of states,
which we often have here pursued, or the discussion of what makes a person able to function
in one or another state? I don't think Plato was saying that Greece had it made, that Greece
needed to throw its weight around more to be great. He's pointing out that it had lost
greatness, the same way every empire loses when it forgets that individual spark that is in a
single person, his virtue. And the sad thing is it all comes down to the education of our
young people in the values, the virtues that apply both to his own personal life and to the
life of the state.
At its heart, the protests which are beginning, only beginning, and which are peaceful,
may be politeia vs. republic, the 'polis' itself against 'things political'. A new and true
enlightenment, multipolar.
Corruption's been a fact of life in North America ever since it was "discovered."
Bernard Bailyn captured it quite well in his The New England Merchants in the
Seventeenth Century , that is during the very first stages of plantation, with most
corruption taking place in Old England then exported to the West. Even the Founders were
corrupt, although they didn't see themselves as such. Isn't Adam & Eve's corruption
detailed in Genesis merely an indicator of a general human trait that needs to be managed via
culture? That human culture has generally failed to contain and discipline corruption speaks
volumes about both. John Dos Passos in his opus USA noted that everyone everywhere was
on the "hustle"--from the hobo to the banker. "Every child gots to have its own" are some of
the truest lyrics ever written. Will humanity ever transcend this major failure in its
nature?
Who is behind the claim that China is imprisoning vast numbers of Uighurs in concentration
camps and what evidence has been presented? See the Greyzone for its recent report on this.
Thanks to all of you for your insights on Bolton.
I still don't see anything to explain why he got a second gig in the Whitehouse.
Or anything that he did that enhanced US security long term.
And another guy who dodged active service.
Strange angry dude,!
Pat Lang believes that Bolton has breached a law requiring US Officials with access to Top
Secret Stuff to submit personal memoirs for scrutiny before publishing. Col Lang is awaiting
similar approval for a memoir of his own and thinks Bolton didn't bother waiting for the
Official OK.
There's a diverse range of comments. Most commentators like the idea of Bolton being tossed
in the slammer. Others speculate that as a Swamp Creature, Bolton will escape prosecution.
It's interesting that no-one has asked to see the publisher's copy of the USG's signed &
dated Approval To Publish document, relevant to Bolton's book.
Yes why not? If Obama awarded the Noble prize even before he begins serving his first term
I can't see why Bolton not nominated now. America is a joke, not a banana republic. It
deserves Obama, Trump, Bolton or Biden another stoopid joker.
As Ben Garrison recent noted, in an
interview Bolton stated that it was OK for the government agencies to lie to the American
people if national security is at stake. And it always seems to be at stake for dominant men
who want secrecy and power. Bolton is a dangerous liar and his anti-Trump screed cannot be
trusted.
Re: the Nuremberg trials , I became fascinated by the writings of Paul R. Pillar who
pointed out that U.S. sanctions are frequently peddled as a peaceful alternative to
war fit the definition of 'crimes against peace' . This is when one country sets up an
environment for war against another country. I'll grant you that this is vague but if this is
applicable at all how is this not an accurate description of what we are doing against Iran
and Venezuela?
In both cases, we are imposing a full trade embargo (not sanctions) on basic civilian
necessities and infrastructures and threatening the use of military force. As for Iran, the
sustained and unfair demonization of Iranians is preparing the U.S. public to accept a
ruthless bombing campaign against them as long overdue. We are already attacking the civilian
population of their allies in Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon.
How Ironic that the country that boasts that it won WW2 is now guilty of the very crimes
that it condemned publicly in court.
Security screening of manuscripts I t is the law in the United States that those who
have had legal access to the secrets of the government must submit private manuscripts for
removal of such secrets BEFORE they are published or even presented to a potential publisher.
Every department of government has an office charged with such work.
I know this process well because my memoir "Tattoo" has been in the hands of the appropriate
Defense Department office for nigh on six months. The book is long, and I was so unlucky as to
have DoD shut down its auxiliary services during my wait. I have thought of withdrawing it from
screening but, surprisingly, the screeners tell me it has some worth for those who will come
after. So, I will wait.
All this applies to John Bolton, a career State Department man whose adult life has been
soaked in government secrets. I first noticed Bolton as a glowering presence at briefings I
gave to selected State Department people with regard to national command authority projects I
was running. His attitude was consistent. If the idea was not his, it was simply wrong.
Bolton's "kiss and tell" book about Trump is IMO as much caused by wounded ego as a desire
to make money. He submitted the book for security review to DoD and the CIA. Why not State? Ah,
Pompeo would tear it to pieces. Bolton evidently grew impatient with the pace of clearance and
decided to go ahead with publication without clearance
To do this is a felony. The release of the book today completes the elements of proof for
the crime.
Bolton should be arrested and charged with any of a number of possible crimes. pl
Let's see what Trump does with Bolton now that he has committed a felony.
My bet is that other than crying on Twitter, he'll not do much. His previous
actions/inactions on these matters show weakness.
In any case bitching on Twitter makes him look like an executive with poor hiring
judgement as he was the one that hired him. Just like he hired Mattis and Kelly as well as
Rosenstein and Wray.
Bolton being successfully charged with violations associated with his sour grapes hit piece
memoir is analogous to Al Capone finally going down for tax evasion. But if that's the way it
goes I will not be sad.
Re "Tattoo", your Memorial Day "Ap Bu Nho" extract alone makes "some worth" an amusingly
ludicrous understatement. I wish you luck with the censors & very much look forward to
one day reading "Tattoo".
"He was a convert - - -"
I was going to ask what went wrong with Bolton: was he dropped on his head as an infant? No
father in the home? The Dulles brothers spent their childhoods being harangued by their
bible-thumping Calvinist grandfather (reports Kinzer in his useful bio on the brothers).
In Jeff Engel's book about the decision-making behind G H W Bush's decision to wage war
against Saddam re Kuwait, he recounts that an argument by Brent Scowcroft was significant,
AND that "Scowcroft, who was very short," confronted taller-than-average Bush while
knees-to-knees in an airplane.
Bolton is shorter than the average American male. Does he have 'short-person' compulsion to
compensate?
People psychologize Trump constantly, usually from ignorance and malice. But something is
very wrong with Bolton. Pompeo as well. What is it?
"What huge imago made a psychopathic god?" (Auden, Sept. 1939)
#1 I read this WaPo article that argued because the recent DOJ's lawsuit against the
release of the book is based on "prior restraint on speech before it occurs", meaning the
Trump administration cannot censor speech before it happens, therefore there is no 1st
amendment breach against the Trump admin by Bolton. As the court elaborated in Nebraska Press
Association v. Stuart, prior restraints are "the most serious and the least tolerable
infringement on First Amendment rights" and "one of the most extraordinary remedies known to
our jurisprudence."
#2 Bolton took all of his notes containing classified intelligence with him after he was
fired and nobody took an issue. How is that possible?
#3 The Wapo article says his manuscript was reviewed for four months by one Ellen Knight,
an official (doesn't mention which department) responsible for reviewing publishing material
and she gave it the green light for publication on April 27th.
#4 During a press conference, Bill Barr gave an unusual take on Bolton's book as if he was
giving publicity to the book. He said he had never seen a book being written on Trump with
such pace and in such quick time and that it had a lot of sensitive information and stuff. It
sounded really odd what Bill Barr said. I dunno maybe I am reading to much between the
lines...
#5 With regards to Pompeo, back in September during a press conference at the State, when
asked by a reporter about Bolton's firing I specifically remember watching him on TV giving a
big meaningful chuckle and a smile... it was revealed later that they clearly did not get
along with each other and Pompeo had complained on numerous times that Bolton as NSA, who
does not have executive authorities, had been doing a lot of policy stuff and running his own
show in shadow.
On a final note, I don't think Bolton is a neocon in the mold of Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith,
Abrams, Kagan, Kristol etc...There is this long piece by New Yorker published last year that
really gets into detail of how and why Bolton is not a neocon, but adheres to a more hawkish
Jacksonian nationalism approach rather than the liberal idealism of arch neocons I mentioned
above. However, he does have quite similar F.P. views with neocon oldies such as Irving
Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, and Jeane Kirkpatrick.
If Bolton does NOT get the book thrown at him, it will be pretty good evidence of the
existence of the Deep State allowing those it favors to write their own rules. Of course, we
already knew that after Clapper lied with impunity to Wyden when he was under oath.
He'll never be prosecuted and neither will Comey, Clapper and the rest of the swamp scum.
Strozk (lower on the food chain) might be the human sacrifice (with a sentence of "community
service") but no one of any significance (or "royal" title) is ever prosecuted in the
swamp.
Trump has tried, but his miserable lack of hiring experience and skill has not made a dent
I feel like I have a few words to say about Bolton if I may,
IMHO Bolton's view of the world is very dark and extremely Hobbesian. He is no slouch by
any stretch of imagination, in fact he is extremely knowledgeable and masterful when it comes
to policy-making and that basically how things are done in D.C. He has made a brand for
himself as the most hawkish national security expert in all of America in my opinion.
Honestly I cannot think of anyone else who espouses more hawkishness and zero diplomacy than
Bolton, ever... maybe Tom Cotton or Liz Cheney but still not close. This is the reason why
Trump hired him. In fact Trump did not want to hire him as the top brass in first place,
citing his mustache as one reason that would not look good on TV and wanted to give him 2nd
tier jobs at the State or as NSA early on, but Bolton refused. Trump, wanted to hire Bolton's
"brand" not his policies or hawkishness to intimidate Nkorea, Iran, and China to force them
come into making deals with him and him personally.
IMO Trump found out after the first Kim summit that Bolton was
such an ambitious and counterproductive foreign policy maker and one-man-team that if he
allowed Bolton to get his way, there would be world war III (Trump's own words) and his most
important promise to keep America out of forever wars which was his wining platform over
neocons such as Hilary, Jeb and Rubio during 2016 election would disappear into thin air.
So, Trump found ways to check Bolton and keep him out of the loop in sensitive and crucial
moments by Mattis, Kelly, Joe Dunford, Pompeo and even Melania (in the case of getting rid of
Bolton's close confidant and neocon Mira Ricardel when she called for bombing Iranian forces
back in September 2018 in respone to several rockets by iraqi militias hitting the ground
close to the U.S. embassy in Baghdad), and even sent him to Mongolia last year on a goose
chase to make an embarrassing example of him for undermining him (i.e. Trump's) authority in
the case of sitting down with the Taliban in Camp David to discuss military pullout from
Afghanistan back in Sep. whereas at the same time Pompeo was smart enough to tow the same
line as Trump and survive.
I few years ago I came across this interesting but odd piece by B on the Moon of Alabama
on Bolton. I honestly dunno what to make of it.
The book is already released in the hundreds. It will be on-line soon enough regardless of
the niceties of Barr's attempt to slam shut the barn door, or what the legal system does with
Bolton going fwd.
Those close to Trump know his emotional state must be appeased or they will soon be departing
- unless there's a DNA match.
Reaction to it will be a test of one's ability to distinguish Bolton from the events he
describes & their veracity. Is there anything of Trump's statements & acts (released
so far) that surprises anyone... that rings untrue?
Those ideologically (or religiously) dependent upon the Trump Phenomenon for validating their
core beliefs will demonstrate how creative true believers can be when attached to a
personality.
For what its worth I am looking forward to buying it, should scratch that Peter Scholl Latour
itch.
Another thing is that I just dont get the Neocons.
Their politics are bad both from a Machieavellian (dilutes US forces, creates enemies,
considerably restricts creative ways in which US power could be employed) and from a moral
(obviously) point of view. I also dont get their power, stupid/evil tends to be competed out.
Heck, even if they are stupid/evil but very good at beurocratic backbiting stuff, they are
still supposedly disadvantadged against skilled beurocratic backbiters that arent stupid/evil
(or at least only evil and not stupid).
Is it internal cohesion or a much higher degree of ruthlessness that maintains their
position?
I've for many years thought that the Bolton problem was best solved with a speedy trial and a
swift execution, with remains thrown overboard somewhere in the Indian ocean.
He signed an oath to safeguard the secrecy of the information when "read on" for it and
another such when he was "read off." The 1st Amendment does not come into it at all
I'm fully expecting the Dem "left" to try and praise the monsterous Bolton for "going against
Trump", as they did with war criminal Mad Dog Matis and Bush. Bolton has to be one of the
most evil mass murders on the face of the Earth. The world will be an infinitely better place
when he and his ilk like Netanyahu, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Chertoff..etc finally go back to hell.
Poor Johnny! What's sadder than being a crook, but an ineffective one? I think that's what he
is. He may be infamous enough to be a household name, but he never really managed to make a
career. Hardly ever did he stay on a job for more than 2 years, before his fellow crooks
deemed him unfit for his position, again and again. Says a lot.
I hope they will confiscate his book on some flimsy pretext, only to lose the piles of
copies in storage, so they cannot possibly be released to bookstores again. Maybe some mice
will make use of it to furnish their nests?
Take a look at his face. It's obvious to me that even John Bolton does not enjoy being
John Bolton. That mouth, it's drooping to an absurd degree. Comparable to Merkel's face, come
to think of it.
John Bolton's tell all book about his tenure with the Trump administration is a perfect
example of the pot calling the kettle burned. It is a fitting description of the leadership
of the US government and it's capitol city as a den of backstabbing, corkscrewing and double
dealing vipers. It's like standing on a street corner watching two prostitutes calling each
other a whore! How low has the US sunk.
Of course, Trump actually campaigned to leave Afghanistan and Syria, and he was elected to do
so. The self-appointed Deep State has pretty much thwarted him and his voters.
The political establishment in Canada appeared dismayed at the prospect of Bolton as National
Security Adviser. See these interviews with Hill + Knowlton strategies Vice-chairman, Peter
Donolo, from 2018:
So Bolton gets in, Meng Wangzhou is detained in Vancouver on the US request (that's
another story), and in time, Canada appoints a new Ambassador to China - Mr. Dominic
Barton. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_Barton
Then Bolton gets fired. 'Nuff said. Just to let everyone know that Bolton is well and truly
hated, as a government official, in certain circles.
Close -- the threatened official was Jose Bustani, at that time (2002) the head of the
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)as he had been for five years.
Bustani had been working to bring Iraq and Libya into the organization, which would have
required those two countries to eliminate all of their chemical weapons.
The US, though, had other ideas -- chiefly invading and destroying both of those nations,
and when Bustani insisted on continuing his efforts then Bolton threatened Bustani's adult
children.
let the lobbyists with the most money win... that's what defines the usa system, leadership
and decision making process... no one in their right mind would support this doofus..
At least the one saving grace about John Bolton's memoir is that it might be a tad closer to
reality than Christopher Steele's infamous dossier and might prove valuable as a source of
evidence in a court of law. Maybe
Yosemite Sam himself should start quaking in his boots.
@ Jpc
When faced with Trump's behavior of employing warmongers, including several generals, some
observers opined that Trump wanted people with contrasting opinions so that he could consider
them and then say "no." He did more with Bolton eventually, sending him to Mongolia while he
(Trump) went to Singapore (or somewhere over there).
re Ian2 | Jun 17 2020 23:08 utc | 19
who hazarded : My guess Trump went along with the tough guy image that Bolton projected in
media and recommendations by others.
Not at all, if you go back to the earliest days of the orangeman's prezdency, you will see
Trump resisted the efforts by Mercer & the zionist casino owner to give Bolton a gig.
He knew that shrub had problems with the boasts of Bolton and as his reputation was as an
arsehole who sounded his own trumpet at his boss's expense orangeman refused for a long time.
Trump believes the trump prezdency is about trump no one else.
Thing was at the time he was running for the prez gig trump was on his uppers, making a few
dollars from his tv show, plus licensing other people's buildings by selling his name to be
stuck on them. trump tower azerbnajan etc.
He put virtually none of his own money into the 'race' so when he won the people who had put
up the dosh had power over him.
Bolton has always been an arse kisser to any zionist cause he suspects he can claw a penny
outta, so he used the extreme loony end of the totally looney zionist spectrum to hook him
(Bolton) up with a gig by pushing for him with trump.
It was always gonna end the way it did as Bolton is forever briefing the media against
anyone who tried to resist his murderous fantasies. Trump is never gonna argue for any scheme
that doesn't have lotsa dollars for him in it so he had plenty of run ins with Bolton who
then went to his media mates & told tales.
When bolton was appointed orangey's stakes were at a really low ebb among DC warmongers, so
he reluctantly took him on then spent the next 18 months getting rid of the grubby
parasite.
Real History: Candidate Trump praised Bolton and named him as THE number one Foreign Policy
expert he (Trump) respected.
Imagine the mustachioed Mister Potatoe (sic) Head and zany highjinks!
Bolton and one of his first wives were regulars at Plato's Retreat for wife swapping
orgies. The wife was not real keen on the behavior, but she allegedly found herself verbally
and physically abused for objecting.
Trump is at fault for hiring him to appease the Zionist lobby. We all knew the guy was a
warmonger and a scumbag. It's not a surprise. Trump surrounds himself with the worst people
If we view Bolton as Adelson puppet, such a behaviour clearly does not make much sense. Or this is a single from Israel lobby to
Trump "moor did his duty, moor can go"?
Notable quotes:
"... "a variety of instances when he sought to intervene in law enforcement matters for political reasons." ..."
"... "in effect, give personal favors to dictators he liked," ..."
"... "The pattern looked like obstruction of justice as a way of life, which we couldn't accept," ..."
"... "bombshells" ..."
"... "exactly the right thing to do." ..."
"... "systematic use of indoctrination camps, forced labor, and intrusive surveillance to eradicate the ethnic identity and religious beliefs of Uyghurs and other minorities in China." ..."
"... "Panda Hugger." ..."
"... The mustachioed warhawk had served as Trump's national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019. While the exact reason for his firing was never revealed, Trump has since commented that Bolton was interfering with his peace initiatives and had "never seen a war he didn't like." ..."
"... Indeed, the "most irrational thing" Bolton accuses Trump of was to refuse to bomb Iran in June 2019, according to the New York Times excerpt. ..."
"... "soft on China" ..."
"... As for Trump supporters, many were indifferent about Bolton's betrayal, noting that Trump hired the neocon in the first place and kept him on for over a year, while ditching the faithful General Michael Flynn after less than two weeks on the job, following a FBI ambush and a Washington Post hit job. ..."
Former national security adviser John Bolton has leaked excerpts of his book to major newspapers, accusing President Donald Trump
of colluding with leaders in China and Turkey, and obstruction of justice "as a way of life." Facing a DOJ lawsuit seeking to
block the publication of his memoir for containing classified information, Bolton decided to go to the press, leaking parts of
the book to the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
Breaking News: John Bolton says in his new book that the House should have investigated President Trump for potentially impeachable
actions beyond Ukraine https://t.co/8lpd4xAzYu
Bolton famously refused to testify before the Democrat-led impeachment proceedings against Trump over his alleged abuse of power
regarding Ukraine, but now claims that they should have expanded the probe to "a variety of instances when he sought to intervene
in law enforcement matters for political reasons."
He accuses Trump of wanting to "in effect, give personal favors to dictators he liked," bringing up companies in China
and Turkey as examples, according to the Times. "The pattern looked like obstruction of justice as a way of life, which we couldn't
accept," the Times quotes him as saying.
One of the Bolton "bombshells" is that he sought China's purchase of US soybeans in order to get re-elected, during trade
negotiations with President Xi Jinping.
SOYBEAN DIPLOMACY: The WSJ has published an excerpt of
@AmbJohnBolton 's forthcoming book, revealing
Trump-Xi conversation and how the American president pleaded his Chinese counterpart to buy U.S. soybeans so he could win farm
states in the 2020 presidential elections |
#OATT pic.twitter.com/XKAogLCCtN
An excerpt in the Wall Street Journal has Trump telling Xi that – alleged – concentration camps for Uighur Muslims in China's
Xinjiang province were "exactly the right thing to do." It also alleges that Trump did Xi a favor by relaxing US sanctions
on ZTE, a Chinese telecom company.
WSJ excerpt of Bolton book has Trump & China bombshells. Trump told Xi building concentration camps for Muslims "was exactly
the right thing to do." Trump pleaded w/ Xi to help him w/ re-election by making US farm product buys. And Trump helped Xi w/
ZTE. https://t.co/4CSflQQqcL
This comes as Trump signed into law
the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020, which mandates US sanctions against Chinese officials over "systematic use of indoctrination
camps, forced labor, and intrusive surveillance to eradicate the ethnic identity and religious beliefs of Uyghurs and other minorities
in China."
Another excerpt has Bolton referring to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin as a "Panda Hugger."
According to Bolton, Trump told Xi to "go ahead with building the camps" for imprisoned Uighurs.
As another proof of Trump's perfidy, Bolton writes that the president told Xi that he would like to stay in office beyond the
two terms the US Constitution would allow him. Bolton's one-time colleague Dinesh D'Souza commented that Bolton was unable to recognize
a clear joke.
Really? This is it? John Bolton's smoking gun? Trump has been jokingly putting out memes about this for four years. This conversation,
if it occurred at all, seems obviously jocular. Bolton, however, whom I knew quite well from AEI, doesn't have a jocular bone
in his body pic.twitter.com/Qe8sXCAT58
Trump has on more than one occasion shared a meme showing him staying in power forever, triggering Democrats into denouncing him
as an aspiring dictator. Apparently, Bolton thought the same.
According to John Bolton posting this meme was an impeachable offense https://t.co/q2BHlfVTEu
-- Will Chamberlain 🇺🇸 (@willchamberlain)
June 17, 2020
The mustachioed warhawk had served as Trump's national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019. While the exact
reason for his firing was never revealed, Trump has since commented that Bolton was interfering with his peace initiatives and had
"never seen a war he didn't like."
Indeed, the "most irrational thing" Bolton accuses Trump of was to refuse to bomb Iran in June 2019, according to the New York
Times excerpt.
Pretty telling that the episode which pissed off Bolton the most during his tenure was Trump calling off airstrikes which would
have killed dozens of Iranian soldiers in June 2019 https://t.co/ruFSInj2Mu
pic.twitter.com/5zO7UrxMTM
Arguing that Trump is being "soft on China" and colluding with Xi also happens to be a Democratic Party strategy for the
2020 presidential election, outlined in April
and reported by Axios.
While Democrats and the mainstream media welcomed Bolton's bombshells as validating their position on Trump, he is unlikely to
become a #Resistance hero, simply because they still remember he refused to say these things under oath during the impeachment hearings,
when they – in theory – could have bolstered their case for getting Trump out of office.
As for Trump supporters, many were indifferent about Bolton's betrayal, noting that Trump hired the neocon in the first place
and kept him on for over a year, while ditching the faithful General Michael Flynn after less than two weeks on the job, following
a FBI ambush and a Washington Post hit job.
Do I care that Bolton is stabbing Trump in the back? Not at all. General Flynn was NSA and Trump made his choices. Being outraged
on behalf of a 70+ year old man who makes poor choices is well beyond my job description.
The OPCW is claimed to be an independent agency but we know that it suppressed the results of
its own engineers when it reported that the Syrian government was responsible for the alleged
chemical attack in Douma. The former head of the agency has publicly asserted that when John
Bolton demanded that he step down, he added, "We know where your children live." The US has a
history of corruption and intimidation. Any investigation would result in finding China
responsible just as Russia was found to be responsible for the airliner that was shot down
over Ukraine.
FBI memos show case was to be closed with a defensive briefing before a second interview
with Flynn was sought.
Evidence withheld for years from Michael Flynn's defense team shows the FBI found "no
derogatory" Russia evidence against the former Trump National Security Adviser and that
counterintelligence agents had recommended closing down the case with a defensive briefing
before the bureau's leadership intervened in January 2017
In the text messages to his team, Strzok specifically cited "the 7th floor" of FBI
headquarters, where then-Director James Comey and then-Deputy Director Andrew McCane worked,
as the reason he intervened.
"Hey if you haven't closed RAZOR, don't do so yet," Strzok texted on Jan. 4,
2017
####
JFC.
Remember kids, the United States is a well oiled machine that dispenses justice equitably
along with free orange juce to the tune of 'One Nation Under a Groove.'
So, I think Mark asked about 'legal action', but as you can see Barr and others are going
through this stuff with a fine tooth comb so it is as solid when it goes public. More
importantly, it can be used as evidenec to reform such corruption and put some proper
controls in place to stop it happening again at least for a few years
And meanwhile everybody who thinks they might be in the line of fire at some future moment is
destroying evidence as fast as they can make it unfindable.
"... Comey later publicly took credit when he had told an audience that he decided he could "get away" with sending "a couple guys over" to the White House to set up Flynn and make the case. ..."
"... In his role as the national security adviser to the president elect, there was nothing illegal in Flynn meeting with Kislyak. To use this abusive law here was utterly absurd, although other figures such as former acting Attorney General Sally Yates also raised it. Nevertheless, the FBI had latched onto this abusive law to target the retired Army lieutenant general ..."
"... Another newly released document is an email from former FBI lawyer Lisa Page to former FBI special agent Peter Strzok, who played the leadership role in targeting Flynn. In the email, Page suggests that Flynn could be set up by making a passing reference to a federal law that criminalizes lies to federal investigators. She suggested to Strzok that "it would be an easy way to just casually slip that in." So this effort was not about protecting national security or learning critical intelligence. It was about bagging Flynn for the case in the legal version of a canned trophy hunt. ..."
Previously undisclosed documents in the case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn offer us a chilling
blueprint on how top FBI officials not only sought to entrap the former White House aide but
sought to do so on such blatantly unconstitutional and manufactured grounds.
These new documents further undermine the view of both the legitimacy and motivations of
those investigations under former FBI director James Comey. For all of those who have long seen
a concerted effort within the Justice Department to target the Trump administration, the
fragments will read like a Dead Sea Scrolls version of a "deep state" conspiracy.
One note reflects discussions within the FBI shortly after the 2016 election on how to
entrap Flynn in an interview concerning his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey
Kislyak. According to Fox News, the note was written by the former FBI head of
counterintelligence, Bill Priestap, after a meeting with Comey and his deputy director, Andrew
McCabe.
The note states, "What is our goal? Truth and admission or to get him to lie, so we can
prosecute him or get him fired?" This may have expressed an honest question over the motivation
behind this targeting of Flynn, a decision for which Comey later publicly took credit when
he had told an audience that he decided he could "get away" with sending "a couple guys over"
to the White House to set up Flynn and make the case.
The new documents also explore how the Justice Department could get Flynn to admit breaking
the Logan Act, a law that dates back to from 1799 which makes it a crime for a citizen to
intervene in disputes between the United States and foreign governments. It has never been used
to convict a citizen and is widely viewed as flagrantly unconstitutional.
In his role as the national security adviser to the president elect, there was nothing
illegal in Flynn meeting with Kislyak. To use this abusive law here was utterly absurd,
although other figures such as former acting Attorney General Sally Yates also raised it.
Nevertheless, the FBI had latched onto this abusive law to target the retired Army lieutenant
general .
Another newly released document is an email from former FBI lawyer Lisa Page to former
FBI special agent Peter Strzok, who played the leadership role in targeting Flynn. In the
email, Page suggests that Flynn could be set up by making a passing reference to a federal law
that criminalizes lies to federal investigators. She suggested to Strzok that "it would be an
easy way to just casually slip that in." So this effort was not about protecting national
security or learning critical intelligence. It was about bagging Flynn for the case in the
legal version of a canned trophy hunt.
It is also disturbing that this evidence was only recently disclosed by the Justice
Department. When Flynn was pressured to plead guilty to a single count of lying to
investigators, he was unaware such evidence existed and that the federal investigators who had
interviewed him told their superiors they did not think that Flynn intentionally lied when he
denied discussing sanctions against Russia with Kislyak. Special counsel Robert Mueller and his
team changed all that and decided to bring the dubious charge. They drained Flynn financially
then threatened to charge his son.
Flynn never denied the conversation and knew the FBI had a transcript of it. Indeed,
President Trump publicly
discussed a desire to reframe Russian relations and renegotiate such areas of tensions. But
Flynn still ultimately pleaded guilty to the single false statement to federal investigators.
This additional information magnifies the doubts over the case.
Various FBI officials also lied and acted in arguably criminal or unethical ways, but all
escaped without charges. McCabe had a supervisory role in the Flynn prosecution. He was then
later found by the Justice Department inspector general to have repeatedly lied to
investigators. While his case was referred for criminal charges, McCabe was fired but never
charged. Strzok was also fired for his misconduct in the investigation.
Comey intentionally leaked FBI material, including potentially classified information but
was never charged. Another FBI agent responsible for the secret warrants used for the Russia
investigation had falsified evidence to maintain the investigation. He is still not indicted.
The disconnect of these cases with the treatment of Flynn is galling and grotesque.
Even the judge in the case has added to this disturbing record. As Flynn appeared before
District Judge Emmet Sullivan for sentencing, Sullivan launched into him and said he could be
charged with treason and with working as an unregistered agent on behalf of Turkey. Pointing to
a flag behind him, Sullivan declared to Flynn, "You were an unregistered agent of a foreign
country while serving as the national security adviser to the president of the United States.
That undermines everything this flag over here stands for. Arguably, you sold your country
out."
Flynn was never charged with treason or with being a foreign agent. But when Sullivan
menacingly asked if he wanted a sentence then and there, Flynn wisely passed. It is a record
that truly shocks the conscience. While rare, it is still possible for the district court to
right this wrong since Flynn has not been sentenced. The Justice Department can invite the
court to use its inherent supervisory authority to right a wrong of its own making. As the
Supreme Court made clear in 1932, "universal sense of justice" is a stake in such cases. It is
the "duty of the court to stop the prosecution in the interest of the government itself to
protect it from the illegal conduct of its officers and to preserve the purity of its
courts."
Flynn was a useful tool for everyone and everything but justice. Mueller had ignored the
view of the investigators and coerced Flynn to plead to a crime he did not commit to gain
damaging testimony against Trump and his associates that Flynn did not have. The media covered
Flynn to report the flawed theory of Russia collusion and to foster the view that some sort of
criminal conspiracy was being uncovered by Mueller. Even the federal judge used Flynn to rail
against what he saw as a treasonous plot. What is left in the wake of the prosecution is an
utter travesty of justice.
Justice demands a dismissal of his prosecution. But whatever the "goal" may have been in
setting up Flynn, justice was not one of them.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington
University. You can find his updates online @JonathanTurley . - "
Source "
In a dramatic new turn of events, the legal team for Flynn, President
Trump's former national security advisor, says the Department of Justice has turned over exculpatory
evidence in his case. Flynn is defending against charges he lied to FBI agents in the course of their
investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
At a minimum, this information, which includes evidence that US government prosecutors illegally
coerced a guilty plea by threatening Flynn's son with prosecution, warrants the withdrawal of that
guilty plea. Whether or not the judge in the case, US District Court Judge Emmet G Sullivan, will
dismiss the entire case against Flynn on the grounds of prosecutorial misconduct is yet to be seen.
One fact, however, emerges from this sordid affair: the FBI, lauded by its supporters as the world's
"premier law enforcement agency,"
is anything but.
Evidence of FBI misconduct during its investigation into alleged collusion between members of the
Trump campaign team and the Russian government in the months leading up to the presidential election
has been mounting for some time. From mischaracterizing information provided by former British MI6
officer Christopher Steele in order to manufacture a case against then-candidate Trump, to committing
fraud against the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to authorize wiretaps on former low-level
Trump advisor Carter Page, the FBI has a record of corruption that would make a third-world dictator
envious.
The crimes committed under the aegis of the FBI are not the actions of rogue agents, but rather
part and parcel of a systemic effort managed from the very top – both former Director James Comey and
current Director Christopher Wray are implicated in facilitating this criminal conduct. Moreover, it
was carried out in collaboration with elements within the Department of Justice, and with the
assistance of national security officials working for the Obama administration, making for a
conspiracy that would rival any investigation conducted by the FBI under the Racketeer Influenced and
Corrupt Organizations Act.
The heart of the case against Michael Flynn – a flamboyant, decorated combat veteran, with 33 years
of honorable service in the US Army – revolves around a phone call he made to the Russian ambassador
to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, on December 29, 2016. That was the same day then-President Obama
ordered the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats from the US on charges of espionage. The conversation
was intercepted by the National Security Agency as part of its routine monitoring of Russian
communications. Normally, the identities of US citizens caught up in such surveillance are
"masked,"
or hidden, so as to preserve their constitutional rights. However, in certain instances
deemed critical to national security, the identity can be
"unmasked"
to help further an
investigation, using
"minimization"
standards designed to protect the identities and privacy
of US citizens.
In Flynn's case, these
"minimization"
standards were thrown out the window: on January 12,
2017, and again on February 9, the Washington Post published articles that detailed Flynn's phone call
with Kislyak. US Attorney John Durham, tasked by Attorney General William P Barr to lead a review of
the actions taken by law enforcement and intelligence officials as part of the Russian collusion
scandal, is currently investigating the potential leaking of classified information by Obama-era
officials in relation to these articles.
Read more
Flynn's phone call with Kislyak was the central topic of interest when a pair of FBI agents, led by
Peter Strzok, met with Flynn in his White House office on January 24, 2017. This meeting later served
as the source of the charge levied against him for lying to a federal agent. It also provided grist
for then acting-Attorney General Sally Yates to travel to the White House on January 26 to warn
then-White House Counsel Michael McGahn that Flynn had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his
conversations with Kislyak, and, as such, was in danger of being compromised by the Russians.
That Flynn lied, or otherwise misrepresented, his conversation with Kislyak to Pence is not in
dispute; indeed, it was this act that prompted President Trump to fire Flynn in the first place. But
lying to the Vice President, while wrong, is not a crime. Lying to FBI agents, however, is. And yet
the available evidence suggests that not only did Flynn not lie to Strzok and his partner when
interviewed on January 24, but that the FBI later doctored its report of the interview, known in FBI
parlance as a
"302 report,"
to show that Flynn had. Internal FBI documents and official
testimony clearly show that a 302 report on Strzok's conversation with Flynn was prepared
contemporaneously, and that he had shown no indication of deception. However, in the criminal case
prepared against him by the Department of Justice, a 302 report dated August 22, 2017 – over seven
months after the interview – was cited as the evidence underpinning the charge of lying to a federal
agent.
The evidence of a doctored 302 report, when combined with the evidence that the US prosecutor
conspired with Flynn's former legal counsel to
"keep secret"
the details of his plea
agreement, in violation of so-called Giglio requirements (named after the legal precedent set in
Giglio v. United States which holds that the failure to disclose immunity deals to co-conspirators
constitutes a violation of due-process rights), constitutes a clear-cut case of FBI malfeasance and
prosecutorial misconduct. Under normal circumstances, that should warrant the dismissal of the
government's case against Flynn.
Whether Judge Emmet G Sullivan will agree to a dismissal, or, if not, whether the Department of
Justice would seek to retry Flynn, are not known at this time. What is known, however, is the level of
corruption that exists within the FBI and elements of the Department of Justice, regarding their
prosecution of a US citizen for purely political motive. Notions of integrity and fealty to the rule
of law that underpin the opinions of many Americans when it comes to these two institutions have been
shredded in the face of overwhelming evidence that the law is meaningless when the FBI targets you. If
this could happen to a man with Michael Flynn's stature and reputation, it can happen to anyone.
Devastating flashback clip of Comey just aired on @marthamaccallum show.
When asked who went around the protocol of going through the WH Counsel's office and instead decided to send the FBI agents
into White House for the Flynn perjury trap ...
...Comey smugly responds "I sent them."
Here is the clip:
@comey is preparing for prison and hoping to avoid
the death penalty. Will Obama be brought down too?
Imagine having your life and reputation ruined by rogue US govt. officials. Then years later when the plot finally comes to
light the first thing you do is post an American flag. This is the guy they wanted you to believe was a Russian asset. 🙄
https://t.co/TI768Vijn2
U.S. District Court Judge
Emmet
G. Sullivan unsealed four pages of stunning FBI emails and handwritten notes Wednesday, regarding former Trump National Security
Advisor Michael Flynn, which allegedly reveal the retired three star general was targeted by senior FBI officials for prosecution,
stated Flynn's defense attorney Sidney Powell. Those notes and emails revealed that the retired three-star general appeared to be
set up for a perjury trap by the senior members of the bureau and agents charged with investigating the now-debunked allegations
that President Donald Trump's campaign colluded with Russia, said Sidney Powell, the defense lawyer representing Flynn.
Moreover, the
Department of Justice release 11 more pages of documents Wednesday afternoon, according to Powell.
While we await Judge Sullivan's order to unseal the exhibits from Friday, the government has just provided 11 more pages even
more appalling that the Friday production. We have requested the redaction process begin immediately.
@GenFlynn @BarbaraRedgate pic.twitter.com/YPEjZWbdvo
"What is especially terrifying is that without the integrity of Attorney General Bill Barr and
U.S. Attorney Jensen , we still would not have this clear exculpatory information as Mr. Van Grack and the prosecutors have opposed
every request we have made," said Powell.
It appears, based on the notes and emails that the Department of Justice was determined at the time to prosecute Flynn, regardless
of what they found, Powell said.
"The FBI pre-planned a deliberate attack on Gen. Flynn and willfully chose to ignore mention of Section 1001 in the interview
despite full knowledge of that practice," Powell said in a statement.
"The FBI planned it as a perjury trap at best and in so doing put it in writing stating 'what is our goal? Truth/ Admission
or to get him to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired."
The documents, reviewed and obtained by SaraACarter.com , reveal that
senior FBI officials discussed strategies for targeting and setting up Flynn, prior to interviewing him at the White House on Jan.
24, 2017. It was that interview at the White House with former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and FBI Special Agent Joe Pientka that
led Flynn, now 61, to plead guilty after months of pressure by prosecutors, financial strain and threats to prosecute his son.
Powell filed a motion earlier this year to withdraw Flynn's guilty plea and to dismiss his case for egregious government misconduct.
Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017, under duress by government prosecutors, to lying to investigators about his conversations
with Russian diplomat
Sergey Kislyak about sanctions on Russia. This January, however, he withdrew his guilty plea in the U.S. District Court in Washington,
D.C. He stated that he was "innocent of this crime" and was coerced by the FBI and prosecutors under threats that would charge his
son with a crime. He filed to withdraw his guilty plea after DOJ prosecutors went back on their word and asked the judge to sentence
Flynn to up to six months in prison, accusing him of not cooperating in another case against his former partner. Then prosecutors
backtracked and said probation would be fine but by then Powell, his attorney, had already filed to withdraw his guilty plea.
The documents reveal that prior to the interview with Flynn in January, 2017 the FBI had already come to the conclusion that Flynn
was guilty and beyond that the officials were working together to see how best to corner the 33-year military veteran and former
head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The bureau deliberately chose not to show him the evidence of his phone conversation to
help him in his recollection of events, which is standard procedure. Even stranger, the agents that interviewed Flynn later admitted
that they didn't believe he lied during the interview with them.
Powell told this reporter last week that the documents produced by the government are "stunning Brady evidence' proving Flynn
was deliberately set up and framed by corrupt agents at the top of the FBI to target President Trump.
She noted earlier this week in her motion that the evidence "also defeats any argument that the interview of Mr. Flynn on January
24 was material to any 'investigation.' The government has deliberately suppressed this evidence from the inception of this prosecution
-- knowing there was no crime by Mr. Flynn."
Powell told this reporter Wednesday that the order by Sullivan to unseal the documents in Exhibit 3 in the supplement to Flynn's
motion to dismiss for egregious government conduct is exposing the truth to the public. She said it's "easy to see that he was set
up and that Mr. Flynn was the insurance policy for the FBI." Powell's reference to the 'insurance policy,' is based on one of the
thousands of texts exchanged by former FBI lawyer Lisa Page and her then-lover former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok.
In an Aug. 15, 2016, text from Strzok to Page he states, "I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's
(former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe) office -- that there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's
like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before 40."
The new documents were turned over to Powell, by U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea. They were discovered after an extensive review by
the attorneys appointed by U.S. Attorney General William Barr to review Flynn's case, which includes U.S. Attorney of St. Louis,
Jeff Jensen.
In one of the emails dated Jan. 23, 2017, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who at the time was having an affair with Strzok and who worked
closely with him on the case discussed the charges the bureau would bring on Flynn before the actual interview at the White House
took place. Those email exchanges were prepared for former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was fired by the DOJ for lying
multiple times to investigators with DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz's office.
Former FBI Director James Comey, who was fired by President Trump for his conduct, revealed during an interview with Nicolle Wallace
last year that he sent the FBI agents to interview Flynn at the White House under circumstances he would have never done to another
administration.
"I probably wouldn't have done or maybe gotten away with in a more organized investigation, a more organized administration,"
Comey said. "In the George W. Bush administration or the Obama administration, two men that all of us, perhaps, have increased appreciation
for over the last two years."
In the Jan 23, email Page asks Strzok the day before he interviews Flynn at the White House:
"I have a question for you. Could the admonition re 1001 be given at the beginning at the interview? Or does it have
to come following a statement which agents believe to be false? Does the policy speak to that? (I feel bad that I don't know this
but I don't remember ever having to do this! Plus I've only charged it once in the context of lying to a federal probation officer).
It seems to be if the former, then it would be an easy way to just casually slip that in.
"Of course as you know sir, federal law makes it a crime to "
Strzok's response:
I haven't read the policy lately, but if I recall correctly, you can say it at any time. I'm 90 percent sure about that, but
I can check in the am.
In the motion filed earlier this week, Powell stated "since August 2016 at the latest, partisan FBI and DOJ leaders conspired
to destroy Mr. Flynn. These documents show in their own handwriting and emails that they intended either to create an offense they
could prosecute or at least get him fired. Then came the incredible malfeasance of Mr. Van Grack's and the SCO's prosecution despite
their knowledge there was no crime by Mr. Flynn."
Attached to the email is handwritten notes regarding Flynn that are stunning on their face. It is lists of how the agents will
guide him in an effort to get him to trip up on his answers during their questioning and what charges they could bring against him.
"If we get him to admit to breaking the Logan Act, give facts to DOJ & have them decide," state the handwritten notes.
"Or if he initially lies, then we present him (not legible) & he admits it, document for DOJ, & let them decide how to address
it."
The next two points reveal that the agents were concerned about how their interview with Flynn would be perceived saying "if we're
seen as playing games, WH (White House) will be furious."
"Protect our institution by not playing games," t he last point on the first half of the hand written notes state.
From the handwritten note:
Afterwards:
interview
I agreed yesterday that we shouldn't show Flynn (redacted) if he didn't admit
I thought @ it last night, I believe we should rethink this
What is (not legible) ? Truth/admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?
we regularly show subjects evidence, with the goal of getting them to admit their wrongdoing
I don't see how getting someone to admit their wrongdoing is going easy on him
If we get him to admit to breaking the Logan Act, give facts to DOJ & have them decide
Or if he initially lies, then we present him (not legible) & he admits it, document for DOJ, & let them decide how to address
it
If we're seen as playing games, WH will be furious
Protect our institution by not playing games
(Left column)
we have case on Flynn & Russians
Our goal is to (not legible)
Our goal is to determine if Mike Flynn is going to tell the truth or if he lies @ relationship w/ Russians
can quote (redacted)
Shouldn't (redacted
Review (not legible) stand alone
It appears evident from an email from former FBI agent Strzok, who interviewed Flynn at the White House to then FBI General Counsel
James Baker, who is no longer with the FBI and was himself under investigation for leaking alleged national security information
to the media.
The email was a series of questions to prepare McCabe for his phone conversation with Flynn on the day the agents went to interview
him at the White House. These questions would be questions that Flynn may ask McCabe before sending the agents over to interview
him.
Email from Peter Strzok, cc'd to FBI General Counsel James Baker: (January 24, 2017)
I'm sure he's thought through these, but for DD's (referencing Deputy Director Andrew McCabe) consideration about how to answer
in advance of his call with Flynn:
Am I in trouble?
Am I the subject of an investigation?
Is it a criminal investigation?
Is it an espionage investigation? Do I need an attorney? Do I need to tell Priebus? The President?
Will you tell Priebus? The President? Will you tell the WH what I tell you?
What happens to the information/who will you tell what I tell you? Will you need to interview other people?
Will our interview be released publically? Will the substance of our interview be released?
How long will this take (depends on his cooperation – I'd plan 45 minutes)? Can we do this over the phone?
I can explain all this right now, I did this, this, this [do you shut him down? Hear him out? Conduct the interview if he starts
talking? Do you want another agent/witness standing by in case he starts doing this?]
President Donald Trump has bashed former FBI Director James Comey, after unsealed documents
revealed an agency plot to entrap Gen. Michael Flynn in a bid to take down the Trump
presidency. "DIRTY COP JAMES COMEY GOT CAUGHT!" Trump tweeted on Thursday morning, in
one of a series of tweets lambasting the FBI's prosecution of retired army general Michael
Flynn, which he called a "scam."
Flynn served as Trump's national security adviser in the first days of the Trump presidency,
before he was fired for allegedly lying about his contact with Russian Ambassador Sergey
Kislyak.
An FBI investigation followed, and several months later, Flynn pleaded guilty to Special
Counsel Robert Mueller about lying during interviews with agents. He has since tried to
withdraw the plea, citing poor legal defense and accusing the FBI and Obama administration of
setting him up from the outset.
Documents unsealed by a federal judge on Wednesday seem to support that argument. In one
handwritten note, dated the same day as Flynn's FBI interview in January 2017, the unidentified
note-taker jots down some potential strategies to use against the former general.
"We have a case on Flynn + Russians," the note reads. "What's our goal?
Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?"
#FLYNN docs just
unsealed, including handwritten notes 1/24/2017 day of Flynn FBI interview. Transcript: "What
is our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?"
Read transcript notes, copy original just filed. @CBSNews
pic.twitter.com/8oqUok8i7m
The unsealed documents also include an email exchange between former agent Peter Strzok and
former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, in which the pair pondered whether to remind Flynn that lying to
federal agents is a crime. Page and Strzok were later fired from the agency, after a slew of
text messages emerged showing the pair's mutual disdain for Trump, and discussing the
formulation of an "insurance policy" against his election.
Flynn's discussions with Kislyak were deemed truthful by former FBI Deputy Director Andrew
McCabe. Additionally, a Washington Post
article published the day before Flynn's January 2017 interview revealed that the FBI had
tapped his calls with the Russian ambassador and found "nothing illicit."
Still, Section 1001 of the US Criminal Code, which makes it illegal to lie to a federal
agent, is broad in its scope. Defense Attorney Solomon Wisenberg
wrote that "even a decent person who tries to stay out of trouble can face criminal
exposure under Section 1001 through a fleeting conversation with government agents."
Early January 2017 Recommendation To Close Case on General Flynn Rebuffed by FBI Leaders
by Larry C Johnson
The document dump from the Department of Justice on the Michael Flynn case continues and the
information is shocking and damning. It is now clear why previous leaders of the Department of
Justice (Sessions and Rosenstein) and current FBI Director Wray tried to keep this material
hidden. There is now no doubt that Jim Comey and Andy McCabe help lead and direct a conspiracy
to frame Michael Flynn for a "crime" regardless of the actual facts surrounding General Flynn's
conduct.
The most stunning revelation from today's document release is that the FBI agents who
investigated Michael Flynn aka "Crossfire Razor" RECOMMENDED on the 4th of January 2017 that
the investigation of Flynn be closed. Let that sink in. The FBI agents investigating Flynn
found nothing to justify either a criminal or counter-intelligence investigation more than two
weeks before Donald Trump was inaugurated as President. Yet, FBI Director Jim Comey and Deputy
Director McCabe, with the help of General Counsel Jim Baker, Assistant Director for Counter
Intelligence Bill Priestap, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok decided to try to manufacture a crime
against Flynn.
The documents released on Wednesday made clear that as of January 21st, the FBI Conspirators
were scrambling to find pretext for entrapping and charging General Flynn. Here is the
transcription of Bill Priestap's handwritten notes:
Apologists for these criminal acts by FBI officials insist this was all routine. "Nothing to
see here." "Move along." Red State's Nick Arama did a good job of reporting on the absurdity of
this idiocy (
see here ). Former US Attorney Andy McCarthy cuts to the heart of the matter:
"They did not have a legitimate investigative reason for doing this and there was no
criminal predicate or reason to treat him [Flynn] like a criminal suspect," McCarthy
explained.
"They did the interview outside of the established protocols of how the FBI is supposed to
interview someone on the White House staff. They are supposed to go through the Justice
Department and the White House counsel's office. They obviously purposely did not do that and
they were clearly trying to make a case on this."
"For years, a number of us have been arguing that this looked like a perjury trap," McCarthy
said.
Today's (Thursday) document dump reinforces the validity of McCarthy's conclusion that this
was a concocted perjury trap. The key document is the "Closing Communication" PDF dated 4
January 2017. It is a summary of the FBI's investigation of Crossfire Razor (i.e., Mike Flynn).
The document begins with this summary:
The FBI opened captioned case based on an articulable factual basis that Crossfire Razor
(CR) may wittingly or unwittingly be involved in activity on behalf of the Russian Federation
which may constitute a federal crime or threat to the national security. . . . Specifically, .
. . CR had ties to various state-affiliated entities of the Russian Federation, as reported by
open source information; and CR traveled to Russia in December 2015, as reported by open source
information.
The Agent conveniently fails to mention that Flynn's contacts with Russia in December 2015
were not at his initiative but came as an invitation from his Speaker's Bureau. Moreover,
General Flynn, because he still held TS/SCI clearances, informed the Defense Intelligence
Agency (DIA) of the trip, received permission to make the trip and, upon returning to the
United States from Russia, was fully debriefed by DIA. How is that an indicator of posing a
threat to the national security of the United States?
The goal of the investigation is stated very clearly on page two of the document:
. . . to determine whether the captioned subject, associated with the Trump campaign, was
directed and controlled by and/or coordinated activities with the Russian federation in a
manner which is a threat to the national security and/or possibly a violation of the Foreign
Agents Registration Act, 18 U.S.C. section 951 et seq, or other related statutes.
And what did the FBI find? NOTHING. NADA. ZIPPO. The Agent who wrote this report played it
straight and the investigation in the right way. He or she concluded:
The Crossfire Hurricane team determined that CROSSFIRE RAZOR was no longer a viable
candidate as part of the larger CROSSFIRE HURRICANE umbrella case. . . . The FBI is closing
this investigation. If new information is identified or reported to the FBI regarding the
activities of CROSSFIRE RAZOR, the FBI will consider reopening the investigation if
warranted.
This document is dated 4 January 2017. But Peter Strzok sent a storm of text messages to the
Agent who drafted the report asking him to NOT close the case.
This is not how a normal criminal or counter-intelligence case would be conducted. Normally
you would have actual evidence or "indicia" of criminal or espionage activity. But don't take
me word for it. Jim Comey bragged about this outrageous
conduct:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/NxNhjFrjXqI
Comey is a corrupt, sanctimonious prick. I suspect he may not think what he did was so funny
in the coming months. He may have forgotten saying this stupidity, but the video remains
intact.
The documents being released over the last week provide great insight into Attorney General
William Barr's strategy. He is not going to entertain media debates and back-and-forth with the
apologists for treason. He is letting the documents speak for themselves and ensuring that US
Attorneys--who are not part of the fetid, Washington, DC sewer--review the documents and
procedures used to prosecute political figures linked to President Trump. Then those documents
are legally and appropriately released. Barr is playing by the rules.
We are not talking about the inadvertent discovery of an isolated mistake or an act of
carelessness. The coup against Trump was deliberate and the senior leadership of the FBI
actively and knowingly participated in this plot. Exposing and punishing them remains a top
priority for Attorney General Barr, who understands that a failure to act could spell the doom
of this Republic.
No indictments.
Not for this bunch of swamp rats.
One set of laws for the swamp, another for America.
And now the same swamp - the bureaucrat pinhead version - are destroying the economy and
shutting down the country?.
Why?
Terrible decisions based on worse "data" AND tank the economy and Trump's re-election
chances.
Flynn has been bankrupted. He has fought valiantly to restore his honor ALONE. His fate is in
many ways in the hands of Judge Sullivan.
Trump other than tweet has done what for someone that brought military and national
security cred to his campaign? Let's not forget that Flynn was fired ostensibly for lying to
VP Pence. Exactly what the putschists wanted to accomplish.
blue peacock
Flynn is a nice Irish Catholic boy from Rhode Island whose father a retired MP staff sergeant
and branch manager of a local bank successfully cultivated the ROTC staff at U of RI so that
his two sons were given army ROTC scholarships in management, something their father could
understand. Michael and his brother, both generals are NOT members of the WP club and
therefore available for sacrifice. Michael Flynn occupied a narrow niche in Military
Intelligence. He was a targeting guy in the counter-terrorism bidness and rode that train to
the top without much knowledge or experience of anything else. He and his boss Stan
McChrystal, soul mates. He was singularly unqualified to be head of one of the major agencies
of the IC. IMO Martin Dempsey, CJCS (a member of the WP club) used Flynn to stand up to
Brennan's CIA and the NSC nuts at the WH while standing back in the shade himself. That is
why Obama cautioned Trump to be wary of North Korea and Michael Flynn. And this "innocent"
was then mousetrapped by people he thought were patriots.
True then, but what was not expected was Trump neither resigning nor being impeached nor
getting a new AG who would launch the Durham investigation. I wonder what FISA warrants are
out related to the Chinese virus and associated communications with US and Chinese nationals.
At least we don't have Obama's cast of characters involved in that, unless we have his "j.v."
team.
Someone that doesn't show up much in The NY Times or the Washington Post now but was the
central character in numerous scurrilous stories. Svetlana Lokhova was falsely slandered for
having an affair with Gen.Flynn and accused as a Russian agent by CIA/FBI agent Stefan
Halper.
What we learned today from the STUNNING document release in the case of @GenFlynn 1. FBI
opened a full-blown counterintelligence investigation in 2016 on the ex head of the Defense
Intelligence Agency while he was working for a political campaign based on one piece of
false intel
Its mind blowing the vast tentacles of this conspiracy at the highest levels of our law
enforcement and intelligence agencies. It is even more mind blowing that the miscreants have
profited so handsomely with book deals, media sinecures, GoFundMe campaigns. None have been
prosecuted.
Newly unsealed documents indicate that the FBI targeted former National Security Advisor
Michael Flynn for prosecution, showing senior officials at the bureau discussing ways to
ensnare him in a "perjury trap" before an interview.
The four pages of documents were
unsealed by US District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan on Wednesday, revealing in handwritten notes
and emails that the FBI's goal in investigating Flynn may have been "to get him to lie so we
can prosecute him or get him fired."
"The FBI planned it as a perjury trap at best and in so doing put it in writing,"
Flynn's defense attorney Sidney Powell said in a statement.
Sullivan also ordered another 11 pages of documents unsealed, which, according to Powell ,
may soon be redacted and published.
How they planned to get Flynn removed:1) Get Flynn "to admit to breaking the Logan Act";
or2) Catch Flynn in a lie.Their end goal was a referral to the DOJ - not to investigate
Flynn's contacts with the Russians. pic.twitter.com/Vty3FYaSt9
The potentially exculpatory documents were inexplicably denied to Flynn's defense team for
years, despite numerous requests to the government.
"What is especially terrifying is that without the integrity of Attorney General Bill
Barr and US Attorney Jensen, we still would not have this clear exculpatory information as ...
the prosecutors have opposed every request we have made," Powell said.
The role of the FBI in instigating the prosecution of Michael Flynn, the criminality of its conduct, and
the encouragement it received in doing so from senior Obama officials should offend everyone.
In a dramatic new turn of events, the legal team for Flynn, President Trump's former national security
advisor, says the Department of Justice has turned over exculpatory evidence in his case.Flynn is
defending against charges he lied to FBI agents in the course of their investigation into allegations of
Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
At a minimum, this information, which
includes evidence that US government prosecutors illegally coerced a guilty plea by threatening Flynn's
son with prosecution, warrants the withdrawal of that guilty plea. Whether or not the judge in the case,
US District Court Judge Emmet G Sullivan, will dismiss the entire case against Flynn on the grounds of
prosecutorial misconduct is yet to be seen. One fact, however, emerges from this sordid affair: the FBI,
lauded by its supporters as the world's
"premier law enforcement agency,"
is anything but.
Evidence of FBI misconduct during its investigation into alleged collusion between members of the
Trump campaign team and the Russian government in the months leading up to the presidential election has
been mounting for some time. From mischaracterizing information provided by former British MI6 officer
Christopher Steele in order to manufacture a case against then-candidate Trump, to committing fraud
against the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to authorize wiretaps on former low-level Trump
advisor Carter Page, the FBI has a record of corruption that would make a third-world dictator envious.
The crimes committed under the aegis of the FBI are not the actions of rogue agents, but rather part
and parcel of a systemic effort managed from the very top – both former Director James Comey and current
Director Christopher Wray are implicated in facilitating this criminal conduct. Moreover, it was carried
out in collaboration with elements within the Department of Justice, and with the assistance of national
security officials working for the Obama administration, making for a conspiracy that would rival any
investigation conducted by the FBI under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
The heart of the case against Michael Flynn – a flamboyant, decorated combat veteran, with 33 years of
honorable service in the US Army – revolves around a phone call he made to the Russian ambassador to the
United States, Sergey Kislyak, on December 29, 2016. That was the same day then-President Obama ordered
the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats from the US on charges of espionage. The conversation was
intercepted by the National Security Agency as part of its routine monitoring of Russian communications.
Normally, the identities of US citizens caught up in such surveillance are
"masked,"
or hidden,
so as to preserve their constitutional rights. However, in certain instances deemed critical to national
security, the identity can be
"unmasked"
to help further an investigation, using
"minimization"
standards designed to protect the identities and privacy of US citizens.
In Flynn's case, these
"minimization"
standards were thrown out the window: on January 12,
2017, and again on February 9, the Washington Post published articles that detailed Flynn's phone call
with Kislyak. US Attorney John Durham, tasked by Attorney General William P Barr to lead a review of the
actions taken by law enforcement and intelligence officials as part of the Russian collusion scandal, is
currently investigating the potential leaking of classified information by Obama-era officials in
relation to these articles.
Flynn's phone call with Kislyak was the central topic of interest when a pair of FBI agents, led by
Peter Strzok, met with Flynn in his White House office on January 24, 2017. This meeting later served as
the source of the charge levied against him for lying to a federal agent. It also provided grist for then
acting-Attorney General Sally Yates to travel to the White House on January 26 to warn then-White House
Counsel Michael McGahn that Flynn had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with
Kislyak, and, as such, was in danger of being compromised by the Russians.
That Flynn lied, or otherwise misrepresented, his conversation with Kislyak to Pence is not in
dispute; indeed, it was this act that prompted President Trump to fire Flynn in the first place. But
lying to the Vice President, while wrong, is not a crime. Lying to FBI agents, however, is. And yet the
available evidence suggests that not only did Flynn not lie to Strzok and his partner when interviewed on
January 24, but that the FBI later doctored its report of the interview, known in FBI parlance as a
"302 report,"
to show that Flynn had. Internal FBI documents and official testimony clearly show
that a 302 report on Strzok's conversation with Flynn was prepared contemporaneously, and that he had
shown no indication of deception. However, in the criminal case prepared against him by the Department of
Justice, a 302 report dated August 22, 2017 – over seven months after the interview – was cited as the
evidence underpinning the charge of lying to a federal agent.
The evidence of a doctored 302 report, when combined with the evidence that the US prosecutor
conspired with Flynn's former legal counsel to
"keep secret"
the details of his plea agreement,
in violation of so-called Giglio requirements (named after the legal precedent set in Giglio v. United
States which holds that the failure to disclose immunity deals to co-conspirators constitutes a violation
of due-process rights), constitutes a clear-cut case of FBI malfeasance and prosecutorial misconduct.
Under normal circumstances, that should warrant the dismissal of the government's case against Flynn.
Whether Judge Emmet G Sullivan will agree to a dismissal, or, if not, whether the Department of
Justice would seek to retry Flynn, are not known at this time. What is known, however, is the level of
corruption that exists within the FBI and elements of the Department of Justice, regarding their
prosecution of a US citizen for purely political motive. Notions of integrity and fealty to the rule of
law that underpin the opinions of many Americans when it comes to these two institutions have been
shredded in the face of overwhelming evidence that the law is meaningless when the FBI targets you. If
this could happen to a man with Michael Flynn's stature and reputation, it can happen to anyone.
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer. He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing
the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf's staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on
Twitter @RealScottRitter
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely
those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Given some time and currency, I guess Morocco would offer more value for money if you want
some exotic customs and landscapes. If you have more money, you could spend them on a
carbon-free cruise with stunning vistas and off-the-beaten route: North Pole on board of
nuclear-powered ice breaker! It is wise to have swimming costume (a pool is on board, heated,
I presume) and sensible apparel -- enough for normal winter (in Moscow). The number of places
is below 150, with a little hospital on board too. In the latest ads I read about discounts,
but the deal was that you can pay in rubbles with prices below the rubble plunged by 25%,
still, for 27 k USD you can see John Bolton's relatives in natural environment (like mommy
walrus taking care of youngsters), polar bears, seals, and landscapes of Franz Josef Land.
Helicopter rides included. You can also take a plunge into the arctic water -- with safety
precautions .
"... The Democrats did not want Adam Schiff to have to answer questions about the whistleblower, and they don't want the whistleblower's identity to be officially revealed. Such things do not contribute to the greatest cause of our time, the destruction of Donald Trump. ..."
"... The whole point of having the House impeachment investigation proceed from the House Intelligence Committee, headed by Adam Schiff, was to send the signal that Trump is unacceptable to the nefarious powers that make up the Deep State, especially the intelligence agencies, especially the CIA. ..."
"... What a world, then, when OP Democrats are cheering on John Bolton, hoping again for a savior to their sacred resistance cause, and meanwhile they aren't too excited about Rand Paul's intervention. For sure, it is a sign that a "resistance" isn't real when it needs a savior; it's not as if the French Resistance sat back waiting for Gen. de Gaulle. In any case, in the procession of horrible reactionary figures that Democrats have embraced, Bolton is probably the worst, and that's saying quite a lot. ..."
"... People are even talking about "getting used to accepting the help of the CIA with the impeachment," and the like. (I realize I'm being repetitious here, but this stuff blows my mind, it is so disturbing.) At least they are recognizing the reality -- at least partially; that's something. But then what they do with this recognition is something that requires epic levels of TDS -- and, somehow, a great deal of the Left is going down this path. ..."
"... The USA Deep State is a Five Eyes partner and as such Trump must be given the proverbial boot for being an uneducated boor lacking political gravitas & business gravitas with his narcissistic Smoot-Hawley II 2019 trade wars. Screw the confidence man-in-chief. He is a liability for the USA and global business. Trump is not an asset. ..."
"... Almost as a by product of his 2016 victory, Trump showed up the MSM hacks for what they were, lying, partisan shills utterly lacking in any integrity and credibility. The same applies to the intrigues and corruption of the Dirty Cops and Spookocracy. They had to come out from behind the curtain and reveal themselves as the dirty, lying, seditious, treasonous, rabid criminal scum they are. The true nature of the State standing in the spotlight for all the world to see. This cannot be undone. ..."
First , the whistleblower was ruled out as a possible witness -- this was
essentially done behind the scenes, and in reality can be called a Deep State operation, though
one exposed to some extent by Rand Paul. This has nothing to do with protecting the
whistleblower or upholding the whistleblower statute, but instead with the fact that the
whistleblower was a CIA plant in the White House.
That the whistleblower works for the CIA is a matter of public record, not some conspiracy
theory. Furthermore, for some time before the impeachment proceedings began, the whistleblower
had been coordinating his efforts to undermine Trump with the head of the House Intelligence
Committee, who happens to be Adam Schiff. It is possible that the connections with Schiff go
even further or deeper. Obviously the Democrats do not want these things exposed.
... ... ...
In this regard, there was a very special moment on January 29, when Chief Justice John
Roberts refused to allow the reading of a question from Sen. Rand Paul that identified the
alleged whistleblower. Paul then held a press conference in which he read his question.
The question was directed at Adam Schiff, who claims not to have communicated with the
whistleblower, despite much evidence to the contrary. (Further details can be read at
here
.) A propos of what I was just saying, Paul is described in the Politico article as
"a longtime antagonist of Republican leaders." Excellent, good on you, Rand Paul.
Whether this was a case of unintended consequences or not, one could say that this episode
fed into the case against calling witnesses -- certainly the Democrats should not have been
allowed to call witnesses if the Republicans could not call the whistleblower. But clearly this
point is completely lost on those working in terms of the moving line of bullshit.
One would think that Democrats would be happy with a Republican Senator who antagonizes
leaders of his own party, but of course Rand Paul's effort only led to further "outrage" on the
part of Democratic leaders in the House and Senate.
The Democrats did not want Adam Schiff to have to answer questions about the whistleblower,
and they don't want the whistleblower's identity to be officially revealed. Such things do not
contribute to the greatest cause of our time, the destruction of Donald Trump.
However, you see, there is a complementary purpose at work here, too. The whole point of
having the House impeachment investigation proceed from the House Intelligence Committee,
headed by Adam Schiff, was to send the signal that Trump is unacceptable to the nefarious
powers that make up the Deep State, especially the intelligence agencies, especially the
CIA.
The only way these machinations can be combatted is to pull the curtain back further -- but
the Republicans do not want this any more than the Democrats do, with a few possible exceptions
such as Rand Paul. (As the Politico article states, Paul was chastised publicly by McConnell
for submitting his question in the first place, and for criticizing Roberts in the press
conference.)
What a world, then, when OP Democrats are cheering on John Bolton, hoping again for a
savior to their sacred resistance cause, and meanwhile they aren't too excited about Rand
Paul's intervention. For sure, it is a sign that a "resistance" isn't real when it needs a
savior; it's not as if the French Resistance sat back waiting for Gen. de Gaulle. In any case,
in the procession of horrible reactionary figures that Democrats have embraced, Bolton is
probably the worst, and that's saying quite a lot.
... ... ...
Now we are at a moment when "the Left" is recognizing the role that the CIA and the rest of
the "intelligence community" is played in the impeachment nonsense. This "Left" was already on
board for the "impeachment process" itself, perhaps at moments with caveats about "not leaving
everything up to the Democrats," "not just relying on the Democrats," but still accepting their
assigned role as cheerleaders and self-important internet commentators. (And, sure, maybe
that's all I am, too -- but the inability to distinguish form from content is one of the main
problems of the existing Left.)
Now, though, people on the Left are trying to get comfortable with, and trying to explain to
themselves how they can get comfortable with, the obvious role of the "intelligence community"
(with, in my view, the CIA in the leading role, but of course I'm not privy to the inner
workings of this scene) in the impeachment process and other efforts to take down Trump's
presidency.
People are even talking about "getting used to accepting the help of the CIA with the
impeachment," and the like. (I realize I'm being repetitious here, but this stuff blows my
mind, it is so disturbing.) At least they are recognizing the reality -- at least partially;
that's something. But then what they do with this recognition is something that requires epic
levels of TDS -- and, somehow, a great deal of the Left is going down this path.
They might think about the "help" that the CIA gave to the military in Bolivia to remove Evo
Morales from office. They might think about the picture of Donald Trump that they find
necessary to paint to justify what they are willing to swallow to remove him from office. They
might think about the fact that ordinary Democrats are fine with this role for the CIA, and
that Adam Schiff and others routinely offer the criticism/condemnation of Donald Trump that he
doesn't accept the findings of the CIA or the rest of the intelligence agencies at face
value.
The moment for the Left, what calls itself and thinks of itself as that, to break with this
lunacy has passed some time ago, but let us take this moment, of "accepting the help of the
CIA, because Trump," as truly marking a point of no return.
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
The USA Deep State is a Five Eyes partner and as such Trump must be given the proverbial boot
for being an uneducated boor lacking political gravitas & business gravitas with his
narcissistic Smoot-Hawley II 2019 trade wars. Screw the confidence man-in-chief. He is a liability for the USA and global business. Trump is not an asset.
paul ,
Trump, Sanders and Corbyn were all in their own way agents of creative destruction.
Trump tapped into the popular discontent of millions of Americans who realised that the
system no longer even pretended to work in their interests, and were not prepared to be
diverted down the Identity Politics Rabbit Hole.
The Deep State was outraged that he had disrupted their programme by stealing Clinton's seat
in the game of Musical Chairs. Being the most corrupt, dishonest and mendacious political
candidate in all US history (despite some pretty stiff opposition) was supposed to be
outweighed by her having a vagina. The Deplorables failed to sign up for the programme.
Almost as a by product of his 2016 victory, Trump showed up the MSM hacks for what they were,
lying, partisan shills utterly lacking in any integrity and credibility. The same applies to
the intrigues and corruption of the Dirty Cops and Spookocracy. They had to come out from
behind the curtain and reveal themselves as the dirty, lying, seditious, treasonous, rabid
criminal scum they are. The true nature of the State standing in the spotlight for all the
world to see. This cannot be undone.
For all his pandering to Adelson and the Zionist Mafia, for all his Gives to Netanyahu, Trump
has failed to deliver on the Big Ticket Items. Syria was supposed to have been invaded by
now, with Hillary cackling demonically over Assad's death as she did over Gaddafi, and
rapidly moving on to the main event with Iran. They will not forgive him for this.
They realise they are under severe time pressure. It took them a century to gain their
stranglehold over America, and this is a wasting asset. America is in terminal decline, and
may soon be unable to fulfil its ordained role as dumb goy muscle serving Zionist interests.
And the parasite will find it difficult to find a replacement host.
George Mc ,
Haven't you just agreed with him here?
He thinks the left died in the 1960s, over a half century ago. It's pretty simple to
identify a leftist: anti-imperialist/ anti-capitalist. The Democrats are imperialists.
People who vote for the Democrats and Republicans are imperialists. This article is a
confused mess, that's my whole point;)
If the Democrats and Republicans (and those who vote for them) are imperialists (which they are) then the left are indeed
dead – at least as far as political representation goes.
Koba ,
He's sent more troops to Iraq and Afghanistan he staged several coups in Latin America and
wanted to take out the dprk and thier nukes and wants to bomb Iran! Winding down?!
sharon marlowe ,
First, an attempted assassination-by-drone on President Maduro of Venezuela happened. Then
Trump dropped the largest conventional bomb on Afghanistan, with a mile-wide radius. Then
Trump named Juan Guido as the new President of Venezuela in an overt coup. Then he bombed
Syria over a fake chemical weapons claim. He bombed it before even an investigation was
launched. Then the Trump regime orchestrated a military coup in Bolivia. Then he claimed that
he was pulling out of Syria, but instead sent U.S. troops to take over Syrian oil fields.
trump then assassinated Gen. Solemeni. Then he claimed that he will leave Iraq at the request
of the Iraqi government, the Iraqi government asked the U.S. to leave, and Trump rejected the
request. The Trump regime has tried orchestrating a coup in Iran, and a coup in Hong Kong. He
expelled Russian diplomats en masse for the Skripal incident in England, before an
investigation. He has sanctioned Russia, Iran, North Korea, China, and Venezuela. He has
bombed Yemen, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Those are the things I'm
aware of, but what else Trump has done in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and South America you
can research if you wish. And now, the claim of leaving Afghanistan is as ridiculous as when
he claimed to be leaving Syria and Iraq.
Dungroanin ,
Yeah yeah and 'he' gave Maduro 7 days to let their kid takeover in Venezuela! And built a
wall. And got rid of obamacare and started a nuke war with Rocketman and and and ...
sharon marlowe ,
There were at least nine people killed when Trump bombed Douma.
Only a psychopath would kill people because one of its spy drones was shot down. You don't
get points for considering killing people for it and then changing your mind.
People should get over Hillary and pay attention to what Trump has been doing. Why even
mention what Hillary would have done in Syria, then proceed to be an apologist for what Trump
has done around the world in just three years? Trump has been quite a prolific imperialist in
such a short time. A second term could well put him above Bush and Obama as the 21st
century's most horrible leaders on earth.
Dungroanin ,
...If you think that the potus is the omnipotent ruler of everything he certainly seems to be
having some problems with his minions in the CIA, NSA, FBI..State Dept etc.
Savorywill ,
Yes, what you say is right. However, he did warn both the Syrian and Russian military of the
attack in the first instance, so no casualties, and in the second attack, he announced that
the missiles had been launched before they hit the target, again resulting in no casualties.
When the US drone was shot down by an Iranian missile, he considered retaliation. But, when
advised of likely casualties, he called it off saying that human lives are more valuable than
the cost of the drone. Yes, he did authorize the assassination of the Iranian general, and
that was very bad. His claims that the general had organized the placement of roadside bombs
that had killed US soldiers rings rather hollow, considering those shouldn't have been in
Iraq in the first place.
I am definitely not stating that he is perfect and doesn't do objectionable things. And he
has authorized US forces to control the oil wells, which is against international law, but at
least US soldiers are not actively engaged in fighting the Syrian government, something
Hillary set in motion. However, the military does comprise a huge percentage of the US
economy and there have to be reasons, and enemies, to justify its existence, so his situation
as president must be very difficult, not a job I would want, that is for sure.
The potus is best described (by Assad actually) as a CEO of a board of directors appointed
by the shareholders who collectively determine their OWN interests.
Your gaslighting ain't succeeding round here – Regime! So desperate, so so sad
🤣
"... "Bolton is a longtime member of the failed Washington elite that Trump vowed to oppose, hell-bent on repeating virtually every foreign policy mistake the U.S. has made in the last 15 years - particularly those Trump promised to avoid as president," ..."
"... "It's important that someone who was an unrepentant advocate for the Iraq War, who didn't learn the lessons of the Iraq War, shouldn't be the secretary of state for a president who says Iraq was ..."
Senator Rand Paul said Tuesday in an
op-ed for Rare
that he would oppose President-elect Donald Trump's rumored selection of former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton as Secretary of State.
"Bolton is a longtime member of the failed Washington elite that Trump vowed to oppose, hell-bent on repeating virtually
every foreign policy mistake the U.S. has made in the last 15 years - particularly those Trump promised to avoid as president,"
Paul wrote citing U.S. interventions in Iraq and Libya that Trump has criticized but that Bolton strongly advocated.
Reports since have indicated that former New York City mayor and loyal Trump ally, Rudy Giuliani is being considered for the post.
The Washington Post's David Weigel
reports , "Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a newly reelected member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said this morning that
he was inclined to oppose either former U.N. ambassador John Bolton or former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani if they were nominated
for secretary of state."
"It's important that someone who was an unrepentant advocate for the Iraq War, who didn't learn the lessons of the Iraq
War, shouldn't be the secretary of state for a president who says Iraq was a big lesson," Paul told the Post. "Trump
said that a thousand times. It would be a huge mistake for him to give over his foreign policy to someone who [supported the war].
I mean, you could not find more unrepentant advocates of regime change."
"... Of particular interest will be cases overseen by now-unemployed former US attorney for DC, Jessie Liu, which includes actions against Stone, Flynn, the Awan brothers, James Wolfe and others . Notably, Wolfe was only sentenced to leaking a classified FISA warrant application to journalist and side-piece Ali Watkins of the New York Times - while prosecutors out of Liu's office threw the book at former Trump adviser Roger Stone - recommending 7-9 years in prison for process crimes. ..."
"... What's next on the real-life House of Cards? ..."
A
week of two-tiered
legal shenanigans was capped off on Friday with a
New York
Times report that Attorney General William Barr has assigned an outside prosecutor to
scrutinize the government's case against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn,
which the Times suggested was " highly unusual and could trigger more accusations of political
interference by top Justice Department officials into the work of career prosecutors."
Notably, the FBI excluded
crucial information from a '302' form documenting an interview with Flynn in January, 2017.
While Flynn eventually pleaded guilty to misleading agents over his contacts with the former
Russian ambassador regarding the Trump administration's efforts to oppose a UN resolution
related to Israel, the original draft of Flynn's 302 reveals that agents thought
he was being honest with them - evidence which Flynn's prior attorneys never pursued.
His new attorney, Sidney Powell, took over Flynn's defense in June 2019 - while Flynn
withdrew his guilty plea in January , accusing the government of "bad faith,
vindictiveness, and breach of the plea agreement."
In addition to a review of the Flynn case, Barr has hired a handful of outside prosecutors
to broadly review several other politically sensitive national-security cases in the US
attorney's office in Washington , according to the Times sources.
Of particular interest will be cases overseen by now-unemployed former US attorney for DC,
Jessie Liu, which includes actions against Stone, Flynn, the Awan brothers, James Wolfe and
others . Notably, Wolfe was only sentenced to leaking a classified FISA warrant application to
journalist and side-piece
Ali Watkins of the New York Times - while prosecutors out of Liu's office threw the book at
former Trump adviser Roger Stone - recommending 7-9 years in prison for process crimes.
Earlier this week, Barr overruled the DC prosecutors recommendation for Stone, resulting in
their resignations. The result was the predictable triggering of Democrats across the spectrum
.
According to the Times , "Over the past two weeks, the outside prosecutors have begun
grilling line prosecutors in the Washington office about various cases -- some public, some not
-- including investigative steps, prosecutorial actions and why they took them, according to
the people. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive internal
deliberations."
The moves amounted to imposing a secondary layer of monitoring and control over what
career prosecutors have been doing in the Washington office. They are part of a broader
turmoil in that office coinciding with Mr. Barr's recent
installation of a close aide, Timothy Shea , as interim United States attorney in the
District of Columbia, after Mr. Barr maneuvered out the Senate-confirmed former top
prosecutor in the office, Jessie K. Liu.
Mr.
Flynn's case was first brought by the special counsel's office, who agreed to a plea deal
on a charge of lying to investigators in exchange for his cooperation, before the Washington
office took over the case when the special counsel shut down after concluding its
investigation into Russia's election interference.
-New
York Times
I was obvious that Flynn was targeted for elimination by what ludicrously calls itself the
"resistance" right from the beginning using Hoover's G-boys and girls who have by the way
been heavily infiltrated by CIA to get him.
Many of the players involved in this act worked in CI which is closely connected to the
CIA's own counter intelligence. In fact the connections are so incestuous that many of the
FBI's "agents" are sheep dipped Agency officers.
One has to ask themselves why the FBI would be so interested in foreign policy? Hoover
despite his many failings stayed out of the area of Foreign Intel yet the Bureau currently
seems obsessed by it.
Why? Probably because they are working on the same team as CIA, NSA, DIA, DHS and the
other alphabet soup agencies who gain their power from what could be correctly called the War
of Terror. Flynn being a threat because he was in agreement with Trump's proposed
noninterventionist foreign policy.
The same one he promised his voters but has currently reneged on. Remember the
"resistance" as they call themselves but are really the same ol' shit faction want America
constantly embroiled in Foreign conflicts and the operation known as the "Purple
Revolution"by the same group who likes to color code their regime changes was not only to
take down Flynn but Trump as well. A soft coup in other words.
Now that Trump's playing ball they can go after his base and those on the left who oppose
the usual that the so called "resistance' offers.
Seamus Padraig ,
One has to ask themselves why the FBI would be so interested in foreign policy? Hoover
despite his many failings stayed out of the area of Foreign Intel yet the Bureau currently
seems obsessed by it.
The FBI does have a counter-intelligence function, so that would give them some legitimate
interest in the activities of foreign intelligence services, at least; but I suspect their
obsession with Trump and Flynn goes far, far beyond any legitimate legal mandate.
True they've always had a CI function but it was more like a total Keystone Kops' operation.
Still is probably when you consider that Hannssen worked in their CI for over two decades
without being detected.
Of there's CIA with James Jesus Angleton who was a good friend of Kim Philby who wrecked
any CI capability both FBI and CIA had by being suspicious of any Russiaphile.
In fact this whole Russiaphobia and hoax is probably the resurrection of the ghost of
Angleton.
True Hoover spent more time chasing Commie and creating the Red Scare than he did cross
dressing and hanging out a Mob hangouts which he assured us didn't exist.
"... Bolton targeted every arms control and disarmament agreement over the past several decades, and played a major role in abrogating two of the most significant ones. As an arms control official in the Bush administration, he lobbied successfully for the abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972. As soon as he joined the Trump administration, he went after the Intermediate-Nuclear Forces Treaty, which was abrogated in 2018. He criticized the Nunn-Lugar agreement in the 1990s, which played a key role in the denuclearization of former Soviet republics, and maligned the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons as well as the Iran nuclear accord. He helped to derail the Biological Weapons Conference in Geneva in 2001. ..."
It isn't enough for the corporate media to praise John Bolton for his timely manuscript that
confirms Donald Trump's explicit linkage between military aid to Ukraine and investigations
into his political foe Joe Biden. As a result, the media have made John Bolton a "man of
principle," according to the Washington Post, and a fearless infighter for the
"sovereignty of the United States." Writing in the Post , Kathleen Parker notes that
Bolton isn't motivated by the money he will earn from his book (in the neighborhood of $2
million), but that he is far more interested in "saving his legacy." Perhaps this is a good
time to examine that legacy.
Bolton, who used student deferments and service in the Maryland National Guard to avoid
serving in Vietnam, is a classic Chicken Hawk. He supported the Vietnam War and continues to
support the war in Iraq. Bolton endorsed preemptive military strikes in North Korea and Iran in
recent years, and lobbied for regime change in Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria,
Venezuela, and Yemen. When George W. Bush declared an "axis of evil" in 2002 consisting of
Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, Bolton added an equally bizarre axis of Cuba, Libya, and
Syria.
When Bolton occupied official positions at the Department of State and the United Nations,
he regularly ignored assessments of the intelligence community in order to make false arguments
regarding weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Cuba and Syria in order to promote the
use of force. When serving as President Bush's Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and
Disarmament, Bolton ran his own intelligence program, issuing white papers on WMD that lacked
support within the intelligence community. He used his own reports to testify to congressional
committees in 2002 in effort to justify the use of military force against Iraq.
Bolton presented misinformation to the Congress on a Cuban biological weapons program. When
the Central Intelligence Agency challenged the accuracy of Bolton's information in 2003, he was
forced to cancel a similar briefing on Syria. In a briefing to the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee in 2005, the former chief of intelligence at the Department of State, Carl Ford,
referred to Bolton as a "serial abuser" in his efforts to pressure intelligence analysts. Ford
testified that he had "never seen anybody quite like Secretary Bolton in terms of the way he
abuses his power and authority with little people."
The hearings in 2005 included a statement from a whistleblower, a former contractor at the
Agency for International Development, who accused Bolton of using inflammatory language and
even throwing objects at her. The whistleblower told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
staff that Bolton made derogatory remarks about her sexual orientation and weight among other
improprieties. The critical testimony against Bolton meant that the Republican-led Foreign
Relations Committee couldn't confirm his appointment as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
President Bush made Bolton a recess appointment, which he later regretted.
The United Nations, after all, was an ironic assignment for Bolton, who has been a strong
critic of the UN and most international organizations throughout his career because they
infringed on the "sovereignty of the United States." In 1994, he stated there was no such thing
as the United Nations, but there is an international community that "can be led by the only
real power left in the world," the United States. Bolton stated that the "Secretariat Building
in New York has 38 stories," and that if it "lost ten stories, it wouldn't make any
difference."
Bolton said the "happiest moment" in his political career was when the United States pulled
out of the International Criminal Court. Years later, he told the Federalist Society that
Bush's withdrawal from the UN's Rome Statute, which created the ICC, was "one of my proudest
achievements."
Bolton targeted every arms control and disarmament agreement over the past several
decades, and played a major role in abrogating two of the most significant ones. As an arms
control official in the Bush administration, he lobbied successfully for the abrogation of the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972. As soon as he joined the Trump administration, he went
after the Intermediate-Nuclear Forces Treaty, which was abrogated in 2018. He criticized the
Nunn-Lugar agreement in the 1990s, which played a key role in the denuclearization of former
Soviet republics, and maligned the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons as well
as the Iran nuclear accord. He helped to derail the Biological Weapons Conference in Geneva in
2001.
U.S. efforts at diplomatic reconciliation have drawn Bolton's ire. The two-state solution
for the Israeli-Palestinian situation as well as Richard Nixon's one-China policy have been
particular targets. He is also a frequent critic of the European Union, and a passionate
supporter of Brexit. From 2013 to 2018, he was the chairman of the Gatestone Institute, a
well-known anti-Muslim organization. He was the director of the Project for the New American
Century, which led the campaign for the use of force against Iraq. The fact that he was a
protege of former senator Jesse Helms should come as no surprise.
It is useful to have Bolton's testimony at the climactic moment in the current impeachment
trial, but it should't blind us to his deceit and disinformation over his thirty years of
opposition to U.S. international diplomacy. As an assistant attorney general in the Reagan
administration, he fought against reparations to Japanese-Americans who had been held in
internment camps during World War II. Two secretaries of state, Colin Powell and Condi Rice,
have accused Bolton with holding back important information on important international issues,
and Bolton did his best to sabotage Powell's efforts to pursue negotiations with North Korea.
Bolton had a hand in the disinformation campaign against Iraq in the run-up to the U.S.
invasion of 2003. The legacy of John Bolton is well established; his manuscript will not alter
this legacy. Join the debate on
Facebook More articles by: Melvin GoodmanMelvin A. Goodman is a
senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns
Hopkins University. A former CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence:
The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The
Cost of American Militarism . and A Whistleblower at the
CIA . His most recent book is "American Carnage: The Wars of Donald Trump" (Opus
Publishing), and he is the author of the forthcoming "The Dangerous National Security State"
(2020)." Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org .
"We can't beat him so we have to impeach him" no truer words were ever spoken. Too bad
they couldn't come up with a reason. I think November will be a Democrat Slaughter.
Bolton is a war mongering narcissist that wanted his war, didn't get it, & is now
acting like a spoilt child that didn't get his way & is laying on the floor kicking &
screaming!
Trump excoriates Bolton in tweets this morning:
"For a guy who couldn't get approved for the Ambassador to the U.N. years ago, couldn't get
approved for anything since, 'begged' me for a non Senate approved job, which I gave him
despite many saying 'Don't do it, sir,' takes the job, mistakenly says 'Libyan Model' on T.V.,
and ... many more mistakes of judgement [sic], gets fired because frankly, if I listened to
him, we would be in World War Six by now, and goes out and IMMEDIATELY writes a nasty &
untrue book. All Classified National Security. Who would do this?"
IMO, Trump is a fantastic POTUS for this day and age, but he wasn't on his A game when he
brought Bolton onboard. He should have known better and, was, apparently, warned. Maybe Trump
thought he could control him and use him as a threatening pit bull. Mistake. Bolton is greedy
as well as vindictive.
Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn filed a supplemental motion to withdraw his
guilty plea Wednesday citing failure by his previous counsel to advise him of the firm's
'conflict of interest in his case' regarding the Foreign Agents Registration Act form it filed
on his behalf, and by doing so "betrayed Mr. Flynn," stated Sidney Powell, in a defense motion
to the court.
Flynn's case is now in its final phase and his sentencing date, which was scheduled for Jan.
28, in a D.C. federal court before Judge Emmet Sullivan was changed to Feb. 27. The change came
after Powell filed the motion to withdraw his plea just days after the prosecutors made a major
reversal asking for up to six months jail time. The best case scenario for Flynn, is that Judge
Sullivan allows him to withdraw his guilty plea, the sentencing date is thrown-out and then his
case would more than likely would head to trial.
Powell alleged in a motion in December, 2019 that Flynn was strong-armed by the prosecution
into pleading guilty to one count of lying to FBI investigators regarding his conversation with
former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Others, close to Flynn, have corroborated the
accounts suggesting prosecutors threatened to drag Flynn's son into the investigation, who also
worked with his father at Flynn Intel Group, a security company established by Flynn.
In the recent motion Flynn denounced his admission of guilt in a declaration,
"I am innocent of this crime, and I request to withdraw my guilty plea. After I signed the
plea, the attorneys returned to the room and confirmed that the [special counsel's office]
would no longer be pursuing my son."
He denied that he lied to the FBI during the White House meeting with then FBI Special Agent
Peter Strzok and FBI Special Agent Joe Pientka. The meeting was set up by now fired FBI
Director James Comey and then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was also fired for lying to
Inspector General Michael Horowitz's investigators. Strzok was fired by the FBI for his actions
during the Russia investigation.
Flynn stated:
"When FBI agents came to the White House on January 24, 2017, I did not lie to them. I
believed I was honest with them to the best of my recollection at the time. I still don't
remember if I discussed sanctions on a phone call with Ambassador Kislyak nor do I remember
if we discussed the details of a UN vote on Israel."
Powell Targets Flynn's Former Legal Team
Powell noted in Wednesday's motion that Flynn's former defense team at Covington &
Burling, a well known Washington D.C. law firm, failed to inform Flynn that their lawyers had
made "some initial errors or statements that were misunderstood in the FARA registration
process and filings." She also reaffirmed her position in the motion that government
prosecutors are continuing to withhold exculpatory information that would benefit Flynn.
A spokesperson with Flynn's former law firm Covington & Burling, stated in an email to
SaraACarter.com that "Under the bar rules, we are limited in our ability to respond publicly
even to allegations of this nature, absent the client's consent or a court order."
In Powell's motion, she stated that Covington and Burling was well aware that it had a
'conflict of interest' in representing Flynn after November 1, 2017. She stated in the motion
it was on that day, when Special Counsel prosecutors had notified Covington that "it recognized
Covington's conflict of interest from the FARA registration." Moreover, the government had
asked Covington lawyers to discuss the discrepancy and conflict with Flynn, Powell stated in
the motion.
"Mr. Flynn's former counsel at Covington made some initial errors or statements that were
misunderstood in the FARA registration process and filings, which the SCO amplified, thereby
creating an 'underlying work' conflict of interest between the firm and its client," stated
Powell in the motion.
"Government counsel specified Mr. Flynn's liability for 'false statements' in the FARA
registration, and he told Covington to discuss it with Mr. Flynn," states the motion.
"This etched the conflict in stone. Covington betrayed Mr. Flynn."
Powell included in her motion an email from Flynn's former law firm Covington & Burling
between his former attorney's Steven Anthony and Robert Kelner. The email was regarding the
Special Counsel's then-charges against Paul Manafort, who had been a short term campaign
manager for Trump. Manafort and his partner Rick Gates, were then faced with 'multiple criminal
violations, including FARA violations."
Internal Email From the motion:
In the internal email sent to Kelner, Anthony addresses his concerns after the Manafort
order was unsealed.
I just had a flash of a thought that we should consider, among many many factors with
regard to Bob Kelley, the possibility that the SCO has decided it does not have, [with regard
to] Flynn, the same level of showing of crime fraud exception as it had [with regard to]
Manafort. And that the SCO currently feels stymied in pursuing a Flynn-lied-to-his-lawyers
theory of a FARA violation. So, we should consider the conceivable risk that a disclosure of
the Kelley declaration might break through a wall that the SCO currently considers
impenetrable.
In February, 2017, then Department of Justice official David Laufman had called Flynn's
lawyers to push them to file a FARA, the motion states. In fact, it was a day after Flynn was
fired as the National Security Advisor for Trump. Laufman made the call to the Covington and
Burling office "to pressure them to file the FARA forms immediately," according to the
motion.
Laufman's push for Flynn's FARA seemed peculiar considering, Flynn's company 'Flynn Intel
Group' had filed a Lobbying Registration Act in September, 2016. Former partner to Flynn Bijan
Rafiekian, had been advised at the time by then lawyer Robert Kelly that there was no need for
the firm to file a FARA because it was not dealing directly with a foreign country or foreign
government official, as stated during his trial. In Rafiekian's trial Kelly testified that he
advised the Flynn Intel Group that by law they only needed to file a Lobbying Disclosure Act
and suggested they didn't need to file a FARA when dealing with a foreign company. In this
instance it was Innova BV, a firm based in Holland and owned by the Turkish businessman, Ekim
Alptekin.
Flynn's former Partner's Case Overturned, Powell Cites Case In Motion
In September, 2019, however, in a stunning move Judge Anthony Trenga with the Eastern
District of Virginia Rafiekian's conviction was overturned. Trenga stated in his lengthy
acquittal decision that government prosecutors did not make their case and the "jury was not
adequately instructed as to the role of Michael Flynn in light of the government's in-court
judicial admission that Flynn was not a member of the alleged conspiracy and the lack of
evidence sufficient to establish his participation in any conspiracy "
An important side note, Laufman continually posts anti-Trump tweets and is frequently on CNN
and MSNBC targeting the administration and its policies.
These despicable remarks reflect contempt for democracy and government accountability, and
constitute further evidence of the President's unfitness to lead our great nation. Republican
Members of Congress, stand up and fulfill your oaths. https://t.co/a8BwWkLTkv
Powell said prosecutors reversed course on their decision to not push for jail time for
Flynn in early January because she said, her client "refused to lie for the prosecution" in the
Rafiekian case.
do yourselves a favor and read her brief...Covington and the FBI are EVIL
BASTARDS......god help any of us who find ourselves in the govt crosshairs..I don't give a
rat's *** how much you despise Trump...these bastards in DC would cut your heads off if they
could profit from it.
Worse than that in this case. He had a deal that if he plead guilty they wouldn't go after
his son and they wouldn't recommend prison time for him. He did what they asked. Then they
recommended prison time in the end anyway.
How that isn't legal malpractice, I'm sure I don't know.
He may as well try suing the Queen of England. Federal prosecutors and federal law
enforcement agents have almost complete immunity from civil causes of action arising from the
performance of their duties, even if they acted maliciously, lied, etc. It's good to be the
King (or Queen, or a federal prosecutor). People generally have no idea how badly the deck is
stacked against them if they end up in the cross hairs of these people.
In fact it is classified information..highly classified according to news reports. And so
we're likely to never see it. Flynn was forced out for some reason, presumably good ones.
It's hard to say anything for certain because the White House was in disarray in Feb2017.
DJT's inexperience in government was glaringly obvious in the first couple of months of his
administration. He mishandled several issues badly, paticularly the Flynn episode and James
Comey. I said then that he should have replaced Comey on Day 1. Had he done so none of the
mess of "Russian collusion" would likely have ever come about. Although he usually gets
things right, eventually, his (early) tendencies toward delayed action cost him.
They always claim something is highly classified when they want to conceal something that
will incriminate or embarrass them before the American people.
Trump came into office without an army of bureaucrats to fill all the jobs in the
government behemoth. He had to put in people that had been vehemently opposed to him in
order to get confirmations. That's why the expression, "The new boss, same as the old
boss." And it has certainly been true of Trump regarding foreign policy.
Well, since it was under Obama that they intercepted Flynn's calls, that's where the
classification came from. The USG grows and maintains its power through myriad levels of
secrecy. (I was in the game as a CIA communications specialist for 8 years). The game is
thoroughly bipartisan.
The White House said on Friday that it was the Obama administration that authorized
former national security adviser Michael Flynn's contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey
Kislyak during President Trump's transition, according to CNN.
One week after federal prosecutors
changed their tune
in the Michael Flynn case - recommending he serve up to
six months
in prison
for lying to investigators regarding his contacts with a Russian diplomat, the
former National Security Adviser
withdrew his guilty plea
Tuesday
afternoon
.
In a
24-page court filing
, Flynn accuses the government of "bad faith, vindictiveness, and breach of
the plea agreement," and has asked his January 28th sentencing date to be postponed for 30 days.
General Flynn has moved to withdraw his guilty plea due to the "government's bad faith,
vindictiveness, and breach of the plea agreement."
pic.twitter.com/Qp5JcQjXmB
According to Flynn's counsel,
prosecutors "concocted" Flynn's alleged "false statements
by their own misrepresentations, deceit, and omissions."
"It is beyond ironic and completely outrageous that the prosecutors have persecuted Mr. Flynn,
virtually bankrupted him, and put his entire family through unimaginable stress for three years,"
the filing continues.
"The prosecutors concocted the alleged 'false
statements' (relating to FARA filing) by their own misrepresentations, deceit, and omissions."
pic.twitter.com/o47WO8qClX
Prosecutors initially recommended no jail time over Flynn's cooperation in the Russiagate
probes, however they flipped negative on him after he "sought to thwart the efforts of the
government to hold other individuals, principally Bijan Rafiekian, accountable for criminal
wrongdoing."
The 67-year-old Rafiekian, an Iranian-American and Flynn's former business partner, was charged
with illegally acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. Prosecutors accused Flynn
of failing to accept responsibility and "complete his cooperation" - as well as "affirmative
efforts to undermine" the prosecution of Rafiekian."
More on this from attorney and researcher @Techno Fog:
After Flynn refused to lie for prosecutors (Van
Grack), they retaliated by:
1) Reversing course and labeling Flynn a co-conspirator
2) Improperly contacted Flynn's son
3) Put Flynn's son on the witness list for intimidation purposes (never called as a witness)
pic.twitter.com/fP4hpVXfGY
"The govt's tactics in relation for Mr. Flynn's
refusal to 'compose' for the prosecution is a due process violation that can and should be
stopped dead in its tracks by this Court"
pic.twitter.com/ttcFGmyPv7
Most of this prosecution of Flynn has been under TRUMP'S Justice
Department! Isn't there ANYBODY in charge in this government?
Lyndon Johnson would have literally knocked out an Attorney
General that didn't do his bidding. He did, in fact, assault the
head of the Federal Reserve back in the day - when America was
America!
https://www.dianomi.com/smartads.epl?id=4777
Paul
Craig Roberts: The Justice Department Is Devoid Of Justice
by
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/09/2020 - 23:05
0
SHARES
In the United States the criminal justice (sic) system is itself not subject to law.
We
see immunity to law continually as police commit felonies against citizens and even murder children
and walk away free. We see it all the time when prosecutors conduct political prosecutions and
when they prosecute the innocent in order to build their conviction record. We see it when judges
fail to prevent prosecutors from withholding exculpatory evidence and bribing witnesses and when
judges accept coerced plea deals that deprive the defendant of a jury trial.
We just saw it again when federal prosecutors recommended a six month prison sentence
for Lt. Gen. Flynn,
the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency accused of lying to
the FBI about nothing of any importance, for being uncooperative in the Justice (sic) Department's
effort to frame President Trump with false "Russiagate" charges. The Justice (sic) Department
prosecutor said:
"The sentence should adequately deter the defendant from violating the law, and to promote
respect for the law. It is clear that the defendant has not learned his lesson. He has behaved
as though the law does not apply to him, and as if there are no consequences for his actions."
That is precisely what the Justice (sic) Department itself did for years in their
orchestration of the fake Russiagate charges against Trump.
The prosecutor's hypocrisy is overwhelming.
The Justice (sic) Department is a criminal organization. It has no sense of
justice. Convicting the innocent builds the conviction rate of the prosecutor as effectively as
convicting the guilty.
The Horowitz report of the Justice (sic) Department's lies to
the FISA court did not recommend a six-month prision sentence for those Justice (sic) Deplartment
officials who lied to the government.
Horowitz covered up the crimes by converting
them into "mistakes." Yes, they are embarrassing "mistakes," but mistakes don't bring prison
sentences.
Gen. Flynn, who was President Trump's National Security Advisor for a couple of weeks
before Mueller and Flynn's attorneys manuevered him into a plea bargain, allegedly lied to the FBI
about whether he met with a Russian.
Flynn and his attorneys should never have accepted
the proposition that a National Security Advisor shouldn't meet with Russians. Henry Kissinger and
Zbigniew Brzezinski met with Russians all the the time. It was part of their job. Trump
originally intended to normalize the strained relations with Russia. Flynn should have been
meeting with Russians. It was his job.
Ninety-seven percent of felony cases are resolved with plea bargains. In other words,
there is no trial.
The defendant admits to guilt for a lighter sentence, and if he throws
in "cooperation," which generally means giving false evidence against someone else in the
prosecutor's net, no sentence at all. Flynn was expected to help frame Trump and Flynn's former
business partner, Bijan Rafiekian, on an unrelated matter. He didn't, which means he is
"uncooperative" and deserving of a prison sentence.
Plea bargains have replaced trials for three main reasons.
One is that the defense attorney doesn't want the hard work of defending his client.
One is that the majority of defendants cannot afford to pay the cost of defense.
One is that refusing to plea guilty and demanding a trial angers both the prosecutor and
judge.
Trials take time and provide a test of often unreliable police and prosecutorial evidence. They
mean work for the prosecutor. Even if he secures a conviction, during the same time he could have
obtained many more plea bargain convictions. For the judge, trials back up his case
docket. Consequently, a trial means for the defendant very high risks of a much longer and more
severe sentence than he would get in exchange for saving prosecutor and judge time and energy. All
of this is explained to the defendant by his attorney.
It was explained to Gen. Flynn. He agreed to a plea, most likely advised that his
"offense" was so minor, no sentence would be forthcoming. Flynn later tried to revoke his plea,
saying it was coerced, but the Clinton-appointed judge refused to let him out of the trap.
Now that we know the only Russiagate scandal was its orchestration by the CIA, Justice (sic)
Department, and Democrats, failing to cooperate with the special counsel investigation of alleged
Russian interference in the 2016 election is nonsensical as we know for a definite fact that there
was no such interference.
This is how corrupt American law has become. A man is being put in prison for 6
months for not cooperating with an investigation of an event that did not happen!
If Trump doesn't pardon Flynn (and Manafort and Stone), and fire the corrupt prosecutors
who falsely prosecuted Flynn, Trump deserves no one's support.
A president who will not defend his own people from unwarranted prosecution is not worthy of
support.
In Flynn's case, we cannot dismiss the suspicion that revenge against Flynn was the
driving factor.
Gen. Flynn is the official who revealed on television that Obama made the
willful decision to send ISIS or whatever we want to call them into Syria. Of course, the Obama
regime pretended that the jihadists were moderates seeking to overthrow the alleged dictator Assad
and bring democracy to Syria. Washington then pretended that it was fighting the mercenaries it
had sent into Syria.
Even though the presstitutes did their best to ignore Flynn's
information, Flynn gave extreme offense by letting this information out. That bit of truth-telling
was Flynn's real offense.
Tags
Law Crime
Then there is the fact that Comey admitted he took advantage of
the the situation by catching Flynn off guard without an
attorney. This is a warning to everyone: never answer questions
by FBI without consulting your attorney first and having him/her
present.
"... "The sworn statements of Mr. Flynn and his former counsel belie his new claims of innocence and his new assertions that he was pressured into pleading guilty," Sullivan said in his Dec. 16 opinion ( pdf ). ..."
"... In June, he fired his lawyers and hired former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell , who has since accused the government of misconduct, particularly of withholding exculpatory information or providing it late. ..."
"... Powell has argued that Flynn's previous lawyers had a conflict of interest because they testified in a related case against Flynn's former business partner. Flynn had previously told the court he would keep the lawyers despite the conflict, but Powell said prosecutors should have asked the judge to dismiss the lawyers anyway. Sullivan disagreed, saying Flynn failed to show a precedent that the prosecutors had that obligation. ..."
"... Powell also said the government had no proper reason to investigate Flynn in the first place and that it had set up an "ambush interview" with the intention of making Flynn say something it could allege was false. ..."
"... Sullivan disagreed again and said that previously, with the advice of his former lawyers, Flynn never "challenged the conditions of his FBI interview." ..."
"... Powell said Flynn's answers to the agents weren't "material," meaning relevant to the FBI investigation of election meddling. ..."
"... Sounds like Flynn got bad advice from his previous lawyers, and the judge is requiring Flynn to live with the consequences. In other words, it is as if the judge is prohibiting Flynn from changing legal representation because Flynn cannot do anything different than what his first team of "counselors" advised. ..."
"... Flynn is as deep state as it gets. He would throw the book at any one of you. Make no mistake. Being a general is a political appointment. ..."
"... Flynn was also a ******* lobbyist for foreign governments, including Turkey,...without disclosing his advise was paid for. He sold himself out like a whore. ..."
"... "Michael Flynn reportedly filed paperwork on Tuesday for the $530,000 worth of work he did last year that "could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey." https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2017/03/08/michael-flynn-admits-turkey-lobbying ..."
"... NATO Alliance member Turkey? How about a list of Israel friends with benefits. MIC grifters and aipac. Bloated orange imbecile can not fight only tweet. ..."
"... They say Dems and other psychos always accuse others of what they themselves are doing. Ever heard of the Clinton Foundation? Operating expenses: 95%.Benevolent aid: 5%. Suck on that for awhile. ..."
"... Flynn did nothing wrong. Was framed setup and then blackmailed to plead. Who will pay a price. Brennan Comey Strzok? Those who stood with Trump were ruined under false pretenses. ..."
"... Oh how soon you forget that Flynn commited war crimes in Grenada. ..."
"... Then bring him up on those charges. In court those kinds of leaps are inaddmissable. ..."
"... Hahahaha Grenada. Reagan's signature military victory. Flynn should be a super hero. Grenada and Panama are the only victories the Pentagon clowns have managed. What should we expect they only get $1,000,000,000,000.00 a year ..."
"... Remember that Michael Flynn waived his right to appeal this judge's decision when he plead guilty. This won't be going to a higher court. He's going down and the judge who is sentencing him is PISSED. ..."
"... Flynn is going to prison. Hillary is not. The sooner you jackoffs accept that, the sooner you'll be able to move on with your lives instead of living out your pitiful existence in bitterness and regret. And no, you won't be doing any civil war. You'll just be angry, your anger will turn inward, and you'll poison yourselves with resentment, living out your days alone. Don't say you weren't warned. ..."
"... They threatened his son if he did not plead guilty. Of course, to you Dems the means justifies the end. He will be pardoned, and deservedly so. ..."
"... I don't expect Clinton to go to jail ... committing crimes or not she is untouchable. People may wish it but it will never ever happen she has too much on all the other criminals. ..."
A federal judge has denied requests by Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn to prompt the government to
give him information he deems exculpatory and to dismiss the case against him .
District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan sided with the government in arguing that Flynn was
already given all the information to which he was entitled. The judge also dismissed Flynn's
allegations of government misconduct, noting that Flynn already pleaded guilty to his crime and
failed to raise his objections earlier when some of the issues he now complains about were
brought to his attention.
"The sworn statements of Mr. Flynn and his former counsel belie his new claims of
innocence and his new assertions that he was pressured into pleading guilty," Sullivan said
in his Dec. 16 opinion (
pdf ).
Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, pleaded guilty on Nov. 30, 2017, to
one count of lying to the FBI. He's been expected to receive a light sentence, including no
prison time, after extensively cooperating with the government on multiple investigations.
In June, he fired his lawyers and hired former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell , who has since accused the
government of misconduct, particularly of withholding exculpatory information or providing it
late.
Powell has argued that Flynn's previous lawyers had a conflict of interest because they
testified in a related case against Flynn's former business partner. Flynn had previously told
the court he would keep the lawyers despite the conflict, but Powell said prosecutors should
have asked the judge to dismiss the lawyers anyway. Sullivan disagreed, saying Flynn failed to
show a precedent that the prosecutors had that obligation.
Powell also said the government had no proper reason to investigate Flynn in the first place
and that it had set up an "ambush interview" with the intention of making Flynn say something
it could allege was false.
Sullivan disagreed again and said that previously, with the advice of his former lawyers,
Flynn never "challenged the conditions of his FBI interview."
Flynn was interviewed by two FBI agents, Joe Pientka and Peter Strzok, on Jan. 24, 2017, two
days after he was sworn in as President Donald Trump's national security adviser.
The prosecutors argued that the FBI had a "sufficient and appropriate basis" for the
interview because Flynn days earlier told members of the Trump campaign, including soon-to-be
Vice President Mike Pence, that he didn't discuss with the Russian ambassador the expulsion of
Russian diplomats in late December 2016 by then-President Barack Obama.
Flynn later admitted in his statement of offense that he asked, via Russian Ambassador to
the U.S. Sergei Kislyak, for Russia to only respond to the sanctions in a reciprocal manner and
not escalate the situation.
The FBI was at the time investigating whether Trump campaign aides coordinated with Russian
2016 election meddling. No such coordination was established by the probe, which concluded more
than two years later under then-special counsel Robert Mueller.
Powell argued that whatever Flynn told Pence and others in the transition team was none of
the FBI's business.
"The Executive Branch has different reasons for saying different things publicly and
privately, and not everyone is told the details of every conversation,"
she said in a previous court filing .
"If the FBI is charged with investigating discrepancies in statements made by government
officials to the public, the entirety of its resources would be consumed in a week."
Powell said Flynn's answers to the agents weren't "material," meaning relevant to the FBI
investigation of election meddling.
Sullivan, however, thought otherwise, using a broader description of the investigation. The bureau, he said, probed the "nature of any links between individuals associated with the
[Trump] Campaign and Russia" and what Flynn said was material to it. The description Sullivan used appears to omit the context of the probe, which focused
specifically on the Russian election meddling.
Powell was dealt a bad hand by Flynn's previous corrupt and incompetent attorneys. The
judge has an obligation to honor the new views of new counsel. He can't assume that Flynn had
been well advised by former counsel. There's no evidence or history of that. They sold him
out.
Sounds like Flynn got bad advice from his previous lawyers, and the judge is requiring
Flynn to live with the consequences. In other words, it is as if the judge is prohibiting
Flynn from changing legal representation because Flynn cannot do anything different than what
his first team of "counselors" advised.
He's so Deep State that Brennen and Clapper went to Soetoro to get him fired after the
election. Flynn was going to rat them out on the treasonous Iran deal. When Obama said no
because it was too close to the end of his presidency they then criminally framed Flynn.
Flynn was lied to. Flynn was a 30 year veteran and General. Flynn couldn't imagine his
country turning against him like this. None of us could. But with the cabal running our
country, it could and did happen. Now we have to stamp out the cockroaches before it's too
late.
Flynn was also a ******* lobbyist for foreign governments, including Turkey,...without
disclosing his advise was paid for. He sold himself out like a whore.
NATO Alliance member Turkey? How about a list of Israel friends with benefits. MIC grifters and aipac. Bloated orange imbecile can not fight only tweet.
This ***** judge will give him a mouse sentence to protect his own *** . We don't know the half of it . How close is the judge to Obama ? I think we are going to find out .
President Trump should step in now and Pardon Gen.Flynn and Roger Stone both trial were
fixed unethical and not based on fact and law. In Stones case a radical jury of Demon
Rat-Brains were assembled to hand down a guilty verdict.
They say Dems and other psychos always accuse others of what they themselves are doing.
Ever heard of the Clinton Foundation? Operating expenses: 95%.Benevolent aid: 5%. Suck on that for awhile.
Flynn did nothing wrong. Was framed setup and then blackmailed to plead. Who will pay a price. Brennan Comey Strzok? Those who stood with Trump were ruined under false pretenses.
Those who violated the constitution and rule of law are media pundants and
undisturbed.
Orange dotard please divert some of your swamp creatures from destroying Iran, Venezuela
and Bolivia.
America needs the secret police smashed and held accountable for sedition and treason.
Hahahaha Grenada. Reagan's signature military victory. Flynn should be a super hero. Grenada and Panama are the only victories the Pentagon clowns have managed. What should we expect they only get $1,000,000,000,000.00 a year
The minute they let Flynn off he talks and they sure as hell don't want that. They want to drag this out as long as possible and hope for a miracle (Trump gets beat
) or at least time enough for them to bugger off. FISA has known for years they were lied to by the FBI and now it has been confirmed . So why didn't they do anything then or now ? Were they in on it ? How do you draw any
other conclusion ?
Remember that Michael Flynn waived his right to appeal this judge's decision when he plead
guilty. This won't be going to a higher court. He's going down and the judge who is
sentencing him is PISSED.
Flynn is going to prison. Hillary is not. The sooner you jackoffs accept that, the sooner
you'll be able to move on with your lives instead of living out your pitiful existence in
bitterness and regret. And no, you won't be doing any civil war. You'll just be angry, your anger will turn
inward, and you'll poison yourselves with resentment, living out your days alone. Don't say
you weren't warned.
I don't expect Clinton to go to jail ... committing crimes or not she is untouchable. People may wish it but it will never ever happen she has too much on all the other
criminals.
Flynn can ask to withdraw plea, but he's turned down that opportunity three times, so
judge might not allow it. Then everything Powell has been doing becomes relevant. Up to this point it's just a bunch
of noise, unfortunately.
So let me just be sure I understand this: he is being denied evidence that could prove
innocence on a trial related to a guilty plea, which was largely the result of persecution by
the FBI and we ALLOW this to happen in America? What has happened to this country?
The Michael Flynn sentencing hearing is cancelled while the judge considers the issue of
exculpatory material
By Robert Willmann
New attorneys for Gen. Michael Flynn (ret.) entered appearances in his court case in June
2019. He had signed a plea bargain agreement with the office of "special counsel" Robert
Mueller on 30 November 2017, and under that agreement, a criminal charge consisting of a single
count was filed. He pled guilty to it in court the next day. A sentencing hearing began on 18
December 2018, but went off the rails and was to be continued at a later date.
On 30 August 2019, Flynn's new lawyers filed a request (a motion) that the prosecutors for
the federal government turn over exculpatory material that they likely had access to and had
not disclosed to him earlier. The motion also asked the judge to issue an order that the
prosecutors show cause why they should not be held in contempt of court for not turning over
the material that might be favorable and helpful to Flynn. Several papers were filed by both
sides on the issue after that.
A sentencing hearing had been reset to 18 December 2019. However, as a result of the
documents filed about the request for exculpatory material, Judge Emmet Sullivan decided not to
have a court hearing on the motion, but instead would decide it on the documents that had been
filed with the court clerk. The last paper was filed on the issue on 4 November 2019. Normally,
both the prosecution and defense file memoranda about an upcoming sentencing hearing. Since 18
December was approaching, they filed a joint motion to reschedule the filing of memos and any
sentencing hearing--
"11/27/2019 Minute Order as to Michael T. Flynn granting 140 Joint Motion to Modify Briefing
Schedule. The Court hereby Suspends the briefing schedule for the supplemental sentencing
memoranda. The Court hereby Vacates the sentencing hearing previously scheduled for December
18, 2019 until further Order of this Court. Signed by Judge Emmet G. Sullivan on 11/27/2019.
(Lcegs1) (Entered: 11/27/2019)"
The request for disclosure of exculpatory material may or may not be granted. But the fact
that a month has gone by, and now more time is needed, means that it is being given serious
consideration.
This is another remnant for Bush neocon team, a protégé of Bolton. Trump probably voluntarily appointed this rabid neocon, a
chickenhawk who would shine in Hillary State Department.
Interestingly she came from working class background. So much about Marx theory of class struggle. Brown, David (March 4, 2017).
"Miner's daughter
tipped as Trump adviser on Russia" . The Times.
She also illustrate level pf corruption of academic science, because she got
PhD in history from Harvard in 1998 under Richard
Pipes, Akira Iriye, and
Roman Szporluk. But at least this was history, not
languages like in case of Ciaramella.
Such appointment by Trump is difficult to describe with normal words as he understood what he is buying. So he is himself to blame for his current troubles and his inability
to behave in a diplomatic way when there was important to him question about role of CrowdStrike in 2016 election and creation of Russiagate
witch hunt.
There is something in the USA that creates conditions for producing rabid female neocons, some elevator that brings ruthless female
careerists with sharp elbows them to the establishment. She sounds like a person to the right of Madeline Albright, which is an achievement
With such books It is unclear whether she is different from Max Boot. She buys official Skripal story like hook and sinker. The
list of her book looks like produced in UK by Luke Harding
Being miner daughter raised in poverty we can also talk about betrayal of her class and upbringing.
This also rises wisdom of appointing emigrants to the Administration and the extent they pursue policies beneficial for their
native countries.
She testified in public before the same body on November 21, 2019. [12] While being
questioned by Steve Castor , the counsel for the House Intelligence
Committee's Republican minority, Hill commented on Gordon
Sondland 's involvement in the Ukraine matter: "It struck me when (Wednesday), when you put up on the screen Ambassador Sondland's
emails, and who was on these emails, and he said these are the people who need to know, that he was absolutely right," she said.
"Because he was being involved in a domestic political errand, and we were being involved in national security foreign policy. And
those two things had just diverged." [13] In response
to a question from that committee's chairman, Rep. Adam Schiff
, Hill stated: "The Russians' interests are frankly to delegitimize our entire presidency. The goal of the Russians [in 2016]
was really to put whoever became the president -- by trying to tip their hands on one side of the scale -- under a cloud."
[
"... Peter Strzok was interviewed on 19 July 2017 by the FBI and, according to his affidavit, pretended that he was asked on the 24th of January 2017 to interview General Flynn. He implied this was a last minute request. But as noted in the preceding paragraph, which is based on an interview of Strzok's mistress, Lisa Page, a meeting took place the day before to orchestrate the ambush of General Flynn. ..."
"... What is truly remarkable is that Peter Strzok stated the following, which exonerates Flynn of the charges in the indictment cited above: Strzok and Pientka both had the impression at the time that Flynn was not lying or did not think he was lying. Flynn struck Strzok as "bright, but not profoundly sophisticated." ..."
"... In fact, as noted by Sidney Powell, "the FBI and DOJ wrote an internal memo dated January 30, 2017, exonerating Mr. Flynn of acting as an "agent of Russia;" and, they all knew there was no Logan Act violation." ..."
"... The real problem for the Government's fraudulent case against Flynn are the 302s. There should only be one 302. Not at least four versions. The FBI protocol is to enter the 302 into the FBI Sentinel system within five days of the interview. In other words, the original 302 should have been put on the record on the 29th of January. But that original 302 is MISSING. The prosecutors claim they cannot find it. ..."
"... But the prosecutors finally did provide the defense, after repeated requests, multiple copies of 302s. They dated as follows--10 February 2017, 11 February 2017. 14 February 2017 and 15 February 2017. WTF??? This alone is prima facie evidence that something crooked was afoot. ..."
"... The final 302--dated 15 February 2017--painted General Flynn in the worst possible light. The "facts" of this 302 are not supported by the notes taken by Agents Strzok and Pientka. The conclusion is simple--the FBI fabricated a case against General Flynn. We now wait to see if Judge Sullivan will acknowledge this crooked conduct and exonerate the good General. Justice demands it. ..."
"... Poor George Popadopoulos, also "bright, but not profoundly sophisticated.", also had lawyers who rolled over to the FBI. If you read George's book, "Deep State Target: How I Got Caught in the Crosshairs of the Plot to Bring Down President Trump", the methods used on Flynn sound familiar. ..."
"... If the evidence provided by the defence in the Flynn case is even only a partial example of the capabilities and proclivities of the FBI, then how many other poor schmucks have been convicted and jailed unjustly at the hands of this organisation? ..."
"... The answer, given the size of the organisation must be : "thousands". The remedy is obvious and compelling if you want to remain something like a first world democracy. ..."
"... So instead of Flynn burning the agency down, they did just the opposite and got to him first. Just like Sen Schumer warned Trump: don't take on the IC, because they have six ways against Sunday to take you down. ..."
"... Maybe Flynn' s alleged post-inauguration audit plans is what triggered Brennan to get Obama to secretly keep his eyes on Flynn - maybe that was the second tier secret access they wanted, not necessarily Trump himself? ..."
"... Survival in DC is existential - my own in-house observation during the Watergate years. ..."
"... However, IMO the far more telling issue of the depths of IC's Coup effort. Are the exploits of Halper, Mifsud, MI6-CIA link. Which began back in 2015. This gives the impression, Flynn was being targeted for career destruction. Solely as retaliation for his departure from the Obama Administration, coupled with Flynn's open opposition to policies of Obama-Brennan (Iran-Syria-Libya). This took place way before he agreed to the NSA post with President Trump. ..."
"... Why did FLynn not have the Secret Service Detail arrest Sztrok and company on the spot for violating US security CFRs by knowing such conversations took place and knowing the contents thereof with out appropriate security clearances?? ..."
"... Many things about Spygate have puzzled me. The response by Trump after becoming POTUS to all the machinations by Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Rosenstein, et al has been baffling. It is like he does not understand the powers of his office. And after he learned about the covert action action against his campaign and him, to then staff his administration with folks who were in cahoots with the putschists is frankly bizarre. ..."
"... ........ "CrowdStrike, the cyber-security company that is involved in all this over and over again, is a an American company founded by a Ukrainian, Dmitri Alperovitch, who is extremely anti-Russia and who delights in implicating Russia in the DNC hacking event that probably did not happen......" ..."
Sidney Powell, General Michael Flynn's magnificent lawyer, is in the process of destroying
the bogus case that Robert Mueller and his gang of legal thugs tried to sneak past appropriate
judicial review. To help you understand what she is doing we must first go back and review the
indictment of Flynn and then look at what Ms. Powell, aka Honey Badger, has forced the
prosecutors to admit.
Here are the nuts and bolts of the indictment
On or about January 24, 2017, defendant MICHAEL T. FLYNN did willfully and knowingly make
materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements and representations . . . to agents of
the Federal Bureau of Investigation that:
(i) On or about December 29, 2016, FLYNN did not ask the Government of Russia's Ambassador
to the United States ("Russian Ambassador") to refrain from escalating the situation in
response to sanctions that the United States had imposed against Russia that same day; and
FLYNN did not recall the Russian Ambassador subsequently telling him that Russia had chosen to
moderate its response to those sanctions as a result of his request.
(ii) On or about December 22, 2016, FLYNN did not ask the Russian Ambassador to delay the
vote on or defeat a pending United Nations Security Council resolution; and that the Russian
Ambassador subsequently never described_to FLYNN Russia's response to his request.
Let me make a couple of observations before we dig into the notes and the 302 that FBI
Agents Strzok and Pientka wrote up during and following their interview of Michael Flynn on
January 24, 2017. First, Michael Flynn did nothing wrong or inappropriate in speaking to
Russia's Ambassador Kislyak. He was doing his job as an incoming National Security Advisor to
President Trump. Second, not "recalling" what Ambassador Kislyak said (or did not say) on 22
December is not lying. Third, even if Flynn did ask the Russian Ambassador on the 29th of
December to "refrain from escalating the situation" in response to the U.S. sanctions imposed
by Barack Hussein Obama, there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, that is wise counsel
intended to defuse a situation.
Now, here is where the FBI, especially Agents Strzok and Pientka, are in so much trouble.
The day prior to the "interview" of General Flynn the FBI plotters met to discuss strategy.
According to Sidney Powell:
January 23, the day before the interview, the upper echelon of the FBI met to orchestrate it
all. Deputy Director McCabe, General Counsel James Baker, , Lisa Page, Strzok, David Bowdich,
Trish Anderson, and Jen Boone strategized to talk with Mr. Flynn in such a way as to keep from
alerting him from understanding that he was being interviewed in a criminal investigation of
which he was the target. (Ex.12). Knowing they had no basis for an investigation,6 they
deliberately decided not to notify DOJ for fear DOJ officials would follow protocol and notify
White House Counsel.
Peter Strzok was interviewed on 19 July 2017 by the FBI and, according to his affidavit,
pretended that he was asked on the 24th of January 2017 to interview General Flynn. He implied
this was a last minute request. But as noted in the preceding paragraph, which is based on an
interview of Strzok's mistress, Lisa Page, a meeting took place the day before to orchestrate
the ambush of General Flynn.
What is truly remarkable is that Peter Strzok stated the following, which exonerates Flynn
of the charges in the indictment cited above: Strzok and Pientka both had the impression at the time that Flynn was not lying or did not
think he was lying. Flynn struck Strzok as "bright, but not profoundly sophisticated."
The fact that the FBI Agents Strzok and Pientka did not to show General Flynn the transcript
of his calls to refresh his recollection, nor did they confront him directly if he did not
remember, exposes this plot as a contrived scenario to entrap Michael Flynn rather than a
legitimate, legally founded investigation.
In fact, as noted by Sidney Powell, "the FBI and DOJ wrote an internal memo dated January
30, 2017, exonerating Mr. Flynn of acting as an "agent of Russia;" and, they all knew there was
no Logan Act violation."
The notes taken by Agents Strzok and Pientka during their interview of Michael Flynn are
damning for the FBI. These notes are Exhibits 9 and 10 in the sur sureply filed by Sidney
Powell on 1 November 2019. (I wrote recently on the fact that the FBI/DOJ mislabeled the notes
from this interview--see here). Neither Strzok nor Pientka recorded any observation that Flynn
lied about his contacts with Kislyak. Neither wrote down anything supporting the indictment by
the Mueller crowd that "Flynn lied." To the contrary, Strzok swore under oath that he did not
believe Flynn was lying.
The real problem for the Government's fraudulent case against Flynn are the 302s. There
should only be one 302. Not at least four versions. The FBI protocol is to enter the 302 into
the FBI Sentinel system within five days of the interview. In other words, the original 302
should have been put on the record on the 29th of January. But that original 302 is MISSING.
The prosecutors claim they cannot find it.
But the prosecutors finally did provide the defense, after repeated requests, multiple
copies of 302s. They dated as follows--10 February 2017, 11 February 2017. 14 February 2017 and
15 February 2017. WTF??? This alone is prima facie evidence that something crooked was
afoot.
The final 302--dated 15 February 2017--painted General Flynn in the worst possible light.
The "facts" of this 302 are not supported by the notes taken by Agents Strzok and Pientka. The
conclusion is simple--the FBI fabricated a case against General Flynn. We now wait to see if
Judge Sullivan will acknowledge this crooked conduct and exonerate the good General. Justice
demands it.
These are not my facts. They are the facts based on documents submitted on the record to
Judge Sullivan. I find it shocking that no journalist has had the energy or interest to cover
this. Just one more reminder of the putrid state of journalism and investigative reporting. The
charges levied against General Flynn by the Mueller prosecutors are without foundation. That is
the stark conclusion facing any honest reader of the documents/exhibits uncovered by the Honey
Badger. This kind of conduct by the FBI is just one more proof to support Colonel Lang's wise
observation that this institution, along with the CIA, should be burned to the ground and new
institutions erected in their stead that are committed to upholding the Constitution and
preserving the rights of the individual.
General Flynn was the National Security Advisor to the President. Among his duties he would
be expected to talk with foreign officials, including Russians, perhaps especially Russians.
My question is what was the predicating evidence that gave rise to opening a criminal case
with Flynn as the subject at all. What was the substantive violation; and why was there a
need to convene a meeting of high level Bureau official to discuss an ambush interview. What
was there to talk about in this meeting? My suspicion is that they expected, or hoped, at the
outset to leverage Flynn against Trump which makes the scheme worse, much worse
Re: predicate - IIRC, this is where the work of the FBI/CIA "ratfucker" Stefan Halper was
instrumental, having propagated the bogus claim that scholar Svetlana Lokhova was a Russian
agent with whom Gen. Flynn was having a sexual relationship.
There was a simpler time when even the least accomplished FBI Agent would have known enough
to ask Mr Halper for the circumstantial details as to how he acquired the news that Flynn had
any relationship at all with Lokhova, let alone a sexual relationship, who told him, how did
he know, why was he telling him, when, etc. The same questions should have been resolved with
respect to Lokhova before entertaining a conclusion that she was a Russian Agent of some
sort. Finally, even if the allegation against Flynn had been true, which had not been
established, and the allegation against Lokhova had been true, which as far as I know had not
been established, the Agents should have laid those cards before Flynn from the outset as the
reason he was being interviewed. If during the course of the interview he became suspect of
having done something illegal, he should have been told what it was and given all his rights,
including the right to an attorney. If the Agents suspected he was lying in matters of such
significant import that he would be charged for lying, they should have been given a specific
warning that lying was a prosecutable offense. That would have been playing it down the
middle. Since none of this appears to have been done, the question is why not. The leading
suspicion is that the carefully considered intent was to take down Flynn by any means
necessary to advance another purpose.
There are two separate issues: The Russian-Flynn Spying connection was established in London
back in 2015. IMO using Halper as an echo-chamber for Brennan's collusion fabrications. LTG
Flynn at that time was being set-up, for a retaliatory career strike(TS Clearance issues, I
submit).
The Flynn Perjury case was made in Jan 17 in DC, by the Secret Society, Comey, McCabe,
Yates, Strozk and the unwitting, SA Joe Pientka (hopefully). This trap was drafted by Comey,
specifically to take advantage of the newly elected President's inexperienced Cabinet, the WH
in-chaos. Chaos reportedly generated by a well timed Leak to the media. Which suggested that
LTG Flynn had Lied to VP Pence.
This FBI leak, now had the WH in a tail spin. Given the collusion beliefs at that time, had
VP Pence admitted that acting NSA Flynn, did in fact speak with the Russian Kislyak re:
Sanctions. The media would've screamed, the call demonstrated Russian Collusion.
Since VP Pence stated, he did not know that NSA Flynn had discussed the Sanctions with
Kislyak. The media created the image that Flynn had lied to the VP...
This was the "Pretext" which Defense Council Powell referred to. This is the opportune
moment, at which Comey sprang and later bragged about. Stating publicly that he took
advantage of a inexperienced Trump oval office in turmoil. Claiming he decided "Screw IT"
I'll send two agents in to question Flynn.
Without going through FBI-WH protocols. Because Comey knew that protocols would alert the
entire WH Staff. Making the FBI's hopes for a Perjury Trap against NSA Flynn, impossible.
Accordingly, AAG Yates and McCabe then both set the stage, with calls to WH Counsel
McGahn. Where they threatened charges against Flynn under the nonexistent "1799" Logan Act.
As well as suggesting that Flynn was now vulnerable to Extortion by Russian agents. Since the
Russians knew he had lied to the VP.
As Powell points out, by 24JAN17, the date of the Flynn interview. The entire world, knew
Flynn had Lied. Making the extortion threat rather bogus. In fact reports stated, at that
time even WHC McGahn had asked either Yates or McCabe (don't recall which). Why would the FBI
give a damn, what the NSA had told the VP? However the Bureau persisted and they won out.
McGahn is reported to have told Flynn, that he should sit down with these two FBI
agents...
Once Flynn sat down and gave a statement. FWIW, I think Andy McCabe was going to find a
Flynn misstatement or create one. Sufficient to justify the 1001 charge. It appears as though
McCabe took the later option and simply Created one.
My question is does some combination of incompetence and bubblethink naivete explain how at
the outset they could have gone all in on the Brennan/Halper information or did they just
cynically exploit the opportunity that had been manufactured in order to take it to the next
level -Trump. Taking it to the next level appears to be what drove the Papadopolis case where
similar procedural abuses occurred.
Poor George Popadopoulos, also "bright, but not profoundly sophisticated.", also had lawyers
who rolled over to the FBI. If you read George's book, "Deep State Target: How I Got Caught in the Crosshairs of the
Plot to Bring Down President Trump", the methods used on Flynn sound familiar.
Since George only served two weeks, I wonder if it would be worth while for him to tackle
the FBI again?
PS When the FBI says you are not "sophisticated", does that mean that they view you as
easy to trick?
Papadopolis signed "confession" equally odd: string of disconnected facts topped off with
what appears almost to be an added "conclusion" allegedly based on these irrelevant string of
factual statements that damn him into eternity as well.
Was the conclusionary" confession" added later, or was it shoved in front of him to sign
as a unwitting last minute alteration to a previously agreed set of facts is pror statements
he had already agreed were true? Just me, but when I read this "confession some time ago, it
simply did not pass the smell test.
The signed "confession: basically appeared to be accusing Papadopolus and by extension the
Trump campaign of violating the Logan Act - violating Obama's exclusive right to conduct
foreign policy.
(A SCHIFF PARAPHRAse)
Yes I was in Russia
Yes, I ate pork chops for dinner
Yes. I endeavored to meet with Russian individuals
Etc - benign
Etc - benign
Confession - al of the above are true
Kicker: Final Statement I INTENTIONALLY MET WITH TOP LEVEL RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT AGENTS TO
DISCUSS US FOREIGN POLICY
Papadopoulos' "lies" rest on subjective interpretation. For instance, one of the "lies"
consist of a referral to Mifsud as "a nobody". A second "lie" is based on when he officially
joined the Trump campaign: George P says it was when he first went to Washington and attended
a campaign meeting, while the indictment says no it was when he participated in the phone
call which invited him on board (a difference of a couple of weeks). It is very very thin
gruel.
I wonder if SST is missing the bigger picture. If the evidence provided by the defence in the Flynn case is even only a partial example
of the capabilities and proclivities of the FBI, then how many other poor schmucks have been
convicted and jailed unjustly at the hands of this organisation?
The answer, given the size of the organisation must be : "thousands". The remedy is
obvious and compelling if you want to remain something like a first world democracy.
How many others have there been? The genesis of the USA v Flynn, was a CIA-FBI hybrid. An
international Co-Intel operation, aimed at targeting Donald Trump. As such "the Case" was
initiated from the top down, under the secrecy of a T/S Counter-Intelligence operation.
These are not the normal beginnings of a Criminal matter. Which originates with a filed
criminal Complaint, from the ground-up.
In short all of the checks and balances our federal statutes mandate. Steps where AUSA's,
Bureau ASAC's and District Judges must review and approve. Even before convening a GJ. Were
intentionally overridden or perjured by a select society of the highest officials inside DoJ.
As such there were no higher authorities nor any of the Higher Loyalty for Jim Comey to seek
his resolution from.
That is not the normal investigative process. This was a deliberate criminal act to target
an innocent man (actually several innocent men). As such IMO, the associated political
pressure, all of which was self-inflicted. Was the force which brought about the criminality
on the part of Comey, McCabe, et al.
So, FWIW, you don't see those levels of personal involvement in criminal investigations.
The classic, where the murder victim's brother is the town Sheriff. Hence you don't see cases
of innocent people being dragged off to the Dungeons. Certainly not intentionally and not in
the thousands, anyway.
On another blog, a commenter claimed Flynn was going to program audit the entire IC - money
spent and results obtained.
So instead of Flynn burning the agency down, they did just the opposite and got to him
first. Just like Sen Schumer warned Trump: don't take on the IC, because they have six ways
against Sunday to take you down.
Maybe Flynn' s alleged post-inauguration audit plans is what triggered Brennan to get
Obama to secretly keep his eyes on Flynn - maybe that was the second tier secret access they
wanted, not necessarily Trump himself?
Survival in DC is existential - my own in-house observation during the Watergate
years.
The reports I've read tell of a long and sorted history between LTG Flynn, John Brennan, DNI
Clapper and Obama. Some of the stories did remind me of the SST suggestion to, "Burn it all
down". The General also supported this idea that DoD, should be the lead agency in the IC and
CA. Since must of their modern day activity, does tend to be kinetic...
So LTG Flynn has made enemies in the Obama administration, CIA and DNI.
However, IMO the far more telling issue of the depths of IC's Coup effort. Are the
exploits of Halper, Mifsud, MI6-CIA link. Which began back in 2015. This gives the
impression, Flynn was being targeted for career destruction. Solely as retaliation for his
departure from the Obama Administration, coupled with Flynn's open opposition to policies of
Obama-Brennan (Iran-Syria-Libya). This took place way before he agreed to the NSA post with
President Trump.
Then there's also LTG Flynn's direct rebuttal of DDFBI Andy McCabe. Seems McCabe was
involved in a Bureau OPR dust-up over sexual harassment allegations. The female SA worked CT
and was an acquaintance of Gen Flynn's. Flynn then made a public statement of support for the
Agent. Which was reported to have angered Andy. Sydney Powell, suggests that McCabe was
overhead to have said words to the effect or, First we F--- Flynn, then we F--- Trump. During
one of his 7th floor, Secret Society meetings.
Again all of this happened, before General Flynn was Candidate Trump's NSA Designee. So
the Six ways to Sunday, warning does resonate re: LTG Flynn as well.
In my experience in the US armed forces.... having a top secret crypto clearance...
And later.... as a federal investigator...
I distinctly remember that conversations between the White house, particularly the
president and his national security chief are "top secret -- eyes only for the president"
So.....
Why did FLynn not have the Secret Service Detail arrest Sztrok and company on the spot for
violating US security CFRs by knowing such conversations took place and knowing the contents
thereof with out appropriate security clearances??
"Why did FLynn not have the Secret Service Detail arrest Sztrok and company on the spot for
violating US security CFRs.."
Many things about Spygate have puzzled me. The response by Trump after becoming POTUS to
all the machinations by Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Rosenstein, et al has been baffling. It is
like he does not understand the powers of his office. And after he learned about the covert
action action against his campaign and him, to then staff his administration with folks who
were in cahoots with the putschists is frankly bizarre.
Does anyone have any explanation for the actions or inactions of Trump & Flynn?
"Does anyone have any explanation for the actions or inactions of Trump & Flynn?"
I have no comment relative to Flynn, but, in regards to Trump, IMO, Trump is stupid.
First, a little background. I did vote for Trump. I did have an hatred for national
politics ever since the Cheney "presidency". In that period, I was a dissident with a very
minor voice. But, I did study, as best as I could, the Bush (Cheney) and the Obama
presidency. It was reasonably clear that president's. didn't count. IMO the real power lay
with: a handful of Senate leaders, the CIA, the bureaucracy, and the powerful families that
controlled the major multi-national corporations, such as, Exxon Mobile. The preceding
constituted a powerful oligarchy that controlled the U.S. A dictatorship of sorts.
Trump had two major objectives for his presidency: MAGA and "drain the swamp". I concurred
with both objectives. After six months of the Trump presidency, and after observing his
choice of appointments and his actions, I concluded that he was a high school baseball player
trying to compete with the major leagues. He didn't know what he was doing (and, still
doesn't).
At that time, I concluded that if Trump really wanted to install MAGA and "drain the
swamp" he should have concluded way before putting his hat in the ring, that the only way to
accomplish his objective was to foster a coup after becoming president. Prior to his
presidency, he would had to select a team which would be his appointees and develop a plan.
After becoming president, he would have to ignore Congress and put his people in place
including in the DOD. The team would stay in control regardless of Congress' views.
Of course, this is a dictatorship, but is this any less obnoxious to our current oligarchs
dictatorship.
You're not wrong in criticizing Trump's personnel choices and inaction. When he entered
office he was warned about the SES/SIS holdovers and the need to get his own people in place.
He ignored that advice and is suffering the consequences. Trump played a character on TV of
being a shrewd, tough judge of talent and ability. In reality, he is a bit of a goofball.
That said, his basic policy positions are solid with respect to putting America first,
enforcing immigration laws, and disengaging from the foreign adventurism that has defined US
foreign policy for the last 75 years.
My hope is that he now finally recognizes the threat.
I prefer thinking of Donald Trump as a World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Famer as it fits
the context of what we are seeing more precise. Staged drama, personality pitted against
personality, all a great spectacle.
If it makes the denizens of DC fall on their fainting couches with the image all the
better.
Isn't Donald Trump suffering the same problem Jimmy Carter had that as a DC outsider he
isn't able hire talent and the establishment has made it clear that a position in the Trump
administration is a career killer?
Democrat's politics of personal destruction made it virtually impossible for Trump to hire or
appoint the requisite people for the task you described. RINO's wouldn't touch him and
Democrats were hell bent for revenge at any costs.
Amazing he did as well as he has done so far - considering his election was so toxic to
any possible insiders who could have offered the necessary experience to warn him where the
third rails were located.
Give him another four years and full control of GOP House and Senate back - this country
needs his energy and resoluteness to finally get the real work done. Patriots at every level
need to apply for appointed positions.
BTW: I was a rabid no-Trumper up to election night. Then Trump became my President. I have
not looked back.
Draining the Swamp can't be accomplished by hiring within the beltway or hiring any long-term
Democrat or Republican operative including members of Congress.
Trump should have recognized when he learned that his transition team was being spied on
that he had to hire people who believed in his agenda and had no ties to the Swamp.
By hiring folks like Haley, Pompeo, Bolton, Coats, Rosenstein, Wray, etc and not cleaning
house by firing entire swathes of the bureaucracy and then not using the powers of his office
to declassify but instead passing the buck on to Rosenstein, Sessions and Barr and only
tweeting witch hunt he has enabled the Swamp to run circles around him.
IMO, he is where he is because of his inability to put together a coherent team that
believes in his agenda and is willing to fight the Swamp with everything thy've got.
@joekovalski98: Pres. Trump came into office being very familiar with the intelligence
operation against him.
Enter Admiral (ret) Mike Rogers who travelled secretly without approval by Clapper to brief
the president of the spy operation.
Trump immediately move his administration to NJ.
Rogers and Flynn go back many years as Rogers was a protégé of Flynn. They
both extensively informed president Trump.
"Drain the swamp" is en-route carried out partially by our military and Flynn's former
DIA.
The stage was set and president Trump kept the left distracted via twitter while the
operation is underway between our military, white hats and their allies abroad.
Mifsud was arrested by the Italian intelligence agents 3 days ago and brought back to
Rome.
Trump is a long way from stupid - he has so far managed via twitter and his orthodox ways
for the deep state to unmask themselves. Hiring enemies at times is a way to confuse those
that try to destroy you.
Mifsud's arrest could be key to unraveling or should I say, the Unmasking of. Rather large
amounts of fraudulent intelligence that was laundered through the FISA Warrant Application
process.
The AG reportedly now has Mifsud's Cellphones (2), which coupled with Mifsud's interview
statements, if not his direct cooperation. Should reveal the CIA and/or SA Strozk, were
responsible for providing Mifsud with the false Intelligence. Which he then fed into their
Warrant Apps, through the person of George Papadopoulos.
Which in turn, could establish that Mifsud was never the alleged Russian Agent linked to
Putin. But rather a western intelligence asset, linked to Brennan. Thus destroying the
obvious Defensive strategy of Brennan, Comey and McCabe. Specifically the vaunted, "Hey who
knew the intelligence was bad? I was just doing my JOB!
I believe it was because the FBI was intentionally lying about their authority to monitor the
Flynn-Kysliak conversation. Claiming they were not monitoring the WH, rather they were
monitoring the Russian Ambassador and LTG Flynn was merely, Caught-up in that conversation.
Which at the time, was a good-enough-story. But recent disclosures seem to prove the 2 Agents
along with Comey, McCabe as well as AAG Sally Yates. All knew at the time of their "Pretext"
was establishing a Perjury Trap for the new NSA.
What set Brennan's hair on fire that instigated Brennan's secret memo to Obama who in turn
created and authorized this multi-nation, IC secret surveillance and entrapment operation?
When will we learn why Samantha Powers demanded hundreds of FISA unmasking requests during
the final hours of the Obama administration, after the election but before before the
inauguration of Donald J Trump as the 45th President of the United States of America.
Why have Joseph Mifsud and Crowdstrike, yet again, disappeared from media interest.
Why oh why, certain persons disappear from media interest? Why for example, did Ghislaine
Maxwell disappear from media? Is she not involved in lawsuits? Do courts not know where she
is now? The all-knowing Wikipedia English - does not know (as of today, I checked). The
answer to all these troubling questions is in the comments to the Colonels piece on John
Hannah. Am I becoming paranoid perhaps.?
If the media continues endlessly about the Ukraine phone call, the quid pro quo yet fails to
mention Crowdstrike "favor" in the same article, something is fishy. The phone call story did
not drop out of sight; just a very salient detail. In fact the substance of the phone call is
the story- and what Democrats are calling grounds for impeachment. Yet NO mention of the
Crowdstrike favor. I find this odd. Don't you?
Under the caption, "Nobody does it better" this explanation from Defense Counsel Powell's
04NOV19 Filing, pg 3 para 2
"The government has known since prior to January 24, 2017, that it intended to target Mr.
Flynn for federal prosecution. That is why the entire investigation" of him was created at
least as early as summer 2016 and pursued despite the absence of a legitimate basis. That is
why Peter Strzok texted Lisa Page on January 10, 2017: "Sitting with Bill watching CNN. A TON
more out. .
We're discussing whether, now that this is out, we can use it as a pretext to go interview
some people." 3 The word "pretext" is key. Thinking he was communicating secretly only with
his paramour before their illicit relationship and extreme bias were revealed to the world,
Strzok let the cat out of the bag as to what the FBI was up to. Try as he might, Mr. Van Grack cannot stuff that cat back into that bag.4
Former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe as much as admitted the FBI's intent to set up Mr.
Flynn on a criminal false statement charge from the get-go. On Dec. 19, 2017, McCabe told the
House Intelligence Committee in sworn testimony: "[T]he conundrum that we faced on their
return from the interview is that although [the agents] didn't detect deception in the
statements that he made in the interview . . . the statements were inconsistent with our
understanding of the conversation that he had actually had with the ambassador."
McCabe proceeded to admit to the Committee that "the two people who interviewed [Flynn]
didn't think he was lying, [which] was not [a] great beginning of a false statement case."
Ex. 1.
_____________
What's the saying? "Not much ambiguity there?"
Finally, on Nov 9, 2029 American Thinker in an article about Nancy Pelosi attempts at damage
control, someone in the media actually mentions Crowdstrike and the alleged " DNChacking"
........ "CrowdStrike, the cyber-security company that is involved in all this over and
over again, is a an American company founded by a Ukrainian, Dmitri Alperovitch, who is
extremely anti-Russia and who delights in implicating Russia in the DNC hacking event that
probably did not happen......"
Understanding What Sidney Powell is Doing to Kill the Case Against Michael Flynn by Larry
C Johnson
Sidney Powell, General Michael Flynn's magnificent lawyer, is in the process of destroying
the bogus case that Robert Mueller and his gang of legal thugs tried to sneak past appropriate
judicial review. To help you understand what she is doing we must first go back and review the
indictment of Flynn and then look at what Ms. Powell, aka Honey Badger, has forced the
prosecutors to admit.
Here are the nuts and bolts of the indictment
On or about January 24, 2017, defendant MICHAEL T. FLYNN did willfully and knowingly make
materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements and representations . . . to agents of
the Federal Bureau of Investigation that:
(i) On or about December 29, 2016, FLYNN did not ask the Government of Russia's Ambassador
to the United States ("Russian Ambassador") to refrain from escalating the situation in
response to sanctions that the United States had imposed against Russia that same day; and
FLYNN did not recall the Russian Ambassador subsequently telling him that Russia had chosen to
moderate its response to those sanctions as a result of his request.
(ii) On or about December 22, 2016, FLYNN did not ask the Russian Ambassador to delay the
vote on or defeat a pending United Nations Security Council resolution; and that the Russian
Ambassador subsequently never described_to FLYNN Russia's response to his request.
Let me make a couple of observations before we dig into the notes and the 302 that FBI
Agents Strzok and Pientka wrote up during and following their interview of Michael Flynn on
January 24, 2017. First, Michael Flynn did nothing wrong or inappropriate in speaking to
Russia's Ambassador Kislyak. He was doing his job as an incoming National Security Advisor to
President Trump. Second, not "recalling" what Ambassador Kislyak said (or did not say) on 22
December is not lying. Third, even if Flynn did ask the Russian Ambassador on the 29th of
December to "refrain from escalating the situation" in response to the U.S. sanctions imposed
by Barack Hussein Obama, there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, that is wise counsel
intended to defuse a situation.
Now, here is where the FBI, especially Agents Strzok and Pientka, are in so much trouble.
The day prior to the "interview" of General Flynn the FBI plotters met to discuss strategy.
According to Sidney Powell:
January 23, the day before the interview, the upper echelon of the FBI met to orchestrate it
all. Deputy Director McCabe, General Counsel James Baker, , Lisa Page, Strzok, David Bowdich,
Trish Anderson, and Jen Boone strategized to talk with Mr. Flynn in such a way as to keep from
alerting him from understanding that he was being interviewed in a criminal investigation of
which he was the target. (Ex.12). Knowing they had no basis for an investigation,6 they
deliberately decided not to notify DOJ for fear DOJ officials would follow protocol and notify
White House Counsel.
Peter Strzok was interviewed on 19 July 2017 by the FBI and, according to his affidavit,
pretended that he was asked on the 24th of January 2017 to interview General Flynn. He implied
this was a last minute request. But as noted in the preceding paragraph, which is based on an
interview of Strzok's mistress, Lisa Page, a meeting took place the day before to orchestrate
the ambush of General Flynn.
What is truly remarkable is that Peter Strzok stated the following, which exonerates Flynn
of the charges in the indictment cited above:
Strzok and Pientka both had the impression at the time that Flynn was not lying or did not
think he was lying. Flynn struck Strzok as "bright, but not profoundly sophisticated."
The fact that the FBI Agents Strzok and Pientka did not to show General Flynn the transcript
of his calls to refresh his recollection, nor did they confront him directly if he did not
remember, exposes this plot as a contrived scenario to entrap Michael Flynn rather than a
legitimate, legally founded investigation.
In fact, as noted by Sidney Powell, "the FBI and DOJ wrote an internal memo dated January
30, 2017, exonerating Mr. Flynn of acting as an "agent of Russia;" and, they all knew there was
no Logan Act violation."
The notes taken by Agents Strzok and Pientka during their interview of Michael Flynn are
damning for the FBI. These notes are Exhibits 9 and 10 in the sur sureply filed by Sidney
Powell on 1 November 2019. (I wrote recently on the fact that the FBI/DOJ mislabeled the notes
from this interview--see here). Neither Strzok nor Pientka recorded any observation that Flynn
lied about his contacts with Kislyak. Neither wrote down anything supporting the indictment by
the Mueller crowd that "Flynn lied." To the contrary, Strzok swore under oath that he did not
believe Flynn was lying.
The real problem for the Government's fraudulent case against Flynn are the 302s. There
should only be one 302. Not at least four versions. The FBI protocol is to enter the 302 into
the FBI Sentinel system within five days of the interview. In other words, the original 302
should have been put on the record on the 29th of January. But that original 302 is MISSING.
The prosecutors claim they cannot find it.
But the prosecutors finally did provide the defense, after repeated requests, multiple
copies of 302s. They dated as follows--10 February 2017, 11 February 2017. 14 February 2017 and
15 February 2017. WTF??? This alone is prima facie evidence that something crooked was
afoot.
The final 302--dated 15 February 2017--painted General Flynn in the worst possible light.
The "facts" of this 302 are not supported by the notes taken by Agents Strzok and Pientka. The
conclusion is simple--the FBI fabricated a case against General Flynn. We now wait to see if
Judge Sullivan will acknowledge this crooked conduct and exonerate the good General. Justice
demands it.
These are not my facts. They are the facts based on documents submitted on the record to
Judge Sullivan. I find it shocking that no journalist has had the energy or interest to cover
this. Just one more reminder of the putrid state of journalism and investigative reporting. The
charges levied against General Flynn by the Mueller prosecutors are without foundation. That is
the stark conclusion facing any honest reader of the documents/exhibits uncovered by the Honey
Badger. This kind of conduct by the FBI is just one more proof to support Colonel Lang's wise
observation that this institution, along with the CIA, should be burned to the ground and new
institutions erected in their stead that are committed to upholding the Constitution and
preserving the rights of the individual.
General Flynn was the National Security Advisor to the President. Among his duties he would
be expected to talk with foreign officials, including Russians, perhaps especially Russians.
My question is what was the predicating evidence that gave rise to opening a criminal case
with Flynn as the subject at all. What was the substantive violation; and why was there a
need to convene a meeting of high level Bureau official to discuss an ambush interview. What
was there to talk about in this meeting? My suspicion is that they expected, or hoped, at the
outset to leverage Flynn against Trump which makes the scheme worse, much worse
Re: predicate - IIRC, this is where the work of the FBI/CIA "ratfucker" Stefan Halper was
instrumental, having propagated the bogus claim that scholar Svetlana Lokhova was a Russian
agent with whom Gen. Flynn was having a sexual relationship.
There was a simpler time when even the least accomplished FBI Agent would have known enough
to ask Mr Halper for the circumstantial details as to how he acquired the news that Flynn had
any relationship at all with Lokhova, let alone a sexual relationship, who told him, how did
he know, why was he telling him, when, etc. The same questions should have been resolved with
respect to Lokhova before entertaining a conclusion that she was a Russian Agent of some
sort. Finally, even if the allegation against Flynn had been true, which had not been
established, and the allegation against Lokhova had been true, which as far as I know had not
been established, the Agents should have laid those cards before Flynn from the outset as the
reason he was being interviewed. If during the course of the interview he became suspect of
having done something illegal, he should have been told what it was and given all his rights,
including the right to an attorney. If the Agents suspected he was lying in matters of such
significant import that he would be charged for lying, they should have been given a specific
warning that lying was a prosecutable offense. That would have been playing it down the
middle. Since none of this appears to have been done, the question is why not. The leading
suspicion is that the carefully considered intent was to take down Flynn by any means
necessary to advance another purpose.
There are two separate issues: The Russian-Flynn Spying connection was established in London
back in 2015. IMO using Halper as an echo-chamber for Brennan's collusion fabrications. LTG
Flynn at that time was being set-up, for a retaliatory career strike(TS Clearance issues, I
submit).
The Flynn Perjury case was made in Jan 17 in DC, by the Secret Society, Comey, McCabe,
Yates, Strozk and the unwitting, SA Joe Pientka (hopefully). This trap was drafted by Comey,
specifically to take advantage of the newly elected President's inexperienced Cabinet, the WH
in-chaos. Chaos reportedly generated by a well timed Leak to the media. Which suggested that
LTG Flynn had Lied to VP Pence.
This FBI leak, now had the WH in a tail spin. Given the collusion beliefs at that time, had
VP Pence admitted that acting NSA Flynn, did in fact speak with the Russian Kislyak re:
Sanctions. The media would've screamed, the call demonstrated Russian Collusion.
Since VP Pence stated, he did not know that NSA Flynn had discussed the Sanctions with
Kislyak. The media created the image that Flynn had lied to the VP...
This was the "Pretext" which Defense Council Powell referred to. This is the opportune
moment, at which Comey sprang and later bragged about. Stating publicly that he took
advantage of a inexperienced Trump oval office in turmoil. Claiming he decided "Screw IT"
I'll send two agents in to question Flynn.
Without going through FBI-WH protocols. Because Comey knew that protocols would alert the
entire WH Staff. Making the FBI's hopes for a Perjury Trap against NSA Flynn, impossible.
Accordingly, AAG Yates and McCabe then both set the stage, with calls to WH Counsel
McGahn. Where they threatened charges against Flynn under the nonexistent "1799" Logan Act.
As well as suggesting that Flynn was now vulnerable to Extortion by Russian agents. Since the
Russians knew he had lied to the VP.
As Powell points out, by 24JAN17, the date of the Flynn interview. The entire world, knew
Flynn had Lied. Making the extortion threat rather bogus. In fact reports stated, at that
time even WHC McGahn had asked either Yates or McCabe (don't recall which). Why would the FBI
give a damn, what the NSA had told the VP? However the Bureau persisted and they won out.
McGahn is reported to have told Flynn, that he should sit down with these two FBI
agents...
Once Flynn sat down and gave a statement. FWIW, I think Andy McCabe was going to find a
Flynn misstatement or create one. Sufficient to justify the 1001 charge. It appears as though
McCabe took the later option and simply Created one.
Excellent summation.
My question is does some combination of incompetence and bubblethink naivete explain how at
the outset they could have gone all in on the Brennan/Halper information or did they just
cynically exploit the opportunity that had been manufactured in order to take it to the next
level -Trump. Taking it to the next level appears to be what drove the Papadopolis case where
similar procedural abuses occurred.
Poor George Popadopoulos, also "bright, but not profoundly sophisticated.", also had lawyers
who rolled over to the FBI.
If you read George's book, "Deep State Target: How I Got Caught in the Crosshairs of the
Plot to Bring Down President Trump", the methods used on Flynn sound familiar.
Since George only served two weeks, I wonder if it would be worth while for him to tackle
the FBI again?
PS When the FBI says you are not "sophisticated", does that mean that they view you as
easy to trick?
Papadopolis signed "confession" equally odd: string of disconnected facts topped off with
what appears almost to be an added "conclusion" allegedly based on these irrelevant string of
factual statements that damn him into eternity as well.
Was the conclusionary" confession" added later, or was it shoved in front of him to sign
as a unwitting last minute alteration to a previously agreed set of facts is pror statements
he had already agreed were true? Just me, but when I read this "confession some time ago, it
simply did not pass the smell test.
The signed "confession: basically appeared to be accusing Papadopolus and by extension the
Trump campaign of violating the Logan Act - violating Obama's exclusive right to conduct
foreign policy.
(A SCHIFF PARAPHRAse)
Yes I was in Russia
Yes, I ate pork chops for dinner
Yes. I endeavored to meet with Russian individuals
Etc - benign
Etc - benign
Confession - al of the above are true
Kicker: Final Statement I INTENTIONALLY MET WITH TOP LEVEL RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT AGENTS TO
DISCUSS US FOREIGN POLICY
Papadopoulos' "lies" rest on subjective interpretation. For instance, one of the "lies"
consist of a referral to Mifsud as "a nobody". A second "lie" is based on when he officially
joined the Trump campaign: George P says it was when he first went to Washington and attended
a campaign meeting, while the indictment says no it was when he participated in the phone
call which invited him on board (a difference of a couple of weeks). It is very very thin
gruel.
If the evidence provided by the defence in the Flynn case is even only a partial example
of the capabilities and proclivities of the FBI, then how many other poor schmucks have been
convicted and jailed unjustly at the hands of this organisation?
The answer, given the size of the organisation must be : "thousands". The remedy is
obvious and compelling if you want to remain something like a first world democracy.
How many others have there been? The genesis of the USA v Flynn, was a CIA-FBI hybrid. An
international Co-Intel operation, aimed at targeting Donald Trump. As such "the Case" was
initiated from the top down, under the secrecy of a T/S Counter-Intelligence operation.
These are not the normal beginnings of a Criminal matter. Which originates with a filed
criminal Complaint, from the ground-up.
In short all of the checks and balances our federal statutes mandate. Steps where AUSA's,
Bureau ASAC's and District Judges must review and approve. Even before convening a GJ. Were
intentionally overridden or perjured by a select society of the highest officials inside DoJ.
As such there were no higher authorities nor any of the Higher Loyalty for Jim Comey to seek
his resolution from.
That is not the normal investigative process. This was a deliberate criminal act to target
an innocent man (actually several innocent men). As such IMO, the associated political
pressure, all of which was self-inflicted. Was the force which brought about the criminality
on the part of Comey, McCabe, et al.
So, FWIW, you don't see those levels of personal involvement in criminal investigations.
The classic, where the murder victim's brother is the town Sheriff. Hence you don't see cases
of innocent people being dragged off to the Dungeons. Certainly not intentionally and not in
the thousands, anyway.
On another blog, a commenter claimed Flynn was going to program audit the entire IC - money
spent and results obtained.
So instead of Flynn burning the agency down, they did just the opposite and got to him
first. Just like Sen Schumer warned Trump: don't take on the IC, because they have six ways
against Sunday to take you down.
Maybe Flynn' s alleged post-inauguration audit plans is what triggered Brennan to get
Obama to secretly keep his eyes on Flynn - maybe that was the second tier secret access they
wanted, not necessarily Trump himself?
Survival in DC is existential - my own in-house observation during the Watergate
years.
The reports I've read tell of a long and sorted history between LTG Flynn, John Brennan, DNI
Clapper and Obama. Some of the stories did remind me of the SST suggestion to, "Burn it all
down". The General also supported this idea that DoD, should be the lead agency in the IC and
CA. Since must of their modern day activity, does tend to be kinetic...
So LTG Flynn has made enemies in the Obama administration, CIA and DNI.
However, IMO the far more telling issue of the depths of IC's Coup effort. Are the
exploits of Halper, Mifsud, MI6-CIA link. Which began back in 2015. This gives the
impression, Flynn was being targeted for career destruction. Solely as retaliation for his
departure from the Obama Administration, coupled with Flynn's open opposition to policies of
Obama-Brennan (Iran-Syria-Libya). This took place way before he agreed to the NSA post with
President Trump.
Then there's also LTG Flynn's direct rebuttal of DDFBI Andy McCabe. Seems McCabe was
involved in a Bureau OPR dust-up over sexual harassment allegations. The female SA worked CT
and was an acquaintance of Gen Flynn's. Flynn then made a public statement of support for the
Agent. Which was reported to have angered Andy. Sydney Powell, suggests that McCabe was
overhead to have said words to the effect or, First we F--- Flynn, then we F--- Trump. During
one of his 7th floor, Secret Society meetings.
Again all of this happened, before General Flynn was Candidate Trump's NSA Designee. So
the Six ways to Sunday, warning does resonate re: LTG Flynn as well.
In my experience in the US armed forces.... having a top secret crypto clearance...
And later.... as a federal investigator...
I distinctly remember that conversations between the White house, particularly the
president and his national security chief are "top secret -- eyes only for the president"
So.....
Why did FLynn not have the Secret Service Detail arrest Sztrok and company on the spot for
violating US security CFRs by knowing such conversations took place and knowing the contents
thereof with out appropriate security clearances??
"Why did FLynn not have the Secret Service Detail arrest Sztrok and company on the spot for
violating US security CFRs.."
Many things about Spygate have puzzled me. The response by Trump after becoming POTUS to
all the machinations by Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Rosenstein, et al has been baffling. It is
like he does not understand the powers of his office. And after he learned about the covert
action action against his campaign and him, to then staff his administration with folks who
were in cahoots with the putschists is frankly bizarre.
Does anyone have any explanation for the actions or inactions of Trump & Flynn?
"Does anyone have any explanation for the actions or inactions of Trump & Flynn?"
I have no comment relative to Flynn, but, in regards to Trump, IMO, Trump is stupid.
First, a little background. I did vote for Trump. I did have an hatred for national
politics ever since the Cheney "presidency". In that period, I was a dissident with a very
minor voice. But, I did study, as best as I could, the Bush (Cheney) and the Obama
presidency. It was reasonably clear that president's. didn't count. IMO the real power lay
with: a handful of Senate leaders, the CIA, the bureaucracy, and the powerful families that
controlled the major multi-national corporations, such as, Exxon Mobile. The preceding
constituted a powerful oligarchy that controlled the U.S. A dictatorship of sorts.
Trump had two major objectives for his presidency: MAGA and "drain the swamp". I concurred
with both objectives. After six months of the Trump presidency, and after observing his
choice of appointments and his actions, I concluded that he was a high school baseball player
trying to compete with the major leagues. He didn't know what he was doing (and, still
doesn't).
At that time, I concluded that if Trump really wanted to install MAGA and "drain the
swamp" he should have concluded way before putting his hat in the ring, that the only way to
accomplish his objective was to foster a coup after becoming president. Prior to his
presidency, he would had to select a team which would be his appointees and develop a plan.
After becoming president, he would have to ignore Congress and put his people in place
including in the DOD. The team would stay in control regardless of Congress' views.
Of course, this is a dictatorship, but is this any less obnoxious to our current oligarchs
dictatorship.
You're not wrong in criticizing Trump's personnel choices and inaction. When he entered
office he was warned about the SES/SIS holdovers and the need to get his own people in place.
He ignored that advice and is suffering the consequences. Trump played a character on TV of
being a shrewd, tough judge of talent and ability. In reality, he is a bit of a goofball.
That said, his basic policy positions are solid with respect to putting America first,
enforcing immigration laws, and disengaging from the foreign adventurism that has defined US
foreign policy for the last 75 years.
My hope is that he now finally recognizes the threat.
I prefer thinking of Donald Trump as a World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Famer as it fits
the context of what we are seeing more precise. Staged drama, personality pitted against
personality, all a great spectacle.
If it makes the denizens of DC fall on their fainting couches with the image all the
better.
Isn't Donald Trump suffering the same problem Jimmy Carter had that as a DC outsider he
isn't able hire talent and the establishment has made it clear that a position in the Trump
administration is a career killer?
Democrat's politics of personal destruction made it virtually impossible for Trump to hire or
appoint the requisite people for the task you described. RINO's wouldn't touch him and
Democrats were hell bent for revenge at any costs.
Amazing he did as well as he has done so far - considering his election was so toxic to
any possible insiders who could have offered the necessary experience to warn him where the
third rails were located.
Give him another four years and full control of GOP House and Senate back - this country
needs his energy and resoluteness to finally get the real work done. Patriots at every level
need to apply for appointed positions.
BTW: I was a rabid no-Trumper up to election night. Then Trump became my President. I have
not looked back.
Draining the Swamp can't be accomplished by hiring within the beltway or hiring any long-term
Democrat or Republican operative including members of Congress.
Trump should have recognized when he learned that his transition team was being spied on
that he had to hire people who believed in his agenda and had no ties to the Swamp.
By hiring folks like Haley, Pompeo, Bolton, Coats, Rosenstein, Wray, etc and not cleaning
house by firing entire swathes of the bureaucracy and then not using the powers of his office
to declassify but instead passing the buck on to Rosenstein, Sessions and Barr and only
tweeting witch hunt he has enabled the Swamp to run circles around him.
IMO, he is where he is because of his inability to put together a coherent team that
believes in his agenda and is willing to fight the Swamp with everything thy've got.
@joekovalski98: Pres. Trump came into office being very familiar with the intelligence
operation against him.
Enter Admiral (ret) Mike Rogers who travelled secretly without approval by Clapper to brief
the president of the spy operation.
Trump immediately move his administration to NJ.
Rogers and Flynn go back many years as Rogers was a protégé of Flynn. They
both extensively informed president Trump.
"Drain the swamp" is en-route carried out partially by our military and Flynn's former
DIA.
The stage was set and president Trump kept the left distracted via twitter while the
operation is underway between our military, white hats and their allies abroad.
Mifsud was arrested by the Italian intelligence agents 3 days ago and brought back to
Rome.
Trump is a long way from stupid - he has so far managed via twitter and his orthodox ways
for the deep state to unmask themselves. Hiring enemies at times is a way to confuse those
that try to destroy you.
Mifsud's arrest could be key to unraveling or should I say, the Unmasking of. Rather large
amounts of fraudulent intelligence that was laundered through the FISA Warrant Application
process.
The AG reportedly now has Mifsud's Cellphones (2), which coupled with Mifsud's interview
statements, if not his direct cooperation. Should reveal the CIA and/or SA Strozk, were
responsible for providing Mifsud with the false Intelligence. Which he then fed into their
Warrant Apps, through the person of George Papadopoulos.
Which in turn, could establish that Mifsud was never the alleged Russian Agent linked to
Putin. But rather a western intelligence asset, linked to Brennan. Thus destroying the
obvious Defensive strategy of Brennan, Comey and McCabe. Specifically the vaunted, "Hey who
knew the intelligence was bad? I was just doing my JOB!
I believe it was because the FBI was intentionally lying about their authority to monitor the
Flynn-Kysliak conversation. Claiming they were not monitoring the WH, rather they were
monitoring the Russian Ambassador and LTG Flynn was merely, Caught-up in that conversation.
Which at the time, was a good-enough-story. But recent disclosures seem to prove the 2 Agents
along with Comey, McCabe as well as AAG Sally Yates. All knew at the time of their "Pretext"
was establishing a Perjury Trap for the new NSA.
What set Brennan's hair on fire that instigated Brennan's secret memo to Obama who in turn
created and authorized this multi-nation, IC secret surveillance and entrapment operation?
When will we learn why Samantha Powers demanded hundreds of FISA unmasking requests during
the final hours of the Obama administration, after the election but before before the
inauguration of Donald J Trump as the 45th President of the United States of America.
Why have Joseph Mifsud and Crowdstrike, yet again, disappeared from media interest.
Why oh why, certain persons disappear from media interest? Why for example, did Ghislaine
Maxwell disappear from media? Is she not involved in lawsuits? Do courts not know where she
is now? The all-knowing Wikipedia English - does not know (as of today, I checked). The
answer to all these troubling questions is in the comments to the Colonels piece on John
Hannah. Am I becoming paranoid perhaps.?
If the media continues endlessly about the Ukraine phone call, the quid pro quo yet fails to
mention Crowdstrike "favor" in the same article, something is fishy. The phone call story did
not drop out of sight; just a very salient detail. In fact the substance of the phone call is
the story- and what Democrats are calling grounds for impeachment. Yet NO mention of the
Crowdstrike favor. I find this odd. Don't you?
Under the caption, "Nobody does it better" this explanation from Defense Counsel Powell's
04NOV19 Filing, pg 3 para 2
"The government has known since prior to January 24, 2017, that it intended to target Mr.
Flynn for federal prosecution. That is why the entire investigation" of him was created at
least as early as summer 2016 and pursued despite the absence of a legitimate basis. That is
why Peter Strzok texted Lisa Page on January 10, 2017: "Sitting with Bill watching CNN. A TON
more out. .
. We're discussing whether, now that this is out, we can use it as a pretext to go interview
some people." 3 The word "pretext" is key. Thinking he was communicating secretly only with
his paramour before their illicit relationship and extreme bias were revealed to the world,
Strzok let the cat out of the bag as to what the FBI was up to. Try as he might, Mr. Van
Grack cannot stuff that cat back into that bag.4
Former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe as much as admitted the FBI's intent to set up Mr.
Flynn on a criminal false statement charge from the get-go. On Dec. 19, 2017, McCabe told the
House Intelligence Committee in sworn testimony: "[T]he conundrum that we faced on their
return from the interview is that although [the agents] didn't detect deception in the
statements that he made in the interview . . . the statements were inconsistent with our
understanding of the conversation that he had actually had with the ambassador."
McCabe proceeded to admit to the Committee that "the two people who interviewed [Flynn]
didn't think he was lying, [which] was not [a] great beginning of a false statement case."
Ex. 1.
_____________
What's the saying? "Not much ambiguity there?"
Finally, on Nov 9, 2029 American Thinker in an article about Nancy Pelosi attempts at damage
control, someone in the media actually mentions Crowdstrike and the alleged " DNChacking"
........ "CrowdStrike, the cyber-security company that is involved in all this over and
over again, is a an American company founded by a Ukrainian, Dmitri Alperovitch, who is
extremely anti-Russia and who delights in implicating Russia in the DNC hacking event that
probably did not happen......"
"... If Flynn actually had lied to Strzok and Pientka that fact would have been reflected in the notes and the original 302. But that did not happen. A normal routine would be to write up the 302 and put it into final within five days. That did not happen. The original 302 still has not been produced. However, Ms. Powell has presented exhibits showing that there were other versions of the 302 generated and that substantive, unsupportable changes were made. The "final" 302 essentially made the case that Flynn lied. ..."
"... But Sidney Powell has produced documentary evidence showing that Strzok stated he did not believe that Flynn lied. And there was more FBI misconduct. General Flynn, for example, was not advised of the need to have a lawyer present nor was he shown the transcript of the call that was illegally recorded by the NSA. At no point was he given a chance to correct the record. It was a total setup and designed to paint Flynn as a liar and a collaborator with the Russians. This is malevolently diabolical conduct by law enforcement officers. ..."
There is no good news in this for the government's case. At a minimum it exposes the FBI as
incompetent clowns. At worse, it may be evidence of a deliberate effort to deceive the defense
and the judge. It has been exposed because of the insistent demands of the principled Sidney
Powell, a relentless Honey Badger. That woman will not quit in demanding that General Flynn be
treated fairly. She knows right from wrong. Cannot say the same for the FBI. The Bureau is a
disgrace.
Now that we know that the FBI mislabeled the notes taken by the FBI agents during their
interview of General Flynn, it would appear the entire case is in jeopardy. The foundation of
the charge that Flynn lied about his conversation with the Russian Ambassador is predicated on
the notes the FBI agents took and then turned into a 302 report. I asked one of my retired FBI
buddies (he served as a Special Agent in Charge of a large US city) if the agents were required
to date and sign their notes. He replied: No, we did not sign and date notes. They were placed
in a 1-A (evidence) Envelope which had our name and the date collected along with the file
number and, I believe, the case title. The 1-As were kept as part of the original case file.
They were not entered into evidence like other things we collected.
Those notes should have been placed in an "evidence" envelope with the appropriate name and
date on the envelope. How could so-called professionals screw up something this basic?
There was something more nefarious afoot. Let's put this into the broader context. If
Flynn actually had lied to Strzok and Pientka that fact would have been reflected in the notes
and the original 302. But that did not happen. A normal routine would be to write up the 302
and put it into final within five days. That did not happen. The original 302 still has not
been produced. However, Ms. Powell has presented exhibits showing that there were other
versions of the 302 generated and that substantive, unsupportable changes were made. The
"final" 302 essentially made the case that Flynn lied.
But Sidney Powell has produced documentary evidence showing that Strzok stated he did
not believe that Flynn lied. And there was more FBI misconduct. General Flynn, for example, was
not advised of the need to have a lawyer present nor was he shown the transcript of the call
that was illegally recorded by the NSA. At no point was he given a chance to correct the
record. It was a total setup and designed to paint Flynn as a liar and a collaborator with the
Russians. This is malevolently diabolical conduct by law enforcement officers.
Honey Badger Powell's terrific lawyering and insistence on getting her hands on the evidence
the US Government is withholding has now backed the Mueller team into a corner. Sidney Powell
has exposed staggering misconduct and malfeasance. Michael Flynn will be exonerated. The only
real question is whether or not the prosecutors will be held in contempt and tried.
Why doesn't the FBI, just record an interview? It's not that video cameras and tape
recorders are a new invention. Is the objective to manipulate using written interpretations
of conversations?
I'm worried there won't be any popcorn left by the time we get to the end of this sorry saga.
It would be nice to think that success by Sidney Powell might be the start of the finale in
this duplicitous story but I doubt it. The world is upside down and to many this is now a
matter of belief not evidence, something that has been largely caused be an entirely partisan
mainstream media (interested only in improving its revenue stream) and what can only be
described as a totally gullible section of the voting public.
One thing, Flynn has one hell of a lawsuit against his prior lawyers - a well known swamp law
firm. Egregious malpractice if not outright conspiring with the prosecutors.
FBI interviews are not recorded because if they were, then the interview subject could not be
falsely charged with the felony of lying to a federal investigator.
I need to write about the long history of the FBI honoring J. Edgar Hoover's policy, even
countering former Director Louis Freeh, after a meeting in mid 1990's with a federal judge
who had same suggestion, ORDERED the FBI to begin tape recording confessions and even after
many states like Minnesota, began to find their own constitutions required tape-recording (at
least of custodial confessions). After Freeh ordered the FBI to begin tape-recording, a
number of SACs argued the advantages for prosecutorial purposes of sticking with the old
policy of allowing Agents to write up, from memory and notes, what subjects and witnesses
said. The SACs made the point that juries would always tend to believe agents over the word
of defendants. So Freeh backed down. Flynn's attorney ought to request these memos
documenting how FBI policy was deliberately kept antiquated because it was advantageous.
Perhaps Larry Johnson knows -- Does Michael Flynn have some form of redress agains the
government, some established protocol for compensation for the misery and expense he's been
put through? Or are lawsuits against former lawyers his only option to try to recoup legal
expenses?
Strozk's caree/life is over. An interesting meditation: is he an evil man, or did he get
caught up in something larger than he could handle? (He thought he had what it took to swim
with the sharks, but he was just a barnacle. Or steelhead trout.)
The "unidentified" supposed whistleblower, Eric Ciaramella, is young - early 30s. Age of
consent, for sure, but very young, the "age of youthful ambition," a different category from
Strozk, the age of damn well should have known better. I would judge Eric -- whom I suspect
was at very least put up to carrying out dirty deeds for Biden and careerism -- less harshly
than Strozk.
How did Sidney Powell become involved in this long, on-going case? She can't ethically
"solicit" the business, but someone must have put Flynn in touch with her -- at what point.
What made Flynn seek legal advice elsewhere.
Flynn seemed so passive about facing these drummed up charges earlier in the case - what
exactly was he trying to protect his son about that allegedly caused this legal passivity
about his own case.
Love watching this unfold and the lessons in " big government" that come with it. But
Flynn having to live out a modern day Greek tragedy is a very high price to pay for our
civics lesson.
Asked and answered: Powell tussled dramatically in the past with Andrew Weissman over his
role in the government's prosecution of Enron steam roller cases. She finally got court
vindication for her clients 9 years later.
Why does Andrew Weissman's name keep popping up just about everywhere now, when one is
looking in pari delitci (including our now famous Pierre Delecto)?
From what I have read, I gather that the FBI in the Mueller / Comey era has made extensive
use of "perjury traps". They then threaten charges to get someone to "flip" on someone
bigger, in this case Trump. Flynn wouldn't flip even when they threatened to go after Flynn's
son. So they decided to "F" him, as stated by Andrew McCabe.
The FBI has been thoroughly disgraced, and Wray is incapable of cleaning it up. He just
wants to keep the dirt under the rug. It is too late for that, it is all coming out. US
citizens deserve to know how dirty our FBI and CIA are - they are criminal organizations.
Is it just me (wink, wink) but I find it completely coincidental that both Strzok (100%) and
Pientka (likely) are of Polish origins. Could it be my Russian paranoia. Nah, I am being
unreasonable--those people never had a bad feeling towards Trump's attempts to boost
Russian-American relations with Michael Flynn spearheading this effort. Jokes aside, however,
I can only imagine how SVR and GRU are enjoying the spectacle. I can only imagine how many
"free" promotions and awards can be attach to this thing as a free ride.
"... "Page didn't recall whether she took part in editing the FD-302," the filing stated. Included was a discussion between Lisa Page and her paramour Peter Strzok talking about editing Flynn's 302 report. Strzok to Page: "I made your edits" Also discussion of misleading leadership re: picking up 302. Upon seeing her texts, Page "believes she must have seen it at some point " ..."
Another shoe is about to drop. Gen. Flynn was entrapped by the Obama Bin Biden clan.
General Flynn Attorney Sidney Powell: "We Will Seek to Move to Dismiss for Egregious
Government Conduct"
Attorney Sidney Powell joined Lou Dobbs on Tuesday night to discuss the latest updates on
US Government's court case against General Michael Flynn.
The Justice Department on Friday responded to Flynn's lawyer Sidney Powell's motion to
compel production of Brady Material and to hold prosecutors in contempt.
Sidney Powell filed a motion a couple
weeks ago revealing that General Flynn was indeed set up by the FBI with an ambush, damaging
leaks and altered 302 reports.
Powell revealed that former FBI lawyer Lisa Page EDITED General Mike Flynn's 302 report,
then lied to the DOJ about the edits.
A 302 summary report consists of contemporaneous notes taken by an FBI agent when
interviewing a subject.
"Lisa Page, Special Counsel to Deputy Director McCabe, resigned; she edited Mr. Flynn's
302 and was part of a small, high-level group that strategically planned his ambush." the
filing said.
"Page didn't recall whether she took part in editing the FD-302," the filing stated.
Included was a discussion between Lisa Page and her paramour Peter Strzok talking about
editing Flynn's 302 report. Strzok to Page: "I made your edits" Also discussion of misleading
leadership re: picking up 302. Upon seeing her texts, Page "believes she must have seen it at
some point "
Flynn's story became a classic story of FBI entrapment...
Notable quotes:
"... The Federalist ..."
"... According to the 37-page motion , a team of " high-ranking FBI officials orchestrated an ambush-interview of the new president's National Security Advisor, not for the purpose of discovering any evidence of criminal activity -- they already had tapes of all the relevant conversations about which they questioned Mr. Flynn -- but for the purpose of trapping him into making statements they could allege as false ." ..."
"... Notably, Lisa Page lied to the DOJ, saying that she didn't recall whether she took part in editing Flynn's 302 form . ..."
"... Then, quoting from a sealed statement by Strzok, Powell reveals that over next two weeks, there were "many meetings" between Strzok and [FBI Deputy Director Andrew] McCabe to discuss "whether to interview [] National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and if so, what interview strategies to use." ..."
"... Another startling claim in Powell's filing references a purported conversation between former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Washington Post reporter David Ignatius, which claims Clapper told the reporter "words to the effect of 'take the kill shot on Flynn,' after Ignatius reportedly obtained the transcript of Flynn's phone calls. ..."
"... Lastly, Powell's filing also notes that US District Judge Rudolph Contreras, who recused himself after accepting Flynn's guilty plea, had a personal relationship with Peter Strzok , according to text messages. ..."
FBI Entrapped Flynn With Manipulated Evidence As Clapper Allegedly Issued 'Kill Shot' Order: Court Docs by
Tyler Durden Sat, 10/26/2019 - 11:30 0 SHARES
A bombshell court filing from Michael Flynn's new legal team alleges that FBI agents altered a '302' form - the official record
of the former national security adviser's interview - that resulted in the DOJ charging him with lying to investigators.
Early last week Flynn attorney Sidney Powell filed a sealed reply to federal prosecutors' claims that they have satisfied their
requirements for turning over evidence in the case. A
minimally redacted copy of the
reply brief was made public late last week, revealing the plot to destroy Flynn , as reported by
The Federalist 's Margot Cleveland.
According to the 37-page motion , a team of " high-ranking FBI officials orchestrated an ambush-interview of the new president's
National Security Advisor, not for the purpose of discovering any evidence of criminal activity -- they already had tapes of all
the relevant conversations about which they questioned Mr. Flynn -- but for the purpose of trapping him into making statements they
could allege as false ."
At the heart of the matter is the 302 form 'documenting' an FBI interview in which Flynn was asked about his conversations with
former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Powell alleges that FBI lawyer Lisa Page edited her lover Peter Strzok's account of the
interview - texting him, "I made your edits."
"On February 10, 2017, the news broke -- attributed to 'senior intelligence officials' -- that Mr. Flynn had discussed sanctions
with Ambassador Kislyak, contrary to what Vice President Pence had said on television previously." Following this leak, "overnight,"
Flynn's 302 was changed -- and substantively so. " Those changes added an unequivocal statement that 'FLYNN stated he did not'
-- in response to whether Mr. Flynn had asked Kislyak to vote in a certain manner or slow down the UN vote."
" This is a deceptive manipulation " Powell highlighted, " because, as the notes of the agents show, Mr. Flynn was not even
sure he had spoken to Russia/Kislyak on this issue . He had talked to dozens of countries." The overnight changes to the 302 also
included the addition of a line, indicating Flynn had been question on whether "KISLYAK described any Russian response to a request
by FLYNN."
But the agent's notes do not include that question or answer, Powell stressed, yet it was later made into the criminal offense
charges against Flynn . And "the draft also shows that the agents moved a sentence to make it seem to be an answer to a question
it was not ," Powell added.
Here's Powell describing how they know the 302 form was altered:
Notably, Lisa Page lied to the DOJ, saying that she didn't recall whether she took part in editing Flynn's 302 form .
Laying the groundwork
Leading up to the interview with Flynn, the text messages reveal that the FBI wanted to capitalize on news of the 'salacious and
unverified' Steele dossier - and whether they "can use it as a pretext to go interview some people," Strzok texted Page.
Then, quoting from a sealed statement by Strzok, Powell reveals that over next two weeks, there were "many meetings" between
Strzok and [FBI Deputy Director Andrew] McCabe to discuss "whether to interview [] National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and
if so, what interview strategies to use." And "on January 23, the day before the interview, the upper echelon of the FBI met to
orchestrate it all . Deputy Director McCabe, General Counsel James Baker, Lisa Page, Strzok, David Bowdich, Trish Anderson, and
Jen Boone strategized to talk with Mr. Flynn in such a way as to keep from alerting him from understanding that he was being interviewed
in a criminal investigation of which he was the target."
Next came "Comey's direction to 'screw it' in contravention of longstanding DOJ protocols," leading McCabe to personally call
Flynn to schedule the interview . Yet none of Comey's notes on the decision to interview Flynn were turned over to defense. Even
Obama-holdover "Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates candidly opined that the interview 'was problematic' and ' it was not always
clear what the FBI was doing to investigate Flynn ," Powell stressed. Yet again, the prosecution did not turn over Yates' notes,
but only "disclosed a seven-line summary of Ms. Yates statement six months after Mr. Flynn's plea."
-The Federalist
'Kill Shot'
Another startling claim in Powell's filing references a purported conversation between former Director of National Intelligence
James Clapper and Washington Post reporter David Ignatius, which claims Clapper told the reporter "words to the effect of 'take the
kill shot on Flynn,' after Ignatius reportedly obtained the transcript of Flynn's phone calls.
Clapper's spokesman told Fox News that he "absolutely did not say those words to David Ignatius," adding "It's absolutely
false" and "absurd."
Powell claims that Ignatius was given the Flynn-Kislyak call transcripts by a Pentagon official who was also Stefan Halper's "handler."
Halper - who was
paid over $1 million by the Obama administration - was one of many spies the FBI sent to infiltrate the Trump campaign.
Halper, in 2016, contacted several members of the Trump campaign including former foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos
and former aides Carter Page and Sam Clovis.
"The evidence the defense requests will eviscerate any factual basis for the plea and reveal the conduct so outrageous --
if there is not enough already -- to mandate dismissal of this prosecution for egregious government misconduct ," Powell wrote.
-
Fox News
Lastly, Powell's filing also notes that US District Judge Rudolph Contreras, who recused himself after accepting Flynn's
guilty plea, had a personal relationship with Peter Strzok , according to text messages.
"The government knew that well in advance of Mr. Flynn's plea that Judge Contreras was a friend of Peter Strzok and his recusal
was even discussed in an exchange of multiple texts," writes Powell, referencing Strzok-Page texts discussing Strzok and Contreras
speaking "in detail" about anything "meaningful enough to warrant recusal."
"The government knew that well in advance of Mr. Flynn's plea that Judge Contreras was a friend of Peter Strzok and his recusal
was even discussed in an exchange of multiple texts."
"... Larry nailed it. Now let's watch the real criminal scramble as Barr and Durham proceed ahead with a criminal investigation into the roots of the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. Looks to me like John Brennan went out of channels to solicit Five Eyes help in running sting operations. ..."
UPDATE--Honey Badger Emasculating DOJ Case Against General Flynn by Larry C Johnson
The shoe dropped and the brief is now on line. WOW!! The honorable Sidney Powell, a fierce
Honey Badger not afraid to fight cowardly Lions, has delivered. You can read her reply here (just
posted).
Here is Honey Badger's conclusion:
In its relentless pursuit of Mr. Flynn, the government became the architect of an injustice
so egregious it is "repugnant to the American criminal system." Russell, 411 U.S. at 428
(citations omitted). For these reasons and those in our original Motion and Brief in Support,
this Court should compel the government to produce the evidence the defense requests in its
full, unredacted form. Given the clear and convincing evidence herein, this Court should issue
an order to show cause why the prosecutors should not be held in contempt; and should dismiss
the entire prosecution for outrageous government misconduct.
Another shoe dropped this week and it ain't looking good for the Mueller legacy. General
Michael Flynn's lawyer, the Honey Badger Sidney Powell, filed on Wednesday (23 October) a
formal request that Judge Sullivan order the publication of Flynn's Reply to the Government's
Opposition to the Motion to Compel. To briefly recap--Sidney Powell filed a motion (see my
piece about
Michael Flynn's motion to compel production of Brady material ). The DOJ lawyers went nuts
and behaved like a crazed Pee Wee Herman (
see here ) and insisted they did not need to produce anything.
The Government lawyers argument was simple and moronic--i.e., they said that because Flynn
pled guilty to a charge where the Government knew he had not lied that he was still guilty.
Stupid logic like this is, I believe, one of the reasons the average person hates lawyers.
Sidney Powell has prepared a response to the Government's rebuttal and agreed to edit out
some portions that mentioned names or referred to specific classified info. But the Government
lawyers are trying to stonewall her and prevent her response from going public. Here's what the
Honey Badger wrote explaining the Government misconduct:
Mr. Flynn filed his Reply to the Government's Opposition to the Motion to Compel by noon on
October 22, 2019, completely under seal because of its minimal references to materials produced
under the Protective Order. The defense expected it could quickly resolve the issue with
government counsel given the government's previous redactions of the Motion to Compel.
We advised the prosecution on Saturday, October 19, 2019, of every document the defense
intended to cite that was produced under the Protective Order and requested the government
approve them to be unsealed. Shortly after filing the Reply yesterday, counsel for Mr. Flynn
sent the government a copy of the brief with light redactions that mirrored those redactions
the government made in the original Motion to Compel. Counsel requested that the government
propose any further redactions so the brief could be quickly filed for the public -- preferably
by the close of business on October 22. Ex. 1.
The government replied that it "would request more redactions beyond" what the defense
proposed, but it provided no reason whatsoever. Given that the government has not provided
defense counsel any classified information, this seems inexplicable. The defense also requested
that the government promptly provide a copy with all its requested redactions, and it has not.
The proposed redacted Reply the defense attaches here under seal includes redactions of the
names the government previously redacted and all quotations of any material covered by the
Protective Order.1
In a nutshell, the corrupt Government lawyers appear to be engaged in an Olympic level of
ass covering. The items that Honey Badger Powell has in hand and wants to release are likely to
destroy the Government's case against General Flynn.
The Mueller prosecutors who railroaded General Flynn never counted on being confronted by
the likes of the steely woman from Texas, Sidney Powell. She is a genuine Honey Badger. The
following video will educate those who know nothing of the Honey Badger.
If I learned one thing from teaching all those years and from raising three nasty girls who
were my stepdaughters and also my two boys: I would rather deal with males than with a woman
on a mission to get her way.
I am happy Flynn has good and determined counsel It's just too bad that he's been put
through all this. I hope Ms. Powell also fights to get him good compensation and restitution
for the suffering they've put him and his family through. (It's always been obvious that they
had to know their prosecution of Flynn was just to get an early punishment for anyone who
might feel the new administration would be better than the old.)
It appears that an agreement has been reached between Michael Flynn's lawyers and those of
the Justice Department about redactions in the reply brief filed by Flynn under seal, which
brief addresses the government's response to Flynn's request to compel production of
exculpatory material. Thus, the reply brief should soon be unsealed and will then be
available in the court clerk's file--
"Sundance" at The Conservative Treehouse has a lot more detail on just how big the new
ones are that Ms Powell is ripping into the perpetrators of this travesty of justice.
Thank you, Mr. Johnson, for this bit of good news (as well as the entertaining badger video).
I wonder why Mr. Flynn's previous lawyers seem to have been more chipmunk than badger?
Off topic, but Battle at Krueger video, in which Cape Buffalo fight off simultaneous
attack on their calf by a lion crew and crocodiles, still gives me goosebumps. But then I'm a
real animal person.
That web page gives links to the FULL docket (currently 129 items) for this case.
The last entry on that page is currently
129 Oct 24, 2019
Consent MOTION for Leave to File Redacted Reply Brief by MICHAEL T. FLYNN. (Attachments: #
(1) Text of Proposed Order, # (2) Reply in Support of Motion to Compel Production of Brady
Material and for an Order to Show Cause (Redacted), # (3) Exhibit 1, # (4) Exhibit 2
(Redacted), # (5) Exhibit 3, # (6) Exhibit 4, # (7) Exhibit 5 (Redacted), # (8) Exhibit 6
(Redacted), # (9) Exhibit 7, # (10) Exhibit 8, # (11) Exhibit 9, # (12) Exhibit 10, # (13)
Exhibit 11 (Redacted), # (14) Exhibit 12 (Redacted), # (15) Exhibit 13, # (16) Exhibit 14, #
(17) Exhibit 15, # (18) Exhibit 16)(Binnall, Jesse)
together with links to the individual items mentioned.
Clicking on the first link, the "MAIN DOCUMENT",
yields a 161-page (!) PDF of the whole shebang.
Because it's so long, it takes minutes to download, but if you want the whole thing, there it
is.
And this approach does not use scribd.
Some interesting items on the docket:
item 9 is the reassignment of the case from Judge Contreras to Judge Sullivan.
87 and 89 are Flynn's change of attorneys.
Larry nailed it. Now let's watch the real criminal scramble as Barr and Durham proceed ahead
with a criminal investigation into the roots of the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. Looks to me
like John Brennan went out of channels to solicit Five Eyes help in running sting operations.
Perfectly appropriate that Barr is seeking cooperation from Australia, Italy and Ukraine in
pursuing possible criminal misconduct by FBI, CIA and other Federal employees. I hope the
probe develops court-admissible evidence that John Brennan committed fraud by claiming to
have a top Kremlin source who gave eyewitness reports that Putin ordered Russian intelligence
to boost Trump's election chances.
I CANNOT believe the Strzok-Page texts revealing they'd altered the 302s for Gen. Flynn's
January 2017 FBI interview are JUST NOW coming to light. This occurred nearly THREE YEARS
AGO! And it's probably cost the general several hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal
fees. God only knows what it's cost Americans in morale and treasure.
I hope this is going to go a long way in diminishing the FBI's chances of blaming its
seditious conduct on the CIA, when it's becoming more and more apparent that they were
co-conspirators. Has anyone heard of any sanctimonious tweets from the self-righteous James
Comey today???
Bolton Opposed Ukraine Investigations; Called Giuliani "A Hand Grenade" by
Tyler Durden Tue, 10/15/2019 - 12:25 0 SHARES
Former national security adviser John Bolton was 'so alarmed' by efforts to encourage Ukraine to investigate the Bidens and 2016
election meddling that he told an aide, Fiona Hill, to alert White House lawyers, according to the
New York Times
.
When Hill confronted Sondland, he told her that he was 'in charge' of Ukraine, "a moment she compared to Secretary of State Alexander
M. Haig Jr.'s declaration that he was in charge after the Ronald Reagan assassination attempt, according to those who heard the testimony,"
according to the Times.
Hill says she asked Sondland on whose authority he was in charge of Ukraine, to which he replied 'the president.' She would later
leave her post shortly before a July 25 phone call with Ukraine's president which is currently at the heart of an impeachment inquiry.
Meanwhile, the Times also notes that "House Democrats widened their net in the fast-paced inquiry by summoning Michael McKinley,
a senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who abruptly resigned last week, to testify Wednesday."
Career diplomats have expressed outrage at the unceremonious
removal of Ambassador Marie L. Yovanovitch from Ukraine after she came under attack by Mr. Giuliani, Donald Trump Jr. and
two associates who have since been arrested on charges of campaign violations.
Three other Trump admin officials are scheduled to speak with House investigators this week, including Sondland - who is now set
to appear on Thursday. On Tuesday, deputy assistant secretary of state George Kent will testify, while on Friday, Laura K. Cooper
- a a deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia policy, will speak with lawmakers as well.
Looks like we have our whistleblower. My only question is, how does one whistle with such a bristly moustache draping their
hairlip?
So now we have Mr. Neocon and Mr. Liddle Kidz conjugating as the strangest of bedfellows? How will this play to their respective
bases? Are we to assume these people think this nations top law enforcement agent (POTUS) is to abdicate his duties therewith
just because the criminal is (at least according to our two tiered justice system) supposed to be beyond reproach?
Mr. Bolton, bright and determined as he is, has hitched his wagon to mad mare galloping full tilt over a precipice.
Looking for a return of uranium one to the headlines soon. In due time we will stich this Russia/Ukraine narrative back together
from a patchwork of facts. You traitors are fucked...royally fucked...and you know it.
So, Mr bolton, explain to us in simple terms how you appraise America's security and her related interests. Your camp is in
eclipse.
John Bolton:
"I was appauled...just flabbergasted...that the president was concerned that our intelligence apparatus was politicized to
the extent that its highest echelons were arrayed in an attempt to subvert a lawful and legitimate election. Never mind that six
other nations were tasked with abetting this treasonous plot...this is an outrage!!! The whole point of intelligence agencies
is to skirt the law with impunity, and once we (the unelected permanent breacracy) tell one of our minions like Biden or Hillary
that they're permanently immune from prosecution, we can't have some earnest pact of Patriots running around demanding law and
order."
What a sorry bunch of cretians.
We were so close...so close...to losing it all. But since the enemy is making clear we're playing zero sum, we're going to
end up with everything.
Brace yourself, California. If I were you, I'd study the legal framework of Reconstruction. Your plight will be of a kind.
Your state has been engaged in a systematic attempt to overthrow the government. Your leaders will be appointed for a generation
after this all comes out. Don't look to Beijing to save you...they kinda have their hands full.
So, I guess Bolton is no longer collecting free money like Hunter Biden was. I get it now how all these politicians have kids
overseas and open foreign corporations which our tax money goes in to by way of cutting deals overseas public officials to line
their pockets with our money. This how they get into government poor and become very rich! Giuliani is pointing this fact out
to the public with Trump and the swamp HATES IT!
The public now knows how these corrupt PUBLIC OFFICIALS in America have been fleecing the tax payers. This is a major hit on
the swamp.
Trump & Giuliani we're behind you thank you for showing us how the swamp has been ******* us for all these years.
Understand that the reason Schitt head won't allow public hearings is because the former Ambassador to Ukraine--Volker, shot
this whole **** fest down when he testified. There is no "there" there.
Bolton and the others are crying because of Trump's pull out. The left jumped on the war bandwagon under Billary a long time
ago. Necons work both parties.
If Bolton dislikes Guiliani that's the best endorsement of Rudy I can imagine. Bolton is a complete warmongering traitor who,
like McShitstain, desires a nice case of brain cancer.
Go Rudy, expose the corrupt Demonrats! We deplorables love human hand grenades. That's why we elected the Donald, and you apparently
are the perfect lawyer for our great God emperor.
"Schiff simply does not have the gravitas that a weighty procedure such as impeachment requires," Biggs wrote in an opinion
piece for Fox News. "He has repeatedly shown incredibly poor judgment. He has persistently and consistently demonstrated that
he has such a tremendous bias and animus against Trump that he will say anything and accept any proffer of even bogus evidence
to try to remove the president from office."
"Michael Flynn pleads Fifth, refuses to be 'paraded, harassed or disparaged' by Adam
Schiff"
By Rowan Scarborough...The Washington Times...Monday, September 23, 2019...7:12 p.m.
likbez said in
reply to im1dc...
"Michael Flynn pleads Fifth, refuses to be 'paraded, harassed or disparaged'
by Adam Schiff"
Looks like Adam Schiff who is part of Israel lobby like to take risks.
Flynn saga is about Israel not about Russia. He contacted Russia ambassador at the request
of Kushner who ask him to try to block Russian vote in UN against Israel.
What if the testimony blow out in his face like was the case with Lewandowski
The key question is why Trump hired Bolton in the first place, not why he was sucked...
This guy is a reckless imperialist, staunch neocon and a war criminal. No person who promoted
or voted in the Congress for Iraq war can held government or elected position. They are
compromised for the rest of their miserable lifes.
This is a bit like rearranging the chairs on the deck of Titanic.
The problem is we do not know who pressed Trump to appoint Bolton., Rumors were that it was Abelson. In this case nothing
changed.
The other problem with making Bolton firing a significant move is the presence in White House other neocon warmongers. So one
less doe not change the picture. For example Pompeo remains and he is no less warmongering neocon, MIC stooge, and no less
subservant to Israel then Bolton.
Notable quotes:
"... Firing National Security Advisor John Bolton gives US President Donald Trump a chance to move foreign policy in a more peaceful direction – as long as he's not replaced with another hawk, former congressman Ron Paul told RT ..."
"... Bolton has "been a monkey-wrench in Donald Trump's policies of trying to back away from some of these conflicts around the world," Paul observed on Tuesday ..."
"... "Every time I think Trump is making progress, Bolton butts in and ruins it," Paul added. Negotiations with Afghanistan and talks with North Korea and Iran have reportedly been scuttled by his aggressive tendencies, with Pyongyang declaring him a "defective human product." ..."
"... "A lot of people here didn't even want his appointment, because he was only able to take a position that did not require Senate approval," Paul said, suggesting that perhaps the "Deep State" pressure had forced the president to keep Bolton around long past his sell-by date. ..."
"... As for whether Bolton's departure would change the White House's policy line significantly, though, Paul was less certain. "I don't think it will change a whole lot," he said, pointing out that "we have no idea" who will replace Bolton. Trump said he would make an announcement next week. ..."
Firing National Security Advisor John Bolton gives US President Donald Trump a chance to
move foreign policy in a more peaceful direction – as long as he's not replaced with
another hawk, former congressman Ron Paul told RT.
Bolton has "been a monkey-wrench in Donald Trump's policies of trying to back away from some
of these conflicts around the world," Paul observed on Tuesday, after news of Bolton's
dismissal from the White House.
Also on rt.com Bolton out: Trump ditches hawkish adviser he kept for 18 months despite
'disagreements'
"Every time I think Trump is making progress, Bolton butts in and ruins it," Paul added.
Negotiations with Afghanistan and talks with North Korea and Iran have reportedly been scuttled
by his aggressive tendencies, with Pyongyang declaring him a "defective human product."
Foreign leaders weren't the only ones who had a problem with Trump's notoriously belligerent
advisor, either.
"A lot of people here didn't even want his appointment, because he was only able to take a
position that did not require Senate approval," Paul said, suggesting that perhaps the "Deep
State" pressure had forced the president to keep Bolton around long past his sell-by date.
While the uber-hawk's firing came "later than it should be," Paul hoped it would clear the
way for Trump to follow through on the America First, end-the-wars promises that won him so
much support in 2016. "Those of us who would like less intervention, we're very happy with
it."
Also on rt.com War and whiskers: Freshly-resigned John Bolton gets meme-roasting
As for whether Bolton's departure would change the White House's policy line
significantly, though, Paul was less certain. "I don't think it will change a whole lot," he
said, pointing out that "we have no idea" who will replace Bolton. Trump said he would make an
announcement next week.
"... However satisfying it may be to see him leave, whoever is picked to succeed him may not be much of an improvement. No one should cheer the chaotic and dysfunctional nature of this administration. Its boss revels in divisions and factionalism among his staff, which allows him to continue governing by his whims, kneejerk reactions and vanity. ..."
"... It is more likely that he was fired because he dented his boss's ego than because his advice was so bad: Mr Trump liked Mr Bolton's bellicose style when he saw it on Fox News, not when it clashed with his own intentions. ..."
"... The national security adviser may have been the most ferocious of the voices urging Mr Trump to turn up the pressure on Iran, but he was certainly not alone . Mr Bolton's presence in the White House was frightening. But its continued occupation by the man who hired him is much more so. ..."
"... As far as Pompeo's "moderation" goes, don't expect anything moderate. But general mailiciousness and opportunism aside, as an evangelical he'll certainly get along perfectly with Pence. ..."
The Guardian view on John Bolton: good riddance, but the problem is his
boss
Many will rightly celebrate the departure of the US national security adviser. But
however welcome the news, it reflects the deeper problems with this administration
...
However satisfying it may be to see him leave, whoever is picked to succeed him may not be
much of an improvement. No one should cheer the chaotic and dysfunctional nature of this
administration. Its boss revels in divisions and factionalism among his staff, which allows
him to continue governing by his whims, kneejerk reactions and vanity.
It is neither normal nor desirable for the national security adviser to be excluded
from meetings about Afghanistan – even if it is a relief, when the individual concerned
is (or was) Mr Bolton. It is more likely that he was fired because he dented his boss's ego
than because his advice was so bad: Mr Trump liked Mr Bolton's bellicose style when he saw it
on Fox News, not when it clashed with his own intentions.
The national security adviser may have been the most ferocious of the voices urging
Mr Trump to turn up the pressure on Iran, but he was certainly not alone . Mr Bolton's
presence in the White House was frightening. But its continued occupation by the man who
hired him is much more so.
I read that the main drivers of getting him kicked or retire himself were Mnuchin and
Pompeo, both afflicted by that nasty goofy smile disease. I am always happy when I see
Mnuchin's hands on the table, eliminating one explanation for the smile.
There is that reported sentence about Bolton - that there is no problem for which war was
not his solution. I read about similar sentence about Pompeo - that he has an IR seeker for
Donald's ass.
That written, good riddance indeed. Likely, if Bolton had his way, the US would likely be
at war with North Korea and Iran.
When I studied I was at the UNFCCC for a time during Bush Jr. presidency and talked about
what Bolton did at the UN with my superior, a 20 year UN veteran.
A 'malicious saboteur arsonist' is a polite summary of what he did there directly and
indirectly, and with given his flirt with MEK and regime change in Iran he has likely not
changed at all.
As far as Pompeo's "moderation" goes, don't expect anything moderate. But general
mailiciousness and opportunism aside, as an evangelical he'll certainly get along perfectly
with Pence.
I don't usually find much value at the Atlantic but this article (written before Trump even
fired Bolton) about Trump's FP timeline (and flip flops) and Bolton who was acting like he
was President is very, very good.
It will allow Trump loyalist to more easily support Trump and give everyone else a tad bit of
hope that Trump really won't go bonkers and start any wars.
Since President Trump appears to talk about things and stuff with Tucker Carlson, perhaps he
should ask Tucker Carlson to spend a week thinking . . . and then offer the President some
names and the reasoning for offering those names.
If the President asks the same Establishment who gave him Bolton, he will just be handed
another Bolton. "Establishment" include Pence, who certainly supported Bolton's outlook on
things and would certainly recommend another "Bolton" figure if asked. Let us hope Pence is
not consulted on Bolton's successor.
different clue,
re "Let us hope Pence is not consulted on Bolton's successor."
Understandable point of view but then, Trump still is Trump. He can just by himself and
beyond advice easily find suboptimal solutions of his own.
Today I read that Richard Grenell was mentioned as a potential sucessor.
As far as that goes, go for it. Many people here will be happy when he "who always only
sais what the Whitehouse sais" is finally gone.
And with Trump's biggest military budget in the world he can just continue the arms sale
pitches that are and were such a substantial part of his job as a US ambassador in
Germany.
That said, they were that after blathering a lot about that we should increase our
military budget by 2%, 4%, 6% or 10%, buy US arms, now, and of course the blathering about
Northstream 1 & 2 and "slavedom to russian oil & gas" and rather buy US frack gas of
course.
He could then also take a side job for the fracking industry in that context. And buy
frack gas and arms company stocks. Opportunities, opportunities ...
"... But Bolton coupled the Fox and AEI sinecures with gnarlier associations -- for one, the Gatestone Institute, a, let's say Islam-hostile outfit, associated with the secretive, influential Mercer billionaires. ..."
"... Bolton appeared the leading light of a neoconservative revival, of sorts, until he didn't. ..."
"... It doesn't matter whether Bolton's "time is up" or not, because his departure wouldn't change anything. If he goes, Trump will replace him with some equally slimy neocon interventionist. ..."
"... It won't end until we muck out the White House next year. Dumping Trump is Job One. ..."
"... Oh. Yes. You want to get rid of Trump's partially neocon administration, so that you could replace it with your own, entirely neocon one. Wake me up when the DNC starts allowing people like Tulsi Gabbard to get nominated. But they won't. So your party will just repeat its merry salsa on the same set of rakes as in 2016. ..."
No major politician, not even Barack Obama, excoriated the Iraq war more fiercely than did
Trump during the primaries. He did this in front of a scion of the house of Bush and in the
deep red state of South Carolina. He nevertheless went on to win that primary, the Republican
nomination and the presidency on that antiwar message.
And so, to see Bolton ascend to the commanding heights of the Trump White House shocked many
from the time it was first rumored. "I shudder to think what would happen if we had a failed
presidency," Scott McConnell, TAC' s founding editor, said in late 2016 at our foreign
policy conference, held, opportunely, during the presidential transition. "I mean, John
Bolton?"
At the time, Bolton was a candidate for secretary of state, a consideration scuttled in no
small part because of the opposition of Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul. As McConnell
wrote in November of that year: "Most of the upper-middle-level officials who plotted the Iraq
War have retreated quietly into private life, but Bolton has kept their flame alive." Bolton
had already been passed over for NSA, losing out early to the doomed Michael Flynn. Rex
Tillerson beat him for secretary of state. Bolton was then passed over for the role of
Tillerson's deputy. When Flynn flamed out of the White House the following February, Trump
chose a general he didn't know at all, H.R. McMaster, to replace him.
Bolton had been trying to make a comeback since late 2006, after failing to hold his job as
U.N. ambassador (he had only been a recess appointment). His landing spots including a Fox News
contributorship and a post at the vaunted American Enterprise Institute. Even in the early days
of the Trump administration, Bolton was around, and accessible. I remember seeing him multiple
times in Washington's Connecticut Avenue corridor, decked out in the seersucker he notoriously
favors during the summer months. Paired with the familiar mustache, the man is the Mark Twain
of regime change.
But Bolton coupled the Fox and AEI sinecures with gnarlier associations -- for one, the
Gatestone Institute, a, let's say Islam-hostile outfit, associated with the secretive,
influential Mercer billionaires. He also struck a ferocious alliance with the Center for
Security Policy, helmed by the infamous Frank Gaffney, and gave paid remarks to the National
Council for the Resistance of Iran, the lynchpin organization of the People's Mujahideen of
Iran, or MEK. The latter two associations have imbued the spirit of this White House, with
Gaffney now one of the most underrated power players in Washington, and the MEK's "peaceful"
regime change mantra all but the official line of the administration.
More than any of these gigs, Bolton benefited from two associations that greased the wheels
for his joining the Trump administration.
The first was Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist. If you want to
understand the administration's Iran policy under Bolton to date, look no further than a piece
by the then-retired diplomat in conservative mainstay National Review in August 2017,
days after Bannon's departure from the White House: "How to Get Out of the Iran Deal." Bolton
wrote the piece at Bannon's urging. Even out of the administration, the former Breitbart
honcho was an influential figure.
"We must explain the grave threat to the U.S. and our allies, particularly Israel," said
Bolton. "The [Iran Deal's] vague and ambiguous wording; its manifest imbalance in Iran's
direction; Iran's significant violations; and its continued, indeed, increasingly, unacceptable
conduct at the strategic level internationally demonstrate convincingly that [the Iran deal] is
not in the national-security interests of the United States."
Then Bolton, as I
documented , embarked on a campaign of a media saturation to make a TV-happy president
proud. By May Day the next year, he would have a job, a big one, and one that Senator Paul
couldn't deny him: national security advisor. That wasn't the whole story, of course. Bolton's
ace in the hole was Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate who has helped drive
Trump's Israel policy. If Trump finally moves against Bolton, it will likely be because Adelson
failed to strenuously object.
So will Trump finally do it? Other than White House chief of staff, a position Mick Mulvaney
has filled in an acting capacity for the entire calendar year, national security advisor is the
easiest, most senior role to change horses.
A bombshell Washington Post story lays out the dire truth: Bolton is so distrusted on
the president's central prerogatives, for instance Afghanistan, that he's not even allowed to
see sensitive plans unsupervised.
Bolton has also come into conflict with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to three
senior State Department officials. Pompeo is the consummate politician. Though an inveterate
hawk, the putative Trump successor does not want to be the Paul Wolfowitz of the Iran war.
Bolton is a bureaucratic arsonist, agnostic on the necessity of two of the institutions he
served in -- Foggy Bottom and the United Nations. Pompeo, say those around him, is keen to be
beloved, or at least tolerated, by career officials in his department, in contrast with Bolton
and even Tillerson.
The real danger Bolton poses is to the twin gambit Trump hopes to pull off ahead of, perhaps
just ahead of, next November -- a detente deal with China to calm the markets and ending
the war in Afghanistan. Over the weekend, the president announced a scuttled meeting with the
Taliban at Camp David, which would have been an historic, stunning summit. Bolton was
reportedly instrumental in quashing the meet. Still, there is a lot of time between now and
next autumn, and the cancellation is likely the latest iteration of the president's showman
diplomacy.
Ending America's longest war would be a welcome rebuttal to Democrats who will, day in and
day out, charge that Trump is a fraud. But to do so, he will likely need a national security
advisor more in sync with the vision. Among them: Tucker Carlson favorite Douglas Macgregor,
Stephen Biegun, the runner-up previously, or the hawkish, but relatively pragmatic retired
General Jack Keane.
Bolton seems to be following the well-worn trajectory of dumped Trump deputies. Jeff
Sessions, a proto-Trump and the first senator to endorse the mogul, became attorney general and
ideological incubator of the new Right's agenda only to become persona non grata in the
administration. The formal execution came later. Bannon followed a less dramatic, but no less
explosive ebb and flow. James Mattis walked on water until he didn't.
And Bolton appeared the leading light of a neoconservative revival, of sorts, until he didn't.
You confuse "politician" and "liar" here, whereas he is "consummate" at neither politics
nor lying. His politicking has been as botched as his diplomacy; his lying has been
prodigious but transparent.
Bolton has been on the way out now for how many months? I will believe this welcome news
when I see his sorry ___ out the door.
I think much of America and the world will feel the same way.
It doesn't matter whether Bolton's "time is up" or not, because his departure wouldn't
change anything. If he goes, Trump will replace him with some equally slimy neocon
interventionist.
It won't end until we muck out the White House next year. Dumping Trump is Job One.
Oh. Yes. You want to get rid of Trump's partially neocon administration, so that you could
replace it with your own, entirely neocon one. Wake me up when the DNC starts allowing
people like Tulsi Gabbard to get nominated. But they won't. So your party will just repeat
its merry salsa on the same set of rakes as in 2016.
Trump whole administration is just a bunch of rabid neocons who will be perfectly at home (and some were) in Bush II
administration. So firing of Bolton while a step in the right direction is too little, too late.
Notable quotes:
"... Whatever the reason for Bolton's departure, this means one less warmongering neocon is left in the DC swamp, and is a prudent and long overdue move by Trump, one which even Trump's liberals enemies will have no choice but to applaud. ..."
"... Ending America's longest war would be a welcome rebuttal to Democrats who will, day in and day out, charge that Trump is a fraud. But to do so, he will likely need a national security advisor more in sync with the vision. Among them: Tucker Carlson favorite Douglas Macgregor, Stephen Biegun, the runner-up previously, or the hawkish, but relatively pragmatic retired General Jack Keane. ..."
While there was some feverish speculation as to what an impromptu presser at 1:30pm with US
Secretary of State Pompeo, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and National Security Adviser Bolton
would deliver, that was quickly swept aside moments later when Trump unexpectedly announced
that he had effectively fired Bolton as National Security Advisor, tweeting that he informed
John Bolton "last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House" after "
disagreeing strongly with many of his suggestions. "
... ... ...
Whatever the reason for Bolton's departure, this means one less warmongering
neocon is left in the DC swamp, and is a prudent and long overdue move by Trump, one which even
Trump's liberals enemies will have no choice but to applaud.
While we await more details on this strike by Trump against the military-industrial
complex-enabling Deep State, here is a fitting closer from Curt Mills via the American
Conservative:
Ending America's longest war would be a welcome rebuttal to Democrats who will, day in and
day out, charge that Trump is a fraud. But to do so, he will likely need a national security
advisor more in sync with the vision. Among them: Tucker Carlson favorite Douglas Macgregor,
Stephen Biegun, the runner-up previously, or the hawkish, but relatively pragmatic retired
General Jack Keane.
Bolton seems to be following the well-worn trajectory of dumped Trump deputies. Jeff
Sessions, a proto-Trump and the first senator to endorse the mogul, became attorney general
and ideological incubator of the new Right's agenda only to become persona non grata in the
administration. The formal execution came later. Bannon followed a less dramatic, but no less
explosive ebb and flow. James Mattis walked on water until he didn't.
And Bolton appeared the leading light of a neoconservative revival, of sorts, until he
didn't.
"... Yeah, consistency may be nice, but what about the actual substance of what Bolton believes and does? ..."
"... Personally, I'm not interested in trying to starve Iran into submission or attack it on behalf of Israel. And I would be interested in actually pursuing a meaningful attempt to resolve the Korea issue. Bolton is not only on the wrong side of these issues, he is in general the principal malign force pushing foreign policy insanity in this administration (as opposed to Adelson et all pushing policy insanity from outside the administration.) ..."
"... Heinrich Himmler also was consistent and sincere. By your logic, that must mean that Himmler was a credit to the Nazi regime. ..."
"... You can't serve a president well if you're constantly at odds with him. The Commander-in-Chief has to have his or her own mind about things, advisors are there to advise. If you want to do one thing but you're being counseled to do otherwise, what purpose does such a relationship serve? ..."
"... It was clearly Adelson and his ilk who got Bolton hired in the first place when Trump had initially been unimpressed. In "Fire and Fury," Steve Bannon allegedly says that Trump didn't think Bolton looked the part of NSA. And it's even more significant that Adelson and others of a similar cast--e.g., Safra Catz, the dual-national CEO of Oracle-- engineered a whispering campaign against McMaster that paved the way for what was effectively his firing. ..."
"... Bolton's ace in the hole was Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate who has helped drive Trump's Israel policy ..."
"... Besides, it's not like Bolton was a military man, he openly acknowledges that he didn't want to go and 'die on some rice paddy' in Vietnam. But, he's willing to send other people's kids to fight and die in some pointless show of geopolitical power, If he goes, good riddance. ..."
"... Israel and to a lesser extent Saudi Arabia drive Trump's Iran policy, and Pompeo is their messenger. ..."
"I have to think that NSA Bolton actually believes what he advocates."
There are and have been lots of people who believe what they advocate--Lenin, Trotsky,
Mao, Robespierre, and the Neoconservatives in general among them.
Yeah, consistency may be nice, but what about the actual substance of what Bolton
believes and does?
Personally, I'm not interested in trying to starve Iran into submission or attack it on
behalf of Israel. And I would be interested in actually pursuing a meaningful attempt to
resolve the Korea issue. Bolton is not only on the wrong side of these issues, he is in
general the principal malign force pushing foreign policy insanity in this administration
(as opposed to Adelson et all pushing policy insanity from outside the administration.)
Sorry, but Bolton's "service" sure ain't appreciated by me!
Hyperbole much I see.
If you want to honestly assess someone, you might want to avoid that tact. To my knowledge NSA Bolton is not building concentration camps to send undesirables to
an early grave.
I would be curious what you know about what his agenda is or why.
You can't serve a president well if you're constantly at odds with him. The
Commander-in-Chief has to have his or her own mind about things, advisors are there to
advise. If you want to do one thing but you're being counseled to do otherwise, what
purpose does such a relationship serve?
Nah, they (Bolton and all the neocons) are celebrating the death of another American
soldier killed in a suicide attack just prior to a planned peace summit with the Taliban.
The Taliban and the neocons are two sides that deserve each other, but at the cost of many
innocents.
Its easy to depose any third world government with our military, but one cannot
eradicate an ideology with today's humanitarian standards. So we should just leave and tell
the Taliban they can even take power in Afghanistan again, but if they harbor any groups
that want to attack our country, we'll be back. It only takes a month or so to depose a
third world government. Then we leave again. We can do this over and over again and it'll
be way cheaper than leaving troops there and many fewer casualties.
I don't think Bolton will be in there for the rest of Trump's presidency. Presidential
appointments rarely ever last through the whole administration. Now I'm not when he goes
cause anyone's guess is as good as mine. And will policy actually change for the better or
remain the same?
" If only the Tsar knew how wicked his advisers are! "
We've been hearing of Bolton's imminent demise since the time Trump appointed the
unindicted criminal, and to a position that isn't subject to Congressional advice and
consent.
Bolton is still in office, still making policy, still stovepiping "intelligence" to
Trump, still plotting away like Grima Wormtongue.
If Trump wasn't so close to Bolton, why was he in regular contact with the man before
appointing him, and why does he allow Bolton to control what information Trump gets?
And if you read the latest news, it seems that the occupation of Afghanistan isn't going
anywhere either. Bolton wins again, but some writers at TAC keep holding out hope for
Trump.
"If Trump finally moves against Bolton, it will likely be because Adelson failed to
strenuously object."
Well, isn't that nice? Trump's decision on whether to keep or fire his national security
advisor depends on the whim of the hideous, Israel-uber-alles ideologue Adelson. That sure
makes me feel good. (And by the way, Curt Mills, this is called burying the lede.)
Of course it's only logical. It was clearly Adelson and his ilk who got Bolton hired in
the first place when Trump had initially been unimpressed. In "Fire and Fury," Steve Bannon
allegedly says that Trump didn't think Bolton looked the part of NSA. And it's even more
significant that Adelson and others of a similar cast--e.g., Safra Catz, the dual-national
CEO of Oracle-- engineered a whispering campaign against McMaster that paved the way for
what was effectively his firing.
This piece misses what's important about the Trump administration's foreign/security
policy saga and reduces it to a mere matter of personalities and petty politics. File this
under the heading of discretion being the better part of valor.
"Bolton's ace in the hole was Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate who has
helped drive Trump's Israel policy. If Trump finally moves against Bolton, it will likely
be because Adelson failed to strenuously object."
So -- Ilhan Omar was right??? I thought she was a vile anti-Semite echoing an ancient
slur!!
If Bolton does leave, I won't be sorry to see him go. Bolton's Hawkish opinions are
dangerous to the US' economic health.
Want to go into a deep Recession? Start another long-term foreign war that goes on for
decades - and do it on credit, AGAIN.
Besides, it's not like Bolton was a military man, he openly acknowledges that he didn't
want to go and 'die on some rice paddy' in Vietnam. But, he's willing to send other people's kids to fight and die in some pointless show of
geopolitical power, If he goes, good riddance.
The photo accompanying the article sums it up. Pompeo flanked by an American flag, and both
of them dwarfed by a huge projection of the flag of Israel.
Israel and to a lesser extent Saudi Arabia drive Trump's Iran policy, and Pompeo is
their messenger.
"I have to think that NSA Bolton actually believes what he advocates."
There are and have been lots of people who believe what they advocate--Lenin, Trotsky,
Mao, Robespierre, and the Neoconservatives in general among them.
Yeah, consistency may be nice, but what about the actual substance of what Bolton
believes and does?
"... What was set as a routine status conference in federal court in Washington D.C. for Tuesday, 10 September, has now changed to one with a very significant shift: the judge will establish a briefing schedule and a hearing date for the request (usually called a "motion") to compel the government to produce Brady material and for an order to show cause why the prosecutors involved should not be held in contempt of court. A "brief" is a written argument filed for consideration by a court on a particular issue or issues. It is part of a post-trial appeal to a court of appeals or to the Supreme Court, but can be unilaterally filed or ordered to be filed in a trial court. ..."
"... The case and prosecution of Gen. Flynn have seemed peculiar from the start, as was his sudden resignation as National Security Advisor on 13 February 2017 after a protest against him by vice president Mike Pence. ..."
"... The "special counsel" Robert Mueller was appointed on 17 May 2017. By 30 November 2017 a criminal charge was filed against Flynn in federal court pursuant to a plea bargain agreement, and the next day he appeared in court for the formal hearing to enter a guilty plea before Judge Rudolph Contreras. ..."
"... Six days later on 7 December, Judge Contreras recused himself, and Judge Sullivan was randomly assigned to preside over the case. Why Judge Contreras suddenly bailed out is not known, although one issue might be that he was named to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on 19 May 2016 for a term until 18 May 2023, and warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) may have intercepted communications by Flynn before and after Donald Trump was elected president. ..."
"... The references in the documents and court orders to "Brady material" come from the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court opinion called Brady vs. Maryland. It required the government to produce evidence in its possession that is favorable to the defendant, although the type of evidence and who decided what evidence was "favorable" was the subject of subsequent court opinions and ethical rules of State Bar Associations governing the conduct of attorneys. The opinion in the Brady case interpreted the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution as requiring the disclosure of exculpatory information to the defense in a criminal case. ..."
"... "John Dowd: And the stuff on Flynn is absolutely false. ..."
The term "ex parte" appears in different contexts in the court system, and is heaviest when
one side in a legal dispute meets with the judge behind closed doors without the other side
being present. On 5 September 2019, this uncommon event happened when Gen. Michael Flynn (ret.)
and his new lawyers met privately with Judge Emmet Sullivan about the refusal of the federal
government, through its prosecutors, to grant them security clearances to look at some existing
information and exculpatory material in his criminal case, and any new material that might be
disclosed.
Three documents filed in Flynn's case on 30 August led to the ex parte meeting and a
change in scheduling: a joint status report which was not very joint; a Motion to Compel
Production of Brady Material and for an Order to Show Cause, filed under seal; and a brief in
support of the motion to compel and for a show cause order that is not sealed.
What was set as a routine status conference in federal court in Washington D.C. for Tuesday,
10 September, has now changed to one with a very significant shift: the judge will establish a
briefing schedule and a hearing date for the request (usually called a "motion") to compel the
government to produce Brady material and for an order to show cause why the prosecutors
involved should not be held in contempt of court. A "brief" is a written argument filed for
consideration by a court on a particular issue or issues. It is part of a post-trial appeal to
a court of appeals or to the Supreme Court, but can be unilaterally filed or ordered to be
filed in a trial court.
The court's description appearing in the clerk's docket sheet says, in part--
"09/05/2019 Hearing (Ex Parte) for proceedings before Judge Emmet G. Sullivan held on
9/5/2019 as to Michael T. Flynn. The Court held an ex parte and sealed hearing with Mr. Flynn
and defense counsel to consider Mr. Flynn's request for the Court's intervention on counsels
request for security clearances. See Joint Status Report, ECF No. 107 at 2-3 (stating 'the
government continues to deny [Mr. Flynn's] request for security clearances. [Mr. Flynn's]
attempts to resolve that issue with the government have come to a dead end, thus requiring the
intervention of this Court.').... The Court advised counsel that it intends to resolve 109
Motion to Compel Production of Brady Material before addressing any Court intervention
regarding security clearances for Mr. Flynns counsel."
The case and prosecution of Gen. Flynn have seemed peculiar from the start, as was his
sudden resignation as National Security Advisor on 13 February 2017 after a protest against him
by vice president Mike Pence.
The "special counsel" Robert Mueller was appointed on 17 May 2017. By 30 November 2017 a
criminal charge was filed against Flynn in federal court pursuant to a plea bargain agreement,
and the next day he appeared in court for the formal hearing to enter a guilty plea before
Judge Rudolph Contreras.
Six days later on 7 December, Judge Contreras recused himself, and
Judge Sullivan was randomly assigned to preside over the case. Why Judge Contreras suddenly
bailed out is not known, although one issue might be that he was named to the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court on 19 May 2016 for a term until 18 May 2023, and warrants under
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) may have intercepted communications by Flynn
before and after Donald Trump was elected president.
On 12 December 2017, Judge Sullivan issued his standard order requiring the government to
produce any evidence in its possession that is favorable to the defendant and material to
either the defendant's guilt or punishment [1]. On 21 February 2018, a protective order was
signed governing the use and disclosure of information regarding the case by the parties,
whether unclassified or classified [2].
The case proceeded along to 18 December 2018, when a weird and aborted sentencing hearing
took place, as Judge Sullivan may not have been fully aware of the details of the case or had
not been fully briefed by his law clerks, and said surprising things not expected by the
parties. Any sentencing was then postponed, and that hearing is a story in itself.
Drama resumed in March 2019 when the report of the Mueller group was given to the U.S.
Attorney General consisting of two volumes totalling 448 pages. On 17 May 2019, an assistant
U.S. Attorney filed excerpts of the Mueller report in the court clerk's file.
Meanwhile, Gen. Flynn decided to change lawyers, and discharged the attorneys from the
Covington & Burling law firm of Washington D.C., who withdrew on 6 June 2019. That firm has
been an establishment and silk-stocking group since 1919, with Dean Acheson, later the
Secretary of State, as one of the early members. It now has expanded to offices in 12
additional cities and has over 1,000 lawyers. However, as is known in life, such silk stockings
do not always prevail.
If a lawyer is discharged from representing a client when a matter is pending, the client's
file is to be given to him. Even in the internally protective legal community, dragging your
feet in returning a client's file is a big no-no. The docket sheet revealed a sideshow after
Covington & Burling withdrew from representing Flynn. His new attorneys complained that not
all of the file material had been returned. Covington & Burlington's size and position in
the D.C. Bar meant nothing, as Judge Sullivan responded in a order on 16 July 2019--
"07/16/2019 Minute Order as to Michael T. Flynn. In view of the parties' responses to the
Court's Minute Order of July 9, 2019, the Court, sua sponte, schedules a status conference for
August 27, 2019 at 11:00 AM in Courtroom 24A. Defense counsel has represented to the Court that
Mr. Flynn has not received the entire file from his former counsel. ... In light of the
representations made by defense counsel regarding the delay in receiving the client files, the
Court hereby gives notice to the parties of the Court's intent to invite Senior Legal Ethics
Counsel for the District of Columbia Bar to attend the status conference and explain on the
record the applicable District of Columbia Rules of Professional Conduct. Mr. Flynn's former
counsel shall attend the status conference...."
This threatened kick to the groin area motivated Covington & Burlington to the extent
that nine days later, on 25 July, they signed a paper, subsequently filed, which said that by
then all of Gen. Flynn's file had been returned, and: "The firm never, in any way whatsoever,
conditioned the transfer of files to General Flynn's new counsel on payment of outstanding
fees" [3].
The status conference set for 27 August was then cancelled, and the parties were to file a
joint status report by 30 August and tell the court: "(1) the status of Mr. Flynn's
cooperation; (2) whether the case is ready for sentencing; (3) suggested dates for the
sentencing hearing, if appropriate; and (4) whether there are any issues that would require the
Court's resolution prior to Mr. Flynn's sentencing".
But the joint status report ended up saying, " The parties are unable to reach a joint
response on the above topics. Accordingly, our respective responses are set forth separately
below" [4].
Also on 30 August the two documents were filed that kicked off the new developments: a
sealed request to compel production of material and for a show cause order about whether the
prosecutors should be held in contempt of court, and the brief in support of the request, which
is publicly available.
Larry Johnson noticed the importance of the 30 August brief and discussed it a week ago
[5].
The references in the documents and court orders to "Brady material" come from the 1963 U.S.
Supreme Court opinion called Brady vs. Maryland. It required the government to produce evidence
in its possession that is favorable to the defendant, although the type of evidence and who
decided what evidence was "favorable" was the subject of subsequent court opinions and ethical
rules of State Bar Associations governing the conduct of attorneys. The opinion in the Brady
case interpreted the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution as requiring the disclosure of
exculpatory information to the defense in a criminal case.
The brief is 19 pages long and is useful to read because it describes in more general terms
what certainly would appear in detail in the motion filed under seal. In addition, pages 11-16
present a basic description of the Brady doctrine--
As a possibly helpful coincidence, Judge Sullivan presided over the disgraceful trial of
Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska in 2008, in which the Department of Justice prosecutors did not
disclose exculpatory evidence they had about Stevens, and the misconduct was so blatant that
Judge Sullivan held three prosecutors in contempt of court on 13 February 2009, which forced
them off of the case after the trial was over. New prosecutors saw that the case had real
problems when the evidence favorable to Stevens was considered, and in 2009 requested that the
jury verdict be set aside and cancelled, and the criminal charges dismissed "with prejudice",
which means that they cannot be filed again.
Judge Sullivan on 7 April 2009 appointed an
attorney to investigate the Justice Department lawyers, and it resulted in what is called the Schuelke report, which is referenced in footnote 3 on page 2 of the brief filed in Flynn's case
[6]. Thus, Judge Sullivan knows that attorneys and agents of the Department of Justice can
commit misconduct, and he is capable of addressing it.
However, the procedural posture of Gen. Flynn's case is a difficult one. He signed a plea
bargain agreement and pled guilty to the one charge in open court, going through the whole
drill that accompanies the entry of a plea of guilty, including affirmative statements about
knowledge and voluntariness. However, the one good thing is that he has not yet been sentenced
and a final order has not been signed by the judge.
From the papers in the court clerk's file, it appears as if the new lawyers for Gen. Flynn
are approaching the problem by developing events that are like those which resulted in the
dismissal of the case against Senator Ted Stevens. The request filed on 30 August and its
accompanying brief ask for information favorable to Flynn to be disclosed, plus the initiation
of a contempt of court proceeding against the prosecutors. If the prosecutors from the Mueller
group and the Justice Department are held in contempt of court for their conduct during the
investigation and for failing to make proper disclosures of evidence, they should be forced off
of the case, and other possible remedies may also be available in Gen. Flynn's favor.
The clerk's docket sheet is in reverse chronological order, starting with the recent
documents and going backwards in time to the beginning of the court case--
A few months back, I was dialing between radio stations while driving and heard part of an
interview that caught my attention. The interview was of attorney John Dowd, who represented
president Trump for a period of time during the investigation by special counsel Robert
Mueller. The newly filed documents in the Flynn case brought back to mind the interview of John
Dowd. I found it the other day as a video of the radio program, which was on 19 April 2019,
after the Mueller report had been released. The following excerpt is of interest, and starts at
about 9 minutes and 34 seconds into the interview. The whole interview follows the short
transcript below, and both website citations are to the same interview--
"John Dowd: And the stuff on Flynn is absolutely false.
Brian Kilmeade: What do you mean?
John Dowd: We were ...
Brian Kilmeade: What do you mean the stuff's on ... [crosstalk]
John Dowd: Flynn didn't commit a crime. You know, we were, we helped Flynn's lawyers because
they couldn't find their way around. They couldn't get documents. We got everything for them.
And we, we were told, I was told they were going in to convince the special counsel that there
was no case there.
Brian Kilmeade: Well they said [crosstalk] Hey John, they told, they, they..., in the report
it says Flynn was told by the president to go get the 30,000 missing Hillary e-mails.
The status conference is to begin at 11:00 a.m. today, 10 September. If the position of the
judge remains the same, a schedule for the filing of briefs by the parties and a hearing date
about Flynn's motion will be established, which will create a new dynamic at a sensitive point
in this criminal case.
[1] The standard order of Judge Emmet Sullivan that the government is to produce information
and evidence to the defense.
[6] The report by Henry Schuelke III was completed in November 2011. It is 514 pages after
the table of contents, plus an addendum of comments and objections by the six subjects of his
investigation. The report in the pdf computer format as filed is around 30 megabytes in size,
and so uploading it for viewing is not practical at this time.
Here are just some of the twists and turns in the case, which has gone on for more than
three years.
Flynn's trip to Russia in 2015, where it was claimed Flynn went without the knowledge or
approval of the DIA or anyone in Washington,
was proven not to be true .
Flynn was suspected of being compromised by a supposed Russian agent, Cambridge academic
Svetlana Lokhova, based on allegations from Western intelligence asset Stefan Halper.
This was also proven to be not true.
The very strange post-dated FD-302 form on the FBI's January 2017 interview of Flynn that
wasn't filled out until August 2017, almost seven months afterward, is
revealed in a court filing by Flynn's defense team .
FBI agent Pientka became the
"DOJ's Invisible Man," despite the fact that Congress has repeatedly called for him to
testify. Pientka has remained out of sight and out of mind more than a year and a half since
his name first surfaced in connection with the Flynn case.
Now, it's not that far-fetched of an idea that the Mueller special counsel prosecutors would
hide exculpatory evidence from the Flynn defense team, since they've just admitted to having
done exactly that in another case their
office has been prosecuting .
The defense team for Internet Research Agency/Concord, more popularly known as "the Russian
troll farm case," hasn't been smooth going for the Mueller prosecutors.
Then, in a
filing submitted to the court on Aug. 30, the IRA/Concord defense team alerted Judge
Friedrich that the prosecutors just got around to handing them key evidence the prosecutors had
for the past 18 months. The prosecution gave no explanation whatsoever as to why they hid this
key evidence for more than a year.
It's hard to see at this point how the entire IRA/Concord case isn't tossed out.
What would it mean for Flynn's prosecutors to have been caught hiding exculpatory evidence
from him and his lawyers, even after the presiding judge explicitly ordered them in February to
hand over everything they had?
It would mean that the Flynn case is tossed out, since the prosecution team was caught
engaging in gross misconduct.
Now you can see why Flynn refused to withdraw his guilty plea when Judge Sullivan gave him
the opportunity to do so in late December 2018.
A withdrawal of the guilty plea or a pardon would let the Mueller prosecution team off the
hook.
And they're not getting off the hook.
Flynn hired the best lawyer he possibly could have when it comes to exposing prosecutorial
misconduct. Nobody knows the crafty, corrupt, and dishonest tricks federal prosecutors use
better than Powell, who actually wrote a compelling book about such matters, entitled "
License to Lie: Exposing
Corruption in the Department of Justice ."
Everything this Mueller prosecution team did in withholding exculpatory evidence from
Flynn's defense team -- and continued to withhold even after Judge Sullivan specifically issued
an order about it -- is going to be fully exposed.
Defying a federal judge's Brady order is a one-way ticket to not only getting fired, it's a
serious enough offense to warrant disbarment and prosecution.
If it turns out Mueller special counsel prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence -- not
only in the IRA/Concord case, but also in the cases against Flynn, Paul Manafort, Michael
Cohen, Rick Gates, Roger Stone, and others -- that will have a huge impact.
If they are willing to withhold exculpatory evidence in one case, why wouldn't they do the
same thing in other cases they were prosecuting? Haven't they have already demonstrated they
are willing to break the rules? Tags
We have become a third-world country. Even throwing Mueller and his entire prosecutors'
team in jail would not be enough to restore confidence in our legal system. But it would be a
start.
On or about December 28, 2016, the Russian Ambassador contacted FLYNN.
c. On or about December 29, 2016, FLYNN called a senior official of the Presidential
Transition Team ("PTT official"), who was with other senior ·members of the
Presidential Transition Team at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, to discuss
what, if anything, to communicate to the Russian Ambassador about the U.S. Sanctions. On that
call, FLYNN and 2 Case 1:17-cr-00232-RC Document 4 Filed 12/01/17 Page 2 of 6 the PTT
official discussed the U.S. Sanctions, including the potential impact of those sanctions on
the incoming administration's foreign policy goals. The PIT official and FLYNN also discussed
that the members of the Presidential Transition Team at Mar-a-Lago did not want Russia to
escalate the situation. d. Immediately after his phone call with the PTT official, FLYNN
called the Russian Ambassador and requested that Russia not escalate the situation and only
respond to the U.S. Sanctions in a reciprocal manner. e. Shortly after his phone call with
the Russian Ambassador, FLYNN spoke with the PTT official to report on the substance of his
call with the Russian Ambassador, including their discussion of the U.S. Sanctions. f. On or
about December 30, 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin released a statement indicating
that Russia would not take retaliatory measures in response to the U.S. Sanctions at that
time. g. On or about December 31, 2016, the Russian Ambassador called FLYNN and informed him
that Russia had chosen not to retaliate in response to FL YNN's request. h. After his phone
call with the Russian Ambassador, FLYNN spoke with senior members of the Presidential
Transition Team about FL YNN's conversations with the Russian Ambassador regarding the U.S.
Sanctions and Russia's decision not to escalate the situation.
The coup plot between the international intelligence community (which includes our
FBI-CIA-etc) and their unregistered foreign agents in the multinational corporate media is
slowly being revealed.
Here’s another possibility... elites in the US Gov set on running a soft coup
against a duly elected president and his team made up a whole pile of **** and passed it off
as truth.
The Manafort thing has me totally riled since HRC's "Password" guy and his brother were
PARTNERS with manafort, did the same damn things, and were NOT investigated.
Donald Trump is many things to many people, but is not his social personna to be patient.
He is being VERY patient to let this unfold, to "give a man enough rope" or political party
and its owner, as it may be....
Donna Brazile's book is under-rated: it holds they keys as to who ran the DNC and why
after Obie bailed.
Our local community rag (Vermont) had an opinion piece last week about "The slide towards
Facism", where the author breathlessly stated that she had learned from a MSNBC expose by
Rachel Maddow that the administration was firing researchers at NASA and EPA as well as
cutting back funding for LGBTQ support groups. Oh the horror. The author conveniently forgot
that the same dyke had lied for 2 years about Russia,Russia,Russia but it's still OK to
believe any **** that drops out of her mouth.
This is the level of insanity happening around here. Of course it is Bernie's turf.
People who are so stupid and gullible deserve everything they are gonna get.
Poor Flynn. Rail-roaded by ZOG and Obama and Hillary and Co. I hope beyond hope that the
truth is revealed and that he can sue the **** out of the seditionists/(((seditionists))) who
put him into this mess such that his great-great-grandchildren will never have to work.
I also blame Trump for throwing Flynn under the bus.
If they are willing to withhold exculpatory evidence in one case, why wouldn’t they
do the same thing in other cases they were prosecuting? Haven’t they have already
demonstrated they are willing to break the rules?
Duh! Because it's easy and the media never covers it and AG Barr and FBI director Wray
will cover it all up. America no longer operates under rule of law, and now we all know it.
Never cooperate with them!
flynn didn't rape children, to buzy trying to fight liberators of iraq and afganistan from
invasion... that's his major crime.
I guess, kelly, mattis, mcmaster neither are on the child rape trend. but what can they
do? when the entire cia and doj and fbi are full on controlled and run by the pedos? it's
like when all the cardinals and the pope are pedos, what a bishop to do...
Why would CIA Rothschild'd up puppet Trump pick only the best William Barr?
Who told Acosta to cut no prosecution deal with Epstein? George Bush? Robert Mukasey? or
Bob Mueller?
Trump, Barr, Bush, Mueller all on the same no rule of law national no government
pys op , for Epstein & 9/11 clean op team Poppa Bush, Clinton, &
Mossad.
Barr: CIA operative
It is a sobering fact that American presidents (many of whom have been corrupt) have gone
out of their way to hire fixers to be their attorney generals.
Consider recent history: Loretta Lynch (2015-2017), Eric Holder (2009-2015), Michael
Mukasey (2007-2009), Alberto Gonzales (2005-2007), John Ashcroft (2001-2005),Janet Reno
(1993-2001), **** Thornburgh (1988-1991), Ed Meese (1985-1988), etc.
Barr was a full-time CIA operative, recruited by Langley out of high school, starting
in 1971. Barr’s youth career goal was to head the CIA.
CIA operative assigned to the China directorate, where he became close to powerful CIA
operative George H.W. Bush, whose accomplishments already included the CIA/Cuba Bay of
Pigs, Asia CIA operations (Vietnam War, Golden Triangle narcotics), Nixon foreign policy
(Henry Kissinger), and the Watergate operation.
When George H.W. Bush became CIA Director in 1976, Barr joined the CIA’s
“legal office” and Bush’s inner circle, and worked alongside Bush’s
longtime CIA enforcers Theodore “Ted” Shackley, Felix Rodriguez, Thomas Clines,
and others, several of whom were likely involved with the Bay of Pigs/John F. Kennedy
assassination, and numerous southeast Asian operations, from the Phoenix Program to Golden
Triangle narco-trafficking.
Barr stonewalled and destroyed the Church Committee investigations into CIA
abuses.
Barr stonewalled and stopped inquiries in the CIA bombing assassination of Chilean
opposition leader Orlando Letelier.
Barr joined George H.W. Bush’s legal/intelligence team during Bush’s vice
presidency (under President Ronald Reagan) Rose from assistant attorney general to Chief
Legal Counsel to attorney general (1991) during the Bush 41 presidency.
Barr was a key player in the Iran-Contra operation, if not the most important member of
the apparatus, simultaneously managing the operation while also “fixing” the
legal end, ensuring that all of the operatives could do their jobs without fear of exposure
or arrest.
In his attorney general confirmation, Barr vowed to “attack criminal
organizations”, drug smugglers and money launderers. It was all hot air: as AG, Barr
would preserve, protect, cover up, and nurture the apparatus that he helped create, and use
Justice Department power to escape punishment.
Barr stonewalled and stopped investigations into all Bush/Clinton and CIA crimes,
including BCCI and BNL CIA drug banking, the theft of Inslaw/PROMIS software, and all
crimes of state committed by Bush
Barr provided legal cover for Bush’s illegal foreign policy and war crimes
Barr left Washington, and went through the “rotating door” to the corporate
world, where he took on numerous directorships and counsel positions for major companies.
In 2007 and again from 2017, Barr was counsel for politically-connected international law
firm Kirkland
& Ellis . Among its other notable attorneys and alumni are Kenneth Starr, John
Bolton, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and numerous Trump administration attorneys.
K&E’s clients include sex trafficker/pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and Mitt
Romney’s Bain Capital.
A strong case can be made that William Barr was as powerful and important a figure in the
Bush apparatus as any other, besides Poppy Bush himself.
there is a war on america, and the DoD and men like flynn are too arrogant, dumb, and
proud to admit they have been fucked and conned deeply by men way smarter than them...
we don't need ******* brains, but killers to wage this revolution against the american
pedostate.
and that, what they master, they don't want to do.
if they want money, they should have learned to trade and not kill...
Halper has links to the CIA and MI6. He also served in the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan
administrations.
Halper met with Carter Page, a volunteer adviser to the Trump campaign, at a Cambridge
symposium held on July 11 and 12, 2016. Page had just returned from a trip to Russia a few days
prior and said he remained in contact with Halper for a number of months after that.
Page's trip became the core subject of the Steele dossier -- a collection of unsubstantiated
claims about Trump-Russia collusion put together by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele that
was paid for by Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National
Committee. The dossier was used by the FBI as the core evidence to obtain from the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court a warrant to spy on Page several weeks before the presidential
election
On Sept. 2, 2016, Halper also contacted George Papadopoulos, another Trump campaign aide,
and offered $3,000 and a paid trip to London to write a paper about a gas field in the
Mediterranean Sea. Papadopoulos accepted the offer and flew to London, where he met Halper and
his assistant.
On Aug. 31 or Sept. 1, 2016, Halper also met with Trump campaign co-Chairman Sam Clovis in
Northern Virginia and offered help to the Trump campaign with foreign policy, The Washington
Post
reported .
Halper's concern about Lokhova is portrayed as feigned in her complaint, since he seemed to
have shown no concern for about two years after the 2014 Flynn meeting, only showing concern
after Flynn started to aid Trump.
In fact, Halper appears himself to be rather close to Russian intelligence, having invited
Vladimir Trubnikov, former director of Russian intelligence, to teach at CIS at least twice --
in 2012 and in 2015 -- according to the complaint. Trubnikov obliged him both times.
Between 2012 and 2017, Halper was
paid more than a $1 million by the Office of Net Assessment, a strategy think tank that
falls directly under the U.S. secretary of defense.
Adam Lovinger, an analyst at the think tank, raised alarm about the contracts to Halper,
but was punished for it , according to his lawyer.
Flynn
Flynn was one of the most consequential post-9/11 intelligence officials in the world.
"Mike Flynn's impact on the nation's War on Terror probably trumps any other single person
as his energy and skill at harnessing the Intelligence Community into a focused effort was
literally historic," wrote then-Brig. Gen. John Mulholland in Flynn's 2007 performance
review.
At the time, Flynn headed intelligence at the Joint Special Operations Command.
Mulholland, himself a former special forces officer, called Flynn "easily the best
intelligence professional of any service serving today."
In 2014, however, he was forced into retirement over disagreements with the Obama
administration.
More than a year ago, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to two FBI agents about conversations
with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that took place when former President Barack Obama
imposed additional sanctions on Russia in December 2016.
He also pleaded guilty to lying about asking Russia to vote against or delay the vote on a
U.N. Security Council resolution.
Finally, he pleaded guilty to lying about his foreign lobbying disclosures regarding the
extent to which his work benefiting the Turkish government was overseen by that government.
Foreign lobbying paperwork violations are seldom prosecuted. Flynn said the work started in
August 2016; he shut down his lobbying firm in November 2016.
Flynn has extensively cooperated with government prosecutors
on multiple investigations and further cooperation will give him yet more grounds to ask
for a lenient sentence. Even before the delay, the prosecutors were asking for a lenient
sentence, including no prison time, while the defense wanted no more than a year of probation
and community service.
Lt. Gen. Michael
Flynn appears to have put the team of former special counsel Robert Mueller on the
defensive, unraveling what had been suggested to be a possible unofficial deal with the
prosecutors.
Flynn, former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty in 2017 to
one count of lying to the FBI. The Mueller team recommended a light sentence for him, including
no prison time, officially because of his contrition for the crime and extensive cooperation
with multiple Justice Department investigations.
But it appears that another, unofficial, deal may have been in place.
Several weeks before Flynn signed his plea,
NBC News reported , based on unnamed sources, that the Mueller team was trying to get
Flynn's cooperation by threatening to indict his son, Michael Flynn Jr.
"If the elder Flynn is willing to cooperate with investigators in order to help his son it
could also change his own fate, potentially limiting any legal consequences," the article
stated.
This isn't how an official plea deal would work, according to former FBI agent and Epoch
Times contributor Marc Ruskin.
"It would be done with a wink and a nod," he said in a previous phone interview, later
adding that "it wouldn't be binding, but it would be like an understanding."
It's not clear whether any such deal was reached and if so, what specifically it entailed.
But Flynn's case involves a number of peculiarities that suggest something was going on behind
the scenes.
'Star Witness' Strzok
Flynn's statement of offense attached to his plea acknowledges that he lied to the FBI
during a Jan. 24, 2017, interview.
However, the FBI agent that wrote the report from the interview was Peter Strzok, who was
later kicked off the Mueller team after the revelation of his animus toward Trump in texts
then-FBI lawyer Lisa Page, with whom he was having an extramarital affair. Strzok was later
fired from the bureau, while Page left on her own.
"Michael Flynn would have faced no legal jeopardy at all if he just wouldn't have pleaded
guilty because they would have never gotten a conviction with Peter Strzok as their star
witness," Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who sits on the House Judiciary Committee,
told Fox News on Dec. 4.
Lobbying Forms
Flynn's statement also included an admission that the forms submitted by lawyers for his
now-defunct lobbying company, Flynn Intel Group (FIG), contained false and misleading
statements.
Flynn was never charged with lying on the forms and neither was his son, who also worked for
the firm.
The Mueller team simply used Flynn's admission to charge Flynn's former partner in FIG,
Bijan Rafiekian, and Ekim Alptekin, a Turkish businessman and FIG's client, with false
statements on the lobbying forms and for conspiring to act as unregistered lobbyists for
Turkey.
The lobbying involved an op-ed published in The Hill under Flynn's name about Fethullah
Gulen, an Islamic cleric living in exile in Pennsylvania who runs a group that Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed for an attempted 2016 coup.
Flynn was supposed to testify on the case and has asked the court to delay his sentencing
until after that matter is concluded.
Flynn's Move
Last month, however, Flynn made an unexpected move. He fired his lawyers -- the same lawyers
he hired to do the lobbying paperwork for his firm. His new team includes Sidney Powell, a
former federal prosecutor who is a
critic of corruption in the Justice Department in general and of Mueller in particular.
Later that month, the Mueller team asked Flynn to testify that he signed the lobbying forms
knowing about the false statements and intending for them.
He refused , saying he only acknowledged the falsities with hindsight, but wasn't aware of
them at the time.
This angered Brandon Van Grack, one of Mueller's main prosecutors, according to Flynn's
lawyers.
'Retaliation'
Shortly after that, the Mueller team did several things that Powell called a
"retaliation."
They called off Flynn's testimony and tried to put a gag order on him to stop him from
disclosing that fact.
Then they tried to recast him as a co-conspirator in the lobbying case, despite earlier
telling the court multiple times that he wasn't one.
They also had an FBI agent directly call and question Flynn Jr. "despite knowing that he was
represented by counsel," Flynn's lawyers said in a court filing. "The Agent persisted in trying
to speak with him even after he said to call his attorney."
Then, on July 11, they designated Flynn Jr. as a
witness in the lobbying case, though he wasn't on the original witness list from the day
before (
pdf ).
No Deal?
If Flynn is indeed being punished for reneging on the "wink and a nod" deal, the Mueller
team seems to have the short end of the stick now because, officially, there is no deal.
The judge in the lobbying case made it clear that the government has yet to prove there was
a conspiracy to begin with, not to mention that Flynn was a co-conspirator. Meanwhile, Powell
told the judge in the Flynn case that the severity of his sentence shouldn't be affected
because he's still cooperating with the government -- he simply clarified that what the Mueller
team wanted him to say went beyond what he'd previously acknowledged and wasn't true.
If there was a deal, the Mueller team has by and large already delivered on its side of it.
Whatever leverage it had over Flynn now appears about spent. Does Van Grack still have a card
or two to play? And if so, does he really want to tip his hand?
New Questions
On July 12, the Mueller team handed a statement to Rafiekian's
lawyers saying that the government has "multiple independent pieces of information relating
to the Turkish government's efforts to influence United States policy on Turkey and Fethullah
Gulen, including information relating to communications, interactions, and a relationship
between Ekim Alptekin and Michael Flynn because of Michael Flynn's relationship with an ongoing
presidential campaign without any reference to [Rafiekian] or FIG."
Rafiekian's lawyers seized on the statement, arguing that Flynn was
"secretly acting on behalf of Turkey."
But they also acknowledged that they haven't seen any such evidence.
Powell seemed unimpressed.
"We have no idea what the government is talking about. It smacks of desperation," she said in a
statement , highlighting that during Trump's presidential campaign "countless people"
reached out to Flynn, who was an adviser to Trump.
"Whatever it is, it cannot be new information to the prosecution, and it was only a few
months ago prosecutors recommended probation for him," Powell said. "As we have said in our
recent filings, this can only be retaliation for his refusal to answer a question the way they
wanted."
The Mueller team's claim raises more questions: How did it get this information? How long
have they been sitting on it and why? If Alptekin reached out to Flynn on behalf of Turkey
explicitly because Flynn advised Trump, why haven't we heard about it by now? Did Turkey reach
out to the Clinton camp too? After all, it was Clinton who was widely expected to replace
President Barack Obama, who already had an amicable relationship with Erdogan.
In fact, just days before Rafiekian and Alptekin engaged in talks about the Gulen job in
July 2016, Obama called Erdogan "to deliver what a senior administration official described as
a 'shout-out' for his resilience in the face of a failed coup attempt, and to express relief
that the Turkish president and his family were safe," The
New York Times reported .
Turkey was trying to make the Obama administration extradite Gulen, but why it would try to
get help specifically from Flynn, who was known to be at odds with the Obama administration,
remains unclear.
If the Obama administration, however, somehow learned that Flynn's firm, unregistered to
boot, was working for Alptekin, who is known to have ties to Erdogan, it would have given it a
perfect pretext to target Flynn for FISA surveillance as an "agent of a foreign power."
While it has been speculated that the FBI took out a FISA warrant on Flynn to spy on the
Trump campaign, that hasn't been confirmed.
Update: The article has been updated to reflect that Michael Flynn continues to cooperate
with prosecutors.
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"... Contrary to the official rationale, the detention of the Iranian tanker was not consistent with the 2012 EU regulation on sanctions against the Assad government in Syria. The EU Council regulation in question specifies in Article 35 that the sanctions were to apply only within the territory of EU member states, to a national or business entity or onboard an aircraft or vessel "under the jurisdiction of a member state." ..."
"... The notice required the Gibraltar government to detain any such ship for at least 72 hours if it entered "British Gibraltar Territorial Waters." Significantly, however, the video statement by Gibraltar's chief minister Fabian Picardo on July 4 explaining the seizure of the Grace 1 made no such claim and avoided any mention of the precise location of the ship when it was seized. ..."
"... There is a good reason why the chief minister chose not to draw attention to the issue of the ship's location: it is virtually impossible that the ship was in British Gibraltar territorial waters at any time before being boarded. The UK claims territorial waters of three nautical miles from its coast, whereas the Strait of Gibraltar is 7.5 nautical miles wide at its narrowest point. That would make the limit of UK territory just north of the middle of the Strait. ..."
"... But international straits must have clearly defined and separated shipping lanes going in different directions. The Grace 1 was in the shipping lane heading east toward the Mediterranean, which is south of the lane for ships heading west toward the Atlantic and thus clearly closer to the coast of Morocco than to the coast of Gibraltar, as can be seen from this live view of typical ship traffic through the strait . So it is quite implausible that the Grace 1 strayed out of its shipping lane into British territorial waters at any time before it was boarded. ..."
"... Such a move clearly violates the global treaty governing the issue -- the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea . Articles 37 through 44 of that agreement, ratified by 167 states, including the UK and the European Union, establish a "regime of transit passage" for international straits like the Strait of Gibraltar that guarantees freedom of navigation for merchant ships. The rules of that regime explicitly forbid states bordering the strait from interfering with the transit passage of a merchant ship, with very narrowly defined exceptions. ..."
"... The evidence indicates, moreover, that the UK's actions were part of a broader scheme coordinated with the Trump administration to tighten pressure on Iran's economy by reducing Iran's ability to export goods. ..."
"... On July 19, Reuters London correspondent Guy Falconbridge reported , "[S]everal diplomatic sources said the United States asked the UK to seize the vessel." ..."
"... Detailed evidence of Bolton deep involvement in the British plan to seize the Iranian tanker has surfaced in reporting on the withdrawal of Panamanian flag status for the Grace 1. ..."
"... The role of Panama's National Security Council signaled Bolton's hand, since he would have been the point of contact with that body. The result of his maneuvering was to leave the Grace 1 without the protection of flag status necessary to sail or visit a port in the middle of its journey. This in conjunction with the British seizure of the ship was yet another episode in the extraordinary American effort to deprive Iran of the most basic sovereign right to participate in the global economy. ..."
"... Back in 2013 2013 there was a rumour afoot that Edward Snowden, who at the time was stuck in the Moscow airport, trapped there by the sudden cancellation mid-flight of his US passport, was going spirited away by the President of Bolivia Evo Morales aboard his private jet. So what the US apparently was lean on it European allies to stop him. This they duly and dutifully did. Spain, France, and others denied overflight rights to the Bolivian jet, forcing it to turn back and land in Austria. There was even a report that once on the ground, the Spanish ambassador to Austria showed up and asked the Bolivian president if he might come out to the plain for a coffee--and presumably to have a poke around to see he could catch Snowden in the act of vanishing into the cargo hold. ..."
"... The rumor turned out to be completely false, but it was the Europeans who wound up with the egg on their face. Not to mention the ones who broke international law. ..."
"... Bolton persuaded the British to play along with the stupid US "maximum pressure" strategy, regardless of its illegality. (Maybe the British government thought that it would placate Trump after Ambassadorgate.) And then of course Pompeo threw them under the bus. It's getting hard to be a US ally (except for Saudi Arabia and Israel.) ..."
"... Spain lodged a formal complaint about the action, because it considers the sea around Gibraltar to be part of its international waters, "We are studying the circumstances and looking at how this affects our sovereignty," Josep Borell, Spain's acting foreign minister, said. So Gibraltar or Spanish waters? Gibraltar – Territorial Waters (1 pg): ..."
"... Worse than the bad behavior of Bolton, and the poodle behavior of Britain, is the utter failure of our press to provide us a skeptical eye and honest look at events. They've been mere stenographers and megaphones for power doing wrong. ..."
"... And this just in. A UK government official has just stated, related to the Iranian tanker stopped near Gibraltar, the UK will not be part of Trump's 'maximum pressure' gambit on Iran. We shall see if Boris Johnson is for or against that policy. ..."
"... John Bolton, war criminal. ..."
"... John Bolton has been desperate for a war with Iran for decades. This is just another escalation in his desperate attempt to get one. He's the classic neocon chicken hawk who is bravely ready to risk and sacrifice other people's lives at the drop of a hat. ..."
"... Since UK is abusing its control of Gibraltar by behaving like a thug, maybe it is better for the international community to support an independent state of Gibraltar, or at least let Spain has it. It will be better for world peace. ..."
"... While I agree with the gist of the article, remember that Bolton has no authority except that which is given to him. So stop blaming Bolton. Blame Trump. ..."
"... The provocations will go on and on until Iran shoots back and then Wash. will get the war it's been trying to start for some time now to pay back all those campaign donors who will profit from another war. ..."
"... The MIC needs constant wars to use up munitions so new ones can be manufactured. It's really just about business and politicians working together for mutual benefit to keep those contributions coming in. With all the other issues facing America, a war with Iran will just add to the end of the USA which is coming faster than you think. ..."
Did John Bolton Light the Fuse of the UK-Iranian Tanker Crisis? Evidence suggests he pressured the Brits to seize an
Iranian ship. Why? More war. By Gareth
Porter •
July 23, 2019
While Iran's seizure of a British tanker near the Strait of Hormuz on Friday was a clear response to the British capture of an
Iranian tanker in the Strait of Gibraltar on July 4, both the UK and U.S. governments are insisting that Iran's operation was illegal
while the British acted legally.
The facts surrounding the British detention of the Iranian ship, however, suggest that, like the Iranian detention of the British
ship, it was an illegal interference with freedom of navigation through an international strait. And even more importantly, evidence
indicates that the British move was part of a bigger scheme coordinated by National Security Advisor John Bolton.
British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt called the Iran seizure of the British-flagged tanker Stena Impero "unacceptable" and insisted
that it is "essential that freedom of navigation is maintained and that all ships can move safely and freely in the region."
But the British denied Iran that same freedom of navigation through the Strait of Gibraltar on July 4.
The rationale for detaining the Iranian vessel and its crew was that it was delivering oil to Syria in violation of EU sanctions.
This was never questioned by Western news media. But a closer look reveals that the UK had no legal right to enforce those sanctions
against that ship, and that it was a blatant violation of the clearly defined global rules that govern the passage of merchant ships
through international straits.
The evidence also reveals that Bolton was actively involved in targeting the Grace 1 from the time it began its journey in May
as part of the broader Trump administration campaign of "maximum pressure" on Iran.
Contrary to the official rationale, the detention of the Iranian tanker was not consistent with the 2012 EU regulation on
sanctions against the Assad government in Syria. The
EU Council regulation in question
specifies in Article 35 that the sanctions were to apply only within the territory of EU member states, to a national or business
entity or onboard an aircraft or vessel "under the jurisdiction of a member state."
The UK government planned to claim that the Iranian ship was under British "jurisdiction" when it was passing through the Strait
of Gibraltar to justify its seizure as legally consistent with the EU regulation. A
maritime news outlet has reported that on July 3, the day before the seizure of the ship, the Gibraltar government, which has
no control over its internal security or foreign affairs, issued
a regulation to provide what it would claim
as a legal pretext for the operation. The regulation gave the "chief minister" of the British the power to detain any ship if there
were "reasonable grounds" to "suspect" that it had been or even that it was even "likely" to be in breach of EU regulations.
The notice required the Gibraltar government to detain any such ship for at least 72 hours if it entered "British Gibraltar
Territorial Waters." Significantly, however, the video statement
by Gibraltar's chief minister Fabian Picardo on July 4 explaining the seizure of the Grace 1 made no such claim and avoided any
mention of the precise location of the ship when it was seized.
There is a good reason why the chief minister chose not to draw attention to the issue of the ship's location: it is virtually
impossible that the ship was in British Gibraltar territorial waters at any time before being boarded. The UK claims
territorial waters of three nautical miles from its coast, whereas
the Strait of Gibraltar is 7.5 nautical miles wide at its narrowest point. That would make the limit of UK territory just north of
the middle of the Strait.
But international straits must have clearly defined and separated shipping lanes going in different directions. The Grace
1 was in the shipping lane heading east
toward the Mediterranean, which is south of the lane for ships heading west toward the Atlantic and thus clearly closer to the
coast of Morocco than to the coast of Gibraltar, as can be seen from this
live view of typical ship traffic
through the strait . So it is quite implausible that the Grace 1 strayed out of its shipping lane into British territorial waters
at any time before it was boarded.
But even if the ship had done so, that would not have given the UK "jurisdiction" over the Grace 1 and allowed it to legally
seize the ship. Such a move clearly violates the global treaty governing the issue -- the
United Nations Convention
on the Law of the Sea . Articles 37 through 44 of that agreement, ratified by 167 states, including the UK and the European Union,
establish a "regime of transit passage" for international straits like the Strait of Gibraltar that guarantees freedom of navigation
for merchant ships. The rules of that regime explicitly forbid states bordering the strait from interfering with the transit passage
of a merchant ship, with very narrowly defined exceptions.
These articles allow coastal states to adopt regulations relating to safety of navigation, pollution control, prevention of fishing,
and "loading or unloading any commodity in contravention of customs, fiscal, immigration or sanitary laws and regulations" of bordering
states -- but for no other reason. The British seizure and detention of the Grace 1 was clearly not related to any of these concerns
and thus a violation of the treaty.
The evidence indicates, moreover, that the UK's actions were part of a broader scheme coordinated with the Trump administration
to tighten pressure on Iran's economy by reducing Iran's ability to export goods.
The statement by Gibraltar's chief minister said the
decision to seize the ship was taken after the receipt of "information" that provided "reasonable grounds" for suspicion that it
was carrying oil destined for Syria's Banyas refinery. That suggested the intelligence had come from a government that neither he
nor the British wished to reveal.
BBC defense correspondent Jonathan Beale reported: "[I]t appears
the intelligence came from the United States." Acting Spanish Foreign Minister Joseph Borrell commented on July 4 that the British
seizure had followed "a demand from the United States to the UK." On July 19, Reuters London correspondent Guy Falconbridge
reported , "[S]everal diplomatic sources said the United States asked the UK to seize the vessel."
Detailed evidence of Bolton deep involvement in the British plan to seize the Iranian tanker has surfaced in reporting on
the withdrawal of Panamanian flag status for the Grace 1.
Panama was the flag state for many of the Iranian-owned vessels carrying various items exported by Iran. But when the Trump administration
reinstated economic sanctions against Iran in October 2018, it included prohibitions on industry services such as insurance and reinsurance.
This decision was accompanied by
political pressure on Panama to withdraw Panamanian flag status from 59 Iranian vessels, many of which were owned by Iranian
state-affiliated companies. Without such flag status, the Iranian-owned vessels could not get insurance for shipments by freighter.
That move was aimed at discouraging ports, canal operators, and private firms from allowing Iranian tankers to use their facilities.
The State Department's Brian Hook, who is in charge of the sanctions,
warned those
entities last November that the Trump administration believed they would be responsible for the costs of an accident involving a
self-insured Iranian tanker.
But the Grace 1 was special case, because it still had Panamanian flag status when it began its long journey around the Southern
tip of Africa on the way to the Mediterranean. That trip began in late May, according to Automatic Identification System
data cited by Riviera Maritime Media . It was no coincidence that the Panamanian Maritime Authority
delisted the Grace 1 on May 29 -- just as the ship was beginning its journey. That decision came immediately after Panama's National
Security Council issued an alert
claiming that the Iranian-owned tanker "may be participating in terrorism financing in supporting the destabilization activities
of some regimes led by terrorist groups."
The Panamanian body did not cite any evidence that the Grace 1 had ever been linked to terrorism.
The role of Panama's National Security Council signaled Bolton's hand, since he would have been the point of contact with
that body. The result of his maneuvering was to leave the Grace 1 without the protection of flag status necessary to sail or visit
a port in the middle of its journey. This in conjunction with the British seizure of the ship was yet another episode in the extraordinary
American effort to deprive Iran of the most basic sovereign right to participate in the global economy.
Now that Iran has detained a British ship in order to force the UK to release the Grace 1, the British Foreign Ministry will claim
that its seizure of the Iranian ship was entirely legitimate. The actual facts, however, put that charge under serious suspicion.
Gareth Porter is an investigative reporter and regular contributor to The American Conservative . He is also the author
of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.
Honestly the Brits are such idiots, we lied them into a war once. They knew we were lying and went for it anyway. Now the are
falling for it again. Maybe it is May's parting gift to Boris?
Same EU legislation only forbids Syria exporting oil and not EU entities selling to Syria (albeit with some additional paperwork).
However, it doesn't forbid other non-EU states to sell oil to Syria. They are not behaving like the US. And this is also not UN
sanctioned. In fact, UK is also acting against the spirit of JPCOA towards Iran. Speak about Perfidious Albion (others would say
US lapdog).
Back in 2013 2013 there was a rumour afoot that Edward Snowden, who at the time was stuck in the Moscow airport, trapped
there by the sudden cancellation mid-flight of his US passport, was going spirited away by the President of Bolivia Evo Morales
aboard his private jet. So what the US apparently was lean on it European allies to stop him. This they duly and dutifully did.
Spain, France, and others denied overflight rights to the Bolivian jet, forcing it to turn back and land in Austria. There was
even a report that once on the ground, the Spanish ambassador to Austria showed up and asked the Bolivian president if he might
come out to the plain for a coffee--and presumably to have a poke around to see he could catch Snowden in the act of vanishing
into the cargo hold.
The rumor turned out to be completely false, but it was the Europeans who wound up with the egg on their face. Not to mention
the ones who broke international law.
Now we find that once again a European country had (apparently) gone out on a limb for the US--and wound up with egg on its
face for trying to show its loyalty to the US in an all-too-slavish fashion by doing America's dirty work.
Bolton persuaded the British to play along with the stupid US "maximum pressure" strategy, regardless of its illegality. (Maybe
the British government thought that it would placate Trump after Ambassadorgate.) And then of course Pompeo threw them under the
bus. It's getting hard to be a US ally (except for Saudi Arabia and Israel.)
The very fact that the UK tried to present its hijack of Iran Oil as an implementation of EU sanctions dovetail well with Bolton's
objective of creating another of those "international coalitions" without a UN mandate engaging in 'Crimes of Aggression".
The total lack of support from the EU for this UK hijack signals another defeat to both the UK and the neocons of America.
Too bad there isn't an international version of the ACLU to argue Iran's legal case before the EU body. What typically happens
is that Iran will refuse to send representation because that would in effect, acknowledge their authority. The EU will have a
Kangaroo court and enter a vacant decision. This has happened numerous times in the U.S.
Would anyone in the U.S. or EU recognize an Iranian court making similar claims? Speaking of which, the entire point of UN
treaties and international law is to prevent individual countries from passing special purpose legislation targeting specific
countries. Why couldn't Iran pass a law sanctioning EU vessels that tried to use their territorial waters, what is so special
about the EU, because it is an acronym?
Spain lodged a formal complaint about the action, because it considers the sea around Gibraltar to be part of its international
waters, "We are studying the circumstances and looking at how this affects our sovereignty," Josep Borell, Spain's acting foreign
minister, said. So Gibraltar or Spanish waters? Gibraltar – Territorial Waters (1 pg):
https://www.academia.edu/30...
Worse than the bad behavior of Bolton, and the poodle behavior of Britain, is the utter failure of our press to provide us
a skeptical eye and honest look at events. They've been mere stenographers and megaphones for power doing wrong.
Thanks for the investigative reporting. Trump has lied almost 11,000 times, so I think nobody expects the truth from The Trump
Administration anytime soon. Especially if it goes against the narrative.
And this just in. A UK government official has just stated, related to the Iranian tanker stopped near Gibraltar, the UK will
not be part of Trump's 'maximum pressure' gambit on Iran. We shall see if Boris Johnson is for or against that policy.
OK, so why did the Brits go along with it? Are they so stupid as to not figure out that Iran might respond in kind, or did the
Brits not also want war?
John Bolton has been desperate for a war with Iran for decades. This is just another escalation in his desperate attempt to
get one. He's the classic neocon chicken hawk who is bravely ready to risk and sacrifice other people's lives at the drop of a
hat.
Since UK is abusing its control of Gibraltar by behaving like a thug, maybe it is better for the international community to
support an independent state of Gibraltar, or at least let Spain has it. It will be better for world peace.
While I agree with the gist of the article, remember that Bolton has no authority except that which is given to him.
So stop blaming Bolton. Blame Trump.
The provocations will go on and on until Iran shoots back and then Wash. will get the war it's been trying to start for some time
now to pay back all those campaign donors who will profit from another war.
The MIC needs constant wars to use up munitions so
new ones can be manufactured. It's really just about business and politicians working together for mutual benefit to keep those
contributions coming in. With all the other issues facing America, a war with Iran will just add to the end of the USA which is
coming faster than you think.
"... The "issue" in question was no small matter. Last year, Alptekin paid $530,000 to retired Lt. General Michael Flynn to lobby on behalf of Turkish interests ..."
"... But it later emerged that Flynn had failed to register as a foreign lobbyist for this work, as required by law, and that he was under federal investigation for his secret lobbying for Alptekin. ..."
"... He denied to ABC News that he and his company had represented the government of Turkey. (In his retroactive filing, Flynn noted that his work for Alptekin "could be construed to have principally benefitted the Republic of Turkey.") Alptekin blamed the "highly politicized situation" in the United States for the "misunderstanding and misperceptions" around his company and hiring of Flynn. ..."
"... Perhaps the in-fighting within the deep state will reveal more of their earlier machinations in the days to come. ..."
I have obtained new information that may offer some new insights into the Obama
Administration's covert action to entrap General Michael Flynn. This builds on my last piece--
The Obama Administration Manufactured the Case Against General Flynn. When this story is
finally told, I think we will learn that Flynn's FARA problems may have started with a CIA
officer, acting on the direction of then CIA Director Brennan, who enlisted the Israelis to ask
Ratio Oil Exploration (an Israeli company) to commission their partner, INOVO BV, to hire
Flynn's company. INOVO BV, out of the blue, asked the Flynn Investigative Group aka FIG, to do
a study of Turkish dissident Fethullah Gülen.
What Flynn did not know when he accepted the work is that INOVO BV apparently had
operational ties to the Government of Turkey and that all communications by INOVO's chief, Ekim
Alptekin, with the Government of Turkey were being "collected" by the NSA and disseminated in
U.S. intelligence channels. The FBI was monitoring these communications and used their inside
knowledge to pressure Flynn into a FARA filing which they could claim was "false."
The truth of the matter is that General Flynn did not know he was doing work for a Turkish
Government cutout. A basic due diligence search would show that INOVO was partnered with an
Israeli oil exploration company. No need to file under FARA given those facts. Michael Flynn's
consulting firm, Flynn Investigative Group, was hired by
Inovo BV :
To appreciate the diabolical nature of this plot, let us re-read the Mueller indictment of
General Flynn:
Other False Statements Regarding FLYNN's Contacts with Foreign Governments
5. On March 7, 2017, FLYNN filed multiple documents with the Department of Justice pursuant
to the Foreign Agents Registration Act ("FARA") pertaining to a project performed by him and
his company, the Flynn Intel Group, Inc. ("FIG"), for the principal benefit of the Republic of
Turkey ("Turkey project"). In the FARA filings, FLYNN made materially false statements and
omissions, including by falsely staling that (a) FIG did not know whether or the extent to
which the Republic of Turkey was involved in the Turkey project, (b) the Turkey project was
focused on improving U.S. business organizations' confidence regarding doing business in
Turkey, and (c) an op-ed by FLYNN published in The Hill on November 8, 2016, was written at his
own initiative; and by omitting that officials from the Republic of Turkey provided supervision
and direction over the Turkey project.
There was nothing that General Flynn did under the auspices of the FIG that merited the FBI
drilling down on his activities. So why was he targeted? A contributing factor was the
lingering resentment towards Flynn for the role DIA played when he was in charge with respect
to Obama's Syria policy. The DIA was an honest broker in a heavily politicized Washington in
the summer of 2012. The DIA, under General Flynn's leadership, accurately reported that Assad's
government was withstanding the U.S. backed rebel onslaught. The integrity of analysis demanded
by Flynn earned him enemies from policymakers keen on embroiling the United States in the
Syrian civil war.
Once Flynn was out of government, Brennan and his cohorts apparently kept tabs on Flynn and
his activities. It appears they were keen on payback and looked for opportunities to entrap him
and destroy his reputation. With the benefit of hindsight we can now understand that this was
an organized set up. The first opportunity to tarnish Flynn came when he spoke at an event
sponsored by RT and ended up sitting next to Vladimir Putin at dinner. This provided the
circumstantial evidence to accuse him of colluding with Russia.
The next shoe to drop came courtesy of the intelligence community (i.e., the CIA), who
alerted the FBI that Flynn was working for a intel cutout of the Turkish Government. What the
CIA did not tell the FBI is that the Brennan's CIA apparently had helped arrange, albeit
indirectly via the Israelis, Flynn's gig with INOVO.
When Flynn was pressured by the FBI to file documents under the Foreign Agents Registration
Act, he was being manipulated into a lie. The record that has emerged in the last couple of
weeks, thanks to his new lawyer, Sidney Powell, shows that former FBI Chief of the National
Security Division's Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, David Laufman, played a
critical role in pressuring Flynn to file.
It is not clear whether Laufman understood that the relationship between Flynn and INOVO was
manufactured with the help of the CIA. But the recent release of documents makes it pretty
clear that Laufman was dealing in insider information and made no effort to help Flynn
understand that he had been deceived by INOVO.
The CIA's hand remained active in flooding the media with propaganda to impugn General
Flynn's character. David Corn, writing for Mother Jones (he also was instrumental in spreading
the Steele Dossier around) painted
Flynn in a sinister light :
. . . . The "issue" in question was no small matter. Last year, Alptekin paid $530,000 to
retired Lt. General Michael Flynn to lobby on behalf of Turkish interests. At the time, Flynn
was a top adviser to Trump's presidential campaign, and after Trump's shock victory, the
president-elect rewarded Flynn with the job of national security adviser. But it later emerged
that Flynn had failed to register as a foreign lobbyist for this work, as required by law, and
that he was under federal investigation for his secret lobbying for Alptekin.
He denied to ABC News that he and his company had represented the government of Turkey. (In
his retroactive filing, Flynn noted that his work for Alptekin "could be construed to have
principally benefitted the Republic of Turkey.") Alptekin blamed the "highly politicized
situation" in the United States for the "misunderstanding and misperceptions" around his
company and hiring of Flynn.
Corn and Buzzfeed zeroed in on the money paid to Flynn and raised the specter of Israeli
involvement, albeit indirectly.
Corn wrote :
But an attachment to the filing, citing an American law firm representing Alptekin, says
that "Inovo represented a private sector company in Israel that sought to export natural gas to
Turkey, and it was for support of its consulting work for this client that Inovo engaged Flynn
Intel Group, specifically to understand the tumultuous political climate at the time between
the United States and Turkey so that Inovo could advise its client regarding its business
opportunities and investment in Turkey."
None of the money came from Turkey, according to Alptekin's American attorneys. In an
interview with a Dutch newspaper in April, Alptekin said the funds for the Flynn project came
from a loan from his wife and payments from Ratio Oil Exploration, an Israeli natural gas
company.
Alptekin's troubles started last June when his Dutch company, Inovo BV, signed a deal to
become the sole Turkish representative of Ratio Oil Exploration, an Israeli firm that is one of
three companies with the right to drill in the Leviathan gas field beneath the eastern
Mediterranean Sea. "Ratio hereby confirms that it has in place a service agreement with Inovo
BV and it has granted Inovo with the rights to exclusively represent Ratio in the Republic of
Turkey for exploring and managing the opportunity to export gas from Leviathan into Turkey,"
according to a copy of a letter on Ratio letterhead, signed by Ratio's chairman of the board,
Ligad Rotlevy, and obtained by BuzzFeed News.
I do not think that Israeli link, i.e, Ration Oil Exploration, is a coincidence. I suspect
that Ratio Oil executives now realize that were used unwittingly in this plot to go after
General Flynn. They even ponied up some cash. It is understandable why some Israelis would want
to get information about Fethullah Gulen in front of the U.S. Government. He is perceived in
some circles as a terrorist and an enabler of drug trafficking. Others insist these are
unfounded charges and that Gulen is being smeared simply for opposing Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan.
I also think it is worth investigating whether any of that cash came courtesy of Mossad at
the behest of the CIA.
Without NSA intercepts of INOVO's principal, Ekim Alptekin, there would have been no solid
case against Flynn on FARA violations. I am hopeful that his new attorney will fully expose the
fraud perpetrated on Flynn by his government.
re: It is understandable why some Israelis would want to get information about Fethullah
Gulen in front of the U.S. Government. He is perceived in some circles as a terrorist and an
enabler of drug trafficking. Others insist these are unfounded charges and that Gulen is
being smeared simply for opposing Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
I question the motives of these "others". They are either complicit knaves or deluded
fools. Just like Epstein, the source of Gulen's wealth is murky. It might even originate from
a set of common sources.
No need to publish this, but please let Mr Johnson know he may need to add one more person
here - George Papadopolous.
PapaD was working an oil deal around this time (2016 iirc) with Israel and Greece that
would bypass Turkey. This brought the attention of someone, presumably CIA. PapaD was also
arrested by FBI and threatened with FARA violations for working for Israel. PapaD's story is
longer and more convoluted, but you get the idea.
Gen Flynn's brother Joe Flynn had an interview 15 Jun 2019 with John B Wells, and told
nearly the same story as Mr Johnson, sans details. Joe Flynn believes Gen Flynn was the
original target for both CIA interest and FISA warrant.
Thank you for your diligence in keeping up with this. The way our MSM works today, I won't be
surprised to hear on NPR that Gen. Flynn is suspected of involvement in the murder of Seth
Rich.
Tom Wright
makes some good observations about Trump's foreign policy here, but I think he
underestimates Bolton's determination to cling to power:
It's hard to see how Bolton can stay. Trump has long known that Bolton wanted war more
than he does. He sidelined him on North Korea and overruled him on Iran. For his part, Bolton
has privately attacked Pompeo, long a Trump favorite, as falling captive to the State
Department bureaucracy and has predicted that the North Korea policy will fail.
Bolton has given an unusually large number of interviews to reporters and has been
rewarded with positive profiles lauding his influence and bureaucratic prowess. Those of us
who predicted that he would cling to the post of national security adviser, as it would be
the last job he'd ever get, may have been wrong. In fact, Bolton looks and sounds as if he is
preparing to exit on his own terms. Better that than being sent on a never-ending tour of the
world's most obscure places. For Bolton, leaving because he's too tough for Trump is the
perfect way to save face. Otherwise, he may be remembered as the man who presided over one of
the weakest national security teams in modern American history and someone whose myopic
obsessions -- like international treaties or communism in Venezuela -- meant the United
States lost precious time in preparing for the national security challenges of the
future.
Bolton has been allowed to drive Iran policy to the brink of war, and I can't believe that
he would voluntarily leave the position he has when he still has a chance of getting the war
with Iran that he has been seeking for years. It is true that Bolton was sent to Mongolia to
keep him out of sight during the president's visit with Kim at the DMZ, but where is the proof
that Trump has abandoned the maximalist demands that Bolton has long insisted on? On Iran,
Trump is still reciting hawkish talking points, sanctioning anything that moves, and
occasionally making more deranged threats against the entire country. Unless Trump decides to
get rid of Bolton, I don't see why Bolton would want to leave. He gets to set policy on the
issue he has obsessed over for decades, and he gets to pursue a policy of regime change in all
but name. Bolton will probably be happy to let Pompeo have all the "credit" for North Korea
policy, since there is none to be had, and he'll keep stoking the Iran obsession that has
already done so much harm to the Iranian people and brought the U.S. dangerously close to a war
it has no reason to fight.
Banishing Bolton to Mongolia was briefly entertaining for those of us that can't stand the
National Security Advisor, but it doesn't mean very much if administration policies aren't
changing. Since Bolton is the one running the policy "process," it seems unlikely that there
will be any real change as long as he is there. For whatever reason, Trump doesn't seem willing
to fire him. Maybe that's because he doesn't want to offend Sheldon Adelson, a known Bolton
supporter and big Trump donor, or maybe it's because he enjoys having Bolton as a lightning rod
to take some of the criticism, or maybe it's because their militaristic worldviews aren't as
dissimilar as many people assume. It doesn't really matter why Trump won't rid himself of
Bolton. What matters is that Bolton is supposedly "humiliated" again and again by Trump actions
or statements, and then Bolton gets back to promoting his own agenda no matter what the
president does.
For that matter, Bolton's absence from the DMZ meeting may have been exactly what he wanted.
Graeme Wood suggested
as much just the other day:
Carlson has inserted himself into the frame of this bizarre and impromptu diplomatic trip,
and that is exactly where the Boltonites want him: forever associated with a handshake that
will be recorded as a new low in the annals of presidential gullibility.
Many observers have assumed that Bolton won't be able to stay in the administration at
different points over the last several months. When Trump claimed that he didn't want regime
change in Iran, that was supposed to be a break with Bolton. The only hitch is that Bolton
maintains this same fiction that they aren't trying to bring down the Iranian government when
they obviously are. The second summit with North Korea and the possibility of some initial
agreement caused similar speculation that Bolton's influence was waning, and then he managed to
wreck the Hanoi summit by getting Trump to make demands that he and everyone else must have
known were unacceptable to the North Koreans. Every time it seems that Bolton's maximalism is
giving way to something else, Bolton gets the last laugh.
Demolishing the architecture of arms control has been one of Bolton's main ambitions
throughout his career. He has already done quite a bit of damage, but I assume he will want to
make sure that New START dies. Bolton likely will "be remembered as the man who presided over
one of the weakest national security teams in modern American history and someone whose myopic
obsessions -- like international treaties or communism in Venezuela -- meant the United States
lost precious time in preparing for the national security challenges of the future," but as
long as he has the chance to pursue those obsessions and advance his agenda I don't think he's
going to give it up. He is an abysmal National Security Advisor, a fanatic, and a menace to
this country, and I would love it if he did resign, but I just don't see it. I doubt that
Bolton cares about "saving face" as much as he does inflicting as much damage as he can while
he has the opportunity. The only thing that Bolton believes in quitting is a successful
diplomatic agreement that advances U.S. interests. That is why it is necessary for the
president to replace him, because I don't see any other way that he is going to leave.
Bolton quitting? Heck! He's just getting started. Britain, on orders from Bolton, detained
an Panamanian flagged supertanker heading to Syria with Iranian oil. Spanish officials said
the Grace 1, was seized by British patrol ships off Gibraltar, and boarded by Royal Marines
and detained on Wash.'s orders.
Bolton's power is becoming unlimited because Trump and the rest of the gov. is doing
nothing to stop his agenda, which most of Wash., must share, of starting a war with Iran, N.
Korea, or anywhere else he can stir up trouble.
It's so obvious Wash. wants Iran to fire the first shot in order to go to war and make
political donors like Sheldon Adelson happy, as well as Netanyahu who has more to say about
US foreign policy than the American people who just want to stop the wars and concentrate on
the issues and problems here at home.
After all, it's OUR MONEY going to finance all the atrocities abroad that the war industry
and other countries benefit from. Unbelievable stuff going on in Wash. and seems everyday it
gets worse and more absurd.
You gotta love the SCI. This shallowly-disguised Russian propaganda arm writes in the most
charming awkward idiomatic English, bouncing from a "false neutral" tone to a jingoistic
Amercia-phobic argot to produce its hit pieces.
Russian propaganda acts like Claude Raines in "Casablanca" : "i am shocked, shocked to
discover (geopolitics) going on here!" Geeeee, Europe and the US are in a struggle to
avoid Europe relying on Russia for strategic necessities like fuel, even if it imposes costs
on European consumers. If you have a dangerous disease, and your pharmacist is known for
cutting off their customers' vital drugs to extort them, you might consider using another
provider who not only doesn't cut off supplies, but also provides the police department that
protects you from your pharmacist's thugs who are known to invade customers' homes using the
profits from their own business.
The US provides the protective umbrella that limits Putin's adventurism. Russia cuts of
Ukraine's gas supplies in winter to force them into submission. Gasprom is effectively an arm
of the Russian military, weaponizing Russia's only product as a geopolitical taser. Sure, it
costs more to transport LNG across the Atlantic and convert it back to gas, but the profits
from that business are routinely funneled back to Europe in the form of US trade,
contributions to NATO, and the provision of the nuclear umbrella that protects Europeans from
the man who has publicly lamented the fall of the Soviet Union, called for the return of the
former SSRs, and violated the IRM treaty to place nuclear capable intermediate-range missiles
and cruise missiles within range of Europe and boasted about his new hypersonic weapons'
theoretic capability to decapitate NATO and American decision-making within a few minutes of
launch.
Oh, for pity's sake, Laugher. Everything...absolutely everything you attribute to Russia
in your post can be said of the U.S. I'm not much of a Wiki fan, but for expediency, here's
their view on military bases.
The establishment of military bases abroad enables a country to project power , e.g. to conduct
expeditionary
warfare , and thereby influence events abroad. Depending on their size and
infrastructure, they can be used as staging areas or for logistical,
communications and intelligence support. Many conflicts throughout modern history have
resulted in overseas military bases being established in large numbers by world powers and the
existence of bases abroad has served countries having them in achieving political and
military goals.
And this link will provide you with countries worldwide and their bases.
Note that Russia, in this particular list, has eight bases all contiguous to Russia. The
U.S. has 36 listed here with none of them contiguous to the U.S.' borders.
At the same time, the administration has signaled in recent days that it plans to let the
New Start treaty, negotiated by Barack Obama, expire in February 2021 rather than renew it
for another five years. John R. Bolton, the president's national security adviser, who met
with his Russian counterpart, Nikolai Patrushev, in Jerusalem this week, said before leaving
Washington that "there's no decision, but I think it's unlikely" the treaty would be
renewed.
Mr. Bolton, a longtime skeptic of arms control agreements, said that New Start was flawed
because it did not cover short-range tactical nuclear weapons or new Russian delivery
systems. "So to extend for five years and not take these new delivery system threats into
account would be malpractice," he told The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative outlet.
Like all of his complaints about arms control agreements, Bolton's criticisms of New START
are made in bad faith. Opponents of New START have long pretended that they oppose the treaty
because it did not cover everything imaginable, including tactical nuclear weapons, but this
has always been an excuse for them to reject a treaty that they have never wanted ratified in
the first place. If the concern about negotiating a treaty that covered tactical nuclear
weapons were genuine, the smart thing to do would be to extend New START and then begin
negotiations for a more comprehensive arms control agreement. Faulting New START for failing to
include things that are by definition not going to be included in a strategic arms reduction
treaty gives the game away. This is what die-hard opponents of the treaty have been doing for
almost ten years, and they do it because they want to dismantle the last vestiges of arms
control. The proposal to include China as part of a new treaty is another tell that the Trump
administration just wants the treaty to die.
The article concludes:
Some experts suspect talk of a three-way accord is merely a feint to get rid of the New
Start treaty. "If a trilateral deal is meant as a substitute or prerequisite for extending
New Start, it is a poison pill, no ifs, ands or buts," said Daryl G. Kimball, executive
director of the Arms Control Association. "If the president is seeking a trilateral deal as a
follow-on to New Start, that's a different thing."
Knowing Bolton, it has to be a poison pill. Just as Bolton is ideologically opposed to
making any deal with Iran, he is ideologically opposed to any arms control agreement that
places limits on the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The "flaws" he identifies aren't really flaws that
he wants to fix (and they may not be flaws at all), but excuses for trashing the agreement. He
will make noises about how the current deal or treaty doesn't go far enough, but the truth is
that he doesn't want any agreements to exist. In Bolton's worldview, nonproliferation and arms
control agreements either give the other government too much or hamper the U.S. too much, and
so he wants to destroy them all. He has had a lot of success at killing agreements and treaties
that have been in the U.S. interest. Bolton has had a hand in blowing up the Agreed Framework
with North Korea, abandoning the ABM Treaty, killing the INF Treaty, and reneging on the JCPOA.
Unless the president can be persuaded to ignore or fire Bolton, New START will be his next
victim.
If New START dies, it will be a loss for both the U.S. and Russia, it will make the world
less secure, and it will make U.S.-Russian relations even worse. The stability that these
treaties have provided has been important for U.S. security for almost fifty years. New START
is the last of the treaties that constrain the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, and when it
is gone there will be nothing to replace it for a long time. The collapse of arms control
almost certainly means that the top two nuclear weapons states will expand their arsenals and
put us back on the path of an insane and unwinnable arms race. Killing New START is irrational
and purely destructive, and it needs to be opposed.
bolton is opposed to any treaty, to any agreement, whereby the other side can expect to
obtain equally favorable terms-he wants the other side on their knees permanently without
any expectation of compromise by the empire.
Miss Gabbard just served two tours in the ME, one as enlisted in the HI National Guard.
Brave Mr. Bolton kept the dirty communists from endangering the US supply of Chesapeake
crab while serving in the Maryland Guard. Rumor also has it that he helped Tompall Glaser
write the song Streets of Baltimore. Some say they saw Mr. Bolton single handily defending
Memorial Stadium from a combined VC/NVA attack during an Orioles game. The Cubans would have
conquered the Pimlico Race Course if not for the combat skill of PFC Bolton.
Sixty-six years later, I am witnessing how another "Ugly American" is walking in the
footsteps of Roosevelt. His name is John Bolton, a chief advocate of the disastrous US invasion
of Iraq, a nefarious Islamophobe, and former chairman of the far-right anti-Muslim Gatestone
Institute. This infamous institution is known for spreading
lies about Muslims - claiming there is a looming "jihadist takeover" that can lead to a
"Great White Death" - to incite hatred against them and intimidate, silence, and alienate
them.
In his diabolical plans to wage war on Iran, Bolton is taking a page from Roosevelt's
playbook. Just as the CIA operative used venal Iranian politicians and fake news to incite
against the democratically elected Iranian government, today his successor, the US national
security adviser, is seeking to spread misinformation on a massive scale and set up a false
flag operation with the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), a militant terrorist organisation. Meanwhile,
he has also pressed forward with debilitating sanctions that are further worsening the economic
crisis in the country and making the lives of ordinary Iranians unbearable.
... ... ...
Bolton is the dreadful residue of the pure violence and wanton cruelty that drive Zionist
Christian zealots in their crusades against Muslims. He is the embodiment of the basest and
most racist roots of American imperialism.
The regime he serves is the most naked and vulgar face of brutish power, lacking any
semblance of legitimacy - a bullying coward flexing its military muscles. At its helm is an
arrogant mercantile president, who - faced with the possibility of an impeachment - has no
qualms about using the war machine at his disposal to regain political relevance and line his
pockets.
But the world must know Americans are not all ugly, they are not all rabid imperialists -
Boltons and Roosevelts. What about those countless noble Americans - the sons and daughters of
the original nations that graced this land, of the African slaves who were brought to this land
in chains, of the millions after millions of immigrants who came to these shores in desperation
or hope from the four corners of the earth? Do they not have a claim on this land too - to
redefine it and bring it back to the bosom of humanity?
"... Just as Obama turned out to be a slightly more articulate version of Dubya, Trump has turned out to be a meaner, more dysfunctional, more reckless version of Dubya. ..."
"... Bolton is a neo-con, neo-cons are Trotskyites. They believe in an eternal revolution. Bolton believes in eternal war. ..."
"... Sid, the natural conclusion is that the 'deep state' is real, and for the most part runs the country. Whoever is President is less important than the goals of the American elite, most importantly the 'War Party' (the MIC and the IC) and Wall Street, but including Health Care. A side party of equal importance is the Israel Lobby. What happens in America is pretty much what the leaders of those groups want. ..."
"... Trump is too weak to push back on Bolton. He likes bluster. If starting a war will make Trump look macho, he very well might start one. Bolton wants war, Trump may let us stumble into one. ..."
"... "What will it take to get Bolton fired?" One phone call from Israel. Then again, one phone call from Israel would also stop Trump from firing him, and there's no reason to suspect that Bibi is anything other than ecstatic over Bolton's performance. ..."
"... Find out who "told" Donald Trump he HAD to hire Bolton (and Pompeo and others as well) and you'll probably learn the identity of the real puppet master pulling the strings in the "Deep State." It's simply impossible to believe Trump – who ran for president on a platform of "non-interventionism" – appointed this guy on his own volition. ..."
"... The headline asks, "What Will It Take to Get Bolton Fired?" This is a great question. If he CAN'T be fired, this tells us who is really running our country. Another question along the same lines: What will it take to get America to cease its support of Saudi Arabia? ..."
"... The petodollar makes these wars possible; it also defends or preserves the Status Quo, which makes so many of our elite ultra wealthy and powerful. Our carte blanche support of Saudi Arabia is telling us something important just like Trump's appointment of Bolton told us something important. ..."
For
someone "not playing along," Trump has obediently given Bolton and the Iran hawks practically
everything they have wanted so far. He has gone much further in laying the groundwork for war
with Iran than any of his predecessors, and the only reason that many people seem confident
that he won't order an attack is their mistaken belief that he is a non-interventionist when
all of the evidence tells us that he is no such thing. Trump presumably doesn't want to start a
multi-year, extremely expensive war that could also throw the economy into a recession, but
then every president that launches an illegal war of choice assumes that the war would be much
easier and take less time than it does. No one ever knowingly opts for a bloody debacle. The
absurdly optimistic hawkish expectations of a quick and easy triumph are always dashed on the
rocks of reality, but for some reason political leaders believe these expectations every time
because "this time it's different." There will come a point where Bolton will tell Trump that
attacking Iran (or Venezuela) is the only way to "win," and Trump will probably listen to him
just as he has listened to him on all of these issues up until now.
There is no question that Bolton should lose his job. Even if you aren't an opponent
of Trump, you should be unhappy with the way Bolton has been operating for the last year. He
has made a point of sabotaging administration policies he doesn't like, resisting decisions he
doesn't agree with, and effectively reversing policy changes while pretending to be carrying
out the president's wishes. His mismanagement of the policy process is a bad joke, and the
reason he runs the National Security Council this way is so that he can stop views and
information that don't suit his agenda from reaching the president. But Trump pays little or no
attention to any of this, and as long as Bolton remains loyal in public and a yes-man in person
he is likely safe in his job. If Bolton gets his wish and the U.S. starts a war with Iran, he
may not be in that job for much longer, but the damage will have already been done. Instead of
counting on Trump to toss Bolton overboard, Congress and the public need to make absolutely
clear that war with Iran and Venezuela is unacceptable and Trump will be destroying his
presidency if he goes down that path in either country.
Obama entered office in 2008 promising to close Guantanamo and end
the stupid wars.
Not only did Obama fail to end a single war, he gave us new and stupider wars in Syria,
Yemen and Ukraine, to name but three. Guantanamo is still open.
Just as Obama turned out to be a slightly more articulate version of Dubya, Trump has turned
out to be a meaner, more dysfunctional, more reckless version of Dubya.
" some reason political leaders believe these expectations every
time because "this time it's different."
Like communists, political leaders think 'this time we'll get it right. Bolton is a neo-con, neo-cons are Trotskyites. They believe in an eternal revolution. Bolton
believes in eternal war.
As much of a disaster for American institutions Trump has been, I
believe he does not want to go to war. The times are a'changin'. Average Americans have figured
out that these wars are self-defeating nonsense. Trump knows that, and doesn't want to alienate
the middle American types who support him and would go to war.
But he does want to sound and look tough, hence Bolton. The problem is that while Trump may
believe he's just blustering, reneging on the nuclear deal, cranking back brutal sanctions and
sending US flotillas to the Strait of Hormuz looks and feels like war to the Iranians.
We could stumble into a very big and ugly war like America stumbled into the ugly era of
Trump. And Trump is the absolute last person I would want to serve as a commander in chief
during war time.
Sid, the natural conclusion is that the 'deep state' is real, and
for the most part runs the country. Whoever is President is less important than the goals of
the American elite, most importantly the 'War Party' (the MIC and the IC) and Wall Street, but
including Health Care. A side party of equal importance is the Israel Lobby. What happens in
America is pretty much what the leaders of those groups want.
Trump is too weak to push back on Bolton. He likes bluster. If
starting a war will make Trump look macho, he very well might start one. Bolton wants war,
Trump may let us stumble into one.
Of course the "Deep State", the "permanent government" the "Borg" or
whatever you want to call it is real.
Every winning candidate since arguably Bush 1.0 ("kinder gentler nation") ran for office as
a non-interventionist. Even Dubya promised a humbler foreign policy in 2000.
Once inaugurated, each candidate morphed into a foaming-at-the-mouth hawk.
I don't pretend to know how the process works, or even if it is the same for every
president, but the results speak for themselves. I suspect without evidence that it is
something like what we saw in "Yes, Minister".
The neo-cons are busy studying the Israeli playbook of declaring
themselves surrounded and launching a preemptive strike. Pompeo's view is that the occupation
of Iraq is/was so difficult because the US isn't as ruthlessly efficient as the IDF in the West
Bank and allowed Iraq some self-governance.He won't allow that in the conquered Iran.
Step 1: send a doctored telegram to Kaiser Trump and leak it to the press. Step 2: Get the GOP Senate to pass the "Gulf of Hormuz" declaration. Step 3: sink a ship, perhaps one called USS Maine or USS Liberty.
The first question is "What did it take to get Bolton hired?"
The answer to the author's question is that making Trump look bad (in a way that Trump
recognizes) is what will get Bolton fired. But like Dick Cheney, Bolton has a very good sense
of what a Richelieu needs to do to seem loyal and obedient to an idiot king. Rummy appended
Bible verses to schemes that he wanted Bush to approve. Bolton does something similar, no
doubt.
"What will it take to get Bolton fired?" One phone call from Israel. Then again, one phone call from Israel would also stop Trump
from firing him, and there's no reason to suspect that Bibi is anything other than ecstatic
over Bolton's performance.
The mammoth "donations" from Adelson et al to Trump and the corrupt Republicans have paid
off royally for Israel. With Trump and Bolton in the White House, Israel barely even needs a
foreign ministry, a treasury, or a military anymore. Uncle Sam does it all for free.
Find out who "told" Donald Trump he HAD to hire Bolton (and Pompeo
and others as well) and you'll probably learn the identity of the real puppet master pulling
the strings in the "Deep State." It's simply impossible to believe Trump – who ran for president on a platform of
"non-interventionism" – appointed this guy on his own volition.
Also, if it was so important to appoint Bolton, why would this be the case?
I think it's because – in the minds of those pulling the strings – it's crucial
to them that America does the things Bolton wants to do.
That is, Bolton wasn't named National Security Advisor to do nothing.
The headline asks, "What Will It Take to Get Bolton Fired?" This is a great question. If he CAN'T be fired, this tells us who is really running our
country. Another question along the same lines: What will it take to get America to cease its support
of Saudi Arabia?
We know the answer to this one. NOTHING. Consider that
We will support a nation whose leader orders the gruesome murder of a journalist.
We will support a nation that is committing war crimes and attrocities against a poor
nation like Yemen, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent children.
We will support a nation that beheads 37 citizens in one day – some whose alleged
crimes occurred when the victims were teenagers, or whose alleged offenses include practicing
homosexuality or simply criticizing the government.
The answer (Saudi Arabia can do whatever it wants with no risk of incurring the wrath of
America) begs the question: Why is "letting Saudi Arabia do whatever it wants" so important to
America?
This answer, I believe, has everything to do with the vital role the petrodollar plays in
maintaining the Status Quo.
If the Deep State is calling the shots, what is most important to the Deep State?
Answer: Protecting the U.S. dollar (fiat) printing press. Absent this printing press and the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency, none of
our current wars and future wars would even be possible.
And the fact we are willing to wage these wars sends a vital message to the nations of the
world: We WILL use our military against anyone who threatens the Status Quo.
The petodollar makes these wars possible; it also defends or preserves the Status Quo, which
makes so many of our elite ultra wealthy and powerful. Our carte blanche support of Saudi Arabia is telling us something important just like
Trump's appointment of Bolton told us something important.
The only way people like Bolton get fired is the same way Bannon
got dumped. It is when Trump sees on Fox News that they are getting more press coverage than
him.
The post of national security advisor needs to be subject to Senate
confirmation.
Henry Kissinger in the Nixon administration and Zbigniew Brzezinski in the Carter
administration were both more powerful/influential than the respective secretaries of state,
William Rogers and Cyrus Vance.
The Senate needs to assert itself and ensure that national security advisors are appointed
in the same way as secretaries of state. This would help to a certain extent.
Looks like Bolton is dyed-in-the-wool imperialist. He believes the United States can do what wants without regard to
international law, treaties or the роlitical commitments of previous administrations.
Notable quotes:
"... Israel is an Anglo American aircraft carrier to control the Eastern Mediterranean ..."
...Zionists know what they want, are willing to work together towards their goals, and put their money where their mouth
is. In contrast, for a few pennies the goyim will renounce any principle they pretend to cherish, and go on happily proclaiming
the opposite even if a short while down the road it'll get their own children killed.
The real sad part about this notion of the goy as a mere beast in human form is maybe not that it got codified for eternity
in the Talmud, but rather that there may be some truth to it? Another way of saying this is raising the question whether the goyim
deserve better, given what we see around us.
Israel is an Anglo American aircraft carrier to control the Eastern Mediterranean and prevent a Turko Egyptian and possibly Persian
invasion of Greece & the West
That does not change the fact that Trump foreign policy is a continuation of Obama fogirn policy. It is neocon forign policy directed
on "full spectrum dominance". Trump just added to this bulling to the mix.
Notable quotes:
"... When pressed on the dangers of having such an uber-hawk neo-conservative who remains an unapologetic cheerleader of the 2003 Iraq War, and who laid the ground work for it as a member of Bush's National Security Council, Trump followed with, "That doesn't matter because I want both sides." ..."
"... I was against going into Iraq... I was against going into the Middle East . Chuck we've spent 7 trillion dollars in the Middle East right now. ..."
"... Bolton has never kept his career-long goal of seeing regime change in Tehran a secret - repeating his position publicly every chance he got, especially in the years prior to tenure at the Trump White House. ..."
"... Bolton! So much winning! And there's also Perry: Rick Perry, Trump's energy secretary, was flagged for describing Trumpism as a "toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness, and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition." ..."
"... Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton was one of the architects of the Iraq War under George W. Bush, and now he's itching to start a war with Iran -- an even bigger country with almost three times the population. ..."
In a stunningly frank moment during a Sunday
Meet the Press interview focused on President Trump's decision-making on Iran, especially last week's "brink of war" moment which
saw Trump draw down readied military forces in what he said was a "common sense" move, the commander in chief threw his own national
security advisor under the bus in spectacular fashion .
Though it's not Trump's first tongue-in-cheek denigration of Bolton's notorious hawkishness, it's certainly the most brutal and
blunt take down yet, and frankly just plain enjoyable to watch. When host Chuck Todd asked the president if he was "being pushed
into military action against Iran" by his advisers in what was clearly a question focused on Bolton first and foremost, Trump responded:
"John Bolton is absolutely a hawk. If it was up to him he'd take on the whole world at one time, okay?"
Trump began by explaining, "I have two groups of people. I have doves and I have hawks," before leading into this sure to be classic
line that is one for the history books: "If it was up to him he'd take on the whole world at one time, okay?"
During this section of comments focused on US policy in the Middle East, the president reiterated his preference that he hear
from "both sides" on an issue, but that he was ultimately the one making the decisions.
When pressed on the dangers of having such an uber-hawk neo-conservative who remains an unapologetic cheerleader of the 2003 Iraq
War, and who laid the ground work for it as a member of Bush's National Security Council, Trump followed with, "That doesn't matter
because I want both sides."
And in another clear indicator that Trump wants to stay true to his non-interventionist instincts voiced on the 2016 campaign
trail, he explained to Todd that:
I was against going into Iraq... I was against going into the Middle East . Chuck we've spent 7 trillion dollars in the Middle
East right now.
It was the second time this weekend that Trump was forced to defend his choice of Bolton as the nation's most influential foreign
policy thinker and adviser. When peppered with questions at the White House Saturday following Thursday night's dramatic "almost
war" with Iran, Trump said that he "disagrees" with Bolton "very much" but that ultimately he's "doing a very good job".
Bolton has never kept his career-long goal of seeing regime change in Tehran a secret - repeating his position publicly every
chance he got, especially in the years prior to tenure at the Trump White House.
But Bolton hasn't had a good past week: not only had Trump on Thursday night shut the door on Bolton's dream of overseeing a major
US military strike on Iran, but he's been pummeled in the media.
Even a Fox prime time show (who else but Tucker of course) colorfully described him as a "bureaucratic tapeworm" which periodically
reemerges to cause pain and suffering.
It's great that the biggest war mongers are the ones that not only never served but in the case of Bolton, purposely avoided
serving. They should send that ****** to Iran so we can see just how supportive he is when he's actually in danger.
This guy is a worthless piece of **** and Trump's an idiot for hiring him.
Being a cheerleader for the Iraq war is as ridiculous as that ******* mustache. He's just letting neocons have a front row
seat to power. That's how he's keeping them from jumping ship to become democrats. They have no principles. They're just power
worshippers.
Do ya all remember when Trump took office? Losers use military strategy that is overwhelming bombardment b4 land attack. I
thought that Donnie can not survive this pressure. Looks like now he is riding horse with banner in hands. Thumb up, MJT
I was against going into the Middle East...$7 Trillion? So why is Jared trying to give away $50 Billion more? People thought
they voted for MAGA, but they got Jared...MMEGA.
How about MJANYA?...Make Jared a New Yorker Again. Send Jared and Ivanka back to New York before it's $10 Trillion.
Bolton! So much winning! And there's also Perry: Rick Perry, Trump's energy secretary, was flagged for describing Trumpism
as a "toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness, and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition."
Trump "unleashes"? For those who think, he also said Bolton is doing a good job. Crap headline. I think Solomon said, "In a
multitude of counselors there is victory".
What kind of unprofessional dingus talks openly about employee issues? That's not how you run a organization. That's how you
run a reality television show.
Sides? I could hire Hobo Joe, the bum that huffs paint and drinks scotch out of plastic bottle while yelling at traffic by
the intersection, as my advisor. He'd probably tell me to do some whacky stuff. But why would I do that?
There is no side to hear. Bomb everyone. That is John Bolton's side. It isn't worth hearing. The man shouldn't be drawing a
paycheck. He shouldn't be drawing breath. He should be pushing up daisies. He the same as ISIS.
Reading is fundamental....and certainly not needed to spout opinions. In fact, reading, combined with critical thinking, logic
and reason, just gets in the way of forming opinions. Or should I say "repeating" other's opinions.
"Chuck we've spent 7 trillion dollars in the Middle East right now."....Yes, just like your *** bosses wanted and needed and
you dumb ******* sheep still think voting matters.
Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton was one of the architects of the Iraq War under George W. Bush, and now he's
itching to start a war with Iran -- an even bigger country with almost three times the population.
Democrats in Congress have the power to pull us back from the brink , but they need to act now. Once bombs start falling and
troops are on the ground, there will be massive political pressure to rally around the flag.
Bolton is just Albright of different sex. The same aggressive stupidity.
Notable quotes:
"... Albright typifies the arrogance and hawkishness of Washington blob... ..."
"... How to describe US foreign policy over the last couple of decades? Disastrous comes to mind. Arrogant and murderous also seem appropriate. ..."
"... Washington and Beijing appear to be a collision course on far more than trade. Yet the current administration appears convinced that doing more of the same will achieve different results, the best definition of insanity. ..."
"... Despite his sometimes abusive and incendiary rhetoric, the president has departed little from his predecessors' policies. For instance, American forces remain deployed in Afghanistan and Syria. Moreover, the Trump administration has increased its military and materiel deployments to Europe. Also, Washington has intensified economic sanctions on Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, and even penalized additional countries, namely Venezuela. ..."
"... "If we have to use force, it is because we are America: we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us." ..."
"... Even then her claim was implausible. America blundered into the Korean War and barely achieved a passable outcome. The Johnson administration infused Vietnam with dramatically outsize importance. For decades, Washington foolishly refused to engage the People's Republic of China. Washington-backed dictators in Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, and elsewhere fell ingloriously. An economic embargo against Cuba that continues today helped turn Fidel Castro into a global folk hero. Washington veered dangerously close to nuclear war with Moscow during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and again two decades later during military exercises in Europe. ..."
"... Perhaps the worst failing of U.S. foreign policy was ignoring the inevitable impact of foreign intervention. Americans would never passively accept another nation bombing, invading, and occupying their nation, or interfering in their political system. Even if outgunned, they would resist. Yet Washington has undertaken all of these practices, with little consideration of the impact on those most affected -- hence the rise of terrorism against the United States. Terrorism, horrid and awful though it is, became the weapon of choice of weaker peoples against intervention by the world's industrialized national states. ..."
"... Albright's assumption that members of The Blob were far-seeing was matched by her belief that the same people were entitled to make life-and-death decisions for the entire planet. ..."
"... The willingness to so callously sacrifice so many helps explain why "they" often hate us, usually meaning the U.S. government. This is also because "they" believe average Americans hate them. Understandably, it too often turns out, given the impact of the full range of American interventions -- imposing economic sanctions, bombing, invading, and occupying other nations, unleashing drone campaigns, underwriting tyrannical regimes, supporting governments which occupy and oppress other peoples, displaying ostentatious hypocrisy and bias, and more. ..."
"... At the 1999 Rambouillet conference Albright made demands of Yugoslavia that no independent, sovereign state could accept: that, for instance, it act like defeated and occupied territory by allowing the free transit of NATO forces. Washington expected the inevitable refusal, which was calculated to provide justification for launching an unprovoked, aggressive war against the Serb-dominated remnant of Yugoslavia. ..."
"... Alas, members of the Blob view Americans with little more respect. The ignorant masses should do what they are told. (Former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster recently complained of public war-weariness from fighting in Afghanistan for no good reason for more than seventeen years.) Even more so, believed Albright, members of the military should cheerfully patrol the quasi-empire being established by Washington's far-sighted leaders. ..."
"... When asked in 2003 about the incident, she said "what I thought was that we had -- we were in a kind of a mode of thinking that we were never going to be able to use our military effectively again." ..."
"... For Albright, war is just another foreign policy tool. One could send a diplomatic note, impose economic sanctions, or unleash murder and mayhem. No reason to treat the latter as anything special. Joining the U.S. military means putting your life at the disposal of Albright and her peers in The Blob. ..."
Albright typifies the arrogance and hawkishness of Washington blob...
How to describe US foreign policy over the last couple of decades? Disastrous comes to mind. Arrogant and murderous also seem
appropriate.
Since 9/11, Washington has been extraordinarily active militarily -- invading two nations, bombing and droning several others,
deploying special operations forces in yet more countries, and applying sanctions against many. Tragically, the threat of Islamist
violence and terrorism only have metastasized. Although Al Qaeda lost its effectiveness in directly plotting attacks, it continues
to inspire national offshoots. Moreover, while losing its physical "caliphate" the Islamic State added further terrorism to its portfolio.
Three successive administrations have ever more deeply ensnared the United States in the Middle East. War with Iran appears to
be frighteningly possible. Ever-wealthier allies are ever-more dependent on America. Russia is actively hostile to the United States
and Europe. Washington and Beijing appear to be a collision course on far more than trade. Yet the current administration appears
convinced that doing more of the same will achieve different results, the best definition of insanity.
Despite his sometimes abusive and incendiary rhetoric, the president has departed little from his predecessors' policies. For
instance, American forces remain deployed in Afghanistan and Syria. Moreover, the Trump administration has increased its military
and materiel deployments to Europe. Also, Washington has intensified economic sanctions on Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, and
even penalized additional countries, namely Venezuela.
U.S. foreign policy suffers from systematic flaws in the thinking of the informal policy collective which former Obama aide Ben
Rhodes dismissed as "The Blob." Perhaps no official better articulated The Blob's defective precepts than Madeleine Albright, United
Nations ambassador and Secretary of State.
First is overweening hubris. In 1998 Secretary of State Albright declared that
"If we have to use force, it is because we are America: we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than
other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us."
Even then her claim was implausible. America blundered into the Korean War and barely achieved a passable outcome. The Johnson
administration infused Vietnam with dramatically outsize importance. For decades, Washington foolishly refused to engage the People's
Republic of China. Washington-backed dictators in Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, and elsewhere fell ingloriously. An economic embargo against
Cuba that continues today helped turn Fidel Castro into a global folk hero. Washington veered dangerously close to nuclear war with
Moscow during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and again two decades later during military exercises in Europe.
U.S. officials rarely were prepared for events that occurred in the next week or month, let alone years later. Americans did no
better than the French in Vietnam. Americans managed events in Africa no better than the British, French, and Portuguese colonial
overlords. Washington made more than its share of bad, even awful decisions in dealing with other nations around the globe.
Perhaps the worst failing of U.S. foreign policy was ignoring the inevitable impact of foreign intervention. Americans would never
passively accept another nation bombing, invading, and occupying their nation, or interfering in their political system. Even if
outgunned, they would resist. Yet Washington has undertaken all of these practices, with little consideration of the impact on those
most affected -- hence the rise of terrorism against the United States. Terrorism, horrid and awful though it is, became the weapon
of choice of weaker peoples against intervention by the world's industrialized national states.
The U.S. record since September 11 has been uniquely counterproductive. Rather than minimize hostility toward America, Washington
adopted a policy -- highlighted by launching new wars, killing more civilians, and ravaging additional societies -- guaranteed to
create enemies, exacerbate radicalism, and spread terrorism. Blowback is everywhere. Among the worst examples: Iraqi insurgents mutated
into ISIS, which wreaked military havoc throughout the Middle East and turned to terrorism.
Albright's assumption that members of The Blob were far-seeing was matched by her belief that the same people were entitled to
make life-and-death decisions for the entire planet. When queried 1996 about her justification for sanctions against Iraq which had
killed a half million babies -- notably, she did not dispute the accuracy of that estimate -- she responded that "I think this is
a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it." Exactly who "we" were she did not say. Most likely she meant
those Americans admitted to the foreign policy priesthood, empowered to make foreign policy and take the practical steps necessary
to enforce it. (She later stated of her reply: "I never should have made it. It was stupid." It was, but it reflected her mindset.)
In any normal country, such a claim would be shocking -- a few people sitting in another capital deciding who lived and died.
Foreign elites, a world away from the hardship that they imposed, deciding the value of those dying versus the purported interests
being promoted. Those paying the price had no voice in the decision, no way to hold their persecutors accountable.
The willingness to so callously sacrifice so many helps explain why "they" often hate us, usually meaning the U.S. government.
This is also because "they" believe average Americans hate them. Understandably, it too often turns out, given the impact of the
full range of American interventions -- imposing economic sanctions, bombing, invading, and occupying other nations, unleashing drone
campaigns, underwriting tyrannical regimes, supporting governments which occupy and oppress other peoples, displaying ostentatious
hypocrisy and bias, and more.
This mindset is reinforced by contempt toward even those being aided by Washington. Although American diplomats had termed the
Kosovo Liberation Army as "terrorist," the Clinton Administration decided to use the growing insurgency as an opportunity to expand
Washington's influence. At the 1999 Rambouillet conference Albright made demands of Yugoslavia that no independent, sovereign state
could accept: that, for instance, it act like defeated and occupied territory by allowing the free transit of NATO forces. Washington
expected the inevitable refusal, which was calculated to provide justification for launching an unprovoked, aggressive war against
the Serb-dominated remnant of Yugoslavia.
However, initially the KLA, determined on independence, refused to sign Albright's agreement. She exploded. One of her officials
anonymously complained: "Here is the greatest nation on earth pleading with some nothingballs to do something entirely in their own
interest -- which is to say yes to an interim agreement -- and they stiff us." Someone described as "a close associate" observed:
"She is so stung by what happened. She's angry at everyone -- the Serbs, the Albanians and NATO." For Albright, the determination
of others to achieve their own goals, even at risk to their lives, was an insult to America and her.
Alas, members of the Blob view Americans with little more respect. The ignorant masses should do what they are told. (Former National
Security Adviser H.R. McMaster recently complained of public war-weariness from fighting in Afghanistan for no good reason for more
than seventeen years.) Even more so, believed Albright, members of the military should cheerfully patrol the quasi-empire being established
by Washington's far-sighted leaders.
As Albright famously asked Colin Powell in 1992:
"What's the use of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?" To her, American military personnel
apparently were but gambit pawns in a global chess game, to be sacrificed for the interest and convenience of those playing. No
wonder then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell's reaction stated in his autobiography was: "I thought I would
have an aneurysm."
When asked in 2003 about the incident, she said "what I thought was that we had -- we were in a kind of a mode of thinking
that we were never going to be able to use our military effectively again." Although sixty-five years had passed, she
admitted that "my mindset is Munich," a unique circumstance and threat without even plausible parallel today.
Such a philosophy explains a 1997 comment by a cabinet member, likely Albright, to General Hugh Shelton, then Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff: "Hugh, I know I shouldn't even be asking you this, but what we really need in order to go in and take out
Saddam is a precipitous event -- something that would make us look good in the eyes of the world. Could you have one of our U-2s
fly low enough -- and slow enough -- so as to guarantee that Saddam could shoot it down?" He responded sure, as soon as she qualified
to fly the plane.
For Albright, war is just another foreign policy tool. One could send a diplomatic note, impose economic sanctions, or unleash
murder and mayhem. No reason to treat the latter as anything special. Joining the U.S. military means putting your life at the disposal
of Albright and her peers in The Blob.
Anyone of these comments could be dismissed as a careless aside. Taken together, however, they reflect an attitude dangerous for
Americans and foreigners alike. Unfortunately, the vagaries of U.S. foreign policy suggest that this mindset is not limited to any
one person. Any president serious about taking a new foreign-policy direction must do more than drain the swamp. He or she must sideline
The Blob.
"... "Iran cannot sit idly by as the American imperialist machine encroaches on their territory, threatens their sovereignty, and endangers their very way of life," said Bolton, warning that America's fanatical leadership, steadfast devotion to flexing their muscles in the region, and alleged access to nuclear weapons necessitated that Iran strike back with a vigorous show of force as soon -- and as hard -- as possible. ..."
"... "The only thing these Westerners understand is violence, so it's imperative that Iran sends a clear message that they won't be walked over. Let's not forget, the U.S. defied a diplomatically negotiated treaty for seemingly no reason at all -- these are dangerous radicals that cannot be reasoned with. ..."
Demanding that the Middle Eastern nation retaliate immediately in self-defense against the
existential threat posed by America's military operations, National Security Adviser John
Bolton called for a forceful Iranian response Friday to continuing United States aggression.
"Iran cannot sit idly by as the American imperialist machine encroaches on their territory,
threatens their sovereignty, and endangers their very way of life," said Bolton, warning that
America's fanatical leadership, steadfast devotion to flexing their muscles in the region, and
alleged access to nuclear weapons necessitated that Iran strike back with a vigorous show of
force as soon -- and as hard -- as possible.
"The only thing these Westerners understand is violence, so it's imperative that Iran sends
a clear message that they won't be walked over. Let's not forget, the U.S. defied a
diplomatically negotiated treaty for seemingly no reason at all -- these are dangerous radicals
that cannot be reasoned with.
They've been given every opportunity to back down, but their goal is total domination of the
region, and Iran won't stand for that."
At press time, Bolton said that the only option left on the table was for Iran to launch a
full-fledged military strike against the Great Satan.
Bolton was notoriously a draft dodger during the Vietnam War, like his current boss, not due
to any scruples regarding what was occurring, but out of concern for his own sorry ass.
"... Comey said in an interview that he used tactics he would not ordinarily use because the then fledgling Trump administration was unorganized at the beginning. Basically, he and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe discouraged Flynn from asking White House general counsel to sit in on the interview. Flynn, according to several source with knowledge, had no idea he was being targeted by the FBI for an investigation. ..."
"... Weissmann served as Mueller's second in command for the special counsel investigation into the Trump campaign, despite the fact that his tactics have been highly criticized by both judges and colleagues. He was called unscrupulous and has had several significant issues raised about how he operated during the Mueller inquiry into Trump campaign officials, including Flynn. ..."
"... Powell has openly stated in columns and on cable networks that Weissmann's dirty tactics of withholding exculpatory evidence and threatening witnesses to garner prosecutions should have had him disbarred long ago. ..."
"... Flynn plead guilty after Mueller [ Weissmann ] threatened Flynn's family, including his son Michael Jr. According to sources close to Flynn family, Mueller threatened Flynn on multiple occasions that if he did not plead guilty to lying to the FBI, Mueller would investigate other Flynn family members, including his son. ..."
"... I sent them. Something we've, I probably wouldn't have done or maybe gotten away with in a more organized administration," Comey said. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe made a similar statement regarding Flynn, which was uncovered by congressional investigators. ..."
"... Five Ways "Dirty Cop Mueller" Played Americans For Complete Fools . . . https://youtu.be/-YYmSIoCp50 ..."
"... The world's greatest liars and scum prosecuting someone for telling a lie. Seth Rich https://consortiumnews.com/2019/06/12/why-didnt-mueller-investigate-seth-rich/ ..."
"... Mark Meadows destroys The Mueller Coverup . . . https://youtu.be/iPgPgev7Yd4 ..."
"... Sidney Powell Rips Into Mueller https://youtu.be/udRqsEa2N9E ..."
Embattled Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn has hired well known defense attorney Sidney Powell to represent him before his sentencing hearing
in Washington D.C.'s federal court . Flynn, who fired his attorney's last week, will still fully cooperate with the government in
all cases pending, Powell
told SaraACarter.com.
Flynn's former legal counsel Robert Kelner and Stephen Anthony offered no explanation for their abrupt dismissal telling
SaraACarter.com
they "decline to comment."
"He is and will continue to cooperate with the government in all aspects," Powell told
SaraACarter.com.
"He and his family truly appreciate all the cards and letters of support from countless people and the contributions to the
defense fund which are even more important now."
Powell noted that Flynn's case file, "is massive" and "it will take me at least 90 days to review it."
Kelner and Anthony submitted a two-page motion last week to the federal judge. Flynn's sentencing will be based on his 2017 guilty
plea to special counsel Robert Mueller's prosecutors for one count of lying to the FBI.
The guilty plea has been a source of contention in news reports, after evidence and testimony surfaced that the FBI special agents
that interviewed Flynn in January, 2017 didn't believe he was lying. Both former
FBI Special Agent
Peter Strzok and FBI Special Agent
Joe Pientka interviewed Flynn about his phone conversation with then Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak. The interview
was conducted just as Flynn began his then role as National Security Advisor for Trump.
Former FBI Director James Comey joked about the bureau's interview with Flynn.
Comey said in an interview that he used tactics he would not ordinarily use because the then fledgling Trump administration
was unorganized at the beginning. Basically, he and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe discouraged Flynn from asking White
House general counsel to sit in on the interview. Flynn, according to several source with knowledge, had no idea he was being targeted
by the FBI for an investigation.
"I sent them. Something we've, I probably wouldn't have done or maybe gotten away with in a more organized administration,"
Comey said. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe made a similar statement regarding Flynn, which was uncovered by congressional
investigators.
Flynn's attorneys said
in the filing that they had been notified "he is terminating Covington & Burling LLP as his counsel and has already retained new
counsel for this matter."
Powell is the author of the New York Times best seller and tell-all book
Licensed To Lie, which exposed the corruption within the justice system. The book is based on the case Powell won against prosecutor
Andrew Weissmann, when he was deputy and later director of the Enron Task Force.
Weissmann served as Mueller's second in command for the special counsel investigation into the Trump campaign, despite the
fact that his tactics have been highly criticized by both judges and colleagues. He was called unscrupulous and has had several significant
issues raised about how he operated during the Mueller inquiry into Trump campaign officials, including Flynn.
He prosecuted the accounting firm Arthur Andersen LLP, which ended in the collapse of the firm and 85,000 jobs lost world wide.
Maureen Mahoney took the case to the Supreme Court, and Powell consulted. Mahoney overturned Weissmann's conviction and the decision
was
reversed unanimously by the court.
Powell has openly stated in columns and on cable networks that Weissmann's dirty tactics of withholding exculpatory evidence
and threatening witnesses to garner prosecutions should have had him disbarred long ago.
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Powell has openly stated in columns and on cable networks that Weissmann's dirty tactics of withholding exculpatory evidence
and threatening witnesses to garner prosecutions should have had him disbarred long ago.
Flynn plead guilty after Mueller [ Weissmann ] threatened Flynn's family, including his son Michael Jr. According to sources
close to Flynn family, Mueller threatened Flynn on multiple occasions that if he did not plead guilty to lying to the FBI, Mueller
would investigate other Flynn family members, including his son.
Good people tend to talk to law enforcement because they naively believe that people in government and LE have good intentions
and follow the rule of law. A lot of people get screwed trying to legitimately help, sad as that is.
I sent them. Something we've, I probably wouldn't have done or maybe gotten away with in a more organized administration,"
Comey said. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe made a similar statement regarding Flynn, which was uncovered by congressional
investigators.
Well Comeboy, we will keep that in mind when you are brought before a jury of your peers. Make sure you have a good lawyer.
******* incredible. Why on earth is our government so filled with sociopaths. What have we done to deserve this level of treatment?
I hope the whole cabal ends up in jail.
If you don't think treason matters, Weissman's games with Alaskan senator Ted Stevens caused a Democrat to get elected in a
red state and was the 60th vote needed for Obama care.
Although I wasn't enamored with the amount of military personnel Trump initially chose for his cabinet, Flynn didn't feel like
the same type as McMaster and Kelly. I hope he can get his name cleared
Unless we drain the swamp, decent people will be discouraged from entering public service. They've dragged this man through
the mud while conflicted high level bureaucrats, corrupt FBI types, the DNC, the Clintons, and all the other pieces of swamp crap
are still basking in the sunshine.
Let's not forget the rabidly over-the-top military assaults on elderly people in the middle of the night. Although I doubt
he ever tried that on some mafia guy. Just solid citizens.
In announcing that DOJ had declined to prosecuted this unnamed high-ranking FBI official, the inspector general also said that
the case in question had been referenced in the IG's earlier report on the FBI's activities leading up to the 2016 election.
"The OIG investigation," said a summary released
by the OIG , "concluded that the DAD engaged in misconduct when the DAD: (1) disclosed to the media the existence of information
that had been filed under seal in federal court, in violation of 18 USC 401, Contempt of Court; (2) provided without authorization
FBI law enforcement sensitive information to reporters on multiple occasions; and (3) had dozens of official contacts with the
media without authorization, in violation of FBI policy."
I get that the DOJ punted, but Barr is going to fry his ***, so unlike the presentation you depict, they are still going after
this ****
Nice attempt at deception
Occams_Razor_Trader_Part_Deux , 54 minutes ago
link
"In announcing that DOJ had declined to prosecuted this unnamed high-ranking FBI official"
That's Barr's DOJ that decided to not prosecute an unnamed deputy assistant director of the FBI that was found to have leaked
information which is misconduct! Unless that person is cooperating with the investigation- THAT'S ********!
This is beautiful! A lot of legal luminaries will have the opportunity to bring their brilliant minds to the table, to help
repair the laws of the Republic.. Let them tackle issues such as privacy, spying on citizens, the Patriot Act, unreasonable seizures
and searches, police brutality, home/office invasions etc.
If such a battlefield is provided (legal battlefields), perhaps we might contrive a delay in "cessation" of dissemination.
Let Comey and the others lawyer up too, the hammer is gonna drop, and let the executive lawyer up as well, we're gonna restore
the foundation of the Republic!
What took you so long Sidney Powell? Life is good, battle beckons!
Let's have at it, restoration of Law, that is, cheers...
I enjoy listening to Sidney Powell speak on this matter.
She's got guts, and with the smarts required to win against these criminals running everything. I hope she has good security.
She's someone I'd not want to go up against in a courtroom.
How they treated Flynn was a disgrace. Just think of how law enforcement treats the average citizen with no power and no publicity
to shine light on their cases. I hope they slam these guys. I would say that the judges in cases like these should be throwing
cases like this out. The courts have become politicized and a lot of judges need to be shown the door as well.
It is a political prosecution. When he was head of DIA and called out the Obama
Administration for arming the Salafists in Syria his fate was probably sealed.
On a related note, when I heard that Paul Manafort was facing mortage fraud charges I
immediately thought of the scene in The Wire in which Lester Freaman explains the "head
shot". Explanation here (I suggest you skip the video): https://jackbaruth.com/?p=8652
Is it even probable that Flynn will serve time in jail? Would a sentence of a mere 9 days
(ala Papadopoulos) jeopardize his status with the military?
IMO "protecting" him would have little effect on the luster of Trump's brand. If
anything's tarnished it it's the familiarity people all over the world now have with his
tendency to shoot from the lip.
Still, it's that pugnacious behavior that endears him to millions of voters. I used to
hate it, and while I still occasionally wish he'd just ST*U, I nevertheless appreciate it at
times. For instance, I happen to agree with him that "Nervous Nancy" is a mess.
I say protect Flynn and be done with it. It sounds like the guy was the victim of
overzealous prosecution anyway.
From your post I'm assuming a presidential pardon prior to sentencing (if Trump himself has
the guts to follow through) would preserve Flynn's benefits. The irony is that Flynn's
alleged spurious contact with Kislyak was for precisely those interests to which the
Administration (and the Dems and Repubs) are beholden.
The situation with Gen. Flynn has seemed very strange from the beginning. When he was removed
as National Security Advisor for allegedly making a misleading statement to vice president
Pence, it was a muddy situation itself. How Pence was "mislead" has been unclear to me,
although perhaps I missed a thorough explanation. Then came the Mueller investigation which
turned into a criminal investigation.
Around a month or so ago, I heard on the radio part of an interview with a lawyer who was
involved with representing the White House or Trump in the Mueller investigation. He said
something astonishing about Flynn's situation before Flynn made the plea bargain with the
Mueller group. I do not know if I can find a recording of it, but the idea was that some
evidence had been produced that showed Flynn's likely innocence.
Pat said something interesting at one point, I seem to remember, it was a bit naive of
Flynn to accept the RT gala dinner invitation. He wouldn't have... But then, I may be
dreaming. On the other hand easy dot connectors in the services surely may have thought
otherwise. Meaning not naive but evil.
Flynn's plea deal required him to plead guilty only for lying to the FBI. The government
recommended no jail time. The judge made comments during his last hearing indicating he was
still considering jail time. Flynn panicked at that point. I don't blame him. His recent
change of lawyers is still puzzling to me. Is he attempting to play hardball at this stage in
the game?
The perjury charge is small stuff compared to his hidden status as an agent for Turkish
interests. Why risk reopening that can of worms? That has the potential of setting him up as
Manafort's bunkmate at Rikers.
"... From what I have read, including excerpts of JCPOA, it seems that Iran's move to restart some low level enrichment is captured in the agreement as something that Iran could do if the other party(ies) are in breach of the agreement. And at this time, the US is not a party any longer and the EU is in breach by stopping any economic intercourse with Iran. ..."
"... This should be reiterated again and again, because just mentioning that Iran unilaterally is starting enrichment puts a target on their back especially in the United States of Amnesia, while they are still just doing only what is prescribed by the JCPOA. ..."
"... Bolton's lying goes with his broad contempt for the American people. He treats us like contemptible sheep, he lies to us, and then he tries to manipulate Trump into sending our sons and daughters to fight wars for his foreign buddies. ..."
"... It is indeed remarkable in a very bad way that Bolton has any credibility to speak on issues. He has a very long track record of lie after lie after lie, going back to the build up for Iraq war. Indeed, he has never acknowledged that Iraq war a monumental tragedy. ..."
John Bolton
repeats one of the Trump administration's biggest and most important lies:
Donald Trump's national security adviser said Wednesday there was "no reason" for Iran to back out of its nuclear deal with
world powers other than to seek atomic weapons, a year after the U.S. president unilaterally withdrew America from the accord.
Bolton and other administration officials have promoted the lie that Iran seeks nuclear weapons for months. Unfortunately, members
of Congress and the press have largely failed to call out these lies for what they are. There is no evidence to support the administration's
claims, and there is overwhelming evidence that they are wrong, but if they can get away with saying these things without being
challenged they may not need evidence to get the crisis that Bolton and others like him want.
In this case, the AP story just relays Bolton's false and misleading statements as if they should be taken seriously, and their
headline trumpets Bolton's dishonest insinuations as if they were credible. This is an unfortunate case of choosing the sensationalist,
eye-catching headline that misinforms the public on a very important issue. Bolton's latest remarks are especially pernicious because
they use Iran's modest reactions to Trump administration sanctions as evidence of Iran's imaginary intent to acquire weapons. The
U.S. has been trying to push Iran to abandon the deal for more than a year, and at the first sign that Iran begins to reduce its
compliance in order to push back against the administration's outrageous economic warfare Bolton tries to misrepresent it as proof
that they seek nuclear weapons. Don't fall for it, and don't trust anything Bolton says. Not only does he have a record of distorting
and manipulating intelligence to suit his purposes, but his longstanding desire for regime change and his ties to the Mujahideen-e
Khalq (MEK) make him an exceptionally unreliable person when it comes to any and all claims about the Iranian government.
The story provides some context, but still fails to challenge Bolton's assertions:
Bolton said that without more nuclear power plants, it made no sense for Iran to stockpile more low-enriched uranium as it
now plans to do. But the U.S. also earlier cut off Iran's ability to sell its uranium to Russia in exchange for unprocessed
yellow-cake uranium [bold mine-DK].
Iran has set a July 7 deadline for Europe to offer better terms to the unraveling nuclear deal, otherwise it will resume
enrichment closer to weapons level. Bolton declined to say what the U.S. would do in response to that.
"There's no reason for them to do (higher enrichment) unless it is to reduce the breakout time to nuclear weapons," Bolton
said.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration ended the sanctions waivers that enabled Iran to ship its excess low-enriched uranium
out of the country. They made it practically impossible for Iran to do what they have been reliably doing for years, and now Bolton
blames Iran for the consequences of administration actions. The administration has deliberately put Iran in a bind so that they
either give up the enrichment that they are entitled to do under the JCPOA or exceed the restrictions on their stockpile so that
the U.S. can then accuse them of a violation. Left out in all of this is that the U.S. is no longer a party to the deal and violated
all of its commitments more than a year ago. Iran has patiently remained in compliance while the only party to breach the agreement
desperately hunts for a pretext to accuse them of some minor infraction.
Iran's record of full compliance with the JCPOA for more than three years hasn't mattered to Bolton and his allies in the slightest,
and they have had no problem reneging on U.S. commitments, but now the same ideologues that have wanted to destroy the deal from
the start insist on treating the deal's restrictions as sacrosanct. These same people have worked to engineer a situation in which
Iran may end up stockpiling more low-enriched uranium than they are supposed to have, and then seize on the situation they created
to spread lies about Iran's desire for nukes. It's all so obviously being done in bad faith, but then that is what we have come
to expect from Iran hawks and opponents of the nuclear deal. Don't let them get away with it.
The reason that Iran is threatening to enrich its uranium to a higher level is that the U.S. has been relentlessly sanctioning
them despite their total compliance with the terms of the JCPOA. The Trump administration has done all it could to deny Iran the
benefits of the deal, and then Bolton has the gall to say that they have no other reason to reduce their compliance. Of course Iran
does have another reason, and that is to put pressure on the other remaining parties to the deal to find a way to get Iran the benefits
it was promised. It is a small step taken in response to the administration's own destructive policy, and it is not evidence of
anything else. Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons, and it is grossly irresponsible to treat unfounded administration claims about
this as anything other than propaganda and lies.
From what I have read, including excerpts of JCPOA, it seems that Iran's move to restart some low level enrichment is captured
in the agreement as something that Iran could do if the other party(ies) are in breach of the agreement. And at this time, the
US is not a party any longer and the EU is in breach by stopping any economic intercourse with Iran.
This should be reiterated again and again, because just mentioning that Iran unilaterally is starting enrichment puts a target
on their back especially in the United States of Amnesia, while they are still just doing only what is prescribed by the JCPOA.
Bolton's lying goes with his broad contempt for the American people. He treats us like contemptible sheep, he lies to us,
and then he tries to manipulate Trump into sending our sons and daughters to fight wars for his foreign buddies.
It is indeed remarkable in a very bad way that Bolton has any credibility to speak on issues. He has a very long track record of lie after lie after lie, going back to the build up for Iraq war. Indeed, he has never
acknowledged that Iraq war a monumental tragedy.
I think NK has it right to assert that Bolton is a defective human product.
"... Most diplomats, officials, and journalists were shocked that Bolton (evading confirmation with a recess appointment) had actually become the U.S. representative, given his long, public disdain for the UN ..."
"... It's been the strategy of Republican administrations to appoint the fiercest critic to head an agency or institution in order to weaken it, perhaps even fatally. ..."
"... Bolton possesses an abiding self-righteousness rooted in what seems a sincere belief in the myth of American greatness, mixed with deep personal failings hidden from public view. ..."
"... It is more than an ideology. It's fanaticism. Bolton believes America is exceptional and indispensible and superior to all other nations and isn't afraid to say so. ..."
"... Bolton's all too willing to make his bullying personal on behalf of the state. He implicitly threatened the children of José Bustani, who Vice President Dick Cheney wanted out of his job as head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons because Bustani had gotten Iraq to agree to join the chemical weapons protocol, thereby making it harder for the U.S. to invade Iraq. ..."
"... We saw a pattern of Mr. Bolton trying to manipulate intelligence to justify his views. If it had happened once, maybe. But it came up multiple times, and always it was the same underlying issue: he would stake out a position, and then, if the intelligence didn't support it, he would try to exaggerate the intelligence and marginalize the officials who had produced it." ..."
"... Bolton is no fan of democracy if things don't go his way. He is a vociferous instigator of the so-far failed U.S. coup in Venezuela and of course Bolton organized the "Brooks Brothers riot" that disrupted the recounting of votes in Florida in the disputed 2000 presidential election ..."
"... This is a common ruling class tactic in the U.S. to portray disobedient leaders ripe for overthrow as Hitler. Saddam was Hitler, Milosevic was Hitler, Noriega was Hitler and Hillary Clinton called Putin Hitler. It is a false revival of U.S. glory from World War II to paint foreign adventures as moral crusades, rather than naked aggression in pursuit of profits and power. ..."
"... Bolton is the distillation of the pathology of American power. He is unique only in the purity of this pathology. ..."
"... Two months after Bolton was appointed national security adviser, in June 2018, Trump pulled the U.S. out of the six-nation deal that has seen Tehran curtail its nuclear enrichment program in exchange for relaxation of U.S. and international sanctions. ..."
"... Both Israel and Saudi Arabia, lacking the military firepower of the United States, have long tried to get the U.S. to fight its wars, and one no more important than against its common enemy. ..."
"... It is the typical provocation of a bully: threaten someone with a cruise missile and the moment they pick up a knife in self-defense you attack, conveniently leaving the initial threat out of the story. It then becomes: "Iran picked up a knife. We have to blow them away with cruise missiles." ..."
"... The New York Times that day reported : "Privately, several European officials described Mr. Bolton and Mr. Pompeo as pushing an unsuspecting Mr. Trump through a series of steps that could put the United States on a course to war before the president realizes it." ..."
"... Pompeo told a radio interviewer after the briefing that the U.S. had still not determined who attacked two Saudi, a Norwegian and an Emirati oil tanker in the Gulf last week, which bore the hallmarks of a provocation. Pompeo said "it seems like it's quite possible that Iran was behind" the attacks. ..."
"... But also last Sunday he told Fox News that the "military-industrial complex" is real and "they do like war" and they "went nuts" when he said he wanted to withdraw troops from Syria. Trump said he didn't want war with Iran, here possibly reflecting Israel's views. ..."
"... Joe, nice piece of work covering the psycho-pathology of America's leading nazi! ..."
"... To correct one of your statements: Trump DID NOT appoint him National Security Adviser, but Adelson and Mercer did. Trump is a brain-dead, blackmailed puppet who fancies himself as POTUS ..."
"... Everybody I know who is following the Washington Beltway histrionics of Trump et al know full-well that a certain intelligence agency of a small Middle East domiciled country have THE definitive dossier on Trump and have been building it for the last five decades. ..."
"... The Bolton-Pompeo-Pence presidency is destined to go down in history as one of infamy and treason. Trump? dead-man walking, more than likely by a stroke-heart attack when he's popping out one of his idiotic and manic tweets! ..."
"... John Bolton is a psychopath, He should be dismissed immediately, but I think that he should be institutionalized. ..."
"... Yeah Joe, it wasn't just you and other reporters who were stunned by Bolton's recess appt to the UN by W -- - many of us were staggered by the jaw-dropping inappropriateness of it, ..."
"... But, as you accurately mentioned, the Republicans had long-ago (I recall first hearing about it during Nixon's reign, with Earl Butz) used that gambit to effectively sabotage regulatory agencies & depts. Rather than try to dissolve an agency that most people want, they can neutralize it by appointing some hack or lobbyist for the entity being regulated so that nothing meaningful gets done, AND it has the 'beneficial' effect of discrediting the agency involved, and government in general, which is what many libertarian-inclined Republicans like. ..."
"... Israel doesnt want the US to attack Iran Well that is BS! Israel and its Fifth Column in the US have agitated for the US to attack Iran for years .we've all seen and heard it .and now they want to try to wipe our memories of their war mongering with their typical hasbara in the NYT and Netanyahu claiming .'oh we have nothing to do with it." ..."
"... Bolton is a psychopath but he is Sheldon Adelson's errand boy .who Bolton met with in Las Vegas the week before Trump appointed him and Adelson is the Orange carnival barker's 100 million dollar donor. ..."
"... Trump's incoherent mixture of neoconservative & isolationism almost make him a Bush! ..."
"... I assume Trump knows what a 'neocon' but is so indebted to Israel and intoxicated by Islamophobic rhetoric that he cannot free himself from his addiction to surrounding himself with more neo-cons ..."
"... The progression from Flynn to McMaster to Bolton was just selecting between neocon flavors for his National Security Advisers. What a joke of a nation! ..."
"... I appreciate the article, but it doesn't mention Israel, which is the fountainhead of the agenda to take out Iran, Iraq, and Syria. ..."
"... "Overall, 28 sitting senators have received sizable contributions from John Bolton PAC during the election cycle, as have nine representatives on the House defense, foreign affairs, and homeland security subcommittees." ..."
"... Don't forget who told Donald Trump to hire John Bolton. It was Steve Bannon and Roger Ailes. ..."
"... They like Bolton because he is "incapable of empathy and good on Israel." ..."
"... The NYT has indeed supported wars but it is not alone nor is this a recent trend. There is a very old trend of the commercial news establishments becoming war hawks and regurtitators of official propaganda whenever the USA wants to pick a fight. It goes back to the period after the establishment of the nation when expansionism set its roots down and what grew out of that is pretty much the same kind of nationalistic propaganda we see today. ..."
John Bolton has been saying for years he wants the Iranian government overthrown, and now he's made his move. But this time he
may have gone too far, writes Joe Lauria.
I knew John Bolton and interacted with him on a nearly daily basis with my colleagues in the press corps at United Nations headquarters
in New York when Bolton was the United States ambassador there from August 2005 to December 2006.
Most diplomats, officials, and journalists were shocked that Bolton (evading confirmation with a recess appointment) had
actually become the U.S. representative, given his long, public disdain for the UN. But that turned out to be the point.
It's been the strategy of Republican administrations to appoint the fiercest critic to head an agency or institution in order
to weaken it, perhaps even fatally.
Bolton's most infamous quote about the UN followed him into the building. In 1994 he had
said : "The Secretariat building
in New York has 38 stories. If it lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."
But a more telling comment in that same 1994 conference was when he said that no matter what the UN decides the U.S. will do
whatever it wants:
Bolton sees such frank admissions as signs of strength, not alarm.
He is a humorless man, who at the UN at least, seemed to always think he was the smartest person in the room. He once gave a
lecture in 2006 at the U.S. mission to UN correspondents, replete with a chalk board, on how nuclear enrichment worked. His aim,
of course, was to convince us that Iran was close to a bomb, even though a 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate being prepared
at the time said Tehran had
abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
I thought I'd challenge him one day at the press stakeout outside the Security Council chamber, where Bolton often stopped to
lecture journalists on what they should write. "If the United States and Britain had not overthrown a democratically elected government
in Iran in 1953 would the United States be today faced with a revolutionary government enriching uranium?' I asked him.
"That's an interesting question," he told me, "but for another time and another place." It was a time and a place, of course,
that never came.
More Than an Ideology
Bolton possesses an abiding self-righteousness rooted in what seems a sincere belief in the myth of American greatness, mixed
with deep personal failings hidden from public view.
He seemed perpetually angry and it wasn't clear whether it was over some personal or diplomatic feud. He seems to take personally
nations standing up to America, binding his sense of personal power with that of the United States.
It is more than an ideology. It's fanaticism. Bolton believes America is exceptional and indispensible and superior to all
other nations and isn't afraid to say so. He'd have been better off perhaps in the McKinley administration, before the days
of PR-sugarcoating of imperial aggression. He's not your typical passive-aggressive government official. He's aggressive-aggressive.
And now Bolton is ordering 120,000 troops to get ready and an aircraft carrier to steam towards Iran.
Bolton's all too willing to make his bullying personal on behalf of the state. He implicitly
threatened the children
of José Bustani, who Vice President Dick Cheney wanted out of his job as head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons because Bustani had gotten Iraq to agree to join the chemical weapons protocol, thereby making it harder for the U.S. to
invade Iraq.
After Bolton's failed 2005 confirmation hearings, Tony Blinken, the then staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
told The New Yorker
's Dexter Filkins:
"We saw a pattern of Mr. Bolton trying to manipulate intelligence to justify his views. If it had happened once, maybe.
But it came up multiple times, and always it was the same underlying issue: he would stake out a position, and then, if the
intelligence didn't support it, he would try to exaggerate the intelligence and marginalize the officials who had produced it."
Bolton is no fan of democracy if things don't go his way. He is a vociferous instigator of the so-far failed U.S. coup in
Venezuela and of course Bolton organized
the "Brooks Brothers riot" that disrupted the recounting of votes in Florida in the disputed 2000 presidential election.
What is alarming about the above video is not so much that he justifies lying, but the example he gives: lying to cover up military
plans like the invasion of Normandy. This is a common ruling class tactic in the U.S. to portray disobedient leaders ripe for
overthrow as Hitler. Saddam was Hitler, Milosevic was Hitler, Noriega was Hitler and Hillary Clinton called Putin Hitler. It is
a false revival of U.S. glory from World War II to paint foreign adventures as moral crusades, rather than naked aggression in pursuit
of profits and power.
Bolton is the distillation of the pathology of American power. He is unique only in the purity of this pathology.
Regime Change for Iran
The U.S. national security adviser has been saying for years he wants the Iranian government overthrown, and now he's made his
move. But this time John Bolton may have flown too high.
He was chosen for his post by a president with limited understanding of international affairs -- if real estate is not involved
-- and one who loves to be sucked up to. Trump is Bolton's perfect cover.
But hubris may have finally bested Bolton. He had never before maneuvered himself into such a position of power, though he'd
left a trail of chaos at lower levels of government. Sitting opposite the Resolute desk on a daily basis has presented a chance to implement
his plans.
At the top of that agenda
has been Bolton's stated aim for years: to
bomb and
topple
the Iranian government.
Thus Bolton was the driving force to get a carrier strike force sent to the Persian Gulf and, according to The New York Times,
on May 14 , it was he who
"ordered" a Pentagon
plan to prepare 120,000 U.S. troops for the Gulf. These were to be deployed "if Iran attacked American forces or accelerated its
work on nuclear weapons."
Two months after Bolton was appointed national security adviser, in June 2018, Trump pulled the U.S. out of the six-nation
deal that has seen Tehran curtail its nuclear enrichment program in exchange for relaxation of U.S. and international sanctions.
At the time of Bolton's appointment in April 2018, Tom Countryman, who had been undersecretary of state for arms control and
international security, as had Bolton,
predicted
to The Intercept that if Iran resumed enrichment after the U.S. left the deal, it "would be the kind of excuse that a
person like Bolton would look to to create a military provocation or direct attack on Iran."
In response to ever tightening sanctions, Iran said on May 5 (May 6 in Tehran) that it would indeed
restart partial nuclear enrichment. On the same day, Bolton
announced the carrier strike group was headed to the Gulf.
Bolton Faces Resistance
If this were a normally functioning White House, in which imperial moves are normally made, a president would order military
action, and not a national security adviser.
"I don't think Trump is smart enough to realize what Bolton and [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo are doing to him,"
former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel told RT's Afshin Rattansi
this week.
"They have manipulated him. When you get the national security adviser who claims that he ordered an aircraft carrier flotilla
to go into the Persian Gulf, we've never seen that. In the days of Henry Kissinger, who really brought sway, he never ordered
this, and if it was ordered it was done behind closed doors."
Bolton claimed he acted on intelligence that Iran was poised to attack U.S. interests close to Iran.
Both Israel and Saudi Arabia, lacking the military firepower of the United States, have long tried to get the U.S. to fight
its wars, and one no more important than against its common enemy. An
editorial on May 16 in the Saudi English-language news
outlet, Arab News , called for a U.S. "surgical strike" on Iran. But The New York Times reported on the
same day that though Israel was behind Bolton's "intelligence" about an Iranian threat, Israel does not want the U.S. to attack
Iran causing a full-scale war.
The
intelligence alleged Iran was fitting missiles on fishing boats in the Gulf. Imagine a government targeted by the most powerful
military force in history wanting to defend itself in its own waters.
Bolton also said Iran was threatening Western interests in Iraq, which led eventually to non-essential U.S. diplomatic staff
leaving Baghdad and Erbil.
It is the typical provocation of a bully: threaten someone with a cruise missile and the moment they pick up a knife in self-defense
you attack, conveniently leaving the initial threat out of the story. It then becomes: "Iran picked up a knife. We have to blow
them away with cruise missiles."
But this time the bully is being challenged. Federica Mogherini, the EU's high representative for foreign affairs and security
policy,
resisted the U.S. on Iran when she met Pompeo in Brussels on May 13.
"It's always better to talk, rather than not to, and especially when tensions arise Mike Pompeo heard that very clearly today
from us," said Mogherini. "We are living in a crucial, delicate moment where the most relevant attitude to take – the most responsible
attitude to take – is and we believe should be, that of maximum restraint and avoiding any escalation on the military side."
The New York Times that day
reported
: "Privately, several European officials described Mr. Bolton and Mr. Pompeo as pushing an unsuspecting Mr. Trump through a series
of steps that could put the United States on a course to war before the president realizes it."
Ghika: No new threat from Iran. (YouTube)
British Maj. Gen. Chris Ghika then said on May 14: "There has been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq or
Syria." Ghika was
rebuked by U.S. Central Command, whose spokesman said, "Recent comments from OIR's Deputy Commander run counter to the identified
credible threats available to intelligence from U.S. and allies regarding Iranian-backed forces in the region."
A day later it was Trump himself, however, who was said to be resisting Bolton. On May 15 The Washington Post reported:
"President Trump is frustrated with some of his top advisers, who he thinks could rush the United States into a military
confrontation with Iran and shatter his long-standing pledge to withdraw from costly foreign wars, according to several U.S.
officials. Trump prefers a diplomatic approach to resolving tensions and wants to speak directly with Iran's leaders."
"President Trump has told his acting defense secretary, Patrick Shanahan, that he does not want to go to war with Iran, according
to several administration officials, in a message to his hawkish aides that an intensifying American pressure campaign against
the clerical-led government in Tehran must not escalate into open conflict."
Then it was the Democrats who stood up to Bolton. On Tuesday Pompeo and Shanahan briefed senators and representatives behind
closed doors on Capitol Hill regarding the administration's case for confronting Iran.
"Are they (Iran) reacting to us, or are we doing these things in reaction to them? That is a major question I have, that I still
have," Sen. Angus King told reporters after the briefing. "What we view as defensive, they view as provocative. Or vice versa."
Democratic Representative Ruben Gallego told reporters after the briefing: "I believe there is a certain level of escalation
of both sides that could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The feedback loop tells us they're escalating for war, but they could
just be escalating because we're escalating."
Pompeo told a radio interviewer after the briefing that the U.S. had still not determined who attacked two Saudi, a Norwegian
and an Emirati oil tanker in the Gulf last week, which bore the hallmarks of a provocation. Pompeo said "it seems like it's quite
possible that Iran was behind" the attacks.
Bolton was conspicuously absent from the closed-door briefing.
It's Up to Trump
Trump has pinballed all over the place on Iran. He called the Times and Post stories about him resisting Bolton
"fake news."
"The Fake News Media is hurting our Country with its fraudulent and highly inaccurate coverage of Iran. It is scattershot, poorly
sourced (made up), and DANGEROUS. At least Iran doesn't know what to think, which at this point may very well be a good thing!"
Trump tweeted on May 17.
The Fake News Media is hurting our Country with its fraudulent and highly inaccurate coverage of Iran. It is scattershot,
poorly sourced (made up), and DANGEROUS. At least Iran doesn't know what to think, which at this point may very well be a good
thing!
Then he threatened what could be construed as genocide against Iran. "If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of
Iran. Never threaten the United States again!" he tweeted on Sunday.
But also last Sunday he told Fox News that the
"military-industrial complex" is real and "they do like war" and they "went nuts" when he said he wanted to withdraw troops from
Syria. Trump said he didn't want war with Iran, here possibly reflecting Israel's views.
On Monday he implied that the crisis has been drummed up to get Iran to negotiate.
"The Fake News put out a typically false statement, without any knowledge that the United States was trying to set up a negotiation
with Iran. This is a false report ."
The Fake News put out a typically false statement, without any knowledge that the United States was trying to set up
a negotiation with Iran. This is a false report....
John Bolton must be stopped before he gets his war. It is beyond troubling that the man we have to count on to do it is Donald
Trump.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent for T he Wall Street Journal,
Boston Globe , Sunday Times of London and numerous other newspapers. He can be reached at [email protected]and followed on Twitter @unjoe .
Or as Pogo said, "We have met the enemy and he is US." As in the lies that created the Vietnam war and the waste of 58,000
American soldiers and thousand of Vietnamese. Or the lie that Iran is our enemy when we funded and encouraged Saddam to attack
them and destroyed their attempt to have a secular government.
Or the lie of the WMD's and the 9/11 attack which was funded by Saudi Arabia, and run by Saudis and NOT Iraq.
Or the lies of Afghanistan which was economically and culturally better off when it was controlled by the USSR...
John Hawk , May 26, 2019 at 16:56
Joe, nice piece of work covering the psycho-pathology of America's leading nazi!
To correct one of your statements: Trump DID NOT appoint him National Security Adviser, but Adelson and Mercer did. Trump
is a brain-dead, blackmailed puppet who fancies himself as POTUS.
It can't get any more delusional than this. Everybody I know who is following the Washington Beltway histrionics of Trump
et al know full-well that a certain intelligence agency of a small Middle East domiciled country have THE definitive dossier
on Trump and have been building it for the last five decades.
After all, deception is their game and they use it liberally, like feeding their agenda to Bolton as 'intelligence' info
of the highest order. The Bolton-Pompeo-Pence presidency is destined to go down in history as one of infamy and treason.
Trump? dead-man walking, more than likely by a stroke-heart attack when he's popping out one of his idiotic and manic tweets!
Zhu , May 26, 2019 at 03:20
If Bolton were struck by lightning tomorrow morning, would anything change much? I doubt it. We Americans are as warlike
as the ancient Assyrian. We've been slaughtering Indians, Koreans, SE Asians, Central Americans, and multiple Middle Eastern
people for a looong time. It is flattering to blame this individual or th t country, but no. We, as a community, are all responsible
to some degree. Even me, on the far side of the world.
Alex , May 25, 2019 at 21:50
Bolton's choosing destroyed IRAN but staying friends with Saudi Arabia it's so contradicting, and so obvious that he is influenced
to behave this way is because Israelies influence. Saudy Kingdom using Bolton to get IRAN so Saudy will be only country promote
Extreme version of Wahhabi Islam which is didn't existed In Islam's history.
So Bolton's obsession with destruction of Iran is ignorance as its best. September 11th suspects were most of them Saudy
nationals, yet nobody wanted to talk about it, because there is irony that, George W Bush was and probably still doing business
with Saudy. So how can you explain that to American people? No you can not.
Perhaps collectively hypnotism !
OlyaPola , May 26, 2019 at 02:58
" So how can you explain that to American people?"
Given that useful fools are useful, why would you want to?
" No you can not."
An illustration of the benefits of dumbing down do not accrue solely to those actively engaged in dumbing down, facilitating
the minimising of blowback during implementation of strategies based on "How to drown a drowning man with the minimum of blowback",
given that many believe that critical mass is a function of linear notions of 50% +1 and above; a further conflation of quantity
with quality to which the opponents are prone.
William , May 25, 2019 at 19:06
John Bolton is a psychopath, He should be dismissed immediately, but I think that he should be institutionalized.
Put him in a strait jacket and keep him in a padded cell. He poses a threat to millions of people.
Eddie S , May 25, 2019 at 11:26
Yeah Joe, it wasn't just you and other reporters who were stunned by Bolton's recess appt to the UN by W -- - many of
us were staggered by the jaw-dropping inappropriateness of it, IF it was assessed from a pro-peace perspective.
But, as you accurately mentioned, the Republicans had long-ago (I recall first hearing about it during Nixon's reign,
with Earl Butz) used that gambit to effectively sabotage regulatory agencies & depts. Rather than try to dissolve an agency
that most people want, they can neutralize it by appointing some hack or lobbyist for the entity being regulated so that nothing
meaningful gets done, AND it has the 'beneficial' effect of discrediting the agency involved, and government in general, which
is what many libertarian-inclined Republicans like.
Good article about a reprehensible politician.
renfro , May 25, 2019 at 11:18
"But The New York Times reported on the same day that though Israel was behind Bolton's "intelligence" about an Iranian
threat, Israel does not want the U.S. to attack Iran causing a full-scale war. "
________________________________
Israel doesnt want the US to attack Iran Well that is BS!
Israel and its Fifth Column in the US have agitated for the US to attack Iran for years .we've all seen and heard it .and now
they want to try to wipe our memories of their war mongering with their typical hasbara in the NYT and Netanyahu claiming .'oh
we have nothing to do with it."
Bolton is a psychopath but he is Sheldon Adelson's errand boy .who Bolton met with in Las Vegas the week before Trump
appointed him and Adelson is the Orange carnival barker's 100 million dollar donor.
Seriously, how stupid do they think we are? If we attack Iran it will be for the Zionist and Saudis and we all know it.
Luther Bliss , May 25, 2019 at 10:57
Trump's incoherent mixture of neoconservative & isolationism almost make him a Bush!
Remember it wasn't until Bush JR's second term that he asked his father, "What's A Neocon?" to which Pappy Bush replied,
"Israel."
I assume Trump knows what a 'neocon' but is so indebted to Israel and intoxicated by Islamophobic rhetoric that he cannot
free himself from his addiction to surrounding himself with more neo-cons.
The progression from Flynn to McMaster to Bolton was just selecting between neocon flavors for his National Security
Advisers. What a joke of a nation!
Mark , May 25, 2019 at 02:30
I appreciate the article, but it doesn't mention Israel, which is the fountainhead of the agenda to take out Iran, Iraq,
and Syria. Bolton stands out for his extremity among extremists, but he's a means rather than the end. The agenda is something
into which he bought, passionately by all indications, but which a paucity of other people created strictly to advance their
own, tiny, exclusive clan, not for the benefit of the United States.
Hank , May 25, 2019 at 09:43
To think that this administration campaigned on a promise to restrict future wasteful and needless interventions and then
hired this dinosaur of a warmonger makes my blood curl! Everyone with half a brain knows what Bolton's agenda is yet here he
is leading the USA into a war at the behest of a foreign nation led by a felon and terrorist! The American people who want peace
and their tax dollars invested into improving the USA have once again been stabbed in the back by a conniving administration.
Will this cycle of non-democracy ever end? Until it does, future administrations will continue on just like previous ones- kowtowing
to special interests, in particular the military/industrial mafia and the apartheid criminal state of Israel! All this massive
business of holding "elections" in the USA, all the talk about "Russian collusion" and the REAL collusion is right there in
front of us all- the US administration has once again COLLUDED to go back on a campaign promise and once again open the money
trough for the military/industrialist pigs!
Mark , May 26, 2019 at 05:31
I get the idea, but it's necessary to look 'behind' back-stabbing, conniving, colluding administrations, and Bolton, and
the military/industrial complex, and to bring Israel and some barely known U.S. history, at least back to World War I, explicitly
to the fore for public scrutiny. That's a monumental task, to say the least, owing to American attention spans and the contrary
interests of the powers that be.
Taras77 , May 24, 2019 at 20:24
Bolton has his own well funded PAC, from which he is free to "contribute" (bribe) sychophant congress individuals. What a
situation for the fix for war.
"Overall, 28 sitting senators have received sizable contributions from John Bolton PAC during the election cycle, as
have nine representatives on the House defense, foreign affairs, and homeland security subcommittees."
ricardo2000 , May 24, 2019 at 17:29
By far the most productive, and most verifiable, way to eliminate weapons is at a negotiating table. The easiest way to start
a war is with ignorant blather.
O Society , May 24, 2019 at 16:09
Don't forget who told Donald Trump to hire John Bolton. It was Steve Bannon and Roger Ailes.
They like Bolton because he is "incapable of empathy and good on Israel."
Trump initially declined on Bolton because "he doesn't like Bolton's moustache."
Kool Aid drinkers and idiots. We're being lead by a cult of morons who worship the bombs, money, and a white separatist state.
i doubt the iranians will test a nuke until after djt is out of office. after that you might wake up one morning and everything
you knew before becomes quite obsolete.
my guess is israel has stealth cruise missiles with h bombs. it would be very foolish of them to not have them. those descendants
of egyptian slaves are anything but foolish.
Sam , May 27, 2019 at 00:33
@ CitizenOne: Thank you for your long comment. I agree with much of what you wrote, but would like to know why you claimed,
"Iran is surely guilty of vowing the destruction of Israel " . According to what I've read, Iran has not initiated hostilities
with any nation for over a century – a clear, peaceful contrast to the rogue states of Israel & the U.S. Are you referring to
the long-ago-debunked claim that Iran claimed to 'wipe Israel off the map'?
(See https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jun/14/post155
? "So there we have it. Starting with Juan Cole, and going via the New York Times' experts through MEMRI to the BBC's monitors,
the consensus is that Ahmadinejad did not talk about any maps. He was, as I insisted in my original piece, offering a vague
wish for the future.
"A very last point. The fact that he compared his desired option – the elimination of "the regime occupying Jerusalem" –
with the fall of the Shah's regime in Iran makes it crystal clear that he is talking about regime change, not the end of Israel.
")
Or perhaps you're referring to Revolutionary Guard deputy leader Hossein Salami's warning that if Israel starts an aggressive
war against Iran, it 'will end with {Israel's} elimination from the global political map'? IMHO, warning an extremely aggressive,
self-obsessed, Apartheid-practicing rogue state against trying to attack your nation is wise ;-) .
I look forward to your response. Thanks very much.
Sam F , May 27, 2019 at 06:12
Sam: please use an identifier initial as I do, to prevent confusion.
I have asked you twice before; perhaps not the same person.
It is unfair to expect others to make the clarification, and easy to prevent.
How is it that crazies like Bolton can end up high in our government hierarchy? It is because the whole damned government
is crazy through and through
Joe , May 23, 2019 at 20:48
His Dad probably made a huge donation to Yale just like Bush's Dad. That's what happens when the system is gamed.
Art Thomas , May 25, 2019 at 09:22
Yes, in my opinion. The state stripped of patriotic rhetoric and other obfuscations that keep us devoted to it is nothing
more than a criminal gang that hides behind the law.
Some basic examples. 1. The law: taxation, the crime: theft. 2. The law: monetary credit expansion, i.e. debt financing,
the crime: counterfeiting, i.e. creating money out of thin air. 3. The invasion of countries not a threat to the invading state.
Etc. etc.
Tiu , May 23, 2019 at 18:30
If the US "political establishment" was working for America's benefit, things would look very different.
They are instead working on the "globalist" agenda, which will, if successful, destroy all nations as we know them today and
what remains will be ruled over by a bunch of sociopaths who are the same group that has inflicted John Bolton on the world.
Bolton's a tool, a bit like a hammer, to get their project done. The Democrats have equivalent tools e.g. H R Clinton.
Mark Thomason , May 23, 2019 at 18:04
The problem is if he hasn't gone too far. If he gets his war.
Vonu , May 23, 2019 at 16:53
John Bolton should get to ride the missile in the remake of Dr. Strangelove.
evelync , May 23, 2019 at 19:53
hah hah hah
I loved that movie :)
and yes Bolton is a perfect caricature of Slim Pickens AKA Dr Strangelove.
I also refer to him as Yosemite Sam
one difference for our current real life war monger is that the movie character was simply insane and didn't justify his
craziness with explanations.
Bolton, OTOH, blames "national Security" and "the national interests" of this country .say what????
if we look at the horrific human costs and the enormous financial costs of the wars that were fought for U.S. "national interests"
one would want to ask, once the rubble had cleared, what "interests" were actually served and whose "security" did they actually
improve?
The answers always take us back to Eisenhower's MIC and Ray McGovern's MICIMATT (maybe I got a couple of these letters wrong?).
Whoever profited from the mayhem don't represent either our "national interest' or our "national security" IMO and yet those
two phrases are used to shut down any discussion or criticism in the lead up .
whew
Mork D , May 25, 2019 at 01:20
Strictly about the movie – Slim Pickens plays the ranking officer on the B-52 (I think?) which is actually dropping the bomb.
Dr Strangelove is a totally different character, one of a few played by Peter Sellers in that movie, and is a (mostly!) wheelchair-bound
German scientist.
And the wheelchair bound psychopathic scientist of Dr. Strangelove was inspired by Kubrick meeting Henry Kissinger at a cocktail
party and recognizing that Kissinger was the most evil person on this planet because he looked and sounded so responsible and
rational.
Now that Saddam, bin Laden, Pol Pot, Stalin, and Hitler are dead, Kissinger holds the record of the person still alive who has
needlessly killed more people, both Americans and non-Americans, than any other person on this planet.
Hillary's idea of destabilizing Libya and creating a political vacuum there was from her training when working for Kissinger.
Abe , May 23, 2019 at 16:51
The Pathology:
John Bolton
Senior fellow at American Enterprise Institute (pro-Israel Lobby organization)
Chairman of Gatestone Institute (pro-Israel Lobby organization)
Former board member of Project for the New American Century (pro-Israel Lobby organization)
Former Adviser to Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (pro-Israel Lobby organization) https://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/john-bolton/
Mike Pompeo
Christian Zionist: "We will continue to fight these battles, it is a never ending struggle until the Rapture."
Associate of Center for Security Policy (pro-Israel Lobby organization)
Sponsor of ACT! for America (pro-Israel Lobby organization) https://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/mike-pompeo/
Sam , May 27, 2019 at 00:38
@ Abe: Thanks for the info!
Litchfield , May 23, 2019 at 16:42
John Bolton is obviously a very sick puppy.
This is patently obvious to any observer with the least desgree of psyhological sophistication and insight.
If he lived on your block and made such statements about his neighbors, or a woman living nearby, he would be looking at restraining
orders.
He is an out-of-control abusive pig who belongs in an institution where a course of shock therapy might actually help him. I
reckon any basic psychological test would find that he has a least borderline personality and at worst is actually insane and
incapable of taking responsibility for the consequences of his action.
Bolton has permanent termporary insanity.
Letting this tortured, psychopathic individual run the military is itself an enormous crime, one of murderous negligence, one
for which Trump truly should and could be impeached. Congress must take all possible steps to get this man out of the Executive
Branch.
Threaten Trump with impeachment if he doesn't fire Bolton.
His appointment of Bolton is reckless negligence and endangers this country.
James , May 23, 2019 at 19:09
I wonder how good American politicians of the past, if there were any, would react to the appointment of this psychopath
as what he is now. Whom should be blamed for it? Donald Trump? The pro-Israeli lobbies? Or the American nation? A glance at
the man's face is enough to realize that he is deeply sick. To me, he doesn't look like a human being at all! He looks like
a monkey out of a stuffy room. Why don't psychotherapists do anything about him? Shouldn't he be hospitalized for the safety/security
of the world population? By the way, I wonder where Netanyahu, the psychopath's provoker, is. He has been very quiet for about
a month or so. Maybe he is waiting for the war to ignite without getting himself directly involved in it. Let Americans and
Iranians kill one another while he waits to pick up the fruit in the end.
Mork D , May 25, 2019 at 01:27
Where does the blame lie? Who hired him? Who's the chief of the executive branch? Who's a person who could actually fire
him (as he's so famous for doing on reality TV shows) instead of wringing his hands on friendly TV networks declaring he doesn't
want to actually go to war, but if he's 'forced' to, he'll erase Iran from the map?
Druid , May 26, 2019 at 03:16
He would have to get permission from Adelson and the Mercers first.
CitizenOne , May 24, 2019 at 20:52
Bolton and Pompeo are the only things keeping him from impeachment. As long as Trump satisfies the bloodthirsty war mongers
and the insatiable appetite of the MIC and the Pro Israel lobby and the Oil Lobby or Koch Industries he cannot lose. So far
Trump is bangin on all cylinders. I really think he knows what he needs to do to survive. All this impeachment talk is just
fantasy by the left dreaming about getting him out of office "somehow".
bjd , May 23, 2019 at 16:13
That the mono-maniacal psychopath Bolton is a walking exhibit of the Dunning–Kruger effect is no surprise to me. It is extra
frightening though.
Realist , May 23, 2019 at 16:00
What was Bolton's day job before he started mucking around in politics and foreign policy? Master waterboarder or testicular
electrificator in extraordinary renditions for the CIA? He seems the sort to have spent much time at Abu Ghraib, and not just
to take notes. Honestly, his major goals seem to be the eradication of entire cultures and societies, which will somehow redound
to the magnificence of the United States of America. Clearly a sociopathic personality. A lot in common with Cheney.
Jimmy G , May 23, 2019 at 15:57
Again the panic is stirred by .. The NYT! (The source of such good info regarding Russia gate) .
The statement regarding Bolton " ordering" anything is just one more example of the media and the intel bureaucrats trying to
put the President in a jam politically . (Remember how a month ago we were invading Venezuela?)
Bolton is doing nothing more than getting enough rope to hang himself, and the military intelligence service, congressional
and media Trumpophobes are willing to stir this to the very edge, and we all know Congress could (if it could act in good Constitutional
faith, rather than pretending to be the judicial branch) unite for the good of this country and Trump would be amenable to whatever
they came up with. Trump is far less of a warmonger than any POTUS we've had in a very long time.
Realist , May 23, 2019 at 16:18
If Congress is the only branch of government with the constitutional power to declare a war, surely it has the power to FORBID
the executive branch from fomenting such a war against their judgement.
In fact, wasn't the Boland Amendment such a legislative act passed with the intent of preventing the Reagan administration
from pursuing military action in Central America, most notably Nicaragua and El Salvador?
What's to prevent the Congress, if it were so inclined (which I doubt it is) to instruct the president (especially if he
seems trigger-happy) to refrain from initiating any unprovoked attacks upon Iran, Venezuela, North Korea or any other country,
for that matter?
Vonu , May 23, 2019 at 16:56
Ollie North worked for Reagan, didn't he?
RnM , May 25, 2019 at 17:27
Trump is very aware that 'Stache Bolton and Mike "Mumbles" Pompeo are significant threats to his re-election. Would not be
surprised to see them removed before January.
CitizenOne , May 25, 2019 at 21:02
The NYT has indeed supported wars but it is not alone nor is this a recent trend. There is a very old trend of the commercial
news establishments becoming war hawks and regurtitators of official propaganda whenever the USA wants to pick a fight. It goes
back to the period after the establishment of the nation when expansionism set its roots down and what grew out of that is pretty
much the same kind of nationalistic propaganda we see today.
I agree with your statement that Trump is far less vulnerable based on his history but I am sure that the war planners are
always concocting special information diets that are carefully prepared to appeal to the particular tastes of the leader of
the day. Whatever Trumps opinion is he will be surrounded by the hand picked lunatics of the day who will entice and enjoin
him to agree with plans for war based on their carefully prepared menu of propaganda specifically designed to be appealing to
the palate of whoever is in charge.
It is less certain that Trump's long history of opposing military action will have real staying power as he is served up
courses of a sumptuous meal prepared specially for his palate designed to engage him in support for military action all over
the World.
Trump is particularly susceptible to flattery and appeals to his greatness and his very stable genius. He wants to be the
great leader and for that he needs a plan to deal with the geopolitical situation in many countries.
Trump is a man who knows what to do too.
He advised Germany that it was a puppet of Russia until he didn't
He advised Teresa May how to do Brexit the right way until he didn't
He announced to the World he had forged deep connections with North Korea until he didn't
He had high hopes for an alliance with Russia until he didn't.
He specified the right type of fire fighting to be used to fight the Notre Dame Cathedral fire until he didn't
He wanted to walk away from the fight in Syria until he didn't
He wanted to walk away from the war in Syria again until he didn't
He wanted to cut the military budget until he didn't
Ordinarily if we were in the middle of a democratic presidency the press would be raising the "flip flopper" argument every
second of their available airtime.
Democrats are the flip floppers but never a republican even when he is. It all depends on the way the flips and the flops
land. If they land on conservative positions then a flop or a flip never occurred. With republicans, flip flopping is just a
corrective action to realign the president on the correct course. If it is a democrat then their hypocrisy and flip flopping
are broadcast 24/7 and are portrayed a fundamentally disqualifying events which demonstrate a fundamental lack of principles
and weakness of character deserving of condemnation. When errant republicans flip flop over to the "correct" vision they are
welcomed with open arms into the fold.
Trump wants to be accepted so badly that the democrats hounding him are in fact herding him into the fold of the conservatives
who will shelter him and support him at all costs and the media will never ever ever never call this flip flopping.
In short, if a political candidate shifts to the left his integrity will be destroyed as his character will be portrayed
as weak and built on shifting sands. He will be deemed not to be trusted like some loose cannon.
On the other hand, if a political candidate shifts to the right he will be greeted as a prodigal son returning to the fold
and will be welcomed with open arms.
So I am not as sure as you that Trump's background will be any indicator of his future ideas about how to succeed in the
environment he is in where both democrats by their antagonism and republicans by their defense of him both push him over to
the right.
He may once have been far less of a war hawk but politicians on both sides of the aisle are pushing him further to the right
every day.
Consortium News editor Joe Lauria may wish to contribute a follow up series of articles detailing the purity of pro-Israel
Lobby pathology exemplified by Bolton, Pompeo, and the beyond troubling Trump preferably before the next war.
Litchfield , May 23, 2019 at 19:33
"the wider extent of pro-Israel Lobby pathology in the US government. "
That's it in a nutshell.
KiwiAntz , May 24, 2019 at 18:46
Thanks Joe for the great article. Bolton (aka the moustache) truly is a humourless, warmongering, depraved psycho? This is
a cowardly man who dodged the Vietnam draft as he didn't want to die in some foreign patty field! But this lunatic has no qualms
to send other peoples sons & daughters into a Iranian war zone as cannon fodder to satisfy his deluded & perverted bloodlust
to destroy Iran? If "the moustache" wants a War with Iran he should be forced to fight on the frontlines with his troops along
with POTUS Bonespurs Trump, another cowardly draft dodger? Let the moustache & the Dotard make a stand, like Jon Snow in the
Battle of the bastards, sword in hand, facing down the so called Iranian, bogeyman enemy, but this would never happen as cowards
& bastards like Bolton & Trump don't personally fight in the battles they start, they hide in safety in a Washington situation
room, as far away from any War zone as possible! If Bolton gets his War with Iran, Trump will pay the price for this suicide
mission because he would be blamed for the fallout of any Military defeat! America's already sorry record of Military humiliation
& defeat in Regime change operations around the Globe would reach a crescendo if they ever dared to try to attack & overthrow
Iran as it would be the endgame of the US Empire!
mark , May 23, 2019 at 22:28
Trump is just Israel's bitch.
incontinent reader , May 24, 2019 at 01:08
Good comment, Abe. We've missed you. Keep posting more of the same.
Zhu , May 25, 2019 at 01:37
We Americans were bloodthirsty long before Israel existed.
anon , May 25, 2019 at 06:35
What an absurd zionist troll post. Try it with someone dumb, Zhu.
Michael Steger , May 23, 2019 at 15:17
First Joe, McKinley did not implement American submission to British Imperialism, though it began with the end of Grant's
administration as with the twice elected Groucher Cleveland, but it's confirmation as US policy began with Teddy Roosevelt.
The Roosevelt Corollary destroyed JQA's Community of Principle in the Americas which should be known as the true Monroe Doctrine,
contrary to popular opinion today which has incorrectly replaced the Monroe Doctrine with the Roosevelt Corollary (as Bolton
is especially want to do). TR signalled the end of the Lincoln Era of American industrial development and global cooperation,
which was best represented by Grant, the most overlooked of great Presidents (and perhaps we see similarities of Grant to Trump
today). Bolton indeed is Captain Kangaroo, presiding over his Court as the Queen of No Hearts would in Alice's confrontation
with British rule once she penetrates behind the facade of British Lockean empiricism. With insight only equalled to Lincoln's,
who said "We can't fight two wars at once, so first the Confederacy and then the British," Trump has identified the fascist
nexus within our government as that same British foe, a nexus led by Brennan, Rice, Clapper, Jarrett, et al, which works on
behalf of what Eisenhower (another overlooked great President and General) called the Military Industrial Complex. The MIC is
a British Intelligence deployment to fundamentally undermine our Constitution and put the US into a state of perpetual war and
police surveillance. It is now over 70 years in the making, and is enforcing a new Cold War and attempted coup of our elected
Government, and yet, it may have finally found its match, not just in Trump, but in Trump's intended cooperation with Putin
of Russia and Xi of China. These three nations, along with Modi of India (just reelected) are a true threat to this rotten British
system, from Fabian liberals to Bolton chickenhawks, the true enemy is this British System. If we move on that effectively,
we may just have a chance to win this revolutionary moment now unfolding throughout the trans-Atlantic world. Let us return
to JQA's community of principle for the entire world. Let us work with Trump to end this fascist British nexus. Let us celebrate
our true heritage as Americans!
Litchfield , May 23, 2019 at 16:51
Your comments read with interesting and well taken.
BUT: The bottom line is that Trump hired Bolton (and Pompeo) and has wound him up and set him loose goosewalking across the
globe.
Why?
The buck for Bolton's suicidal buffonery stops with Trump.
So, I can't see him as a genuine foe of the Deep State-MIC as you describe.
Michael Steger , May 23, 2019 at 18:10
Bolton is loyal to Trump, even though he is a failed chickenhawk. Look at McMaster, at the leaking, and outright betrayal
of the President. Same with Tillerson, betrayal. Pompeo and Bolton have ridiculous views and bloated war rhetoric, but they're
personally loyal, perhaps opportunistically, and even temporarily, but nonetheless right now they are, and when they're not,
I bet they're gone. But Trump does control the policy. Look at North Korea, any war? Media said there would be, then worked
to undermine a deal. Venezuela, war? They're talking in Norway now, how'd that happen? Syria, troops out? MIC, Dems and Media
opposed, and Trump called them out for the first time since Eisenhower! Pompeo to Sochi to see Putin, progress. How'd that happen?
Trump is fighting the MIC and too many good Americans are spinning so fast from the propaganda machine they can't see straight.
anon4d2 , May 24, 2019 at 18:40
Interesting, but it is easy for a president to fight the MIC: simply fire and arrest anyone who acts against efforts to control
them. He could send any federal enforcement agency, FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, reserves, national guard, or even the Coast
Guard, Secret Service, DC police, or private guards to arrest them and prosecute any resisters as traitors. It is not one man
against the MIC.
And they cannot assassinate him once he has announced that intention, without exposing their hand and unleashing a generation
of purges and strict controls. If he is surrounded by traitors, he has only to say that and fire the lot of them. He could leak
that anonymously to Wikileaks or tweet it and they would be terrified.
Mork D , May 25, 2019 at 01:48
Bolton has been working DC bureaucracy like a pro for decades. He's using Trump like a marionette while he runs circles around
the amateur. He was helping orchestrate foreign wars of choice back when Trump was still playing a pretend boss on TV. Bolton
has no loyalty except as a facade for those he needs to suck up to.
Your examples of non-wars are terrific. Trump is amazing! – because he's running the government so badly that the State Dept
doesn't know what the Pentagon is doing doesn't know and vice versa. He chose to ignore the Iran nuclear deal, which had prevented
Iran from developing nuclear weapons. So now, the Iranians declare (out of self defense) that they're now going to pursue nuclear
weapons. Trump then says that he doesn't want to attack Iran, but they must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. This
is a circular argument exactly of the type the MIC uses to engage in war. Pompeo then indicates that laughable, ineffectual
attempts at sabotage are most likely Iranian. This grave threat to our nation can't even do enough damage to an oil tanker to
make it take on water.
Just because someone fails to do something doesn't mean that they were against it the whole time. Maybe they're just awful
at it. Sure, Trump says some things that are heartening to the anti-war and anti-interventionist crowd. But the next day he'll
say something heartening to rabid neocons. He needs to grow a spine, but it's far too late. He's a dandy, a spoiled rich kid
fop who's never had to answer for his mishaps, because why, when you have inherited money and a stout legal team?
anon4d2 , May 24, 2019 at 19:06
The idea that "the MIC is a British Intelligence deployment" is fantastical, as the US MIC is several times the size of UK's
entire MIC, and such a secret could never be kept. The US MIC has engaged UK secret agencies to subvert the US Constitution
by serving as agents to pass intercepted US communications back to the US to pretend that the MIC didn't do it, or that it was
foreign intel. But that is a long way from UK controlling the US MIC.
There are certainly confluences of interests between the US and UK oligarchies, but I see no basis for the contention that
"American submission to British Imperialism began with the end of Grant's administration" when the US prosecuted Britain for
building the Alabama etc. to break the Union blockade, and was outraged that Britain considered recognition of the Confederacy
until it lost at Gettysburg. The US under TR was not submitting to anyone when it sent the Great White Fleet on tour, or when
it seized Cuba and the Philippines. Nor under Wilson when it stayed out of WWI until very late in the war, despite the Lusitania
loss. Nor under FDR when it stayed out of WWII until attacked, despite the passionate pleas of Churchill.
Some detailed argument with credible references would be needed to support those assertions.
Zhu , May 25, 2019 at 01:44
Scapegoating is real popular with lefties & rughties alike. American Exceptionalism forbids we ever accept respobility for
what we've done.
Zhu , May 25, 2019 at 01:45
No, the rest of humanity is not any better.
anon4d2 , May 25, 2019 at 06:48
The commenter was searching for causes, and some UK conspiracy is simply too far from any available evidence. In fact it
much appears to be a wild attempt to distract from the obvious causes including zionism, which you pretend is "scapegoating."
No, zionism is a principle corrupting factor in US politics, especially foreign policy.
If you don't see that, you must start learning the evidence, rather than relying on the presumption that it is mere scapegoating.
Otherwise you are serving their wrongful and racist tribal purposes, and others will presume that you know that.
Oscar Shank , May 26, 2019 at 07:24
Zhu knows it.
Vera Gottlieb , May 23, 2019 at 14:56
How much more peaceful the life on our entire planet would be if the Americans weren't around.
Vonu , May 23, 2019 at 16:58
Extend that to all humans, and the head of PETA would support the project.
David G. Horsman , May 23, 2019 at 17:16
I doubt that. Nature hates a void.
Bethany , May 24, 2019 at 17:50
Exactly. Very well put.
Abe , May 23, 2019 at 14:19
Brazilian diplomat Jose Bustani, the first director-general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW),
only served about one year of his second term.
Bustani was forced out by the U.S. government in April 2002 because he wanted international chemical weapons monitors inside
Iraq and thus was seen as impeding the US push for war against Iraq. The US accused Bustani of "advocacy of inappropriate roles
for the OPCW".
Since 2011, the United Nations has stood by a US-Saudi-Israeli Axis financed and armed the mercenary terrorist forces attacked
Syria. In addition to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, major support for terrorist mercenaries has provided
via NATO-member state Turkey, as well as Jordan. Israel has launched repeated air attacks and provided direct support for terrorist
forces in Syria.
From July 2010 to 2018, the Director-General of the OPCW was Turkish career diplomat Ahmet Uzumcu. Uzumcu served ambassador
to Israel from 1999 to 2002, and as the Permanent Representative of Turkey to NATO between 2002 and 2004.
Turkey has been the primary channel for mercenary terrorist forces assaulting the Syrian state. The remaining terrorist forces
in the Idlib Governorate continue to be supplied through Syria.
Since Uzumcu announced the creation of the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission in Syria on 29 April 2014, not a single OPCW report
has acknowledged these basic facts concerning the conflict in Syria.
Following a consensus recommendation by the OPCW Executive Council in October 2017. Spanish career diplomat Fernando Arias
was appointed to replace Uzumcu as Director-General of the OPCW. Previously, Arias served as Ambassador of Spain to the Netherlands
and the Permanent Representative of Spain to the OPCW. He also has served as Permanent Representative of Spain to the United
Nations in New York.
Uzumcu, and now Bustani, obviously understand that the appropriate role of the OPCW is to provide propaganda support for
"regime change" operations, and to say nothing contrary to the "narrative" endorsed by the US-Saudi-Israeli Axis.
David G. Horsman , May 23, 2019 at 17:52
The OPCW has certainly disgraced themselves in Syria. What a sham.
Randal Marlin , May 23, 2019 at 13:48
John Bolton's questioner in the second clip should have made the distinction between deception used to lead the country into
war, and deception used to pursue a war already constitutionally declared and already underway.
In the first case there is a violation of democratic principle. When the people are the ultimate sovereign, they need to be
properly informed. They can agree to deception, like where and when D-Day will occur, during war; but not in the case of leading
the people into war. Lying to Congress is always unacceptable, and those who do lie to Congress should be made to suffer serious
penalties.
zhenry , May 24, 2019 at 02:13
I read a report that the aircraft carrier strike force and preparation of 120,000 US troops, to Persian Gulf was ordered
sometime ago and that Bolton took advantage of that fact to make it look that 'Bolton ordered it'?
vinnieoh , May 24, 2019 at 10:54
What I'd read is that the carrier strike force and bomber detachment were previously scheduled: there had been a previous
drawdown and this deployment represents a return to a level similar to the end of the Iraq war, and that does sound like Bolton/Pompeo
opportunism. The 120,000 troops plan sounds like something Bolton prodded pentagon scribes to produce. How to interpret when
Bolton says that then Trump denies it, and then a new troop deployment (1% of the previous) is announced/suggested/leaked? I
see it as Trump taking his dogs out for a walk to snarl at the neighbors.
David G , May 23, 2019 at 13:07
"Thus Bolton was the driving force to get a carrier strike force sent to the Persian Gulf and, according to The New York
Times, on May 14, it was he who 'ordered' a Pentagon plan to prepare 120,000 U.S. troops for the Gulf."
That the National Security Advisor, irrespective of whether the job is currently held by a lunatic like Bolton, may be giving
such orders should in and of itself be a subject of serious inquiry by Congress and the media.
The National Security Advisor is, as the title states, merely an advisor – not confirmed by the Senate, and therefore not,
in constitutional terms, an "officer of the United States" with the authority to carry out the policy of the government. Other
than his assistant fetching him lunch, nobody in government should be following Bolton's orders at all while he holds this job.
But this is nothing new. I had the same concern, on an even larger scale, during the first Bush Jr. administration when Cheney
was running around reshaping the government in his own warped image. Despite the Vice President's elected status, he has no
executive power under the Constitution – no power at all, in fact, except when sitting as President of the Senate. There was
a time when everyone knew that.
With all the perennial crowing we see about the greatness of the Constitution, and the mewling about how Trump is degrading
it, it would be nice if Congress and the media could spare a moment to care about whether the people giving orders to the world's
largest military and covert/intelligence apparatus are legally empowered to do so.
Ash , May 23, 2019 at 17:17
> That the National Security Advisor, irrespective of whether the job is currently held by a lunatic like Bolton,
> may be giving such orders should in and of itself be a subject of serious inquiry by Congress and the media.
It does kind of have an Alexander Haig flavor to it, doesn't it?
David G , May 23, 2019 at 22:08
When Bolton gets up and says "I'm in control here", I'm definitely finding a rock to hide under.
Zenobia van Dongen , May 23, 2019 at 13:06
The question that Joe Lauria asked of John Bolton, i.e. "If the United States and Britain had not overthrown a democratically
elected government in Iran in 1953 would the United States be today faced with a revolutionary government enriching uranium?"
seems to imply that Iran seeks revenge against the US for the CIA's 1953 coup d'état against prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq.
However the current leaders of Iran are not entitled to consider themselves the heirs of Mossadeq, nor are they morally justified
in avenging him, since the CIA coup relied largely on support from the very same clerical establishment that now rules Iran.
As a matter of fact in the 1950s and 60s Shia clerics in Iran were routinely considered CIA agents. Consequently the Iranian
elite's pretense of carrying on Mossadeq's anti-imperialist struggle is profoundly hypocritical. I grant that the current reactionary
clique that governs Iran defends Iran's sovereignty against US imperialism as Mossadeq did. But the underlying concept of the
Iranian nation is profoundly different. The present régime has no respect for the principles of democracy and popular sovereignty
that pervaded Iran's anti-imperialist struggle in the 1950s and was derived from the democratic ideals of the Persian constitutionalist
revolution of 1909. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Constitutional_Revolution
Indeed, Iran has no hesitation in crushing underfoot the aspirations to independence of other nations. It ruthlessly conducts
ethnic cleansing in Syria, commits assassinations in South America, and in general behaves with imperialist ruthlessness that
is moreover unmitigated by any concern for human rights or international law.
vinnieoh , May 23, 2019 at 14:27
As to your last paragraph please provide proof for your allegations. As to your second paragraph you assume to know the meaning
behind the question Mr. Lauria asked. Could it be possible (this I believe is more likely) that what Mr. Lauria meant or realizes
that absent the '53 coup would there now be an Islamic theocracy ruling Iran?
Again making the disclaimer that I'm no expert on the region or Iran particularly I have followed many leads of reading and
investigation to understand the ramifications of that seminal event (the '53 coup.) What I believe I've understood is that Iran
prior to and until the '53 coup was on its own unique trajectory of reclaiming its sovereignty and rejecting its status as a
(UK) colonial vassal. There seemed to be a somewhat fluid acceptance of the rising democratic movement of Mosaddeq et. al.,
a fading nod to the former royal house, and an acceptance of Shiite religiosity of some considerable social legitimacy.
So, three centers of power and influence working its unique way to an unique Iranian future.
With the US/UK engineered coup the imperialists destroyed the legitimate democratic evolution happening there. With the re-installation
of the Shah Reza Pahlavi as the puppet ruler of the US, that traditional center of power and legitimacy was likewise forever
delegitimized in the eyes of most Iranians. That sentiment was cemented with the creation of SAVAK by the US, UK, and Israel
to be the iron fist of the Shah and his new imperial master.
That left only one center of power or authority which retained legitimacy in the eyes of Iranians – the Shiite theocrats,
and that is why when Iranians kicked the US out it was the Islamic theocracy doing the booting. You are correct that there was
at least one Shiite cleric (I've forgotten his name,) jealous and fearful of the rising influence of democratic governance,
who is a known and recorded collaborator with the US/UK machinations of the coup. Without the help of the US/UK his part in
the affair would probably have been inconsequential.
It is not Iran that is funding and establishing Islamic madrasses in Pakistan, India, China, Indonesia, Africa and elsewhere.
It is the Wahhabist Sunnis and they preach intolerance and violent jihad. Furthermore, of the total global population of adherents
of Islam, 75% are Sunni affiliated, and 25% are Shiite affiliated. Those percentages hold true in the immediate region of the
ME as well. The repeated claims of Iranian desires of empire are a shibboleth emanating from KSA and UAE.
The leaders of the Islamic Revolution used Mossadegh's image to help get people on board against the Shah, The National Front
was allowed to be a party again for a short time, and a Street in Tehran was renamed post-revolution for Mohammad Mossadegh.
This was a cynical ploy by the Mullahs to get people on board with their revolution and make people believe that they were indeed
the true heirs of Mossadegh and committed to democracy. It was all a sham. The National Front was made illegal again at some
point in the 80s, and the street named for Mossadegh was renamed around the same time. These people are the heirs of the Shah
whether they like it or not.
anon4d2 , May 23, 2019 at 16:59
Joe's question points out that, had the US not overthrown Mossadegh, there would have been a secular democratic government.
That is true throughout the Mideast, where in the 1950s-70s the US supported radical Islamic movements that suppressed secular
movements and overthrew secular governments, pretending that the USSR was moving in. There was no evidence of USSR interest
there, as it was preoccupied with such factions in its central Asian republics, and apparently only some arms from the USSR
in Egypt were ever found as "evidence."
Similar US actions have continued to date, almost 30 years after the collapse of the USSR, the US always supporting fanatics
against moderates like Assad and Ghaddafi, and pretending to support "democracy."
Compare the US support of Saudi Arabia, a fanatical fundamentalist monarchy engaged in terrorism throughout the region, including
against their only neighbor that defends minority rights, Syria. Again falsely claiming the need to protect oil supply, which
it can buy anywhere without bombing anyone, like any other oil buyer. Again falsely claiming to support democracy which it overthrows
everywhere at the pleasure of its own oligarchy, always to "protect Israel" or attack socialism, which is always to get political
bribes.
There is no evidence of any "ethnic cleansing" by Iran in Syria or elsewhere. Where do you get that idea? Iran is majority
Shiah, defending the majority Sunni population of Syria from Sunni fundamentalists. You certainly have no evidence that Iran
"commits assassinations in South America" or opposes "aspirations to independence of other nations" and made that up to deceive
others. Your comments on this site have been knowingly false.
zhenry , May 24, 2019 at 03:44
The above, re the current Iranian religious govt, very informative, thankyou.
Re Joe's article I cannot take seriously that Trump is against war and the Deep State.
If Trumps rhetoric during his electioneering, supporting the middle class (deeply deprived after the US corporations abandoned
them for low paid Chinese labour) was in any way honest he would not have chosen the cabinet he did (and keeps on choosing).
Trump has not chosen one cabinet member that would support that supposed sympathy for the middle class.
Reporting that assumes Trump is fighting for moderation (against his own cabinet) and to establish policies in the direction
of that sympathy, is without evidence, it seems to me, regardless of what he might suggest to Fox News.
Vonu , May 23, 2019 at 17:00
"The present régime has no respect for the principles of democracy and popular sovereignty that pervaded Iran's anti-imperialist
struggle in the 1950s and was derived from the democratic ideals of the Persian constitutionalist revolution of 1909."
And the American government has equal respect for the Constitution.
Bolton didn't order a carrier group to the Persian Gulf. He doesn't have the authority. The carrier group left because of
the deployment was already planned. Bolton does not have the power that has been ascribed to him. He is a grandiose clown who
knows how to play the press. I don't think he will have his job six months from now.
David G , May 23, 2019 at 12:16
"At the time of Bolton's appointment in April 2018, Tom Countryman predicted to The Intercept that if Iran resumed enrichment
after the U.S. left the deal, it 'would be the kind of excuse that a person like Bolton would look to to create a military provocation
or direct attack on Iran.' In response to ever tightening sanctions, Iran said that it would indeed restart partial nuclear
enrichment."
Two problems with this part of the article:
• The link in the main text here goes to an Intercept article about Bolton, but it has no mention of Tom Countryman, or even
of Iran.
• It isn't accurate to say that Iran may now, or is saying it will, "resume" or "restart" nuclear enrichment, since it never
ceased, nor did it ever commit to cease, such activity. The JCPOA merely imposed strict *limits* and monitoring on nuclear enrichment
and stockpiling, some of which Iran is saying it will now depart from.
I also disagree with the imputation elsewhere in the article that Donald Trump has a good understanding of real estate. His
disastrous, decades-long record in that business suggests otherwise. But I suppose some people will always believe what they
see on TV.
lou e , May 23, 2019 at 12:06
Creeping fascism works like fishing with a rod and reel. You hook the fish and it runs off 100 ft of line . You reel in 50
ft and the fish takes 30 feet back. Do the Math! Some times burning down the village IS the only way to get rid of the infestation.
Bit hard on the USSA, but as Ben Franklin put it you have a democratic republic IF ypu can Keep It.
Remember at an earlier time with Bolton, someone described him as a kiss up kick down kind of guy, i.e., a real jerk. I defended
Trump against Russiagate because it was a threat to the office of the president. Unless, he gets his head straight, his "political"
moves in the Middle East and Southwest Asia can spin out of control. He is not negotiating a new deal with some city to build
another hotel, and his rhetoric makes him sound like that is the way he thinks he should act with other countries.
One can defend him by saying maybe it will work, but then maybe not and it is not a matter of your target taking his papers
and leaving the room.
Great article, Mr. Lauria. Have you posted your resume on your site? Interested in your confrontation with Bolton.
Trump wants to be reelected more that being the President but in his defense we know what he will face if he decides to enter
into honest negotiations. He's going to have a heck of a time finding people to cover his back. He can count on one presidential
aspirant, Tulsi Gabbard but she's on the other side.
Jeff Harrison , May 23, 2019 at 11:42
If we have to rely on Thump for anything other than social controls, we're screwed.
David G , May 23, 2019 at 11:40
These personal reminiscences of Bolton at the U.N. by Joe Lauria unfortunately only confirm the man's very public record.
The fact that such a creature has been accepted for so long in the heart of U.S. foreign "policy" is yet more evidence that
the country's crisis of political culture started long before Trump came on the scene.
I don't quite accept the slight comfort implied in the formulations here that this time Bolton has "gone too far", or "flown
too high", since to me they imply that there is some moral or rational bedrock that he has struck beneath which the establishment
is not willing to go.
I don't think that's true, as a general proposition. For example, the U.S. continues less noisily but inexorably on its long-term
collision course with China, which will be even more catastrophic than war with Iran, not to mention the ultimate one with the
planet's environmental limits.
For me it's enough that, for a number of contingent reasons, Bolton's (and MBS's and Netanyahu's) lunge at Iran has fallen
flat with both U.S. and European policy and media elites – for now, and I hope forever.
I just called WH 202-456-1111 to tell President Trump that Bolton should be fired; had to wait 8 min to talk. Trump certainly
has lots of problems, but he'll have plenty more if he starts a war! Pox Americana!
Litchfield , May 23, 2019 at 16:58
Great idea.
I'll do the same.
vinnieoh , May 23, 2019 at 11:04
Thank you Mr. Lauria. I'm tending to believe that not only has Bolton flown too high, but Trump's predictable method of trying
to get what he wants was completely miscalculated wrt Iran. There is no better treaty or deal to be had concerning keeping Iran
from developing a nuclear weapon. The failures of the JCPOA that Trump is probably griping about all have to do with matters
of Iran's necessary and legitimate right to security and self-defense. No sane nation would willingly give in to this bullying.
Thanks again.
vinnieoh , May 23, 2019 at 11:44
Also, wrt Trump's predictable patterns, note that little if anything has changed regarding the US and the DPRK, so if he
is a crafty and effective negotiator I'm having a hard time seeing it.
David G. Horsman , May 23, 2019 at 18:22
Good example Vinnieoh. NK and SK are reaching out and (more importantly) shoving out the US. More winning.
I love Trump. He is useful. Fascism, NAFTA, generic racism you name it, he really shines a light on issues.
Here again. (Currently) SA, GAZA, Israel, Syria and of course Iran. Hell, the entire region. What a train wreck he is.
What about the dollar? The EU? Yikes.
By gosh this man could single handedly take down an empire! MAGA!
Well done, Joe Lauria. Of course our dilemma is Donald Trump says one thing and contradicts himself 5 minutes later. You
could say he "changes his mind" but I do not think his mind is stable to begin with. He's far too nuts to put any faith in for
"doing the right thing,"
Bolton and his neoconservative pox on the world serve the interests of the war machine and fossil fuel corporations. When
will be rid of them? When We the People grow a set of testicles and throw them all into prison. Trump isn't going to save us,
but he might let Bolton get us all killed.
Seems that Trump is so small minded that what we observe cannot be explained mechanistically, we need quantum mechanics.
Rather that a particular state of mind we have a stochastic distribution, wave patterns and spin.
Yes, Joe Lauria has presented the problem very well.
A major factor is certainly the persuasiveness of the NSC and other MIC entities which surround the president, and comprise
much of official DC. Try persuading anyone in the MIC that war is ever inappropriate: they are all full of extreme scorn and
false accusations, and have endless "evidence" of threats behind every tree, and rationales to attack this or at least that,
just to make "statements" and "warnings" to invisible foreign monsters. The MIC is a completely and permanently logic-proof
subculture of bullying, which bullies every member of its own tribe to line up behind tyrants like Bolton and a million other
puerile bullies devoid of humanity.
No doubt you know that this was all well understood by the founders of the US, who restricted federal military powers to
repelling invasions and knew that any standing military was a threat to democracy. The Federalist Papers should be required
reading in the US. All of those understandings were gradually lost after the War of 1812 and the 1820s, as the founders died
off. As the US became confident that it could repel any invasion, it lost the sense of the necessity of unity and cooperation
of regions, and Congress degenerated into a battle of intransigent factions leading to the completely unnecessary Civil War.
With the ebullient emergence of the middle class, no effort was made to correct the defects of the Constitution in failing to
protect the institutions of democracy from the rising power of economic concentrations. With WWI and WWII, the power of oligarchy
over mass media was consolidated, and by WWII the oligarchy and MIC effectively controlled elections, mass media, and the judiciary,
the tools of democracy. Democracy has been a facade ever since.
The US has zero security problems that the MIC has not created, and could at any time re-purpose 80% of the MIC to developing
infrastructure in the poorest nations with positive effects upon its security. Had it done so since WWII, we would have rescued
the poorest half of humanity from poverty, ignorance, malnutrition, and disease, and would have had a true American Century.
Instead we have killed over 20 million innocents and mortgaged the lives of our children to serve the infantile psychopaths
of the MIC.
The solution is not only to eliminate the 2000-member NSC, cut the military by at least 80 percent, prohibit acts of war
or surveillance by the executive branch, tax the rich so that no one has income above upper middle class, and demand amendments
to the Constitution restricting funding of the mass media and elections to limited and registered individual donations. We also
desperately need a fourth branch of federal government, which I am calling the College of Policy Debate, to conduct moderated
textual debates of policy issues in all regions, protecting and representing every viewpoint, in which all views are challenged
and must respond, and all parties must come to common terms. The CPD should produce commented debate summaries available to
the public with mini-quizzes and discussion groups. Without that rational analysis and access to the core debates, we do not
have a democracy at all, we are all no more than the fools and pawns of these oligarchy scammers, who must be actively excluded
from all government capacities.
Sorry for the lecture.
Linda Wood , May 24, 2019 at 01:59
Please don't apologize, Sam F. Your brilliant and humane words give me hope at a time in which I am in shock at the blatancy
of fascism in our government.
Doggrotter , May 23, 2019 at 10:33
Where is a drone strike when you need one?
OlyaPola , May 23, 2019 at 10:23
" seemed to always think he was the smartest person in the room."
Useful fools are often most useful when they are believers that they are not fools.
Once upon a time there was a discussion of which of the opponents' should be proposed for the Nobel Peace Prize – the list
being relatively long.
After extensive analysis and discussion the short-list consisted of two opponents in alphabetical order Mr. John Bolton and
Mr. Karl Rove.
However in light of the notion "Do you think your opponents are as stupid as you are? " the proposal question was left in
abeyance, not only as a function of decorum but also through understanding that "Useful fools are often most useful when they
are believers that they are not fools." and that even small dogs can seem tall when you are lying on your stomach.
OlyaPola , May 24, 2019 at 17:33
Since omniscience can't exist perhaps Mr. Bolton was/is subject to misrepresentation and misunderstanding?
"Pompeo told a radio interviewer after the briefing that the U.S. had still not determined who attacked two Saudi, a Norwegian
and an Emirati oil tanker in the Gulf last week, which bore the hallmarks of a provocation. Pompeo said "it seems like it's
quite possible that Iran was behind" the attacks."
What possible advantage could accrue to Iran from putting a few dents in the ships? Smells of another false flag.
I would not be so sure. A delicate signal that Iran has more capabilities concerning stopping in-out-Gulf traffic than naive
people like Bolton realize has a sobering potential. By the way of contrast, what kind of black flag it is if it is instantly
put in doubt, "we do not know" etc. When there were "chemical incidents" in Syria, no one in Washington claimed the need for
more facts, uncertainty etc.
Instead, UAE initially denied that it happened at all, subsequently, together with KSA, they did not have any "certain knowledge".
Somehow no government appears to promote the incident. Even USA.
BTW, the allegation that Iran is placing missiles on fishing boats staggers the mind. First of all, "missile boats" of which
Iran has plenty are small ships, BUT NOT VERY small, ca. 500-800 tons, which are fast, 40 kt, but not as fast as their predecessors,
torpedo boats (200-300 tons, 50-60 kt). They are still faster than any of the larger naval vessels, can trail them, and attack
from small distance in the case of start of hostilities. That Iran places missiles on such boats can be learned from videos
proudly provided by PressTV.ir.
Using "fishing boats" for that purpose is dubious, and the largest question mark would be: WHY? The reason that missile boats
are larger and heavier than torpedo boats is that you need more stability to launch missiles than torpedoes. Then you need a
radar etc. Placing missiles on fishing boats would be a waste of missiles. Hardly an escalation.
OlyaPola , May 23, 2019 at 12:47
"Hardly an escalation."
Perhaps you are being deflected by framing?
One of the escalations is the escalation of belief in, requirement of, and resort to, the dumbed-downess of the "target audience".
One of the salient questions being deflected is why, and as ever investigation requires some knowledge of Mr. Heisenberg
and his principles.
mark , May 23, 2019 at 22:34
Perhaps the Iranians are putting missiles on fishing boats to stun the fish and catch them that way. Fishing boats aren't
exactly very fast.
Anyone who actually believes the oil tanker incidents were carried by Iran should seek an immediate consultation with their
doctor. These blatant false flags clearly are the work of fools and Iranians are not fools.
Brian , May 23, 2019 at 17:22
Exactly. According navel personnel, Iran has been using fishing boats to transfer rockets from land to it's vessels for years,
supposedly because the gulf is too shallow. I don't have hydrographic maps of the area, anyone know if this is true?
Clearly, Persian Gulf has routes for the largest ships on Earth, but the supply bases for missiles may be away from ports,
and it would make sense to place them so they are not easily accessible to a big ship navy, and in general, to disperse them.
Tim , May 26, 2019 at 06:43
"Thomas"
> These blatant false flags clearly are the work of fools
Since neither you nor I know who did it, and there are a whole slew of plausible suspects, we don't know why they did it,
either. So it is silly to claim they are fools.
Since the Saudis and UAE are in the midst of waging war on Yemen, the most obvious suspects are their enemies there, al-Ansara.
(And by the way, contrary to what another commentator claimed, it was not a "few dents", but a gaping hole in the hull just
below the waterline. And since the local authorities spoke of an impact by an unidentified object, these were presumably torpedo
strikes.)
OlyaPola , May 26, 2019 at 07:58
"What possible advantage could accrue to Iran from putting a few dents in the ships?"
Quite a few including but not limited to further data on the opponents' perception of what constitutes plausible belief for
the opponents' target audience, and the opponents' increasing resort to, amplitude, scope and velocity of "misrepresentations".
As is the case with the benefits of dumbing down not accruing solely to those actively engaged in dumbing down, the benefits
of creation and implementation of "false flags" do not accrue solely to those engaged in "false flags", and are enhanced when
the creators and implementers of "false flags" are immersed in amalga of projection and notions of sole/prime agency, facilitating
potential benefits to many others not restricted to Iran.
The fiasco of the latest obviously unsuccessful US attempt to topple twice
democratically-elected President Nicolas Maduro made a laughing stock of the US government
throughout the world and is now exposing new splits in the Trump administration in Washington.
It is also exposing a dangerous but also ridiculous myth that Washington has credulously
swallowed for generations – the idea that National Security Adviser John Bolton is
actually competent.
No one among the carefully trained castrated geldings of the US mainstream news media and
their pseudo-liberal and libertarian outliers has ever dared to ask how able Bolton actually
is. He is held in awe and even fear for his supposed brilliant intellect and for his undoubted
energy and relentless determination to push the policies he supports with tunnel vision and
fanatical relentlessness as hard as he can.
Yet given such undeniable "qualities" what is truly astonishing is how useless Bolton has
been in pursuing his own primary foreign policy goals for more than 40 years. He failed to
prevent the first president to take him seriously, Ronald Reagan to conduct sweeping nuclear
arms reductions with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and to push ahead with Gorbachev to
dismantle the Cold War. These policies were anathema to Bolton who prophesied – falsely
– that war and catastrophe would flow from them. But Reagan ignored him and pushed them
through anyway.
Now Bolton has destroyed Reagan's legacy of peace by convincing current President Donald
Trump to scrap one of Reagan's greatest achievement, the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces
(INF) Treaty.
He succeeded in helping provoke the US invasion, conquest and occupation of Iraq under
President George W. Bush in 2003 but failed to persuade even Bush, Junior and his top foreign
policy adviser, National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to pull out
of any arms control treaties whatsoever.
Then, the Iraq misadventure was so appallingly bungled that Bolton failed to get any
traction whatsoever for his priority project of toppling the government of Iran, even if it
took a full scale war to do it.
In Washington, even Bolton's greatest critics among libertarians and paleo-conservatives
have spoken for decades with awe of his supposed brilliant intellect, command of all details,
endless energy and ability to read and keep track of everything. But now, the latest failed
coup in Venezuela instead reveals an ignorant, simplistic rash adventurer and gambler who
charges head on into dangerous situations and who relies on bullying and bluster alone to get
his way.
Bolton showed none of the ruthless, devious subtlety of a Dwight D. Eisenhower in
masterminding a coup and fragrant breach of international law without appearing to have
anything to do with it (a skill which Ronald Reagan, though far less masterful than the revered
Eisenhower also attempted in Iran-Contra).
Bolton's fingerprints were all over the hard-charging policy of propping up ridiculous Juan
Guiado as America's cardboard cutout puppet to run Venezuela, even though he had no credibility
whatsoever.
Bolton is in fact is an awesomely bad judge of choosing his own allies in other countries.
His combination of recklessness and vanity means he is always a sucker for whatever
smooth-talking sociopath can worm his way into his presence.
This explains how the late, unlamented Ahmed Chalabi was able to convince Bolton and his
neocon friends that he (Chalabi)) would be welcomed by tens of millions of Iraqis as soon the
US armed forces invaded ("liberated" was the politically approved term) his country and how
Zalmay Khalizad, a catastrophic clown, was acclaimed as an infallible guru on Afghanistan.
Bolton is widely known to have no small talk, private interests, charm or social skills
whatsoever. Far from confirming his "genius", as his many worshipful courtiers claim, this only
confirms his haplessness.
If Bolton played poker he would be skinned alive. He cannot read people and being an
obsessive courtier and flatterer himself, he always falls flat on his face for the flattery of
others. The arch-manipulator is in reality the easiest of figures to manipulate.
Once the strange miasma of worshipful myth is stripped from Bolton, all the confusions and
bungles of the April 30 Coup That Never Was in Venezuela become clear.
The US is closer to war with Iran
than it has been since the Bush years, or perhaps ever. And Bolton is largely to blame
But Bolton is on a fast track, seemingly aware that Trump's time in office may be limited.' Photograph: Jim Young/Reuters Donald
Trump's national security adviser John Bolton wants the United States to go to war with
Iran .
And everything that the Trump administration has done over its Iran policy, particularly since Bolton became Trump's top foreign
policy adviser in April of 2018, must be viewed through this lens, including the alarming US military posturing in the Middle East
of the past two weeks.
Just after one month on the job, Bolton
gave Trump
the final push he needed to withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement, which at the time was (and still is, for now) successfully
boxing in Iran's nuclear program and blocking all pathways for Iran to build a bomb. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)
– as the Iran deal is formally known – was the biggest obstacle to Bolton's drive for a regime change war, because it eliminated
a helpful pretext that served so useful to sell the war in Iraq 17 years ago.
Since walking away from the deal, the Trump administration has claimed that with a "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran, it
can achieve a "better deal" that magically turns Iran into a Jeffersonian democracy bowing to every and any American wish. But this
has always been a fantastically bad-faith argument meant to obscure the actual goal (regime change) and provide cover for the incremental
steps – the crushing sanctions, bellicose rhetoric, and antagonizing military maneuvers – that have now put the United States closer
to war with Iran than it has been since at least the latter half of the Bush administration, or perhaps ever.
In his White House statement 10 days ago announcing (an already pre-planned) carrier and bomber deployment to the Middle East,
Bolton cited "a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings" from Iran to justify the bolstered US military presence.
But multiple sources who have seen the same intelligence have since
said
that Bolton and the Trump administration blew it "out of proportion, characterizing the threat as more significant than it actually
was". Even a British general operating in the region pushed back this week,
saying he has seen no evidence of an increased Iranian threat.
What's even more worrying is that Bolton knows what he's doing. He's "a
seasoned bureaucratic infighter
who has the skills to press forcefully for his views" – and he has a long history of using those skills to undermine American
diplomacy and work toward killing arms control agreements.
As a senior official in the George W Bush administration,
he played key role
in the collapse of the Agreed Framework, the Clinton-era deal that froze North Korea's plutonium nuclear program (the North Koreans
tested their first bomb four years later).
He said
he "felt like a kid on Christmas day" after he orchestrated the US withdrawal from the international criminal court in 2002.
And now as a senior official in the Trump administration, he
pushed
for the US to withdrawal from a crucial nuclear arms treaty with Russia.
While it's unclear how much of a role he played in scuttling Trump's negotiations with Kim Jong-un in Hanoi last year, he publicly
called for the so-called
"Libya model" with the North Koreans (in other words, regime change by force). Just months before joining the administration, he
tried to make the
legal case for a preventive war against Pyongyang. And if you think he cares about the aftermath of war with North Korea, he
doesn't. Bolton was reportedly
"unmoved" by a presentation during his time in the Bush administration of the catastrophic consequences of such a war. "I don't
do war. I do policy," he said then.
So far, Bolton has been successful in moving the United States toward his desired outcome with Iran – if getting the Pentagon
to draw up plans to send
120,000 US troops to the region to confront Iran is any indication. There are hopeful signs that we can avoid war, as US officials
and our European allies, seemingly alarmed by what Bolton is up to, are
sounding the alarm about
the Trump administration skewing intelligence on Iran.
But Bolton is on a fast track, seemingly aware that Trump's time in office may be limited. The question, ultimately, is whether
the president can stick to his instincts of avoiding more military conflict, or acquiesce to a man hellbent on boxing him into a
corner with no way out other than war with Iran.
Ben Armbruster is the communications director for Win Without War and previously served as National Security Editor at ThinkProgress
"... "Zainab Ahmad has concluded her detail with the Special Counsel's Office but will continue to represent the office on specific pending matters that were assigned to her during her detail," special counsel spokesperson Peter Carr said in a statement. Yahoo News reports ..."
"... Ahmad has had a role in the Russia investigation from almost the very beginning, well before Robert Mueller's appointment. ..."
"... Ahmad and Brandon Van Grack together signed Flynn's guilty plea agreement in November 2017. They secured an admission from Flynn, the president's first national security adviser, that he had committed a felony during the Trump administration's early days in the White House, concealing from FBI agents back-channel talks he had with the Russian ambassador during the transition. ..."
"... Prior to joining the probe, Ahmad was a terrorism prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn. ..."
"... Her departure comes after another high-profile prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, is set to leave the probe. Weissmann, often referred to as Mueller's "legal pit bull," headed up the special counsel's case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who faces seven and one-half years in prison after judges in Virginia and Washington, D.C. handed down sentences of 47 months and 43 months in jail, respectively. ..."
The prosecutor who oversaw retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn's case is leaving special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe in the
latest sign that the investigation into collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Kremlin is drawing to a close.
"Zainab Ahmad has concluded her detail with the Special Counsel's Office but will continue to represent the office on specific
pending matters that were assigned to her during her detail," special counsel spokesperson Peter Carr said in a statement. Yahoo
News
reports
:
Ahmad has had a role in the Russia investigation from almost the very beginning, well before Robert Mueller's appointment.
[ ]
Ahmad and Brandon Van Grack together signed Flynn's
guilty plea agreement in November 2017. They secured an admission from Flynn, the president's first national security adviser,
that he had committed a felony during the Trump administration's early days in the White House, concealing from FBI agents back-channel
talks he had with the Russian ambassador during the transition.
As part of his guilty plea, Flynn also admitted to failing to
register his work as a lobbyist for Turkey's interests at the same time he was serving on the Trump campaign and lying to the
Department of Justice in an after-the-fact registration.
Ahmad will take an unspecified role at the Justice Department, but will still have oversight of Flynn's case and other duties
that were assigned to her while a special counsel investigator, said Carr. Prior to joining the probe, Ahmad was a terrorism prosecutor
in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn.
Her departure comes after another high-profile prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, is set to leave the probe. Weissmann, often referred
to as Mueller's "legal pit bull," headed up the special counsel's case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who
faces seven and one-half years in prison after judges in Virginia and Washington, D.C. handed down
sentences of 47 months
and 43 months in jail, respectively.
Weissmann will both teach and study at New York University and undertake several public service projects, which include preventing
wrongful convictions by boosting the court system's forensic science standards, two unnamed sources
told NPR.
News of Ahmad's exit also comes as Washington is abuzz with speculation about when Mueller's long-awaited report will finally
be released. Ty Cobb, one of Trump's former personal attorneys in the Russia investigation, recently
told ABC News that he would suspect the report's release would occur "no later than mid-March."
However, some lawmakers are concerned Mueller and Co. may decide on withholding key details of the report, which could prompt
high-profile Democrats, including House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff (D-CA), to take matters into their own hands.
"We will obviously subpoena the report. We will bring Bob Mueller in to testify before Congress; we will take it to court if necessary.
And in the end, I think the [Justice] Department understands they're going to have to make this public," Schiff
said during a February appearance on ABC's This Week .
The special counsel's office has yet to comment on the report's release date.
@FB Yeah brother that
POS was called out during his confirmation hearings during baby bush's presidency. Larry Flint had offered a Million dollars to
anyone who had proof of republican sexual exploits. He was quickly fingered by someone who attended those clubs. He was forced
to accept a temporary position and quietly resigned after a few months so as to avoid facing questions.
Someone said they saw him proposition a teenage girl outside one of the swinger clubs he frequented.
@SeekerofthePresence
Thank you your comment is very much appreciated. But I'm definitely not a spokesman for moral truth, just the truth. I just watch
in amazement from Mexico at what the US government has become. A den of the most vile people ever assembled in the world far worse
than the people that demanded the crucification of Jesus Christ. We just went through a serious political conversion, but the
people had to hit the streets for it to succeed. I just don't think the American people feel they are in a do or die situation,
and they couldn't more wrong.
U.S. Foreign Policy used to have only two instruments in
dealing with rest of the world, namely carrots and sticks. Since the fall of Soviet Union and
certainly after 9/11, only sticks remain. Now the World including the so-called allies are
getting tired of the threats and start ignoring the Empire, hence the diminishing
effectiveness, paving the way for polymorphic World. This transition is fraught with dangers as
pointed out by the Author.
Lovely post by Ret. Col. Douglas Macgregor on the end of empire:
"John Bolton is the problem"
"Trump's national security adviser is getting dangerous particularly to the president's
ideals"
Douglas Macgregor https://spectator.us/john-bolton-problem/
Could also be titled, "How to Exhaust an Empire."
Sun Tzu warned of the same demise in the "Art of War."
Didn't they used to teach that book at West Point?
@El Dato
And also the 90 minute Trump-Putin phone call, where Venezuela was the main subject
From the way I understand Trump's comments afterward, it seems the military option is off
the table the two presidents agreed that humanitarian aid is the priority
This is great news I have to give Trump credit here Justin Raimondo presciently opined a
week ago that Trump may have been giving the 'walrus' just enough rope on Venezuela to hang
himself
I have to wonder what Vlad whispered in carrot top's ear
When we take a close look at the American Government and it's elected officials, we can only
come to one conclusion. The US is a thriving criminal enterprise that uses force to get what
they want. The military's role is that of enforcers and the US President is no different than
a Mafia Don. In no other time in US history has Government and Organized Criminal Gangs been
so indistinguishable. George H.W. Bush with his New World Order announcements, his CIA drug
dealing operations and military invasion of Panama to steal the drug cartel's money deposited
in that county's banks, came close. Bill Clinton working with George H.W. Bush protecting
drug shipments smuggled into Mena, AK, the cover up of murdered witnesses and numerous sexual
assault allegations also came pretty close.
But when George W. Bush, Dick Chaney, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld came into power,
that was a Mafia if there was ever one. That group of criminals stole more money and murdered
more people than any criminal organization in history. They even conned the American people
into believing some rag-heads in Afghanistan hiding in caves did it. It was the first time
since Pancho Villa that anyone attacked the US on its own soil. Not only did they steal all
the gold stored in bank vaults located in the Twin Towers, but they put money on the stock
market. In true gangster fashion the next move was to retaliate against the Muslim Mafia who
was fingered by Mayer Lanski (Benjamin Nuttenyahoo) and their own paid snitches (MSM). It was
time to hit mattresses and send their enforcers to get payback so the Purple Gang (Israel)
can take over their territory.
There is a big difference between the US Government and the Mafia when it comes to war,
the Mafia adheres to a strict code of ethics, they do not target their enemies families.
In 2016 the American people elected a true gangster from New York city. A known con man, a
swindler, a tax evader and known associate of the criminal underground. A man with numerous
court cases and 23 accusations of sexual assault. A man who was screwing a porn star while
his wife was given birth. A man who's mentor was Roy Cohen a mob attorney and practicing
homosexual who died of AIDS. A man that surrounded himself with the most perverted group of
people in New York such as: Roger Stone a well known swinger and gay pride participant. Paul
Manafort a convicted criminal and swinger who attended the same clubs as Stone along with
their wives. They liked to watch their wives get screwed by other men. Lets not forget John
Bolton who was exposed by Larry Flint for also being a swinger. His ex-wife accused him of
forcing her to perform sex acts with multiple men at the same clubs the other 2 cuckolds
attended. A Russian agent once commented that the best place to find government people to
blackmail was the New York swingers scene.
Jeffery Epstein tops the list of perverted friends of Donald Trump. Epstein is the worst
kind of perverted human being. The predator pedophile that uses his money to lure young girls
into his sick world. Epstein holds the key to uncovering the nation wide pedophile ring that
include some of the most famous people in the US. This is Trump's Mafia, a Mafia not like the
Gambinos or Luchesis. A Mafia full of Perverts, Criminals, Pedophiles and Cuckolds. These are
just a few of the people in Trump's circle of friends. If these are your leaders, what does
that say about the American people!
My dad used to tell me tell me who you hang around with, and I'll tell you who you are!
Every single person in DC government is compromised! And this incompetent Mafia of Perverts
want you to believe that Madurro is a corrupt leader and Iran is a threat to the US!
Bolton power over Trump is connected to Adelson power over Trump. To think about Bolton as pure advisor is to seriously
underestimate his role and influence.
Notable quotes:
"... But I always figured you needed to keep the blowhards under cover so they wouldn't stick their feet in their mouths and that the public position jobs should go to the smoothies..You, know, diplomats who were capable of some measure of subtlety. ..."
"... A clod like Bolton should be put aside and assigned the job of preparing position papers and a lout Like Pompeo should be a football coach at RoosterPoot U. ..."
"... "Once he's committed to a war in the Mideast, he's just screwed," ..."
"... Not only Trump, at the same time the swamp creatures risk losing control over the Democrat primaries, too. With a new major war in the Mideast, Tulsi Gabbard's core message of non-interventionism will resonate a lot more, and that will lower the chances of the corporate DNC picks. A dangerous gamble. ..."
"... The other day I was thinking to myself that if Trump decides to dismiss Bolton or Pompeo, especially given how terrible Venezuela, NKorea, and Iran policies have turned out (clearly at odds with his non-interventionist campaign platform), who would he appoint as State Sec and NS adviser? and since Bolton was personally pushed to Trump by Adelson in exchange for campaign donation, would there be a backlash from the Jewish Republican donors and the loss of support? I think in both cases Trump is facing with big dilemmas. ..."
"... Tulsi for Sec of State 2020... ..."
"... Keeping Bolton and Pompeo on board is consistent with Trump's negotiating style. He is full of bluster and demands to put the other side in a defensive position. I guess it was a successful strategy for him so he continues it. Many years ago I was across the table from Trump negotiating the sale of the land under the Empire State Building which at the time was owned by Prudential even though Trump already had locked up the actual building. I just sat there, impassively, while Trump went on with his fire and fury. When I did not budge, he turned to his Japanese financial partner and said "take care of this" and walked out of the room. Then we were able to talk and negotiate in a logical manner and consumate a deal that was double Trump's negotiating bid. I learned later he was furious with his Japanese partner for failing to "win". ..."
"... You can still these same traits in the way that Trump thinks about other countries - they can be cajoled or pushed into doing what Trump wants. If the other countries just wait Trump out they can usually get a much better deal. Bolton and Pompeo, as Blusterers, are useful in pursuing the same negotiation style, for better or worse, Trump has used for probably for the last 50 years. ..."
"... I have seen this style of negotiations work on occasion. The most important lesson I've learned is the willingness to walk. I'm not sure that Trump's personal style matters that much in complex negotiations among states. There's too many people and far too many details. ..."
"... Having the neocons front & center on his foreign policy team I believe has negative consequences for him politically. IMO, he won support from the anti-interventionists due to his strong campaign stance. While they may be a small segment in America in a tight race they could matter. ..."
"... Additionally as Col. Lang notes the neocons could start a shooting match due to their hubris and that can always escalate and go awry. We can only hope that he's smart enough to recognize that. I remain convinced that our fawning allegiance to Bibi is central to many of our poor strategic decision making. ..."
"... I agree that this is Trump's style but what he does not seem to understand is that in using jugheads like these guys on the international scene he may precipitate a war when he really does not want one. ..."
"... "Perhaps the biggest lie the mainstream media have tried to get over on the American public is the idea that it is conservatives, that start wars. That's total nonsense of course. Almost all of America's wars in the 20th century were stared by liberal Democrats." ..."
"... So what exactly is Pussy John, then, just a Yosemite Sam-type bureaucrat with no actual portfolio, so to speak? I defer to your vastly greater knowledge of these matters, but at times it sure seems like they are pursuing a rear-guard action as the US Empire shrinks ..."
"... If were Lavrov, what would I think to myself were I to find myself on the other side of a phone call from PJ or the Malignant Manatee? ..."
It's time for Trump to stop John Bolton and Mike Pompeo from
sabotaging his foreign policy | Mulshine
"I put that question to another military vet, former Vietnam Green Beret Pat Lang.
"Once he's committed to a war in the Mideast, he's just screwed," said Lang of Trump.
But Lang, who later spent more than a decade in the Mideast, noted that Bolton has no direct
control over the military.
"Bolton has a problem," he said. "If he can just get the generals to obey him, he can start
all the wars he wants. But they don't obey him."
They obey the commander-in-chief. And Trump has a history of hiring war-crazed advisors who
end up losing their jobs when they get a bit too bellicose. Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley
comes to mind."
" In Lang's view, anyone who sees Trump as some sort of ideologue is missing the point.
"He's an entrepreneurial businessman who hires consultants for their advice and then gets
rid of them when he doesn't want that advice," he said.
So far that advice hasn't been very helpful, at least in the case of Bolton. His big mouth
seems to have deep-sixed Trump's chance of a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. And
that failed coup in Venezuela has brought up comparisons to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion
during the Kennedy administration." Mulshine
--------------
Well, pilgrims, I worked exclusively on the subject of the Islamic culture continent for the
USG from 1972 to 1994 and then in business from 1994 to 2006. I suppose I am still working on
the subject. pl
I don't get it I suppose. I'd always thought that maybe you wanted highly opinionated Type A
personalities in the role of privy council, etc. You know, people who could forcefully
advocate positions in closed session meetings and weren't afraid of taking contrary
positions. But I always figured you needed to keep the blowhards under cover so they wouldn't
stick their feet in their mouths and that the public position jobs should go to the smoothies..You, know, diplomats who were capable of some measure of subtlety.
But these days it's the loudmouths who get these jobs, to our detriment. When will senior
govt. leaders understand that just because a person is a success in running for Congress
doesn't mean he/she should be sent forth to mingle with the many different personalities and
cultures running the rest of the world?
A clod like Bolton should be put aside and assigned
the job of preparing position papers and a lout Like Pompeo should be a football coach at RoosterPoot U.
No. I would like to see highly opinionated Type B personalities like me hold those jobs. Type
B does not mean you are passive. It means you are not obsessively competitive.
"Once he's committed to a war in the Mideast, he's just screwed,"
Not only Trump, at the same time the swamp creatures risk losing control over the Democrat
primaries, too. With a new major war in the Mideast, Tulsi Gabbard's core message of
non-interventionism will resonate a lot more, and that will lower the chances of the
corporate DNC picks. A dangerous gamble.
Interesting post, thank you sir. Prior to this recent post I had never heard of Paul
Mulshine. In fact I went through some of his earlier posts on Trump's foreign policy and I
found a fair amount of common sense in them. He strikes me as a paleocon, like Pat Buchanan,
Paul Craig Roberts, Michael Scheuer, Doug Bandow, Tucker Carlson and others in that mold.
The other day I was thinking to myself that if Trump decides to dismiss Bolton or Pompeo,
especially given how terrible Venezuela, NKorea, and Iran policies have turned out (clearly
at odds with his non-interventionist campaign platform), who would he appoint as State Sec
and NS adviser? and since Bolton was personally pushed to Trump by Adelson in exchange for
campaign donation, would there be a backlash from the Jewish Republican donors and the loss
of support? I think in both cases Trump is facing with big dilemmas.
My best hope is that
Trump teams up with libertarians and maybe even paleocons to run his foreign policy. So far
Trump has not succeeded in draining the Swamp. Bolton, Pompeo and their respective staff
"are" indeed the Swamp creatures and they run their own policies that run against Trump's
America First policy. Any thoughts?
Keeping Bolton and Pompeo on board is consistent with Trump's negotiating style. He is full
of bluster and demands to put the other side in a defensive position. I guess it was a
successful strategy for him so he continues it. Many years ago I was across the table from
Trump negotiating the sale of the land under the Empire State Building which at the time was
owned by Prudential even though Trump already had locked up the actual building. I just sat
there, impassively, while Trump went on with his fire and fury. When I did not budge, he
turned to his Japanese financial partner and said "take care of this" and walked out of the
room. Then we were able to talk and negotiate in a logical manner and consumate a deal that
was double Trump's negotiating bid. I learned later he was furious with his Japanese partner
for failing to "win".
You can still these same traits in the way that Trump thinks about other countries - they
can be cajoled or pushed into doing what Trump wants. If the other countries just wait Trump
out they can usually get a much better deal. Bolton and Pompeo, as Blusterers, are useful in
pursuing the same negotiation style, for better or worse, Trump has used for probably for the
last 50 years.
I have seen this style of negotiations work on occasion. The most important lesson I've learned is the willingness to
walk. I'm not sure that Trump's personal style matters that much in complex negotiations among states. There's too many people
and far too many details. I see he and his trade team not buckling to the Chinese at least not yet despite the intense
pressure from Wall St and the big corporations.
Having the neocons front & center on his foreign policy team I believe has negative
consequences for him politically. IMO, he won support from the anti-interventionists due to
his strong campaign stance. While they may be a small segment in America in a tight race they
could matter.
Additionally as Col. Lang notes the neocons could start a shooting match due to
their hubris and that can always escalate and go awry. We can only hope that he's smart
enough to recognize that. I remain convinced that our fawning allegiance to Bibi is central
to many of our poor strategic decision making.
Just out of curiosity: Did the deal go through in the end, despite Trump's ire? Or was
Trump so furious with the negotiating result of his Japanese partner that he tore up the
draft once it was presented to him?
I agree that this is Trump's style but what he does not seem to understand is that in
using jugheads like these guys on the international scene he may precipitate a war when he
really does not want one.
Mulshine's article has some good points, but he does include some hilariously ignorant bits
which undermine his credibility.
"Jose Gomez Rivera is a Jersey guy who served in the State Department in Venezuela at the
time of the coup that brought the current socialist regime to power."
Wrong. Maduro was elected and international observers seem to agree the election was
fair.
"Perhaps the biggest lie the mainstream media have tried to get over on the American
public is the idea that it is conservatives, that start wars. That's total nonsense of
course. Almost all of America's wars in the 20th century were stared by liberal Democrats."
So what exactly is Pussy John, then, just a Yosemite Sam-type bureaucrat with no actual
portfolio, so to speak? I defer to your vastly greater knowledge of these matters, but at
times it sure seems like they are pursuing a rear-guard action as the US Empire shrinks and
shudders in its death throes underneath them, and at others it seems like they really have no
idea what to do, other than engage in juvenile antics, snort some glue from a paper bag and
set fires in the dumpsters behind the Taco Bell before going out into a darkened field
somewhere to violate farm animals.
If were Lavrov, what would I think to myself were I to
find myself on the other side of a phone call from PJ or the Malignant Manatee?
In this case he looks like Bill Clinton impersonalization ;-) That's probably how Adelson controls Bolton ;-)
Notable quotes:
"... Larry Flint had offered a Million dollars to anyone who had proof of republican sexual exploits. He was quickly fingered by someone who attended those clubs. He was forced to accept a temporary position and quietly resigned after a few months so as to avoid facing questions. ..."
@FB Yeah brother,
that POS was called out during his confirmation hearings during baby Bush's presidency. Larry Flint had offered a Million
dollars to anyone who had proof of republican sexual exploits. He was quickly fingered by someone who attended those clubs. He
was forced to accept a temporary position and quietly resigned after a few months so as to avoid facing questions.
Someone said they saw him proposition a teenage girl outside one of the swinger clubs he frequented.
Bolton? NSA? Do you mean NSC? Everything we hear about Bolton lately is ideological
labeling as a so-called Neocon, more ambiguous bullshit, or tainting him by association with
Israelis. Funny how everybody just forgot what Bolton did at the UN, when Bush shoehorned him
in there without congressional consent. Bolton personally constipated the drafting of the
Summit Outcome Document to remove awkward mentions of the magic word impunity. The old perv
put up 700 amendments to obstruct the process.
Now, who cares that much about impunity? And why would it be such a big deal, unless you
had impunity in municipal law but the whole world was committed to ending impunity? Cause if
you think about it, that's what the whole world has been doing for 70 years, codifying the
Pre-CIA Nuremberg Principles as international criminal law and developing state
responsibility for internationally wrongful acts as customary and then conventional
international law. Who doesn't want that?
CIA. Impunity is CIA's vital interest. They go to war to keep it all the time.
@DESERT FOX
Wisely, DESERT FOX recalled Colonel Fletcher Prouty, and wrote: " the CIA is the zionist
chain dogs that rule America!"
Dear DESERT FOX,
As you know, for some very dramatic time, Attorney Garrison held Clay Shaw's
feet-to-the-fire while demonstrating the latter businessman's connection to the Israeli
company, Permindex.
So naturally, a reasonable & respectful question arises, for which there is likely no
available & conclusive determination.
Are CIA, Mossad, and M16 joined as one (1) ruling and globally unaccountable
"(Western) Zionist chain dog" link? Tough one, D.F., but am confident you can intelligently
handle it. Thanks & salud!
@ChuckOrloski
From what I have read, MI6 is under zionist control and is the template for the CIA and the
Mossad and is the controller of both the CIA and the Mossad and all three are under zionist
control.
Another good book is The Committee of 300 by Dr. John Coleman a former officer in MI6 and
his videos on youtube.
"... On June 12, 2018 The Washington Post ran an overlooked story where they disclosed that National Security Advisor John Bolton had accepted money from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, Deutsche Bank and HSBC to return for his participation in speeches and panel discussions ..."
"... John Bolton accepted $115,000 from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation to speak at multiple events hosted by the Foundation including one in September 2017 where Bolton assured his audience that President Donald Trump would not radically change US foreign policy despite his explicit campaign promises to do so. ..."
"... More broadly, John Bolton's work for the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, HSBC and Deutsche Bank shows that while he preaches hardline foreign policy approaches towards nations such as Iran and North Korea he has no issue tying himself to those who openly flaunt American sanctions and diplomatic attempts to pressure these states. For an individual who is the President's National Security Advisor to have taken money from banks who provide financial services to terror groups who have murdered thousands of Americans is totally unacceptable. ..."
On June 12, 2018 The Washington Post ran an overlooked story where they
disclosed that National Security Advisor John Bolton had accepted money from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, Deutsche Bank and HSBC
to return for his participation in speeches and panel discussions. These three entities have been linked to various kinds of corruption
including sanctions evasion for Iran, money laundering on behalf of drug cartels, provision of banking services to backers of Islamic
terror organizations and controversial donations to the Clinton Foundation.
The financial ties between Bolton and these institutions highlight serious ethical concerns about his suitability for the position
of National Security Advisor.
I. Victor Pinchuk Foundation
John Bolton accepted $115,000 from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation to speak at multiple events hosted by the Foundation including
one in September 2017 where Bolton assured his audience that President Donald Trump would not radically change US foreign policy
despite his explicit campaign promises to do so.
The Victor Pinchuk Foundation was blasted in 2016 over their donation of $10 to $25 million to the
Clinton Foundation between 1994 and 2005. The donations lead to accusations
of influence peddling after it emerged that Victor Pinchuk had been invited
to Hillary Clinton's home during the final year of her tenure as Secretary of State.
Even more damning was Victor Pinchuk's participation in activities that constituted evasions of sanctions levied against Iran
by the American government. A 2015 exposé by Newsweek highlighted the fact
that Pinchuk owned Interpipe Group, a Cyprus-incorporated manufacturer of seamless pipes used in oil and gas sectors. A now-removed
statement on Interpipe's website showed that they
were doing business in Iran despite US sanctions aimed to prevent this kind of activity.
Why John Bolton, a notorious war hawk who has called for a hardline approach to Iran, would take money from an entity who was
evading sanctions against the country is not clear. It does however, raise serious questions about whether or not Bolton should
be employed by Donald Trump, who made attacks on the Clinton Foundation's questionable donations a cornerstone of his 2016 campaign.
II. HSBC Group
British bank HSBC paid Bolton $46,500 in June and August 2017 to speak at two gatherings of hedge fund managers and investors.
HSBC is notorious for its extensive ties to criminal and terror organizations for whom it has provided illegal financial services.
Clients that HSBC have laundered money for include Colombian drug traffickers
and Mexican cartels who have terrorized the country and recently
raised murder rates to the highest levels in Mexico's history . They have
also offered banking services to Chinese individuals
who sourced chemicals and other materials used by cartels to produce methamphetamine and heroin that is then sold in the United
States. China's Triads have helped open financial markets in Asia to cartels
seeking to launder their profits derived from the drug trade.
In 2012, HSBC was blasted by the US Senate for for allowing money from
Russian and Latin American criminal networks as well as Middle Eastern terror groups to enter the US. The banking group ultimately
agreed to pay a $1.9 billion fine for this misconduct as well as their involvement
in processing sanctions-prohibited transactions on behalf of Iran, Libya, Sudan and Burma.
Some of the terror groups assisted by HSBC include the notorious Al Qaeda. During the 2012 scrutiny of HSBC, outlets such as
Le Monde , Business Insider
and the New York Times revealed that HSBC had maintained ties to Saudi
Arabia's Al Rajhi Bank. Al Rajhi Bank was one of Osama Bin Ladin's "Golden Chain" of Al Qaeda's most important financiers. Even
though HSBC's own internal compliance offices asked for the bank to terminate their relationship with Al Rajhi Bank, it continued
until 2010.
More recently in 2018, reports have claimed that HSBC was used for illicit
transactions between Iran and Chinese technology conglomerate Huawei. The US is currently seeking to extradite Huawei CFO Meng
Wanzhou after bringing charges against Huawei related to sanctions evasion
and theft of intellectual property. The company has been described as a "backdoor" for elements of the Chinese government by certain
US authorities.
Bolton's decision to accept money from HSBC given their well-known reputation is deeply hypocritical. HSBC's connection to
terror organizations such as Al Qaeda in particular is damning for Bolton due to the fact that he formerly served as the chairman
of the Gatestone Institute , a New York-based advocacy group that purports
to oppose terrorism. These financial ties are absolutely improper for an individual acting as National Security Advisor.
III. Deutsche Bank
John Bolton accepted $72,000 from German Deutsche Bank to speak at an event in May 2017.
Deutsche Bank has for decades engaged in questionable behavior. During World War II, they
provided financial services to the Nazi Gestapo and financed construction
of the infamous Auschwitz as well as an adjacent plant for chemical company IG Farben.
Like HSBC, Deutsche Bank has provided illicit services to international criminal organizations. In 2014
court filings showed that Deutsche Bank, Citi and Bank of America had all
acted as channels for drug money sent to Colombian security currency brokerages suspected of acting on behalf of traffickers.
In 2017, Deutsche Bank agreed to pay a $630 million fine after working with
a Danish bank in Estonia to launder over $10 billion through London and
Moscow on behalf of Russian entities. The UK's financial regulatory watchdog
has said that Deutsche Bank is failing to prevent its accounts from being used to launder money, circumvent sanctions and
finance terrorism. In November 2018, Deutsche Bank's headquarters was raided
by German authorities as part of an investigation sparked by 2016 revelations in the "Panama Papers" leak from Panama's Mossack
Fonseca.
Two weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks, the Bush administration signed
an executive order linking a company owned by German national Mamoun Darkazanli to Al Qaeda. In 1995,
Darkazanli co-signed the opening of a Deutsche Bank account for Mamdouh
Mahmud Salim. Salim was identified by the CIA as the chief of bin Laden's computer operations and weapons procurement. He was
ultimately arrested in Munich, extradited to the United States and
charged
with participation in the 1998 US embassy bombings.
In 2017, the Office of the New York State Comptroller opened an investigation into accounts that Deutsche Bank was operating
on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP is defined by both the United States and the European
Union as a terrorist organization. It is ironic that Bolton, who is a past recipient of the "Guardian of Zion Award" would accept
money from an entity who provided services to Palestinian groups that Israel considers to be terror related.
IV. Clinton-esque Financial Ties Unbecoming To Trump Administration
Bolton's engagement in paid speeches, in some cases with well-known donors to the Clinton Foundation, paints the Trump administration
in a very bad light. Donald Trump criticized Hillary Clinton during his
2016 Presidential campaign for speeches she gave to Goldman Sachs that were
labeled by her detractors as "pay to play" behavior. John Bolton's acceptance of money from similar entities, especially the Victor
Pinchuk Foundation, are exactly the same kind of activity and are an embarrassment for a President who claims to be against corruption.
More broadly, John Bolton's work for the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, HSBC and Deutsche Bank shows that while he preaches
hardline foreign policy approaches towards nations such as Iran and North Korea he has no issue tying himself to those who openly
flaunt American sanctions and diplomatic attempts to pressure these states. For an individual who is the President's National
Security Advisor to have taken money from banks who provide financial services to terror groups who have murdered thousands of
Americans is totally unacceptable.
It is embarrassing enough that Donald Trump hired Bolton in the first place. The next best remedy is to let him go as soon
as possible.
Trump has described his son-in-law as a "great guy". The president-elect has also reportedly taken the unprecedented step of requesting
security clearance for Kushner to attend top-secret presidential briefings, the first one of which was on Tuesday. It's unclear if
the request will be approved. It marks an astonishing departure and invites the accusation of nepotism.
Kushner's options for a White House job are limited given his family ties to the president, Richard Painter, who served as President
George W Bush's White House ethics lawyer, told the Associated Press. Congress passed an anti-nepotism law in 1967 that prohibits
the president from appointing a family member – including a son-in-law – to work in the office or agency they oversee. The measure
was passed after President John F Kennedy appointed his brother, Robert Kennedy, as attorney general.
But the law does not appear to prevent Kushner from serving as an unpaid adviser, and few doubt that Kushner will play a decisive
role in shaping the Trump presidency, acting as policy adviser and gate-keeper. As
Trump and Barack Obama met privately at the White House last week, Kushner strolled the mansion's South Lawn, deep in conversation
with Obama's chief of staff. As Kushner walked through the bustling West Wing during Trump's visit last week, he was heard asking
Obama aides: "How many of these people stay?", apparently blissfully unaware that the entire West Wing staff will leave at the end
of Obama's term.
His contacts already include Henry Kissinger and Rupert Murdoch; he has received foreign ambassadors. Like Trump, Kushner has
never had a formal role in government, but he now appears set to be more important than many who do.
If if 2016 there were some hope not we know that Trump folded. Completely. He actually is not a President. he is a marionette.
Notable quotes:
"... Bankers & Trump: Bankers know you capture catch more flies with money honey. ..."
"... " former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who has known Trump socially for decades and is currently advising the president-elect on foreign policy issues " - I really, really hope this is just Hammerin' Hank tooting his own horn, as he and his sycophants in the FP establishment and MSM are wont to do. ..."
"... "Trump dumps the TPP: conservatives rue strategic fillip to China" (Guardian) Another wedge angle for Trumps new-found RINO "friends" to play. Trump will have as many problems with Ayn Ryan Congress as Obama/Clinton on economic issues. ..."
"... And if Abe's Japan were really an independent country, they'd pick up the TPP baton and sell it to China. ..."
"The Trump campaign, meanwhile, delved into message tailoring, sentiment manipulation and machine learning." - Oh, please,
this sounds like a stereotypical Google-centric view of things. They of course left out the most important part of the campaign,
the key to its inception, which could be described in terms like "The Trump campaign, meanwhile, actually noticed the widespread
misery and non-recovery in the parts of the US outside the elite coastal bubbles and DC beltway, and spotted a yuuuge political
opportunity." In other words, not sentiment manipulation – that was, after all, the Dem-establishment-MSM-wall-street-and-the-elite-technocrats'
"America is already great, and anyone who denies it is deplorable!" strategy of manufactured consent – so much as actual *reading*
of sentiment. Of course if one insisted on remaining inside a protective elite echo chamber and didn't listen to anything Trump
or the attendees actually said in those huge flyover-country rallies that wasn't captured in suitably outrageous evening-news
soundbites, it was all too easy to believe one's own hype.
" former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who has known Trump socially for decades and is currently advising the president-elect
on foreign policy issues " - I really, really hope this is just Hammerin' Hank tooting his own horn, as he and his sycophants
in the FP establishment and MSM are wont to do.
"Trump dumps the TPP: conservatives rue strategic fillip to China" (Guardian) Another wedge angle for Trumps new-found
RINO "friends" to play. Trump will have as many problems with Ayn Ryan Congress as Obama/Clinton on economic issues.
"The TPP excludes China, which declined to join, proposing its own rival version, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership
(RCEP), which excludes the US." You see, it is all China's fault. No info presented on why China "declined" to join.
And if Abe's Japan were really an independent country, they'd pick up the TPP baton and sell it to China.
"... It was possible to say, before Warren G. Harding was elected, that he wasn't particularly well-qualified to be president. And he did turn out as president to have, as we say nowadays, some issues. But his administration was stocked with (mostly) well-qualified men who served with considerable distinction. ..."
"... To succeed in business, the brand only gets you so far. Quality matters. To succeed in the presidency, getting elected only gets you so far. Governing matters. ..."
"... But how Hegelian it would be if the thesis of the Bush and Clinton dynasties, followed by the antithesis of a Trump victory over first a Bush and then a Clinton in 2016, were to produce an unanticipated synthesis: a Trump administration marked by the reconstruction of republican normalcy in America. In its own way, that would be a genuine contribution to making America great again. ..."
"... Kristol is mad Trump lambasted the Iraq war. Was Putin against the Iraq war? I think the whole world was except for the "Coalition of the Willing." You'll never see the UK back another war like that. ..."
"... "Socialist feminist Liza Featherstone and others have denounced Clinton's uncritical praise of the "opportunity" and "freedom" of American capitalism vis-à-vis other developed nations. "With this bit of frankness," Featherstone explains, referring to the former Secretary of State's "Denmark" comments, "Clinton helpfully explained why no socialist-indeed, no non-millionaire-should support her. She is smart enough to know that women in the United States endure far more poverty, unemployment, and food insecurity than women in Denmark-yet she shamelessly made clear that she was happy to keep it that way." Indeed, Clinton's denunciation of the idea that the United States should look more like Denmark betrayed one of the glaring the fault lines within the Democratic Party, and between Clintonian liberalism and Sandersite leftism." ..."
"... Of course the progressive neoliberals in this forum regularly resort to ad hominem to any ideas or facts that don't line up with the agreed-upon party line. ..."
The Trump Administration http://tws.io/2iFd3rC
via @WeeklyStandard
Nov 28, 2016 - William Kristol
Who now gives much thought to the presidency of Warren G. Harding? Who ever did? Not us.
But let us briefly turn our thoughts to our 29th president (while stipulating that we're certainly no experts on his life or
times). Here's our summary notion: Warren G. Harding may have been a problematic president. But the Harding administration was
in some ways an impressive one, which served the country reasonably well.
It was possible to say, before Warren G. Harding was elected, that he wasn't particularly well-qualified to be president.
And he did turn out as president to have, as we say nowadays, some issues. But his administration was stocked with (mostly) well-qualified
men who served with considerable distinction.
Andrew Mellon was a successful Treasury secretary whose tax reforms and deregulatory efforts spurred years of economic growth.
Charles Dawes, the first director of the Bureau of the Budget, reduced government expenditures and, helped by Mellon's economic
policies, brought the budget into balance. Charles Evans Hughes as secretary of state dealt responsibly with a very difficult
world situation his administration had inherited-though in light of what followed in the next decade, one wishes in retrospect
for bolder assertions of American leadership, though in those years just after World War I, they would have been contrary to the
national mood.
In addition, President Harding's first two Supreme Court appointments -- William Howard Taft and George Sutherland -- were
distinguished ones. And Harding personally did some admirable things: He made pronouncements, impressive in the context of that
era, in favor of racial equality; he commuted the wartime prison sentence of the Socialist leader, Eugene V. Debs. In these ways,
he contributed to an atmosphere of national healing and civility.
The brief Harding administration-and for that matter the eight years constituting his administration and that of his vice president
and successor, Calvin Coolidge-may not have been times of surpassing national greatness. But there were real achievements, especially
in the economic sphere; those years were not disastrous; they were not dark times.
President-elect Donald J. Trump probably doesn't intend to model his administration on that of President Warren G. Harding.
But he could do worse than reflect on that administration's successes-and also on its failures, particularly the scandals that
exploded into public view after Harding's sudden death. These were produced by cronies appointed by Harding to important positions,
where they betrayed his trust and tarnished his historical reputation.
Donald Trump manifestly cares about his reputation. He surely knows that reputation ultimately depends on performance. If a
Trump hotel and casino is successful, it's not because of the Trump brand-that may get people through the door the first time-but
because it provides a worthwhile experience thanks to a good management team, fine restaurants, deft croupiers, and fun shows.
If a Trump golf course succeeds, it's because it has been built and is run by people who know something about golf. The failed
Trump efforts-from the university to the steaks-seem to have in common the assumption that the Trump name by itself would be enough
to carry mediocre or worse enterprises across the finish line.
To succeed in business, the brand only gets you so far. Quality matters. To succeed in the presidency, getting elected only
gets you so far. Governing matters.
It would be ironic if Trump's very personal electoral achievement were followed by a mode of governance that restored greater
responsibility to the cabinet agencies formally entrusted with the duties of governance. It would be ironic if a Trump presidency
also featured a return of authority to Congress, the states, and to other civic institutions. It would be ironic if Trump's victory
led not to a kind of American Caesarism but to a strengthening of republican institutions and forms. It would be ironic if the
election of Donald J. Trump heralded a return to a kind of constitutional normalcy.
If we are not mistaken, it was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (though sadly unaware of the phenomena of either Warren G. Harding
or Donald J. Trump) who made much of the Irony of History.
But how Hegelian it would be if the thesis of the Bush and Clinton dynasties, followed by the antithesis of a Trump victory
over first a Bush and then a Clinton in 2016, were to produce an unanticipated synthesis: a Trump administration marked by the
reconstruction of republican normalcy in America. In its own way, that would be a genuine contribution to making America great
again.
(Harding-Coolidge-Hoover were a disastrous triumvirate that ascended to power after the Taft & Wilson administrations, as the
GOP - then the embodiment of progressivism - split apart due to the efforts of Teddy Roosevelt.)
Peter K. -> Fred C. Dobbs... , -1
Kristol is mad Trump lambasted the Iraq war. Was Putin against the Iraq war? I think the whole world was except for the
"Coalition of the Willing." You'll never see the UK back another war like that.
It is the neocon's taking a back seat! Kristol is co-founder of PNAC along with a Clinton mob long time foggy bottom associate's
husband.. Trump is somewhat less thrilled with tilting with Russia for the American empire which is as moral as Nero's Rome.
ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs... , -1
Prescient: dumping Kristol's PNAC will strengthen the republic.
"Socialist feminist Liza Featherstone and others have denounced Clinton's uncritical praise of the "opportunity" and "freedom"
of American capitalism vis-à-vis other developed nations. "With this bit of frankness," Featherstone explains, referring to the
former Secretary of State's "Denmark" comments, "Clinton helpfully explained why no socialist-indeed, no non-millionaire-should
support her. She is smart enough to know that women in the United States endure far more poverty, unemployment, and food insecurity
than women in Denmark-yet she shamelessly made clear that she was happy to keep it that way." Indeed, Clinton's denunciation of
the idea that the United States should look more like Denmark betrayed one of the glaring the fault lines within the Democratic
Party, and between Clintonian liberalism and Sandersite leftism."
Is it better to ignore this fault line and try to paper it over or is it better to debate the issues in a polite and congenial
manner?
Of course the progressive neoliberals in this forum regularly resort to ad hominem to any ideas or facts that don't line
up with the agreed-upon party line.
Despite his election promises Trump Secretary of State shortlist was always dominated by neocons. A set of candidates would make
Hillary Clinton proud..
(There are 5 women on the list, including Sarah Palin & NH's Kelly Ayotte, demonstrating that
ilsm has some influence.
For Sec/Defense - seriously. Alternatively for UN Ambassador. Right.)
Thomas Barrack Jr. Founder, chairman and executive chairman of Colony Capital; private equity
and real estate investor
Jeb Hensarling Representative from Texas and chairman of the House Financial Services Committee
Steven Mnuchin Former Goldman Sachs executive and Mr. Trump's campaign finance chairman
Tim Pawlenty Former Minnesota governor
Defense Secretary
Kelly Ayotte Departing senator from New Hampshire and member of the Senate Armed Services
Committee
Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn Former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (he would need
a waiver from Congress because of a seven-year rule for retired officers)
Stephen J. Hadley National security adviser under George W. Bush
Jon Kyl Former senator from Arizona
Jeff Sessions Senator from Alabama who is a prominent immigration opponent
Attorney General
Chris Christie New Jersey governor
Rudolph W. Giuliani Former New York mayor
Jeff Sessions Senator from Alabama
Interior Secretary
Jan Brewer Former Arizona governor
Robert E. Grady Gryphon Investors partner
Harold G. Hamm Chief executive of Continental Resources, an oil and gas company
Forrest Lucas President of Lucas Oil Products, which manufactures automotive lubricants, additives
and greases
Sarah Palin Former Alaska governor
Agriculture Secretary
Sam Brownback Kansas governor
Chuck Conner Chief executive officer of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives
Sid Miller Texas agricultural commissioner
Sonny Perdue Former Georgia governor
Commerce Secretary
Chris Christie New Jersey governor
Dan DiMicco Former chief executive of Nucor Corporation, a steel production company
Lewis M. Eisenberg Private equity chief for Granite Capital International Group
Labor Secretary
Victoria A. Lipnic Equal Employment Opportunity commissioner and work force policy counsel
to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce
Health and Human Services Secretary
Dr. Ben Carson Former neurosurgeon and 2016 presidential candidate
Mike Huckabee Former Arkansas governor and 2016 presidential candidate
Bobby Jindal Former Louisiana governor who served as secretary of the Louisiana Department
of Health and Hospitals
Rick Scott Florida governor and former chief executive of a large hospital chain
Energy Secretary
James L. Connaughton Chief executive of Nautilus Data Technologies and former environmental
adviser to President George W. Bush
Robert E. Grady Gryphon Investors partner
Harold G. Hamm Chief executive of Continental Resources, an oil and gas company
Education Secretary
Dr. Ben Carson Former neurosurgeon and 2016 presidential candidate
Williamson M. Evers Education expert at the Hoover Institution, a think tank
Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Jeff Miller Retired chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee
Homeland Security Secretary
Joe Arpaio Departing sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz.
David A. Clarke Jr. Milwaukee County sheriff
Michael McCaul Representative from Texas and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee
Jeff Sessions Senator from Alabama
White House Chief of Staff
Stephen K. Bannon Editor of Breitbart News and chairman of Mr. Trump's campaign
Reince Priebus Chairman of the Republican National Committee
E.P.A. Administrator
Myron Ebell A director at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a prominent climate change
skeptic
Robert E. Grady Gryphon Investors partner who was involved in drafting the Clean Air Act Amendments
of 1990
Jeffrey R. Holmstead Lawyer with Bracewell L.L.P. and former deputy E.P.A. administrator in
the George W. Bush administration
U.S. Trade Representative
Dan DiMicco Former chief executive of Nucor Corporation, a steel production company, and
a critic of Chinese trade practices
U.N. Ambassador
Kelly Ayotte Departing senator from New Hampshire and member of the Senate Armed Services
Committee
Richard Grenell Former spokesman for the United States ambassador to the United Nations during
the George W. Bush administration
CIA Director / Director of National Intelligence
Michael T. Flynn Former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Peter Hoekstra Former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee
Mike Rogers Former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee
Frances Townsend Former homeland security adviser under George W. Bush
National Security Adviser
Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn Former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Trump's Hires Will Set Course of His Presidency
http://nyti.ms/2eNUfRg
NYT - MARK LANDLER =- Nov 12
WASHINGTON - "Busy day planned in New York," President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Twitter
on Friday morning, two days after his astonishing victory. "Will soon be making some very important
decisions on the people who will be running our government!"
If anything, that understates the gravity of the personnel choices Mr. Trump and his transition
team are weighing.
Rarely in the history of the American presidency has the exercise of choosing people to fill
jobs had such a far-reaching impact on the nature and priorities of an incoming administration.
Unlike most new presidents, Mr. Trump comes into office with no elective-office experience, no
coherent political agenda and no bulging binder of policy proposals. And he has left a trail of
inflammatory, often contradictory, statements on issues from immigration and race to terrorism
and geopolitics.
In such a chaotic environment, serving a president who is in many ways a tabula rasa, the appointees
to key White House jobs like chief of staff and cabinet posts like secretary of state, defense
secretary and Treasury secretary could wield outsize influence. Their selection will help determine
whether the Trump administration governs like the firebrand Mr. Trump was on the campaign trail
or the pragmatist he often appears to be behind closed doors. ...
he actually never fought any war. He was under influence of Israel lobby from the very beginning (Kushner). Ao it was only natural
that Trump folded immediately after the election, not in April 2017 when he bombed Syria.
Notable quotes:
"... President Trump's first National Security Advisor Mike Flynn got kicked out of office for talking with Russian officials. Such talks were completely inline with Trump's declared policies of détente with Russia. (I agree that Flynn should have never gotten the NSA job. But the reasons for that have nothing to do with his Russian connections.) ..."
"... With Flynn out, the war-on-Russia hawks, that is about everyone of the "serious people" in Washington DC, had the second most important person out of the way that would probably hinder their plans. ..."
"... They replaced him with a militaristic anti-Russian hawk ..."
"... He is the main author of an Army study on how to militarily counter Russia. McMaster is likely to "resist" when President Trump orders him to pursue better relations with Moscow. ..."
"... Trump has now been boxed in by hawkish, anti-Russian military in his cabinet and by a hawkish Vice-President. The only ally he still may have in the White House is his consigliere Steve Bannon. The next onslaught of the "serious people" is against Bannon and especially against his role in the NSC . It will only recede when he is fired. ..."
Trump is losing the war with the "deep state". Badly...
President Trump's first National Security Advisor Mike Flynn got kicked out of office for talking with Russian officials.
Such talks were completely inline with Trump's declared policies of détente with Russia. (I agree that Flynn should have never gotten
the NSA job. But the reasons for that have nothing to do with his Russian connections.)
Allegedly Flynn did
not fully inform Vice-President Pence about his talk with the Russian ambassador. But that can not be a serious reason. The talks
were rather informal, they were not transcribed. The first call is said to have reached Flynn on vacation in the Dominican Republic.
Why would a Vice-President need to know each and every word of it?
With Flynn out, the war-on-Russia hawks, that is about everyone of the "serious people" in Washington DC, had the second most
important person out of the way that would probably hinder their plans.
They replaced him with a militaristic anti-Russian
hawk :
In a 2016 speech to the Virginia Military Institute
, McMaster stressed the need for the US to have "strategic vision" in its fight against "hostile revisionist powers" - such as
Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran - that "annex territory, intimidate our allies, develop nuclear weapons, and use proxies
under the cover of modernized conventional militaries."
General McMaster, the new National Security Advisor, gets sold as a somewhat rebellious, scholar-warrior wunderkind . When the
now disgraced former General Petraeus came into sight he was sold with the same marketing profile.
Petraeus
was McMaster's boss. McMaster is partially his creature:
He was passed over for brigadier general twice, until then-Gen. David Petraeus personally flew back to Washington, D.C., from
Iraq to chair the Army's promotion board in 2008.
When Petraeus took over in the war on Afghanistan he selected McMaster as his staff leader for strategy. McMaster was
peddled to the White House by Senator Tom Cotton, one of the
most outlandish
Republican neocon war hawks.
McMaster's best known book is "
Dereliction of Duty
" about the way the US involved itself into the Vietnam War. McMaster criticizes the Generals of that time for not having resisted
then President Johnson's policies.
He is the main
author of an Army study on how to militarily counter Russia. McMaster is likely to "resist" when President Trump orders him to
pursue better relations with Moscow.
Trump has now been boxed in by hawkish, anti-Russian military in his cabinet and by a hawkish Vice-President. The only ally
he still may have in the White House is his consigliere Steve Bannon. The
next onslaught of the "serious people" is
against Bennon and especially
against his role in the NSC . It will only recede when he is fired.
It seems to me that Trump has been rolled with the attacks on Flynn and the insertion of McMaster into his inner circle. I wonder
if he, and Bannon, recognize the same problematic development and have a strategy against it.
Donald Trump's unorthodox US presidential transition continued on Monday when he held talks with one of the most prominent supporters
of leftwing Democrat Bernie Sanders.
The president-elect's first meeting of the day at Trump Tower in New York was with Tulsi Gabbard, a Democratic maverick who endorsed
the socialist Sanders during his unsuccessful primary battle with Hillary Clinton.
... ... ...
At first glance Gabbard, who is from Hawaii and is the first Hindu member of the US Congress, seems an unlikely counsellor. She
resigned from the Democratic National Committee to back Vermont senator Sanders and formally nominated him for president at the party
convention in July, crediting him with starting a "movement of love and compassion", although by then Clinton's victory was certain.
But the Iraq war veteran has also expressed views that might appeal to Trump, criticising Obama, condemning interventionist wars
in Iraq and Libya and taking a hard line on immigration. In 2014, she called for a rollback of the visa waiver programme for Britain
and other European countries with what she called "Islamic extremist" populations.
In October last year she tweeted: "Al-Qaeda attacked us on 9/11 and must be defeated. Obama won't bomb them in Syria. Putin did.
#neverforget911." She was then among 47 Democrats who joined Republicans to pass a bill mandating a stronger screening process for
refugees from Iraq and Syria coming to the US.
"... By many yardsticks, Israeli citizens enjoy higher living standards than US citizens. ..."
"... President Obama next week is scheduled to sign the most lavish foreign aid package in the country's history - $3.1 billion in military assistance to Israel - raising an urgent question: can the U.S. afford it? ..."
"... The United States already transfers $3.1 billion in taxpayer money to Israel every year, far more than any other country, but the deal that will be signed into law next week will guarantee foreign aid to the country until the year 2027, a decade after Obama has left office. ..."
By many yardsticks,
Israeli citizens enjoy higher living standards than US citizens. With more unemployed people than
at any time in U.S. history,
President Obama next week is scheduled to sign the most lavish foreign
aid package in the country's history - $3.1 billion in military assistance
to Israel - raising an urgent question: can the U.S. afford it?
The United States
already transfers $3.1 billion in taxpayer money to Israel every year, far more than any other country,
but the deal that will be signed into law next week will guarantee foreign aid to the country
until the year 2027, a decade after Obama has left office.
Attorney General William Barr said in a letter to Congress Friday that he may be able to
provide lawmakers with the special counsel's principal conclusions "as soon as this
weekend."
There were no instances in which Mueller was told not to take a specific action in his
wide-ranging probe, Barr said.
Guado looks more and more like Russian Navalny -- another color revolution Trojan Horse.
Notable quotes:
"... Half a BILLION dollars to be spent to overthrow Maduro, and they spent how much time making claims like Putin hacked the election.... Lies, More lies, Damn lies..... Same as it ever was. ..."
"... "The first round of the U.S. 'regime change' change attempt in Venezuela failed but it is far from over. The State Department alone foresees to spend $500 million more on it: ..."
"... The Fiscal Year 2020 budget request includes funding to support democracy in Venezuela and provides the flexibility to make more funds available to support a democratic transition, including up to $500 million in transfer authority." ..."
"... Given the results of the last 70 years of US policies I would say that quote should now be updated to "Trillions for war, but not one cent for the people." ..."
On February 23 the U.S. created a 'humanitarian aid' stunt at the border between Colombia
and Venezuela. The stunt ended in a riot during which the supporters of the self declared
'president' Guaidó burned the trucks that where supposed to transport the 'aid'. Even
the New York Times had to admit that.
The riots also marked the day that Guaidó
lost the legal argument he had used to make himself 'interim president'.
Guaido also lost his original legal position. He claimed the presidency on January 23 under
this paragraph of article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution :
When an elected President becomes permanently unavailable to serve prior to his
inauguration, a new election by universal suffrage and direct ballot shall be held within
30 consecutive days . Pending election and inauguration of the new President, the
President of the National Assembly shall take charge of the Presidency of the Republic.
That the "elected President becomes permanently unavailable" was never the
case to begin with. But if article 233 would apply Guaido would have had 30 days to hold
new elections. The 30 days are over and Guaido did not even call for elections to be held.
He thereby defied the exact same paragraph of the constitution that his (false) claim to
the presidency is based on.
The hapless coup plotters in Washington DC were finally put on notice that the issue
creates a legal problem for them. During a March 15 press briefing Elliott Abrams, the
U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela, was asked about the issue:
QUESTION: [C]ould you explain to us the article under which Mr. Guaido declared himself
president? It is said that it has expired last month. Could you explain that to us? What is
the --
MR ABRAMS: As to the Venezuelan constitution, the National Assembly has passed a resolution
that states that that 30-day period of interim presidency will not start ending or counting
until the day Nicolas Maduro leaves power. So the 30 days doesn't start now, it starts
after Maduro. And they – that's a resolution of the National Assembly.
A resolution of the National Assembly, which the Supreme Court of Venezuela holds in
contempt over the seating illegally elected persons, can change the country's constitution?
That does not sound convincing to me. The journalists in the briefing were equally curious of
how the rules could be changed like that during the ongoing game:
During Bosonaro's visit to the US Trump also announced his support for
Brazil's entrance into the NATO alliance, if I was Germany I'd veto that idea outright, the
last thing NATO needs is a basket case like Brazil.
But I imagine the Pentagon is already
counting all the additional arms they can sell to Brazil as a member of NATO without having
to go through all the additional hoops they would while it's just an ally of NATO
Never Mind the Bollocks , Mar 19, 2019 2:39:09 PM |
link
Random Guy also appointed an ambassador, Carlos Vecchio, to the US who just took over the
Venezuela's diplomatic buildings (empty since Venezuela broke off relations with the US over
the attempted coup), including the consular building in New York.
So far it doesn't look like
the US has succeed in replacing Venezuela's representative to the UN with a US stooge, but I
imagine the US is working hard on that front as well.
The US looks just ridiculous doing a
stunt this, but B is right, the US always doubles down, especially on a losing plan.
Half a BILLION dollars to be spent to overthrow Maduro, and they spent how much time making
claims like Putin hacked the election.... Lies, More lies, Damn lies..... Same as it ever was.
thanks b... some crazy talk in that daily press briefing with abrams...
"Q: So Juan Guaido is the interim president of an interim that doesn't exist yet?
A: The 30-day end to his interim presidency starts counting. Because he's not in power,
that's the problem. Maduro is still there. So they have decided that they will count that
from when he actually is in power and Maduro's gone. I think it's logical.
Q: So then he really isn't interim president, then?
A: He is interim president, but he's not --
Q: With no power."
that sounds about par fe the course for the usa... as kadath says - they always double
down on losing plans!
i am a bit mystified as to the plan of maduros to get the cabinet to resign.. what is the
concept there? does he have a number of members that could be persuaded by the logic of
abrams? with a little bribery money, no doubt..
i wonder how brazilians are looking at the stooge they have in power now, sucking up to
the usa-cia..
The optics of groveling to the US and Israel, and military opposition, are not good for our
friend Jair. It's only a matter of time until Bolsonaro starts hemorrhaging support and
Brazilian nationalism abandons him.
- If Maduro is in power, then the office is not vacant. Therefore, Guaidó cannot be
interim president.
- If the office is vacant, then there is no president. Therefore, Guaidó either is or
isn't the interim president (i.e. he can't be the interim president of the interim president,
which in this case is nobody).
If you want to suspend the Constitution, declare a civil war. If you win the civil war,
then you can do whatever you please (including obeying and/or reinterpreting the old
Constitution). In the strict legal sense, Guaidó's position is untenable. Even the
counting of days was wrong: January has 31 days, not 30, therefore his alleged 30-day mandate
was over at the 21st of February, not at the 23rd.
Re:#6 James, normally when you request that your own cabinet resigns it means that you've
either lost faith in their ability to perform their jobs - OR - your making a drastic change
in direction for your government and you need people with a different skill set to run the
various government departments. I imagine Maduros's decision is a mixture of needing to
create a "war government" to fight the economic war the US is waging against him and ensuring
the loyalty of powerful political rivals by giving them cabinet posts. Maduro will probably
announce some major new policies in the coming weeks aimed at 1) resisting US economic
pressure 2) increase Maduro's support among the population (maybe some policies aimed at the
urban middle class to split them off from Random Guy) and 3) announce some foreign
relationship drive to hopefully block more countries from supporting random guy's
pseudo-government and hopefully win some countries back. economic advisors from Russia, Cuba,
China and maybe Iran & Syria will be providing vital support for any economic policies
aimed at avoid US sanctions
"The first round of the U.S. 'regime change' change attempt in Venezuela failed but it is far
from over. The State Department alone foresees to spend $500 million more on it:
The Fiscal Year 2020 budget request includes funding to support democracy in Venezuela and
provides the flexibility to make more funds available to support a democratic transition,
including up to $500 million in transfer authority."
Tell me again how much it will cost to bring clean water to Flint, MI and our other cities
with water problems. You know, the things we don't have money for.
@ lgfocus who asked
"
Tell me again how much it will cost to bring clean water to Flint, MI and our other cities
with water problems. You know, the things we don't have money for.
"
Keep asking those questions and maybe Americans will grow the sentiments necessary to
stand up.
Where are the Bernie crowd that are going to make so much difference in the coming
(s)election?
Even the counting of days was wrong: January has 31 days, not 30, therefore his alleged
30-day mandate was over at the 21st of February, not at the 23rd.
Posted by: vk | Mar 19, 2019 3:33:55 PM | 10
They made their general ops to produce public results specifically at 23 of this month or
for several more months. They obviously wanted to make a point like they were doing at least
since 2016 for almost each consequtive month, only for that period favorable date number was
11. Check events for every 11th of each month since 2016 and check what dominated US and EU
news.
Yet in current Venezuela events there seem to be so much FAIL regarding the US
clandestine strategies.
There's also rising domestic pushback within the Outlaw US Empire while the hypocrisy of
Russiagate rises like a massive iceberg on the horizon. This also puts additional pressure on
Vassal EU governments whose publics see through the Empire's lies and thus further
delegitimizes their national governments.
French Yellow Vests will not surrender until Macron
and his backing Establishment does, and they're motivating other nation's citizens.
Will
Poroshenko get reelected in 12 days or ?
IMO, both Trump and Bolsonaro will be ousted before
Maduro. It appears the Truth Brigades outnumber the liebots thanks to b and a host of other
genuine journalists.
@11 kadath.. thanks for the response to my question.. we will have to wait and see how this
unfolds.. it reminds me a bit of the ukraine 2014 scenario, but different too... in ukraines
case, they already had a split dynamic in the country itself.. here, i don't see it.. the
split seems to be along economics - who are the upper class, with some middle class in tow,
verses everyone else..
@13 lgfocus - that sounds suspiciously like something a COMMUNIST would say!!!!!!! During the
1797 XYZ scandal C.C. Pinckney reportedly said "Millions for defense, but not one cent for
tribute." which has been quoted by the Military Industrial Complex ad nauseam for the last 70
years to justify massive military budgets to fight the forever wars.
Given the results of the
last 70 years of US policies I would say that quote should now be updated to "Trillions for
war, but not one cent for the people."
So if Elliott Abrams is correct, the Venezuelan National Assembly (a now illegitimate entity
by the way) has passed a resolution that Juan Guaido's "interim presidency" only begins AFTER
Nicolas Maduro leaves the presidency? Is that not admitting that Maduro is the legitimate
president?
That Jair Bolsonaro is visiting the CIA to discuss overthrowing Maduro may alarm quite a
few people even among the top tiers of the Brazilian military who otherwise support him.
What's to stop Bolsonaro from discussing with the CIA how to get rid of more than a few top
Brazilian generals who disagree with overthrowing the government of a neighbouring
country?
Now let's all imagine what would happen if Brazil was accepted into NATO like Trump &
the MIC wants and the Brazilian Generals decided to continue their time-honoured tradition of
toppling the current Brazilian President. NATO has no means of ejecting or even suspending a
member so any such crisis in Brazilian leadership would immediately trigger a crisis within
NATO itself on how to respond and accepting a coup government into NATO would kill the
illusion that NATO is some sort of league of Democracies that Bolton hopes to promote as a
replacement to the UN assembly.
Well, Bolsonaro's complete and absolute submission to Donald Trump and the US is probably
surprising even the most optmistic hawks in the White House. The golden shower president will
probably accept anything the US tries to push to Brazil.
It strikes me that the futility of trying to stir up a revolution with an elite constituency
seems completely lost on the coup planners. The Venezuelan elite might want the government
overthrown but there is no way that they'll put their own blood on the line for it. It's
really puzzling trying to understand how they see this playing out. And what will their elite
supporters think if US sanctions mean they can't use their Visa or MasterCard? And the
businesses that cater to the elite?
The Brazil to NATO call sounds awfully like a forecast of significant cross-border
provocations by Brazil which, if responded to by the Venezuelans, could trigger the old
Article 5 musketeers to intervene militarily. Just as ludicrous (and dangerous) as the UK 's
FCE attempt to confer diplomatic status on the BBC Farsi woman jailed in Iran. Student union
politics.
Abrams is attempting to claim that Random Guy is "interim President-in-waiting".
Q: What is that Interim President-in-waiting actually waiting for?
A: He's waiting for the position of President to become vacant.
THAT is the fatal flaw in all of Abrams legal mumbo-jumbo i.e. the articles of the
Venezuelan Constitution that Random Guy invoked to claim the title of Interim President are
only applicable when the office of President (and also Vice President) are VACANT.
Then and only then can the leader of the National Assembly take on the role of "interim
President" until elections take place 30 days later.
Abrams is admitting that the office of President isn't vacant.
This is an important legal point, so it bears repeating: Abrams accepts that someone holds
that position, albeit he is insisting that the current office-holder's claim to that chair is
illegitimate (in Constitutional terms, Maduro is "unfit" to be President).
Again, that exposes Abrams argument as legal mumbo-jumbo, precisely because the leader of
the National Assembly does not possess the authority to declare that a sitting President is
"unfit" for the office. The Venezuelan Constitution is quite clear on that point: that
authority rests with the supreme court, who are perfectly satisfied with Madura's fitness to
be President.
Abrams argument is therefore fraught with danger for Random Guy.
The Constitution clearly states that he can not claim the "interim Presidency" unless the
position is already vacant, which it clearly is not.
The Constitution also clearly states that he does not have the authority to declare the
position to be vacant.
Yet Guaido has done both, and done so at the acknowledged urging of a foreign power.
At the very least that amounts to insurrection, if not treason.
1. Counterpunch
I want to add extra focus on the excellent interview b linked to over at Counterpunch which
was also posted over at Zerohedge.
CG: There's not the chaos US and Trump were expecting. (Opposition leader and
self-proclaimed president Juan) Guaidó is the most hated guy in Venezuela. He has to
stay in luxury hotel in La Mercedes, an expensive neighbourhood of Caracas. They have
electricity there, as they were prepared, so bought generators. That is why Guaidó
went there, and has a whole floor of a luxury hotel for him and his family. While people
are suffering Guaidó is trying on suits for his upcoming trip to Europe. It is a
parallel world.
AG: You think Guaidó will fail?
CG: Venezuelans are making so many jokes with his name, as there's a word similar to
stupid in Spanish – guevon. And look at the demonstration in La Mercedes the other
day (12 March), the crowds didn't manifest. It is becoming a joke in the country. The more
the Europeans and the US make him a president, the more bizarre the situation becomes, as
Guaidó is not president of Venezuela! Interestingly, Chavez predicted what is
happening today, he wrote about it, so people are going back to his works and reading him
again.
2. Military Times
It could well have been me making b's conclusion on the following as well but since it isn't
it gives me an opportunity to warn about and completely disagree when it comes to the content
at Military Times and the conclusions drawn from it: that content if anything is
circumstantial proof that a decision has already been made in favor of a larger war
(technically the US has already launched a war by its actions, or at least according to its
own definitions as it applies it to others attacking them, if I remember correctly they would
even allow themselves to respond with nuclear weapons in such a scenario).
It might not have been the intent of Military Times (I do not know them) but everything
about their content at that link screams war is coming.
Notice how the US congress etc. portrays themselves as unwilling to go to war. We all know
this is untrue.
Notice how "everyone" portray themselves as more or less being forced against their will to
get involved. We all know this is untrue.
"They" love to do this, to wallow in "reluctance", to play innocent, to further the
narrative of "the good guys", because doing so preys on those who still believe they are on
the side of good (or in this case preys on anybody's remaining hope that they have some shred
of sanity left or that they've run out of bloodlust) and more or less guarantees their
support or silent acceptance in the general public. I recognize this all to well because I
fell for it myself in the past. It is a large part of their cherished narrative and has
self-reinforcing properties. They would say it even if no one listened but it is still
completely untrue.
Notice how they constantly hint at what amounts to "if we had to we would".
Notice that despite how every US action mentioned (except for some nebulous bill that might
as well be a unicorn fart) goes against avoiding a war they quote some ex-CIA person on all
of it being the exact opposite and a way to avoid war (but still meet their objective
consisting of unconditional demands).
Notice how at first they claim to believe it would be hard and thus something they obviously
wouldn't want to choose and thus if given no choice then it can't be their fault.
Nevertheless, the crisis is deteriorating rapidly.
Yeah of course it is, as planned and as caused by themselves.
Notice the laundry list of "bad stuff happening".
Notice the appeal to military solutions.
Notice how they then claim it might not be so hard after all, or at least necessary or worth
it.
Notice how they list military options to choose between.
It has already been decided and has already started.
3. Refinery fires
Did anyone else wonder at the sudden pair of refinery fires in Houston?
Posted by: Peter VE | Mar 19, 2019 4:22:48 PM | 19
Yes, since the second larger one went off because I didn't hear about the first one until
then and don't know anything more than that there was one. These things do happen during
normal operation of plants and refineries because every day it doesn't happen
unavoidably breeds some false sense of security and familiarity with the potential energies
involved.
And if that's not what happened then it will be a very hot US summer.
For those who didn't catch it here's all I've got (two measly links). RT
(2nd one)
ZH today (2nd one is now bigger):
This Moderate Rebels Transcript contains excellent revelatory points about Bolsonaro, the
rise of Brazilian Fascism and its connections to the Outlaw US Empire and its ally Zionistan.
I'm uncertain if b linked to it previously as I just stumbled across it.
After the people of Brazil got a taste of power with Lula, their social and national
conscience has risen. A Brazilian military aggression in Venezuela on behalf of American
Imperialism will be viciously opposed by the peoples of Latin America and Spain and Portugal.
The Colombian ELN and Venezuela's Bolivarian militias will unite and begin to attack the US
military in Colombia and fight the vassal state of Colombia. These militias will fight to the
death. Ecuador will catch on fire as well since traitor Moreno backs the US invasion. This
will get ugly.
US will just make up another excuse. These guys don't follow any laws so there is no point
interpreting them. Raw power and a good defense strategy is what it counts now for Venezuela.
They need more S-300, Buk, coastal defense and allies. This is the key for survival of
Venezuela. US will then back down or nuke Venezuela into democracy and freedom of press.
The always interesting Florida Maquis YT channel covers S. America extensively and mentioned
today Trump is putting Brazil forward for OECD membership which may give leverage to their
fascist leader.
The news that Maduro is making a new cabinet could be very important. The current cabinet was
chosen to implement policies designed to prevent a coup by compromising with moderate
elements of the bourgeoisie. Such policies involved the watering down of the revolutionary
policies of 21st Century Socialism, which has led to the erosion of political support for
Maduro without making any perceptible difference the bourgeois commitment to coups and other
antidemocratic measures.
If the revolution is to survive it must continue to deepen, bringing gains to the masses
besides which the inconveniences of sanctions/sabotage are pinpricks which only serve to
deepen popular support of national independence and socialist reform.
If the revolution deepens it will not only increase the strength of the popular movement but
broaden the appeal of Venezuela's policies to the millions of Latin Americans currently
watching in dismay as neo-liberalism cuts into their living standards and aspirations of
security. Nowhere are there millions more sympathetic to revolutionary programmes than in
Colombia, a byword for bad government and inequality and Brazil where the current Presidency
is completely illegitimate.
It will be interesting to see whether Maduro's new cabinet is more attuned to the revolution
and less interested in compromises with a comprador class whose alliance with the US is based
as much on racism and hatred of its own countrymen as it is on greed. Anbd that is saying
something.
Thank you Karlof1 and Zachary Smith, I'll do my best to remember not to go "link crazy" in
the future :D
Aside from all that and on the comments here on Colombia it makes me reconsider if there
was any positive value at all in the mediation by Norway (and others? I think the current
"social democrat" secretary general of NATO was prime minister there at the time...) to
curtail or end the civil war or if it was all a ploy in bad faith. I could be wrong about
this.
I was wrong but I've found out where the confusion stems from; Norway was the second
"guarantor country" after Cuba.
Once the negotiators had been agreed upon, the two sides moved to designate foreign
guarantor countries. Cuba, host to previous encounters, was a logical choice, while Norway
was chosen as the second guarantor country for its active role in international conflict
mediation. Additionally, two facilitator or 'accompanying countries' were also designated.
The FARC chose Venezuela, while the Colombian government chose Chile.[14] Exploratory
meetings continued in Havana in February 2012, with limited [...]
"With more candidates early on, it takes all that energy and diffuses it for petty warfare
instead of a firmly focused "machine" that would take over Congress through the Dem
party."
Well, when your strategy is identity politics you do need a crowd; so all of your supporters
can "identify" with their own special someone and be sad and upset when they lose.
Keep them divided, keep it about race/sexual identity/religion/favorite vegetable if need be,
oh, and of course that favorite mantra; hatred of the "other(s)."
The Dem party is gone, what is left is a divisive machine whose sole purpose seems to be to
separate people into separate boxes with separate identities only united by their hatred of
"other" parties and always completely blind to what is being done in the world in their (US)
name.
Nowhere are there millions more sympathetic to revolutionary programmes than in Colombia, a
byword for bad government and inequality ... bevin | Mar 19, 2019 8:34:12 PM
Current president was elected with rather thin majority -- not as thin as Trump -- and
while economy is "thriving" according to some measures, the fruits of it are even less evenly
distributed than in USA, and the resurgence of the left is fully possible. Importantly,
Colombian society is still very divided in the aftermath of La Violencia of 1950-s, violence
that never truly went away. Colombia and Venezuela are closely connected since colonial times
and troubles easily cross the border. In turn, Venezuelans seems to be easy going
bunglers.
Chavista have "the heart in right place", but even in easier times they had troubles with
the economy. The opposition is all thumbs. The freedom fighters who defected into Colombia
seem to be a bunch of loosers, correctly evicted from a homeless shelter once found useless.
Their putative paymasters seem particularly egregious, good for them to manage to get rid of
the traitors before the latter found a nerve to unionize, but what was the plan anyway?. Sic
sempter traditoribus.
"The Colombian ELN and Venezuela's Bolivarian militias will unite and begin to attack the US
military in Colombia and fight the vassal state of Colombia. These militias will fight to the
death. Ecuador will catch on fire as well since traitor Moreno backs the US invasion. This
will get ugly."
You left out the elephant or rather landmass in the room; Latin America is connected to the
US by land. This US misadventure will come home to roost, it will explode everywhere and
anywhere, finally and at long last IMO the US will reap what it has sown.
lgfocus @ 13 said in part;"Tell me again how much it will cost to bring clean water to Flint,
MI and our other cities with water problems. You know, the things we don't have money for."
This would be a excellent point for all the Dems chasing the POTUS, but, even if they did,
it probably wouldn't get any play on the corporate MSM.
It makes too much sense!
kudos for the relevant mention......
German foreign policy disaster. German freelancer journalist Billy Six jailed in Venezuela,
now back in Germany after intervention by Russian foreign minister Lawrov.
Press conference
with Billy after his arrival in Germany. Must see (German) Germany is accused in the
participation of the drone attack against Maduro.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tsg5Jx5xzrU
Abrams trying to explain Guano and Venezuelan law is a bit like trying to explain western
democracy VS 'non democratic' Assad and Putin and Maduro. Doesn't matter the majority of
people have voted for them. That's not 'democratic'. A lot of Guano in western so called
democracy.
"The far-right President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil supported that but the military of Brazil,
which holds significant power in the cabinet, vetoed it..."
I would be willing to bet that one of the purposes of Bolsonaro's visit to the CIA and DC
was to see how he could remedy that situation, perhaps by getting rid of just a few of these
troublesome military generals who are opposed to his using the Brazilian military, overt and
covert, against Venezuela....
not to mention of course the usual and disgusting CIA options of subversion and other
covert operations agasint Venezuelan democracy
Maybe Maduro is changing his cabinet to get people in who are not under US sanctions. The US
claims most of it's sanctions are against bad guys but the reality is naming individuals is a
propaganda ruse as the sanctions go far deeper than the individuals. People who don't look
past the headlines believe it's only individuals so they fall for the US line it's Maduro and
his polices not the US that's causing the economic problems in Venezuela. Thus a new cabinet
could give Maduro some breathing room until the US can sanction the new guys.
If the US does shut off Mastercard and Visa it will be huge mistake as I doubt very few of
the governments supporters have credit cards. Those the US claims to be hitting with this
action can get a Russian credit card if it's possible. The upper class Gweedo lovers will be
the ones hardest hit which doesn't bode well for Gweedo boy who spouts guano and promises he
can't keep every time he opens his mouth.
Lots of blather of the citizens of the US should stand against the governments actions in
Venezuela. The US government and it's lap dog press control the narrative thus it won't
happen. But if it came to a military invasion the citizens will come out of cocoons and say
hell no like they did with Syria when Obama wanted to bomb that country into the stone age
when Assad, it was the rebels that used gas, crossed his red line. A military invasion and
resulting guerilla warfare in Venezuela will send American boys and girls home in body bags
and Trump can kiss his reelection goodbye and he knows it. Thus no invasion by the US but
that doesn't rule out covert commando raids and sabotage by US personnel inside the
country.
The attack took place when vehicle traffic was stopped at a train crossing, but whether the
raiders indeed had intended to steal the uranium shipment has yet to be determined. Civil
Police are now trying to establish the motive behind the incident. The attackers have
managed to flee the scene, but police have recovered a 9mm pistol which they are now trying
to trace back to the armed group.
I don't speak Portuguese or Brazilian Portuguese but those that do will likely find more
information in the
Globo article .
The Globo article says an enriched Uranium convoy, sent to the Angra dos Reis nuclear power
plant, was attacked by local criminal gangs. The area of Angra dos Reis, renowned for its
beautiful coastline and luxury resorts, is now roamed by criminal gangs that threaten the
population and overtly defy law enforcement forces. Police forces and armed convoys moving
along the highway are frequently ambushed.
Despite Bolsonaro's campaign promises, gangs seems to remain in charge, even in Angra dos
Reis! From the Globo article:
"One of the most beautiful places of the State of Rio, the county of Angra dos Reis has
experienced an increase in violence, with the presence of fire-armed drug dealers inside
communities that were previously considered peaceful."
There is also an extended version of the press conference where Billy Six answers some
more questions. One is particulary interesting as he points out the economic interests of the
German government in Venezuela. He mentions explicitly SIEMENS, Linde, Lufthansa and DHL
which are excluded from free-convertability into Dollar-reserves since Chavez established
currency controls in 2003.
He also claims that the Federal Government in the person of the now expelled German
ambassador to Venezuela Daniel Kriener has met with the father of Juan Requesens who is/was
member of the National Assembly, associated to the student protest newtwork of 'Generation
2007' to which Juan Guaido belongs, and whose party Primero Justicia is the party of Julio
Borges - the former president of the National Assembly and co-plotter of the 2002 coup on
Chavez. Juan Requesens is under arrest and accused to be part of the drone attack on Maduro
in August last year along with 16 other conspirators. According to Six - who had contact with
several of these plotters in prison - the coup in effect did happen and failed because the
Maduro government was pre-informed about the plot and an anti-drone shield could prevent the
assault.
What made it even worse for Six, according to what was told to him by SEBIN (political police
force of Venezuela), was that the German government was aware of this drone in advance which
is why the German embassy had taken such a stand for Juan Requesens to get him out of prison.
This, however, is suppose to be one of the reasons why, of those foreign ambassadors of
Venezuela who received Guaido at the airport two weeks ago, German ambassador Kriener was the
only one who was to leave the country upon the advice of the Bolivarian Government.
There is certainly more to follow and it is perhaps not wrong to keep an eye on this
I would not trust the Brazilian people or the Brazilian left to take care of the issue.
The non-Venezuelan Latin American left is one of the most innofensive, docile and
innefective lefts of the Third World. This is specially the case of the Brazilian left, which
is also deeply balkanized, torn down in inumerous factions -- from the social liberals to
communists.
Besides, the far-right has genuine and huge popular support in Brazil. Bolsonaro's is not
a political giant by any means, nor is he the novelty/outsider e.g. Trump is (he was a
Congressman for 28 consecutive years before becoming president). The far-right is at least
25% of the voting adult population, most probably around 40%, and this mass will go until the
end with their design. Bolsonaro is no Temer.
Excellent post B. Thanks for keeping Venezuela front and center in your blogs.
From my perspective, it looks like Russia is effectively running Venezuela.
What are the indicators:
- Russia is handling Venezuelan oil sales
- Russia is handling Venezuelan international banking
- Maduro has made no strategic mistakes during the coup attempt. Every U.S. move has been
effectively thwarted.
- With few exceptions, military discipline has been maintained.
- The new government realignment looks like something that Maduro would not have come up with
on his own. It is probably a part of the economic plan the Russia prepared for Venezuela over
the past couple of months.
Venezuela is starting to look a lot like Crimea. The U.S. wanted Crimea in order to take
over the Russian naval base and effectively neutralize Russia's Black Sea Fleet. But Russia
was there first, thwarted the U.S.' every move, and now the U.S., in the Black Sea, is in a
much weaker position than before 2014.
In Venezuela, the U.S. wanted Venezuelan oil. But Russia was there first. So far every
U.S. move has been thwarted and the U.S. is starting to suffer from a scarcity of heavy
crudes. If past is prologue, the U.S. will have no more success in Venezuela than it did in
Crimea. It will not dare to take on Venezuela militarily, as this would mean to take on
Russia militarily.
Venezuela will represent another watershed moment in separating the world into those who
are with the U.S., and those who are against. And the U.S. side will be somewhat smaller than
it was before their Venezuelan adventure started.
There's a mind-boggling Extortiongate scandal going on in Argentina - with links throughout
Latin America including Venezuela, and to Elliot Abrams:
Don't Spy
for Me Argentina In fact, it connects with virtually everything!
Abrams to media....."Constitutional rules? We ain't got no rules! We don't need no rules!
I don't have to show you any stinking rules!" The US cannot be serious, $500 million to take
over Venezuela with the greatest oil reserves on the planet. Victoria Nuland said the US
spent $5 Billion on regime change in Ukraine.. F-----g cheapskates. They will double down,
wait for the secondary sanctions, it is so important that Venezuela keeps its oil markets,
especially Russia and China.
Contrary to what the article states, Brazil has a negligible wheat production. However,
Argentina has, and its main importer until now was Brazil. A huge blow to the Argentinian
economy, whose trade balance will fall even more. The situation in Brazil so calamitous that it produced an extremely rare Chinese
manifestation about the country:
It looks like the US is having to rescue some of the Venezuelan oligarchs from the effect
of the sanctions. This being Fox, it blames socialism, which is utterly backwards, but the
facts are there.
US lifts
sanctions on wives of Venezuela TV magnates
Oh the poor dears. How they must have suffered.
Also, it looks like they (US) are thinking about cutting off credit cards, which as you've
opined, would hurt the middle and upper classes much more than the typical Chavista.
Credit card
sanctions?
That whole press conference exchange has a faintly Mad Hatter Tea Party quality to it.
At one point Abrams says the interim presidency doesn't start counting until "after
Maduro", but the whole raison d'etre of article 233 in the first place is to ensure a
constitutional transition of power in the event that the president becomes unavailable. So
that (the president becoming unavailable) would had to have happened FIRST -- prior to the
implementation of (the relevant passage of) article 233. In other words, that would have to
be the triggering event.
If this seems a bit like stating the obvious -- it is. As the article states,'That the
"elected President becomes permanently unavailable" was never the case to begin with.' That's
end of discussion right there. It never happened. And they have everybody talking in circles
about whether or not the thirty day election requirement was fulfilled? It's absurd.
One thing I'll give the neo-cons credit for is their ability to take obvious lies/complete
fabrications and somehow get people to discuss them as if there was any reality to it. Like
in the case of Iraq they had the whole world discussing the threat of non-existent WMDs. All
these "serious" pundits would prattle on endlessly about the pros and cons of an issue for
which there was not a scintilla of evidence. I think even Goebbels would have to stand back
in awe of what they do.
"The #TrumpRegime is not a government that can provide services. It is a transnational
criminal organization which should be designated as a terrorist group."
Holy crap on a cracker, Batman! Half of all the evil entities in the world are crawling
about within this massive web of crime and treason.
I would beg to make one small change to the exposé; instead of --
" The CIA, under 'extraordinary rendition' proponent Gina Haspel, has become a foot
soldier army for Trump's whims and Bolton's and Pompeo's neo-con dark policies, "
-- I would say that Trump, Bolton, Pompeo and Haspel have become foot-soldiers for the
CIA's neo-con dark policies.
Venezuela: Guaido loyalists seize diplomatic properties in US
Envoys loyal to Venezuela's interim president have taken control of diplomatic buildings
and a consulate. Caracas has severed ties with the US, accusing it of staging a coup against
acting President Maduro.
Don't Spy for Me Argentina. In fact, it connects with virtually everything!
Posted by: BM | Mar 20, 2019 11:35:21 AM | 69
The CIA, under "extraordinary rendition" proponent Gina Haspel, has become a foot soldier
army for Trump's whims and Bolton's and Pompeo's neo-con dark policies. It is clear that
Abrams, Bolton, Pompeo, Rubio, Bannon, and their cohorts, including Macri and Bolsonaro,
are attempting to re-create OPERATION CONDOR, the 1960s, 70s, and 80s alliance of the
intelligence services of the Latin American military dictatorships of Argentina, Bolivia,
Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay, which were full members, with Ecuador and Peru as
associate partners. Tens of thousands of leftist dissidents were tracked down and executed
during CONDOR, which operated with the full approval and involvement of the CIA.
They lost so many opportunities during the 70's. USSR was in their way in so many places.
But now happy days are here again, with Russia, China containment strategies and Trump and
other supremacist leaders being installed everywhere in the West and Americas.
It's about opening Pandora's Box though. 0 latency networks, even negative time ...with
whatever that implicates and a space programe but not the one you see in plain view.
There is a three part video of the UN conference featuring Anya Parampil, Alfred de Zayas and
Max Blumenthal which has debunked the US propaganda on Venezuela at a United Nations Human
Rights Council session in Geneva on March 19.
See also "The Visible Hand of the Market- Economic War in Venezuela" by Pasqualina
Curcio.
Perhaps random guy Guaidó will join other collaborators with the US are just seen as
throw-away pawns by the Empire:
"The Venezuelan military deserters who crossed over to Colombia on February 23, 2019, now
find themselves abandoned both by Colombia and the United Nations High Commission for
Refugees. The UNCHR and the Colombian Government have given the soldiers 4 days to leave the
refugee camp"
The good news is that the health of Venezuelans is improving due to a more healthy diet
due to US led sanctions. Everyone has been forced to have a vegetarian diet substituting
vegetables, lentils, and black beans for meat. Seems that lots of people are growing their
own (organic) vegetables.
From a sociological point of view even the electrical blackouts are bringing the people
together as they spend the time sharing:
"During blackouts, people told stories, played music, or went out and talked on the streets.
It was a paradise, no TVs, smartphones, but real human contact. People cook together. During
the day they're playing board games, dominoes, and kids are having fun."
Thanks for your report! The unintended consequences as you note can be powerful allies for
those being attacked. The well stated case at the UN will also have consequences and generate
more solidarity for Venezuela and condemnation of the Outlaw US Empire, Pompeo, Rubio,
Abrams, Bolton, and Trump.
Venezuela production is not only being hit by the blackout – which seems to have
damaged their overall grid capacity – but by new sanctions. Their diluent supplier has
just stated they will stop business.
Perhaps useful to note that Maduro was just as incompetent 6 months ago as presumably he is
now. He was just as incompetent 9 months ago as presumably he is now. And indeed, he was just
as incompetent three months ago as he is now. In fact we could take it back years.
Thus, it surely is just a coincidence that their blackout occurred at a point in time when
a foreign coup attempt was underway, rather than 9 or 6 or 3 months ago. Sabotage could not
be involved because we're told that incompetence and corruption is responsible, of the sort
that just happened to manifest itself at this point in time.
The 20 folks who are alleged to have died in hospitals from lack of power just
coincidentally died at this particular point in time. Because it is merely coincidence, the
saboteurs probably cannot be tried for murder.
Power has apparently been restored. Oil will resume its flow at whatever magnitude.
Of course there are no coincidences, just the things that the CIA, the Illuminati, the
freemasons, the jewish bankers and the Martians wanted to happen.
"Thus, it surely is just a coincidence that their blackout occurred at a point in time when a
foreign coup attempt was underway, rather than 9 or 6 or 3 months ago. Sabotage could not be
involved because we're told that incompetence and corruption is responsible, of the sort that
just happened to manifest itself at this point in time."
I am sure the US is trying to speed up the process. After all, those Aid buses were not
torched by Mo or his supporters but by Western agents. Its difficult to know who is really to
blame for the blackout, but the US has an agenda to take control over VZ. I would not rule
out the US causing it.
Well Pelosi, here we have attempted murder as a high crime to Impeach Trump, Pence,
Pompeo, Bolton and Abrams with, or is that something too "trivial" for you!
Washington announced late Monday that it is withdrawing all of its embassy personnel from
Caracas in what may signal preparations for a direct US military intervention to consummate
the protracted regime change operation unleashed against Venezuela.
"This decision reflects the deteriorating situation in Venezuela as well as the conclusion
that the presence of U.S. diplomatic staff at the embassy has become a constraint on U.S.
policy," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement.
Pressed at a State Department press conference Tuesday as to what Pompeo meant by
"constraint," Elliott Abrams, the Trump administration's special envoy for regime change in
Venezuela, said that it was "prudent to take these folks out" because their presence made it
"more difficult for the United States to take the actions that it needed to do to support the
Venezuelan people."
Asked whether military intervention was being prepared and if the Maduro government should
see Pompeo's statement as a threat, Abrams, a former Reagan administration State Department
official who oversaw vast war crimes in Central America in the 1980s and was convicted of
lying to Congress about an illegal operation to fund the "contra" terrorist war against
Nicaragua, responded that he would "continue to say, because it is true, all options are on
the table."
"... When Guaido returned to Venezuela on March 4 he was greeted at the airport by several foreign diplomats. Among the receiving dignitaries was Germany's envoy Daniel Kriener. ..."
"... What's more, the explicit backing of Juan Guaido by Germany's envoy was carried out on the "express order" of Foreign Minister Heiko Maas , according to Deutsche Welle. ..."
"... Russia's envoy to the UN Vasily Nebenzia, at a Security Council session last month, excoriated the US for its gross violation of international law with regard to Venezuela. Moscow's diplomat also directed a sharp rebuke at other nations "complicit" in Washington's aggression, saying that one day "you will be next" for similar American subversion in their own affairs. ..."
"... German politicians, diplomats and media were apoplectic in their anger at perceived interference by the US ambassador in Berlin's internal affairs. Yet the German political establishment has no qualms whatsoever about ganging up – only weeks later – with Washington to subvert the politics and constitution of Venezuela. ..."
Germany has
taken the lead among European Union member states to back Washington's regime-change agenda for
Venezuela.
Berlin's hypocrisy and double-think is quite astounding.
Only a few weeks ago, German politicians and media were up in arms protesting to the
Trump administration for interfering in Berlin's internal affairs.
There were even
outraged complaints that Washington was seeking "regime change" against Chancellor Angela Merkel's
government.
Those protests were sparked when Richard Grenell, the
US ambassador to Germany,
warned
German
companies involved in the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline with Russia that they could be hit with
American economic sanctions
if they go ahead with the Baltic seabed project.
Earlier, Grenell provoked fury among Berlin's political establishment when he openly gave his
backing to opposition party Alternative for Germany. That led to consternation and denunciations of
Washington's perceived backing for regime change in Berlin. They were public calls for Grenell to
be expelled over his apparent breach of diplomatic protocols.
Now, however, Germany is shamelessly kowtowing to an even more outrageous American
regime-change plot against Venezuela.
Last week, the government of President Nicolas Maduro ordered the expulsion of German ambassador
Daniel Kriener after he greeted the US-backed opposition figure Juan Guaido on a high-profile
occasion. Guaido had just returned from a tour of Latin American countries during which he had
openly called for the overthrow of the Maduro government. Arguably a legal case could be made for
the arrest of Guaido by the Venezuelan authorities on charges of sedition.
When Guaido returned to Venezuela on March 4 he was greeted at the airport by several
foreign diplomats. Among the receiving dignitaries was Germany's envoy Daniel Kriener.
The opposition figure had declared himself "interim president" of Venezuela on January 23 and
was immediately recognized by Washington and several European Union states. The EU has so far not
issued an official endorsement of Guaido over incumbent President Maduro. Italy's objection blocked
the EU from adopting a unanimous position.
Nevertheless, as the strongest economy in the 28-member bloc, Germany can be seen as de facto
leader of the EU. Its position on Venezuela therefore gives virtual EU gravitas to the geopolitical
maneuvering led by Washington towards the South American country.
What's more, the explicit backing of Juan Guaido by Germany's envoy was carried out on
the "express order" of Foreign Minister Heiko Maas
,
according
to
Deutsche Welle.
"It was my express wish and request that Ambassador Kriener turn out with representatives of
other European nations and Latin American ones to meet acting President Guaido at the airport,"
said Maas.
"We had information that he was supposed to be arrested there. I believe that the presence
of various ambassadors helped prevent such an arrest."
It's staggering to comprehend the double-think involved here.
Guaido was hardly known among the vast majority of Venezuelans until he catapulted on to
the global stage by declaring himself "interim president".
That move was clearly executed
in a concerted plan with the Trump White House. European governments and Western media have
complacently adopted the White House line that Guaido is the legitimate leader while socialist
President Maduro is a "usurper".
That is in spite of the fact that Maduro was re-elected last year in free and fair
elections by a huge majority of votes.
Guaido's rightwing, pro-business party boycotted
the elections. Yet he is anointed by Washington, Berlin and some 50 other states as the legitimate
leader.
Russia, China, Turkey, Cuba and most other members of the United Nations have refused to
adopt Washington's decree of recognizing Guaido.
Those nations (comprising 75 per cent of
the UN assembly) continue to recognize President Maduro as the sovereign authority. Indeed, Russia
has been highly critical of Washington's blatant interference for regime change in oil-rich
Venezuela. Moscow has warned it will not tolerate US military intervention.
Russia's envoy to the UN Vasily Nebenzia, at a Security Council session last month,
excoriated
the
US for its gross violation of international law with regard to Venezuela. Moscow's diplomat also
directed a sharp rebuke at other nations "complicit" in Washington's aggression, saying that one
day "you will be next" for similar American subversion in their own affairs.
Germany's hypocrisy and double-think is, to paraphrase that country's national anthem,
"über alles" (above all else).
German politicians, diplomats and media were apoplectic in their anger at perceived interference
by the US ambassador in Berlin's internal affairs. Yet the German political establishment has no
qualms whatsoever about ganging up – only weeks later – with Washington to subvert the politics and
constitution of Venezuela.
How can Germany be so utterly über servile to Washington and the latter's brazen
criminal aggression towards Venezuela?
It seems obvious that Berlin is trying to ingratiate itself with the Trump
administration. But what for?
Trump has been pillorying Germany with allegations of "unfair trade" practices. In particular,
Washington is recently stepping up its threats to slap punitive tariffs on German auto exports.
Given that this is a key sector in the German export-driven economy, it may be gleaned that Berlin
is keen to appease Trump. By backing his aggression towards Venezuela?
Perhaps this policy of appeasement is also motivated by Berlin's concern to spare the
Nord Stream 2 project from American sanctions.
When NS2 is completed later this year, it
is reckoned to double the capacity of natural gas consumption by Germany from Russia. That will be
crucial for Germany's economic growth.
Another factor is possible blackmail of Berlin by Washington.
Recall the
earth-shattering revelations made by American whistleblower Edward Snowden a few years back when he
disclosed that US intelligence agencies were tapping the personal phone communications of
Chancellor Merkel and other senior Berlin politicians.
Recall, too, how the German state
remarkably
acquiesced
over what should
have been seen as a devastating infringement by Washington.
The weird lack of action by Berlin over that huge violation of its sovereignty by the Americans
makes one wonder if the US spies uncovered a treasure trove of blackmail material on German
politicians.
Berlin's pathetic kowtowing to Washington's interference in Venezuela begs an ulterior
explanation. No self-respecting government could be so hypocritical and duplicitous.
Whatever Berlin may calculate to gain from its unscrupulous bending over for Washington,
one thing seems clear, as Russian envoy Nebenzia warned: "One day you are next" for American
hegemonic shafting.
Germany already forgot, how they blew up Yugoslavia.
It was
because of German diplomacy plotting and meddling, that Croatia
and Slovenia announced their abandonment of federation of Balkan
states - which Yugoslavia de facto was.
Another reason for this, was to destroy a forming Hexagonale -
an alliance of central and southern european states.
As long as Germany has its imperial resentements, there will be
no peace in Europe.
They want in on the Venezuelan petroleum game if/when regime
change happens, obviously. Aruba (controlled by the Dutch) is
about 20miles off the coast of Venezuela and and there is a small
but significant population of German Venezuelans in Venezuela.
CITGO was was trying to restart the large refinery located in
Aruba not long back, haven't heard anything about it lately.
The Strategic Culture Foundation. A culture of strategy? That
sounded interesting. So I dug.
". . . Benefiting from the expanding power of the Internet,
we work to spread reliable information, critical thought and
progressive
ideas
."
That explains why I'm seeing
socialists defending socialists. What a surprise. Not very
critical if you ask me, but definitely "progressive" to the
core.
And as for the author, nearly every one of his articles attack the
US and its allies. You'd think that if he's writing for the
Strategic Culture Foundation, he'd be into
critical thought
.
Meaning, we'd see some minuses
and
pluses in his
work. The fact that we don't, makes him a propagandist, not a
journalist. Then again,
is there such a thing as a journalist
anymore these days
?
I'd like to think so. Yet, when you evaluate someone's work and
see little more than the fermenting of hatred and discontent,
there has to be a motive. For him, it could be personal, given
the amount of passion and conspiracy theory that he puts into his
hatred. For his employers, though, the motive seems to be
strategic
.
Anyway, it's disappointing to find it here at ZH, but I guess the
bills must get paid somehow.
"Military intervention in
Venezuela is totally unacceptable."
She opposed the US and the self-appointed Guaido.
It follows that she had to act not only with the consent of
Berlin and Paris, but in their mandate. This suggests that the EU
has reassessed the situation and changed its position on President
Maduro.
Berlin has come to know that the EU has created an
international contact group, including Germany and France. The
group is conducting talks with the Venezuelan government and with
the opposition, aiming to achieve a peaceful solution to the
critical situation in Venezuela, and as the group spokesman said,
everything will be done to make the solution democratic.
The unnamed French source claims that Beijing and Moscow are
behind the change of Berlin and Paris.
"Hypocrisy" or "getting it right for a change" - that is the
question ! Merkel, the putative Conservative, has sold her own
people down the river many times in the last few years. She has
demonstrated the George W Bush style, over the people in her own
Party. And the results are obvious.
Now, after ruining her
country both culturally and financially, she makes ONE correct
decision. Hardly HYPOCRISY; more like contrition for her
ineptitude.
Well, Merkel is doing a good job of protecting Germany's interests
by opposing the U.S. regarding North Stream 2. The German stand on
Venezuela is disappointing, but they might be figuring no skin off
their back, since Venezuela is not in Europe, so might as well
appease cheeto head.
Shocking, right? Lol. I could have written this article myself.
Just had this conversation with a friend here regarding German
hypocriscy. Germany is a true vassal nation run by puppets.
Highlights the total lack of coordination at the highest levels of
German government. They just can't concieve that anyone is onto
their game but it is blatanly obvious to anyone who can chew gum
and walk simultaneously. The link to the demographic crisis (and
by exstension the coming pension crisis) to the importation of
"refugees" is a bit harder for many to see but still plainly
obvious if one tries just a little. Truly sad state of affairs in
all of Europe only masked over by the ECB. At least for now.
After almost 1 week it seems Venezuela is still around
85%
to 90% blacked-out
'We call it survival': Venezuelans improvise solutions as
blackout continues
With the crisis in its sixth day, neighbors are sharing
generators, contraband supplies and skills for survival
Joe Parkin Daniels and Patricia Torres in Caracas
Tue 12 Mar 2019
18.30 AEDT
Last modified on
Wed 13 Mar 2019
03.06 AEDT
People use their mobile phones at the Distribuidor Altamira
-main exit of Francisco Fajardo highway- where they can get
telephone service during a partial power outage in Caracas on
March 9, 2019.
At a street corner in eastern Caracas, Rosa Elena stepped
from her car and started picking handfuls of leaves from a
modest tree growing at the roadside. "This is neem," she said.
"It's high in sugar and great in a tea." Her interest was more
than academic: Rosa Elena is diabetic, and when the lights went
out in Venezuela last Thursday, she began to worry that the
blackout would ruin her insulin supply, which must be kept
refrigerated. Since then she has been making rounds of the
city, stockpiling neem leaves, which some people believe can be
used to control diabetes.
As a crippling blackout drags into a sixth day,
Venezuelans are being forced to improvise solutions for a
crisis that is affecting every aspect of daily life. Although
there is intermittent power in the capital, some neighbourhoods
have been in the dark since last week, and schools and
businesses will remain closed on Tuesday.
Food has rotted in refrigerators, hospitals have struggled
to keep equipment operating, and people gather on street
corners to pick up patchy telephone signals.
At Residencias Karina, an apartment complex in the
south-eastern municipality of Baruta – the power was still off
on Monday evening, and residents had come together to share
expertise and survival tactics. One elderly resident has lent
his generator to the operation, with cables running up the side
of the red-brick building into a flat where neighbours charge
their phones. To stop the device overheating or getting rained
out, they have fashioned a cover out of cardboard and
tarpaulin.
In ordinary times, petrol is practically free in Venezuela,
due to government subsidies. But power cuts have put many pumps
out of action, and fuel is hard to come by. It is illegal to
fill jerry cans at petrol stations, so people are often forced
to resort to the black market to obtain fuel for generators.
"The government calls it contraband – we call it survival,"
said Carolina, one resident who preferred not to give her
surname for fear of reprisals.
Members of the Bolivarian National Police escort a tanker as
they help organize the distribution of drinking water to
residents of San Agustin neighbourhood in Caracas on March 11,
2019, while a massive power outage continues affecting parts of
the country.
Another neighbour, Pedro Martínez, was once a farmer in the
country's vast western plains, and has brought his own unique
skillset to the team. "I'm a campesino," he said. "I don't know
about phones and I can live without them. But I do know how to
salt meat." Martínez has been turning the residents' supplies
of beef into jerky, so food supplies can last longer. "The
chicken and the fish people had is already rotten," he said.
Late on Sunday night, the housing complex was rocked by a
string of explosions after an electrical substation caught fire
in circumstances which remain unexplained. "It sounded like a
plane taking off," said Carolina, as the stench of burnt
plastic drifted across from the smouldering power plant. The
explosion added to a sense of desperation in a neighbourhood
that had already seen outbreaks of looting. Residents have
mounted lookouts to warn of the government security forces and
paramilitary gangs called colectivos, who they fear will take
down their jerry-rigged infrastructure. "It's like Jumanji
here," Martínez said. "Except instead of elephants and lions
running around it's the national guard and colectivos."
Residents have started pumping water from a well behind the
front gate, and taking turns to carry supplies to elderly
neighbours on higher floors. Water is in short supply across
the city: at a pharmacy in the upmarket commercial
neighbourhood of Las Mercedes, the queue for bottled water
stretched for several blocks – longer than the line outside
some petrol stations. Moisés de Lima, a homeowner and new
father, loaded gallon bottles of water into his car. He was
stockpiling in expectation of a prolonged crisis.
"We are in a wartime economy now," De Lima said, his
voice trembling with anger. "This is what this government has
done to us, and it has the nerve to just make excuses and play
the blame game."
On Monday night Maduro made a
conspiratorial televised address to the nation,
claiming the
power cut was part of a "demonic" plot dreamed up in the White
House by Donald Trump
in an attempt to plunge Venezuela
into chaos and justify a military invasion and occupation.
Most locals, however, are convinced the cause is years of
under-investment, mismanagement and corruption. "Chavistas have
been in power for 20 years and we have had 20 years of energy
crises," said De Lima
, who paid for his water in dollars,
which swiftly became the de facto currency as cashpoints and
card-readers went out of action.
"After 20 years, you can't
blame other people for your problems."
Outside La Carlota military airbase near the centre of the
city, locals had descended on a tap outside a local police
station, bringing empty bottles, jugs and tubs. Waiting in line
was Jeancary Lugo, a business administrator, who was dismayed
by the efforts of some storekeepers to profit from the crisis.
"On Friday, I bought a bag of ice from a store for $1.50.
Yesterday they wanted $8," she complained. "There's a lot of
solidarity here but there's also people taking advantage. I
feel like they are [trying to] rob us."
Across the road, dozens of national guardsmen lined up,
with riot shields and gas masks at the ready. "Is this what
Venezuela deserves?" one person in line shouted at a police
officer by the station house. The officer shrugged. "In the
command centre there's no water either, and electricity comes
and goes. We're all suffering the same," he said.
Venezuela: Guaidó under investigation for 'sabotage' of
power grid
Tom Phillips Latin America correspondent
Wed 13 Mar 2019
06.20 AEDT
First published on Wed 13 Mar 2019 05.13 AEDT
Venezuelans head to collect water from a sewage canal at the
river Guaire in Caracas. President Nicolás Maduro has alleged a
US attack crippled the country's electrical system.
Venezuela's chief prosecutor has asked the country's supreme
court to open an investigation into opposition leader Juan
Guaidó for alleged involvement in the "sabotage" of the
country's power grid. Tarek Saab announced the inquiry on
Tuesday, a day after the embattled president, Nicolás Maduro,
accused Donald Trump of masterminding a "demonic" plot with the
country's opposition to force him from power.
Guaidó – who most western governments now recognize as
Venezuela's legitimate interim leader – is already under
investigation for allegedly fomenting violence, but authorities
have not tried to detain him since he violated a travel ban and
then returned home from a tour of Latin American countries.
Saab said the case against Guaidó also involves messages
allegedly inciting people to robbery and looting during the
crippling blackout which began on Thursday.
Maduro's political foes and many specialists believe the
nationwide blackout is the result of years of mismanagement,
corruption and incompetence. "We are in the middle of a
catastrophe that is not the result of a hurricane, that is not
the result of a tsunami," Guaidó told CNN on Sunday. "It's the
product of the inefficiency, the incapability, the corruption
of a regime that doesn't care about the lives of Venezuelans."
But in a televised nationwide address on Monday night
Maduro accused the White House of launching an imperialist
"electromagnetic attack".
Critics condemned it as a cynical
attempt to deflect criticism of his regime's responsibility.
"The United States' imperialist government ordered this
attack," Maduro claimed in his 35-minute speech, only his
second significant intervention since the crisis began last
week. "They came with a strategy of war of the kind that only
these criminals – who have been to war and have destroyed the
people of Iraq, of Libya, of Afghanistan and of Syria – think
up." Maduro alleged the US had conducted the attack – in league
with "puppets and clowns" from the Venezuelan opposition – to
create "a state of despair, of widespread want and of conflict"
that would justify a foreign intervention.
Maduro, who gave no evidence for his claims, gave little
hint that an end was in sight to a crisis that the opposition
blames for at least 21 deaths and many fear could plunge the
country into violence and turmoil.
On Tuesday, the foreign
minister, Jorge Arreaza, ordered US diplomats to leave the
country within 72 hours. "The presence on Venezuelan soil of
these officials represents a risk for the peace, unity and
stability of the country," the government said in a statement.
The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, had announced on Monday
night that Washington was withdrawing all remaining diplomatic
staff from Caracas. "This decision reflects the deteriorating
situation in Venezuela as well as the conclusion that the
presence of US diplomatic staff at the embassy has become a
constraint on US policy," Pompeo tweeted.
Maduro has been fighting for political survival since
January when Guaidó declared himself Venezuela's legitimate
leader and was swiftly recognised as interim president by
dozens of western nations including the US and Britain.
Maduro's many opponents –
who blame him for an economic
collapse that has triggered the most severe migration crisis in
recent Latin American history
– ridicule his claims that
the outage is part of a White House conspiracy. Anna Ferrera, a
student activist in Caracas, said:
"They go around and
around saying this was sabotage and how the US always sabotages
things and the empire is going against Venezuela. But they
haven't given any [credible] explanation. "They always make up
stories to explain the flaws of the system. This is
outrageous," added Ferrera, who said she feared many might
accept Maduro's version because the blackout had knocked out
communication systems across the country, giving his
administration a monopoly on information.
Dimitris Pantoulas, a Caracas-based political analyst, said
Maduro had appeared "worried, anxious and absolutely
desperate" in his Monday night broadcast,
suggesting the
situation was dire. "It is clear, from what he said, that
the government does not control the situation (nobody does) and
they do not have any plan or strategy,"
Pantoulas tweeted.
In his speech, Maduro, who inherited Hugo Chávez's
Bolivarian revolution after his 2013 death, vowed that the
supposed attack on Venezuela's grid would be thwarted. "Victory
belongs to us," he declared. "What you can be certain of is
that sooner rather later, in the coming days, we will win this
battle definitively. We will win – and we will do it for
Venezuela. We will do it for our homeland. We will do it for
you. We will do it because of our people's right to happiness."
An epic cautionary tale of the danger of electing loony left
governments, led by hopey water-melons and warped and insane
neo-communist idiots. These poor sad scared people are going to be
stuffed for at least the next generation.
Germany excuse in WWII: "just obeying orders"
Germany excuse in VZ: "just obeying orders"
Some people never learn. It is obvious that Germany after ww2
became a US vassal following the dictamenes from WDC otherwise
it will face the consequences.
With Germany awash with migrant crime - no go areas - their
women and children afraid to go to swimming pools, concerts,
new year celebrations, rather than deal with their own horrific
issues they want to overthrow a democratically elected leader -
just another USA poodle state
Nah, the Orange Messiah doesn't need an excuse. He'll cut SS
and Medicare for the poor while giving trillions to his
oligarch buddies in tax cuts and crony capitalist MIC
contracts, while spending huge treasury to advance ZioNazism
and Bolshevism worldwide. TrumpTARDs suck his mushroom to his
satisfaction in any event.
A U.S. official has stated that the position from Trump's administration is to "persuade, urge and argue"
for India to stop buying oil from Venezuela.
The United States government "persuades and urges" India to stop buying oil from Venezuela, Washington's
special envoy for the Latin American country, Elliot Abrams stated Sunday.
"We say you should not be helping this regime," Abrams added as President Donald Trump's
administration continues to increase sanctions and interventionist tactics to financially pressure the
Venezuelan government.
Actions that come as a response to India's position to continue doing business with Venezuela on the
basis of purely economic considerations, despite international pressure. As India's Ministry of Foreign
Affairs spokesman, Raveesh Kumar,
said
Feb. 14 their nation "doesn't have any barter system with Venezuela; commercial considerations
and related factors will determine the value of trade which we have with any country."
A sovereign position that is key for Venezuela. The Indian market is a potential lifeline for
Venezuela's economy as it has historically been the second-largest cash-paying customer for the
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries country's crude, behind the United States, which
through Trump's sanctions have handed control of the revenue to Juan Guaido, the opposition lawmaker who
self-proclaimed as the "interim president" of the country.
Currently, Venezuela exports approximately 366,000 oil barrels per day to India, a figure that the
nation's Oil Minister, Manuel Quevedo,
expressed
they expect to double in the near future. However, such plans could be stopped by the
intervention of the U.S.
On the NYT story, you have to love how transparent the propaganda is, and yet they (Bolton, Pompeo, Rubio) don't care whatsoever.
Oh, and not one critical word about people throwing Molotov cocktails. Like that's a perfectly normal, non-violent means of protest.
Predictably during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee
hearing on Thursday , Republican chairman Marco Rubio condemned Venezuela's Maduro as a
"clear danger" and a "threat to the national security of the US." To be expected the hearing
was filled with plenty of threats and talk of flipping "military elites" and enforcing tougher
sanctions.
But perhaps unexpected was just how out in the open and brazen Rubio's own admissions of how
far he's willing to go in promoting regime change in Caracas. In public testimony he called on
the US to promote " widespread unrest " in order to eventually bring down the Maduro
government. It appears Rubio is now urging the White House to initiate a full-on "Syria
option" for Venezuela , which implies covert arming, funding, and militarization of the
opposition to reach peak escalation and confrontation with the government, perhaps inviting
broader external military intervention, similar to efforts to topple Syria's Assad over the
past years.
We've commented before about how popular anti-Maduro protests seemed to have lost
significant momentum of late, pretty much fading out altogether over the past couple weeks,
after tensions came to a head on Feb. 23 when US-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido
led a failed attempt to get an unauthorized humanitarian aid convoy across the
Colombian-Venezuelan border.
This as it appeared the opposition was itching for a provocation that might draw the US and
regional allies into some of kind of more direct intervention , and as a significant uptick in
US military flights went to and from Colombia near the border with Venezuela. During Thursday's
Senate hearing, there appeared a willingness to admit the fact that it appears Maduro is not
going anywhere anytime soon , for example, when the committee's top Democrat, Sen. Bob Menendez
of New Jersey, said
, "Confronting tyranny requires sustained commitment. But Maduro is not invincible. He's far
from it."
Though issuing plenty of threats of tighter sanctions and strangling Venezuelan oil exports,
the Democrats on the committee stopped short of endorsing military action: "The support that we
have lent unequivocally on Venezuela does not include the use of force," Menendez said
further .
However, Rubio's extreme "regime change by any means possible" hawkishness was on full
display. Journalist Max Blumenthal reports:
At Senate hearing on Venezuela just now, Marco Rubio called for the US to promote
"widespread unrest" as a means of encouraging regime change . His proposal was met with
approval .
Blumenthal noted this was a reference to instigating further "violent guarimba riots" --
referencing the local Spanish word -- that have been a feature of Venezuelan city streets since
Maduro was sworn in for a second six year term in January, and which has further represented
the more violent side of Venezuelan politics for years.
Your Spanish lesson for the day is guarimba , (feminine, as in ' me voy a la
guarimba ' I'm going to the guarimba ) the blocking of roads, lighting of tires,
and sometimes involving defensive acts of rock-throwing , a practice adopted by the
Venezuelan opposition in response to elections they feel are unfair. Those who participate in
the guarimbas are known as guarimberos . It is presently the season of
guarimbas , and one can only hope, for the sake of the nation, that they will soon
come to an end.
Though Maduro has survived the latest round of international pressure to succumb to internal
coup efforts led by a US-supported opposition, the fires of unrest Venezuela don't look to be
extinguishable anytime soon.
As Ben Norton also pointed out on Thursday while speaking of using "humanitarian aid" as a
pretext for regime change: "They're not even hiding it at this point."
Just how
weak a president has Donald Trump become? For an illustration, see a terrific Washington
Post article on the
foreign-policy decision-making process since John Bolton became Trump's national security
adviser. Or, rather, the absence of anything resembling a process.
As Heather Hurlburt
pointed out when Bolton took the job, he's ill-suited for it. Bolton is a policy advocate,
not the honest broker that the position calls for. That's a particular problem for Trump.
Because the president is inexperienced in national-security matters, he doesn't know whether
Bolton is speaking for the experts on a policy question or just advocating for his own
preferences. Because Trump knows little about the executive branch, Bolton can use his
bureaucratic skills to advance his own agenda -- including impeding Trump's plan to withdraw
U.S. troops from Syria.
This isn't to say that Bolton's policies are necessarily wrong; that's for others to judge.
But it creates a real problem for the presidency when top advisers are looking out for their
own interests and not the president's.
On this point, Ronald Reagan's administration is instructive. By all accounts, Reagan was
more informed about policy than Trump is. He was also a pragmatic politician, capable of
compromising or even backing down entirely when it was in his interests. Reagan's weakness,
however, was that he could be curiously passive at times, and (like many presidents) too easily
swayed by anecdotes. That meant he needed high-level staffers who could serve as honest
brokers. His first-term chief of staff, James Baker, allowed him to make good decisions.
Baker's replacement, Donald Regan, failed to do so. Partly as a result, Reagan's presidency had
almost completely collapsed by the time Regan was fired amid the Iran-Contra scandal.
Bravo Much respect to this woman as opposed to the gutless spineless members of the US
Congress as a whole who function as enablers of the fascist war criminals who themselves are
the stooges and puppets of the American elite.
Absolutely. I like that her contention the west intended to use the aid trucks as a wedge to
start an intervention is described as a 'far-left conspiracy'; in fact I heard it said that
the trucks which were burned contained wire and materials for making barriers, among their
foodstuffs. You will not hear it in any western publications, but according to a Colombian
news source, the reports are accurate.
It also answers the question of where Guaido is now – not holed up in the US Embassy
in Venezuela, but in Bogota, still trying to overthrow the government of his own country from
there, although I daresay he spends much of his time in the US Embassy in Bogota. At present
he cannot return to Venezuela, and it seems to me a talented child could make out a case for
treason – he openly colluded with a foreign government to overthrow the elected
government of his own country. Try that in the USA, and see if they think it is treason.
So much of US meddling operations in foreign countries depends on momentum – getting
something going and then constantly accelerating, action piling on top of action with no time
to think, until when the dust settles, the US aim has been achieved and any reservations are
drowned out by a burst of cheering and flag-waving – a triumphant parade featuring the
victors, as everyone is invited to join in celebrating the latest bold step in the democratic
adventure. But if there is a pause in which people have time to think, many of them think
"there's something not right about this".
One more thing – the western governments encouraged the Venezuelan opposition to
boycott the election, because they knew very well they were unlikely to make any gains. They
then used that as an excuse to call the elections illegitimate, and that as an excuse to
declare Guaido the rightful ruler since the elected president came to power through a sham
election. Neat trick – you'll want to watch for that one, because it is likely to
appear again in some guise or other. The opposition was not shut out of the election; it
chose not to participate. New elections have to be held within 30 days, so let's see if the
opposition tries the same trick again, afraid to face Maduro.
All the Venezuelan people who are quoted in the western press, usually just a first name
and age (Rosa, 32, says she can't go on under Maduro, can't feed her children), have the
perfect right to vote against him. If not enough people do so to prevent him from winning,
then surprise!! that's how democracy works. Any time not liking the results of an election is
reason to declare it illegitimate and appoint someone else, let me know; there's quite a few
western leaders who could be looking for new jobs before next week's out.
Yes, she is impressing many people with her courage but not the Washington Party (I no longer
distinguish between Democrats and Republicans as there is no meaningful difference on issues
that matter).
I don't think so; look at all the time Navalny has been around, and although they have not
quite gotten around to announcing him as the new president of Russia (that'd be funny, but it
would be wise to note the differences and why the west thought it would work in Venezuela),
he is still rated as the 'opposition leader' although he is not even really a politician, has
no party and only engages in politics when prodded by the west. But he has not been
sacrificed in a blaze of glory. No reason for Guaido to be, either. If Maduro was going to
rub him out, he would have already done so, and instead seems to be proceeding deliberately
toward legal action for treason or something like that.
Guaido very much alive is a useful reminder of the failed coup, and perhaps the west would
like to get rid of him for that reason, but their capacity for taking decisive action in
Venezuela seems to be a little short of what they thought it was.
Navalny has no chance to lead a revolution in Russia but he is a useful biting insect. His
death would not advance the Western objective one micron (going metric here). So, keeping him
around has value to the West.
Guaido has an expiration date. His value is diminishing at an exponential rate. Soon, he
will need to be written out of the script. Killing him off would seem the most obvious, but,
not the only choice. Much depends if the US in planning an imminent military invasion, If
they are, they will need Guaido, otherwise, he may be more useful dead as part of a
longer-term propaganda operation.
It closes with a recommendation that some other entity than the United States take over
mediation, and try to work out a solution which would culminate in 'free elections' (the west
is obsessed with the idea that Maduro stole the last election, or at least is committed to
that narrative). But I'm pretty confident that Condition Number One for such 'free' elections
would be that Maduro must not stand as a candidate – the west fears a win that could
not be called illegitimate.
Interestingly, the piece also discusses that Guaido is merely a smiley face for some of
the most radical figures in Venezuelan politics, fierce liberals who would hand control of
the nation's energy industry to the conqueror. Also, it explains how the wealthy make a bit
extra on the side by re-selling state-subsidized commodities in neighbouring countries at a
significant markup.
Guaido's main mentor is Leopoldo Lopez who is currently under house arrest in Venezuela. He
was previously involved in the 2002 coup to remove Hugo Chavez as President and has tried
hijacking student protests, Dar'aa-style, to instigate violence from which coup attempts can
be launched. He's far more dangerous than Lorenzo Mendoza.
God, that Trish Regan is a moron on steroids. But, it was very heartening to see Russia
stepping up with aid. Certainly, the physical aid is important to Venezuela but, more
important, is the knowledge that they are not facing the US alone – cautiously
optimistic that Venezuela can survive the assault.
Soooo many bullshit moments, my head is reeling. "The ones who are the aggressors here are
the RUSSIANS, the United States supports a peaceful transition of power". Yes, to the leader
it picked for the country, in a process about as far from democracy as an egg is from an
eggplant. "Russia might not have the same good sweet deals, there would be a more competitive
landscape, and they don't like that". Trish, baby – your National Security Advisor is
on record as publicly stating it would make a big difference to the US economy if the USA
could invest in and produce Venezuela's oil. It already has complete control of the refining
end – if it were also investing in it and producing it what would be left for the
Venezuelans?
It is important to Americans that they always are doing the right thing, the just thing,
the altruistic thing, and that nothing so smutty as American profit and financial gain come
into it. It is for this reason they are fed such self-serving pablum daily by their news
media.
But why should someone as wealthy and well known as Robert Kraft visit a massage parlor in a
strip mall? He could have top whores from around the world flown in to his penthouse . For
god's sake, he could have gone to that private Caribbean Island where the insiders go for
illicit sex with whomever/whatever they could imagine. Something is weirder than average
here.
Log books show Bill Clinton just loved Island hospitality as evidenced by his numerous
visits. Odd, how utterly quiet the MSM is about this – y'ld think that industrial scale
rape of young girls would be newsworthy in the MSM. No, just the Covington Kid get them
going. Eyes Wide Shut at work here.
I think it's the thrill of the chase that appeals, plus knowing that you did something
illegal (either secretly or in full view) and got away with it. Having whores flown to your
place wouldn't have the same appeal.
Well, I suppose being a Peeping Tom could his next adventure. Nevertheless, it still makes
little sense from a psychological aspect. Some say he was somehow set up as a lot of NFL
owners are tired of his team winning the Superbowl every other year and wanted to take him
down a notch or two.
I suspect that most super rich, if not perverts from a young age, end up being perverted
– the power of money and a highly developed market offering perversion is just too much
to resist for most humans. That is a major reason why capitalism or free markets or whatever
you want to call a system that encourages accumulation of vast amounts of wealth is (drum
roll) perverted.
Again, the only defense needed by a cop in killing a suspect was "I thought my life was in
danger" regardless if that were actually the case. In the particular instance, I do think the
cops may have thought such but they were apparently trigger happy and reacted to a "flash of
light" or glint off some something metallic. They thought it was a muzzle blast. Really? They
offered confusing statements as well – the suspect advanced on them in a shooting
stance but refused to show his hands. What kind of shooting stance would that be?
I don't think it was cold blooded murder in this case – just manslaughter. They
ought to be charged accordingly and kicked off the force. But no, everything is OK, nothing
to see. Besides, it would have a chilling effect on police everywhere if they were fearful of
being charged every time they killed someone. I mean, like, who would want to be a cop?
I note that in this instance, though, the deceased was committing a crime; a series of them,
in fact. Nothing he needed to be killed for, certainly, but a case removed from all the other
black men who have been shot with their cell phone in their hand, or nothing at all, while
the cops who decided to 'question' them ( sometimes for nothing more than walking on the
sidewalk in a mostly-white neighbourhood) had no apparent reason to be bothering them. Police
intervention was certainly called for here, although it is hard to believe it could not have
been carried out without any real violence at all. The list of people who actually decided to
go for their gun when ordered to put their hands up by police who already have their weapons
out must be a short one.
Police in America seem uniformly convinced that black men they detain will try to kill
them. I wonder why? Have a lot of police officers been shot to death by black men? I bet the
list of black men killed by police is a lot longer.
To partially address the question of how many police are killed by felonious acts (shot, run
over, etc.) versus how many they have killed by shooting (not counting fatalities from
crashes during police chases), its roughly 65 to 1,000+. or better than a 15 to 1 kill ratio.
31% of the civilian victims were black.
In Britain and Japan, there were a few civilians killed by police last year. China had 4
(US rate was 1,500 times higher per capita). Could not find info on Russia. Philippines was
way higher than the US rate apparently due to the drug war and terrorists may be included in
that data as well.
The standoff between Venezuela and the AngloZionist Empire last week-end has clearly ended
in what can only be called a total defeat for Elliott Abrams. While we will never know what was
initially planned by the demented minds of the Neocons, what we do know is that nothing
critical happened: no invasion, not even any major false flag operation. The most remarkable
facet of the standoff is how little effect all the AngloZionist propaganda has had inside
Venezuela. There were clashes, including some rather violent ones, across the border, but
nothing much happened in the rest of the country. Furthermore, while a few senior officers and
a few soldiers did commit treason and join forces with the enemy, the overwhelming majority of
the Venezuelan military remained faithful to the Constitution. Finally, it appears that Maduro
and his ministers were successful in devising a strategy combining roadblocks, a concert on the
Venezuelan side, and the minimal but effective use of riot police to keep the border closed.
Most remarkably, "unidentified snipers" did not appear to shoot at both sides (a favorite
tactic of the Empire to justify its interventions). I give the credit for this to whatever
Venezuelan (or allied) units were in charge of counter-sniper operations along the border.
Outside Venezuela this first confrontation has also been a defeat for the Empire. Not only
did most countries worldwide not recognize the AngloZionist puppet, but the level of protest
and opposition to what appeared to be the preparations for a possible invasion (or, at least, a
military operation of some kind) was remarkably high. While the legacy corporate Ziomedia did
what it always does (that is whatever the Empire wants it to do), the Internet and the
blogosphere were overwhelmingly opposed to a direct US intervention. This situation also
created a great deal of internal political tensions in various Latin American countries whose
public opinion remains strongly opposed to any form of US imperial control over Latin
America.
In this respect, the situation with Brazil is particularly interesting. While the Brazilian
government fully backed the US coup attempt, the Brazilian military was most uncomfortable with
this. My contacts in Brazil had correctly predicted that the Brazilian military would refuse to
attack Venezuela and, eventually, the Brazilians even issued a statement to that effect
.
Alas, there are still plenty of US puppet regimes in Latin America to mindlessly do whatever
Uncle Shmuel wants them to (Colombia would be the worst offender, of course, but there are
others). But that is not the main problem here.
The main problem is that the Neocons cannot accept defeat and that they are likely to do
what they always do, double down and make a bad situation even worse. The head of the Russian
Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, has warned
that the US has deployed special forces in Colombia and Puerto Rico in preparation for a
possible invasion. Uncharacteristically, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs made
intelligence information public, which described in some detail what kind of plans the Empire
and its allies had, even before this past week-end's confrontation. See for yourself:
In fact, the leaders of the Empire and their puppets are not keeping any secrets about their
determination to overthrow the constitutional government and replace it with the kind of
comprador regime the US already imposed in Colombia. Pompeo, Abrams and Pence have been
particularly hysterical in their threats, but the entire "Lima Group" is still at it:
As for the Russian UN Ambassador, he was very clear on what Russia expects to happen
next:
The Neocons are not even content to threaten Venezuela, and John Bolton could not help
himself and publicly
threatened Nicaragua as being next in line for a US-sponsored regime change. He even spoke
of a "
Troika of Tyranny " reminiscent of the famous " Axis of Evil ".
This is all hardly surprising: US politicians always resort to infantile comic-book kind of
language when they want to give their threats a special gravitas. Next we will be told that
Maduro is a "New Hitler" and that he is "genociding his own people", possibly with chemical
weapons ("highly likely", no doubt!). If not that, then Maduro will be distributing Viagra to
his forces to
help them rape more women . To those puzzled by the fact that presumably adult politicians
use the kind of language one could find in grade school, I can only say that this just reflects
the state of the political discourse in the US, which has been dumbed-down to an incredibly low
level. Be careful, however, because while US politicians are rather comical in their infantile,
ignorant, illiteracy, and while they have an almost perfect record of embarrassing failures,
the past decades have also shown that they are quite capable of murderous rampages (in Iraq
alone the US invasion resulted in over one million dead Iraqi civilians) or of wrecking even a
very prosperous country (which Libya under Muammar Gaddafi definitely was).
Next, the Empire will probably strike-back
There is a small chance that Abrams & Co. will conclude that the situation in Venezuela
is a total mess and that the Empire cannot capitalize on it in the short to middle term. This
is possible, yes, but also highly unlikely.
The truth is that Mr MAGA and his Neocon puppet-masters have failed, at least so far, at
absolutely everything they tried. And if taking on China, Russia, Iran or even Syria is no easy
task, Venezuela is by far the most fragile country in what could be called the "Resistance
countries": Venezuela is far away from it's allies (except Cuba), it is surrounded by more or
less hostile countries (especially Colombia), it's economy is crippled by US sanctions and
sabotage and its armed forces are dwarfed by the immense firepower the Empire has available in
the region. Add to this the truly demonic mindset of Neocons like Abrams and the future for
Venezuela looks bleak.
ORDER IT NOW
The good news is that the Colombians and the rest of the Lima Group "friends of Venezuela"
probably don't have the military power to take on Venezuela by themselves. The preferred option
for the US would be to use the Colombians like the KLA was used in Kosovo or how al-Qaeda (and
derivatives) were used against Syria: as boots on the ground while the US provides air power,
electronic warfare capabilities, intelligence, bomb and missile strikes, etc. The US also has
immense naval capabilities which could be used to assist (and, of course, direct) any military
operations against Venezuela (I highly recommend this analysis by my friend Nat South who
describes in some detail the US naval capabilities and operations in the region).
My gut feeling is that this approach will not work. As is often the case, the US has all
sorts of impressive capabilities except for the main one: a military force capable of providing
the boots on the ground (as opposed to a non-US proxy). The problem for the US military would
not be so much getting in, as staying inside and getting something done before leaving –
what the US called an "exit strategy". And here, there are really no good options for the
US.
It is therefore far more likely that the US will use the weapon which it truly masters
better than anybody else on earth: corruption.
There is big money, really big money, all around the Venezuelan crisis: not only oil money,
but also drug money. And there are a lot of truly evil and corrupt people involved in this
struggle who will use that corruption-weapon with devastating effect against the
constitutionally elected government. And, just to make things worse, Venezuela is already
devastated by corruption. Still, there are quite a few factors which might well save Venezuela
from being reconquered by the Empire.
First, while US Neocons are too arrogant to bother with anybody's opinion except their own,
and while the various US agencies primarily talk with the immensely wealthy rulers of Colombia
and the rest of Latin America, it does appear that a strong majority of Venezuelans support
their elected government. Furthermore, US leaders simply don't understand how hated the
"Yankees" are in Latin America (at least among the masses, not the comprador elites) and
how fantastically offensive the appointment of a felon like Elliott Abrams as Envoy to
Venezuela is to the vast majority of the people of this continent.
Second, Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro did empower, for the very first time, the masses of
the Venezuelan people, especially those who lived in abject poverty when Venezuela was still a
US colony. These people are under no illusion about what a Guaido regime would mean to them.
And while most of the supporters of Chavez and Maduro are not influential or wealthy, there are
a lot of them and they will probably fight to prevent a complete reversal of all the
achievements of the Bolivarian revolution.
Third, Latin America might well be changing, just like the Middle-East did. Remember how,
for years, the Israelis could attack their neighbors with quasi-total impunity and how poorly
the Arab armies performed? That suddenly changed when Hezbollah proved to the entire region and
even the world, that the "Axis of Kindness" (US, Israel, KSA) could be successfully defeated,
even by a comparatively tiny resistance with no air force, no navy and very little armor. As I
never cease to repeat – wars are not won by firepower, but by willpower . Oh sure,
firepower helps, especially when you can fire from far away with no risk to yourself and your
victim cannot fire back, but as soon as big firepower is met by big willpower the former
rapidly fails. There is a very real possibility that Venezuela might do for Latin America what
the Ukraine did for Russia: act as a surprisingly effective "vaccine" against the AngloZionist
propaganda. An indigenous leader like Evo Morales, who has declared his full and total support
for the elected government of Maduro, is an inspiration to the people of Latin America far
beyond the borders of Bolivia. The Russian ambassador to the UN got it right: there are already
other leaders after Maduro which the AngloZionists want to eliminate and replace by a pliable
puppet à la Guaido or Duque Márquez. At the end of the day, this is a
typical dialectical problem: the more brutal and overt the US aggression against Latin America
is, the more successful coups or even invasions the US organizes, the stronger the anti-Yankee
feelings generated among the people of the continent. Think of it this way: the US has already
terminally alienated the people of China, Russia and Iran, along with most of the Arab and
Muslim world, and thanks to that alienation, the leaders of China, Russia and Iran have enjoyed
the support of their people in their struggle against the AngloZionist Empire. Could something
very similar not already be happening in Latin America?
Conclusion: focus on the right question
To defeat the Empire's plans for Venezuela, it is crucial that we all keep hammering over
and over again: the choice is not between Maduro or Guiado, the choice is not between poverty
under the Chavistas and prosperity under the AngloZionists. This is how the agents of the
Empire (whether paid or simply stupid) want to frame the discussions. The real issue at stake
here is the rule of law . The rule of law inside Venezuela, of course, and the rule of law
internationally.
First year law students are often taught that the purpose of the law is not "justice" per
se, but to provide a mechanism to solve disputes. That mechanism is, admittedly, a highly
imperfect one, but it is understood by civilized people as being preferable to the alternative
. The alternative, by the way, is what happens in every time a so-called "humanitarian
intervention" is launched: a humanitarian disaster.
Yet, this is the typical modus operandi of the Neocons (and of all imperialists,
really). First, chose a country for destabilization, then use your control of the international
financial markets and trade to trigger an economic crisis; then, send your "democracy
promoting" spooks and agents of influence to foment protests or, even better, violent
disorders; then send some "unidentified snipers" if the legitimate government does not use
enough violence to quell the protests, then denounce the leader you want replaced as "monster"
"animal" or even "new Hitler" and threaten to overthrow him. After that, declare urbi et
orbi that it is "highly likely" that the "new Hitler" will massacre his own people, add a
false flag op if needed, and then declare a "coalition of the willing" composed of "friends" of
the country you want to occupy who will take action due to the "ineffectiveness of the US",
ditch any thoughts about international law and only speak of " rules-based order ". Check out
how Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov explains the meaning of this substitution:
When you listen to the supporters of Guaido you will always hear them talking about how
terrible Maduro is, how horrible the economic situation of Venezuela really is, how corrupt the
members of the regime are, etc. etc. etc. This is all a smokescreen. Even the accusation that
the last elections were stolen by Maduro is just another smokescreen. Why? Because even if
Maduro did steal the election, Guaido did not have the right to declare himself President,
Trump had no right to recognize him as such, and the Empire had no business threatening a
military intervention or even a violation of the sovereign border of Venezuela under the
ridiculous pretext of bringing in humanitarian aid while, at the same time, keeping the country
under draconian (and fully illegal) sanctions. The solution to a crisis brought about by a
violation of law cannot be a wholesale abandonment of the very core principles of law, but such
a solution can only be a restoration of law and order by legal means. Kinda obvious, but so
many seem to forget this, that it is worth repeating. And here, I will again post a graphic
which really says it all:
The most powerful tools in the arsenal of the Empire are not it's nuclear forces or its
bloated, if generally ineffective, armed forces. The most powerful tool in the Empire's arsenal
is its ability to frame the discussion, to set what is focused upon and what is obfuscated. The
Empire's legacy corporate Ziomedia even dictates what words should or should not be used in a
discussion (example: never speak of "illegal aggression" but speak of "humanitarian
intervention").
This is why we must speak of " true sovereignty ", of " international law ", of "
constitutional procedures " and of " aggression " and " threat of aggression " as war crimes.
We need to continue to demand that basic fundamental principles of civilized societies (such as
the principle of "innocent until proven guilty") be upheld by governments and by the media. We
need to deny the rulers of the Empire the right to declare that they have the right to
completely ignore the most sacred principles of the post-WWII international order . We need to
continue to insist that a just international order can only be a multi-polar one; that a single
World Hegemon can never deliver justice and that there shall be no peace if there is no
justice. Finally, we need to ceaselessly demand that each country and each nation live
according to its own traditions and beliefs and reject the notion that a single political model
must, or even can, be applied universally.
These are all principles which the Neocons hate and which they would love to bundle together
under a single all encompassing concept, like George Orwell's " crimethink ". Mostly, the Neocons like to
use the "anti-Semite" and "anti-Semitic" to dismiss these principles, and when that fails, then
"terrorist" is always available for use. Don't let them do that: every time they try that
trick, immediately denounce it for what it is and continue focusing on what really matters. If
we can force the Neocons to deal with these issues we win. It is really that simple.
It is impossible for me to guess how this conflict will play itself out. Will the brazen
arrogance of "the Yankees" be enough to seriously red-pill the people of Venezuela and the rest
of Latin America? Maybe. My hope and my gut feeling is that it might
I'm probably the only one who's willing to entertain the possibility that Pompeo, Bolton
and Abrams were chosen and placed with the Empire's demise in mind. They're almost comic book
level caricatures of the worst any Empire could offer. Certainly, no serious empire would
allow them more than a soapbox on an obscure street corner. Shouting wild-eyed, spittle
filled gibberish at astonished passersby suits them better.
Anyway, give 'em some rope and they'll hang both themselves and the Empire with it.
They've been given all the rope they can carry, and are blundering forward at such a pace
they may yet hang the Empire before hanging themselves.
If the Russians didn't "suggest" it, they're counting their lucky stars. Do Presidents in
private discussion make personnel suggestions? No idea, but if they do, Putin couldn't have
suggested a better threesome. Having Grade A, strategically myopic, politically immune
megalomaniacs manning the highest levels of your adversary's security apparatus, alienating
both friends and neutrals while clusterf*cking every Imperial project they're charged with,
sounds too good to be true.
I know, it's an idyll. Be that as it may, we should be grateful, rather than revulsed that
they're at the helm. Coldly practical, talented Imperialists (such as a James Baker) would
have a vastly better chance at extending the late stages of the Empire's life to the entire
planet's detriment.
We're otherwise left with the hope the Russians have a sufficiently strong hold on their
power cords to unplug them before they do something suicidally stupid.
@Erebus I appreciate your sentiments re: the "almost comic book level caricatures of the
worst any Empire could offer. "
My worry is: such bunglers, when presented with a crisis I shudder to imagine Bolton's
reaction to a Cuban-missile level crisis
@Erebus Your suggestion is interesting and appears to have some face validity but it
wouldn't really explain the willingness of other countries to support those policies.
My own view is that the hereditary oligarchs of the western world, by which I mean
primarily the banking dynasties, are in the final stages of degeneration. Whilst the founders
of those dynasties were evidently intelligent people (regardless of what one thinks of their
ethics) their descendants evidently are not. Owing to the phenomenon known as the "mean
recession to the norm" we now find ourselves ruled by mundane individuals who consider
themselves practically supermen. The combination of arrogance, ignorance and a lack of real
intellectual weight, in combination with a tendency to hire "advisers" who are telling them
what they want to hear is destroying the west. The closest parallel is probably the end of
the Roman empire. We are living in the modern equivalent of the days of Nero and
Caligula.
They're almost comic book level caricatures of the worst any Empire could offer.
Certainly, no serious empire would allow them more than a soapbox on an obscure street
corner. Shouting wild-eyed, spittle filled gibberish at astonished passersby suits them
better.
The problem with empires is hubris and pomposity. They are so enamored with themselves
they don't notice their ass showing.
This is why I don't have high hopes for Tulsi Gambard:she is not a ruthless debater, and
therefore, she has allowed the neocons to define the terms of debate .The Framework .
Tulsi Gambard should have denounced John McCain Pompeo .Abrams as War Criminals who should
be brought to justice ..
If the neocons responded:"ASSAD IS A WAR CRIMINAL!!! .Gambard should respond:"Israel,
Saudi Arabia, and the Trump Administration aid and abett ISIS in Syria ."
But Tulsi Gambard at the end of the day is a Democrat onboard with the race war against
The Historic Native Born White Working Class Majority And this will be her focus during the
Democratic Party POTUS debates .along with homo rights She will make the rights of homos in
Iran a very high priority in her POTUS campaign.
Very good article. You're absolutely correct that the most powerful weapon the Zioempire has
is framing the situation through the Ziomedia and other Zio talking heads.
US leaders simply don't understand how hated the "Yankees" are in Latin America . .
.
Where is Latin America's media? You would think it would be easy to inveigh against
Yankees. They should have an entire news desk devoted to watching the US imperialists.
In Brazil, Brazil's corporate media led to Bolsonaro's victory. Why is there no strong
opposition media? How did the Corporate Media get so dominant?
Magisterial work. One cavil: characterizing criminal officials by their ideology as "Neocons"
plays into a particular aspect of US dogma. US state criminals like to pretend that
everything is policy: Torture is policy. Aggression is policy. Coercive foreign interference
is policy. Unilateral sanctions are policy. No, they're not, they're crimes. They're
internationally wrongful acts.
US official criminality is not ideological but institutional. It emanates from particular
organizations: from CIA, which depends on impunity for its existence; and CIA's Israeli
cutouts, AIPAC, ADL, &c. CIA's Israeli cutouts carry out illegal domestic coercive
interference for CIA including but not limited to bribery, blackmail, and propaganda.
If you want to make a state criminals' head pop like a zit, read them the laws that
they're trying to wreck. The "basic fundamental principles of civilized societies" are real.
They're written down in black and white:
@MarkU Yes, this globalist fish is rotting from the head down. Mediocrities on the top
are very confident and completely out of their depth. This will get ugly.
International Law, and law in general, mean nothing to Israel and all of its client states,
especially the USA. Israel and the US are the only states that consistently ignore judgements
against them.
Venezuela, like Iraq, is doomed. The only questions ares how much damage will be done, and
how will it be inflicted?
Capitalism and communism both thrive on conflict, and are intolerant of other economic
systems, of which Venezuela is one.
@Erebus I think the Russians must be relieved that the Americans are busy concocting
narratives away from the Ukraine. However, Porky is busy trying to regain their attention.
Here is the Kiev version – a total travesty of the truth:
Four Ukrainian soldiers wounded in action in Donbas since Tuesday morning 09:49, 27
February 2019 War 855 0 Nine invaders were killed on Tuesday, intelligence reports
say
This one won't be as easy as the Reagan era coups. The Venezuelans are pretty well armed and
ready to defend their homeland. Abrams and his goons were good at massacring indigenous
villagers armed with machetes. Venezuela knew this was coming, so they have prepared.
I think this will be as successful as the attempted coup on Erdogan, and will backfire on
the Wall St neocon scum spectacularly. Trump is a fool.
I know people who have been on the ground in Venezuela. It does sound pretty terrible. They
pay their employees with food. Now why this is, sanctions or awful government I don't pretend
to know.
I am a Chinese. I know quite a few Chinese people object to the legitimacy of Chinese
government.
My neighbor is an Iran family. I have seen demonstration against Iranian policy back home
held by Iranian immigrants on the street in my city. I have also worked in Russia for many
years. How can the author say "The US has already terminally alienated the people of China,
Russia and the leaders of China, Russia, Iran have enjoyed the support of their people"?
Quite contrary to the statement. , a few or even a lot of the Chinese, Russian and Iranian
people do no like their government and have to live with it.
Diasdado Cabello already sent two children to China via Moscow.
Even if US do not use force, Maduro will lose grip of power because water(people) can carry
boat(government) and sink boats too!
In Brazil, Brazil's corporate media led to Bolsonaro's victory.
Not true, what led to Bolsonaro´s victory was, in the first place the connivance of
the judicial system with the far-right to keep Lula Da Silva in jail and thus unable to
concur to the elections ( which he would have winned, as the polls were clearly showing )
under invented charges, and in the second place a social media massive campaign on fake-news
related to the left candidate which were spreaded by WhatsApp application to hundreds of
thousands of Brazilians directed by no other than Steve Bannon, which after that was
denounced and already apologized by WhatsApp ( but apologies does not reverse an unfair
elections result .)
The same strategy on massive WhatsApp messages was unfolded during Andalusian elections in
Spain in favor of far-right party Vox .
Why is there no strong opposition media? How did the Corporate Media get so
dominant?
Because they lack the money. Because they have the money.
Where is Latin America's media? You would think it would be easy to inveigh against
Yankees. They should have an entire news desk devoted to watching the US imperialists.
LatinAmerica´s media have been since ages in the hands of the cacique elites
comprador of the USA. Why wiould be easy to inveigh against yankees for LatinAmericans who,
until recently, were mainly illiterate people ( that only changing a bit under socialist
tendence governments ) left in that state by the "elites" in charge during fascist
dictatorships stablished by the US, when i tis not easy even for European people far more
literate and having experienced far more years of, at least resembling, democracy?
Can you in the US inveigh corporate media? I am seeing you are not capable, thus ..
While of course international law must be promoted, as it supposedly is by everyone, even by
the US whenever it suits its purpose, nobody really gives a rat's ass about it, as it is
hardly ever upheld if it stands in the way of the powerful and mighty.
I think what has really deterred the US military intervention so far has not been
mentioned, but the planners in the State Department, CIA, Pentagon, and wherever else they
make such decisions, have surely considered it, are the masses of freedom loving and
anti-imperialist, and mostly left wing, people of South and Latin America, in spite whatever
the political coloration of their present governments and regardless of what their MSM spew
out as being public opinion.
An invasion of Venezuela by the US military, even with any Colombian and Brazilian
assistance, has the potential to ignite the entire region and seriously threaten US long-term
interests and the newly elected right wing governments, and surely this is the last thing
they would all want. I think the protests and public unrest US military intervention would
unleash would be something unseen of in this world previously, and would make the Yellow
Vests protests look like a weekend picnic. Not to mention the potential for revitalising
guerilla wars and terrorist activity in an area rich with "gringo" targets. I don't think the
US, or the current leaders of Brazil, Colombia, etc. would want the region to plunge into
chaos. The US got away with it with Grenada and Panama, but taking on a country such as
Venezuela would send a much stronger message to the people elsewhere. Especially if the
Venezuelans can offer a stiff resistance and not cave in quickly, or mount a viable
insurgency against any US occupation quisling government.
Maybe this Maduro regime is useless and doesn't deserve to survive, and doesn't merit
popular support inside and outside of the country, but US imperialist machinations and
interests throughout the region surely deserve a severe drubbing, and more than just a bloody
nose, considering the bloody history of US interference, and I think the Latinos are capable
of it.
It is not simply a smokescreen to say that Maduro has brought poverty and economic collapse.
I believe that true legimacy in the eyes of GNON derives from success or failure. Maduro is
not illegitimate because he the US says so. He is illegitimate in the eyes of GNON because he
is unimaginably incompetent and has brought national economic failure in one of the most
resource rich nations on Earth where prosperity should be easy. By sharp contrast I mobilized
my network hard against international efforts to unseat Assad because I felt his competence
made him naturally the legitimate leader of an almost unrulable place.
A term like "Anglo-Zionist propaganda" is awkwardly descriptive of the United States. Anglo
Saxons were the founders of the nation but are now a small minority dwarfed by German
Americans, Italian Americans, Irish Americans, Latino Americans and African Americans.
Zionists or Jews are a similarly tiny percentage in the land. None of these much larger
groups have any love for Anglo Saxons and most have no clue nor interest in who is a Jew.
@MarkU"Your suggestion is interesting and appears to have some face validity but it
wouldn't really explain the willingness of other countries to support those policies. "
Most Western countries have lost any autonomy in defining their foreign policy and are
obliged to follow that drawn out by the US/Israel-based "Neo Conservatives" instead.
The turning point at which stage this autonomy was lost occurred about 30 years ago, when
financial globalisation rendered national sovereignty almost obsolete and established
overwhelming primacy of the banking industry over nation states.
The banking dynasties have reached such a level of control over Western democracies that
they can impose obedient and intellectually-challenged "yes-men" such as Bolton in foremost
positions, while in the past they would have to make compromise with more powerful political
apparatus and civil service, and accept "talented imperialists such as James Baker".
The real question that deserves an honest answer should be: do the interests and agenda of
the banking oligarchy really match those of the Western countries they control?
I know people who have been on the ground in Venezuela. It does sound pretty terrible.
They pay their employees with food. Now why this is, sanctions or awful government I don't
pretend to know.
Come on man, how many times have we seen this now? Yeah of course there are poor people in
Vene. like anywhere else, including America, but they're much better off under Chavez/Maduro
than they were when CIA puppets were in charge. The majority of refugees fleeing to America
are coming from countries where CIA puppets are in control, Honduras for example, which the
obama/Clinton regime overthrew in 2009, is where the "caravans" are coming from.
Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Venezuela still have democratically elected govts. in place, there
are minimal immigrants/refugees coming from these countries. But Bolton, Pompeo, Abrams, and
Trump aim to change that. So expect more "invaders" if they get their way.
After Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, etc you can't see what the "problem" is? Sanctions
are siege warfare, nothing less. Sanctions are intended to starve people into submission or
turn them against their govt. Add to that sabotage by the elites in the country that own the
warehouses and distribution, hoarding needed items. This is the same playbook they've been
using for decades now.
All the information is out there, I would suggest you check out Abby Martins videos on
youtube, Grayzone Project website and videos, Jimmy Dores videos, John Pilgers videos, all of
it is explained pretty well. Search youtube for CIA Coups Latin America. I would post a lot
of the videos but I don't want to hog up the page. Sometimes I think people here choose to be
willfully ignorant, the internet is your friend! The CIA/Wall St crowd wants to loot
Venezuela, this is nothing new, read the link in my comment above for some history on CIA
plundering and genocide in Latin America. Read Smedley Butlers book "War is a Racket".
Telesur is a good source for news in Latin America also.
Heres another interesting article on CIA/mercenary operations in Miami. Read the article then
think about 9/11 and all the connections there. Add the "mass shootings" in Orlando and
Parkland. Sure are a lot of coincidences when you start looking..
Miami and southern Florida were major operating areas for cells of Israeli Mossad agents
masquerading as "art students," who were living and working near some of the identified
future Arab "hijackers" in the months preceding 9/11.
@redmudhooch Some people are blind and deaf, or just fools who repeat ad nauseam
Einstein's definition of an idiot, or just shameless idiots (as in that saying "fool me once
), or just plain bastards propagating the eternal lie, or bots (but do they really need to
pay people to post comments on websites with so many idiots anyway taken in by their MSM
lies?). It's a shame seeing people propagating viewpoints of the wealthy and powerful,
especially when they won't benefit in any way when their evil plans come to fruition. What
benefits did ordinary westerners get from supporting wars in the Middle East? Getting blown
up by terrorists and raped by invading refugees in their own countries maybe.
Thanks for the links and videos but I for one can't be bothered looking at the details,
finer points, and all the wealth of evidence that proves a point – by now I know the
general outline of things, it's always the same old, same old, just applied to a new country.
Anyway good work on collating all this and hopefully it benefits someone not yet
convinced.
"... "How many people sleep better knowing that the Baltics are part of NATO? They don't make us safer, in fact, quite the opposite . We need to think really hard about these commitments," said William Ruger, vice president of research and policy at the Charles Koch Institute. ..."
"... A prominent member of the outsiders is Rand Paul, skeptic of Bush's foreign policy, who has criticized Bolton in the last few days. Paul on Tuesday blasted Bolton in an op-ed in Rare as "a longtime member of the failed Washington elite that Trump vowed to oppose." ..."
"... However, neo-cons are bad at losing, so they have redoubled efforts to land one of their own next to Trump. Lindsey Graham, a prominent foreign policy hawk in the Senate, issued an endorsement of Bolton on Thursday, saying: "He understands who our friends and enemies are. We see the world in very similar ways." ..."
"... He also slammed Paul's criticism of Bolton: "You could put the number of Republicans who will follow Rand Paul's advice on national security in a very small car. Rand is my friend but he's a libertarian and an outlier in the party on these issues." ..."
"... Meanwhile, the biggest warmonger, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, who has not said who he'd like to see in Trump's cabinet, laid down a marker on Tuesday by warning the future Trump administration against trying to seek an improved relationship with adversary Russia. "When America has been at its greatest, it is when we have stood on the side those fighting tyranny. That is where we must stand again," he warned. ..."
"... MENA is the most important, perhaps the only leverage that the US has to hold the global reserve currency. As long as the US retain the world's money, the US can finance its debt while collecting rent worldwide. Also, the US can export its inflation. ..."
"... No US President can, or will willingly let these three to fail, because the collapse will be horrifying. ..."
"... the U.S. Empire has globalised its reach as an instrument of the deep state and its oligarchy of owner/operators. Ostensibly to bring democracy to the oppressed, its real purpose was to enrich the rent-seekers on the MIC value chain and to protect and serve the private globalist interests who were the clients of the deep state. National funds flow has always been net outbound, and not the other way around, as in any successful precendent for empire. This continues to be true to this day because of the influence the wealthy rent-seekers on this value chain have over the federal government. Simple as that. ..."
"... Raytheon, Lockheed and Boeing are corporate sponsors of the Rockefeller/CFR. James Woolsey, Stephen Hadley, John Bolton, Eliot Cohen and John McCain are CFR members. Also Bill Clinton, Janet Yellen, John Paulson, Lloyd Blankfein and George Soros. See member lists at cfr dot org. Cohen, Bolton, Woolsey, and McCain were also members of PNAC. ..."
"... Yes. Out of NATO, stop the endless pointless wars in the M.E., embrace George Washington and avoiding "foreign entaglements." ..."
"... Agree...but, easier said than done. A large component of our economy is wholly dependent on government funded MIC and arms sales. Dependency on government spending as large part of our economy has seeped into nearly every aspect of our market place. ..."
"... There is a problem with the long term approach...is that the every attempt will be made to stop such a transition in its tracks. Even if it means world war. ..."
"... With modern travel and communications neither policy would work any longer but I'll take nationalism. Bottom line on hawks, the budget is busted out! Cant afford guns and butter anymore. ..."
"... The empire building has made all but a few a lot poorer and the majority on earth more miserable. I am not naive, I know violence is sometimes necessary, but eternal offence as a strategy ensures enemies will find ways to focus on that top dog and beat you. Beside what I think or believe about foreign policy, it doesn't matter we are broke in affording empire. Period. ..."
"... You guys crazy or sumpthin? You want full employment at good wages? All out War is your best bet. No messy "fixing" anything, just flip the switch and off you go. Draft all those troublemakers, turn them into cannon fodder, crank up the printing presses and happy days are here again. ..."
"... What is with you people? It is almost like Saudi Arabia doesn't exist and doesn't buy our politicians. It is almost as if Hillary Clinton never existed, nor her Saudi asset girlfriend (yes, married to an Israeli asset). Look, if you're going to blame the Jews every time, also blame the Wahhabis. And then you might want to also say fuck you to the British who are responsible for both nations. ..."
"... Look, if you're going to blame the Jews every time, also blame the Wahhabis ..."
"... Wahabism/Salafism has been used since Reagan as a weapon for covert war. Saudi Petrodollars recycle back to the U.S. MIC as they pass through the CIA Hillary Clinton approved very large increases in weapons to the Saudi's especially as they funded the Clinton machine. Clintons are CFR agents, and that has a heavy jewish illuminst influence. ..."
"... In what fucking dimension do people this fucking incompetent still have jobs, let alone credibility? Preposterous that they even still have jobs. The US has blown 5-6 trillion on losing one war after the other, has caused massive disorder and chaos in the Mideast to absolutely no one's benefit except Israel, or so Israel believes, and destabilized the entire region to the point that a WWIII could erupt at any moment. ..."
"... Disaster and incompetence at this level can only be rewarded with sackings and terminations across the board. But no, not in the US. The public is more preooccupied with fictional racists and Donald's bawdy pussy talk. ..."
"... Trump has been provided an easy litmus test, who has ever advocated deposing Assad must be rejected, not because Assad is such a great guy, but because those who would replace him are radical islamists all. Russia could be cultivated as a friend and do more for world peace than the Arab world which has a fatal jihad disease. ..."
"... The presidency is more of a ceremonial position now. If the deep state doesn't like the president, it can simply fire him, as it did with Kennedy (and arguably Nixon). It can also make his life a living hell or force a foreign policy showdown as it did with Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs. ..."
"... Controlled demolitions take weeks of planning and preparation. So the implication is that someone planned the WTC7 collapse weeks in advance. WTC7 held a number of offices, including offices of the SEC. Many files were destroyed. ..."
In late October, when it was still conventional wisdom that Hillary was "guaranteed" to win the presidency, the WaPo explained that
among the neo-con, foreign policy "elites" of the Pentagon, a feeling of calm content had spread: after all, it was just a matter
of time before the "pacifist" Obama was out, replaced by the more hawkish Hillary.
As the
WaPo reported , "there is one corner of Washington where Donald Trump's scorched-earth presidential campaign is treated as a
mere distraction and where bipartisanship reigns. In the rarefied world of the Washington foreign policy establishment, President
Obama's departure from the White House - and the possible return of a more conventional and hawkish Hillary Clinton - is being met
with quiet relief ."
The Republicans and Democrats who make up the foreign policy elite are laying the groundwork for a more assertive American
foreign policy via a flurry of reports shaped by officials who are likely to play senior roles in a potential Clinton White House.
Oops.
Not only did the "foreign policy" elite get the Trump "scorched-earth distraction" dead wrong, it now has to scramble to find
what leverage - if any - it has in defining Trump's foreign policy. Worse, America's warmongers are now waging war (if only metaphorically:
we all know they can't wait for the real thing) against libertarians for direct access to Trump's front door, a contingency they
had never planned for.
As The Hill reported
earlier , "a battle is brewing between the GOP foreign policy establishment and outsiders over who will sit on President-elect
Donald Trump's national security team. The fight pits hawks and neoconservatives who served in the former Bush administrations against
those on the GOP foreign policy edges."
Taking a page out of Ron Paul's book, the libertarians, isolationists and realists see an opportunity to pull back America's commitments
around the world, spend less money on foreign aid and "nation-building," curtail expensive military campaigns and troop deployments,
and intervene militarily only to protect American interests. In short: these are people who believe that human life, and the avoidance
of war, is more valuable than another record quarter for Raytheon, Lockheed or Boeing.
On the other hand, the so-called establishment camp, many of whom disavowed Trump during the campaign, is made up of the same
people who effectively ran Hillary Clinton's tenure while she was Secretary of State, fully intent on creating zones of conflict,
political instability and outright war in every imaginable place, from North Africa to Ukraine. This group is pushing for Stephen
Hadley, who served as national security adviser under George W. Bush. Another Bush ally, John Bolton whose name has been floated
as a possible secretary of State, also falls into this camp.
According to The Hill, other neo-con, establishment candidates floated include Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob
Corker (R-Tenn.), outgoing Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), rising star Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), and senior fellow at conservative think-tank
American Enterprise Institute and former Sen. Jim Talent (R-Mo.).
"These figures all generally believe that the United States needs to take an active role in the world from the Middle East to
East Asia to deter enemies and reassure allies."
In short, should this group prevail, it would be the equivalent of 4 more years of HIllary Clinton running the State Department.
The outsider group sees things differently.
They want to revamp American foreign policy in a different direction from the last two administrations. Luckily, this particular
camp is also more in line with Trump's views questioning the value of NATO, a position that horrified many in the establishment camp.
"How many people sleep better knowing that the Baltics are part of NATO? They don't make us safer, in fact, quite the opposite
. We need to think really hard about these commitments," said William Ruger, vice president of research and policy at the Charles
Koch Institute.
A prominent member of the outsiders is Rand Paul, skeptic of Bush's foreign policy, who has criticized Bolton in the last
few days. Paul on Tuesday blasted Bolton in an op-ed in Rare as "a longtime member of the failed Washington elite that Trump vowed
to oppose."
... ... ...
However, neo-cons are bad at losing, so they have redoubled efforts to land one of their own next to Trump. Lindsey Graham,
a prominent foreign policy hawk in the Senate, issued an endorsement of Bolton on Thursday, saying: "He understands who our friends
and enemies are. We see the world in very similar ways."
He also slammed Paul's criticism of Bolton: "You could put the number of Republicans who will follow Rand Paul's advice on
national security in a very small car. Rand is my friend but he's a libertarian and an outlier in the party on these issues."
Funny, that's exactly what the experts said about Trump's chances of winning not even two weeks ago.
Meanwhile, the biggest warmonger, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, who has not said who he'd like to
see in Trump's cabinet, laid down a marker on Tuesday by warning the future Trump administration against trying to seek an improved
relationship with adversary Russia. "When America has been at its greatest, it is when we have stood on the side those fighting tyranny.
That is where we must stand again," he warned.
Luckily, McCain - whose relationship with Trump has been at rock bottom ever since Trump's first appearance in the presidential
campaign - has zero impact on the thinking of Trump.
Furthermore, speaking of Russia, Retired Amy Col. Andrew Bacevich said there needs to be a rethink of American foreign policy.
He said the U.S. must consider whether Saudi Arabia and Pakistan qualify as U.S. allies, and the growing divergence between the U.S.
and Israel. "The establishment doesn't want to touch questions like these with a ten foot pole," he said at a conference on Tuesday
hosted by The American Conservative, the Charles Koch Institute, and the George Washington University Department of Political Science.
Furthermore, resetting the "deplorable" relations with Russia is a necessary if not sufficient condition to halt the incipient
nuclear arms build up that has resulted of the recent dramatic return of the Cold War. As such, a Trump presidency while potentially
a failure, may be best remember for avoiding the launch of World War III. If , that is, he manages to prevent the influence of neo-cons
in his cabinet.
And then there are the wildcards: those Trump advisers who are difficult to peg into which camp they fall into. One example is
retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who was selected by Trump as his national security
adviser. Flynn is a "curious case," said Daniel Larison, senior editor at The American Conservative. The retired Army general has
said he wants to work with Russia, but also expressed contrary views in his book "Field of Fight."
According to Larison, Flynn writes of an "enemy alliance" against the U.S. that includes Russia, North Korea, China, Iran, Syria,
Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, al-Qaida, Hezbollah, and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. From that standpoint, he is about
as "establishment" as they come.
It's also not crystal clear which camp Giuliani falls into. The former mayor is known as a fierce critic of Islamic extremism
but has scant foreign policy experience.
Most say what is likely is change.
"Change is coming to American grand strategy whether we like it or not,' said Christopher Layne, Robert M. Gates Chair in National
Security at Texas A&M University.
"I think we are overdue for American retrenchment. Americans are beginning to suffer from hegemony fatigue," he said.
And, let's not forget, the tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children who are droned to death every year by anonymous
remote-control operators in the US just so the US can pursue its global hegemonic interest. They most certainly have, and unless
something indeed changes, will continue to suffer, leading to even more resentment against the US, and even more attacks against
US citizens around the globe, and on US soil. Some call them terrorism, others call them retaliation.
Help me here with this word (or whatever it means) REALISTS :
Article: Ron Paul's book, the libertarians, isolationists and REALISTS see an opportunity . to intervene militarily only to
protect American interests.
So dear Libertarians, as I am about to show you two examples, but the list is long, that you have a problem, because of (US)
reality:
1) You are told by the left and right massmedia that the US is something like that: King of natural gas. We'll be the world
exporter. That we have enough natural gas for 100 years, or some nonsense like that. But here is the REALITY :
US "still" had to import almost 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in 2015.
2) Again, you might hear from the left and right massmedia that: US is shale this. US is shale that, even that shale is not
oil, but some form of kerogen. In any event, here' the reality: US crude oil imports, by Millions of Barrels a Day: 2014: 7,344
2015: 7,363 As of July 2016: 8,092 (MBD)
Key Point (in my opinion): Libertarians, you can't have both of best worlds -two incomparable believes. You have to chose,
otherwise you'll be a hypocrite while being a neocon as well.
MENA is the most important, perhaps the only leverage that the US has to hold the global reserve currency. As long as the
US retain the world's money, the US can finance its debt while collecting rent worldwide. Also, the US can export its inflation.
No US President can, or will willingly let these three to fail, because the collapse will be horrifying.
This construction of the U.S. empire is a myth. Unlike the British, Spanish, French, Portuguese, or any other empire throughout
history you care to name, the construction of the U.S. Empire has been a drastic net drain on U.S. finances.
Unlike any preceding
empire, which invaded other lands in search of wealth and captured client states to monetize added value, the U.S. Empire
has globalised its reach as an instrument of the deep state and its oligarchy of owner/operators. Ostensibly to bring democracy
to the oppressed, its real purpose was to enrich the rent-seekers on the MIC value chain and to protect and serve the private
globalist interests who were the clients of the deep state. National funds flow has always been net outbound, and not the other
way around, as in any successful precendent for empire. This continues to be true to this day because of the influence the wealthy
rent-seekers on this value chain have over the federal government. Simple as that.
In the process, the USA has been hollowed out from the inside, and risks imminent collapse. The greatest hope we can hold out
for a Trump presidency is a recognition of the truth of this. Bannon gets close sometimes, but I still have my doubts that there
is true recognition of just how dire these current circumstances are. In this, people like Ron Paul are right on target - to save
the Republic, the Empire and its enabling institutions (like the Fed) must go.
Raytheon, Lockheed and Boeing are corporate sponsors of the Rockefeller/CFR. James Woolsey, Stephen Hadley, John Bolton, Eliot
Cohen and John McCain are CFR members. Also Bill Clinton, Janet Yellen, John Paulson, Lloyd Blankfein and George Soros. See member
lists at cfr dot org. Cohen, Bolton, Woolsey, and McCain were also members of PNAC.
Michael Flynn's book "Field of Fight" is co-authored by neocon Michael Ledeen, defender of Israel and
promoter of "universal fascism" . Ledeen
is a member of the "Foundation for Defense of Democracies" where Trump advisor James Woolsey is chairman. Woolsey, Clinton's ex-CIA
director, is also a member of the "Flynn Intel Group".
Agree...but, easier said than done. A large component of our economy is wholly dependent on government funded MIC and arms
sales. Dependency on government spending as large part of our economy has seeped into nearly every aspect of our market place.
The gov expansion into and control of the economy has so distorted the markets, and created so much dependency that we are
now in a situation where without it, our economy collapses. It would take decades to fix this problem without collapsing the economy
while you are doing it...
However, we would still feel the pain as we transition the economy. There is a problem with the long term approach...is
that the every attempt will be made to stop such a transition in its tracks. Even if it means world war.
With modern travel and communications neither policy would work any longer but I'll take nationalism. Bottom line on hawks,
the budget is busted out! Cant afford guns and butter anymore.
The empire building has made all but a few a lot poorer and the majority on earth more miserable. I am not naive, I know
violence is sometimes necessary, but eternal offence as a strategy ensures enemies will find ways to focus on that top dog and
beat you. Beside what I think or believe about foreign policy, it doesn't matter we are broke in affording empire. Period.
You guys crazy or sumpthin? You want full employment at good wages? All out War is your best bet. No messy "fixing" anything,
just flip the switch and off you go. Draft all those troublemakers, turn them into cannon fodder, crank up the printing presses
and happy days are here again.
Only those doped up hippies worry about nukes. Don't listen to them.
I hear you do not like yo read, but you must read this ZH post that neatly summarizes the NeoCon influence in Wash. which has
run it's course with little tangible returns and many negative debt outcomes including loss of millions of lives . Time to change
or face world condemnation worse than Germany received after WWII. America has always been regarded as a savior Nation until the
Neocons took over Wash. for narrow corporate, DOD and foreign interests.
You have now heard all the arguments and must decide---compromise will only lead to more strife and possible economic collapse.
This is the most important decision of your Presidency ---all other decisions and promises depend on this one.
Fuck those stinking neo-con bastards. We are not going to be fighting Israel's wars again. This is the United States, not Israel,
no matter how much jew money controls congress and no matter how much jew money controls the media. I hope Trump understands this
very clearly.
What is with you people? It is almost like Saudi Arabia doesn't exist and doesn't buy our politicians. It is almost as if
Hillary Clinton never existed, nor her Saudi asset girlfriend (yes, married to an Israeli asset). Look, if you're going to blame
the Jews every time, also blame the Wahhabis. And then you might want to also say fuck you to the British who are responsible
for both nations.
The reason "Islamophobia" is even a thing is because Saudis paid Jewish SJWs to make it a thing, all while they pay WASPs like
Bolton to go apeshit on non-Wahhabi Muslims.
Yes, before you even start, I'm aware of the claims that the Saudis are some sort of "crypto-Jews". Whatever. They need to
be named regardless.
I don't recall the US fighting any wars that would directly benefit Saudi Arabia. Sure, the Saudis have a lot of money, but they
are just a bunch of camel-fuckers who got rich because they are sitting on oil. They are still a bunch of dumb camel-fuckers.
They don't have any nukes. I imagine the Saudis do nothing without the approval of the CIA Israel is a whole different story.
Look, if you're going to blame the Jews every time, also blame the Wahhabis
Let's deconstruct this statement shall we:
1971 Nixon goes off gold standard. Why? Deficit spending on Vietnam War was causing European Central Banks to hold dollars
they didn't want. They bought gold with it rather than mainstreet American goods. This then started depleting American Gold...especially
to France.
1973 Nixon sends his special JEW Kissinger to Saudi. Why? To make the petrodollar a world standard.
The Saudi Kissinger deal: Saudi gets protection by American War Machine, they get to Cartelize with OPEC, they get transhipment
protection by U.S. Navy, Saudi Illegitimate Coup is OK'd and sanctioned by the West, they get front line American Gear. Today
that gear includes the latest Jets and AWAC's.
What does America get, especially the Western Illuminist Bankers? All Saudi Petrodollars are to cycle into Western Capital
Market, including Western Banks. Saudi's are to buy TBILLs with their petrodollars. All oil is to be priced in dollars, to then
create demand for said dollars. Saudi's do not get to own a powerful financial center. (Can you name me a powerful Saudi bank?)
Our Jewish friends are not stupid and have been running the money game since forever.
The Coup for Saudi was actually a British MI6 project. If you trace MI6 back in time, it was an arm of Bank of England. BOE
was brought into existence by Jewish Capital out of Amsterrrdaaaamn.
Wahabism/Salafism has been used since Reagan as a weapon for covert war. Saudi Petrodollars recycle back to the U.S. MIC
as they pass through the CIA Hillary Clinton approved very large increases in weapons to the Saudi's especially as they funded
the Clinton machine. Clintons are CFR agents, and that has a heavy jewish illuminst influence.
So- absolutely, the Salafists are on the side of our Illuminist friends.
The Shites, especially those of Iran/Persia - have had their "funds" absconded with and/or locked up.
So, which side of Islam has our Jewish Illuminist Cabal masters selected?
if you can post some reliable source material to support your post I'd like the see it. it generally tracks with my understanding
but i could use some solid source material.
if you can post some reliable source material to support your post I'd like the see i
Google 1973 Saudi Kissinger deal:
For BOE the sources are more obscure. I personally have tracked them through time using population statistics and the like.
I need to write a book, so I can quote myself.
BOE, Cromwell, the Orange Kings - the usurpation of England, are all related by way of Stock Market Capital in Amersterdamn.
You can trace our Jewish friends arrival in Amersterdamn with their loss of East West Mechanism (silver gold exchange rates on
the caravan routes). They lost it to the portuguese when Vasco de Gama discovered the Sourthern route.
The person who best cataloged these maneuvers was an american Alexander Del Mar - a great monetary historian. Look for his
books.
This stuff will take you years of effort, and I applaud anyone who takes it on.
For the circulation of dollars during Vietnam War, See Hudson's books... especially Super Imperialism
Dr. Bonzo •Nov 19, 2016 11:04 PM
The Republicans and Democrats who make up the foreign policy elite are laying the groundwork for a more assertive American
foreign policy via a flurry of reports shaped by officials who are likely to play senior roles in a potential Clinton White
House.
In what fucking dimension do people this fucking incompetent still have jobs, let alone credibility? Preposterous that
they even still have jobs. The US has blown 5-6 trillion on losing one war after the other, has caused massive disorder and chaos
in the Mideast to absolutely no one's benefit except Israel, or so Israel believes, and destabilized the entire region to the
point that a WWIII could erupt at any moment.
Disaster and incompetence at this level can only be rewarded with sackings and terminations across the board. But no, not
in the US. The public is more preooccupied with fictional racists and Donald's bawdy pussy talk.
A nation of fucking morons. I swear.
Victor999 -> Dr. Bonzo •Nov 20, 2016 4:09 AM
You answered your own question....Israel is the first priority of American foreign policy - always.
Chaos is precisely what Israel ordered in order to weaken central governments of the ME and destroy their military capability.
WWIII? Doesn't matter in the least for Israel who will quietly stand aside and let the goyim fight it out, and then pick up the
remains. We're all fucking morons for allowing the Jews to take over our money supply, our government, our intelligence services,
our media - and hide themselves under the protective cloak of liberalism, political correctness and 'anti-Semitism' to shut down
all rational debate and guard them against 'discriminatory' practices.
Neochrome •Nov 19, 2016 11:06 PM
First of all, McStain should STFU, we'll send a nurse to change his depends, no need to get all cranky.
Giuliani's foreign expertise comes down apparently to be so "brave" to kick down Serbs when they are down and to proclaim to
their face that they have deserved to be bombarded.
Bolton is exactly opposite of everything that Trump campaigned on.
Again, Mitt doesn't look half-bad considering the alternatives...
Kagemusho •Nov 19, 2016 11:13 PM
The Elite always signal their intent through the Traditional Media...like this:
Empire or Not? A Quiet Debate Over U.S. Role
by Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, 21 August 2001
https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/linkscopy/empireOrNot.html
You will find the bastards were planning for war and just needed their Pearl Harbor 2 in order to launch it. The same PNAC,
Office of Special Plans NeoCon nutcases that want to get close to Trump were talking so glibly and blithely about 'empire'. I
knew even then that this was the Elite signaling intent, and we all know what happened a few weeks later. This article should
provide the benefit of hindsight when considering Cabinet postings. These NeoCon Israel-Firster assholes belong in prison for
war crimes!
Salzburg1756 •Nov 19, 2016 11:16 PM
neocon = Israel-Firster
If Trump disempowers them, he will be a great/good president.
the.ghost.of.22wmr -> Salzburg1756 •Nov 20, 2016 12:18 AM
Trump has been provided an easy litmus test, who has ever advocated deposing Assad must be rejected, not because Assad
is such a great guy, but because those who would replace him are radical islamists all. Russia could be cultivated as a friend
and do more for world peace than the Arab world which has a fatal jihad disease.
The Kurds have served our shared interests well , but like all Muslims have no real interest in becoming westernized and will
turn on us once they have achieved their goals.
UnschooledAustr... -> dunce •Nov 20, 2016 1:50 AM
You are wrong about the Kurds. Besides the Alevites the only sane people in this mess called the islamic world.
shovelhead -> dunce •Nov 20, 2016 9:35 AM
The Kurds are an ethnic identity, not a religious one. While most are of an Islamic rootstock, the are Kurds of various religious
beliefs. The Kurds are fighting for an autonomous region where all religions can co-exist without one being dominant and forcing
others to conform.
The Kurds problem is they are not physically separated by geography like Sicily, who falls under the Italian State but are
still distinctly Sicilian in language and culture while the outside world sees them as Italian.
The Kurds problem is that someone in Europe drew a line on a map without consulting them whether they wanted their traditional
homeland to be divided between three different countries.
Dabooda •Nov 20, 2016 12:37 AM
BERNIE SANDERS would be a genius choice for Secretary of State. A kick in the teeth to the Clintonistas and the neocons, an
olive branch to liberals of good will, and a hilarious end to the American civil war that the MSM and Soros are trying to drum
up. Bernie's foreign policy was the only thing I
liked about him.
sinbad2 -> Dabooda •Nov 20, 2016 1:02 AM
What a fantastic idea, political genius.
UnschooledAustr... -> Dabooda •Nov 20, 2016 1:30 AM
I - non-US citizen living in the US - frequently argued that I would have loved seeing Bernie run as VP for Trump.
Not a lot of people who got it. You did.
BTW: Fuck Soros.
Big Ben •Nov 20, 2016 12:51 AM
The presidency is more of a ceremonial position now. If the deep state doesn't like the president, it can simply fire him,
as it did with Kennedy (and arguably Nixon). It can also make his life a living hell or force a foreign policy showdown as it
did with Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs.
Incidentally, I've been looking at some websites that claim that the 911 attacks could not have happened the way the government
claimed. There were actually THREE buildings that collapsed: the North and South Towers and WTC7 which was never hit by an airplane.
The government claims it collapsed due to fires, but a whole bunch of architects and structural engineers say that isn't possible.
And if you look at the video of the collapse, it looks like a perfect controlled demolition. There have been a number of large
fires in steel framed skyscrapers and none of them has caused a collapse. And even if a fire somehow managed to produce a collapse,
it would create a messy uneven collapse where the parts with the hottest fires collapse first.
Controlled demolitions take weeks of planning and preparation. So the implication is that someone planned the WTC7 collapse
weeks in advance. WTC7 held a number of offices, including offices of the SEC. Many files were destroyed.
Also Steven Jones, a retired BYU physics professor and other scientists have found particles of thermite in the dust from the
North and South tower collapses. Thermite is an incendiary used to cut steel. This suggests that the collapse of the the North
and South Towers was also caused by something other than an airplane collision.
I have seen claims that GW Bush's younger brother was a high executive in the company that handled WTC security.
So were the 9/11 attacks a preplanned event designed to create support for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq?
While focusing on preserving ObamaCare and other achievements of the Obama administration that are
threatened by a Donald Trump presidency, the DA's agenda includes panels on rethinking polling and
the left's approach to winning the working-class vote. The group will also stress funneling cash
into state legislative policy initiatives and races where Republicans took over last week.
President-elect Donald Trump has said his first 100 days will be dedicated to restoring "honesty,
accountability and change to Washington" through the following seven steps:
A Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress
A hiring freeze on all federal employees to reduce federal workforce through attrition (exempting
military, public safety, and public health)
A requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated
A five year ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave
government service
A lifetime ban on the White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government
A complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections
Cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to fix America's
water and environmental infrastructure
Billionaire George Soros immediately had fingers of blame pointing at him for the anti-Trump riots
and protests that swept the nation since Nov. 9, as
his group MoveOn.org has organized most of them .
The billionaire committed
$25 million to boosting the Clinton campaign and other Democratic candidates and causes in 2016.
"... News that Trump might work 4 days a week as President, or at least work the same work week as Congress does, would suggest he plans on running a lean government. ..."
"... A counter-argument that could be put forward is that the Presidency doesn't (and shouldn't) define the office-holder's life and the Clintons themselves are an example of what can happen if the Presidency consumes their lives ..."
"... If it's Trump's intention to reform the political culture in Washington and make it more accountable to the public, and bring the Presidency closer to the public, then defining the maximum limits of the position on his time and sticking to them, perhaps through delegating roles and functions to his cabinet secretaries, is one path to reform. ..."
My impression is that Donald Trump is planning or at least thinking of running the government
as a business, choosing people as cabinet secretaries on the basis of past experience and on what
they would bring to the position, as opposed to choosing cabinet secretaries because they have
been loyal yes-people (as Hillary Clinton would have done)
News that Trump might work 4 days a week as President, or at least work the same work week
as Congress does, would suggest he plans on running a lean government. At present the prevailing
attitude among Washington insiders and the corporate media is that Trump is not really that interested
in being President and isn't committed to the job 24/7.
A counter-argument that could be put forward is that the Presidency doesn't (and shouldn't)
define the office-holder's life and the Clintons themselves are an example of what can happen
if the Presidency consumes their lives: it can damage the individuals and in Hillary Clinton's
case, cut her off so much from ordinary people that it disqualifies her from becoming President
herself.
If it's Trump's intention to reform the political culture in Washington and make it more accountable
to the public, and bring the Presidency closer to the public, then defining the maximum limits
of the position on his time and sticking to them, perhaps through delegating roles and functions
to his cabinet secretaries, is one path to reform.
Ran Paul was one of the few who understood how quickly Trump will betray his voters: "There was a time, a very brief
time under the Articles of Confederation, when Americans recognized the evils of the establishment and avoided instituting one." But
it looks like he shares most of illution about Trump ability to changethings to the better: " The Obama establishment is dead. The Democratic establishment is dead, at least for 4 years.
"
Notable quotes:
"... Washington insiders attempt to capture Trump and influence his positions, policies and decisions. ..."
"... The Obama establishment is dead. The Democratic establishment is dead, at least for 4 years. There was a time, a very brief time under the Articles of Confederation, when Americans recognized the evils of the establishment and avoided instituting one. ..."
What happens next in Washington? Trump fills out his administration.
At the same time, Washington insiders attempt to capture Trump and influence his positions,
policies and decisions. The presidency is an institution, not a man, not a president. The presidency
is a network of enormous power with Trump now at its center.
Washington insiders who live and breathe politics are now in a race for positions of power and
influence. They hanker and vie for appointments. Trump must make appointments. He cannot operate
alone. He must delegate power to make decisions. He cannot monitor all information pertinent to every
issue in which the government has a hand.
The presidency is not 100 percent centralized. Decision-making power is allocated to levels below
the president himself and to levels surrounding him. It also lies outside the presidency in Congress.
Trump has his ideas and desires for actions, but their realization depends on the people he appoints.
He loses control and locks himself in with every appointment that he makes. People around him want
his power and want to influence him. They have a heavy influence on what he hears, whom he sees,
the options presented to him, and the evaluations of competing personnel. Trump will likely form
a very small team of offshoots of himself, people whom he trusts implicitly, in order to extend his
capacity to choose people who will adhere to and execute his agenda.
Power in Washington is not simply the apparatus of administering the presidency that will take
up headlines for the next few months. After the U.S. Treasury robs the tax-paying Americans, new
robbers (the Lobby) appear to rob the Treasury using every device they can get away with. There is
a second contingent, the power-seekers. Those who covet the exercise of power unceasingly work toward
their own narrow aims. As long as Washington remains the place that concentrates unbelievably large
amounts of money and powers, it will remain the swamp that Trump has promised to drain but won't.
He cannot drain it, not without destroying Washington's power and he cannot accomplish that, nor
does he even hint that he wants to accomplish that. His stated aims are the redirection of money
and powers, not their elimination for the sake of a greater justice, a greater right, and a truly
greater people and country.
The presidency is an establishment and Washington is another. By being elected, Trump struck
a blow at the members of the establishment who will be packing their bags while weeping over their
losses (see
here and
here .)
But elections do not strike the roots of the presidency, the establishment or Washington. Neither
will demonstrations against Trump.
The Obama establishment is dead. The Democratic establishment is dead, at least for 4 years.
There was a time, a very brief time under the Articles of Confederation, when Americans recognized
the evils of the establishment and avoided instituting one.
This gave way almost immediately (in 1787) to the constitutional seed that planted the enormous
tree that now cuts out the sun of justice from American lives. A domestic war failed to uproot that
tree. Long live the establishment, the Union, the American state, and may they be possessed of immense
powers over our lives - these became the social and political reality. Trump isn't going to change
it. He's a president administering a presidency. He's at the top of the heap. His credo is still
"Long Live the Establishment!"
"... I don't think we should be a nation builder. ..."
"... I had to listen to [Senator] Lindsey Graham, who, give me a break. I had to listen to Lindsey Graham talk about, you know, attacking Syria and attacking, you know, and it's like you're now attacking Russia, you're attacking Iran, you're attacking. And what are we getting? We're getting - and what are we getting? ..."
"... I'd say this in front of thousands of people, wouldn't it be nice to actually report what they said, wouldn't it be nice if we actually got along with Russia, ..."
FRIEDMAN: What do you see as America's role in the world? Do you believe that the role
TRUMP: That's such a big question.
FRIEDMAN: The role that we played for 50 years as kind of the global balancer, paying more for
things because they were in our ultimate interest, one hears from you, I sense, is really shrinking
that role.
TRUMP: I don't think we should be a nation builder. I think we've tried that. I happen to think
that going into Iraq was perhaps I mean you could say maybe we could have settled the civil war,
O.K.? I think going into Iraq was one of the great mistakes in the history of our country. I think
getting out of it - I think we got out of it wrong, then lots of bad things happened, including the
formation of ISIS. We could have gotten out of it differently.
FRIEDMAN: NATO, Russia?
TRUMP: I think going in was a terrible, terrible mistake. Syria, we have to solve that problem
because we are going to just keep fighting, fighting forever. I have a different view on Syria than
everybody else. Well, not everybody else, but then a lot of people.
I had to listen to [Senator]
Lindsey Graham, who, give me a break. I had to listen to Lindsey Graham talk about, you know, attacking
Syria and attacking, you know, and it's like you're now attacking Russia, you're attacking Iran,
you're attacking. And what are we getting? We're getting - and what are we getting?
And I have some
very definitive, I have some very strong ideas on Syria. I think what's happened is a horrible, horrible
thing. To look at the deaths, and I'm not just talking deaths on our side, which are horrible, but
the deaths - I mean you look at these cities, Arthur, where they're totally, they're rubble, massive
areas, and they say two people were injured. No, thousands of people have died. O.K. And I think
it's a shame. And ideally we can get - do something with Syria. I spoke to Putin, as you know, he
called me, essentially
UNKNOWN: How do you see that relationship?
TRUMP: Essentially everybody called me, all of the major leaders, and most of them I've spoken
to.
FRIEDMAN: Will you have a reset with Russia?
TRUMP: I wouldn't use that term after what happened, you know, previously. I think - I would love
to be able to get along with Russia and I think they'd like to be able to get along with us. It's
in our mutual interest. And I don't go in with any preconceived notion, but I will tell you, I would
say - when they used to say, during the campaign, Donald Trump loves Putin, Putin loves Donald Trump,
I said, huh, wouldn't it be nice, I'd say this in front of thousands of people, wouldn't it be nice
to actually report what they said, wouldn't it be nice if we actually got along with Russia, wouldn't
it be nice if we went after ISIS together, which is, by the way, aside from being dangerous, it's
very expensive, and ISIS shouldn't have been even allowed to form, and the people will stand up and
give me a massive hand. You know they thought it was bad that I was getting along with Putin or that
I believe strongly if we can get along with Russia that's a positive thing. It is a great thing that
we can get along with not only Russia but that we get along with other countries.
JOSEPH KAHN, managing editor: On Syria, would you mind, you said you have a very strong idea about
what to do with the Syria conflict, can you describe that for us?
TRUMP: I can only say this: We have to end that craziness that's going on in Syria. One of the
things that was told to me - can I say this off the record, or is everything on the record?
"... One thing not mentioned yet, is Trump getting slammed by his populist base for his Secretary of State picks, which seem to come down to Romney and Giuliani. Romney is the worst of Wall Street, a complete tool of the neoliberal program, and Giuliani has a Hillary Clinton-like record on bloated speaking fees and pay-to-play deals with his law firm, Giuliani Partners. ..."
"... That's the biggest test case to see whether Trump, like Obama before him, is going to forget about his populist base and take the carrot Wall Street is offering him. ..."
"... If Trump really wanted to shake things up, he could pick Tulsi Gabbard for Secretary of State, that would be a clever move, far better than Giuliani or Romney. ..."
One thing not mentioned yet, is Trump getting slammed by his populist base for his Secretary
of State picks, which seem to come down to Romney and Giuliani. Romney is the worst of Wall Street,
a complete tool of the neoliberal program, and Giuliani has a Hillary Clinton-like record on bloated
speaking fees and pay-to-play deals with his law firm, Giuliani Partners. Either one of those
clowns as Secretary of State would be a complete betrayal of everything Trump said he stood for
on foreign policy. Romney however is drawing howls of protest from Rust Belt Trump supporters,
because he's so pro-NAFTA, pro-TPP:
https://www.thenation.com/article/more-nafta-anyone-romney-positions-free-trade-champion/
That's the biggest test case to see whether Trump, like Obama before him, is going to forget
about his populist base and take the carrot Wall Street is offering him. Another big one
is whether John Bolton, neocon war pig just like Clinton pals Victoria Nuland and Robert Kagan,
ends up with a big foreign policy role. Forget about cooperation with Russia on ISIS in that case.
So, those are some serious issues that Trump might want to distract his base from, but they're
the major issues that will determine what kind of foreign policy, economic and military, Trump
will really pursue.
As far as Jill Stein, what the hell is she doing? The biggest Green Party issue right now should
be helping block the Dakota Accesss Pipeline debacle, a consortium of short-sighted interests
aiming at exporting Bakken crude overseas, including Warren Buffett, billionaire Democratic supporter,
whose in $6 billion to DAPL via Phillips 66, and Kelcy Warren, billionaire Republican supported,
CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, another DAPL partner.
Instead she's playing some dumb political game, totally ignoring the one issue any real
"Green Party" would be focusing on right now.
P.S. If Trump really wanted to shake things up, he could pick Tulsi Gabbard for Secretary
of State, that would be a clever move, far better than Giuliani or Romney.
Some people understood it in 2016: "The deep state ushered in Trump because he's clearly their most useful decoy. As the country
hopes in vain, the crooked men behind the curtain will go on with business as usual. Trump is
simply an Obama for a different demographic. Nothing will change for the better."
Also: "To claim the trump is more powerful and has more influence over the US deep state on day one
is just ludicrous."
Notable quotes:
"... Remember, the US Constitution was written by aristocrats who were still in many ways monarchists who didn't want to give up all their power. That mindset also put the electoral college process into the constitution. ..."
"... Oh, what does anyone know about Pence? Folks have been saying he's going to be Trump's Cheney (and apparently Cheney is a Pence's avowed role model and personal hero). Cheney had a lifetime of insider experience and I'm guessing is both ambitious and intelligent (if evil). ..."
"... Did anyone catch Peter Thiel's speech to the National Press Club? Listen to this and tell me it is not spot on. His is actually on Rumps transition team. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfYLEPRiIyE ..."
"... "The deep state ushered in Trump because he's clearly their most useful decoy. As the country hopes in vain, the crooked men behind the curtain will go on with business as usual. Trump is simply an Obama for a different demographic. Nothing will change for the better." ..."
"... So is Trump Hope and Change for the Angry White Male demographic? ..."
"... I doubt very much that the Obama is providing "continuity". IMO this is a naive reading. Obama has just created a smokescreen that allows for preparing to 'facts on the ground' that will force Trump to respond accordingly. ..."
"... That's a mini-conspiracy compared with the one that the Fake War Of Terror has distracted people's attention from. The Privatisation of almost every Publicly-owned asset and piece of infrastructure in the West. The Neolib takeover was well-advanced in 1999 but slipped into overdrive in 2001. Banks, Insurance Cos, Telcos, Airlines, Childcare, Hospitals, Health Clinics (preventative), Roads, Rail, Electrical Generation and distribution. ..."
"... To claim the trump is more powerful and has more influence over the US deep state on day one is just ludicrous. ..."
"... I'm going with the new boss is the same as the old boss. ..."
"...the paradox problem is they'll have to charge Clinton before da boy can pardon her..."
That's one of those facts that sounds right but isn't true. If the law was logical that might
be correct, but then mathematicians would get the highest scores on the Law School Admission Test
(which supposedly tests aptitude to "think like a lawyer.")
The President of the U.S. can't pardon someone in advance for possible later crimes, but can give
a pardon for any and all past crimes without specifying those crimes. That's how Ford was able to
pardon Nixon, who had not been indicted, for any crimes "he might have committed."
If Obama wants he can pardon the Clintons for everything and anything they MIGHT have done up
to the final minutes of swearing in Trump. In that case they would never need to concede they had
ever broken any laws at all.
Remember, the US Constitution was written by aristocrats who were still in many ways monarchists
who didn't want to give up all their power. That mindset also put the electoral college process into
the constitution.
Are you saying that Obama could pardon Bill Clinton and his entire foundation for financial crimes
(apparently) being investigated in New York wrt New York's laws regarding charitable foundation
practices? That seems like it would be "bigger than Marc Rich" demonstration of Democratic misuse
/ abuse of power, cronyism, etc.
If he can do it, he might do it ... if the punishment/threat for not doing it was sufficient.
I've not been impressed by Obama's "brilliance" or "vision" ... I have been impressed rather by
his self-promotion and self-interest -- Neither Bush or Bill Clinton had the sort of job opportunities
that GHWB enjoyed.
Oh, what does anyone know about Pence? Folks have been saying he's going to be Trump's
Cheney (and apparently Cheney is a Pence's avowed role model and personal hero). Cheney had a
lifetime of insider experience and I'm guessing is both ambitious and intelligent (if evil).
Does Pence have genuine potential as Cheney II ... and where does the awkward relationship
between the GOP establishment and Trump put "Pence as a new Cheney" ... The GOP might love it.
Is Trump ideologically consistent enough (don't laugh) to recognize the contradictions?
Did anyone catch Peter Thiel's speech to the National Press Club? Listen to this and tell
me it is not spot on. His is actually on Rumps transition team.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfYLEPRiIyE
Early days indeed. An alternative view of the recent events, by someone who said more or less
the same about Obama when he was selected.
"The deep state ushered in Trump because he's clearly their most useful decoy. As the country
hopes in vain, the crooked men behind the curtain will go on with business as usual. Trump is
simply an Obama for a different demographic. Nothing will change for the better."
I agree with Hoarsewhisperer @11: ... it's a crock and a trick.
I doubt very much that the Obama is providing "continuity". IMO this is a naive reading.
Obama has just created a smokescreen that allows for preparing to 'facts on the ground' that will
force Trump to respond accordingly.
We are at a very very dangerous point in time.
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
Also, giving ANY credence to 'Obama legacy' BS is misguided in the extreme. His 'legacy'
is dissembling and treachery. Anything thing beyond that is just BS meant to keep adversary's
off-balance.
@22 Where do you get the idea that those countries are somehow bad for USA? If we ramp up industries
in USA it will cost substantially more than in those countries. They've benefitted USA immensely.
If the industries come back to USA it won't go over too well, unless slave wages are truly instituted
I don't know if Trump can take credit ... but rather that the Clinton wing of the Pentagon
and CIA, etc. has been defanged and the threat of a coup (if Obama acted in ways contrary to Clinton
and the General's plans) is now neutralized ... Clinton's loss, I hope, will mean future books
will be more candid than might have been possible if she were in office... yes, I wanna know how
bad it's been these last 8 years.
Obama's personal stock wrt his future as a consultant, motivational speaker and all around
leader fell dramatically both with Clinton's campaign (and anticipated sharp turn from Obama's
foreign policy) but also with her defeat (now his legacy). He was spared the ongoing shaming by
a Clinton administration. Likely too little, too late ... when does Kerry get back from the Antarctica?
He's got a chance at some legacy mending as well.
I believe reports that the Clintons and the Obamas loathe each other ... particularly since
the Clintons hate everyone/anyone who does not grovel perfectly. Did Obama sell-out to the DLC
Democrats to secure his future $$$ with all their and the foundation's friends... it will be fun
to watch and look for breadcrumbs, particularly if the foundation implodes under scrutiny.
That would be as part of the carveup that we are not supposed to talk about because it is a
wicked "conspiracy theory"...
Posted by: paul | Nov 11, 2016 12:12:44 PM | 17
That's a mini-conspiracy compared with the one that the Fake War Of Terror has distracted people's
attention from. The Privatisation of almost every Publicly-owned asset and piece of infrastructure
in the West. The Neolib takeover was well-advanced in 1999 but slipped into overdrive in 2001.
Banks, Insurance Cos, Telcos, Airlines, Childcare, Hospitals, Health Clinics (preventative), Roads,
Rail, Electrical Generation and distribution.
In Oz the Govt/people used to own all of the above, or a competitive participant in the 'market'
in the case of banking, insurance, health clinics, airlines etc. In 2016 the govt owns only unprofitable
burdens. Public Education is currently under extreme pressure to be Privatised for Profit.
(The Yanks call it Anti-Communism but consumers call it an Effing Expensive way to get much
crappier service than in the Good Old Days).
I think you give Barrack Obongo way too much credit. He is a "selfishly concerned" narcissist
alright but that's about it. All his years at the bathhouses and public lavatories with his wookie-in-drag
in Chicago, has not made him particularly smarter you know, rather the opposite...
Dropping AQ means dropping KSA, i.e. the 9/11 enquiry will probably go ahead. As for the MB/Qatar
who run a bunch of other groups, this is left to the EU to decide what it want to do with Turkey.
You bet the Eurocrats are having a headache. And Hollande shows his muscles (sic) and claims he
will talk with Trump on the phone and gets some "clarifications" about his programme.
MSM are reporting on a daily basis of the huge problems with the "Syrian refugees" crossing
the Mediterranean Sea although there is just a handful of Syrians compared to Eritreans, Sudanese,
Gambians etc.
According to the report, the last time Turkish jets participated in airstrikes against terrorists
in Syria was on October 23, three days after around 200 PKK/PYD terrorists were killed.
Ash Carter is, together with John Brennan, the major anti-Russian force in the Obama administration.
He is a U.S. weapon industry promoter and the anti-Russia campaign, which helps to sell U.S. weapons
to NATO allies in Europe, is largely of his doing.
BTW, I do believe he re-won his senate seat, against the true patriot Arpaio there.
Hence his absence from the public scene these months.
So things have not changed much if at all, since still 70 days to Jan20, except for appearances
as they've rearranged some furniture & color-matched the curtains to the upholstery in the act/play
is all.
@11 Hoarsewhisperer - I think it's unrealistic to expect the US simply to leave..
...
Posted by: Grieved | Nov 11, 2016 12:33:02 PM | 27
Today, your guess is as good as mine (at least).
But I regard FrUKUS as Ter'rism Central and if Russia & China et al think they can put a stop
to TerCent without dislodging some teeth and kneecapping them, they're pissing into the wind/dreaming.
It's a bit ambiguous but China, according to CCTV Nov 12, during a chat about Sun Yat Sen and
China/Taiwan unity, seems to be issuing a Global reminder to Loyal Chinese Citizens overseas similar
to the one that Russia issued a month ago.
Disgusting as it is, yes, my understanding is Obama can do exactly that. My guess is, want
to or not, he probably will come under so much pressure he will have to pass out plenty of pardons.
Or maybe Lynch will give everyone involved in the Clinton Foundation immunity to testify and then
seal the testimony -- or never bother to get any testimony. So many games.
For Obama, it might not even take all that much pressure. From about his second day in office,
from his body language, he's always looked like he was scared.
Instead of keeping his mouth shut, which he would do, being the lawyer he is, Giuliani has
been screaming for the Clintons' scalps. That's exactly what a sharp lawyer would do if he was
trying to force Obama to pardon them. If he really meant to get them he would be agreeing with
the FBI, saying there doesn't seem to be any evidence of wrong doing, and then change his mind
once (if) he's AG and it's too late for deals.
With so many lawyers, Obama, the Clintons, Lynch, Giuliani, Comey, no justice is likely to
come out of this.
@ Posted by: Ken Nari | Nov 11, 2016 2:51:53 PM | 55
I heard a podcast on Batchelor with Charles Ortel which explained some things -- even if
there are no obvious likely criminal smoking guns -- given that foundations get away with a lot
of "leniency" because they are charities, incomplete financial statements and chartering documents,
as I recall. I was most interested in his description of the number of jurisdictions the Foundation
was operating under, some of whom, like New York were already investigating; and others, foreign
who might or might be, who also have very serious regulations, opening the possibility that if
the Feds drop their investigation, New York (with very very strict law) might proceed, and that
they might well be investigated (prosecuted/banned??) in Europe.
The most recent leak wrt internal practices was just damning ... it sounded like a playground
of favors and sinecures ... no human resources department, no written policies on many practices
...
This was an internal audit and OLD (2008, called "the Gibson Review") so corrective action
may have been taken, but I thought was damning enough to deter many donors (even before Hillary's
loss removed that incentive) particularly on top of the Band (2011) memo. Unprofessional to the
extreme.
It's part of my vast relief that Clinton lost and will not be in our lives 24/7/365 for the
next 4 years. (I think Trump is an unprincipled horror, but that's as may be, I'm not looking
for a fight). After the mess Clinton made of Haiti (and the accusations/recriminations) I somehow
thought they'd have been more careful with their "legacy" -- given that it was founded in 1997,
2008 is a very long time to be operating without written procedures wrt donations, employment
The Imperial Presidency of the United States has evolved over the last century to the point that
the executive holds certain powers that can be considered dictatorial. Arguably, the most consequential
decision in politics is to wage war. The Constitution specifically reserves this right for Congress.
Trump betrayed everything and everybody, but he remain the sign of the crisis of neoliberalism in the USA
Notable quotes:
"... The anger against outsourcing jobs is very real and very dangerous for current corrupt neocon/neolib elite in Washington with their dream of global dominance and global neoliberal empire spanning all countries on all continents much like Trotsky dreamed about global Communist empire. ..."
"... The key information about his real intention would be the candidate for the Secretary of State. But even here uncertainty will remain. For example, it is not completely clear to me that if Bolton would be appointed he will be able to pursue the policies of his neocon past. After all Trump has distinct authoritarian inclinations and Bolton is not stupid enough not to understand that. ..."
"... Hopefully his foreign policy will be less jingoistic that Obama foreign policy. "Our goal is peace and prosperity, not war," said Trump, "unlike other candidates, war and aggression will not be my first instinct." ..."
"... "lovin' Putin" is a propaganda trick which enforces a certain judgment on the US-Russia relations ..."
"... Putin was and remain an obstacle on building global neoliberal empire governed by the USA. So hate toward him by Washington establishment is quite natural. Nothing personal, just business. In other words, demonization of Putin and hysterical anti-Russian campaign (including Hillary attempt to convert Democratic Party into a War party) is just a sign of disapproval of Washington his lack of desire to convert Russian into yet another vassal state. ..."
"... The key question here is not whether Trump will be able to pursue isolationist agenda and improve the US relationship with Russia. The key question is whether he will allowed to do that and resist strong attempts to co-opt him into standard set of neocon policies, which Washington pursued for several decades. ..."
"... Any idea that he will peruse isolationist agenda is undermined by the amount of Iran hawks in his close circle. ..."
"... My impression is that his administration will try to bait Russia in order to prevent any strengthening of China-Russia alliance which was the main blowback of Obama policies toward Russia. ..."
"... This was nothing other than a rejection of the Clinton Doctrine, announced in 1999, in the wake of the war of Kosovo, which made "humanitarian intervention" the new bedrock, or perhaps the new facade, of the foreign policy of the United States. It was the same policy followed and developed by Hillary Clinton during her tenure as secretary of state. (5) ..."
"... The US Empire has been nice to the Russians before. It was called detente and caused almost (not quite) as much hysteria in war-mongering (proto-neoconservative) circles as Trump's 'neo-detente' is causing now. However, the proviso is (and always was) that the warmongering could be ramped up again any time the Americans chose, and of course it was again under Reagan. ..."
"... From the point of view of American imperialism, Trump's plan to (temporarily) be nice to Russia makes a lot of strategic sense: as you point out, under Obama American imperial forces were becoming increasingly overstretched. In any case, for historical reasons, Russia (white, capitalist, Christian) doesn't make as good an enemy as the mysterious dark forces of 'Radical Islam'. ..."
"... So I am guessing under Trump we will see temporary rapprochement with Russia in the East, and more concentration on command and control of the Middle East. I am also guessing Obama's 'Pivot to China' will be allowed to quietly continue. It's also likely the US' policy of quietly picking off 'weak links' in the 'pink tide' in South American (cf Brazil, Honduras) will continue. ..."
"... For the moment I take great comfort in the hostility Trump displayed to Eliot Cohen and his ilk – https://twitter.com/EliotACohen/status/798512852931788800 ..."
"... "After exchange w Trump transition team, changed my recommendation: stay away. They're angry, arrogant, screaming "you LOST!" Will be ugly." ..."
Trump first and foremost is the symptom, not cause of crisis of neoliberalism in the USA. Ideology
is dead, like Bolshevism was dead soon after the end of WWII in the USSR.
Trump has two major path of his governance. He might try relying on nationalist insurgence
his election provoked and squeeze the "deep state" and neocon cabal in Washington, or he will
be co-opted by Republican brass. He probably understand that his positioning during election campaign
as a fighter against globalization and neoliberalism excesses in the USA is the key link that
provides political support for his administration. And throwing a couple on neocons or banksters
against the wall would be a populist gesture well received by American public.
The anger against outsourcing jobs is very real and very dangerous for current corrupt
neocon/neolib elite in Washington with their dream of global dominance and global neoliberal empire
spanning all countries on all continents much like Trotsky dreamed about global Communist empire.
My feeling is that a lot of people are really ready to fight for Trump and that creates for
problem for the "deep state", if Trump "indoctrination" by Washington establishment fails.
Past revolts in some US cities are just the tip of the iceberg. Obama lost not only his legacy
with Trump election. He lost his bid to keep all members of top 1% and first of all financial
oligarchy that drives the events on 2008 unaccountable.
So "accountability drive" which will be interpreted by neoliberals as "witch hunt" might well
be in the cards. I encourage everybody in this blog to listen to the following Trump election
advertisement.
Also I would not assume that he is a newcomer to political games. Real estate business is very
a political activity. So a more plausible hypothesis is that he is a gifted politician both by
nature and due to on the job training received in his occupation.
His idea of creating a circle of advisors who compete with each other and thus allow him to
be the final arbiter of major decisions is not new. He is not hostile to conflicts within his
inner circle.
The key information about his real intention would be the candidate for the Secretary of
State. But even here uncertainty will remain. For example, it is not completely clear to me that
if Bolton would be appointed he will be able to pursue the policies of his neocon past. After
all Trump has distinct authoritarian inclinations and Bolton is not stupid enough not to understand
that.
Hopefully his foreign policy will be less jingoistic that Obama foreign policy. "Our goal
is peace and prosperity, not war," said Trump, "unlike other candidates, war and aggression will
not be my first instinct."
There have been two constants in his campaign: "stomp the weaker" and "lovin' Putin".
That's it.
"lovin' Putin" is a propaganda trick which enforces a certain judgment on the US-Russia
relations . You should better stay above this level in this blog.
Putin was and remain an obstacle on building global neoliberal empire governed by the USA.
So hate toward him by Washington establishment is quite natural. Nothing personal, just business.
In other words, demonization of Putin and hysterical anti-Russian campaign (including Hillary
attempt to convert Democratic Party into a War party) is just a sign of disapproval of Washington
his lack of desire to convert Russian into yet another vassal state.
The key question here is not whether Trump will be able to pursue isolationist agenda and
improve the US relationship with Russia. The key question is whether he will allowed to do that
and resist strong attempts to co-opt him into standard set of neocon policies, which Washington
pursued for several decades.
His "Contract with America" does not cover foreign policy issues except rejection of TPP, NAFTA
and like.
Any idea that he will peruse isolationist agenda is undermined by the amount of Iran hawks
in his close circle.
My impression is that his administration will try to bait Russia in order to prevent any
strengthening of China-Russia alliance which was the main blowback of Obama policies toward Russia.
Also under Trump the USA might be more selective as running six concurrent conflicts (Afghanistan,
Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Ukraine). Which during Obama administration proved to be pretty expensive.
Libya is now a failed state. In Ukraine the standard of living dropped to the level of $2 per
day for the majority of population and the country became yet another debt slave, always balancing
on the wedge of bankruptcy. And costs for the USA are continuing to mount in at least three of
the six countries mentioned ( profits extracted in Ukraine and Iraq partially offset that). It
is unclear whether Trump administration will continue this Obama policy of multiple unilateral
engagements but I think is that during Trump administration the resistance to the USA unilateral
interventionism will be stronger as neoliberalism itself became much less attractive ideology.
Which is more difficult to "export". Similar to the fact that "communism" was more difficult to
export after 60th by the USSR. In a way, after 2008 it is a "damaged good" notwithstanding its
recent victories in Brazil and Argentina. See for example discussion at:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/22/does-clintons-defeat-mean-the-decline-of-us-interventionism/
The South has understood where the North has not: the selective nature of humanitarian interventions
reflects their punitive nature; sanctions go to non-client regimes; interventions seem to be
a new excuse for the hegemonic ambitions of the United States and its allies; they are a new
rationale for NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union; they are a way to suppress Russia
and deprive it of its zones of influence. (3)
What a far-sighted motion was that of the coalition of the countries of the Third World
(G77) at the Havana Summit in 2000! It declared its rejection of any intervention, including
humanitarian, which did not respect the sovereignty of the states concerned. (4) This was
nothing other than a rejection of the Clinton Doctrine, announced in 1999, in the wake of the
war of Kosovo, which made "humanitarian intervention" the new bedrock, or perhaps the new facade,
of the foreign policy of the United States. It was the same policy followed and developed by
Hillary Clinton during her tenure as secretary of state. (5)
But, of course, we can only guess how Trump administration will behave.
'The key question here is not whether Trump will be able to pursue isolationist agenda and
improve the US relationship with Russia. The key question is whether he will allowed to do
that and resist strong attempts to co-opt him into standard set of neocon policies, which Washington
pursued for several decades.'
The US Empire has been nice to the Russians before. It was called detente and caused almost
(not quite) as much hysteria in war-mongering (proto-neoconservative) circles as Trump's 'neo-detente'
is causing now. However, the proviso is (and always was) that the warmongering could be ramped
up again any time the Americans chose, and of course it was again under Reagan.
From the point of view of American imperialism, Trump's plan to (temporarily) be nice to
Russia makes a lot of strategic sense: as you point out, under Obama American imperial forces
were becoming increasingly overstretched. In any case, for historical reasons, Russia (white,
capitalist, Christian) doesn't make as good an enemy as the mysterious dark forces of 'Radical
Islam'.
So I am guessing under Trump we will see temporary rapprochement with Russia in the East,
and more concentration on command and control of the Middle East. I am also guessing Obama's 'Pivot
to China' will be allowed to quietly continue. It's also likely the US' policy of quietly picking
off 'weak links' in the 'pink tide' in South American (cf Brazil, Honduras) will continue.
'Trump: foreign policy continuity rather than change' may well be a typical graduate thesis
in 30 years' time.
I'm curious how Trump will deal with Erdogan. Erdogan seems to have all the tact and subtlety
of an angry Bison and with Trump's thin skin, there is bound to be a conflict at some stage. And
Erdogan is not Christian.
Donald Trump's success or failure as the next US president will largely depend on his ability to keep his independence from the "shadow
government" and elite structures that shaped the policies of previous administrations, former presidential candidate Ron Paul told
RT.
[...]
" Unfortunately, there has been several neoconservatives that are getting closer to Trump. And if gets his advice from them then
I do not think that is a good sign, " Paul told the host of RT's Crosstalk show Peter Lavelle.
The retired Congressman said that people voted for Trump because he stood against the deep corruption in the establishment, that
was further exposed during the campaign by WikiLeaks, and because of his disapproval of meddling in the wider Middle East.
" During the campaign, he did talk a little bit about backing off and being less confrontational to Russia and I like that. He
criticized some the wars in the Middle East at the same time. He believes we should accelerate the war against ISIS and terrorism,
" Paul noted.
[...]
" But quite frankly there is an outside source which we refer to as the 'deep state' or the 'shadow government'. There is a lot
of influence by people which are actually more powerful than our government itself, our president, " the congressman said.
" Yes, Trump is his own guy, more so than most of those who have ever been in before. We hope he can maintain an independence
and go in the right direction. But I fear the fact that there is so much that can be done secretly, out of control of our apparent
government and out of the view of so many citizens, " he added. More: https://www.rt.com/usa/366404-trump-ron-paul-crosstalk/
This is from 2015. Not much changed... But relevant for Venezuela. So what will happen with Venesuellians if
the color revolution suceeed, is easy to predict using Ukrainian example
Notable quotes:
"... Ukraine, what a mess. As though it was ever about the people. It was a grab for resources, 19-century style. But with 21st-century stakes. You can see what the West is after when you look at the US-Ukraine Business Council. ..."
"... Meanwhile last night & this morning, just to distract the people of what is going on in the West, Kiev launched a massive shelling over Donetsk and other places in Donbass using weapons forbbiden by the Minsk agreements, including Tor missiles, one of which fell at a railway station but didn't explode... it was defused by emergency workers but the proof is there if you care to see... it was thesecond biggest attack since the cease fire... ..."
"... This is the IMF hired guns now going after the very people who helped the Wall Street IMF shysters in the illegitimate coup and the set up of the illegitimate Kiev junta, a mix of half Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian mongrels. ..."
"... Furthermore, instead of bringing in the people who helped overthrow Janukovich into the government fold, the IMF is placing it's foreign collaborators in ministerial positions by making them instant Ukrainian citizens, while keeping the right wing, without whose help the coup would not have succeeded, out of government and slowly trying to eliminate them with their private foreign mercenary force. ..."
"... Madame "F*ck the EU Nuland from the US state department bordello, a devout Zionist, enticed these supposed Ukrainian NAZIs to help her in her dirty deeds, no doubt with promises of power sharing. ..."
"... She no doubt got her position not by intelligence but by connections. More than 6000 Ukrainians, human beings, innocent men women and children, have died in madame Nuland's engineered coup, putting her in league with her mentor, Henry Kissinger, aka the butcher of Vietnam. ..."
"... The Ukrainian sub-saharan African minimum wage is now being accompanied by Somali-style politics. ..."
"... The BBC are bravely sticking to their decision not to report this story. Congratulations are in order for such dedication. The graun protected its readership from this confusing information for 24 hours and then caved to the temptation to report news. Too bad. ..."
"... Can we officially congratulate Nuland for a crappy job and also for providing Putin with all the tools he needed to bring back Ukraine under his wing. False flag operations for American private interests must stop now. They are immoral, unethical and only bring death and destruction to otherwise stable societies. The UN should have a say. ..."
"... Neither Azov nor Right Sector want peace. On 3 July 4,000 men from these units protested in Kiev, calling for resumption of the war against the eastern provinces. They favour ethnic cleansing. ..."
"... The west would not have dialogue with Russia because it was not what Washington wanted. Washington wanted to push a wedge between Russia and EU at any cost even 6500 lives and unfortunately they succeeded ..."
"... The Right Sector does not exist, or if it does, it has been created by Moscow. The crisis in Greece is also the work of Russian agents. The ISIS is financed and trained by Putin. Ebola was cooked up in a laboratory in Saint Petersburg. Look for the Russian! ..."
"... this is what happens when you play with fire: you get burned. Using Neo-Nazi's to implement Nato expansionist policies was always a very bad idea. It's just a shame it is not people like Victoria 'fuck the EU' Nuland who will have to suffer the blowback consequences- it is the poor Ukrainian people. This is not that different to what has happened in Libya- where Islamic extremists were used as a proxy force to oust Gaddafi. ..."
"... the jihadists in Ukraine are the integral part of Iraqization of Ukraine. The lovers of Nuland's cookies are still in denial that Ukraine was destined by the US plutocrats to become a sacrificial lamb in a fight to preserve the US dollar hegemony. ..."
"... Why, don't you know? They infiltrated Ukraine, the CIA (and NATO and the EU somehow) created Maidan, their agents killed the protesters, then they overthrew a legitimate government and installed a neo-nazi one, proceeded to instigate a brutal oppression against Russian speakers, then started a war against the peaceful Eastern Ukrainians and their innocent friends in the Kremlin, etc etc. Ignorant question that, by now you should know the narrative! ..."
"... The BBC investigative reported earlier this year that a section of Maidan protesters deliberately started shooting the police. This story was also reported in the Guardian. Google and you will easily find it. The BBC also reported that the Prosecutors Office in Kiev was forbidden by Rada officials from investigating Maiden shooters. ..."
"... have you ever studied geography? If yes, you should remember the proximity of Ukraine to Russia (next door) and the proximity of Ukraine to the US (thousands miles away). Also, have you heard about the CIA Director Brennan and his covert visit to Kiev on the eve of the beginning of the civil war in Ukraine? This could give you an informed hint about the causes of the war. Plus you may be interested to learn about Mrs. Nuland-Kagan (Ms. Nudelman), her cookies, and her foul language. She is, by the way, a student of Dick Cheney. If you were born before 2000, you might know his name and his role in the Iraq catastrophe. Mrs. Nuland-Kagan (and the family of Kagans she belongs to) finds particular pleasure in creating military conflicts around the globe. It is not for nothing that the current situation in Ukraine is called Iraqization of Eastern Europe. ..."
"... This newspaper and other western media documented the armed members of far right groups on Maidan. One BBC journalist was actually shot at by a Svoboda sniper, operating from Hotel Ukraina - the video is still on the BBC website. ..."
"... As predicted the real civil war in Ukraine is still to happen. The split between the east and the ordinary Ukrainian was largely manufactured ..."
"... "When the Guardian claims to be a fearless champion of investigative journalism - as it is, in some areas - why did it obey the dictats of the US neocon media machine which rules all Western mainstream media over the Ukrainian land grab, instead of telling the truth, at that time?" ..."
"... in time Ukrainians will regard Maidan's aftermath as most of them view the Orange Revolution -- with regret and cynicism. ..."
"... Of course the Guardian doesn't like to explain that 'Right Sector' are genuine fascists - by their own admission! These fascists, who wear Nazi insignia, were the people who overthrew the elected government of Ukraine in the US / EU-supported coup - which the Guardianistas and other PC-brainwashed duly cheered on as a supposed triumph of democracy. Since that glorious US-financed and EU-backed coup, wholly illegal under international law, Ukraine's economy has collapsed, as has Ukrainians' living standards. ..."
The Georgian authorities have asked Interpol to put a Red notice on Mikheil Saakashvili as the
request to Ukraine to return him for trial in Georgia was refused.
ww3orbust PrinceEdward 13 Jul 2015 20:22
That does not detract from the fact that the Ukrainian cabinet has been chosen by the US state
department. Natives of the US, Georgia and Lithuania were hastily granted Ukrainian citizenship
in order to maintain an iron grip on Ukraine, while accusing Putin of appointing majors or governors
- in his capacity as head of state?
ww3orbust 13 Jul 2015 20:16
Amazing, nothing at all mentioned by the BBC. It does not fit in to their narrative to see the
country descend into a new stage of anarchy, between the people who murdered police and protesters
on Maidan square, and the US state department installed cabinet. Presumably if Right Sector refuse
to disarm and continue torturing civilians and murdering police, the BBC will continue to ignore
it and focus instead on its Russo-phobic narrative, while accusing Russia of propaganda with the
self-righteous piety that only the BBC are capable of. Or god forbid, more stories about what
colour stool our future king has produced this week.
The thing is, Ukraine is unique in allowing their Nazi thugs to be armed and have some semi-official
status. Everywhere else (including Russia), governments are looking to constrain the activities
of Nazis and prosecute them where possible.
jgbg Pwedropackman 13 Jul 2015 18:26
If it was not for the right sector, Ukraine would still be one united nation.
Them and Svoboda. If it had just been Orange Revolution II, with a simple change of Jewish
oligarchs in charge, there might have been some complaints but little more. It is the Russian-hating
far right that has brought about the violence and everything that has happened since.
PrinceEdward GreatMountainEagle 13 Jul 2015 18:22
Last I heard, Ukraine owes China billions for undelivered Grain.
HollyOldDog gimmeshoes 13 Jul 2015 18:11
But the Euro Maidan press is just an Ukrainian rag that invents stories to support its corrupt
government in Kiev.
jgbg PrinceEdward 13 Jul 2015 17:54
I forget the article, but in the comments I mentioned that multiple Georgians were being
appointed to high level positions by Kiev, and some Russophobe called me a liar.
Not a few days later, Shakashvilli was appointed governor of Odessa. An ex-president of another
country, as governor of a province in another one! Apparently, none of the millions upon millions
of Ukrainians were qualified for the job.
Sakashvilli's former Minister of Internal Affairs in Georgia, Eka Zguladze, is First Deputy
Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. Of course, the Georgian people removed these chumps from
power the first chance they got but the Ukrainian electorate haven't had any say in the appointments
of foreigners in their country.
Well ... when it comes to Ukraine, the need to stock up on popcorn. This bloody and unpredictable
plot is not even in the "Game of Thrones." And this is only the middle of the second season.
Today Speaker of the "RS" Andrew Sharaskin, said: Sports Complex in Mukachevo where the shooting
occurred, was used as the base of the separatists DNR.
- A place 1,000 kilometers from Donetsk! But it's a great excuse to murder the guard in the café
and wounded police officers.
I think tomorrow will say that there have seen Russian Army tanks and Putin - 100%
"Ukraine is part of Europe" - the slogans of the Maidan in action...
Pravyi Sektor were not wrong. However, you cannot have armed groups cleaning up corruption
outside the law...that only works in Gotham City.
Right Sector weren't trying to clean up corruption, they were simply trying to muscle in on
the cigarette smuggling business. If Right Sector cared about crime and public order, they wouldn't
be driving around, armed to the teeth, in vehicles stolen in the EU. (In the video linked in the
article, all of their vehicles have foreign number plates. At least one of those vehicles is on
the Czech police stolen vehicle database:
http://zpravy.idnes.cz/pravy-sektor-mel-v-mukacevu-auta-s-ceskymi-spz-fqj-/zahranicni.aspx?c=A150713_102110_zahranicni_jj)
The EU and the US have stated on many occasions that there are "No Right Wing Nationalists" operating
in Ukraine and its simply propaganda by Putin.
So there shouldn't be anything to worry about should there ?
Stas Ustymenko hfakos 13 Jul 2015 15:15
Yes, yes. You seem to tolerate Medvedchuk and Baloga mafias way better, for years.
Transcarpathian Region is the most corrupt in all of Ukraine (which is quite a fit). What we see
here is a gang war in fatigues.
tanyushka Jeff1000 13 Jul 2015 15:14
sorry i posted the same above... i was just to hasty.. sorry again...
in the main picture of the same article it's interesting to notice the age of most of the conscripted
soldiers... they are in their 30's, theirs 40's and even in their 50's... it's forced conscription,
they are not volunteers... while all the DPR & LPR soldiers are real volunteers...
an uncle, the father of a cousin, was conscripted in Kherson... my cousin had to run away to South
American to say with an aunt to avoid conscription... many men are doing it in Ukraine nowadays...
not because they are cowards but because they don't want to kill their brothers & sisters for
the benefit of the oligarchs and their NATO masters (and mistresses...)
did you know that all the conscripts have to pay for their own uniforms and other stuff, while
in the National Guard and the oligarchs batallions everything is top quality and for free... including
bulletproof vests and other implements courtesy of NATO
Demi Boone 13 Jul 2015 15:13
Well finally they reveal themselves. These Ukraine Nationalists are the people who instigated
the anarchy and shootings at Maidan and used it as an excuse to wrongfully drive out an elected
President and in the chaos that followed bring in a coup Government which represents only West-Ukraine
and suppress' East-Ukraine. You are looking at the face of the real Maidan and not the dream that
a lot of people have tried to paint it to be.
Stas Ustymenko MartinArvay 13 Jul 2015 15:11
Many Right Sector members are indeed patriots. But it looks like the organisation itself is,
sadly, much more useful for providing thugs for hire than "justice".
BMWAlbert PrinceEdward 13 Jul 2015 14:20
But seriously, the naval base is probably the reason, it is too important for some interests
to have a less-reliable (Ukrainian) in charge, this is a job only for the most trusted poodles.
If things had gone differently, the tie-eatimng chap would have been appointed Mayor of Sebastopol.
BMWAlbert PrinceEdward 13 Jul 2015 14:15
There appears to be a Quisling-shortage in Ukraine at present.
Stas Ustymenko obscurant 13 Jul 2015 13:32
More accurately, Kolomoyskiy is Ukrainian oligarch. Who happens to be ethnically, culturally
and, by all accounts, religiously, a Jew.
Stas Ustymenko Kaiama 13 Jul 2015 13:24
Ukrainian Volunteer Corps of the Right Sector fighting in Donbass is two battalions. How is
this a "key organization"? They are a well-known brand and fought bravely on some occasions, but
the wider org is way too eager to brandish arms outside of combat or training. They will be reigned
in, one way or another, and soon.
GameOverManGameOver Jeff1000 13 Jul 2015 12:02
Shh shh shh. This news does not exist yet in the western media, therefore it's nothing but
Russian propaganda.
Jeff1000 13 Jul 2015 11:54
It gets worse - soldiers from the UA are now refusing to follow orders in protest against the
total anarchy sweeping the chain of command, and their lack of rest and equipment.
Tensions have been rising between the government and the Right Sector militia that has
helped it fight pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country.
Finally, the Guardian decided to report the actual new after satisfying itself with ample discussion
of the quality of Russian cheeses. Right sector "helped" to fight "separatists"? Really? Does
Alec Luhn know that there are currently two (!) RS battalions at the front and 19 (!) inside Ukraine?
They are some warriors. Now they are occupying themselves fighting as criminals they are for the
control of contraband.
At the ATO zone, they help consists of plundering, murdering and raping the local population.
They enter a village, take everything of value from houses and then blow them up. They rape women
and girls as young as 10 years old. They've been doing this for more than a year, and we've been
telling you that for more than a year. But apparently in the fight against "pro-Russian separatists"
everything is good. These crimes are so widespread, even the Ukrainian "government" is worried
this will eventually becomes impossible to deny. Some battalions such as Shakhtersk and Aidar
have been officially accused of crimes and ompletely or partially reformed.
Examples: http://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/EUR50/040/2014/en/ http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bfb_1413804655
Ukraine, what a mess. As though it was ever about the people. It was a grab for resources,
19-century style. But with 21st-century stakes. You can see what the West is after when you look
at the US-Ukraine Business Council. It bring NATO, Monsanto and the Heritage Foundation under
one roof:
You'd be surprised, but I like Bandera (controversial as he was) way more than I trust some
people who wrap themselves in his red-and-black Rebel banner. Yarosh included. Banderite rebellion
ended 60 years ago. Its major goal was establishing a "united, free Ukrainian state"; by contrast,
stated ultimate goals of the Right Sector are way murkier; I'm not sure even most of the movement's
members are clear on what these are.
With present actions, Right Sector has a huge image problem in the West. If it will come to all-out
conflict, no doubt the West will back Poroshenko government over a loose confederation of armed
dudes linked by the thin thread of 30ies ideology (suspect even then). And the West will be right.
Stas Ustymenko Nik2 13 Jul 2015 11:03
Methinks you're way overselling a thug turf war as "major political event. Truth is, the region
has been long in the hands of organized crime. The previous regime incorporated and controlled
almost all organized crime in the country, hence no visible conflict. Now, individual players
try to use temporary uncertainty to their advantage.
Right Sector claims they were trying to fight
the smuggling, but this doesn't sound plausible. The word is, what's behind the events is struggle
for control over lucrative smuggling between two individuals (who are both "businessmen" and "politicians",
members of Parliament). Both are old-school players, formerly affiliated with Yanukovitch party.
One just was savvy enough to buy himself some muscle under Right Sector banner. Right Sector will
either have to straighten out its fighters (which it may not be able to do) or disappear as a
political player. I fail to see how people see anything "neo-Nazi" in this gang shootout.
PaddyCannuck Cavirac 13 Jul 2015 10:21
Nobody here is an apologist for Stalin, who was a brutal and cruel despot, and the deportations
of the Crimean Tatars were quite indefensible. However, a few observations might lend some perspective.
1. Crimea has been invaded and settled by an almost endless succession of peoples over the
millennia. The Crimean Tatars (who are of Turkic origin) were by no means the first, nor indeed
the last, and cannot in any meaningful sense be regarded as the indigenous people of Crimea.
2. The Crimean Tatars scarcely endeared themselves to the Russians, launching numerous raids,
devastating many towns, including the burning of Moscow in 1571, and sending hundreds of thousands,
if not millions of Russians into slavery in the Ottoman Empire.
3. The deportations took place in 1942 - 1943 against the backdrop of World War II, when a lot
of bad stuff happened, including -
4. The American (and also Canadian) citizens of Japanese ethnicity who had their property confiscated
and were likewise shipped off to camps. Their treatment, if anything, was worse.
Sevastopol, Pearl Harbor. What's the difference? What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Meanwhile last night & this morning, just to distract the people of what is going on in the West,
Kiev launched a massive shelling over Donetsk and other places in Donbass using weapons forbbiden
by the Minsk agreements, including Tor missiles, one of which fell at a railway station but didn't
explode... it was defused by emergency workers but the proof is there if you care to see... it
was thesecond biggest attack since the cease fire...
Nik2 6i9vern 13 Jul 2015 09:53
Not exactly. By now, BBC has made good coverage of these events in Ukrainian and Russian languages,
but not in English. It looks like BBC considers that Western public does not deserve the politically
sad truth about armed clashes between "champions of Maidan Revolution" and "new democratic authorities,
fighting corruption". Western public should not be in doubt about present-day "pro-European" Ukraine.
And "The Guardian" still has only one article on the issue that could be a turning point in Ukrainian
politics. This is propaganda, not informing about or analyzing really serious political events.
VictorWhisky 13 Jul 2015 09:51
This is the IMF hired guns now going after the very people who helped the Wall Street IMF shysters
in the illegitimate coup and the set up of the illegitimate Kiev junta, a mix of half Ukrainian
and non-Ukrainian mongrels.
Furthermore, instead of bringing in the people who helped overthrow Janukovich into the government fold, the IMF is placing it's foreign collaborators in ministerial
positions by making them instant Ukrainian citizens, while keeping the right wing, without whose
help the coup would not have succeeded, out of government and slowly trying to eliminate them
with their private foreign mercenary force.
Madame "F*ck the EU Nuland from the US state department
bordello, a devout Zionist, enticed these supposed Ukrainian NAZIs to help her in her dirty deeds,
no doubt with promises of power sharing.
So madame Nuland was perfectly willing to get in bed
with the Ukrainian NAZI devils (her Jewish friend should be proud) and when the dirty deed was
done, she is now turning against Ukrainian nationalists in the attempt to have outside forces
in control of Ukraine. Madame Nuland is not as intelligent or capable as portrayed, because if
she was, she would have known Ukraine has a very delicate and very complicated political structure
and history with nearly half the country speaking Russian and more loyal to the Russians than
to the US.
An intelligent person familiar with Ukrainian history would know any attempt of placing
a US stooge in Kiev would certainly result in a civil war.
She no doubt got her position not by
intelligence but by connections. More than 6000 Ukrainians, human beings, innocent men women and
children, have died in madame Nuland's engineered coup, putting her in league with her mentor,
Henry Kissinger, aka the butcher of Vietnam. That intelligent idiot's policies resulted in the
death of 3 million Vietnamese and 50,000 young Americans. Does madame Nuland intend to sacrifice
that many Ukrainians to prove her ultimate stupidity?
Jeremn Luminaire 13 Jul 2015 09:51
The conscripts didn't want to shoot their fellow Ukrainians. The nationalists don't believe
the people in the east are their fellow Ukrainians.
Because they were lovely guys, evidently, and their "popularity" has nothing to do with armed
thugs beating you up if you say anything against them (or the state prosecuting you for denying
or questioning their heroism).
Jeremn jezzam 13 Jul 2015 09:35
Ukrainian media, reporting Ukrainian government official:
12 police dead in two days, 180 wounded with gunshot wounds.
Still Kremlin lies?
Jeff1000 13 Jul 2015 09:30
Thank God Ukraine is finally free and democratic. The old autocratic regime actually had the
gall to make running street battles illegal - but those dark days are in the past. In the liberated
Ukraine you are free spend the dollar a day you get paid on a bullet proof vest so the rampant
Nazi street gangs don't kill you.
Jeremn SHappens 13 Jul 2015 09:26
You'd be surprised, there are Bandera-lovers in the UK too. There's a Bandera museum. And there
is this lot, teaching Christian values to children. And telling them that Bandera was a hero.
Future Right Sector supporters being crafted as we type.
6i9vern 13 Jul 2015 09:24
The Ukrainian sub-saharan African minimum wage is now being accompanied by Somali-style politics. Luckily, the Russians have liberated Crimea so piracy on the high seas isn't an option for
the Ukrainians.
6i9vern 13 Jul 2015 09:18
Apparently, UAVs generously supplied to Ukrainians by the Canadian taxpayers are being put
to good use smuggling cigarettes into Slovakia.
6i9vern 13 Jul 2015 09:12
The BBC are bravely sticking to their decision not to report this story. Congratulations are
in order for such dedication.
The graun protected its readership from this confusing information for 24 hours and then caved
to the temptation to report news. Too bad.
aucontraire2 13 Jul 2015 08:36
Can we officially congratulate Nuland for a crappy job and also for providing Putin with
all the tools he needed to bring back Ukraine under his wing.
False flag operations for American private interests must stop now. They are immoral, unethical
and only bring death and destruction to otherwise stable societies. The UN should have a
say.
SomersetApples 13 Jul 2015 08:25
The country is bankrupt; the Kiev putschists are selling off the country's assets to their
New York allies, the oligarchs and Nazis are at war against each other and the illegal putschist
government and now toilet mouth Nuland is back on the scene. Looks like a scene form Dante's Inferno.
todaywefight Polvilho 13 Jul 2015 07:54
Which Russian invasion will this be the of he approximately 987 mentioned by Poroshenko and
our man Yatz...or are you referring to the people of the AUTONOMOUS REPUBLIC OF CRIMEA's (yes
that was what was called after the 1994 referendum) massive wishes to (like Donbass) go against
a government who illegally dismissed an elected president a wish that was reflected on a referendum
which was allowed by their constitution 18(7)
Bosula Scepticbladderballs 13 Jul 2015 07:38
Yes. Most of the protesters are good people who just want a better deal in life.
monteverdi1610 13 Jul 2015 06:54
Remember all those CIF threads when those of us who pointed to the neo-Nazis in Ukraine were
immediately called ' Putinbots ' ?
PS/ Apologies would be the order of the day , perhaps ?
Sturney 13 Jul 2015 06:49
Apparently this conflict is over. Temporarily over. Anyway in ever-contracting economy, in
a Mariana trench between Russia and EU, in the most totalitarian country in history, such conflicts
will continue. Since Nuland tossed yeast in the outhouse nobody can stop fermentation of sh*t.
Help yourself with some beer and shrimps. I am looking forward when these masses splash out to
EU, preferably to Poland. Must be fun to watch. (Lipspalm)
Justin Obisesan 13 Jul 2015 06:33
In the run-up to the Euro 2012 football tournament, jointly hosted by Poland and Ukraine, I
remember how the media in this country worked themselves into a frenzy harping on about the presence
of violent neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine. After the removal of Mr Yanukovych from office, the same
media organisations changed their tune by describing any talk of neo- Nazis in Ukraine as "Russian
propaganda". The Western media coverage of the Ukrainian crises has been so blatantly pro-Kiev
and anti-Donbass that their claims of impartiality and objectivity cannot be taken seriously anymore.
Jeremn jgbg 13 Jul 2015 06:16
It is fine when they are shooting at Donetsk, but not so good when they use the same tactics
in western Ukraine.
Azov are the same, violent neo-Nazi thugs given authority, and this article notes that PrivatBank
is the bank that services requests for donations to the Azov funds, using J P Morgan as intermidiary.
Neither Azov nor Right Sector want peace. On 3 July 4,000 men from these units protested in
Kiev, calling for resumption of the war against the eastern provinces.
They favour ethnic cleansing.
Jeremn William Fraser 13 Jul 2015 06:10
The people who support Bandera are in western Ukraine. They are the ones who say Stalin starved
the Ukrainian people.
Trouble is, in the 1930s, western Ukraine belonged to Poland.
It was the Russians, eastern Ukrainians and other Soviet people who starved, not the western
Ukrainians.
Kefirfan 13 Jul 2015 06:02
Good, good. Let the democracy flow through you...
Pwedropackman SHappens 13 Jul 2015 05:53
It will be interesting to see which side the US and Canada will support. Probably Poroshenko
and the Oligarchs because the Right Sector is not so happy about the ongoing sales of Ukraine
infrastructure to US corporates.
SHappens 13 Jul 2015 05:14
Harpers' babies are out manifesting, supporting the good guys:
"Supporters of Ukraine's Right Sector extremist group rallied in Ottawa Sunday amid the
radicals' ongoing standoff with police in western Ukraine."
The rally outside the Ukrainian embassy was organized by the Right Sector's representative
office in the Canadian capital, 112 Ukraine TV channel reported, citing the Facebook account of
the so-called Ukrainian Volunteer Corps.
careforukraine 13 Jul 2015 05:09
I wonder how long it will be before the us denounces nazi's in ukraine?
Kind of seems like we have seen this all before.
Almost like how ISIS were just freedom fighters that needed our support until ?.....
Well we all know what happened there.
Pwedropackman 13 Jul 2015 05:04
If it was not for the right sector, Ukraine would still be one united nation.
GameOverManGameOver Chris Gilmore 13 Jul 2015 04:41
Yes, I agree, they do wreck the economy. That was my point. Russia want's strong economies
to do business with, not broken economies that only ask for financial aid.
Like I said, no evidence of Russian troops in Donbass and South Ossetia asked for the presence
of Russian troops to deter the Georgian government from trying another invasion.
And organisations like CIS are meant to expand economic ties. Just like the EU I suppose. They
function in pretty much the same way with everyone getting a chance to lead. So I don't know why
that should be a bad thing. Since the EU is not interested in admitting Russia why can't Russia
go to other organisations?
VladimirM Dmitriy Grebenyuk 13 Jul 2015 04:26
It's a poisonous sarcasm, I think. But I've heard that RS accuse the Ukrainian government of
being pro-Putin as the government accuse them of being Russian agents. Surreal a bit.
stewfen FOHP46 13 Jul 2015 04:24
The west would not have dialogue with Russia because it was not what Washington wanted. Washington
wanted to push a wedge between Russia and EU at any cost even 6500 lives and unfortunately they
succeeded
GameOverManGameOver Chris Gilmore 13 Jul 2015 03:54
I'll admit that frozen conflicts could be useful to Russia. But only from a security point
of view. And why not, exactly? NATO is Russia's biggest threat, so it would make sense for the
government to want to avoid it expanding any further. I understand your misgivings since you're
speaking from the position that NATO should expand to deter Russi I mean 'Iran', but surely you
understand that Russia wanting to prevent that makes logical sense? Sure, it's at someone else's
expense but let's not pretend that big countries doing something at someone else's expense is
a new and revolutionary concept reserved only to Russia. And the Georgian conflict dates back
to the very early 90's.
From an economic point of view though, no sense at all. Frozen conflicts usually bring economic
barriers. Believe it or not Russia's priority isn't expansion, but the economy. And trade with
it's neighbours is an important element of the Russian economy. It's very hard to trade with areas
that are in the middle of a frozen conflict. So in that sense the last thing Russia would want
are profitable areas in a frozen conflict around it's borders hampering it's economic growth.
And none of this has anything to do with Marioupol.
Debreceni 13 Jul 2015 03:38
The Right Sector does not exist, or if it does, it has been created by Moscow. The crisis in
Greece is also the work of Russian agents. The ISIS is financed and trained by Putin. Ebola was
cooked up in a laboratory in Saint Petersburg. Look for the Russian!
Kaiama PrinceEdward 13 Jul 2015 02:50
We don't know if PS were also doing it as well or just poking their noses into someone else's
business. Who started it? I doubt the correct answer will ever be known. Two unsavoury groups
arguing about an illegal business. The problem is that the MP is an MP whereas PS is a national
organisation.
It's never the US....it's never the West.....
(you know, to balance things) : )
todaywefight 13 Jul 2015 01:53
If any one on the other side, the dark side, ever thought that these lot will hold hands with
any one, lay down their arms and sing Kumbaya, uou are either utterly naive or willfully ignorant.
Apparently, these lot have 23 battalions, armed to their teeth, the added bonus for the Privy
Sektor is that , due to expedience and cowardice , they have just made legal and incorporated
into the Ukrainian army, Kyiv is in a highway to nowhere.
Incidentally, unlike the maidan demonstrations which essentially were only in Kyiv there are
demonstrations in more than a dozen cities, and have established dozen of check points already
and Yarosh a member of the VT. have clearly instructed them to fight if necessary.
GameOverManGameOver Omniscience 13 Jul 2015 01:35
So? Yes there are nationalists in Russia, just like everywhere else. You get a gold star for
googling. Shall I get some articles with European and American nationalists to parade around to
make a vague point? If you want I can get you an article of Lithuanians dressed up as the Waffen
SS parading around Vilnius. That's Lithuania the EU and Nato member. Funny how EU principles disappear
when it's one of their own violating them.
You seem to be missing the point entirely. While all countries have their nationalists, those
nationalists are a very small minority, have no power, have no popular support, have no seats
in government, usually derided by the majority of the population and they certainly aren't armed
to the teeth roaming around the country killing, torturing and kidnapping people with the blessing
of their government
HollyOldDog Joe way 13 Jul 2015 00:09
The Right Sector were / are Ukrains Storm Troopers who have had more advanced training by the
Americans. If the Right Sector turn on the Kiev Government they will be difficult to defeat, and
who knows if the civilian population of Ukraine may join in the 'fun' by ousting the current unpopular
Ukrainian government.
sorrentina 12 Jul 2015 23:35
this is what happens when you play with fire: you get burned. Using Neo-Nazi's to implement
Nato expansionist policies was always a very bad idea. It's just a shame it is not people like
Victoria 'fuck the EU' Nuland who will have to suffer the blowback consequences- it is the poor
Ukrainian people. This is not that different to what has happened in Libya- where Islamic extremists
were used as a proxy force to oust Gaddafi.
annamarinja jgbg 12 Jul 2015 23:31
The threshold has been guessed impatiently by the US neocons (while the provocateur Higgins/
Bellingcat fed the gullible the fairy tales about Russian army in Ukraine). The US needs desperately
a real civil war in Ukraine, the Ukrainians be damned. Just look what the US-sponsored "democracy
on the march" has produced in the Middle East. Expect the same bloody results in eastern Europe.
annamarinja obscurant 12 Jul 2015 23:25
perhaps you do not realize that your insults are more appropriate towards the poor Ukrainians
that have been left destitute by the cooky-carrying foreigners and their puppets in Kiev. The
Ukrainian gold reserve has disappeared... meanwhile, the US Congress has shamed the US State Dept
for collaborating with Ukrainian neo-nazis. Stay tuned. But do not expect to hear real news from
your beloved Faux News.
annamarinja quorkquork 12 Jul 2015 23:14
the jihadists in Ukraine are the integral part of Iraqization of Ukraine. The lovers of Nuland's
cookies are still in denial that Ukraine was destined by the US plutocrats to become a sacrificial
lamb in a fight to preserve the US dollar hegemony.
Bud Peart 12 Jul 2015 22:59
Well we always knew it would end this way. With a stalemate in the war with the East the Right
wing paramilitaries and private oligarch militias (whom the west funded and trained) have gone
completely feral and are now in fighting directly with whats left of the Ukrainian National Army.
This is pretty much the rode to another breakaway in Galacia which would effectively end the Ukraine
as a functional state.
The government should move as fast as possible to get a decent federal structure (copy switzerland)
in place before the whole of the West goes into revolt as well.
DelOrtoyVerga LostJohnny 12 Jul 2015 22:38
That is what you get when you put fascists in your government.
I rather reword it to
That is what you get when you enable and rely on thugish pseudo-fascist radical para-military
groups to impose order by force and violence against dissident segments of your own population
(which is armed to the teeth probably by Russia)
Bosula Scepticbladderballs 12 Jul 2015 22:37
What do you think it is?
There were several people identified directly or indirectly in this BBC story whose stories should
have been formally pursued by legal authorities in Kiev.
If you lived in the West you would understand that we call these references as possible 'leads'
- you follow these 'leads' and see where they take you. That is what Western police do.
The story says that Kiev didn't want to follow up any of these points. Why? What harm could this
do?
You state that you do not understand the point that this BBC journalist was making. But I have
in a fair way tried to to explain the point that the BBC was making.
This story caused quite a stir went it came out - and the BBC chose to stick with it and support
their British reporter. In an edited and shorter form the story is still on the BBC - the editing
is also acknowledged by the BBC.
Do you think the BBC should have blocked or not published this investigative piece?
If so - why?
And why hasn't Kiev followed up these issues?
Have I addressed your point yet?
HollyOldDog Scepticbladderballs 12 Jul 2015 21:34
I am just watching a program recorded earlier. Hiroshima: The Aftermath. I have got past the
part when the Japanese 'survivors' had to drink from the pools of Black Rain ( highly radioactive)
and watched the part when American Army Tourists visited the city to take a few photos ( no medical
help though) while gawking at the gooks. In fact the Japanese civilians recieved no medical assistance
at all from the Americans. The commentator just said that they were just there to study the effects
of nuclear radiation on a civilian population. These nuclear bombs were just dropped on Japan
to save One Day of the surrender of the Japanese forces.
The next documtary I will watch another day is the sinking of the Tirpitz by the RAF using
Tallboy bombs. At least this had a useful pupose in helping to stop the destruction of the North
Atlantic convoys, sending aid to Russia. That aid along with the rebuilding of the Soviet Armies
helped the Soviet Union to destroy the invading Nazi forces and provided a Second Front to the
Western Allies to invade Normandy. A lot of good can be achieved when the East and West work together
- maybe avoiding the worst effects of Global Warming but the Americans only seem to want to spend
Trillions $ building more powerful nuclear weapons. Is this all that America has now, an Arms
Industry - I can see it now, cooling the planet with a Nuclear Winter.
HollyOldDog Scepticbladderballs 12 Jul 2015 20:33
The USA caused the chaos in Ukraine so they must pay the billions of $ to fix it then leave
Ukraine alone.
6i9vern 12 Jul 2015 20:29
One of the amusing features of the Soviet media was the long silences it maintained on possibly
embarrassing breaking news until it became clear what the Party Line was.
Eventually, a memo would go out from Mikhail Suslov's office to various media outlets and the
silence would be broken.
At least everyone knew exactly how that system worked. What is happening with the British media
is much more murky.
The beeb/graun seem to be the Pravda/Izvestia, whilst the torygraph is a sort of Trybuna Ludu
- ie real news very occasionally appears in it.
6i9vern 12 Jul 2015 20:08
So, after a mere 24 hours the Graun ran a story on Mukachevo. The Torygraph actually had the
nerve to run the AFP wire report more or less straight away.
The BBC are still keeping shtum.
The Beeb/Graun complex have well and truly had the frighteners put on them.
PrinceEdward Kaiama 12 Jul 2015 20:07
There's no doubt. I agree that the MP was probably running cigarettes, but also Right Sektor
was going to muscle in.
If you asked somebody 3 years ago if Ukraine would be rocked by armed bands with RPGs and Light
Machine Guns fighting in towns, they would have thought you were crazy.
This isn't Russia, this is the Ultranats/Neo-Nazis.
PrinceEdward obscurant 12 Jul 2015 20:05
Right, it's the people in Donbass who bury 14th SS Division veterans with full honors, push
for full pensions to surviving Hiwi and SS Collaborators... not those in Lvov. Uh huh.
BMWAlbert 12 Jul 2015 20:04
11 months of investigations by the newKiev regime, attempting to implicate the the prior one
for the murder of about 100 people in Kiev early last year was unsuccessful. There may be better
candidates here.
fragglerokk ploughmanlunch 12 Jul 2015 19:55
It always amazes me that the far right never learn from history. The politicians and oligarchs
always use them as muscle to ensure coup success then murder/assasinate the leaders to make sure
they dont get any ideas about power themselves. Surprised its taken so long in ukraine but then
the govt is barely hanging onto power and the IMF loans have turned to a trickle so trouble will
always be brewing, perhaps theyve left it too long this time. Nobody will be shedding any tears
for the Nazis and Banderistas.
Why, don't you know? They infiltrated Ukraine, the CIA (and NATO and the EU somehow) created
Maidan, their agents killed the protesters, then they overthrew a legitimate government and installed
a neo-nazi one, proceeded to instigate a brutal oppression against Russian speakers, then started
a war against the peaceful Eastern Ukrainians and their innocent friends in the Kremlin, etc etc.
Ignorant question that, by now you should know the narrative!
Kaiama gimmeshoes 12 Jul 2015 19:53
If you think Pryvi Sektor want to "clean up" then yes, but not in the way you imagine - they
just want the business for themselves.
Geordiemartin 12 Jul 2015 19:51
I am reminded of AJP Taylor premise that Eastern Europe has historically had either German
domination or Russian protection.
The way that the Ukrainian government had treated their own Eastern compatriots leaves little
reason to believe they would be welcome back into the fold and gives people of Donbass no reason
to want to rejoin the rest of the country.
If government is making an effort to reign in the likes of Right sector it is a move in the
right direction but much much more will be needed to establish any trust.
Some Guy yataki 12 Jul 2015 19:45
just because they are nazis doesnt mean they are happy about doing any of this... now. look
at greece and the debacle that has unfolded over the past week has been . the west ukraine wanted
to be part of the euro zone and wanted some of that ecb bail out money. now they are not even
sure if they could skip out on the bill and know they are fighting for nothing . russia gave them
14 bil dollars . the west after the coup only gave the 1 bil
Andor2001 Kaiama 12 Jul 2015 19:44
According to the eyewitnesses the RS shot a guard when he refused to summon the commanding
officer. It was the beginning of the fight.
Andor2001 yataki 12 Jul 2015 19:41
Remember Shakespeare "Othello"? Moor has done his job, Moor has to go..
The neo-Nazis have outlived their usefulness.
Bosula caaps02 12 Jul 2015 19:39
The BBC investigative reported earlier this year that a section of Maidan protesters deliberately
started shooting the police. This story was also reported in the Guardian. Google and you will
easily find it.
The BBC also reported that the Prosecutors Office in Kiev was forbidden by Rada officials from
investigating Maiden shooters.
Maybe the BBC is telling us a lie? The BBC investigation is worth a read - then you can make up
your own mind.
Bosula William Fraser 12 Jul 2015 19:29
Kazakhstan had the highest percentage of deaths from Stalin's policies in this period when
he prevented the nomad herders moving from the mountains to the planes to take advantage of the
benefits of seasons and weather.
Stalin forced the nomads to stay in one area and they perished in the cold of the mountains or
the heat of the summer plains (whichever zone they were forced to stay in).
Some of my family is Ukrainian and some recognise that Stalin's policies weren't specifically
aimed at Ukrainians - the people of Kazakhstan suffered the most (as a percentage of population).
Either way, there is no genetic difference between Slavs or Russian or Ukrainian origin in Ukraine
or Russia - they are all genetically the same people.
This information should be better taught in Ukraine.
The problem is that it would undermine the holy grail story of right wing nationalism in Ukraine.
It's been one of the biggest mistakes ( although Ukraine's military started in a desperately
poor condition ) , to allow militia groups to get so powerful. Right sector should not have arms
and guns... The national Ukraine military should, If members of Right sector want to fight , they
should leave Right sector and join the army.
This was and will happen if they don't disband such armed groups.
annamarinja silvaback 12 Jul 2015 18:18
have you ever studied geography? If yes, you should remember the proximity of Ukraine to Russia
(next door) and the proximity of Ukraine to the US (thousands miles away). Also, have you heard
about the CIA Director Brennan and his covert visit to Kiev on the eve of the beginning of the
civil war in Ukraine? This could give you an informed hint about the causes of the war. Plus you
may be interested to learn about Mrs. Nuland-Kagan (Ms. Nudelman), her cookies, and her foul language.
She is, by the way, a student of Dick Cheney. If you were born before 2000, you might know his
name and his role in the Iraq catastrophe. Mrs. Nuland-Kagan (and the family of Kagans she belongs
to) finds particular pleasure in creating military conflicts around the globe. It is not for nothing
that the current situation in Ukraine is called Iraqization of Eastern Europe.
Bev Linington JJRichardson 12 Jul 2015 18:10
Ukrainians shot down the plane. East, West does not matter as they were all Ukrainians before
the government overthrow. Leaders of the new government could not look past some Ukrainian citizens
ethnicity, instead of standing together united, they decided to oppress which lead to the referendum
in Crimea and the rise of separatists in the East.
jgbg Chirographer 12 Jul 2015 17:53
And for the Pro-Russian posters the newsflash is that could also describe the situation
inside the Donbass.
It certainly describes the situation in Donbass where Right Sector or the volunteer battalions
are in charge. In Dnepropetrovsk, Right Sector would simply turn up at some factory or other business
and order the owner to sign document transferring the enterprise to them. In other cases, they
have kidnapped businessmen for ransom. Some people have simply disappeared under such circumstances.
The Ukrainian National Guard simply break into homes left empty by people fleeing the war and
steal the contents. Such was the scale of looting, the Ukrainian postal service have now refused
to ship electrical goods out of the ATO area unless the senders have the original boxes and receipts.
jgbg AlfredHerring 12 Jul 2015 17:45
Maybe Kiev just needs to bomb them some more.
Putin promised to protect the Russian speaking people in Ukraine - but he hasn't really done
that. His government has indicated that they would not allow Kiev to simply overrun or obliterate
the people of Donbass. Quite where their threshold of actual intervention lies is anyone's guess.
The "pro-Russian" government that you refer to was only elected because it promised to sign
the EU trade agreement. It then reneged on that promise...
Yanukovych's government was elected the previous one was useless and corrupt.
Yanukovych wanted to postpone the decision to sign for six months, while he attempted to extract
more from both the EU and Russia. Under Poroshenko, the implementation of the EU Association Agreement
has been delayed for 15 months, as the governments of Ukraine, the EU and Russia all recognised
that Russian trade (with the favourable terms which Ukraine enjoys) are vitail to Ukraine's economic
recovery. Expect that postponement to be extended.
.... severely and brutally curtailing freedom of speech and concentrating all power in the
hands of Yanukovich's little clan...
As opposed to sending the military to shell the crap out of those who objected to an elected
government being removed by a few thousand nationalists in Kiev.
There was no "coup".
An agreement had been signed at the end of February 2014, which would see elections in September
2014. The far right immediately moved to remove the government (as Right Sector had promised on
camera in December 2013). None of the few mechanisms for replacing the president listed in the
Ukrainian constitution have been followed - that makes it a coup.
The Maidan protesters were not armed
This newspaper and other western media documented the armed members of far right groups on
Maidan. One BBC journalist was actually shot at by a Svoboda sniper, operating from Hotel Ukraina
- the video is still on the BBC website.
....the interim government that was put in place by the parliament in late February and
the government that was elected in May and Oct. of 2014 were and are not fascist.
The interim government included several ministers from Svoboda, formerly the Socialist Nationalist
Party of Ukraine. These were the first Nazi ministers in a European government since Franco's
Spanish government that ended in the 1970's. In a 2013 resolution, the EU parliament had indicated
that no Ukrainian government should include members of Svoboda or other far right parties.
pushkinsideburn vr13vr 12 Jul 2015 16:45
There has been a marked change in rhetoric over the last few weeks. Even CiF on Ukraine articles
seems to attract less trolls (with a few notable exceptions on this article - though they feel
more like squad trolls than the first team). Hopefully a sign of deescalation or perhaps just
a temporary lull before the MH17 anniversary this week?
pushkinsideburn calum1 12 Jul 2015 16:38
His other comments should have been the clue that arithmetic, like independent critical thinking,
is beyond him.
normankirk 12 Jul 2015 16:19
Right sector were the first to declare they wouldn't abide by the Minsk 2 peace agreement.Nevertheless,
Dmitry Yarosh, their leader is adviser to Ukraine's Chief of staff. Given that he only received
about 130,000 votes in the last election, he has a disproportionate amount of power.
As predicted the real civil war in Ukraine is still to happen. The split between the east and
the ordinary Ukrainian was largely manufactured . In the long term no body would be able to live
with the right sector or more precisely the right sector cant share a bed with anyone else.
sashasmirnoff RicardoJ 12 Jul 2015 15:44
"When the Guardian claims to be a fearless champion of investigative journalism - as
it is, in some areas - why did it obey the dictats of the US neocon media machine which rules
all Western mainstream media over the Ukrainian land grab, instead of telling the truth, at
that time?"
This may be why:
"The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media." - former CIA Director William
Colby
Alexander_the_Great 12 Jul 2015 15:43
This was so, so predictable. The Right Sector were the main violent group during the coup in
2014 - in fact they were the ones to bring the first guns to the square following their storming
of a military warehouse in west Ukraine a few days before the coup. It was this factor that forced
the Police to arm themselves in preparation.
Being the vanguard of the illegal coup, they then provided a useful tool of manipulation for
the illegal Kiev government to oppress any opposition, intimidate journalists who spoke the truth
and lead the war against the legally-elected ELECTED governments of Donetsk and Lugansk.
Having failed in the war against the east, western leaders have signalled the right sector
has now outlived its usefulness and has become an embarrassment to Kiev and their western backers.
The Right Sector meanwhile, feel betrayed by the establishment in Kiev. They have 19 battalions
of fighters and they wont go away thats for sure. I think one can expect this getting more violent
in the coming months.
SHappens jezzam 12 Jul 2015 15:40
Putin is a Fascist dictator.
Putin is not a dictator. He is a statist, authoritarian-inclined hybrid regime ruler that possesses
some democratic elements and space for opposition groups.
He has moderate nationalist tendencies in foreign affairs; his goal is a secure a strong Russia.
He is a patriot and has a charismatic authority. Russians stay behind him.
ploughmanlunch samuel glover 12 Jul 2015 15:31
'this notion that absolutely everything Kiev does follows some master script drawn up
in DC and Brussels is simplistic and tiresome'
Agreed.
As is everything is Russia's fault.
ConradLodziak 12 Jul 2015 15:26
This is just the latest in a string of conflicts involving the right sector, as reported by
RT, Russian media and until recently many Ukrainian outlets. The problem, of course, is that Porostinko
has given 'official' status to the right sector. Blow back time for him.
CIAbot007 William Fraser 12 Jul 2015 15:06
Yes, Russia (USSR) from the USSR foundation had been forcing people of the then territory of
Ukraine to identify themselves as Ukrainians under the process of rootisation - Ukrainization,
then gave to Ukraine Donbass and left side Dniepr and Odessa, Herson and Nikolaev, and then decided
to ethnically cleane them.. It doesn't make sense, does it? Oh, wait, sense is not your domain.
annamarinja William Fraser 12 Jul 2015 15:05
let me help you with arithmetics: 72 years ago Europe was inflamed with the WWII.
There was a considerable number of Ukrainians that collaborated with Hitler' nazis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14th_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_of_the_SS_(1st_Galician)
In short, your government finds it is OK to glorify the perpetrators of genocide in Europe during
the WWII.
Nik2 12 Jul 2015 15:04
These tragic events, when YESTERDAY, on Saturday afternoon, several civilians were unintentionally
wounded in gun battles in previously peaceful town near the Hungary and Slovakia borders, vividly
exposes Western propaganda. Though mass media in Ukraine and Russia are full of reports about
this from the start, The Guardian managed to give first information exactly 1 day later, and BBC
was still keeping silence a few minutes ago. Since both sides are allies of the West (the Right
Sector fighters were the core of the Maidan protesters at the later stages, and Poroshenko regime
is presumably "democratic"), the Western media preferred to ignore the events that are so politically
uncomfortable. Who are "good guys" to be praised? In fact, this may be the start of nationalists'
revolt against Ukrainian authorities, and politically it is very important moment that can fundamentally
change Ukrainian politics. But the West decides to be silent ...
annamarinja William Fraser 12 Jul 2015 14:59
Do your history book tell you that the Holodomor was a multiethnic endeavor? That the Ukrainians
were among the victims and perpetrators and that the whole huge country had suffered the insanely
cruel policies of multiethnic bolsheviks? The Holodomor was almost a century ago, whereas the
Odessa massacre and the bombardments of civilian population in east Ukraine by the neo-nazi thugs
(sent by Kiev), has been going during last year and half. Perhaps you have followed Mr. Brennan
and Mrs. Nuland-Kagan too obediently.
foolisholdman zonzonel 12 Jul 2015 14:58
zonzonel
Oops, the presumably fascist govt. is fighting a fascist group.
What is a poor troll to do these days??
Antiukrainian copywriting just got more difficult, perhaps a raise is needed? Just sayin.
What's your problem? Never heard of Fascist groups fighting each other? Never heard of the
"Night of the Long Knives"? Fascists have no principles to unite them. They believe in Uebermenschen
and of course they all think that either they themselves or their leader is The Ueberuebermensch.
Anyone who disagrees is an enemy no matter how Fascist he may be.
samuel glover ploughmanlunch 12 Jul 2015 14:55
Y'know, I'm no fan of the Russophobic hysteria that dominates English-language media. I've
been to Ukraine several times over the last 15 years or so, and I'm sorry to say that I think
that in time Ukrainians will regard Maidan's aftermath as most of them view the Orange Revolution
-- with regret and cynicism.
That said, this notion that everything, absolutely everything Kiev does follows some master
script drawn up in DC and Brussels is simplistic and tiresome. Most post-revolution regimes purge
one end or the other of the current ideological wings. Kiev has already tangled with the oligarch
and militia patron Igor Kolomoisky. So perhaps this is another predictable factional struggle.
Or maybe, as another comment speculates, this is a feud over cigarette tax revenue.
In any case, Ukraine is a complex place going through an **extremely** complex time. it's too
soon to tell what the Lviv skirmish means, and **far** too soon to lay it all on nefarious puppetmasters.
TheTruthAnytime ADTaylor 12 Jul 2015 14:49
The only thing that makes me reconsider is their service to their country,...
Is the CIA their country? So far they've only seemed to serve the interests of American businesspeople,
not Ukrainian interests. Also, murdering eastern Ukrainians cannot really be considered such a
great service to Ukraine, can it?
annamarinja ID075732 12 Jul 2015 14:44
Maidan was indeed a popular apprising, but it was utilized by the US strategists for their
geopolitical games. The Ukrainians are going to learn hard way that the US have never had any
interest in well-being of the "locals" and that the ongoing civil war was designed in order to
create a festering wound on a border with the Russia. The Iraqization of Ukraine was envisioned
by the neocons as a tool to break both Russia and Ukraine. The sooner Ukrainians come to a peaceful
solution uniting the whole Ukraine (for example, to federalization), the better for the general
population (but not for the thieving oligarchs).
vr13vr 12 Jul 2015 14:38
"Couple of hundred Right Sector supporters demonstrated in Kiev?" Come on! Over the last week,
there have been enough of videos of thousands of people in fatigues trying to block access to
government buildings and shouting rather aggressive demands. The entire battalions of "National
Guard." This is much bigger than just 100 people on a peaceful rally. Ukraine might be heading
towards Maidan 3.0.
ID075732 12 Jul 2015 14:26
The situation in Ukraine has been unravelling for months and this news broke on Friday evening.
The Minsk II cease fire has not been honoured by Poroshenko, who has not managed to effect
any of the pledges he signed up to. The right sector who rejected the cease-fire from the start
are now refusing the rule of their post coup president in Kiev.
Time for Victoria Nuland to break out the cookies? Or maybe it's too late for that now. The
country formerly know as Ukraine is turning out to be another outstanding success of American
post -imperial foreign policy.
Meanwhile in UFA the BRIC's economic forum is drawing to a close, with representatives from
the developing world and no reporting of the aspirations being discussed there of over 60% of
the world's population. It's been a major success, but if you want to learn about it, you will
have to turn to other media sources - those usually reported as Russian propaganda channels or
Putin's apologists.
The same people who have been reporting on the deteriorating situation in Kiev since the February
coup. Or as Washington likes to call it a popular up rising.
'The only thing that makes me reconsider is their service to their country'
Don't get me wrong. I detest the fascist militias and their evil deeds.
However, despite their callousness, brutality and stupidity, they have been the most effective
fighting force for Kiev ( more sensible Ukrainians have been rather more reluctant to kill their
fellow countrymen ).
Deluded ? Yes. Cowardly ? No.
Even more reprehensible, in my opinion are the calculating and unprincipled Kiev Government
that have attempted to bully a region of the Ukraine that had expressed legitimate reservations,
using those far right battalions, but accepting no responsibility for the carnage that they carried
out.
mario n 12 Jul 2015 12:52
I think it's time Europe spoke up about dangers of Ukrainian nationalism. 72 years ago Ukrainian
fascists committed one of the most hideous and brutal acts of genocide in the human history. Details
are so horrifying it is beyond imagination. Sadly not many people remembers that, because it is
not politically correct to say bad things about Ukraine. Today mass murderers are hailed as national
heroes and private battalions and ultranationalist groups armed to the teeth terrorise not only
Donbas but now different parts of the country like Zakarpattia where there is strong Hungarian,
Russian and Romanian minority.
How many massacres and acts of genocide Europe needs before it learns to act firmly?
SHappens 12 Jul 2015 12:49
Kiev has allowed nationalist groups including Right Sector to operate despite allegations
by groups like Amnesty International, that Right Sector has tortured civilian prisoners.
You know what, you dont play with fire or you will get burnt. It was written on the wall that
these Bandera apologists would eventually turn to the hand that fed them. I wonder how Kiev will
manage to blame the russians now.
RicardoJ 12 Jul 2015 12:33
Of course the Guardian doesn't like to explain that 'Right Sector' are genuine fascists - by
their own admission! These fascists, who wear Nazi insignia, were the people who overthrew the elected government
of Ukraine in the US / EU-supported coup - which the Guardianistas and other PC-brainwashed duly
cheered on as a supposed triumph of democracy. Since that glorious US-financed and EU-backed coup, wholly illegal under international law,
Ukraine's economy has collapsed, as has Ukrainians' living standards.
The US neocons are losing interest in their attempted land grab of Ukraine - and the EU cretins
who backed the coup, thinking it would be a nice juicy further territorial acquisition for the
EU, are desperately looking the other way, now that both the US and EU realize that Ukraine is
a financial black hole.
When the Guardian claims to be a fearless champion of investigative journalism - as it is,
in some areas - why did it obey the dictats of the US neocon media machine which rules all Western
mainstream media over the Ukrainian land grab, instead of telling the truth, at that time?
jgbg 12 Jul 2015 12:15
The move came after a gunfight broke out on Saturday, when about 20 Right Sector gunmen
arrived at a sports complex controlled by MP Mikhail Lano. They had been trying to stop the
traffic of cigarettes and other contraband, a spokesman for the group said.
Put another way, one group of gangsters tried to muscle in on the cigarette smuggling operation
of another group of gangsters. Smuggling cigarettes into nearby EU countries is extremely lucrative. Here's some video of some of the events:
Note the registration plates driven by both Right Sector and the other gangsters i.e. not Ukrainian.
In all likelihood, these cars are all stolen. Right Sector and fighters from "volunteer battalions" have become accustomed to muscling in
on other people's activities (legal or not) in Donbass. This sort of thuggery is routine when
these folk come to town. It is only when since they have continued such activities on their home
turf in west and central Ukraine that the authorities have taken any notice.
This is true but the USSR collapsed by and large due to degeneration of Bolshevik's elite
(who later became turncoats and were bribed to accept neoliberalism) and mismanagement of the
economy. So if Maduro mismanaged the economy he is doomed, no matter how well his regime tried to
support the bottom 80% of population. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
The United States has for more than a hundred years, two reasons to interfere in the
Soviet Union/Russia. One was ideological with the United States wanting to focus its wealth
in the hands of the one percent it could not allow communism to succeed as it was too great a
threat to capitalism. The other is that it wants unobstructed access to the Soviet
Union/Russian mineral wealth in the east, i.e., it wants to "own" Siberia.
With a successful Soviet Union/Russia, it was possible that revolution would spread through
Europe and even to the United States. End of capitalism. Prior to the Second World War, the
Soviet economy was doing well Then the Second World War came along and although militarily
the Soviet Union was the victor it was at the price of its industrial base being severely
damaged, so to make capitalism more attractive the United States poured wealth into Western
Europe in the Marshall Plan and allowed European parties such as the British Labour Party, a
nominally socialist party but a supporter of capitalism, to introduce the Welfare State to
calm down the restless natives. With the ossification of the Soviet leadership and the
eventual collapse of the USSR, the United States saw that there was no effective competition
with capitalism so it pushed the world away from the Welfare State and towards neo-liberalism
and austerity. The only problem is that the natives are getting restless again but with
largely right-wing politicians in charge. Since most of those right-wing politicians are
ardent capitalist, they're not prepared to make the jump to socialism of any type. When the
right-wing politicians fail, then perhaps you'll see a massive shift to the left as people
start to understand that capitalism, particularly the unregulated kind so beloved in the
United States can't meet their needs.
BTW, it's not difficult to imagine what the MSM would make of a country that was socialist
and nationalist, just look at the hatred directed at the SSNP.
Attempts by Russian gov. to intimidate Amb. Wallace & @UANI are unacceptable. If
President Putin is serious about stabilizing the Middle East, confronting terrorism &
preventing a nuclear arms race in the region, he should stand with UANI & against
Iran.
Why would the national security advisor care what the Russian Foreign Ministry has to say
about a New York-based nonprofit's letter writing campaign, especially when those remarks got
virtually no notice in the media?
Bolton's personal finances and the president's biggest campaign funder offer a couple
clues.
Bolton's financial disclosures show that between September 2015 and April 2018, he
received $165,000 from the Counter-Extremism Project (CEP), a group with overlapping
staffers, board members, and finances with UANI. According to the Bolton's disclosures, the
payments were "consulting fees."
I stopped by to thank you for the link to Greg Grandin you offered in the last thread. I
just finished reading it, and it's a gem of historical storytelling, weaving great themes of
law in a superbly easy read. The concept of national sovereignty originated for the world in
the Latin American colonies, and over time the US embraced it as international law, only to
discard it later, from about the Nixon era on.
So Bolton and the like are actually acting within a current Washington school of thought.
And how well the concept of interventionism has been captured by neoliberalism. The concept
of individual sovereignty was used to dissolve the borders of national sovereignty, but it
wasn't the individual who won. As Grandin states towards the end:
"Economic globalisation promised a prosperous, borderless world, even as its promoters
signed a raft of treaties that freed capital but effectively criminalised labour mobility."
This matter of the mobility of capital and the demise of the individual is something shown
clearly in that other excellent piece you linked a couple of weeks back:
I've wanted to come here to comment on it but the task seemed daunting. Foster's
magisterial article traces the history of neoliberalism - almost 100 years old - and shows
how the mobility of capital was always what it aimed towards. And this financially
borderless world is what we live in now - how ironic that the US can enforce imperial borders
through financial sanctions.
~~
So the stories told by Grandin and Foster seem to intertwine. The rich desire a borderless
world to move capital freely. This has killed the prosperity of the working classes because
of the ease of offshoring industry - the ultimate threat against the worker. And you can no
longer restore equity to a society simply by taxing wealth, because it's too easy for wealth
to flee to other havens. The only thing you can do is nationalize it, to force it to stay
in-country.
Indeed, Venezuela is the enemy of the US on both of these crucial fronts: it insists on
the national sovereignty of its resources and it insists on sharing that wealth with its
workers. It becomes ever more clear that the struggle for true national sovereignty can only
come with the empowerment of the sovereign people, through fair law and fair distribution of
national wealth.
But to do all this, in an era of borderless capitalism, takes socialism.
And this is the crucial aspect of the time we live in. Justice Holmes I think said that he
paid taxes as the price for civilization. But moving forward the only way we can pay for
civilization now is through socialism. This is the dynamic that all the roads lead to,
inexorably.
You see what trouble you stir up when you share links?
This is true but the USSR collapsed by and large due to degeneration of Bolshevik's elite
(who later became turncoats and were bribed to accept neoliberlaim) and mismanagement of the
economy.
The United States has for more than a hundred years, two reasons to interfere in the
Soviet Union/Russia. One was ideological with the United States wanting to focus its wealth
in the hands of the one percent it could not allow communism to succeed as it was too great a
threat to capitalism. The other is that it wants unobstructed access to the Soviet
Union/Russian mineral wealth in the east, i.e., it wants to "own" Siberia.
With a successful Soviet Union/Russia, it was possible that revolution would spread through
Europe and even to the United States. End of capitalism. Prior to the Second World War, the
Soviet economy was doing well Then the Second World War came along and although militarily
the Soviet Union was the victor it was at the price of its industrial base being severely
damaged, so to make capitalism more attractive the United States poured wealth into Western
Europe in the Marshall Plan and allowed European parties such as the British Labour Party, a
nominally socialist party but a supporter of capitalism, to introduce the Welfare State to
calm down the restless natives. With the ossification of the Soviet leadership and the
eventual collapse of the USSR, the United States saw that there was no effective competition
with capitalism so it pushed the world away from the Welfare State and towards neo-liberalism
and austerity. The only problem is that the natives are getting restless again but with
largely right-wing politicians in charge. Since most of those right-wing politicians are
ardent capitalist, they're not prepared to make the jump to socialism of any type. When the
right-wing politicians fail, then perhaps you'll see a massive shift to the left as people
start to understand that capitalism, particularly the unregulated kind so beloved in the
United States can't meet their needs.
BTW, it's not difficult to imagine what the MSM would make of a country that was socialist
and nationalist, just look at the hatred directed at the SSNP.
The supposed Western aid convoy seeking to enter Venezuela from Columbia was obviously a
set-up for false flags designed to trigger an escalation of Trump's war on Maduro's
democratically-elected, constitutionally-legitimate government.
There are multiple analogies between Venezuela color revolution and EuroMaydan... This
article is from April 17 2017 or one month after Ukraine far right came to power via armed
uprising, deposing sitting President (which paradoxically was subservant to Washington
neoliberal, with Biden as his best friend) which barely managed to escape alive.
Looks like closing the US embassy was a good move but "too little too late" on the part of
Maduro government, if we are thinking about the typical mechanics of the color revolution, as was
displayed during EuroMaydan. But functions of the US embassy probably were probably quickly re-
distributed to UK and other NATO countries embassies, so this is a half-measure. In any case as
this article suggests the defense against color revolution is a difficult art, as forces that try
to unleash the color revolution are very powerful indeed and are very skillful in exploiting
economic difficulties created with their own participation via sanction to topple the
government.
They can also allow themselves huge injection of money into the country to feed the
opposition, as well as performing coordination and planning role. Because the next stage is the
economic rape of the country and in this sense those are money well spend.
In case of Venezuela the confiscation of CITCO is an ominous sign as it allows confiscated
from the Maduro government funds to be used against him.
As Trump entered the Presidential race for 2020 election, the question of Venezuela color
revolution success became the question of his prestige. that's probably why stanch neocon Elliott
Abrams, who is the expert in regime change and covert operations for undermining the government,
that US government want to topple, was dusted off and put in charge.
The Director of Fund of research of problems of democracy Maxim Grigoriev -- technology coup
in Ukraine
The political conflict between the authorities and the population in Ukraine is rapidly
growing into a large-scale civil war, which leads to the split of the country. After Crimea,
several other southeastern regions declared their desire to join Russia. The head of the
"Foundation for the Research of the Problems of Democracy" , member of the Public Chamber and
author of the book "the Regime of Saakashvili: how it was accomplished" Maxim Grigoriev told
the correspondent of "Izvestia" Natalia Bashlykova why the new government can not agree with
its own people, as well as which political force is interested in new Presidential Elections in
the current conditions.
Q: Are there any facts that Ukraine really had a prepared project of the "orange
revolution"?
- There are many such facts. To begin with, shortly before the activation of the Maidan in
Ukraine, as if by a click of the switch, a number of oppoosition TV channels were created,
which simultaneously began broadcasting on the Internet. Their main theme, of course, was the
translation of opposition's speeches and protests. Actually propaganda of any activities of the
opposition. On the Maidan they created for this purpose the whole military style system of
uninterrupted provision of Internet. Which did have any interruption since it was created.
There were temporary blackouts, but 99% of the time the Internet was availble. A large number
of television cameras were purchased for the protesters. We know the facts when they went with
cameras on lashes with the law enforcement, on occupation of government institutions... There
were live broadcasts from everywhere.
In addition, Ukraine has a whole network of human rights organizations, all activists of
which in the hour of the ICS were in the ranks of the opposition.
There is a very well-known statement of the presidential candidate of Ukraine Oleg Tsarev,
made almost one day before the Maidan. November 20 in the Verkhovna Rada, he said that with the
active support of the US Embassy the preparation is under way toward unleashing the civil war.
The American instructors are actively training specialists trained in discrediting state
institutions. He talked about the project" Techcamp", which was carried out under the patronage
of the US Ambassador to Ukraine.
That is, there is a strong evidence from multiple sources, indicating that the EuroMaidan in
terms of resources, mobilization of people was prepared at a very high level. If the choice of
the date of uprising was not fixed and probably occurred somewhat spontaneously, but the script
itself was prepared well in advance.
Q: Who and how implemented this scenario? Is the technology known?
- The main force that actually implemented the coup, were trained in Ukraine and hired
fighters who were part of the"Right sector". They played a major role in the overthrow of
power: attacked law enforcement agencies, carried out seizures of state institutions. The "
Right sector "includes a number of organizations, but most of it, up to 70-80%, is a detachment
of" Trident " named after Stepan Bandera under the leadership of Dmitry Yarosh. These are
people who directly consider themselves the heirs of Bandera and talk about it with pride. They
exist with the support of various state authorities of Ukraine. They have been training their
people for almost 20 years. There is evidence that they worked closely with the security
services of Ukraine. For example, with Valentin Nalivaychenko, who was and is now the head of
the security Service of Ukraine. Yarosh was his assistant in his stay as the Deputy of the
Verkhovna Rada. To the Yarosh book "Nation and state" Nalyvaychenko, wrote the Preface, which
calls "the Right sector" partnership structure and looks forward to continued cooperation with
him.
That is, the training was quite large-scale, it was attended by such elements as the removal
of sentries, the attack of a subversive group, separation from prosecution, sniper shooting and
others.
Q: Why neither the authorities, nor security officers didn't react to it?
Because the Ukrainian government itself supported the "Right sector", helped with funding
and training. As I said, the security service of Ukraine participated in this work. Of course,
there were those who perceived the "Right sector" as a force that can instll itself at power at
any time, but there were also a number of politicians who saw it as a support for their
interests, including for the maintaining of the power or neoliberal oligarchs.
Q: Why these forces came the population, after all, the Maidan was and ordinary people?
They didn't know what was going on?
-- Here it is necessary to understand accurately what groups of the population came to the
Maidan. First, the part of the population that supported the European Union and European
integration. We can say that these are those who in Moscow call themselves the creative class,
and I would rather call it the serving class. These are people who were sincerely sure that
after signing the Association agreement with the European Union, their lives will change:
Europe will begin to Finance the country, all problems with corruption will disappear,
high-paying jobs will appear.
Secondly, the students, most of whom came out -- it is important to pay attention to this
-- to these actions on the direct instructions of the rectors. They were exempted from
attending lectures, supplied with food.
The most significant part on protesters were specially brought from the Western Ukraine, at
some point they became the dominat force for EuroMaidan.
There were at meeting representatives of political parties to which it is possible to carry
supporters Vitaly Klitschko and Arseniy Yatsenyuk, but at some point this political management
ceased to control a situation. As a result, the Maidan passed into the hands of the "Right
sector" and self-defense units of Andrei Parubiy. It is on the militants of these groups all
kept. These are those people who sincerely consider themselves successors of Stepan Bandera's
business. They consider that the present situation in Ukraine-continuation of that situation in
1941 when their ancestors willingly cooperated with fascist Germany.
Q: How true that part of the people who went to the Maidan, received money for
it?
-- Part of the insurgents, but I find it difficult to talk about any specific amounts,
because the payment was differentiated. In addition, everyone had different sources of funding.
But as a clear example of who was paid well -- Parubiy, which the media accused that during the
Maidan he bought three apartments in Kiev.
Q: Was the removal of Yanukovych pre-planned?
- It was impossible to predict that Viktor Yanukovich would act in such a strange, cowardice
way. There is an interesting comment of the Minister of internal Affairs of Ukraine Arsen
Avakov who says that it isn't clear to him how actually Yanukovych in the first days treated
the Maidan: supported it or not, or was for European integration or against. At the end
Yanukovich tried to avoid bloodshed and barely managed to escape the country alive. But, as we
see now, this has led to even more bloodshed. Therefore, to predict this kind of situation was
quite difficult.
Q: What was the final result expected by the authors of "project Ukraine"?
- The difficulty is that the Maidan was not one single project. It was a series of such
interrelated projects. Because, for example, Europeans initially would like to see the
President of Ukraine Vitali Klitschko. Americans on the contrary put on Yatsenyuk.
The main task of all external forces, of course, was to continue the policy of containment
of Russia, as once the USSR. If Ukraine was not connected with Russia, it would not be of any
interest except as another market for the sale of products and the market for cheap labor,
perhaps even a transit route.
In addition, a number of internal interests of political players of Ukraine, primarily
oligarchs, worked on the euromaidan. Therefore, the goal was not only the signing of the
agreement on Ukraine's accession to the European Union and the imposition of Pro-American
power, this is only part of the plan, which, perhaps, we do not fully know.
Q: How similar is this situation to the revolution in Georgia?
- There are similarities and differences. I studied Georgia a lot and studied in detail how
Mikhail Saakashvili came to power, how he built his regime of retaining power and actually
built a totalitarian regime. But nevertheless I can say that Saakashvili came to power with
substantial support of the population. At first, Georgians lived with great expectations of
positive changes. In Ukraine, the situation is fundamentally different: half of the country
practically does not support the authorities from the Maidan. Most Ukrainians understand that
it is focused on the interests of the Western regions, the Bandera region. While the other part
of the country adheres to completely opposite views.
Therefore, the situation in Ukraine, unlike Georgia, is more serious, and it is difficult to
say how it will develop. So far, what I see in Ukraine, I can evaluate as a negative
scenario.
Actions for which the former oppostions, while Maylan was active, criticized Yanukovych, are
now widelyly deployed to crahs the protests. But Yanukovich, in contrast, refused to use the
armed forces in the fight against those who went to the Maidan. A new Ukrainian government can
not exist without the support of the military and in accelerated pace leads the country to the
civil war.
Although, as in the elections of the President of Georgia, in Ukraine today began with the
support of US NGO such as the McCain Institute, which was conducting opinion polls,
overestimating the ratings of the most convenient for the USA candidates, as well as engaged in
the organization of election.
According to my information, the money allocated to Ukraine is 10 times more than to
Georgia.
"... the False flag has arrived, the Washington post is now spreading the lie that Venezuelan soldiers shot civilians - now to see if the lie takes hold ..."
Special Representative for Venezuela Elliott Abrams will travel to Homestead Air Reserve
Base, Florida and Cucuta, Colombia February 21-22 to support the delivery of humanitarian
aid to some of the most vulnerable people in Venezuela in response to Interim President
Guaido's request.
Special Representative Abrams will lead a U.S. government delegation to accompany
humanitarian supplies to be transported from Florida to Colombia by military aircraft.
While in Colombia Special Representative Abrams will meet Colombian President Duque and
visiting delegations from Central and South America.
Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams has defended his role in authorizing the
shipment of weapons on a humanitarian aid flight to Nicaraguan rebels, saying the operation
was "strictly by the book."
Mr. Abrams spoke at a news conference Saturday in response to statements by Robert
Duemling, former head of the State Department's Nicaraguan humanitarian assistance office,
who said he had twice ordered planes to shuttle weapons for the contras on aid planes at
Mr. Abrams's direction in early 1986.
According to Strategic Culture Abrams is not the slickest of operators, for
example, while leading the crusade against Nicaragua:
"Abrams solicited an illegal $10 million contribution to the Contras from the Sultan of
Brunei. When North later gave Abrams the Swiss bank account number for Lake Resources, a CIA
front in Geneva, he gave Abrams the wrong prefix of 368 instead of the actual number 386.
Abrams then passed the account number to Brunei. In Brunei, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah wired $10
million from the Citibank branch in Brunei to the wrong account at Credit Suisse in Geneva.
Due to North's and Abram's error, a Swiss shipping magnate was suddenly $10 million
wealthier. .."
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/02/22/trump-contra-war-redux-in-latin-america.html
A fatality at the Brazilian border apparently but the situation is confusing. It's unclear
where the empty truck incident took place but it wasn't at the actual Venezuela/Colombia
border. Mariara is a town between Caracas and Cucuta.
"One person has been killed and 12 are injured after Venezuelan troops opened fire on
civilians trying to keep a border checkpoint open for aid deliveries, it has been
claimed.
Troops arrived at a checkpoint set up by an indigenous community in Kumarakapai, on
Venezuela's southern border with Brazil early this morning.
But when civilians tried to block military vehicles, soldiers opened fire shooting 12 and
killing a woman named as Zorayda Rodriguez, 42, according to the Washington Post. "
Don't have the link, but I urge you to take a look at www.mintpressnews.com for an update on
the "take over" of the
Venezuelan embassy in Costa Rica. The person in charge (!?) is Maria Faria whose father is in
jail for his part in an
assasination attempt on Chavez. The gov of Costa Rica is not amused. These are the people who
will "bring democracy to Venezuela" Right. BTW, she bribed her way into the building.
Meanwhile, the false flag may be occurring. Zero hedge has a report of a civilian at the
brazilian border.
Strictly by the "CIA book", that is. The one that allows Americans to cheat, lie and murder
as much as they like, and then say it's all for the good of those who are cheated, lied to
and murdered.
Hopefully someone can explain. Current inflation rate in Venezuela is 2.6 million %! Is this
correct? If so how did this happen and how is country surviving? And how is Maduro
maintaining his support?
Venezuela have acted naive the whole time, they know US will provoke for weeks and haven't
done anything. Even the ambassadors from US, EU are still in Venezuela!
China, Russia haven't done anything for all these months, they are also to blame for not
stopping this aggression.
The just-published new episode of Empire Files is a gift to all infowarriors
containing most relevant topical information. Share widely and kudos to Abby Martin and Mike
Prysner:
@ 11
"The one that allows Americans to cheat, lie and murder as much as they like, and then say
it's all for the good of those who are cheated, lied to and murdered." I have come to the belief that that is what they mean by the word "FREEDOM".
Interesting facts about the economy in Venezuela. There isn`t enough currency in the hands of
the population but inflation keeps rising and stores are "empty". Some unions are asking for
pay increases at the same time saying that their currency is worthless. The value of the
dollar is fixed in Miami by DollarToDay or some crap like that but the government doesn't do
anything about it.
Is this Econ101 or the Twightlight Zone School of Economics.
Your post is terrifying to me, and hopefully B will approve of my reposting it in case
anyone misses it the first time.
"It seems they are a pleasant family the Abrams. On her blog, Rachel Adams, wife of
Elliott wrote about the Palestinians:
"Transformer-doodling, homework-losing children of Others -- and their offspring -- those
who haven't already been pimped out by their mothers to the murder god -- as shields, hiding
behind their burkas and cradles like the unmanned animals they are, and throw them not into
your prisons, where they can bide until they're traded by the thousands for another child of
Israel, but into the sea, to float there, food for sharks, stargazers, and whatever other
oceanic carnivores God has put there for the purpose.""
re the Daily Mail and ZeroHedge article(s) on the "shooting." Not sure that the shooting
story is legit.
There are no photos of the troops shooting, there is video of the troops NOT shooting when
attacked by various people, there are photos of people on gurneys with possible wounds, but
we all have been down THAT road before...(White Helmets....)I will wait for the govt's take
on the event.
IMO all of this is setting us up for the idiotic concert, my guess is we will see a Maidan
set to music or possibly a rerun of the Vegas shooting.
BTW, I have posted the NY Times 1987 article above in reply to several Daily Mail and Sputnik
posts. Thank you B for enabling me to do so.
ah, shoulda known they wouldn't give up this easily. mueller doesn't have any evidence, so
there will probably be a few weeks of handwringing about the report being doctored, followed
by entreaties to vote for a centrist democrat to beat trump, and for god's sake don't vote
for sanders, cause he can't protect us against putin or something.
@ Posted by: Victor J. | Feb 22, 2019 12:55:57 PM | 20
Hyperinflation can be easily explained by the fact the Venezuelan right-wing is the
bourgeoisie, thus they control the circulation of goods. Without the stores (lock-out), there
is not goods in a monetized society.
But that doesn't stop there: lack of circulation fuels black market. The stronger the
black market, the higher the prices, the higher the inflation. To top it off, it is
embargoed, so imports are not an option. In this scenario (siege + lockout), bandits
thrive.
However, the situation is artificial. Where the shops are open, there is no
shortage of essential goods . There is no hunger in Venezuela -- at least nothing out of
the extraordinaire for capitalist standards (and specially, Latin American standards, where
extreme poverty is ubiquitous). The defficiency is with the more manufactured goods
(specially medicine, but alos hygiene products etc). Since Venezuela also has a very weak
milk production, they also suffer with its supply and of its derivatives.
Venezuela is a textbook Dutch Disease country. It is astonishing Chávez didn't
redirect the resources of the oil boom towards industrialization. Lenin and Stalin did it
under a much more severe situation, so there is no excuse for Chávez putting the cart
in front of the oxen.
From Reuters: on Indigenous person was allegedly killed by Venezuelan solidiers in the
city of Kumarakapay. The rumor also claims there are many wounded.
Have you forgotten? 1975: CIA + MI5/6 coup against Australian Prime Minister Gough
Whitlam
re: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nugan_Hand_Bank
Poor Gough got too curious about Nugan Hand and that simply won't do. Next up, Malcolm Fraser
who immediately flew off to DC and a meeting with Ronnie RayGun. Good ole Malcolm reportedly
made time in his busy schedule for a meeting with David Rockefeller also.
D's run around wanting all these nice things for Americans while they continue to support
"regime change" wars that kill, maim and destroy the infrastructure of countries all over the
world so our corporations can steal their resources and we keep our military/intelligence and
congressional community fat and happy. When all that money we use on destruction could be
used here at home on something constructive. What a bunch of hypocrites. Sanders among
them.
The house even passed a bill unanimously that allows us to sanction anyone aiding in the
reconstruction of any Syrian land held by the Syrian government. The demise of this country
can't happen soon enough.
"The house even passed a bill unanimously that allows us to sanction anyone aiding in the
reconstruction of any Syrian land held by the Syrian government."
Sadly the US is among the sorest losers of all time. Salting the earth where ever it
goes. Although, I recall Assad said that no country that participated in the country's attempted
destruction could ever have a role in the rebuild, so we may be just seeing sour grapes:)
Thanks so much for posting this link to Abby Martin's new piece. The interview with the UN
Human Rights Investigator Alfred de Zayas is extermely revealing, I strongly recommend
viewing it to really understand the situation and the machinations of the power interests
that want to control Venezuela. As well as what he calls "the ocean of lies". He says so
much, a very knowledgeable and truthful person, an expert in fact.
The revolution of the bourgeois/grand children of ex cololianlists who simply cannot accept
that their grandparents' loot have been taken over by the brown people.ie, Native Indians and
black Africans.
What's happeing in Venezuela is a small part of a wider trend sweeping across Latin
America.ie: the old colonialists want their possisions back and they have a willing partner
in the US to help them achieve this dream. Thet've succeeded in Brazil, Argentina etc and
won't stop until the make Latin America great again.
Funny thing about this coup is that, the execution was so sloppy that it's almost comical.
Essentially some wimpy guy with very powerful connections suddenly appoints himself as leader
of the country and is almost immediately legitimaized by ex-colonial powers - how
democratic!
It's even got to a point where some US officials are now issueing personal death threats
against members of the Venezuelan government if they don't defect. I guess one has to do
whatever it takes.
As things currently stand, it's a satlemate which might end up with the bourgeois moving on
to Miami to join their Cuban cousins who're still wating for the US to install them leaders
of Cuba again someday.....soon(whatever that means).
PS: I heard Richard Branson is throwing a rave for the revolition this weekend. Goes to
show how much vested interest are involved in this coup. It's like Cuba all over again.
Has anyone watched any of the Branson concert? It's dire.
There are only about 22,000 viewers on Youtube and the shots of the very large
crowd have a completely different colour balance to the rest suggesting that they were filmed
somewhere else, and occasionally they pan from the performers out towards the audience but
the numbers don't come close to the 250,000 claimed.
Posted by: Victor J. | Feb 22, 2019 12:55:57 PM | 20
I understand that people in Venezuela use plastic cards for day to day transactions, as
the paper currency is scarce. I suspect those millions of percent inflation figures relate
the the convertible value of the currency into foreign currency, not day to day purchases of
staple foods grown in the country.
I've watched a lot of video reports from the streets recently from Telesur and similar and
most people look well fed to me. You can see the contrast with Haiti - many of those oeople
really do look hungry and desperate.
Notice in the real images the stage is located on the curved portion of the bridge and is
positioned in a -45 degree angle (to face the crowd) relative to the flow of traffic, whereas
the fake images the stage is in the middle of the bridge on a straight portion of the bridge
and is faced at 180 degrees relative to the flow of traffic. Two completely different
scenes!
The attack on Venezuela is a flop and it isn't going anywhere. The US military has to already
be extremely aware they can't possibly win (see my comment 114 in "Trump Likes 'Beautiful'
Border Walls" and then Juliana mentioned/added the Darién Gap which means the US has
even less options for logistics).
Venezuela already has anti-aircraft and anti-ship systems that can reach well outside its
borders and of its supporters have systems that reach much further (anywhere).
- Billionaire Bernie is just another fake, as is anyone at all who's running for POTUS no
matter how small their party is.
- Washington Post has no journalists at all and thus no one either outside or inside
Venezuela. Ignore their noise.
- The zombie slaves of the US inside the US and elsewhere aren't going to make any
difference.
- The public propaganda is not actually for public consumption, it is only for the purpose of
continued delirium by the "elites" continuously telling themselves they're not addicts to
evil and that they're getting away with it all even though the year is 2019 and it's
incredibly difficult to figure out what they're supposedly not failing at or how they're not
making everything worse for everybody including themselves (privately hoarding green waste
paper is not a victory only a mental deficiency born of insecurity).
- There's no hyperinflation when it comes to oil and gold which are the de facto
international currencies of Venezuela and considering a full tank of gas in Venezuela costs
something like 1 Bolivar (let's call that 1 millionth of a US dollar according to the
bullshit about hyperinflation) the local economy is completely unaffected. It is interesting
that US dollars are practically unusable in Venezuela (as they should be because they're
worthless).
- Venezuela is incredibly far off from reaching the 20 Trillion USD debt level of the US.
I'm starting to think the whole attack against Venezuela is simply noisy misdirection away
from something else more significant. Either way it's going to cost the US dearly (what made
them think it was a good idea to antagonize Venezuela further? If there's no war they
continue to lose influence and if there's a war they lose much more).
Seeing Elliot ( I only spread democracy and freedom ) Abrams digress into a lisping,indignant
mess while being grilled by a very brave Ihan Omar was priceless. Such a display of courage
is almost non existent by the invertebrates in today's political parties. Unfortunately
getting your feathers ruffled is a weak punishment for genocide. As Alan Nairn pointed out
years ago if all was fair Elliot Abrams would be a perfect fit in the dock.
Venezuelas debt is 3 times GDP, and much of it in a currency they dont control. US debt equals its GDP, and all if it in its own currency. I am pretty sure dollars on the black market are in great demand.
Addendum to my previous post. Finally figured out where the fake concert photos are from.
They are from the 'Peace Without Borders concert of March 16 2008' . Moreover, the
300K number that has been pushed by Branson and by the MSM is no coincedence at all either.
That number is the estimated number of attendees from the
actual 2008 concert .
Trump is accusing Cuba of having troops in Venezuela. Could Trump be wanting to do Cuba too?
Trump scraps the INF and wants to give Saudis nuclear technology, and representing the
party of the Christian Right wants to force all countries to legalize homosexuality. LOL.
World gets crazier every day
Recent WSJ item said Trump's plan included Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. According to
Pepe Escobar, Cuba has 15,000 troops in Venezuela. Any transfer of nuclear tech to Saudi
violates numerous US laws and NPT as well. Trump's move on gay rights is supposed to pressure
Iran.
This is also from Saker - I will put the heading in without that attribution, sorry I am not
good at appropriate links but scrolling down on the front page at that site will get you to
this important message:
There are 9 purported aid trucks in Cucuta vs. what the vice president is saying are 149
being already mobilized by the Venezuelan government. She begins by thanking the Holland
government for their support, remarks that there are 'no attention or programs directed to
vulnerable sectors of our sister republic of Columbia' and ends by saying the Venezuelan
government has apprised the governments of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic of concern
about special forces arriving there.
Did anyone else notice the news story yesterday of eight heavily armed American special
forces types detained in Haiti, then taken to the airport and flown back to USA? National
Post & CTV in Canada ran story, but no follow up.
"
Curacao government communications officer Corinne Leysner told AFP the island's parliament
had agreed to act as a hub for aid "but that goods cannot leave for Venezuela until there is
a safe environment to receive them."
She said the government could not permit the boat to leave with the shipment for security
reasons after Maduro's government ordered the closure of Venezuela's sea and air borders with
Curacao.
"It is a safety issue. Of course we want to help the people of Venezuela but we are not
going to be choosing fights," Leysner said.
Thanks for the info. I had no idea Cuba had so many troops in Venezuela.
Not entirely sure how Trump can pressure Iran into legalizing Homosexuality. Interested in
seeing how his supporters take it. Of course his mentor Roy Cohn was a homosexual who died of
AIDS. Trumps also recently come out saying he wants to focus on eliminating AIDS. A tribute
to his late mentor (partner?)
Trump's aim is based on his assumption that Iran will never allow equal rights for
homosexuals, wants it to become the only nation denying them, then use the R2P concept to
attack Iran.
RE Venezuela, the entire aid charade is also being utilized to promote the R2P concept as
basis for invasion.
Colombian military bases leased by Outlaw US Empire can be seen
on this map .
Interesting. That would be a way to get the LGBT crowd to go along with a war against
Iran, at least that portion that is not owned by the Israeli lobby
The Cuban connection adds another group that will support war on Venezuela in the hopes it
could topple Cubas government, although he frankly has the support of both parties for
Venezuela regime change, short of all out war
All thats needed now is Iran to be found supporting Venezuela and Venezuela and Cuba added
to the list of countries supporting Terrorists. Maybe thats what the next FF brings us. After
that he can get support to take on Venezuela , Iran and Cuba together and get NATO to support
this. Hope not .
He plays by the book, alright, it's called The Book of High Crimes and Misdemeanors. and those are impeachable and Go to Jail offenses. he's a monster.... But he's our monster, sayeth the spooks and Trumpster
Over at the Open Comments thread (thanks to M @ 64 who posted the link), a commenter (GF)
there has said that 2 days after the Brumadinho dam disaster in Minas Gerais (occurred 25
January 2019), the Brazilian government allowed an Israeli plane with 136 personnel and 16
tonnes of equipment to land in the area to assist in emergency aid efforts. The Brazilian
Congress had given no approval for the Israeli plane to fly in and there was no audit or
control over the movements of the people and equipment on the plane. The plane stayed for 2
days and then left.
Google suggests that driving from Brumadinho to Santa Elena de Uairen at the sole
Brazil-Venezuela crossover point would take 64 hours (nearly 3 days) via the BR-174
highway.
As we enter the "silly season"(election fever), the disinformation will fly fast and
furiously. Be careful who and what you believe. One thing you can be sure of, the empire and
it's minions, have limitless amounts of $ to convince anyone that water isn't wet.
I for one, will be shocked if the Mueller investigation produces anything concrete. DJT is
the perfect rep for the people he represents, and it's NOT the working classes.
Wishing the Venezuelan people all the best, as they struggle against another onslaught
from the evil empire.
QUESTION: If you're moving against these regimes that are not democratic, many Nicaraguan
people, Cuban people are saying, "Are you going to help us next?"
SECRETARY POMPEO: Yes, President Trump's administration has done so and will continue
to do so not just in Venezuela but certainly Nicaragua and Cuba as well .
<...>
It is astonishing Chávez didn't redirect the resources of the oil boom towards
industrialization.
Industrialization requires the cooperation of the educated middle and upper classes -- but
these classes were precisely the people opposing Chávez. So he needed to educate his
people, and that needed time (a generation or two). Chávez died too soon.
Lenin and Stalin did it under a much more severe situation, so there is no excuse for
Chávez putting the cart in front of the oxen.
The USSR had a civil war and defeated the White Army, much as China defeated its
Nationalists (also in a civil war). Note that these countries were able to industrialize.
Venezuela could not, probably because its elites were undefeated and were fighting
Chávez hard, and are fighting Maduro even harder.
"Soon the music is going to stop with us Americans being blamed and not those who own
private finance and everything else."
Exactly. The script is already written. After all this support will be there for a Global
Government that will issue the Carbon Dollar/Credits and monitor/control energy consumption
and be run by those who today run international private finance and the major Central Banks.
They will demand reparations from American Citizens in the form of a higher carbon tax and
asset forfeiture ( resources, military,etc) which is why they will be supported by 95% of the
worlds population. The US elite will support this after being assured of global citizenship
and protection of their assets. Global citizenship entitles you to reside in any country
.
They might even split us up into 10-12 pieces with each piece as a separate government
along FEMA/COGS lines.
Trump will get an Oscar for his role in finishing off what Sir Bush Sr and those who
knocked off JFK started. He might even get ownership of Cuba and run the country as the
worlds biggest Casino
Putin probably gets to be Global President and Xi can be Minister of Security and Israel's
Sanhedrin will head the Global Justice Department, Google and Twitter will merge as the
Ministry of Truth and Bibi will handle the Population Control Department aka Extermination
Department. Bibi will appoint MBS as Chief Shiah Exterminator, use your imagination for the
rest.
To those who say Chavez didn't do enough, I say You'd have surrendered in 2002 and the
Revolution would've died with you.
I closely watched Chavez and Venezuela. The most important accomplishment was getting the
Bolivarian Constitution composed and passed into existence. The 2nd most important feat was
constructing TeleSur as before it and the myriad low-power radio stations also devised there
was only the elite-owned BigLie Media, Venezuelan edition. Those two stellar accomplishments
allowed Venezuelans to participate in and defend their democracy . Contemporaneous
with those developments was the rapid drive to improve literacy, for participatory democracy
demands a literate citizenry. IIRC, literacy went from @40% to 90+% in time for the vote on
the Constitution. And those are just the basic fundamentals. Land reform and redistribution
was attempted as was reorganizing the petroleum industry. Could Chavez have instituted more
radical reform? Yes, but at substantial risk. The recent developments prompted me to suggest
that Maduro go all the way and nationalize all important businesses since he really has
nothing to lose. But I'm not there observing everything, so my suggestion isn't totally
credible. It's hard not to want vengeance on the reactionary forces and their stooges; but as
the Russian and Chinese Civil Wars proved, it's probably better to eject those forces and
most of its stooges and struggle without whatever expertise they provided.
Have you forgotten? 1975: CIA + MI5/6 coup against Australian Prime Minister Gough
Whitlam.
...
Same as it ever was
Posted by: Desolation Row | Feb 22, 2019 2:03:24 PM | 34
No, I haven't forgotten.
What makes Gene Sharp's AUSTRALIA claim so bizarre is that the entire purpose of his various
Regime Change Bibles is to provide cherry-picked seeds for large anti-govt protests in order
to create the illusion of a Citizen's Popular Uprising as a prelude to "Step Down"
demands.
But that's not what happened to Whitlam. There were no pre-Step Down public protests. He
was the victim of a Palace Coup contrived by politicians who ignored the Will of The People
when making their moves.
It's 'interesting' because...
1. Gene Sharp claims Whitlam's demise as a victory for his teachings.
2. It bore no resemblance whatsoever to his recommended template.
3. Sharp was often accused of being funded by the CIA, which he tries to laugh off in the
doco.
4. But he's claimed a behind-the-scenes manipulation victory, with CIA and British Empire
fingerprints all over it, as a Gene Sharp victory.
To those who say Chavez didn't do enough, I say You'd have surrendered in 2002 and the
Revolution would've died with you.
Agreed.
I closely watched Chavez and Venezuela. The most important accomplishment was getting the
Bolivarian Constitution composed and passed into existence. The 2nd most important feat was
constructing TeleSur as before it and the myriad low-power radio stations also devised there
was only the elite-owned BigLie Media, Venezuelan edition. Those two stellar accomplishments
allowed Venezuelans to participate in and defend their democracy . Contemporaneous
with those developments was the rapid drive to improve literacy, for participatory democracy
demands a literate citizenry. IIRC, literacy went from @40% to 90+% in time for the vote on
the Constitution. And those are just the basic fundamentals. Land reform and redistribution
was attempted as was reorganizing the petroleum industry.
Good summary, thank you. Clearly, Chávez had a monumental task. He died far too
soon.
Could Chavez have instituted more radical reform? Yes, but at substantial risk.
Indeed. Leaving hostile oligarchs in place has the substantial risk that they could stab
the revolution in the back. (Because of this, Putin has to be very careful.)
A democratic change of government has the advantage that the change can be accomplished
with little bloodshed, at least at first, and the disadvantage that the change is unlikely to
last: Brazil will be undoing everything Lula did.
I would like to add another country, besides the USSR and China, that was able to
industrialize after overcoming its elites: the USA.
It's hard not to want vengeance on the reactionary forces and their stooges; but as the
Russian and Chinese Civil Wars proved, it's probably better to eject those forces and most of
its stooges and struggle without whatever expertise they provided.
So the poor people of Venezuela are being attacked by: a) rich and middle-class people of
Venezuela, who withhold food and essential products from them, as well as put them under
extreme stress by creating hyperinflation, b) the United States, reducing Venezuela income
and thus reducing its ability to help its poor. Then these two groups claim to be so worried
about the plight of the poor that they threaten military action against the Venezuelan armed
forces staffed by the same Venezuelan poor, unless the democratically elected, legitimate
President of the poor is removed and an illegitimate usurper, President of the rich, is
installed. Inversion is the hallmark of a sociopath.
"He threatened the head of OPCW I believe as well."
Your belief is correct; The one threatened was José Bustani, then --- head of the
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
"Bolton -- then serving as under secretary of state for Arms Control and International
Security Affairs -- arrived in person at the OPCW headquarters in the Hague to issue a
warning to the organization's chief. And, according to Bustani, Bolton didn't mince words.
'Cheney wants you out,' Bustani recalled Bolton saying, referring to the then-vice president
of the United States. 'We can't accept your management style.'
Bolton continued, according to Bustani's recollections: 'You have 24 hours to leave the
organization, and if you don't comply with this decision by Washington, we have ways to
retaliate against you.'
There was a pause. 'We know where your kids live. You have two sons in New York'."
One cannot focus exclusively on one border. Since assuming command in November of US
Southern Command, US Admiral Faller has "visited" Brazil and Curaçao, Trinidad &
Tobago and Columbia -- all surrounding Venezuela -- as well as El Salvador, Guatemala and
Honduras.
"Humanitarian hubs" were established during these visits in Colombia, Brazil and
Curacao, with the agreement of NATO bloc member Netherlands which controls the island's
defence and foreign policy.
Naval deployments cannot be ignored either, as the post on the USS Abraham Lincoln
reminds. The HMCS Charlottetown is also in that area, with the ship's transponder turned
off.
The decision of the Maduro government to close the border with Brazil and the maritime
border with Curacao is correct and in defence of his country's sovereignty. It also confirms
there is far more ominous moves afoot than advertised in the psychological war by American
actors such as Sen Marco Rubio grandstanding with US Air Force transport aircraft and cookies
in Cúcata, Colombia or the forthcoming concert on Feb. 23 in that city of the
billionaire Richard Branson of the "white man's burden" type. At the same time, the situation
is very fluid.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez, at a press conference for the national and
international media, held at Minrex headquarters, February 19, 2019, pointed out:
The Revolutionary Government statement dated February 13, with full responsibility and
all necessary facts, affirmed, and I reiterate, that U.S. military transport flights are
taking place, originating at U.S. military installations from which operate special forces
units and marine infantry used for undercover actions, including those directed against
leaders or persons considered valuable.
Entirely without the knowledge of governments in the areas involved, and with total
disregard for the sovereignty of these states, the preparation of a military action
continues, using a humanitarian pretext.
Yesterday afternoon, President Donald Trump and other high-ranking functionaries and
spokespeople for the U.S. government repeated and confirmed that the military option is among
those being considered. Yesterday, the President said: All options are open.
According to the media in the U.S. itself, high-ranking U.S. military commands, which
do not, have never, taken charge of humanitarian aid, have held meetings with politicians in
the U.S. and other nations, and have made visits to sites clearly related to the issue we are
addressing.
Rebuttal Speech by Venezuela's Minister of Defense leaves no doubt as to the loyalty of
the military and puts all the Gringo neocons in their place. While not too long, I thought
this verbal pointed stick at the end of his explanation of what it takes to lead in Venezuela
was great:
"You of course have to be elected and get a majority of votes. After you gain the
majority of votes, the people will have freely expressed their voluntary willingness.
Indirect elections occur in the United States. In Venezuela, we have direct elections
according to the procedures of National Electoral Council."
The point being, Trump is NOT a man of the people's choosing and has zero authority to
command anything Venezuelan.
Someone mentioned the Treaty of Rome and the insane idea that Venezuela could be indicted
for a war crime which is totally ludicrous as it's very plain that the Outlaw US Empire's
been in violation of international law over its illegal sanctions and other measures that are
indeed War Crimes and crimes against its own constitution.
IMO, Venezuela should only fear the nuclear assets of the Outlaw US Empire. Yet, employing
them will only serve to contaminate the very resources the Empire wants to steal and in
reality are useless. Neither the Colombian or Brazilian militaries have the proper assets
to secure a victory over Venezuela's military, nor does the Outlaw US Empire unless it
commits all its Naval & Marine assault assets--and even then those won't be enough. One
of the key indicators being ignored by the Empire is that many in the Opposition are against
any invasion of their nation, and that the small 5th Column will quickly evaporate once the
civilian slaughter begins.
Other musings: How many Venezuelan pilots have secretly received combat training in
Syria once this confrontation loomed and are not green as anticipated? What about all those
munitions captured by Syria, particularly all those TOWs, RPGs and enough small arms to
outfit at least one entire division?
Trump's to meet Kim Feb 27-28, but will 23 Feb and follow-on events nullify that? (I
expect there to be a pan-Korean celebration of the 100th anniversary of the March 1st Movement Kim
ought to deem of greater import.)
Then there's the reaction to Putin's challenge to do the math.
Trump Likes 'Beautiful' Border Walls - Venezuela Should Build Him OneHmpf ,
Feb 20, 2019 10:36:09 AM |
link
Aaron Mate, who is currently on the ground in
Venezuela (vid), notes how Trump early on targeted Venezuela:
Aaron Maté @aaronjmate - 20:59 utc - 18 Feb 2019
Page 136 of McCabe's new book, recounting a 2017 Oval Office meeting: "Then the president
talked about Venezuela. That's the country we should be going to war with, he said. They
have all that oil and they're right on our back door."
It is not only Trump's idea to 'regime change' Venezuela. Ever since 1998, when Hugo
Chavez was elected, the U.S. plotted to
'regime change' Venezuela. It was Obama who put sanctions on the country. Right wing
economists have for years thought up detailed plans on
how to rob Venezuela of its national assets .
Plan A for the recent coup attempt
failed when the Venezuelan military did not accept Random Guyido's brazen claim to the
presidency. There was no plan B. The U.S. is now improvising. The delivery of "humanitarian
aid" is a pretext to break the border between Colombia and Venezuela.
U.S. government "aid" is always political. U.S. aid workers are suspects. Consider these
USAID RED teams which
a 2018 study , commissioned by the U.S. foreign aid agency, recommended:
RED Team officers, the report explains, would carry out development activities, but they
would also have training and expertise that are not typically included in USAID job
requirements.
"RED Team personnel would be able to live and work in austere environments for extended
periods of time and actively contribute to their own security and welfare. They would be
deployed farther forward than USAID personnel traditionally deploy and would routinely
operate under the authority of the host agency with whom they deploy, acting in accordance
with their security posture," the report reads.
"RED team members would be trained and authorized to conduct themselves as a
force-multiplier able to contribute a full suite of security skills as needed," it
says.
USAID officers will also be special forces? Special forces will also be USAID workers?
Which is it? How many of these 'Red Teams' are now in Colombia waiting to cross into
Venezuela?
On Saturday February 23 a breach of the Venezuelan border will be attempted with the
intent to provoke an escalation. That escalation will then be used to justify further action
up to military strikes or even an invasion.
How exactly the game will be played out is still not
clear :
Despite the tough language, it remained unclear how the Venezuelan opposition would break
Mr. Maduro's blockade of the border with a delivery of food and medication on Saturday. Mr.
Trump's own national security adviser said the American military -- which has airlifted
tons of supplies to Venezuela's doorstep on the Colombia border -- will not cross into the
country.
The so called "aid" is also supposed to come via sea and through the border with Brazil.
To prevent that Venezuela
closed down the maritime border with the Dutch Caribbean Islands:
The closure blocks movement of boats and aircraft between the western Venezuelan coastal
state of Falcon and the islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao, said Vice Admiral Vladimir
Quintero, who heads a military unit in Falcon. He did not provide a reason.
The Brazil route is for now too remote for the desired media attention.
Everything will concentrate on the border crossing with Colombia near the Colombian city
of Cúcuta:
Leaders of several Latin American nations plan to travel to Colombia's border with
Venezuela on Friday ahead of the delivery of aid, Chilean President Sebastian Pinera said
on Tuesday, adding that he had accepted an invitation from Colombia's president, Ivan
Duque.
It was not immediately clear which leaders would attend. Most Latin American countries
now recognize Guaido as president, though Bolivia, Cuba and Nicaragua still support
Maduro.
Billionaire businessman Richard Branson is backing a "Live Aid"-style concert on Friday
in the Colombian border city of Cucuta with a fundraising target of $100 million to provide
food and medicine for Venezuela. Maduro's government has announced two rival concerts just
across the border.
Pink Floyd musician Roger Waters spoke out (video) against
the Richard Branson's Not-really-for-AID concert and the U.S. 'regime change' attempt in
Venezuela:
Roger Waters @rogerwaters - 22:57 utc - 18 Feb
2019
The Red Cross and the UN, unequivocally agree, don't politicize aid. Leave the Venezuelan
people alone to exercise their legal right to self determination.
On Saturday, when the U.S. proxy crowd will try to cross the border with unneeded "aid"
some sniper shooting is likely to happen while dozens of cameras roll. Any casualties will be
blamed on the Venezuelan military. The incident will be the propaganda pretext for further
U.S. action. Already days ago Russia's Foreign Ministry warned of such 'false flag' attacks:
A provocation, involving victims, is being put together under the guise of a humanitarian
convoy," Zakharova stressed. "They need it just as a pretext to use outside force, and
everyone should understand that."
Trumps National Security Advisor is preparing the field:
John Bolton @AmbJohnBolton - 1:41 utc - 20 Feb
2019
The Venezuelan military must uphold its duty to protect civilians at the Colombian and
Brazilian borders, and allow them to peacefully bring in humanitarian aid without violence
or fear of persecution.
John Bolton @AmbJohnBolton - 2:14 utc - 20 Feb
2019
Any actions by the Venezuelan military to condone or instigate violence against peaceful
civilians at the Colombian and Brazilian borders will not be forgotten. Leaders still have
time to make the right choice.
Venezuela is not in need of U.S. aid. It is need of an end to the economic sanctions that
put it under a medieval siege. There is no current lack of food or medicine like in Yemen
though some products may run short.
The UN, the Red Cross and Caritas already have aid distribution projects within Venezuela.
They reject the U.S. aid delivery as a political stunt. The International Committee of the
Red Cross recently
doubled its budget for Venezuela to $18 million and is ready to provide more. Last week
933 tonnes of medicines from Cuba and China arrived. Another 300 tons from Russia is
supposed to arrive today.
The Venezuelan government has had enough time to game out how best to respond to the
breach attempt of the border. It needs to block the roads AND it needs to prevent
provocations. Trump likes walls on the border. Venezuela should give them to him.
"I don't mind having a big beautiful door in that wall so that people can come into this
country legally. But we need, Jeb, to build a wall, we need to keep illegals out." - Donald
Trump - Aug 6 2015 GOP
debate
My advise to Venezuela is to use high concrete barricades with barbed wire and mines in
front of them across all vehicle border crossings points. The purpose of the mines is to
prevent attempts to remove the wire and the barricades. Large posters should warn of the
deadly danger of the mines. If someone gets hurt by them, it will clearly be their own
fault.
Passage on foot must be allowed as usual. Armed soldiers should be kept out of sight.
Trump said a lot about the national security need for " beautiful walls ." A large banner with a relevant Trump
quote should top each of the barricaded crossings.
Posted by b on February 20, 2019 at 10:12 AM |
Permalink 'The Brazil route is for now too remote for the desired media attention.'
Maybe, maybe not. There's a new airport at St. Helena and by car/bus it's easily
accessible too.
Boa Vista, Brazil isn't that far off and it's a nice little highway stretching all the way up
to Ciudad Bolivar. In the 90s this has been a major route for drug trafficking into Brazil
and across the Atlantic ocean, not sure if this is still the case as I haven't been down
there for a long time but that road certainly could handle some traffic.
Merida, February 18, 2019 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelan authorities have
expelled six deputies of the European Parliament (EP) this Sunday after denying them
entrance to the country.
The European politicians, who travelled in a personal capacity, had previously been
warned through diplomatic channels that they would not be allowed in the country, but the
group opted to proceed with the trip.
The delegation was made up of MEP Esteban Gonzalez Pons, MEP Jose Ignacio Salafranca,
and MEP Gabriel Mato, all from Spain's hard-right Popular Party.Also present were MEP Juan
Salafranca from Spain's European People's Party; MEP Esther de Lange of the Dutch Christian
Democratic party, and MEP Paulo Rangel from Portugal's Social Democratic Party.
PS: Apparently they've headed for Cucuta in Colombia and now Richard Branson has got into the
act!
Following their denied entry, the deputies accepted an invitation from Colombia's Foreign
Ministry to travel to the Venezuelan-Colombian border city of Cucuta to attend a concert
sponsored by Virgin CEO Richard Branson on Saturday, when Guaido plans to see US-supplied
"humanitarian aid" cross the border, despite orders from Maduro to block it.
Roger Waters versus Richard Branson. The BBC appreciates the entertainment value.
"To say Venezuela is in the middle of a political crisis would be an understatement.
President Nicolás Maduro is locked in a power struggle with Juan Guaidó, an
opposition politician and the self-declared interim leader of the country.
So what better way to make the situation less complicated than to add a spat between one
of the world's richest people and the bass player from Pink Floyd?
"
Yes... it's a pretty weird situation.
They should fill the roads at the borders with trucks. Pointing into Venezuela. Backs of the
trucks wide open, ready for lading the aid that the west is so generously providing.
thanks b... as you note - > "On Saturday February 23 a breach of the Venezuelan border
will be attempted with the intent to provoke an escalation. That escalation will then be used
to justify further action up to military strikes or even an invasion." the intent of the usa
and it's gang of puppets is on full display right here...
Craig
Murray today without any qualification whatsoever stated matter-of-factly:
"... the Saudi backed jihadist group Daesh, originally launched by the CIA as a
counterweight to Shia influence in Iraq ."
We here at MoA have written similarly; but aside from General Flynn, few people having any
"weight" have said so straightforwardly that Daesh is yet another Death Squad CIA construct,
which is what a CIA "counterweight" is always. IMO, the fact that the Outlaw US Empire
created its own adversary for multiple uses hasn't been shouted out nearly enough, just as
al-Qaeda's genesis and usage is similarly glossed over by far too many who know better.
Now that the Hybrid Third World War is opening a new theatre of operations in South
America where the CIA has previously created Death Squads in almost every one of its nations,
we must anticipate the creation of yet another such "auxiliary" force, perhaps consisting of
those specially trained USAID personnel. We know CIA was deeply involved in Colombia's
various drug cartels and the quasi-governmental Death Squads used against Unionists and other
members of the public, and that even corporations like Coca-Cola provided monies for the
"services" of such Squads. IMO, a recap of Outlaw US Empire terrorist operations South of the
Border is demanded by the operation targeting Venezuela.
This travesty gets more and more bizarre.
It seems a classic battle between good and evil and I hope that justice prevails for a
change. Viva Venezuela.
Not mines, but rather tons of manure next to the barrier. Effective, but harmless and
cheap.
Nah, most people can cope with manure as it is usual of vegetarian origin. Pig shit is
better but the one most people have a problem with is human faeces. The Russians should loan
Venezuela a couple of their Il-76 fire fighting aircraft. Dropping 40 tons each of waste
water loaded with human faeces would discourage most people. But a better solution would be
two-three Bunning Lowlander Widebody – 380 HD HBD on each road the "humanitarians"
intend to use. Hell, I'd help crowdfund them if John Bolton and Elliott Abrams were on the
receiving end of a giant pig shit pile.
I can't believe Branson doesn't understand that he's participating in an attempted coup that
could destroy a country. If this border stunt turns into a war he will have blood on his
hands. What a terrible move, all of his companies should be boycotted from here on out.
Amazing this guy wants to get personally involved with the empire's assault on Venezuela,
maybe he was promised some sort of future deal concerning the nation's natural resources?
USAID already has a doubtful reputation, as everything that is supplied by them MUST
be made in the US. One example; even the painted letters on the food sacks must be by
US made paints put on by US personnel on US made sacks . The desired effect seems to
have been to destroy local markets and producers by providing free food that can only be
supplied from the US.(this happened in Africa) Thus making them dependent.
So now as guns are the principal US export, it is not hard to see what the "aid" will
consist of.
The most critical part in deflating the US moves will be ensuring the sniper teams and other
proxies, local or foreign, that will instigate the violence on the 23rd are taken out and
taken out just as the US begins its move.
As a U.S. citizen maybe I should take a little satisfaction that for all the money my govt
spends, at least they are good at something. Granted, it is in all of the wrong things,
information warfare, subversion, causing global chaos and blaming others but we are genius at
doing that if nothing else.
We are the Dr. Smith of the world but wihtout any of his redeeming qualities.
Venezuela
Analysis provides an article that ought to be entitled "Academic War Criminals" or
"Academic Societal Rapists" whose aim is "to bring back the 'wonderful Venezuela of old,' as
in pre-1998 Chavez that requires destroying everything done to improve the lot of the poor
majority:
"The post-coup Venezuelan economy will not be all about mathematically rigorous
experiments in economic growth like Hausmann's academic work. It will be about the
privatization of Venezuela's assets ." [My Emphasis]
This Harvard academic, Hausmann, ought to be known as an academic terrorist, for what he
promotes is terrorism:
"Hausmann's 2004 statistical gambit is actually an established part of the U.S.-coup
playbook. The academic analysis of an election and the finding of flaws, real or imagined,
in an electoral process are the beginning of an ongoing claim against the target's democratic
legitimacy. The created flaw is then repeated and emphasized. Even if it was spurious and
debunked, as was Hausmann's 2004 analysis, it can continue to perform in media campaigns
against the target. After years of such repetition, the target can safely be called a
'dictator' in Western media, even if the 'dictator' has more electoral legitimacy than most
Western politicians." [My Emphasis]
The article discusses a few other similar academic terrorists connected with events in
Haiti and Colombia. The entire Terrorist Network within the Outlaw US Empire is vast and
exists in places some would deem odd. It's also rather lucrative for those willing to abase
themselves as terrorists and clean too since the blood spilt is done at a comfortable, unseen
distance. Such academics must be exposed as the terrorists they are. This article exposes but
a few of the hundreds whose work aims at destroying entire societies; perhaps they ought to
be known as Genocidalists.
The initial step's been taken, but even if a special session of the UNSC is convened,
little of substance will come of it since FUKUS would veto any useful resolution or
declaration. Push back is happening
:
#FromTheSouth | The Venezuelan armed forces have rejected calls by the US president to
turn their backs on President @NicolasMaduro, condemning Trump for promoting terrorism
." [My Empasis]
Yes, it's indeed terrorism to do what Trump's now doing and what every previous US
President has done since 1945. The Outlaw US Empire is modern Terrorism's Mother &
Father.
Ultimately Suicidal. A country ruled by a dynasty of Gollums.
It's not like the US has a chance no matter what because they don't want to nuke the oil.
Venezuela will be harder than Viet Nam and the US didn't do too well there, didn't learn
anything from it and forgot more.
Both Russia and China will involve themselves more if needed, zero doubt about it. If one
compares with the Viet Nam war they already have done what they did then and this is already
in advance of any potential war. "Supplies!" like a certain joke ends :D
In Venezuela there is nothing to compare to South Viet Nam, Brazil will not capoeira
themselves across the border in any meaningful manner, there's only a few neighborhoods of
spoilt rich people inside Venezuela that act as dead weight.
As for US Aid "RED teams" (Red? Naming fail & backronym retardism) it's a big meh in
my opinion. How short is the average lifespan of their (actual) "specials" these days? Three
weeks after first leave as they can't escape constantly reminding themselves of their service
to evil? Poor fuckers thought they were heroes willing to give it all for a just cause and
finally they did at least give something by offing themselves at home thus denying any
further availability to their masters.
Maybe I'm too sympathetic towards them but I lived most of my life believing the same lies
to be true as they did.
Anyway the outcome is clear: given a few years the US will no longer be in any kind of
control of the Caribbean, they are literally giving it away to Russia and China by creating
this situation.
...
No one in the US understands what a carrot is, they think it's some kind of bribe like sex
or drugs, a "kind" threat in advance not to kill you if you roll over, some kind of veiled
stick used in the middle ages (possibly an arcane torture device), or simply an orange
("carrot is orange").
Sir Richard always brings to mind both the vacuous "smiley-face" icon, and Chaucer's image of
"the smiler with the knife under his cloak". He is obviously an overclass Sheriff of
Nottingham who markets himself as a benevolent, contrarian Robin Hood.
The Venezuelan Caper is rotten from top to bottom, and Trump is wholly complicit; unlike
his previous adventures, there's no indication that he's somehow "playing his own game" and
provisionally giving his neocon Hounds of Hell room to run only to abruptly pull back on the
leash when it suits him.
Even so, I personally distrust the odious McCabe's tendentious and utterly self-serving
assertions.
"Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus" is a Latin phrase meaning "false in one thing,
false in everything." It is an ancient common-law principle that a witness who testifies
falsely about one matter is not credible to testify about any matter.
This standard is easily abused, and problematic because even testimony full of lies and
deceit usually contains some truth. But I'm surprised that the best-selling Trump-critical
potboilers, including the dubious Bob Woodward's "Fear: Trump in the White House"* mercenary
exercise in blatant fearmongering, are regarded as reliable and trustworthy.
In this case, Trump may have said exactly what McCabe quoted. But I'm not taking
McCabe's word for it.
___________________________________
* NB (nota Bernhard) : The "U" HTML tag listed under "Allowed HTML Tags" doesn't
work. It's a minor problem, but I hope that it can be enabled.
This opinion piece is from earlier in the month, but gives a pair of photos describing the
bridge near Cucuta, which b's map shows straddling the Pan-American Highway which runs out of
Columbia to the Carribean shore in Venezuela, close to the Tortugas. The photos show the
bridge barricaded at both ends, which would seem to indicate that neither country wanted it.
Who did, I wonder?
So long as Maduro has the backing of the army and the people are fed [here Russia and China
can help out]the US can only huff and puff,in the longer term new sales to sympathetic states
must be a priority. How many of the opposition would be willing to be slaughtered in order to
install Trump's appointee, not that many I'll bet. In my opinion International Law is dead,
we are now entering into the period [thanks to the US] where Mao's doctrine is becoming fact
"Power grows out the barrel of a gun"
Partisan Girl explores an
important topic related to the rights of combatants, not that the Outlaw US Empire
respects them, but it seems the UK and others are tussling with the issue but not for their
announced reasons:
"The @foreignpolicy magazine is hell-bent on pushing the idea that #ISIS wives are
protected by international law. It's because they have to make the same legal argument for
Israeli "settlers" and they don't want there to be a precedent."
The short thread is worth reading.
Blooming Barricade , Feb 20, 2019 3:15:00 PM |
link
If Trump wanted a wall, surely he could use those phoney psyop trucks to block the US-Mexico
border? They seem to have the money and chutzpah to do it?
If I were advising the Venezuelan army I would keep a close look (for a false-flag event or
some other infiltration attempts into Venezuela by easily disguised concert goers) at the
Live Aid Concert that is scheduled to
take place this Friday Feb. 22 near the Venezuelan border in Colombian town of Cucuta.
This venue provides a distraction and a good way to blend into the crowd for any hostile
forces to smuggle weapons, personnel one day ahead of the so-called "humanitarian-aid"
crossings.
Here is a red-flag as to who asked for this Live Aid Concert:
So who asked Richard Branson to do this?
Mr Branson says it was a direct request from Mr Guaidó and opposition leader
Leopoldo López .
It's a simple solution for the Venezuelan government. Friday evening close the Bridge and
then detonate the entire or half of the structure. Then announce the other half is covered
with explosives.
I really wish it was realistic for US citizens to stage protest marches on this, perhaps we
will if the Trump administration decides to provoke a military confrontation.
But the propaganda blitz has probably neutered the ability to do so, with almost everyone
I know fully believing that Maduro is an unelected dictator, murderous thug and that
SOSHULIZMS ruins EVERYTNING!!! Waaaaaaah....
No mentions are made of the draconian sanctions, continual sabotage, theft of the
Venezuelan gov't and people's money/gold, constant coup attempts, and all of it stretching
back decades, across Republican and Democrat Presidential administrations.
But you gotta give 'em credit - the corporate "liberal" MSM (and right-wing media) are
afraid of any change or perceived threat to the crony corporate Wall Street MIC cabal's
control of the gov't and economy and the corresponding hit to their quarterly bonuses and EPS
at the stock market. So they're doing everything they can, and the aforementioned propaganda
blitz (as coined by Media Lens and reprinted by FAIR.org) is actually much more all
encompassing than just Venezuela regime change. This is a concerted war on Democratic
Socialism and any new regulations on the banks and corps that rule the Western countries.
@27 "In this case, Trump may have said exactly what McCabe quoted. But I'm not taking
McCabe's word for it."
Here's another source which highlights Trump's early propensity to get involved in
Venezuela:
Donald Trump repeatedly raised the possibility of invading Venezuela in talks with his
top aides at the White House , according to a new report.
Trump brought up the subject of an invasion in public in August last year,
saying: "We have many options for Venezuela, including a possible military option, if
necessary." But the president's musings about the possibility of a US invasion were more
extensive and persistent than that public declaration , according to the Associated
Press.
The previous day Trump reportedly took his top officials by surprise in an Oval
Office meeting, asking why the US could not intervene to remove the government of
Nicolás Maduro on the grounds that Venezuela's political and economic unraveling
represented a threat to the region.
...
The administration officials are said to have taken turns in trying to talk him out
of the idea , pointing out that any such military action would alienate Latin American
allies who had supported the US policy of punitive sanctions on the Maduro regime.
Their arguments do not seem to have dissuaded the president .
...
In the weeks that followed, Trump remained preoccupied with the idea of an
invasion , according to AP. Shortly after the Bedminister remarks, he raised the issue
with the Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, and then brought it up again at that
year's UN general assembly in September, at a private dinner with allied Latin American
states.
At that dinner, Trump made clear he was ignoring the advice of his aides.
"My staff told me not to say this," Trump said and then asked the other leaders at
the table in turn, if they were sure they didn't want a military solution.
McMaster finally succeeding in persuading Trump of the dangers of an invasion ,
the report said, and the president's interest in the notion subsided.
Seems like saturday (the 23rd) could be a busy day.
1/ The "Aid" convoy tries to enter Venezuela.
2/ Gaydo as "interim" president comes to the end of the 30 day period he is allowed. (....in
the case of an incapacitated President), but as Speaker of the Assembly - he has immunity.
BUT can he be both at once, Speaker and President? Will Maduro arrest him at that date?
3/ The destroyer "Donald Cook" is in the Black Sea, and is supposed to participate in
"exercises" with the Ukrainian Navy, In front of Odessa and - the Kersh Strait. (Also on the
23 if my memory serves me correctly, but I may have mistaken the month !). Provocation
planned?
A big wind up for the big event on Saturday. I think the US would want all eyes and media
attention to be there when 'innocent' people delivering 'aid' will be shot or whatever,
rather than distracted by Ukraine.
I posted some of my thoughts about Putin's State of the Nation Address made earlier today
at
previous Russia-related thread , but rather doubt few have bothered to read them or the
speech itself. Putin's speech was mostly directed at Domestic issues with Foreign Policy
saved for the end. What Putin says in that regard impacts every conceivable topic we might
discuss here. I ought to copy/paste the entire portion of Putin's speech devoted to relations
with the Outlaw US Empire, but b discourages overly-long citations; so, click here and scroll down to the
paragraph beginning thusly:
"The unilateral withdrawal of the USA "
However, the following three paragraphs deserve to be highlighted--Russian media certainly
thought so, too--which are toward the speech's closing remarks:
"Let me say outright that this is not true. Russia wants to have sound, equal and friendly
relations with the USA. Russia is not threatening anyone, and all we do in terms of security
is simply a response, which means that our actions are defensive. We are not interested in
confrontation and we do not want it, especially with a global power like the United States of
America. However, it seems that our partners fail to notice the depth and pace of change
around the world and where it is headed. They continue with their destructive and clearly
misguided policy . This hardly meets the interests of the USA itself. But this is not for
us to decide.
"We can see that we are dealing with proactive and talented people, but within the elite,
there are also many people who have excessive faith in their exceptionalism and supremacy
over the rest of the world. Of course, it is their right to think what they want. But can
they count? Probably they can. So let them calculate the range and speed of our future arms
systems. This is all we are asking: just do the maths first and take decisions that create
additional serious threats to our country afterwards . It goes without saying that these
decisions will prompt Russia to respond in order to ensure its security in a reliable and
unconditional manner.
"I have already said this, and I will repeat that we are ready to engage in disarmament
talks, but we will not knock on a locked door anymore. We will wait until our partners are
ready and become aware of the need for dialogue on this matter ." [My Emphasis]
I rather doubt Putin's well meaning message will have its desired impact, for as he said
those in power are essentially deluded by their thoughts. Unfortunately, the only part of the
speech likely to be highlighted is the Italicized portion while the bolded remainder gets
ignored:
" I would like to emphasise again that we need peace for sustainable long-term
development . Our efforts to enhance our defence capability are for only one purpose:
to ensure the security of this country and our citizens so that nobody would even consider
pressuring us, or launching an aggression against us.
Also, I rather doubt Bolton, Pompeo and company can do the math.
BBC pretends that Roger Waters's only role in Pink Floyd was as bass player. Who was
the singer and songwriter then?
Question should be rephrased: Who was the Pink Floyd songwriter who wrote all the lyrics
to the band's best known albums "The Dark Side of the Moon", "Wish You Were Here", "Animals"
and "The Wall" then?
In a two-minute video posted on Twitter, the musician says Mr Branson's "Live-Aid-ish"
concert has "nothing to do with humanitarian aid at all".
The Red Cross and the UN, unequivocally agree, don't politicize aid. Leave the
Venezuelan people alone to exercise their legal right to self determination.
pic.twitter.com/I0yS3u75b6
-- Roger Waters (@rogerwaters) February 18, 2019
Report
"It has to do with Richard Branson, and I'm not surprised by this, having bought the US
saying: 'We have decided to take over Venezuela, for whatever our reasons may be,'" Mr
Waters says.
"But it has nothing to do with the needs of the Venezuelan people, it has nothing to do
with democracy, it has nothing to do with freedom, and it has nothing to do with aid."
He adds that he has "friends that are in Caracas" who claim there is "no civil war, no
mayhem, no murder, no apparent dictatorship, no suppression of the press".
So who asked Richard Branson to do this?
Mr Branson says it was a direct request from Mr Guaidó and opposition leader
Leopoldo López.
Skip Twitter post by @richardbranson
The humanitarian crisis in Venezuela worsens every day. Join Venezuela Aid Live, support
the cause to help the country's suffering people https://t.co/0ARSI1GpBk pic.twitter.com/IIg8sxGlGh
-- Richard Branson (@richardbranson) February 15, 2019
Report
End of Twitter post by @richardbranson
In an earlier social media video, the billionaire says: "Juan Guaidó, who has
been recognised as Venezuela's legitimate president by over 40 nations, and the EU, and
Leopoldo López, an opposition leader currently under house arrest in Caracas, have
asked us to help organise a beautiful concert, to help bring global attention to this
unacceptable, and preventable, crisis."
Mr López has been under house arrest since 2014.
Who is going to perform?
An official line-up hasn't been released yet but a few celebrities have confirmed that
they're taking part.
The concert's organisers have also released a list of 32 people they have invited to
perform, which includes young Latin stars Rudy Mancuso, Juanes and Despacito singer Luis
Fonsi, and Swedish DJ Alesso.
Lele Pons, a Venezuelan-American singer and actress who was the most-looped individual
on Vine before it shut down in 2016, and Venezuelan singer Danny Ocean have both released
videos saying that they will perform.
Thanks for the response, but don't put away the salt just yet.
The Guardian isn't the bastion of dispassionate, objective reporting it pretends to be. So
I read the linked story with particular interest in its sources for the material you
quoted.
I wasn't surprised to find this telling explanation:
Quoting an unnamed senior administration official, the AP report said the suggestion
stunned those present at the meeting, which included the then national security adviser, HR
McMaster, and secretary of state, Rex Tillerson. Both have since left the
administration.
So once again, all of the ominous quotes are allegedly derived from, or
provided by, an uncorroborated anonymous source-- moreover, a "senior administration
official"; such seemingly authoritative sources are notorious for using the "on background"
convention to vent personal pique or ideological dissatisfaction.
And the Associated Press is also notorious for its consent-manufacturing bias.
The entire Russophobia campaign, and other current Big Lie-based stories, have been rife
with multiple uncorroborated sources appearing to validate each other. Unfortunately, this
strategy exploits the rational tendency to assume that a fact is authentic and reliable if it
seems to be corroborated and confirmed by multiple sources.
Usually, confirmation bias blinds targets of this strategy to the possibility that the
confirmation is spurious because some or all of the "multiple sources" are mendacious.
So I'm not impressed or persuaded by The Guardian passing on multiple hearsay from
compromised, or at least dubious sources: "Some unidentified but important insider told AP,
and they told us" just doesn't cut it.
@42 I guess they want to make it difficult for the border guards to stop Venezuelans going to
the concert on Friday. Then the next day they will head back home with their free stuff.
Their bags will need to be searched of course so that will help to get everybody riled up for
the cameras.
A repeat of the Las Vegas Concert Massacre, perhaps. Good to see people commenting at your
provided link about the situation's reality and calling out Branson for his support for
Imperialism and its crimes. I'm sure Branson can get Pussy Riot to appear, but what of any
legitimate musical groups as none are cited. I wonder if Russian satellite tech's progressed
so it can pick out individual humans--like snipers--amidst all else? Indeed, how would one
plan to deter this probable provocation?
The Guardian is a lying sack of imperialist shit, masquerading as a leftwing paper.
Outrageous, the stuff fascism is made of.
El Cartero Atómico , Feb 20, 2019 5:44:58 PM |
link
As a citizen of the US it's interesting that so many of these pro-war/intervention people
like Trump, Abrams and Bolton were draft dodgers during the Vietnam War. Several years ago I
read a History of Rome and one of the few things I remember was that around 80 Roman Senators
were killed in the Battle of Cannae against Hannibal. How many of the pro intervention types
in our government would be be willing to serve on the front lines like the Roman politicians?
I think we would have a lot fewer interventions and wars if they and their families had to
fight in any war they started.
It will be very difficult to prevent a provocation, but even if the US manage to get their
news footage of people delivering so called aid being shot, or whatever is planned for them,
Russia will be stepping in.
I have notice a change in rhetoric from the Russian leadership over the past few weeks. I
suspect Putin's speech you referred to earlier officially marks a turning point in the way
Russia deals with the US and its machinations.
The organizer of the event, British billionaire Richard Branson, said that it is planned
that up to 300,000 people attend the concert on Friday in Cúcuta, on the border of
Colombia with Venezuela
Perhaps Moscow senses something is about to happen?:
To add to my comment @51, Russia moved into Syria when it was on its last legs and has put
most of it back together. I suspect Russia would have liked a few more years to get its own
house in order before moving back into the world to block US moves.
Now I think we may see Russia willing to stop the US in its tracks as far as US moves on
Venezuela, and willing to escalate as far as the US wishes to take it.
I too share your cynicism at unnamed sources, but my point was when these pieces of
information are then coupled with Trump's own behavior and rhetoric, one tends to lean
towards this overall aggressive posture against Venezuela as more credulous.
Thanks for that. The concert will be at one of the bridges apparently. Ill bet my balls
they are going to use to concert goers for the planned provocation.
Push the fools into delivering so called aid across the border.
I was wondering who would volunteer to be the sacrificial goats.
deja vu of ukraine 2014, but i don't know that the middle class guaido crew are up for it...
i am sure the cia is though.. anyone see nuland handing out cookies on the streets of cucata
yet?? or did they replace her with some other hag?? speaking of hags - richard branscum is
really showing his true colours here..
A couple of press releases that I downloaded from one of the Venezuela aid live sites.
Only in pdf so will copy paste them.
MORE THAN 32 ARTISTS HAVE BEEN
INVITED TO CHANGE VENEZUELA's
HISTORY
The team that organizes Venezuela Aid Live -in collaboration with
Richard Branson- has summoned the following artists to join the cause
and be the musicians that change the history of Latin America this
coming February 22nd at a free concert that will take place at the
Tienditas Bridge, with the aim of raising funds to enter the
humanitarian aid into Venezuela:
THE VENEZUELA AID LIVE
CONCERT WILL TAKE PLACE
AT THE BORDER
VENEZUELA AID LIVE, THE FREE CONCERT that
will take place this Friday, February 22nd, is moving
to Puente Tienditas.
We'll live more than just a concert at this place, we'll
see how Venezuela's freedom doors are opened....
Concert at the Tienditas Bridge and concert goers will also get to see how "Venezuela's
freedom doors are opened". I think that may be a painful experience for many.
@57 dh.. if they are anything like us custom officers, you may as well as stay at home, lol..
iv> What happened to "The Resistance" that was supposed to oppose Trump at
every turn? Why is mainstream media and politics going along with Trump in this coup when they
are against him in everything else?
Posted by: QuietRebel , Feb 20, 2019 6:30:03 PM |
link
What happened to "The Resistance" that was supposed to oppose Trump at every turn? Why is
mainstream media and politics going along with Trump in this coup when they are against him
in everything else?
Posted by: QuietRebel | Feb 20, 2019 6:30:03 PM |
link
Seems to me the only force that can stand up to this US government belligerence are the
citizens of US. A bit of wishful thinking but if they don't want to see their sons and
daughters, not to mention their tax dollars, spent on yet another war of hegemony, they
should be in front of congress, a million man march style, and demand the end of hostilities
and resignation of fuckos like Bolton and Pompeo.
"I repeat for the 1000th time: US 'aid' in Venezuela or any other country has nothing to
do with actually helping people. It is about expanding US power and domination.
"USAID is a regime-change arm. Trump is maki0ng a decades-old US covert strategy
explicit."
Norton provides lots of evidence in the thread to indict ASAID as a supporter of terrorism
over many decades.
Alpi57@62:
"Seems to me the only force that can stand up to this US government belligerence are the
citizens of US."
We would be in deep trouble of that were the case. But it isn't. Syria, half torn apart stood
up to them. So did Iraq, after it had been invaded by the US and a plague of poodles. If
Venezuelans stand their ground they will not just keep invasion at bay but spark a conflict
in the region that will end up with the last friends of America leaving in helicopters from
the roofs of the burning embassies.
Urban warfare requires the kind of practice that our military has been missing, what with
too many drones, bombings, and village firefights. Maybe the Pentagon's reluctance to invade
was simply borne out of lack of training. Now that they have mad skills, they can make Mr.
Bolton proud.
Venezuela's a bi-partisan target which is why the so-called Resistance evaporated just as
Trump knew it would.
Peter AU 1 @53--
Thanks for your reply. I know Russia's providing intel, logistical and material support.
Could there be a Russian sub or two outside Maracaibo? I read somewhere a few days ago that
Venezuelan Air Force was practicing flying Mig-31s armed with the Kinzal hypersonic anti-ship
killer but was unable later to find the link. There's no way an R2P type of UNSCR being
passed. Somehow it must be shown that Venezuelan forces invaded Colombia such that Colombia
calls to the Outlaw US Empire for help in defending itself for any such intervention to be
remotely legal. Refutation of any invasion evidence is paramount, but that's far easier said
than done. Fortunately, Brazilians seem incapacitated by domestic issues, so It's up to
Colombia to act in concert with El Gringo Diablo Norte.
Does Mr. Branson carry liability for any person injured at his concert?
If he is the promoter of this gig, then he should have insurance for this.
Scotch Bingeington , Feb 20, 2019 7:18:18 PM |
link
Outstanding piece, b, thank you!
Meanwhile, the
USS Abraham Lincoln's Carrier Strike Group is crossing the Florida Straits , southbound.
They're in the final stages of naval exercises that are meant to be held before the start
of a mission . The exercises take about a month, and they started on 25 Jan. Easy to see
that Guiado's "big moment of truth" scheduled for 23 Feb was timed with respect to US Navy
needs. I also read that the Lincoln's social media feeds have gone silent recently. Spy
planes are surveying the seas close to Venezuelan waters. In Venezuela, there have been
drills involving their S-300 and Buk-M2 systems. Cuba has been calling out on a lot of
flights from military airports in the US to Caribbean destinations.
All of this doesn't bode well.
There is something else scheduled for on or about February 23. The 30 day expulsion
extension given to the American diplomats is set to expire. It will be interesting to see how
that plays out.
Fallujah, Najaf, Ramadi, Mosul and Baghdad all provided some experience with urban warfare
, and the military has been conducting urban warfare training for awhile. Last year Congress
gave the military instructions to increase the amount of training and submit a report on Feb
1 to describe what is needed to improve urban warfare readiness. A single specialized urban
army unit has been suggested as well as a new and consolidated Army urban training center to
replace the Indiana National Guard's Muscatatuck Urban Training Center
Anyways, it looks like the Empire has plans for more urban wars, perhaps even in the US. I
heard soldiers are asked about their feelings on using arms against US civilians if ordered
to as part of their profiling for future deployments
Economic Zionism[EZ] At work? Recall EZ is a system of economics that demands to control,
ownership and management access to everything, EZ focuses its membership and their
corporations and the Armed rule making Nation States[ARMS] they control on destroying all
competition of whatever kind while at the same time keeping populations in the dark and or
misled. EZ destroys the structures that support, the leadership that represents ownership,
control or authority over any type competition (including oil and gold and privatization
booty). The objects of EZ include use of force, rule of law, and propaganda and are often
used to be sure its adherents are the sole possessors of the valuables found anywhere on the
entire earth. Economic Zionism a system that depends on rule by law for its monopoly powers.
Branson's concert @32 Live Aid concert requested by Mr Guaidó and opposition leader
Leopoldo López could be an example https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-47271182
; certainly the event fits the long history of network powers able to bring monetary and
political forces to any spot sufficient to enable EZ elements to take over or to quash
competition or ownership that restricts EZ access or that competes with it. Branson may not
even be aware ..of the possibilities or how it is he might be used?
I could be wrong but it will take a mountain of facts to convince me otherwise.
Several oil and gold companies want the oil, farming , gold interest as well as several
giants want to privatize much of the state owned service infra structure in Venezuela.
Probably the EZ believe they cannot get adequate public support; it takes time to convince
the governed of foreign nations that it is a crime for Venezuelans to own the oil, gold, and
to provide the water, electric power, and cell phone service to Venezuelans? only the EZ can
make it legal.
These kinds of events are money laundering wet dreams (this one may not be?) and these
kinds of events provide platforms that can be used to persuade EZ all over the world
immediate contributions are necessary to help destroy blatant competition and to convert
Venezuela into another EZ owned monopoly.
It will be interesting to see if accounting for all of the funds raised will be made
public, and if a complete, adequate and uncontroversial accounting is given within a few
days, that clearly shows how, when and to whom the funds were collected from and distributed
to.
Invasion, destruction, removal and replacement of those in the way of EZ are common;
promoting fake news, engineering mind directing, population controlling propaganda and
maintaining absolute back room secrecy are tools of the Economic System known as EZ.
Certainly looks suspicious, but then maybe there is a better explanation?
Private fund raising is always problematic because it allows to hide the source and use of
the money from the public? Promoting and marketing a private fund raising event in one nation
to various other countries, in various languages, keeps secret the flow of funds, both in and
out? I know only one network large enough to pull something like this off, on such short
notice?
From another of the pdf press releases...
"Fundación Solidaridad por Colombia is the strategic ally that will
provide support during the donations collection.
PwC will be the auditor that will ensure total transparency during the
handling of the resources.
Fundación Solidaridad por Colombia is an NGO with 44 years of
experience managing resources for vulnerable populations."
I did a little research on this group, did not find a lot in english, but the woman
running the show is a Columbian who spent a number of years working in Miami and New
York.
Vesti
provides a video clip of the latter portion of Putin's speech some of which I provided
via transcript above that Canthama posted to his Twitter. It's about 11 minutes and fitted
with English subtitles. It's far more dramatic to watch than read, and much of what Putin
says isn't in the bit of transcript I provided. Putin can't be accused of being humorless as
he makes a joke at the European's expense, but the subject matter underlying that joke is no
laughing matter.
23 Feb 2019
Action Alert translated and posted by The Saker in preparation of possible False Flag
Event. No one section is worthy of being read out of context, so I encourage everyone to read
the entire document at the link. Thankfully, numerous FFEs have occurred over the past
several years so we know how they're manipulated such that some counters can be provided.
What can't be initially countered will be the violence used and the lives restored to those
murdered by the Outlaw US Empire--for it most certainly will be the guilty party.
I think I said this before but it seemed what saved the Hugo Chvez government after 2002 was
that the US imperialists' attention was distracted towards conquering Iraq. The US simply did
not have enough forces freely available to finish off Chavez after their failed coup in 2002.
At that time no one predicted that the US was in the process of losing both of the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq. After those failures the US decided to go to war against Libya and
Syria. Won 1 (at least killed Khadaffi) and lost the other.
In any case the US does have large numbers of troops available for imperial adventures in
other theaters. I fear for the Venezuelans at this time. The US is withdrawing from their
failed ventures in the Mid East while the US threatens and pounds its chest in the Persian
Gulf and the South China Sea -- but no one expects the US military to actually commit itself
to another losing military engagement. Unfortunately, I do fear the US is ready to go to war
in Venezuela -- if they do so decide to do so the Modura government would not last very long.
In the short term that would be considered a victory for the US Neo cons. In the longer term,
say 5 years out, it would likely result in a war on the South American continent that has not
been seen since Bolivar.
Why is Richard Branson putting on a concert for a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela but he
cared squat about the famine in Yemen? Someone get this short-sighted hypocrite a good pair
of bi-focals.
Trump wants Venezuela's oil. I see the shine is finally wearing out on Trump with folks
here. It took Venezuela for everyone to see through the Zionist charlatan. Finally, we're all
on the same page. The best description I've heard yet is calling this humanitarian aid a
Trojan Horse. That's exactly what it is.
So, I have more bad news. Trump is considering Joe Lieberman for U.N. Ambassador. Can you
believe he was considering this Zionist shill to replace Comey at the FBI??? Lieberman thinks
that Howard Shultz entering the 2020 campaign is a positive thing. I believe Schultz will
enter the race to help the chosen one Trump win. It's all fixed.
Finally the road to toppling Tehran turned out not to run through Syria. It runs through
Venezeula.
ToivoS "I do fear the US is ready to go to war in Venezuela"
The good colonel at SST seems quite pleased at the prospect. Shoot some commies, grab some
loot. I guess he is like Trump. Doesn't like endless wars that the US eventually walks away
from without any loot.
According to the link: five (EPP) deputy MEP (European Parliament) persons, Esteban Gonzalez
Pons, Jose Ignacio Salafranca, Gabriel Mato Adrover, Esther de Lange and Paulo Rangel were
invited to Venezuela by Guaido but have had their passports retained, also the link says
Maduro supports the "Montevideo Mechanism," a four-step proposal presented by Mexico,
Uruguay, Bolivia and the Community of Caribbean States (Caricom), a solution mechanism for
domestic crisis. https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/02/18/588847/Venezuela-expels-EU-lawmakers
I have to disagree with your assessment. How many more Syrias and Iraqs should happen in
order for the people in US to wake up? How much more innocent blood should be shed for US
citizens to tell their government: live and let live? The days of military might is at an
end. The only force of superiority is an economic one.
Why should we allow this government to muscle in on a little country just on the whim of a
few evil animals like Bolton? They are selling this country to the average citizen on the
illusion of the government of the people, by the people and for the people. Then let the
people exercise that privilege. And that is the only thing that scares this government. The
mob.
I am utterly embarrassed and infuriated by statements of Bolton. He is openly telling
governments is our way or the highway. No country should have that kind of power and/or
mentality. The only force that can eradicate that kind of mentality are the people
themselves. They just need to wake up. I have a feeling they will be forced to soon.
@ all barflies,
In Honduras, the current president receives support from Chump's administration even though
Juan Orlando Hernandez stole millions from the Social Security Institute and other government
ministries to finance his campaign and become very wealthy. Hernandez ran for president
against the honduran constitution, committed electoral fraud and still the business attache
at the US embassy (Heidi Fulton) stood right in front of cameras, where the ballots were
being opened and counted and said that everything was ok with the elections ! She's still
supporting Juan Orlando even though his brother was arrested in the United States on major
drug trafficking charges. Hermano Hernandez was using the army and police to protect his
cocaine shipments to the United States. It seems neo-confederates around Trump need this guy
in power to counter Maduro and keep the honduran masses down. Elites in Honduras violating
their constitution have hosted one of the most strategic US military base in the hemisphere,
the country is also known as USS Honduras... It's known Juan Orlando Hernandez received about
250,000 $ from the Los Cachiros drug cartel and also from other cartels. So there you have
Trump's administration abetting drug cartel related crimes to contain socialist forces in the
americas. I'm pretty sure his base of maggots can't find Honduras on a map. Never mind the
cocaine, let's build that wall to keep Hondurans out. Derp, #MAGA
https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/29/honduras-bleeding/?fbclid=IwAR2ieHSD8pRrPykjXgk2fguxZMsIWdspGEHFxrKoPqFlkpQXfcVDwtjv8pU
Thanks b and all the commentators.
#13 Bevin thanks for the link. Very good article with good links embedded in it.
#43 Karlof1 I was reading a transcript from Putin's State of the Nation Address and later
watched a u-tube clip of part of it. The transcript (from the Saker) read as follows, "What
are they doing in reality? First, they violate everything, then they look for excuses and
appoint a guilty party. But they are also mobilising their satellites that are cautious but
still make noises in support of the USA. The video clip went as follows "In addition they
mobilize their satellites. They carefully oink along with the Americans on this matter"
Judging from the loud round of applause and smiles on many in the audience at that point in
the clip, I'd say the "oink" was the correct translation! YouTube clip was from Canthama
twitter page.
Karlof1 #66 Colombia is one of NATO's "Partners across the globe". Sure hope article 5
doesn't apply to this scenario. Sure hope you are right about Venezuela having a few Mig 31
and Kinzal missiles and the YANKS know they do. Currently the USS Lincoln is off the coast of
Florida undergoing "training".
John Bolton has now threatened the families of those remaining loyal to Maduro. It's not like
he hasn't done this before. He threatened the head of OPCW I believe as well.
I doubt that Branson is as careless or stupid as we're being lead to believe. He started a
successful music retailing company and a successful cut-price airline. Both industries are
highly competitive and the pre-launch business plan for each would have required a prodigious
amount of research/ homework in order to accurately evaluate the prospects for success.
I'm far from convinced that he'd consider Random Guyido to be a legitimate replacement for
the elected President of Venezuela without doing some careful research and contemplating the
outcome of any precedents. If he did conduct such research he would have discovered that
History strongly suggests that Random Guyido is almost certainly a fraud.
So imo Branson knows exactly what he's doing, but we'll have to wait until the cash has
been handed over before we find out. I believe he's got a wry sense of humour and will
probably enjoy making Random Guydo (and his backers) look stupid and gullible. You need a
certain amount of courage to take the risks Branson took to get where he is.
Looks like it is critical for US plans to get hold of Venezuela's oil "no matter what" ASP.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/us-says-it-will-deliver-aid-blocked-by-venezuela-setting-up-confrontation-with-maduro-regime
"The U.S. government says it will position 190 metric tons of supplies by Friday, ready to
deploy throughout Venezuela, according to Mark Green, the administrator of the U.S. Agency
for International
Development (USAID).
The problem is figuring out how to get that aid into Venezuela.
"That really is up to Juan Guaido and his people and his team," Green told Fox News. "We are
working with them to try and pre-position that assistance and give them the tools to lead
their people and provide hope."...
...Green said he's coordinating with the Colombian government to ensure that Guaido, the
opposition leader, has the aid his country needs -- though he said the next step is up to
Guaido.
"We know it's not enough that the humanitarian aid enters," Guaido said at a Caracas news
conference. "We must open the humanitarian channel, no matter what."
b writes that "delivery of "humanitarian aid" is a pretext to break the border between
Colombia and Venezuela".
Perhaps, but there may be another purpose in terms of legal framing the Maduro
government.
The Rome Statute, when defining War Crimes, under the section entitled 'other serious
violations of the laws and customs applicable in international armed conflict' there is
"Intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of
objects indispensible to their survival, including willfully impeding relief supplies "
In other words, the non-acceptance of relief supplies will be framed as a war crime by the
US government.
@85 hoarsewhisperer.. oh brandscum knows exactly what he is doing... promoting his scummy
brand.. that is what he is doing.. everything else is a charade.... but, it is cut throat biz
and that is what he does best... slime ball that he is..
Looks like Branson is in it for some cheap post-coup plane fuel discounts for his Virgin
empire. Too bad I just purchased some Virgin tickets for a short flight in April. But after
that I'll be boycotting them along with the Palestinian Occupation Entity whose products I
avoid as much as possible.
Branson never did it for me. Cool rich 'hippie' PR image always seemed too canned. Somehow
reminds me of Tony Blair for some reason. Perhaps he's looking for some military AID cargo
contracts out of we-know-where.
Yes, this is all very interesting about the ongoing Venezuela crisis. But have you seen the
Tucker Carlson interview of Rutger Bregman? It is a MUST SEE. Bregman, a Dutch historian who
gave the Davos millionaires a most deserved smackdown, did an interview with Carlson. Bregman
totally, completely out debates Carlson until Carlson is left speechless, stumbling his
words–then completely, totally loses his temper. Check it out-
In any case the US does have large numbers of troops available for imperial adventures in
other theaters. I fear for the Venezuelans at this time. The US is withdrawing from their
failed ventures in the Mid East while the US threatens and pounds its chest in the Persian
Gulf and the South China Sea -- but no one expects the US military to actually commit
itself to another losing military engagement. Unfortunately, I do fear the US is ready to
go to war in Venezuela -- if they do so decide to do so the Maduro government would not
last very long. In the short term that would be considered a victory for the US Neo cons.
In the longer term, say 5 years out, it would likely result in a war on the South American
continent that has not been seen since Bolivar.
Posted by: ToivoS | Feb 20, 2019 10:05:13 PM | 76
As always, friend, your contribution
to this forum is very perceptive. ...and how will this all look 50 years out? Even worse!
I have transcribed the interview in full so one can find it through a search engine and so
that fellow MoA commenters can repost it. Here it is:
News Anchor: Well, you know, there's oil sanctions that the Trump White House has put on Venezuela, they're now having
a pretty big impact on the Maduro Administration. We're talking $20b in estimated losses already. And now an increasingly desperate
Nicholas Maduro, he's looking for a financial lifeline from outside. Let's bring in TrendMacro CIO Donald Luskin. Great to
see you, Don!
Donald Luskin: Great to be here!
News Anchor: Okay, $20b losses - what does that mean, first of all, for the Maduro Administration?
Donald Luskin: The problem we've got here is that we're not just dealing with the Maduro Administration. We are dealing
with his partner in crime: Vladimir Putin. And what's going on right now is there's just a game of geopolitical global chess
being played, where we take financial resources away from the regime in order to topple it, and Putin just steps in there and
plugs the hole with money. For instance, one of the most powerful tools we have to isolate Venezuela is to put what the experts
call "secondary sanctions" on financial institutions outside the United States that facilitate economic transactions for Venezuela.
The sanctions we put on say: if we catch you, say, Mr. French Bank, doing a transaction for Venezuela, we will bar you from
ever doing business in the United States, and if you have a branch here in the United States, we'll fine you $10b, right? So,
the Russians, we learned this morning, have set up a special-purpose bank that they think is gonna be beyond these sanctions,
'cause this bank they've set up You know, so we sanction them, we say: new Russian bank, you can't do business with United
States. They say: we don't care, you're our enemy anyway! So this is how Russia is in there, propping up the the (chuckle)
the, the war criminal Maduro regime that is resorting to starving its own
News Anchor: Yeah.
Donald Luskin: people by blockading humanitarian aid that the rest of the world is trying to send
News Anchor: I
Donald Luskin: Folks! They do ring a bell, they do give you clues, these people are evil!
News Anchor: I hear what you're saying, I mean Oil worldwide is traded in dollars, Maduro wants dollars, Russia
is facilitating the dollar exchange here for oil. You made the point, too - and it's well taken - that Russia's Rosneft owns
about 49.9% of the shares of Citgo, the PdVSA unit that, basically, is collateralizing, you know, billions of dollars worth
of loans that Russia's given. I mean, now Maduro's worried about a potential oil blockade. Do you think the U.S. Is going to
do that?
Donald Luskin: Well, you know, that's the endgame. If we're serious about this, there's only one place that we can
meet Putin head-on, and that's on the high seas. This is where we have to think about re-enacting the Cuban missile crisis
of 1962, where we're not just talking about penalties for banks, we're talking about an actual, physical blockade, where put
our ships off the coast of Venezuela and say: nothing comes in, nothing goes out. And let's see who blinks on that one. I have
a funny feeling the blinker is the man named Vladimir Putin.
News Anchor: Yeah, and, you know, he hasn't come out publicly in support, but, Don, your points well taken. Cuba's
in there, Hezbollah is in there, Iran is in Venezuela, really bad actors are in there, Don.
Donald Luskin: That's not
News Anchor: Yep.
Donald Luskin: exactly the
News Anchor: Okay.
Donald Luskin: guest list you'd like to have come at
...[Trump] administration is still filled with Hawks ...
1) The administration action in Iran is aggressive and counter-productive to long term peace. The nuclear deal was an effective
way of ensuring Iran controlling behavior for 15 years as the other parties, Europe and China, wanted to trade with Iran. (Additionally
it makes our nation depend more on the Saudia relationship in which Washington should be slowly moving away from.)
2) Like it or not, Venezuela is another mission creep for the Trump Administration. Recommend the administration
stay away from peace keeping troops and suggest this is China's problem. (Venezuela in debt to their eyeballs with China.)
3) Applaud the administration with peace talks with NK but warn them not to overstate their accomplishments. It is ridiculous
that the administration signed big nuclear deals with NK that don't exist.
"... The precedent was established in Italy with assistance to non-Communist candidates from the late 1940s to the 1960s. "We had bags of money that we delivered to selected politicians, to defray their expenses," said F. Mark Wyatt, a former C.I.A. officer, in a 1996 interview . ..."
"... A self-congratulatory declassified report on the C.I.A.'s work in Chile's 1964 election boasts of the "hard work" the agency did supplying "large sums" to its favored candidate and portraying him as a "wise, sincere and high-minded statesman" while painting his leftist opponent as a "calculating schemer." Advertisement ..."
"... C.I.A. officials told Mr. Johnson in the late 1980s that "insertions" of information into foreign news media, mostly accurate but sometimes false, were running at 70 to 80 a day. In the 1990 election in Nicaragua, the C.I.A. planted stories about corruption in the leftist Sandinista government, Mr. Levin said. The opposition won. ..."
"... Over time, more American influence operations have been mounted not secretly by the C.I.A. but openly by the State Department and its affiliates. For the 2000 election in Serbia, the United States funded a successful effort to defeat Slobodan Milosevic, the nationalist leader, providing political consultants and millions of stickers with the opposition's clenched-fist symbol and "He's finished" in Serbian, printed on 80 tons of adhesive paper and delivered by a Washington contractor. ..."
"... Similar efforts were undertaken in elections in wartime Iraq and Afghanistan, not always with success. After Hamid Karzai was re-elected president of Afghanistan in 2009, he complained to Robert Gates, then the secretary of defense, about the United States' blatant attempt to defeat him, which Mr. Gates calls in his memoir "our clumsy and failed putsch." ..."
"... At least once the hand of the United States reached boldly into a Russian election. American fears that Boris Yeltsin would be defeated for re-election as president in 1996 by an old-fashioned Communist led to an overt and covert effort to help him, urged on by President Bill Clinton. It included an American push for a $10 billion International Monetary Fund loan to Russia four months before the voting and a team of American political consultants (though some Russians scoffed when they took credit for the Yeltsin win). ..."
"... In 2016, the endowment gave 108 grants totaling $6.8 million to organizations in Russia for such purposes as "engaging activists" and "fostering civic engagement." The endowment no longer names Russian recipients, who, under Russian laws cracking down on foreign funding, can face harassment or arrest. ..."
"... What the C.I.A. may have done in recent years to steer foreign elections is still secret and may not be known for decades. It may be modest by comparison with the agency's Cold War manipulation. But some old-timers aren't so sure. ..."
"... "I assume they're doing a lot of the old stuff, because, you know, it never changes," said William J. Daugherty, who worked for the C.I.A. from 1979 to 1996 and at one time had the job of reviewing covert operations. "The technology may change, but the objectives don't." ..."
Bags of cash delivered to a Rome hotel for favored Italian candidates. Scandalous stories leaked to foreign newspapers to swing
an election in Nicaragua. Millions of pamphlets, posters and stickers printed to defeat an incumbent in Serbia.
The long arm of Vladimir Putin? No, just a small sample of the United States' history of intervention in foreign elections.
On Tuesday,
American intelligence chiefs warned the Senate Intelligence Committee that Russia appears to be preparing to repeat in the 2018
midterm elections the same full-on chicanery it unleashed in 2016: hacking, leaking, social media manipulation and possibly more.
Then on Friday, Robert Mueller, the special counsel, announced the indictments of 13 Russians and three companies, run by a businessman
with close Kremlin ties, laying out in astonishing detail a three-year scheme to use social media to attack Hillary Clinton, boost
Donald Trump and sow discord.
Most Americans are understandably shocked by what they view as an unprecedented attack on our political system. But intelligence
veterans, and scholars who have studied covert operations, have a different, and quite revealing, view.
"If you ask an intelligence officer, did the Russians break the rules or do something bizarre, the answer is no, not at all,"
said Steven L. Hall, who retired in 2015 after 30 years at the C.I.A., where he was the chief of Russian operations. The United States
"absolutely" has carried out such election influence operations historically, he said, "and I hope we keep doing it."
Loch K. Johnson, the dean of American intelligence
scholars , who began his career in the 1970s investigating the C.I.A. as a staff member of the Senate's Church Committee, says
Russia's 2016 operation was simply the cyber-age version of standard United States practice for decades, whenever American officials
were worried about a foreign vote.
"We've been doing this kind of thing since the C.I.A. was created in 1947," said Mr. Johnson, now at the University of Georgia.
"We've used posters, pamphlets, mailers, banners -- you name it. We've planted false information in foreign newspapers. We've used
what the British call 'King George's cavalry': suitcases of cash."
The United States' departure from democratic ideals sometimes went much further. The C.I.A. helped overthrow elected leaders in
Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s and backed violent coups in several other countries in the 1960s. It plotted assassinations and supported
brutal anti-Communist governments in Latin America, Africa and Asia.
But in recent decades, both Mr. Hall and Mr. Johnson argued, Russian and American interferences in elections have not been morally
equivalent. American interventions have generally been aimed at helping non-authoritarian candidates challenge dictators or otherwise
promoting democracy. Russia has more often intervened to disrupt democracy or promote authoritarian rule, they said.
Equating the two, Mr. Hall says, "is like saying cops and bad guys are the same because they both have guns -- the motivation
matters."
This broader history of election meddling has largely been missing from the flood of reporting on the Russian intervention and
the investigation of whether the Trump campaign was involved. It is a reminder that the Russian campaign in 2016 was fundamentally
old-school espionage, even if it exploited new technologies. And it illuminates the larger currents of history that drove American
electoral interventions during the Cold War and motivate Russia's actions today.
"I'm not in any way justifying what the Russians did in 2016," Mr. Levin said. "It was completely wrong of Vladimir Putin to intervene
in this way. That said, the methods they used in this election were the digital version of methods used both by the United States
and Russia for decades: breaking into party headquarters, recruiting secretaries, placing informants in a party, giving information
or disinformation to newspapers."
His findings underscore how routine election meddling by the United States -- sometimes covert and sometimes quite open -- has
been.
The precedent was established in Italy with assistance to non-Communist candidates from the late 1940s to the 1960s. "We had bags
of money that we delivered to selected politicians, to defray their expenses," said F. Mark Wyatt, a former C.I.A. officer, in
a 1996 interview .
Covert propaganda has also been a mainstay. Richard M. Bissell Jr., who ran the agency's operations in the late 1950s and early
1960s, wrote casually in his autobiography
of "exercising control over a newspaper or broadcasting station, or of securing the desired outcome in an election."
A self-congratulatory
declassified report on the C.I.A.'s
work in Chile's 1964 election boasts of the "hard work" the agency did supplying "large sums" to its favored candidate and portraying
him as a "wise, sincere and high-minded statesman" while painting his leftist opponent as a "calculating schemer."
Advertisement
C.I.A. officials told Mr. Johnson in the late 1980s that "insertions" of information into foreign news media, mostly accurate
but sometimes false, were running at 70 to 80 a day. In the 1990 election in Nicaragua, the C.I.A. planted stories about corruption
in the leftist Sandinista government, Mr. Levin said. The opposition won.
Over time, more American influence operations have been mounted not secretly by the C.I.A. but openly by the State Department
and its affiliates. For the 2000 election in Serbia, the United States funded
a successful effort to defeat Slobodan Milosevic, the nationalist leader, providing political consultants and millions of stickers
with the opposition's clenched-fist symbol and "He's finished" in Serbian, printed on 80 tons of adhesive paper and delivered by
a Washington contractor.
Vince Houghton, who served in the military in the Balkans at the time and worked closely with the intelligence agencies, said
he saw American efforts everywhere. "We made it very clear that we had no intention of letting Milosevic stay in power," said Mr.
Houghton, now the historian at the International Spy Museum.
Similar efforts were undertaken in elections in wartime Iraq and Afghanistan, not always with success. After Hamid Karzai was
re-elected president of Afghanistan in 2009, he complained to Robert Gates, then the secretary of defense, about the United States'
blatant attempt to defeat him, which Mr. Gates
calls in his memoir
"our clumsy and failed putsch."
At least once the hand of the United States reached boldly into a Russian election. American fears that Boris Yeltsin would be
defeated for re-election as president in 1996 by an old-fashioned Communist led to an overt and covert effort to help him, urged
on by President Bill Clinton. It included an American push for a $10 billion International Monetary Fund loan to Russia four months
before the voting and a team of American political consultants (though some Russians scoffed when they took credit for the Yeltsin
win).
That heavy-handed intervention made some Americans uneasy. Thomas Carothers, a scholar at the Carnegie Institute for International
Peace, recalls arguing with a State Department official who told him at the time, "Yeltsin is democracy in Russia," to which
Mr. Carothers said he replied, "That's not what democracy means."
But what does democracy mean? Can it include secretly undermining an authoritarian ruler or helping challengers who embrace democratic
values? How about financing civic organizations?
Advertisement
In recent decades, the most visible American presence in foreign politics has been taxpayer-funded groups like the National Endowment
for Democracy, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, which do not support candidates but
teach basic campaign skills, build democratic institutions and train election monitors.
Most Americans view such efforts as benign -- indeed, charitable. But Mr. Putin sees them as hostile. The National Endowment for
Democracy gave a $23,000 grant in 2006 to an organization that employed Aleksei Navalny, who years later became Mr. Putin's main
political nemesis, a fact the government has used to attack both Mr. Navalny and the endowment.
In 2016,
the endowment
gave 108 grants totaling $6.8 million to organizations in Russia for such purposes as "engaging activists" and "fostering civic
engagement." The endowment no longer names Russian recipients, who, under Russian laws cracking down on foreign funding, can face
harassment or arrest.
It is easy to understand why Mr. Putin sees such American cash as a threat to his rule, which tolerates no real opposition. But
American veterans of democracy promotion find abhorrent Mr. Putin's insinuations that their work is equivalent to what the Russian
government is accused of doing in the United States today.
"It's not just apples and oranges," said Kenneth Wollack, president of the National Democratic Institute. "It's comparing someone
who delivers lifesaving medicine to someone who brings deadly poison."
What the C.I.A. may have done in recent years to steer foreign elections is still secret and may not be known for decades. It
may be modest by comparison with the agency's Cold War manipulation. But some old-timers aren't so sure.
"I assume they're doing a lot of the old stuff, because, you know, it never changes," said William J. Daugherty, who worked for
the C.I.A. from 1979 to 1996 and at one time had the job of reviewing covert operations. "The technology may change, but the objectives
don't."
Correction : Feb. 18, 2018
An earlier version of this article stated incorrectly that Aleksei Navalny, a political opponent of the Russian president,
Vladimir V. Putin, had received grants from the National Endowment for Democracy. In fact, an organization employing him received
one $23,000 grant from the endowment in 2006.
Scott Shane is a national security reporter for The Times and a former Moscow correspondent.
A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 18, 2018 , on Page SR 4 of the New York edition with the headline: America
Meddles in Elections, Too.
"... "Whether under your watch a genocide will take place and you will look the other way because American interests were being upheld is a fair question because the American people want to know that anytime we engage in a country that we think about what our actions could be and how we believe our values are being furthered," Omar said. ..."
"... After again downplaying her question, Abrams said "the entire thrust of American policy in Venezuela is to support the Venezuelan people's effort to restore democracy to their country." ..."
As assistant secretary of state during the Reagan administration, Abrams was involved in a
secret arms deal in which the U.S. sought to trade missiles and other weapons to Iran and use
the funds to support right-wing paramilitaries known as the "contras," who were seeking to
topple a leftist government in Nicaragua. In a 1991 plea agreement with an independent
commission tasked with probing the scandal -- which became known as the Iran-Contra affair --
Abrams admitted to lying to members of Congress about the clandestine deal. In 1992, he and
other Reagan administration officials embroiled in the scandal were pardoned by former
President George H. W. Bush.
Omar also pressed Abrams about his role in shaping an interventionist American foreign
policy in other Latin American countries during his first stints at the State Department.
During the Cold War, the U.S. supported various violent coups in Latin America, including some
against democratically-elected governments.
The freshman Democrat asked Abrams about a remark he made in 1993, when he called the Reagan
administration's record in El Salvador a "fabulous achievement." Between 1979 and 1992, the
U.S. backed a right-wing military government in El Salvador during a civil war against leftist
guerrillas that resulted in the deaths of more than 75,000 people, according to the Center for Justice and
Accountability , an international human rights group.
Omar specifically cited the massacre of hundreds of civilians by the American-trained El
Salvadoran army at the El Mazote village in 1981.
"Yes or no, do you think that massacre was a 'fabulous achievement' that happened under our
watch," she asked.
"That is a ridiculous question," Abrams responded, again accusing Omar of crafting a
"personal attack."
Omar continued her questioning, asking Abrams if he would be in favor of the U.S. supporting
armed groups in Venezuela that participate in war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide
if he believed it would serve America's interests. Abrams refused to answer the specific
question, saying it was not a "real" question.
"Whether under your watch a genocide will take place and you will look the other way because
American interests were being upheld is a fair question because the American people want to
know that anytime we engage in a country that we think about what our actions could be and how
we believe our values are being furthered," Omar said.
But Maduro and other leftist leaders in the region, including in Bolivia and Cuba, have
accused the American government of trying to stage a coup in Venezuela. Standing alongside
diplomats from Russia, China, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, Nicaragua and Iran, Venezuela's foreign
minister Jorge Arreaza told CBS News' Pamela Falk Thursday that Maduro's government has formed
a coalition to oppose interference in his country's affairs.
After again downplaying her question, Abrams said "the entire thrust of American policy in
Venezuela is to support the Venezuelan people's effort to restore democracy to their
country."
In her final question, Omar asked Abrams whether American foreign policy prioritized
upholding human rights and protecting people against genocide.
"That is always the position of the United States," he replied.
"... American imperialists (and many Americans) truly believe that they are superior and that the world would become a better place if nations submitted to their leadership ..."
"... Early promoters of American intervention were zealous patriots. They proclaimed love of country and loyalty to the flag. Yet they could not imagine that people from non-white countries might feel just as patriotic. ..."
"... Americans have been said to be ignorant about the world. ..."
"... Violent intervention in other countries always produces unintended consequences. ..."
"... Generations of American foreign policy makers have made decisions on three assumptions: the US is the indispensable nation that must lead the world; this leadership requires toughness; and toughness is best demonstrated by the threat or use of force. ..."
"... Most American interventions are not soberly conceived, with realistic goals and clear exit strategies. ..."
"... Foreign intervention has weakened the moral authority that was once the foundation of America's political identity. Today many people around the world see it as a bully, recklessly invading foreign lands. ..."
"... Nations lose their virtue when they repeatedly attack other nations. ..."
"... America is the HIGHLY narcissistic, high functioning, psychopathic garden variety neighbor, highly destructive businessman you work hard to avoid. ..."
"... As Taleb nicely put: Our political leaders have no skin in the game and are completely unaccountable. Best preconditions for disaster! ..."
"... They even call the idea of not mass murdering people 'isolationism'. Hey, well guess what? I don't want to murder other people who never bothered me. ..."
As the world watches aghast at another US and allies' attempt to engineer a coup in
Venezuela, I would like to offer a few insights from Stephen Kinzer' provocative chapter, "The
deep hurt," (pp. 227-250) in his book, The True Flag: Theodore
Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of the American Empire (2017). This remarkable text
carries some hope and lessons for all of us. It tells the story of the great conflict around
the turn of 20th century about the role that the US might play in either dominating the world
or building a cosmopolitan democracy where all people feel secure that they reside in one
country, the earth.
Indeed, Kinzer states:
"Anti-imperialists decisively influenced American history by helping to ensure that the
first burst of American annexation would be the last" (p. 228).
Even swash-buckling Teddy Roosevelt was influenced, losing his zest for the idea of
conquest. When he charged into the White House he held two views simultaneously, intervene to
help other people, without oppressing them. Kinzer thinks that this dichotomy "torments our
national psyche" (p. 229). In the early parts of the book Kinzer sets out the anti-imperialist
(Mark Twain) and pro-imperialist visions (Henry Cabot Lodge). These speeches are worth
gathering round for reflection.
During the following hundred years much of what the anti-imperialists predicted has come to
pass. The United States has become an "actively interventionist power. It has projected
military or covert power into dozens of countries on every continent except Antarctica"(ibid.).
George Frisbie Hoar was right, Kinzer points out, when he "warned that intervening in other
lands would turn the United States into a 'vulgar, commonplace empire founded upon physical
force"" (ibid.).
Anti-imperialists also predicted that an "aggressive foreign policy would have pernicious
effects at home" (ibid.). Military budgets have soared to heights unimaginable in the days of
fervent expansionism in the 1898 war with the Philippines. The armaments industries wield
extraordinary clout. The wealth-soaked elites dominate politics. The invasion and overthrowing
of distant regimes resides in the hands of a few decision-makers. And militaristic values and
rituals saturate American life and expunge peaceful ones.
To be sure, American intervention brought some material blessings (good schools and orderly
systems of justice, etc) and rising American power was perceived as "good for everyone simply
because it means strengthening the world's most beneficent nation" (p. 230). The expansionists
of 1898 believed that America was "inherently benevolent," and subject nations would rally
around the May pole in celebratory dance. "The opposite happened .Carl Schurz was right when he
warned that dominating foreigners would ultimately force Americans to 'shoot them down because
they stand up for their independence'" (p. 231).
Kinzer states that: " In the face of profound new challenges, Americans are once again
debating the role of the United States in the world. Should it intervene violently in other
countries? This remains what Senator William V. Allen called it in 1899: 'The greatest question
that has ever been presented to the American people'" (p. 231). American culture carries a
current of anti-imperialism and commitment to an international legal order. They played a big
role in the establishment of the UN and nurturing global governance. They remain the world's
only superpower with enormous capacity to move towards building the cosmopolitan world order.
What is evident now in this dark moment of history is that the world as it is, is not the way
it has to be.
It is difficult, I think, for the United States with its inordinate military might and
present delusionary self-understanding to wrench itself free from wanting to intervene for
political and economic reasons. Many in the post-WW I world had placed their bet for a better
world on the Presbyterian professor Woodrow Wilson. Famously, Wilson triggered immense
hopefulness to the disenfranchised in the colonies of European powers. He preached that they
should "choose the sovereignty under which the shall live" (p. 232). In office, American troops
were dispatched to intervene in Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Russia .Like
his predecessors -- and successors -- Wilson insisted that he was doing it for the good of the
target countries. Americans would leave them alone, he promised, as soon as they learned 'to
elect good men'" (ibid.). Today scholars speak of the "shattered peace" of the post-WW I world.
Was the desire to begin building, slowly, carefully, a cosmopolitan world order, as Jan Smuts
thought, an "impossible dream"?
Kinzer observes that "this most compassionate of presidents not only invaded countries that
defied the United States, but studiously ignored appeals from colonized people outside Europe,
notably in Egypt, India, Korea, and Indochina. His hypocrisy set the stage for generations of
war and upheaval" (ibid.). Margaret MacMillan's lively and densely detailed book, Paris 1919
(2001) , provides the stories for these outcast colonized countries.
Today, the US has intervened one more time. The difference now may well be that there is
little pretence that the US is engaging in the bully politics of "might is right." They don't
care two hoots about what the world thinks. They do not give a damn about the
self-determination of all countries and peoples. This invasion is stripped of any moral or
legal justification. The US has decided to declare the Speaker of the House, Juan Guaido,
president. This is unheard of! And Canada has forsaken the best of its liberal and social
democratic traditions of adherence to rule of law to hitch its caboose to the US's rampaging
imperialist train.
There are several lessons that Kinzer draws from American history of intervention that our
worth careful reflection.
1) American imperialists (and many Americans) truly believe that they are superior and
that the world would become a better place if nations submitted to their leadership . The
United States would be better off, Kinzer says, if it became a learning nation and not a
teaching one.
2) Early promoters of American intervention were zealous patriots. They proclaimed love of
country and loyalty to the flag. Yet they could not imagine that people from non-white
countries might feel just as patriotic. Love of country was a mark of civilization. Lesser
peoples, therefore, couldn't grasp it.
3) Americans have been said to be ignorant about the world. They are, says Kinzer, but so
are other peoples. The difference is that American leaders, puffed with a sense of mission,
acted on ignorance. American leaders see little reason to bother learning about the nations
whose affairs they intrude.
4) Violent intervention in other countries always produces unintended consequences. Cuba
was turned into a protectorate in 1901. A fine idea? It led ultimately to a bitter
anti-American regime. Intervention in the Philippines sparked waves of nationalism across
East Asia that contributed to the Communist revolution in China in 1949. Later American
interventions also had terrible results planners never anticipated. From Iran and Guatemala
to Iraq and Afghanistan, intervention has devastated societies and produced violent
anti-American passion.
5) Generations of American foreign policy makers have made decisions on three assumptions:
the US is the indispensable nation that must lead the world; this leadership requires
toughness; and toughness is best demonstrated by the threat or use of force. Thus: America is
inherently righteous; its influence on rest of world always benign.
6) Most American interventions are not soberly conceived, with realistic goals and clear
exit strategies. But violent invasions always leave so-called "collateral damage": families
killed, destroyed towns, ruined lives, damaged land.
7) The argument that the United States intervenes to defend "freedom" rarely matches facts
on the ground. Many (most?) interventions prop up predatory regimes. The goal is simply to
increase American power rather than to liberate the suffering.
8) Foreign intervention has weakened the moral authority that was once the foundation of
America's political identity. Today many people around the world see it as a bully,
recklessly invading foreign lands. The current invasion of Venezuela is such an example. The
name "United States" is associated with bombing, invasion, occupation, night raids, covert
action, torture, kidnapping, and secret prisons. Who wants to be saved by America? John
Bolton recently threatened Maduro with prison in Guantanamo if he doesn't get the hell out of
Venezuela.
9) Nations lose their virtue when they repeatedly attack other nations. That loss, as
Washington predicted, has cost the United States its felicity. Kinzer says that the US can
regain it only by understanding its own national interests more clearly. He thinks it is late
for the United States to change its course in the world -- but not too late.
America has not become an interventionist power. What has happened is a Coup d'Etat has
been staged through Congressional rules that give unconstitutional powers to a tiny group on
the basis of their 'seniority' and reconcilliation committee appointment. These few, not the
American people want intervention, war, you name it. They spent $5 trillion in the Middle
East alone. So, let's not blame the American people.
5) Generations of American foreign policy makers have made decisions on three assumptions:
the US is the indispensable nation that must lead the world; this leadership requires
toughness; and toughness is best demonstrated by the threat or use of force. Thus: America is
inherently righteous; its influence on rest of world always benign.
6) Most American interventions are not soberly conceived, with realistic goals and clear
exit strategies. But violent invasions always leave so-called "collateral damage": families
killed, destroyed towns, ruined lives, damaged land.
7) The argument that the United States intervenes to defend "freedom" rarely matches facts
on the ground. Many (most?) interventions prop up predatory regimes. The goal is simply to
increase American power rather than to liberate the suffering.
8) Foreign intervention has weakened the moral authority that was once the foundation of
America's political identity. Today many people around the world see it as a bully,
recklessly invading foreign lands. The current invasion of Venezuela is such an example. The
name "United States" is associated with bombing, invasion, occupation, night raids, covert
action, torture, kidnapping, and secret prisons. Who wants to be saved by America? John
Bolton recently threatened Maduro with prison in Guantanamo if he doesn't get the hell out of
Venezuela."
America is the HIGHLY narcissistic, high functioning, psychopathic garden variety
neighbor, highly destructive businessman you work hard to avoid. How any American can see the US and it's people as exceptional is beyond me. No yellow vests anti WAR protests have evolved to STOP the US genocidal killing
machine.
The US, the white supremacist nation has zero trouble killing maiming and displacing
millions of brown Muslims & Christians in 3 world countries. This WILL come home to roost as what the Zionazi empire of psychopaths does to other
countries they will do to US
9) "Nations lose their virtue when they repeatedly attack other nations. That loss, as
Washington predicted, has cost the United States its felicity. Kinzer says that the US can
regain it only by understanding its own national interests more clearly. He thinks it is late
for the United States to change its course in the world -- but not too late."...
I don't even think Teddy as self righteous and psychopathic as he was at the turn of the
20th Century would have ponied up to cannibalizing his own ( https://wikispooks.com/wiki/9-11/Israel_did_it
) in order to build ever more "pretexts" through the torture and murder of other sovereign
nations simply as a means to "control" resources for the good of his $currency and it's banks
and not a Country and it's peoples under the rule of law to a parasite/cyst that it is
willing to die for (
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-19/top-us-general-says-american-troops-should-be-ready-die-israel
) before it's own Nation!...
Another gr8 lesson about American freedom and democracy is in book: The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. Americans should know that before slaves from Africa white trash from Britain was shipped
as slaves. See: They were white and they were slaves.
" Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.
... In the execution of such a plan nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate
antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be
excluded, and that in place of them just and amicable feelings toward all should be
cultivated....
Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow
citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and
experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican
government. But that jealousy, to be useful, must be impartial, else it becomes the
instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive
partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they
actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of
influence on the other....
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our
commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as
we have already formed engagements let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us
stop. ... GEORGE WASHINGTON
Foreign intervention has weakened the moral authority that was once the foundation of
America's political identity. Today many people around the world see it as a bully,
recklessly invading foreign lands.
Indeed, as that's the nature of the state in any and all its iterations. Reform it? Yes. But only by eradicating it altogether. Why? Because, as the great Albert
Jay Nock said,
"Sending in good people to reform the state is like sending in virgins to
reform the whorehouse."
McCabe, evil whitey on the front line here too? ; chickens coming home to roost
finally? Guess there are two kind of people, those who work for a living, and the barbarians who
appropriate the fruits of other's labor.
Mark Twain wrote savagely and derisively about the Moro Massacre, where the US killed
around a thousand Filipino natives who were hiding in a dormant volcano, they just rimmed it
with artillery and killed everyone.
Because they would not pay tribute. We waterboarded about 200 important people, the
equivalent of mayors and councilmen, ranking officers in militias we had no business
disbanding.
1898 was lies and deceit from the outset. We promised the Philippine General Aguinaldo
that if he fought the Spanish on land, then we would fight them at sea. In exchange for
victory over the Spanish, the Philippines would be freed from colonization.
Except then we took it ourselves and killed anyone who disagreed. Slaughter, rape,
torture, it was never for one moment noble. The USA granted the Philippines its independence
after the Japanese conquered them, lol.
Empires do not give up power, their grip weakens ... Empires do not devolve back into "republics", they crash and burn ... And there are really only two options: a) soft collapse b) hard collapse (there is no [c] option)
Exactly -The article was written by another delusional trying to reconstruct/masquerade
the US criminal empire behind the a new facelift, too little too late. The guy didn't get the
memo from Putin/Xi, telling him tat it is a multipolar world & that the US criminal
empire is death & that it will never come back in any shape, way or form, to violate
international law & carry out war crimes.
American or uk coups are not beneficial. Very sad. Checking USA coups online there is a huge list, after the Allende govt in Chile, comes
Australia, the Whitlam govt, much loved, but ousted in a coup, bloodless by his choice. The
people were waiting for Gough to call them out. Newspaper staff arrived from overseas.
first day in office his govt had let the conscientious objectors out of the 2 years they
were serving in jail. There had been mass demonstrations against Aus participation and
incarceration to no avail with the previous govt. Brought back our Australians from Vietnam,
and twenty or 30 or more major things. Every day.
We have learned nothing. Apparently we are using the taming of the lion method which has
been used for thousands of years to take control of countries on Venezuela. The apparent goal
is to take over several Latin and south American countries. Will this be good or bad? Our
past history indicates it will be a disaster. Have we had any successes?
Craving for respect. This started after the first bite in the apple, history said.
Religion is based on that happening. Americans invented the extra load called fastest. Watch
Hollywood portraying it. Respect shown all over the show for plain murderers. Graveyard
managers and priest making the picture complete. Making that part of the world the right
place for a second coming. Resulting in sending all believers to the place named hell.
The fact that this is not taken for granted is exactly what is wrong with America. If only
we could just learn to leave other people alone unless attacked. They even call the idea of
not mass murdering people 'isolationism'. Hey, well guess what? I don't want to murder
other people who never bothered me. I can't say I'm a Christian, but aren't they supposed to
disagree with this sort of thing? They're also supposed to be like 80% of the population, why
don't we ever hear, 'murder bad' from them?
The leading figures were Vice President Pence, Secretary of State Pompeo and Senator Marco
Rubio as well as hawks in in the National Security Council
Notable quotes:
"... Bolton and Pompeo are both experienced politicians and bureaucrats. They likely knew that their plan was deeply flawed and would require much more than Trump would normally commit to. My hunch is that the soon coming mission creep was build into their plan, but that they did not reveal that. ..."
"... The U.S. said it was paying for the aid but wanted Colombia to find trucks and drivers to move it in. The Colombians said no one would accept the mission because the Venezuelan military would arrest them. The aid remains in warehouses near the border. ..."
"... The little spontaneous support the Random Guyidó had in some parts of the population is already lessening. Yesterday's demonstration he had called for saw less attendance than the one on January 23. ..."
"... f the U.S. does not do more than it has done so far the government under President Maduro can sit this out. The sanctions and the lack of oil revenue will create many immediate problems. But in a few weeks Venezuelan oil will have found new buyers. Fresh money will come in and new sources for imports of medicine and staple food will have been found. ..."
"... Over the same time the Random Guy will lose support. The party he nominally leads only won 20% of the votes. The other opposition parties were never informed of his plan to declare himself president. Their support for the step was lukewarm and will cool further. They may in the end support the mediation talks Maduro has offered and which the UN, Uruguay and Mexico also support. The talks could lead to new parliament and/or presidential elections in a year or two and thereby solve the situation. ..."
"... Waging an open war against that country would be very messy, expensive and difficult to justify. To start and support a guerilla war - Elliott Abrams specialty - takes time also costs a lot of money. The chances to win it are low. Moreover Trump wants to get re-elected but could lose many votes over both scenarios. ..."
"... Venezuela follows the neoliberal doctrine, perhaps not by choice, but they buy what they can't produce. Now they can't buy much and they do not produce much but oil, and they are denied payment by their biggest customer of oil. Ouch. Their gold in London cant be used. Revenues from Citgo are denied. Cant even sell their overseas assets now. ..."
"... People need to eat, once they start going hungry they become more receptive to change. US wont use force unless Venezuela is so beaten down by lack of food and medicines they can be rolled over without much of a fight, perhaps after softening them up with mercenaries or other countries troops ..."
"... Its a process. There is no hurry for the US. Time is on their side. That's the reality. Chinise refineries cant handle too much of their heavy oil and its not about to intervene in any military conflict, and Russia does not need their oil plus Venezuela owes them a lot of money, and they own 49% of Citgo and its US refineries. They will cut a deal that minimizes their losses. ..."
"... I find an interesting parallel between Syria and Venezuela. The US allies who are supposed to sacrifice for the regime change and thieving of the neighbouring country. When US assembled a Thieving Coalition on behalf of Israel to rip apart Syria, Turkey and GCC (Saudis) were the prominent local members, just as Columbia and Brazil in ripping apart Venezuela (also with puppet master Israel on top). ..."
"... We usually think of Israel only as a tormenter of the Palestinians. But Israel is much, much more - it is the Capo Di Tutti i Capi of the global crime. Tormenting Palestinians is only a hobby, a sport, but destroying countries to steal their wealth is the day job. US is a dumb bully, the blunt tool that the Israel Crime Syndicate uses for stealing on a global scale. This is my new perspective after Israel's involvement in the coup in Venezuela. ..."
"... I've been following this story on Telesur and MintPress News for a few days. It confirms the theory that what the US could be doing is igniting -- inadvertently -- civil wars in the Lima Group countries. ..."
"... The Washington Mafia won't admit defeat that easily. Some false flag action somewhere at the border or the u.s. embassy will come. The howling of the Relotius media will be deafening. Maybe a Colombian or a Brazilian military is stupid enough to do what Tronald Dumb would rather avoid in consideration of his electorate. ..."
"... It's likely that the Brazilian and Colombian governments don't command the loyalty of their armed forces (especially the foot soldiers who would have shoulder the burden of invasion) to the extent that the Venezuelan government under Maduro does of its own. Especially if money allocated to the armed forces in Brazil and Colombia has gone to a few favored individuals in the officer hierarchies while the grunts have seen no increased pay or support, or have even seen their pay levels dwindle as their responsibilities grow. ..."
"... That's a possible scenario in Brazil given that since Dilma Rousseff's impeachment as President in 2016 it has been governed by corrupt neoliberal politicians. ..."
"... those are good parallels between syria and venezuala that you draw and to which i agree with.. my thought on trump is basically - it doesn't matter who is in the presidents seat in the usa, as the president seems to have little to say on that matter.. ..."
"... One other thing also to consider is that in addition to conventional armed forces, Venezuela also has popular defense committees and militias among urban and rural communities who would be fighting any invasion forces. ..."
"... If the US nag croaks financially, EU will not be much of a replacement, whilst the potential of parasitising on Russia and China approaches zero. Therefore, I conclude that "strategy of flogging the nag to death" is not really a strategy, it is an urge. That is, it comes from a mix of chutzpah, psychopathy and pig manure in the nature of the parasite. After all, who puts up a sofa on top of a hill of a stolen land to watch the final extinction of the previous owner. Obviously, this goes far beyond just stealing the women and the cattle. ..."
"... These guys are pretty smart. Many like to think otherwise, perhaps it makes them feel better. You can't judge their actions by Hollywood standards of winning and losing. Chaos and denial of resources to anyone opposed to the Empire is enough of a Win , at least temporarily. Its a long game they play, its been played for over a century now, even much longer. ..."
"... The elites, referred to by Plato as Philosopher Kings , want to rule the world as living Gods, or at least their descendants. It's only over the last 150-250 years or so that control of science, finance, military, capitalism and democracy (manipulated via the printing press) gave them the means to realize their goals. It was a long road for them, operating through secret societies and monopoly control of money and government debt, and dealing with factions who were bound by morality (hence the war on religion) . In the battle between Good and Evil tbe good guys have been annihilated or at least silenced, at least in the West and most likely much of the East. ..."
On January 25, two days after Random Guyidó declared himself President of Venezuela,
the lack of planing in the U.S. coup attempt was
already obvious :
My impression is that Trump was scammed. It was long evident that he gives little
attention to details and does not think things through. Most likely Bolton, Pompeo and
Rubio presented him with a three step plan:
Phase 1. Support the self declared president Guaidó; Phase 2: ... (wishful
thinking) ...; Phase 3: Take half of their oil!
... Bolton and Pompeo are both experienced politicians and bureaucrats. They likely knew
that their plan was deeply flawed and would require much more than Trump would normally
commit to. My hunch is that the soon coming mission creep was build into their plan, but
that they did not reveal that.
The U.S. coup planners and their Venezuelan puppets had hoped that the Venezuelan
military would jump to their side. That was wishful thinking and unlikely to happen. They
also thought up some "humanitarian aid" scheme in which pictures of trucks crossing a long
blocked bridge would soon shame the Venezuelan president into stepping down. That was
likewise nonsense.
Unless the U.S. is willing and able to escalate, the coup attempt is destined to
fail.
'Western' media now recognize that phase 2 of the coup plan is in deep trouble. Today
the Guardian , Bloomberg and the New York Times all describe
growing frustration with the lack of success.
[T]hree weeks after Guaidó electrified the previously rudderless opposition
movement by declaring himself interim leader, there are signs his campaign risks losing
steam.
An anticipated mass defection of military chiefs – which opposition leaders
admit is a prerequisite to Maduro's departure – has not materialized, and Maduro's
inner-circle has begun claiming it has weathered the political storm.
Since Juan Guaido declared himself interim president three weeks ago and offered amnesty
to officers who abandon Maduro, more than 30 countries led by the U.S. have hailed the
move, waiting for the military to follow. There hasn't been a rush to his side.
...
In a country with more than 2,000 generals and admirals, only one top officer -- who
commands no troops -- has pledged allegiance to Guaido.
...
This is a major reason why the revolution isn't moving as quickly as some had hoped
when Guaido electrified the world on Jan. 23 with his declaration. This has led to
impatience and finger-pointing. U.S. policy makers and those around Guaido -- as well as
leaders in Brazil and Colombia -- are eyeing one another and worrying about failure.
Officials in each camp have said privately they assumed the others had a more developed
strategy.
[The opposition's] goal was to bring the supplies into Venezuela, forcing a confrontation
with Mr. Maduro, who has refused the help. This would cast Mr. Maduro in a bad light,
opposition leaders said, and display their ability to set up a government-like relief
system in a nation where the crumbling economy has left many starving, sick and without
access to medicine.
Worry about what comes next has intensified . At a meeting in the U.S. embassy in Bogota,
Colombia, last week, military, intelligence and civilian leaders from both countries
discussed ways of moving humanitarian aid into Venezuela. There was a sense of
frustration in the air, according to a participant who agreed to discuss it on condition
of anonymity.
The U.S. said it was paying for the aid but wanted Colombia to find trucks and
drivers to move it in. The Colombians said no one would accept the mission because the
Venezuelan military would arrest them. The aid remains in warehouses near the
border.
At similar meetings in the Colombian border city of Cucuta, a person who attended said
the dynamic was the same -- the U.S. expecting Colombia to find the means to deliver the
aid and the Colombians saying they can't.
The opposition is only now thinking up
its own crazy scheme for delivering the "aid":
In Cúcuta, members of the opposition say they are considering options to
physically force the shipment into Venezuela.
Omar Lares, a former opposition mayor in exile in Cúcuta, said organizers want
people to surround an aid truck on the Colombian side and accompany it to the bridge. A
crowd of thousands would be gathered on the other side to push through a security cordon,
move the containers blocking the bridge, and accompany the aid into Venezuela.
"One group over there, one over here, and we'll make one large human chain," he
said.
And what does he think the battalion of Venezuelan soldiers between the two groups will
do? Just step aside and allow an invasion of their country?
The struggle could make for some marketable TV pictures but it would not achieve
anything. The lack of planning is daunting even to the lobbyists in Washington DC:
" The opposition has created immense expectations, and it's not at all clear they have a
plan for actually fulfilling them ," said David Smilde, a Venezuela analyst at the
Washington Office on Latin America.
The U.S. coup plotters and their Venezuelan proxies seem to recognize that there will be
no imminent change :
Addressing a congressional hearing, the US special envoy on Venezuela, Elliott Abrams,
claimed "Maduro and his band of thieves" were finished. He claimed international pressure
meant "there is a storm brewing inside the Maduro regime that will eventually bring it to
an end".
But while Abrams said Washington was "hopeful and confident" of Maduro's demise he
admitted it was "impossible to predict" when it might come. The US would maintain
pressure "over the next weeks and months", he added, suggesting a quick resolution is no
longer expected.
Opposition leaders have spent recent days trying to dampen expectations that Maduro's
exit is imminent.
Juan Andrés Mejía, an opposition leader and Guaidó ally, admitted
that goal "could take some time".
The little spontaneous support the Random Guyidó had in some parts of the
population is already lessening. Yesterday's demonstration he had called for saw less attendance than the one on
January 23. He now says that he will force the 'aid' crossing on February 23 but he
does not seem to have a real plan to achieve that:
President of the National Assembly Guaido also promised the country that US-delivered
humanitarian aid will "enter the country no matter what" on February 23, issuing an
"order" for the military to allow it to enter. However, military leaders have dismissed
these calls, with the Central Defense Region tweeting in response that the armed forces
would not take any orders from an "imperial lackey."
"One month after the swearing in we have done it. This February 23 the humanitarian
aid will enter the country. The Armed Forces have 11 days to decide if they are on the
side of the Venezuelans and the Constitution or on that of the usurper," he claimed in
reference to President Maduro.
I f the U.S. does not do more than it has done so far the government under President
Maduro can sit this out. The sanctions and the lack of oil revenue will create many
immediate problems. But in a few weeks Venezuelan oil will have found new buyers. Fresh
money will come in and new sources for imports of medicine and staple food will have been
found.
Over the same time the Random Guy will lose support. The party he nominally leads
only won 20% of the votes. The other opposition parties were never informed of his plan to
declare himself president. Their support for the step was lukewarm and will cool further.
They may in the end support the mediation talks Maduro has offered and which the UN,
Uruguay and Mexico also support. The talks could lead to new parliament and/or presidential
elections in a year or two and thereby solve the situation.
The U.S. would not be satisfied by a compromise solution. Trump is now committed to
'regime change' in Venezuela. But how can he do it?
Waging an open war against that country would be very messy, expensive and difficult
to justify. To start and support a guerilla war - Elliott Abrams specialty - takes time
also costs a lot of money. The chances to win it are low. Moreover Trump wants to get
re-elected but could lose many votes over both scenarios.
What else then can he do?
Posted by b on February 14, 2019 at 01:58 PM |
Permalink
Have Russia and/or China taken any steps to provide any medications that may be urgently
required by Venezuelan hospitals or doctors? ...one or two planeloads would seem to get it
done
Given the nation's massive economic potential, America's bankers must be excited about
the prospect of even higher profitability based on increased business opportunities in the
nation that has the world's largest oil reserves.
Simply put, whilst the regime change in Venezuela is faltering the Trump's retreat to Deep
State is escalating. After a couple of months of no movement in Venezuela, he will be
forced to commence his first open war.
Clintons, Bushes and Obama started theirs, how could Trump disappoint? Starting a war
would complete the outcome which is a mirror image (opposite) to what Trump promised and
was elected on.
Some would say that Trump's achievement is zero. Yet, the system which delivered two
worst Presidential candidates ever in history is to blame. Trump was just the worst
candidate for President. If the other, worstest candidate won, there already would have
been no Venezuela and no US, the World would have been a pile of radioactive dust. It is
still not impossible that the worst candidate could achieve the same as the worstest, but
for the other one the outcome was a virtual certainty.
As to 2020 election, expect deja vu - Republican Trump the Worst and some Democratic the
Worstest. Who are you gonna vote for? Who with brains will waste time voting?
Backlash is arriving already. The people of Haiti are toppling their corrupt US puppet
president in naked anger over his betrayal of Venezuela when he voted with the Empire's
dictate in a January OAS event declaring Maduro "illegimite". Must read :
'Between February 6 and 10 of 2019, several military transport aircraft have flown to the
Rafael Miranda Airport in Puerto Rico, the San Isidro Air Base in the Dominican Republic,
and other strategically located Caribbean Islands, most certainly without the knowledge
of the governments of those nations. These flights took off from U.S. military facilities
where Special Operation Troops and U.S. Marine Corps units operate. These units have been
used for covert operations, even against leaders of other countries.'
thanks b... you said this in one of your previous post - they don't have a plan!
@5 kiza - lol! - the way i see it, trump is almost the most successful as he hasn't
engaged in a direct war, and had to work thru other ones started by other presidents... i
like entertaining the idea it is trump against the deep state... it is a fun thought, but i
think it is extremely unrealistic.. trump will do what he is told even if it is in a round
about way.. if the deep state want a war, he will cosign it.. as b also shared - all the
sanctions on russia haven't let up and instead have just increased steadily since he
entered office.. trump may talk a good line - no more wars, why can't we be friends with
russia and etc - but he is missing in action on these same fronts.. now, maybe if he can
hold off on following Netanyahu's war plan for Iran, or hold off on bombing Venezuela or
whatever he is supposed to do here, he might have a chance for a 2nd term... the democrats
have shown real skill in shooting themselves in the foot! anything is possible..
i too enjoyed the congresswomen who was up on anti-Semite charges taking a real strip
out of Elliot Abrams yesterday.. kudos to her for going for it..
Nobody volunteering to be the martyrs as yet, so some will have to be volunteered. The
Trump regime has put a lot of work into gaining Venezuelan oil, so I doubt they will be
stopped by a little hiccup.
I didn't see this posting from Reuters about the next ploy in b's posting
"(Reuters) - President Donald Trump will give a speech on Venezuela in Miami on Monday
and voice support for Venezuela's National Assembly President Juan Guaido, whom the
United States considers the legitimate president of that country, a White House official
said on Wednesday. Trump is to make remarks on Venezuela and "the dangers of socialism"
at Florida International University in Miami, the official said."
We have had this discussion before but there is only top/bottom and not left/right. That
said, the elite are now setting up to cast top/bottom as capitalism/socialism......neither
of which exist in the same way that TOP/BOTTOM does.
Within the definition of TOP/BOTTOM one could suggest that
Capitalism is where (TOP) a historical elite perpetuate the God of Mammon global finance
jackboot without oversight and TBTF on the BOTTOM that acts like powerless zombies, and
Socialism is where the God of Mammon global finance is a set of public utilities as a
managed resource for the public commons and strict restrictions are made on ongoing
ownership of private property
Venezuela follows the neoliberal doctrine, perhaps not by choice, but they buy what
they can't produce. Now they can't buy much and they do not produce much but oil, and they
are denied payment by their biggest customer of oil. Ouch. Their gold in London cant be
used. Revenues from Citgo are denied. Cant even sell their overseas assets now.
People need to eat, once they start going hungry they become more receptive to
change. US wont use force unless Venezuela is so beaten down by lack of food and medicines
they can be rolled over without much of a fight, perhaps after softening them up with
mercenaries or other countries troops
Its a process. There is no hurry for the US. Time is on their side. That's the
reality. Chinise refineries cant handle too much of their heavy oil and its not about to
intervene in any military conflict, and Russia does not need their oil plus Venezuela owes
them a lot of money, and they own 49% of Citgo and its US refineries. They will cut a deal
that minimizes their losses.
Max Blumenthal continues to try and reclaim his former position as a believable journalist.
I provided his observational tweet on the previous Venezuelan thread, and do so
again :
"At Tuesday's opposition march, among the most ferociously anti-Chavista elements
in Venezuela, I struggled to find a single person willing to openly support a direct US
military intervention. Not that Bolton, Rubio, or Abrams would care."
Of course, those sentiments do pose a problem for the Orange Gringo. Down the thread is
a cute cartoon vid that will bring out the wry smile in most.
'"The opposition has created immense expectations, and it's not at all clear they
have a plan for actually fulfilling them," said David Smilde, a Venezuela analyst at the
Washington Office on Latin America'.
No. Actually, the US government and media have created immense expectations. Apparently
Trump's plans as President and Commander-in-Chief are just as half-baked as his business
projects were.
Blooming Barricade , Feb 14, 2019 4:12:34 PM |
link
And Roberto Lovato professor at UCLA on Democracy Now (they're redeeming themselves a
bit IMO with their Venezuela coverage, considering their abysmal coverage of Syria and
"Russiagate"): here
.
@james 9
Thanks for all your previous comments as well as this one. I do not subscribe to the
concept that Trump is a Deep State puppet. Even the horrible Obama was not. All those
sh**bags enter the vice of Presidency and after being squeezed a little by the Deep State
wizards behind the curtain, they start dancing to the tune. The system selects them on the
basis of low resistance, that is on the basis of being worthless, characterless
individuals. Watch the pre-selection/Primaries debates to realise how it comes to the final
match between the worst and the worstest.
But I find an interesting parallel between Syria and Venezuela. The US allies who
are supposed to sacrifice for the regime change and thieving of the neighbouring country.
When US assembled a Thieving Coalition on behalf of Israel to rip apart Syria, Turkey and
GCC (Saudis) were the prominent local members, just as Columbia and Brazil in ripping apart
Venezuela (also with puppet master Israel on top).
The Syria rip off failed because of what I called "the honesty between the thieves". It
appears that the Venezuela rip off is faltering due to the same reason. Perhaps it is an
in-built, systemic weakness of thieving coalitions that all the members want a piece of the
dismembered victim, but are too careful to sacrifice more of their own blood and money than
the next to achieve it.
Israel passes the buck down to US, US passes the buck down to Columbia and Brazil,
Columbian and Brazilian regimes try to pass it down to some internal fool, but those are
hard to find.
The thieving, murdering pyramid falters for the lack of self-sacrificial, extremist
fools (rarer in South America than in Middle East).
We usually think of Israel only as a tormenter of the Palestinians. But Israel is
much, much more - it is the Capo Di Tutti i Capi of the global crime. Tormenting
Palestinians is only a hobby, a sport, but destroying countries to steal their wealth is
the day job. US is a dumb bully, the blunt tool that the Israel Crime Syndicate uses for
stealing on a global scale. This is my new perspective after Israel's involvement in the
coup in Venezuela.
I've been following this story on Telesur and MintPress News for a few days. It
confirms the theory that what the US could be doing is igniting -- inadvertently -- civil
wars in the Lima Group countries.
Talking of which: The Canadian government is looking very weak. There are calls for
Trudeau's resignation after the unveiling of a corruption scandal involving Lavalin which
was heavily involved in the Libyan war in which Canada played a leading and ignominious
role -- Pilots, enforcing the 'no fly' zone, were said afterwards to have been
disillusioned, having been used as Al Qaeda's Air Force.
Canada has been taking the lead as a US surrogate in propagandizing for regime change in
Venezuela, if there is a government crisis it could lead to Freeland taking Trudeau's
place. On the other hand it might lead to a saner person being appointed to Foreign
Affairs.
The Washington Mafia won't admit defeat that easily. Some false flag action somewhere
at the border or the u.s. embassy will come. The howling of the Relotius media will be
deafening. Maybe a Colombian or a Brazilian military is stupid enough to do what Tronald
Dumb would rather avoid in consideration of his electorate.
I'm not sure the plan was ever meant to be a success. Oh sure, Rubio would have loved it if
the military stepped in and took over but he probably felt there was no real downside.
If in 6 months Maduro is still in power Guaido will be able to keep claiming Maduro is
illegitimate.
He can run across the border to Colombia and in the next election claim it is fraudulent
because he is not allowed to run. Meanwhile, sanctions will continue to do their magic and
eventually the people will stop supporting Maduro, not because they want the opposition in
charge, but because they want sanctions lifted.
At that point the military will be easily able to take over and launch elections that
only allow US-backed candidates. No big deal for Trump. What does it cost him? We have
plenty of oil for the time being. This kind of plan has few downsides (other than being
extremely immoral).
Far more likely that Brazil and Colombia refuse to commit any troops or other support
for a US-led coalition to invade Venezuela. These countries have long borders going through
thinly populated tropical forest or mountain areas with Venezuela.
They don't want the prospect of fighting continuous border wars with militias that would
sap their own military strength and which could go deep into their own territories. Imagine
how unpopular that would make their current governments with their publics.
It's likely that the Brazilian and Colombian governments don't command the loyalty
of their armed forces (especially the foot soldiers who would have shoulder the burden of
invasion) to the extent that the Venezuelan government under Maduro does of its own.
Especially if money allocated to the armed forces in Brazil and Colombia has gone to a few
favored individuals in the officer hierarchies while the grunts have seen no increased pay
or support, or have even seen their pay levels dwindle as their responsibilities
grow.
That's a possible scenario in Brazil given that since Dilma Rousseff's impeachment
as President in 2016 it has been governed by corrupt neoliberal politicians.
The problem with your hypothesis is the Venezuelan People support the Bolivarian
Revolution AND its constitution by over 80% as was shown in one of the first threads on
this topic.
Thanks to the People's Media, TeleSur, the People are well informed of the economic war
being waged against them, and they well know what abandoning the Revolution would
mean--they just celebrated a holiday dedicated to a revolt against a previous Yankee-backed
Dictator. Furthermore, the majority of the planet's people through their governments back
Maduro.
Stonewalling the offered dialog by Maduro goes against the Opposition's interest, just
as sitting out elections has every time. And if polls related to BigLie Media believability
within the Outlaw US Empire can be used as a proxy indicator, then it isn't doing a good
job manufacturing consent globally either.
South of the Border, majorities in every nation loathe the Gringo-Yankee Imperialist, so
reactionary governments can only stay in power through force. Bevin notes Lima Group
nations are already experiencing Blowback, and Haiti's already in revolt--again.
thanks... those are good parallels between syria and venezuala that you draw and to
which i agree with.. my thought on trump is basically - it doesn't matter who is in the
presidents seat in the usa, as the president seems to have little to say on that
matter..
they are compliant, or made to be compliant to agenda that seems to override every dream
a normal american might have for some role of harmony on the world stage which always
includes war, or some threat of war, with endless sanctions in prep for more of the same..
all to secure the us$ and yes - i think israel plays a pivotal role in all this as
well.
i like @24 jen's overview on the response that is more likely from the new puppets
surrounding venezuala..
Blooming Barricade , Feb 14, 2019 6:08:37 PM |
link
@20 Yes, Christina Freeland formed the Lima Group with her Ukrianian fascism's ideological
partners: Bolsonaro and his party alongside Columbia and to an extent Argentina. South
America a haven for Nazis once more.
"China will stay committed to pursuing peaceful development, comprehensively
deepening reform and breaking new grounds in opening-up on all fronts, and building a new
type of international relations and a community with a shared future for mankind in order
to create new opportunities for and make fresh contributions to world peace and
development."
"Putin's Lasting
State" or "Modern Russian Governance Explained," by Vladislav Surkov, Tr. Dimitry
Orlov. Excerpt:
"And so the Russian state continues, now as a new type of state that has never
existed here before. It took form mostly in the middle of the 2000s, and so far it has
been little studied, but its uniqueness and its viability are now apparent.
The stress tests which it has passed and is now passing have shown that this
specific, organically arrived at model of political functioning provides an effective
means of survival and ascension of the Russian nation not just for the coming years, but
for decades and, most likely, for the entire next century."
Both provide an amazing counterpoise to what we see the Outlaw US Empire doing. A very
curious proposal from the last article:
"[T]the political system that has been made in Russia is fit to serve not just future
domestic needs but obviously has significant export potential."
The import of what you said is that the people of Venezuela are well informed. The
people of the Evil Empire and its vassals are not. Thirteen weeks of revolt in France and a
week in Haiti -- Evil Empire MSM -- crickets.
"All states can be placed on a continuum which ranges from states whose authority is
based on their power to states whose power is based on their authority." Alexander
Solzhenitsyn
My favorite talking point is how anyone who is interviewed in the U.S. insists that the
'rank and file' are with the new President and only a handful of the most corrupt, upper
echelon Generals still support Maduro.
And I really love it when the Sock Puppets who do the interviews nod their heads as if
this is some great new insight when they should respond, 'how the hell do you know, when
were you in Venezuela?'
Kiza @ 33: Thanks for the compliment but I was really only guessing! Although it's not
difficult to think that any increases in Brazil's military budget that Bolsonaro makes (and
the country is on austerity spending and cutting back on social programs) are likely to go
into buying foreign (ie US) armaments, enriching Bolsonaro's allies in the military and in
Brazil's own armaments production, and not into better pay and conditions for soldiers.
One other thing also to consider is that in addition to conventional armed forces,
Venezuela also has popular defense committees and militias among urban and rural
communities who would be fighting any invasion forces. This is something we MoA
barflies had not considered before as few of us live in countries where militia groups have
been allowed to exist and even receive government support and money for arms and training.
https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13968
"We usually think of Israel only as a tormenter of the Palestinians. But Israel is
much, much more - it is the Capo Di Tutti i Capi of the global crime. Tormenting
Palestinians is only a hobby, a sport, but destroying countries to steal their wealth is
the day job. US is a dumb bully, the blunt tool that the Israel Crime Syndicate uses for
stealing on a global scale. This is my new perspective after Israel's involvement in the
coup in Venezuela."
This is how I see Israel as well, one difference though; IMO the US is being used to
bully yes, but it is also being destroyed and once dead Israel will move on to its next
victim
That's the gist of the narrative, that "democracy's being restored" instead of usurped.
Fortunately, that narrative is well past its sell date and its rot is all too plain for
many to see. It only works on the blindly indoctrinated, which fortunately are no longer a
majority within the Outlaw US Empire.
@42 It would be interesting to know who got Branson involved. He probably sees Guaido as
young and progressive. Maduro not so much. It shows which side of the fence Branson sits
on.
@ Jen 37
Yes, you are absolutely right, the last line of defence of Venezuela is what is usually
called the "territorial defence". I have never seen a territorial defence act effectively
in a military situation, and I am guessing that this is because of poor leadership, poor
armaments and amateurs against professionals. Having written all this, it is the remnants
of the "defence popular" which would be the bedrock of the guerrilla resistance. Therefore,
do not count on them stopping a professional military invasion, but do count on them
increasing the cost of the Mission Accomplished to the "peace keepers", that is those who
want to have peace just to enjoy their loot.
@ frances 38
Dear Frances, you raise this very interesting point about why a rider would flog his nag
to death. I know that there are two opposite strategies in the biological world - parasites
which maintain their host and parasites which kill their host. I simply do not understand
the strategy of a parasite killing its host. This would be a sensible strategy only in a
situation of plentiful replacement hosts, but both US and EU host are pretty warn out
nags.
If the US nag croaks financially, EU will not be much of a replacement, whilst the
potential of parasitising on Russia and China approaches zero. Therefore, I conclude that
"strategy of flogging the nag to death" is not really a strategy, it is an urge. That is,
it comes from a mix of chutzpah, psychopathy and pig manure in the nature of the parasite.
After all, who puts up a sofa on top of a hill of a stolen land to watch the final
extinction of the previous owner. Obviously, this goes far beyond just stealing the women
and the cattle.
Exxon-Mobil drilling exploration analyses results scheduled announcements at South Eastern
Mediterranean basin (location is situated a small birds flying distance south from Akrotiri
British base in Cyprus which will be obviously harbor HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft
carrier/s designed from ground up for F-35 deployment) were accidentally cancelled a few
days short before the Venezuela situation was grabbing the international headlines.
Day before yesterday unexpectedly the results were forwarded to the presses. It was
being timed to synch with the Venezuela humanitarian 'crisis' show?
What's the hidden message here? No oil revenues for you Med folks to use for boosting
social programmes political strategies?
" Therefore, I conclude that "strategy of flogging the nag to death" is not really
a strategy, it is an urge. That is, it comes from a mix of chutzpah, psychopathy and pig
manure in the nature of the parasite. After all, who puts up a sofa on top of a hill of a
stolen land to watch the final extinction of the previous owner. Obviously, this goes far
beyond just stealing the women and the cattle."
I agree, given the kill or be killed pathology of Israel's leadership combined with its
death grip on the US govt, all I see is a US collapse.
Israel in its madness assumes that somehow out of all of this it will rule the ME so why
would it have further need of its American dead horse?
To me, Israel has a Circe (Game of Thrones) mentality; lots of schemes, little to show for
it other than the death of others, lots of others.
"1981–1987: Package holiday industries and Virgin Atlantic Airways success
Branson's first successful entry into the airline industry was during a trip to Puerto
Rico. His flight was cancelled, so he decided to charter his own plane the rest of the way
and offer a ride to the rest of the stranded passengers for a small fee in order to cover
the cost.[24]
In 1982, Virgin purchased the gay nightclub Heaven."
To me it suggests that the guy might have been involved in kompromat operations in some
MI-sonething back at the day?
You're right – a war is all but inconceivable. Here are the numbers: The
Venezuelan army numbers 500,000 members. In addition, there are the uniquely Venezuelan
entities known as the national, regional and municipal-level militias numbering two million
more citizens under arms.
Modern military theory posits that an invading force must number at least three times
the numbers of the defensive force. The US military cannot muster even an equivalent number
to those who would be waiting for them "behind every blade of grass."
Even a strictly air attack intended to wreak widespread destruction and leave nothing
but chaos (a US specialty) would suffer significant casualties from the very sophisticated
air defense systems in Venezuela.
Of course, no quantity of dead military would be of slightest concern to the oligarchs
in the US and in Venezuela who would hope to make a killing from all the killing, but some
substantial number of US politicians would worry about the effect on their constituencies,
and the results in their vote counts next year.
A US military assault on Venezuela would be extremely stupid, and would wreak havoc on
the political class in DC.
The popular militias are not Venezuela's last line of defence, but the key to it. Venezuela
is one of those are countries in which the government can distribute arms and munitions to
the populace without fear that they will be used against it. And that is why so far the
allure of invading Venezuela, on behalf of the US and rich people everywhere, is not
sufficient to attract Colombia or Brazil.
As I have said before there is a real possibility that, by provoking the Venezuelan
masses back into active defence of the Bolivarian system, the imperialists risk starting a
war of poor against rich that would find eager partisans from Patagonia to Panama.
It would be instructive to consider the vast amounts of money and military that it took
to bring FARC to the negotiating table. The reason why Colombia has been invited into NATO
is that, for the past three decades NATO, in the form of US, UK and mercenaries, plus the
narcotics industry's paramilitaries, plus Israel have been spending billions to suppress a
guerrilla uprising in the jungle. And FARC fought entirely on its own, without regular
assistance from any outside power.
What Venezuela must do, however, is to do as Cuba did and become self sufficient in
foodstuffs. It has to break away from its dependency on commodity exports/imports. There is
no reason why it cannot achieve this within months. But to do so it has to break from the
bourgeoisie, who have broken decisively with it, and expropriate their 'property.'
Such an example would thrill millions across the continent and around the world,
millions who would rally- as Britain's dockers did in 1919 when they refused to load ships
supplying the anti-Bolshevik forces in Russia- to the support of the people of Venezuela
fighting for the right to govern themselves.
I don't really believe the Regular Guy nor the opposition want 'elections'.... why should
they? they have essentially lost nearly all of the 30 or more elections since 1998 and yet
they keep howling about elections. They just can't accept it - that they only have 20-30%
of the population with them.
They want power - and some/many of them are now willing to call on the USA to intervene
and give them illegitimate power through a coup d'etat and/or military sabotage and
subversion. they want a return of the totally pernicious and anti-democratic Oligarchy
which rules for hundreds of years until Chavez kicked them out..... These guys are so
arrogant that they are talking, among other nefarious things, about seizing/using funds in
the bank accounts of the Venezuelan embassy in DC
really it's time for Maduro to do something a bit more sane and radical because these
guys are out of control, or he'll lose - in other words, use the courts... but he keeps
talking about "sooner or later" , well it looks to me like later is getting pretty late
Venezuela is a proxy battlefield for the Western way/NOT-Western way. I don't want to throw
ism definitions at the sides when I believe it it all about the money....global private
finance versus alternatives like China, Russia, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela....I
am missing ???
Anyway, I think this "existential" conflict is being forced now before the alternatives
get more influence on the "slave" Western nations.
I don't like to think about the repressive environment that will exist in the remaining
Western block of nations after this global "divorce".
In the coming "public discussion" about capitalism/socialism will the true power of
those that own global private finance be exposed? I hope so but keep seeing identity
politics, wars, etc. being played against the chances.
"A US military assault on Venezuela would be extremely stupid, and would wreak
havoc on the political class in DC."
It would be stupid. Which is precisely why it wont happen, except as fake humanitarian
intervention after Venezuela is divided and weakened from sanctions and starvation. It
could happen earlier with a FF attack killing a large number of Americans blamed on
Venezuela, but the US has been very cautious about putting troops in harms way since
Vietnam. We engage against enemies we know cant hurt us much.
These guys are pretty smart. Many like to think otherwise, perhaps it makes them feel
better. You can't judge their actions by Hollywood standards of winning and losing. Chaos
and denial of resources to anyone opposed to the Empire is enough of a Win , at least
temporarily. Its a long game they play, its been played for over a century now, even much
longer.
The elites, referred to by Plato as Philosopher Kings , want to rule the world as living
Gods, or at least their descendants. It's only over the last 150-250 years or so that
control of science, finance, military, capitalism and democracy (manipulated via the
printing press) gave them the means to realize their goals. It was a long road for them,
operating through secret societies and monopoly control of money and government debt, and
dealing with factions who were bound by morality (hence the war on religion) . In the
battle between Good and Evil tbe good guys have been annihilated or at least silenced, at
least in the West and most likely much of the East.
"... I have to agree with the false flag suggestions. anyone who saw abrams get reamed by omar yesterday saw the true face of delusional and unaccountable psychopathy at work. the closest he's ever come to paying for his war crimes was a brief period before a pardon and as such he's more entitled and fearless than the average deep state scumbag. add the typical zionist persecution complex ("pre-traumatic stress disorder") and a healthy dose of spite and it's clear this won't end until it has to. ..."
"... As for the western media, they'll screech no matter what happens. I "hate watch" the BBC's american coverage and it is even more painful than you'd think. They're fixated at an autistic level on "OMG TEH AID WTF!!!!111!!" and parade out rando "opposition" types who claim they're tortured martyrs while wearing make-up in a new york TV studio. ..."
"... I have to agree with the false flag suggestions. anyone who saw abrams get reamed by omar yesterday saw the true face of delusional and unaccountable psychopathy at work. the closest he's ever come to paying for his war crimes was a brief period before a pardon and as such he's more entitled and fearless than the average deep state scumbag. add the typical zionist persecution complex ("pre-traumatic stress disorder") and a healthy dose of spite and it's clear this won't end until it has to. ..."
"... As for the western media, they'll screech no matter what happens. I "hate watch" the BBC's american coverage and it is even more painful than you'd think. They're fixated at an autistic level on "OMG TEH AID WTF!!!!111!!" and parade out rando "opposition" types who claim they're tortured martyrs while wearing make-up in a new york TV studio. ..."
Market shelves in the scruffy Colombian town of Puerto Santander are loaded with
Venezuelan maize flour, rice, cheese spread and more, heavily subsidized consumer goods
smuggled by government officials and ordinary citizens alike and sold at big mark-ups.
Gasoline is ferried from Venezuela too, as people cash in on the arbitrage opportunities
created by extreme price distortions. The spectacle of food being spirited out of a country
where hunger is becoming epidemic shows in microcosm how Maduro's socialist government has
created an economic and humanitarian disaster. While this black-market trade has been going
on for years now, it's jarring to witness it at a time when much of the world has thrown its
support behind efforts by Maduro's rival, Juan Guaido, to bring emergency supplies into the
country. "It makes you angry to see these products for sale," said Lisbeth Cisneros, 28, a
pregnant mother of four who fled the Venezuelan town of San Cristobal three months ago and
works as a street vendor on the Colombian side of the border. "The situation is horrible over
there."
@israel
shamir I read the link The setting for this incident is British soldiers and colonists
under siege at Fort Pitt by Indians allied with Pontiac. There is no evidence for any
sustained program of attempting to infect Indians with smallpox in U.S. history. This charge
is of a piece with the general use of the term "genocide" regarding American relations with
the Indians. And it is equally fallacious.
In this struggle, President Trump is his own bitter enemy. He seeks approval of the War
Party, and his own base will be disappointed by his actions.
Sad but true. Trump is over. Any Qanons out there still trying desperately to convince
themselves that he's secretly fighting the deep state are just delusional specimens at this
point. Don't get me wrong: I'm still glad Hillary's still not president. I'm just saddened
that there'll be no MAGA but then, I guess that was always unlikely.
A bigger problem is that Venezuela had become a monoculture economy: it exports oil and
imports everything else. It does not even produce food to feed its 35 million inhabitants.
Venezuela is a victim of neoliberal doctrine claiming that you can buy what you can't
produce. Now they can't buy and they do not produce. Imagine a democratic Saudi Arabia hit
by blockade.
This point is worth emphasizing, since it's not a problem unique to Venezuela. In fact,
the Globalist institutions (IMF, WorldBank, USAid, etc.) have worked tirelessly for decades
now to increase third-world countries' dependence on import-export agriculture, rather than
encouraging them to become more self-sufficient. Instead of extending them credit to grow
food for the domestic market, for example, the WorldBank will only extend them credit to grow
crops–usually dry crops like cotton–for export, forcing them to import
much of the food they need. Meanwhile, Washington throws crazy subsidies at agri-giants like
Monsanto (rather than 'small family farms') to encourage them to export more of their GMO
garbage to these countries. Just ask the Mexicans what happened to their domestic
corn-growing industry after NAFTA came into effect. Now, all those Mexicans who lost their
farms are up in the US working as laborers for the very agri-businesses that put them
out of business in the first place!
But hey: sactionable countries, broke farmers heading pa' norte to look for work,
and constant instability throughout the third world–those are all features of
the NWO, not bugs.
By the way, am I the only one who thinks Juan Guaidó looks sort of like a gay
Obama?
Unlike Asians and Arabs, Latin Americans don't have it in them to fight a war. Sure they can
bluster, but like Africans, it's all just chest puffing noise.
When the U.S. decides to go in, they'll meet little resistance. The tragedy will be what
comes later as when the U.S. exported democracy to Iraq, Syria and Libya. Rich Venezuelans
will make out like bandits, the poor will be reduced to selling their daughters.
What surprises me is the silence of both the left and Hispanics. Trump is about to do a
regime change in a Latin American socialist country and they have nothing to say about
it.
Israel Shamir should have better sense than to spread the 'diseased blankets' given by
Americans to the Indians nonsense. Even the link fails to come close to proving a single
case. First, the only known written suggestion that anyone had considered it is from Colonial
days – those are officers of the British Empire. Second, the one case of a possible
such transmission, and it perhaps an accident, also is from the Colonial era.
The most genocidally inclined Americans with power and authority who might have done such
a thing, Union Generals Sherman and Sheridan, did not take advantage of their positions to do
such an evil.
The real decimation of the Native American population was caused by diseases brought by the
Spanish to which they had no immunity. This occurred before widespread settlement on the
Eastern seaboard.
Yes, there was one recorded incident of an army officer giving infected blankets to the
Indians but that was not a widespread program in itself.
Venezuela invasion thing is double-faceted: a trap for Trump & a bluff. if the invasion
is, then bye-bye 2020 election, mission accomplished. if no invasion on sight then the bluff
of Pompeo-Bolton-Abrams is called & the 2020 reelection assured. Venezuela in the role of
bait.
@Anonymous
And of course the trail of tears by the Cherokees and later by the Navaho added to it, as
hundreds if thousand didn't died from the lack of blankets and the lack of food, only to be
used as forced labor living in holes in the ground young women selling them selves for a loaf
of bread while they built a fort.The truth was we tried to kill off by any means as many as
we could for the dead has no claim to the land.!!!.!!c
@Jake
Hmm I believe it was Sherman to said "kill the children for nits breed lice" and surly don't
leave out Custer who the Indians call the 'eastern sun" for he always attacked as the sun
came up attacking friendly villages as well as those not so friendly !!
"... First, you starve people; then you bring them humanitarian aid. This was proposed by John McNaughton at Pentagon: bomb locks and dams, by shallow-flooding the rice, cause widespread starvation (more than a million dead?) "And then we shall deliver humanitarian aid to the starving Vietnamese". Or, rather, "we could offer to do [that] at the conference table." Planning a million dead by starvation, in writing: if such a note would be found on the ruins of the Third Reich, it would seal the story of genocide, it would be quoted daily. But the story of the genocide of the Vietnamese is rarely mentioned nowadays. ..."
"... They did it in Syria, too. At first, they brought weapons for every Muslim extremist, then they blockaded Damascus, and then they sent some humanitarian aid, but only to the areas under rebel control. ..."
"... The Israelis practice it in Gaza. They block all export or import from the Strip, interdict fishing in the Mediterranean and drip-feed the captive Palestinians by 'humanitarian aid'. Jews, being Jews, make it one better: they made the EU to pay for the humanitarian aid to Gaza AND to buy the aid stuff from Israel. This made Gaza an important source of profit for the Jewish state. ..."
You are so kind-hearted! I shed a tear thinking of American generosity. "So many delightful
goodies: sacks of rice, canned tuna and protein-rich biscuits, corn flour, lentils and pasta,
arrived at the border of troubled Venezuela – enough for one light meal each for five
thousand people", – reported the news in a sublime reference to five thousand fed by
Christ's fishes and loaves. True, Christ did not take over the bank accounts and did not seize
the gold of those he fed. But 21st century Venezuela is a good deal more-prosperous than 1st
century Galilee. Nowadays, you have to organise a blockade if you want people to be grateful
for your humanitarian aid.
This is not a problem. The US-UK duo did it in Iraq, as marvellous Arundhati Roy wrote in
April 2003 (in The Guardian of old, before it turned into an imperial tool): After
Iraq was brought to its knees, its people starved, half a million of its children killed, its
infrastructure severely damaged the blockade and war were followed by you guessed it!
Humanitarian relief. At first, they blocked food supplies worth billions of dollars, and then
they delivered 450 tonnes of humanitarian aid and celebrated their generosity for a few days of
live TV broadcasts. Iraq had had enough money to buy all the food it needed, but it was
blocked, and its people received only some peanuts.
And this was rather humane by American standards. In the 18th century, the British colonists
in North America used more drastic methods while dispensing aid to disobedient natives. The Red
Indians were expelled from their native places, and then they were provided humanitarian aid:
whiskey and blankets. The blankets had been previously used by smallpox
patients . The native population of North America was decimated by the ensuing epidemics
from this and similar measures. Probably you haven't heard of this chapter of your history: the
USA has many Holocaust museums but not a single memorial to the genocide near home. It is much
more fun to discuss faults of Germans and Turks than of your own forefathers.
First, you starve people; then you bring them humanitarian aid. This was proposed by John
McNaughton at Pentagon: bomb locks and dams, by shallow-flooding the rice, cause widespread
starvation (more than a million dead?) "And then we shall deliver humanitarian aid to the
starving Vietnamese". Or, rather, "we could offer to do [that] at the conference table."
Planning a million dead by starvation, in writing: if such a note would be found on the ruins
of the Third Reich, it would seal the story of genocide, it would be quoted daily. But the
story of the genocide of the Vietnamese is rarely mentioned nowadays.
They did it in Syria, too. At first, they brought weapons for every Muslim extremist,
then they blockaded Damascus, and then they sent some humanitarian aid, but only to the areas
under rebel control.
This cruel but efficient method of breaking nations' spirit has been developed by lion
tamers for years, perhaps for centuries. You have to starve the beast until it will take food
from your hands and lick your fingers. 'Starvation-taming', they call it.
The Israelis practice it in Gaza. They block all export or import from the Strip,
interdict fishing in the Mediterranean and drip-feed the captive Palestinians by 'humanitarian
aid'. Jews, being Jews, make it one better: they made the EU to pay for the humanitarian aid to
Gaza AND to buy the aid stuff from Israel. This made Gaza an important source of profit for the
Jewish state.
So in Venezuela they follow an old script. The US and its London poodle seized over 20
billion dollars from Venezuela and from Venezuelan national companies. They stole over a
billion in gold ingots Venezuela had trustingly deposited in the cellars of the Bank of
England.
Well, they said they will give this money to a Venezuelan Random Dude, rather. To the guy
who already promised to give the wealth of Venezuela to the US companies. And after this
daylight robbery, they bring a few containers of humanitarian aid to the border and wait for
the rush of bereft Venezuelans for food.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted : "The Venezuelan people
desperately need humanitarian aid. The U.S. & other countries are trying to help, but
Venezuela's military under Maduro's orders is blocking aid with trucks and shipping tankers.
The Maduro regime must LET THE AID REACH THE STARVING PEOPLE."
Venezuelans aren't starving, even though they are going through difficulties. The biggest
noise is made by the wealthy, as always. If Pompeo wants to help Venezuelans, he might lift the
sanctions, return the funds, lift the blockade. The biscuits he wants to provide are of but
little use.
President Maduro is right when he refuses to let this hypocrisy bribe the stomachs and
hearts of his people. It is not just that he remembers his Virgil and knows, Timeo danaos
et dona ferentes , "beware gift-bearing Greeks." There are too many American and Colombian
soldiers around the pending delivery place, and this place is suspiciously close to an airport
with an extra-long runway suitable for a an airlift.
The US is known for its propensity to invade its neighbours: Panama was invaded in 1989 to
keep the Panama Canal in American hands and to roll back the agreement signed by the
good-hearted President Jimmy Carter. President George Bush Sr sent his airborne troops in after
calling Panama president "a dictator and cocaine smuggler". This is exactly what President
Trump says about Venezuela's president.
They are likely to use this aid to invade and suborn Venezuela. Wisely, Maduro began large
military exercises to prepare the army in case of invasion. The situation of Venezuela is dire
enough even without invasion. Their money has been appropriated, their main oil company is as
good as confiscated; and there is a strong fifth column waiting for Yankees in Caracas.
ORDER IT NOW
This fifth column consists mainly of compradors , well-off young folk with a
smattering of Western education and upbringing, who see their future within the framework of
the American Empire. They are ready to betray the unwashed masses and invite the US troops in.
They are supported by the super-rich, by representatives of foreign companies, by Western
secret services. Such people exist everywhere; they tried to organise the Gucci Revolution in
Lebanon, the Green Revolution in Iran, the Maidan in the Ukraine. In Russia they had their
chance in the winter of 2011/2012 when their Mink-Coat Revolution was played at
Moscow's Bolotnaya Heath.
In Moscow they lost when their opponents, the Russia-First crowd, bettered them by fielding
a much-bigger demo
at Poklonnaya Hill. The Western news agencies tried to cover the defeat by broadcasting
pictures of the Putin-supporters demo and saying it was the pro-Western Heath. Other Western
agencies published pictures of 1991 rallies saying they were taken in 2012 on the Heath. In
Moscow, nobody was fooled: the mink-coat crowd knew they were licked.
In the Ukraine, they won, for President Yanukovich, a hesitant and pusillanimous man of two
minds, failed to gather massive support. It is a big question whether Maduro will be able to
mobilise Venezuela-First masses. If he is, he will win the confrontation with the US as
well.
Maduro is rather reticent; he hasn't disciplined unruly oligarchs; he does not control the
media; he tries to play a social-democrat game in a country that is not Sweden by long shot.
His subsidies have allowed ordinary people to escape dire poverty, but now they are used by
black marketeers to siphon off the wealth of the nation. Far from being a disaster zone,
Venezuela is a true Bonanza, a real Klondike: you can fill a tanker with petrol for pennies,
smuggle it to neighbouring Colombia and sell it for market price. Many supporters of the Random
Guy have made small fortunes this way, and they hope to make a large killing if and when the
Americans come.
A bigger problem is that Venezuela had become a monoculture economy: it exports oil and
imports everything else. It does not even produce food to feed its 35 million inhabitants.
Venezuela is a victim of neoliberal doctrine claiming that you can buy what you can't produce.
Now they can't buy and they do not produce. Imagine a democratic Saudi Arabia hit by
blockade.
In order to save the economy, Maduro should drain the swamp, end the black market and
profiteering, encourage agriculture, tax the rich, develop some industry for local consumption.
It can be done. Venezuela is not a socialist state like orderly Cuba, nor a social-democratic
one like Sweden and England in 1970s, but even its very modest model of allowing the masses to
rise out of misery, poverty and ignorance seems too much for the West.
It is often said there are two antagonists in the West, the Populists and the Globalists,
and President Trump is the Populist leader. The Venezuela crisis proved these two forces are
united if there is a chance to attack and rob an outsider country. Trump is condemned at home
when he calls his troops back from Afghanistan or Syria, but he gains support when he threatens
Venezuela or North Korea. He can be sure he will be cheered on by Macron and Merkel and even by
The Washington Post and The New York Times .
He has the real WMD, the Weapons of Mass Deception, to attack Venezuela, and these WMD had
been activated with the beginning of the creeping coup. When a rather unknown young politician,
the leader of a small neoliberal rabidly pro-American fraction in the Parliament, Random Dude,
claimed the title of president, he was immediately recognised by Trump, and the Western media
reported that the people of Venezuela went out in mass demos to greet the new president and
demand Maduro's removal.
They beamed videos of huge Caracas demos back to Venezuela. Not many viewers abroad noticed
that the video was old, filmed in 2016 demos, but the Venezuelans saw that at once. They
weren't fooled. They knew that there is no chance for a big protest demo on that day, the day
of a particularly important baseball game in the professional league between Leones of Caracas
and Cardenales de Lara from Barquisimeto.
But the WMD kept lying. Here is a report by
Moon of Alabama : the reports of large anti-government rallies are fake news or prophecies
hoping to become self-fulfilling ones:
Agence France-Press stated at 11:10 utc yesterday that "tens of thousands" would
join a rally.
Tens of thousands of protesters are set to pour onto the streets of Venezuela's capital
#Caracas Saturday to back opposition leader Juan Guaido's calls for early elections as
international pressure increased on President #Maduro to step down http://u.afp.com/Jouu
They lie that there are army deserters spoiling for a fight with the army. The young guys
CNN presented weren't deserters, and they didn't live in Venezuela. Even their military
insignia were of the kind discarded years ago, as our friend The Saker
noticed .
However, these lies won't avail -- my correspondents in Caracas report that there are demos
for and against government (for Maduro slightly bigger crowds), but the feelings aren't strong.
The crisis is manufactured in Washington, and the Venezuelans aren't keen to get involved.
That's why we can expect an American attempt to use force, preceded by some provocation.
Probably it won't be a full-blown war: the US never fought an enemy that wasn't exhausted prior
to the encounter. If the Maduro administration survives the blow, the crisis will take a low
profile, until sanctions do their work and further undermine the economy.
ORDER IT NOW
In this struggle, President Trump is his own bitter enemy. He seeks approval of the War
Party, and his own base will be disappointed by his actions. His sanctions will send more
refugees to the US, wall or no wall. He undermines the unique status of the US dollar by
weaponising it. In 2020, he will reap what he sow.
I am pretty sure that there won't be any military intervention by US in Venezuela. How do I
know this? Well, if it was any other nation, – for example a nation of people whose
brains have been turned into mush by decades long propaganda – then I would be worried.
Luckily, US have one of the best informed populations on earth – they have all those
bastions of truth like CNN, CBS, NYT and so on. That's why I am fairly certain that the US
wouldn't dare to attack Venezuela. Their peace-loving nation wouldn't let them.
The only way it can happen is if in the next few weeks a group of Venezuelan terrorists
hijacked few planes and flew them into some tall buildings in the US. That's the only way
that the public opinion in the peace loving nation can be swayed towards war.
Remember, every time the US has gone to war, they had to stage various versions of 9/11
– in order to convince the well informed and peace loving Americans that someone hates
their freedoms, so they have to go over there to fight for those freedoms, rather than wait
over here for someone to bring the fight to them.
I am pretty sure that there won't be any military intervention by US in Venezuela. How do I
know this? Well, if it was any other nation, – for example a nation of people whose
brains have been turned into mush by decades long propaganda – then I would be worried.
Luckily, US have one of the best informed populations on earth – they have all those
bastions of truth like CNN, CBS, NYT and so on. That's why I am fairly certain that the US
wouldn't dare to attack Venezuela. Their peace-loving nation wouldn't let them.
The only way it can happen is if in the next few weeks a group of Venezuelan terrorists
hijacked few planes and flew them into some tall buildings in the US. That's the only way
that the public opinion in the peace loving nation can be swayed towards war.
Remember, every time the US has gone to war, they had to stage various versions of 9/11
– in order to convince the well informed and peace loving Americans that someone hates
their freedoms, so they have to go over there to fight for those freedoms, rather than wait
over here for someone to bring the fight to them.
@Verymuchalive
According to numbers from Venezuela's Ministry of Agriculture, after relatively stagnant food
production throughout the 1990s, from 2003 to 2011 milk production increased by 230 percent,
beef production by 19 percent, chicken by 60 percent, rice by 25 percent, corn by 116
percent, and beans by 320 percent.
As can be seen, the claims among Chavez's critics of a decrease in food production are
simply false. And while it is true that there have been food shortages, the real reason is
quite different from what the media reports. An impressive increase in food production in
recent years has simply been outpaced by growing consumption that has increased even more
rapidly, creating supply problems in many basic items and the need to import increasing
amounts of food. Though often cited as a major failure of the Chavez government, it is
actually the result of millions of poor Venezuelans eating better and consuming more than
ever before. As one Venezuelan recently said to an opposition activist who insisted that
empty supermarket shelves were proof of the government's failures and demanded to know, "Then
where is the milk?": "The milk," he replied, "is in the bellies of Venezuela's poor." https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7513
As for the USSR, only now the Russians are coming to the levels of modest affluence circa
1985, after the disaster of anti-communist rule in 1990s.
Russian Communism is a secularised Russian Orthodox Christianity. Likewise, American system
is secularised Judaism.
BRAVO OMAR ..2 nd time in my life I have seen balls in congress.
Venezuela Envoy Elliott Abrams Lose His Cool During Tense Exchange With Rep. Ilhan
Omar
Watch the video at link
"Mr. Abrams, in 1991 you pleaded guilty to two counts of withholding information from
Congress regarding your involvement in the Iran-Contra affair, for which you were later
pardoned by president George H.W. Bush," began Omar. "I fail to understand why members of
this committee or the American people should find any testimony that you give today to be
truthful."
"If I could respond to that " interjected Abrams.
"It was not a question," shot back Omar.
After a brief exchange in which Abrams protested "It was not right!" Omar cut Abrams off,
saying "Thank you for your participation."
@bluedog
Please present you proof your 'forced labor living in holes in the ground, women selling
themselves for bread'.
You cannot, or you would have.
We note your avoidance of the facts. Violent Stone Age 'Indians':
– kept slaves
– were in constant states of war with other tribes
– treated & traded women like cattle
– practiced genocide against other 'Indian' tribes
– used crude environmentally destructive slash & burn agricultural methods
– decimated the animal populations
– the first acts by them when they got horses from the Spaniards was to attack and
decimate other tribes
– engaged in cannibalism
– roasted people alive
– routinely butchered children
– engaged in human sacrifice
– constant rapes
– took scalps from their enemies
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~kw/crichton.html "The noble savage is a fantasy, and it was never true. That anyone still believes it, 200
years after Rousseau, shows the tenacity of religious myths"
@bluedog
I've read biographies of Custer and can only recall two villages attacked by him at the head
of his regiment, the 7th U.S. Cavalry. In November 1868 he led an attack on the Cheyenne
encampment on the Washita River, in Oklahoma. Reports differ on the casualties, but this was
decidedly not a friendly village. The second is his celebrated and perhaps precipitous attack
on the massive summer encampment of Lakota/Cheyenne/Arapaho on the Little Bighorn River.in
June of 1876. They had refused President Grant's order to return to their reservations the
previous January, and placed themselves subject to military action. He had been involved in
other skirmishes with hostile Indians, in Kansas in 1867 and on the Yellowstone Expedition of
1873, but I'm unaware of any other attacks on villages.
I'm hardly a communist myself, but not everything can be blamed on communism.
Venezuela is not a communist state by any stretch of the imagination, and Chavez and Maduro
can hardly be compared to Lenin and Stalin, that's just a bit too much .
I didn't claim that Chavez and Maduro were Communists. Only that they had had a disastrous
effect on Venezuelan agriculture as Lenin and Stalin had on Soviet agriculture – though
of course Bolshevism was many degrees worse. I said elsewhere that Chavez used money from oil
to import ever more food from abroad, rather than stimulate indigenous food production. I
said that this was a very odd form of Socialism. In fact, it's not Socialism at all.
Back in the 1970s and 1980s – if, like me, you are old enough to remember – there
were a number of pseudo-Communist 3rd World States, like North Yemen, Angola and Ethiopia.
Beneath the very thin veneer, they were kleptocracies run to benefit those in power.
Venezuela is a similar pseudo-Socialist kleptocracy. Before he obtained power, Chavez
presented himself as a Reformer, rather than a Socialist. Afterwards, he claimed he was "
Bolivarian Socialist ".
Oil is a very capital intensive industry. If you fail to invest sufficiently, then production
will tail off, particularly the heavy, sulphurous product Venezuela produces. Chavez took
this money and used it to bribe the masses in welfare payments. Talk about being bribed by
your own money ! As much money if not more was stolen by the kleptocracy for their own
benefit – over $200bn or more if Forbes is to believed.
Oil production has gone down from 3.5bbp day before Chavez to 2.4bbp day on his death. It is
now down to 1 bbp day. By the end of the year, it will be be 0.5bbp day or less, regardless
of what America does.
I totally agree with you. The US should stay out of this conflict. Whether it wishes to
embargo Venezuelan crude imports is up to the American government. Otherwise, keep out.
Regardless, the Venezuelan Government would collapse within 18 months. Venezuela will need a
great deal of aid, not only to reconstruct their country, but also to invest heavily in oil
production. If the Us supplies this, let them have the oil. It will be the most expensive oil
in the world
A bigger problem is that Venezuela had become a monoculture economy: it exports oil and
imports everything else. It does not even produce food to feed its 35 million inhabitants.
Venezuela is a victim of neoliberal doctrine claiming that you can buy what you can't
produce.
Under two decades of Chavismo, Venezuela became much more a monoculture economy than it
used to be. Oil exports as a percentage of Venezuelan exports increased from 71.7% in 1998,
the year Chávez was elected, to 97.8% by 2013. Which implies that Chávez was
following, to quote your words, a "neoliberal doctrine claiming that you can buy what you
can't produce."
Yet you say this about the current Chavismo opponent.
When a rather unknown young politician, the leader of a small neoliberal
rabidly pro-American fraction in the Parliament, Random Dude, claimed the title of
president,
You inform us the leader of the opposition is "neoliberal," which implies that Maduro and
Chavismo are NOT neoliberal, in fact are far from being neoliberal. Yet you also inform us
that Chavismo, in its two decades in power followed "neoliberal doctrine claiming that you
can buy what you can't produce."
You are not making sense.
Fuel exports (% of merchandise exports)
1998 71.7%
2013 97.8%
CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuelans reported losing on average 11 kilograms (24
lbs) in body weight last year and almost 90 percent now live in poverty, according to a new
university study on the impact of a devastating economic crisis and food shortages.
Over 60 percent of Venezuelans surveyed said that during the previous three months they had
woken up hungry because they did not have enough money to buy food. About a quarter of the
population was eating two or less meals a day, the study showed.
Last year, the three universities found that Venezuelans said they had lost an average
of 8 kilograms during 2016. This time, the study's dozen investigators surveyed 6,168
Venezuelans between the ages of 20 and 65 across the country of 30 million people.
Most people would term "difficulties" a euphemism for that.
@israel
shamirAs can be seen, the claims among Chavez's critics of a decrease in food
production are simply false.
FAO Stats tell us otherwise. You could find no data beyond 2011? Probably because your
information source, the Venezuelan Ministry of Agriculture didn't want to release
embarrassing data.
Chávez was elected in 2016. FAO Stats inform us that from 1998 to 2016,
Venezuela's net per capita Crops (PIN) production has fallen 35.7%.
Venezuela's net per capita Cereals, Total production (here corn and rice) has fallen
46.9%.
Cereals production fell a further 17% in 2017. From 2014-2017, Cereals production in
Venezuela fell 59%.
"Claims among Chavez's critics of a decrease in food production are simply false ?" As
they say in Venezuela, "Dime otro de vaqueros." Tell me another cowboy story. Tell me
another fish tale.
BRAVO OMAR ..2 nd time in my life I have seen balls in congress.
Venezuela Envoy Elliott Abrams Lose His Cool During Tense Exchange With Rep. Ilhan
Omar
Watch the video at link
"Mr. Abrams, in 1991 you pleaded guilty to two counts of withholding information from
Congress regarding your involvement in the Iran-Contra affair, for which you were later
pardoned by president George H.W. Bush," began Omar. "I fail to understand why members of
this committee or the American people should find any testimony that you give today to be
truthful."
"If I could respond to that " interjected Abrams.
"It was not a question," shot back Omar.
After a brief exchange in which Abrams protested "It was not right!" Omar cut Abrams off,
saying "Thank you for your participation."
"... The book Giants: The Global Power Elite by Peter Philips provides extensive detail on how imperial capital issues its instructions to the institutions it controls. ..."
"... I am very suspicious of the 32% figure. I don't trust it. A poll conducted a few weeks ago has shown just 20% of Venezuelans knew who Guaidó was. How can it be that 32% now consider him the legitimate President? ..."
"... I can certainly picture Trump pulling out all of the stops to overthrow the Venezuelan government the closer it gets to the US elections. I could even see Trump encouraging Colombia and Brazil to invade Venezuelan, but we'll have to wait see. ..."
"... Polls have had a long history of being used to bend the public narrative, slide the Overton window and otherwise obfuscate the core issue(s)......because money pays for them ..."
"... It is so weird to see this unfolding. Nobody even seems to be asking why Guaido didn't just run for president -- he wasn't barred. ..."
"... the moment the Venezuelan right-wing realized the USA chose Guaidó, they quickly begun to "support" him. Of course, this is all a farce: they know Guaidó is merely a code word for American military intervention and regime change. This is textbook color revolution. ..."
This poll basically reflects the Venezuelan people's polarization. The Chavistas always
had circa 60% and the right-wing circa 40%.
What this poll shows, though, is that the people knows how to play politics: those 32% who
answered Guaidó is the "legitimate president" know he's not, but they say he is either
way; they're sending a message to the USA: "please, bomb our country and exterminate the
Chavistas, and we'll serve you as a Puppet State".
Patricia E Schild , Feb 11, 2019 3:17:11 PM |
link
I can't wrap my brain around Venezuela "wanting" the USA to intervene in their sovereign
affairs... When Chavez took power the rich were scattering like cockroaches....Now, they're
seeking their revenge and trying to get back into power. After the results we've seen from
western intervention in the Middle East, I hope very strongly that the USA fails in Veneuela.
The true people of Venezuela deserve so much better. #Istandwiththepeopleofvenezuela
I'm surprised that even out of the right wing/bourgeois constituency of Venezuela, 32% would
say the Guaido is the legitimate President. However, I guess that means the "opposition" are
at least temporarily united behind Random Guy, for now. (Of course, constitutionally, even if
Maduro did step down the Vice President, Delcy Rodriguez, would be the next Constitutional
President.)
@9 AriusArmenian No, don't arrest him. Not yet. According to the Venezuelan constitution an
"interim President" can only be in that position for 30 days, no more, no less.
Let him run around making a fool of himself for 30 days, then tap him on the shoulder and
say "times up buddy, you haven't even called for an election. What was the point of all
this?"
This about it this way: whatever thin veneer of "legitimacy" he has claimed for himself
disappears after a month, so there is no need to rush this. After all, it isn't as if Guaido is building up any momentum.
Quite the opposite, by the look of things.
@9 Good question. I think Maduro is being smart by ignoring Random Dude's pleas. Arresting
him might create a martyr for their cause and serve as a pretext for more US ingerence. The
longer he talks the more he shows the workd the shallowness and ineffectiveness of the coup
attempt..
Hinterlaces' poll that B cites above does not say where the polling was done or how it was
done. For all we know, the "direct interviewing" - one assumes this is face-to-face polling,
not polling by phoning people selected randomly from city phone-books or electoral rolls -
could have been done in neighbourhoods where the interviewers felt most comfortable and these
neighbourhoods may be less supportive of the government on average.
Areas where the people are most in favour of the government are likely to be areas deemed
unsafe to travel on foot because there is a perception that these neighbourhoods are violent
and dominated by drug and other gangs.
I got some information about Hinterlaces itself using Google Translate and this is what
the agency says about itself:
Hinterlaces is the first Venezuelan Intelligence Agency, specializing in public opinion
and market research services, situational analysis and strategic consulting, with emphasis on
the scientific interpretation of the cultural and symbolic dimension of society.
Our mission
Hinterlaces provides intelligence for strategic decision making. Through studies of
public opinion and markets, Hinterlaces is dedicated to producing knowledge, making
situational and environmental analyzes, providing strategic lines to build, enrich, renew and
/ or surpass the social, political, business and commercial performance of our
clients. http://hinterlaces.com/quienes-somos/
This is a polling agency whose agenda might incline towards favouring the private
commercial sector. So take heart that even with in-built bias, the poll Hinterlaces conducted still showed
that a majority of Venezuelans support the Maduro government.
Gee, imagine if the U$A actually lived up to the rhetoric it spews daily about it caring for
democracy and freedom. Then I woke up. The millions of lives ruined, and the innocents we kill daily, all for the sake of greed
and avarice of a few wealthy elites, is mind numbing.
Venezuela is just the latest target in the empire's lust for global domination...
I ask you to step back for a moment and take a look at the whole world. The US is at war in
one form or another with the entire world, 7 or 8 countries in the Middle East in its effort
to gain control of central Eurasia just a Brzezinski dreamed, threatening Iran for its access
to the Caspian Sea and more. The US has troops and is actually fighting and killing in 52 of
54 African countries. The US has built numerous new military bases all around Latin America
and is threatening Venezuela. It is doing everything it can to contain China with military
maneuvers in the South China Sea and trade, and of course Russia nothing needs to be said.
It is the US led western empire against the rest of the world. The Empire apparently
believes it is all or nothing time.
The US led Empire is not the US, the US government is the home of the imperial
institutions, it is Imperial HQ.
The actual "king" and ruler of the Western world is its core block of capital which acts
as one force it is today 50 trillion dollars which is managed by 17 management funds - and
guess what - they all invest in each other.
The book Giants: The Global Power Elite by Peter Philips provides extensive detail on
how imperial capital issues its instructions to the institutions it controls.
The Venezulean military have been running massive exercises (scheduled 11-15 February) -
showing their willingness to fight for Venezuela under Maduro. Their actual combat abilities
are unknown but motivation goes a long way.
That was my thought too, that the percentage for Guaido was so high it must have been an
attempt to get a majority, which failed. If the poll had asked whether the US should be
sponsoring an unelected president, I'm sure the number would be 80% saying "no".
@9 AriusArmenian
Regarding whether Guaido should be arrested - he can't be. As the speaker of the National
Assembly, he's immune from prosecution except as the Venezuelan supreme court rules. The
government applied to the Court, which ruled to prohibit Guaido from leaving the country, and
to freeze his assets. Beyond this, we have not yet heard any more.
Everything is being played by the Maduro government to the letter of the law - which is
the great tactical weakness in the US play here, and the place to strike back.
It is the oil ..... the 'bananas' of United Fruit Company when a neighbor country was over
run by Americans. WTF, I've been brainwashed by them little Russian puppies on social media,
we (US) don't interfere in other countries.
I think it is better to wait. Of course, the interpretation that the Venezuelan presidency is
vacant and that in that special case, the president of the National Assembly rather than the
vice president takes over is odd. It presupposes quite a number of things that defy reality
(there is an elected president) and certainly should not be claimed by anyone outside
Venezuela (for that view, all Venezuelan institutions except the National Assembly and in
particular the Supreme Court would have to be regarded as illegitimate, not just the
president).
But even if that interpretation is odd, it is still a fiction that is probably quite
important for some European governments that now support an attempted (and so far failed)
coup against the democratically elected president of Venezuela.
What will happen after 30 days when the „interim presidency" of Guaido is over? If
he still claims to be president after the 30 days are over, he is an illegitimate usurper
even according to the strange fiction many governments cling to in order to pretend they
support the constitution of Venezuela when in fact they support a would-be coup leader (or
rather the puppet of one). Will these governments then say that they don't care about the
constitution of Venezuela, after all, and still support Guaido after he has even lost any
semblance of legitimacy? Will Guaido call for new elections or even „conduct" them,
which he certainly can't?
Then, I think it is also relevant that (unless I am mistaken), the next regular date for
elections for the National Assembly is already 2020. Perhaps these uncooperative opposition
parties should rather think about how they are going to campaign - after all, it seems likely
that they will lose (more moderate opposition parties that are not involved in the current
coup attempt might have better chances). The playbook for the coup attempt has probably been
written in Washington, but the fear of the parties that currently dominate the National
Assembly that they will lose the 2020 elections is probably a motivating factor, they want to
escalate the situation beforehand in the hope that the 2020 elections either will not take
place or under undemocratic circumstances after a coup or foreign invasion that are favorable
to them.
The elections in Venezuela have all generally used the same system. The pro-US forces have
won just once, while in most elections the Chavists won. These pro-US forces that support
sanctions against their own country and even don't exclude supporting a foreign invasion of
their country have won just one election, and they claim that all elections they lost or in
which they voluntarily did not participate are illegitimate. Probably, they don't have much
hopes of winning the 2020 elections after their despicable behavior since the last elections,
so they want to come to power by force and with foreign support rather than by democratic
means.
Our political parties and media have as much contempt for the democratic process and people
choosing their leaders as the Rhodes/Milner group. They didn't respect the Syrian elections
of 2012 or 2014 even with multiple parties participating and monitors present.
The evidence of Maduro's popularity in Venezuela comes through plain as day in the MSM. This
newest coalition of the killing to take down the Syrian government is calling for new
elections in which Maduro does not participate. There can be no other reason for this other
than the coalition of the killing know that Maduro will win any free and fair election.
Same applied to Assad.
32% is roughly the % that voted for opposition presidential candidates. I'd like to see a polling company ask if the Outlaw US Empire has any right to interfere
with Venezuela whatsoever; and if yes, then how so.
I am very suspicious of the 32% figure. I don't trust it. A poll conducted a few weeks ago
has shown just 20% of Venezuelans knew who Guaidó was. How can it be that 32% now
consider him the legitimate President? Perhaps the poll asked whom they supported/sympathized
with/wanted as President, not who was the legitimate one?
Keep in mind that 75% of Venezuela's radio and TV stations are in private hands and property
of oligarchs bent on sabotaging the bolivarian revolution. Under 5% of media in Venezuela are
state-owned...
So even though western proxies and compradors elites holding iron clad
propaganda monopoly, they can barely muster a third of venezuelans to support their
reactionary program of social regression.
We're witnessing Hugo Chavez's failure to
neutralize the brutal European oligarchy that ran Venezuela as a latifundia for centuries.
One thing is certain 60% of slaves are now refusing to go back to pre-Bolivarian years.
Without kinetic action, the compradors aligned with the West have no chance to pull off a
successful change of regime.
The longer this Guaidó (i'm sorry I mean Gweedo) farce goes on the stronger the Maduro
government's position becomes (although not necessary Maduro's position itself). given that
the US has been working to overthrow the Venezuelan government since at least 2003 and have
now crossed the Rubicon by declaring "Gweedo" president (there's no way to take that back and
return to recognizing Maduro).
I imagine that the Maduro government's plan is to ride out
this crisis till the next election cycle (I think in 2023/2024) and have Maduro step down in
favour of his hand-picked successor, this would then give the US a face-saving option of
recognizing Maduro's successor as the new President, without the humiliation of having to go
back to recognizing Maduro.
The problem however is the 2020 election cycle in the US. For the last 30 years, US
presidents have developed a (another) terrible tradition when going into reelection (the US
also never seems to end a war once it starts one, which is why the US is now current fighting
at least 7 undeclared wars, plus dozens of military operations in various countries). Trump
is desperate for a "Win" going into the 2020 cycle and right now that column is pretty
thread-bare in terms of achievements for the average American worker (the economy is doing
well, but more and more people are concerned that the US is heading towards a recession in
2019, so that may not hold until the 2020). although Trump launching a full-scale invasion
seems unlikely, I can certainly picture Trump pulling out all of the stops to overthrow the
Venezuelan government the closer it gets to the US elections. I could even see Trump
encouraging Colombia and Brazil to invade Venezuelan, but we'll have to wait see.
I don't trust the numbers. Does anyone have the specific questions that were asked? Who owns this "independent" polling company? I didn't read who paid for the poll? I keep think that the US is being set up to fail big time so that default on the US debt
seems "reasonable" given the circumstances. That is when the deals will be made to set the
next stage of ??? humanity....though it might be a bit rocky for a while...
Psychohistorian @ 36 (and anyone else who is interested): Oscar Schemel is the director of the Hinterlaces polling agency which carried out the
survey. He was elected to the National Constituent Assembly (the legitimate legislative body
of the government) in 2017, representing the business sector.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Schemel (You'll need Google Translate.)
The results from the Grayzone article do not comport with what is reported here by b and
so maybe is another study but seems to be the same number of participants.....but then says
was done before Guaido became a thing. Still don't know specific questions for reported results nor who funded it.
Polls have had a long history of being used to bend the public narrative, slide the
Overton window and otherwise obfuscate the core issue(s)......because money pays for them
@Jen: Okay, so, according to The Grayzone translation of Schemel's presentation, only 17%
support U.S. sanctions applied against Venezuela to remove Maduro, only 20% support
international intervention to remove Maduro, only 12% support international military
intervention to remove Maduro, and only 15% don't want any dialogue between government and
opposition to resolve economic problems in the country.
How does that fit in with 32%
supposedly recognizing Guaidó as "legitimate President"? This can't be. Something is
fishy with the 32% figure.
86% "DISAGREE" WITH MILITARY INTERVENTION AGAINST VENEZUELA
Monitor País reveals that 66% of Venezuelans would prefer Maduro to take
effective measures and solve Venezuela's economic problems.
71% are "in disagreement" with the United States applying economic and financial
sanctions against Venezuela to remove President Nicolás Maduro from power, while 24%
"agree", reveals Monitor País de Hinterlaces about what Venezuelans think of an
eventual international intervention and the "exit" of Maduro from the presidency.
The study carried out between July 22 and August 9, conducted through 1,580 telephone
interviews, details that 67% of Venezuelans believe that the presidential elections of 2018
should be expected , while 32% demand the "exit" of the Mature.
With a level of confidence of 95% and a maximum admissible error of +/- 2.5% for the
figures obtained, the research maintains that 66% of Venezuelans would prefer the Maduro
government to take effective measures and solve the economic problems of the country, while
30% would prefer an opposition government to come.
Opinion on intervention
86% of Venezuelans are "in disagreement" with an international military intervention in
Venezuela to get Maduro out of power, while 13% are "in agreement",
76% of Venezuelans are "in disagreement" that there is an international intervention in
Venezuela to remove President Maduro from power, while 22% are "in agreement".
59% believe that the US government is promoting a foreign intervention in Venezuela to
get President Maduro out of power, while 31% consider "no".
How do we know the company still exists? And if it does, how do we know Globovisión
is citing it properly and not just inventing some random numbers?
@ ben #38
There is one Democratic candidate that is in the race specifically to fight the Empires
forever wars. Tulsi Gabbard. And she is being smeared badly by the MSM. But getting a lot of
support from the non-MSM, even from many on the other side of the spectrum.
Pro-coup Twitter accounts actually accuse Hinterlaces of working for "the regime" (skim
through this
thread ), while, in my opinion, its numbers (if true) are skewed in favor of
Guaidó. Anyway, this whole discussion is pointless: anybody can claim anything, as the
company seems to have stopped operating a year and a half ago.
Apart from reinforcing the case that Maduro's Presidency has the support of a simple majority
of voters, this poll is virtually meaningless and irrelevant. The only way to make it
relevant would be to insist that each of the Nazified, Christian Colonial countries which
oppose Maduro conduct a similar poll of the voters in their own country.
i.e. Compare the popularity of the President/PM of the country with popularity of current
Opposition contenders for the Leadership role.
Would Trump, Micron, Mrs May or Scum Mo score anything like 57%?
No effing way, imo.
To keep everything neat and tidy it would be helpful, and conducive to much mirth and
merriment, to conduct the same poll in the countries whose leaders have recognised and
endorsed Maduro's legitimacy.
It is so weird to see this unfolding. Nobody even seems to be asking why Guaido didn't just
run for president -- he wasn't barred. There was lots of criticism of Maduro in the papers,
so the press had the freedom to get behind one or another candidate. There was other
opposition that ran.
Why did some of the opposition boycott the elections? Who was the
opposition that was barred from running by the supreme court, where they wildly popular? Why
didn't they declare themselves president with popular support, rather than this newbie? Why
did the opposition ask UN observers to stay away? It is so blatant that there are narratives
being sold.
I don't see this poll as good news for the Maduro govt at all; looking at other people's
comments, I don't seem to be the only one.
A short month ago, Guaido was a nobody, while
Maduro was the unquestioned, even though not universally liked of course, president.
Once
Uncle Sam went to work on the issue, some clown who basically just started calling himself
president seems to have over 1/3 behind him, while Maduro is only slightly above 50%.
Washington probably feels it's successful in moving the needle, and will go all out trying to
move it further.
B quotes Globovision's report that the Hinterlaces poll was carried out some time between
21 January and 2 February 2019. Grayzone Project refers to a poll carried out in early
January 2019 before 23 January 2019 when Guaidó made his announcement. So there is a
possibility that these are two separate questionnaires conducted at different times - but
maybe with the same sample (too small, in my opinion, for the issue the surveys address).
Please also refer to my comment @ 13 about my misgivings about the validity of the poll.
We do not know how the sample was selected, how the interviews were done (although since I
posted the comment, I found some other online sources suggesting they were telephone
interviews) and whether the interview design had inbuilt biases reflecting Hinterlaces' own
agenda. The website offers no explanation and appears to have been neglected since 2017.
@ Posted by: Ma Laoshi | Feb 12, 2019 2:29:47 AM | 48
Well, news travel fast nowadays: the moment the Venezuelan right-wing realized the USA
chose Guaidó, they quickly begun to "support" him. Of course, this is all a farce:
they know Guaidó is merely a code word for American military intervention and regime
change. This is textbook color revolution.
"... Originally published: FAIR by Gregory Shupak (February 6, 2019) ..."
"... In contact with the popular communities, we consider that one of the fundamental causes of the economic crisis in the country is the effect [of] the unilateral coercive sanctions that are applied in the economy, especially by the government of the United States. ..."
"... While internal errors also contributed to the nation's problems, Russian said it's likely that few countries in the world have ever suffered an "economic siege" like the one Venezuelans are living under. ..."
The U.S. media chorus supporting a U.S. overthrow of the Venezuelan government has for years
pointed to the country's economic crisis as a justification for regime change, while
whitewashing the ways in which the U.S. has strangled the Venezuelan economy ( FAIR.org
, 3/22/18 ).
Sister Eugenia Russian, president of Fundalatin , a Venezuelan human rights NGO
that was established in 1978 and has special consultative status at the UN, told the
Independent (
1/26/19 ):
In contact with the popular communities, we consider that one of the fundamental causes
of the economic crisis in the country is the effect [of] the unilateral coercive sanctions that
are applied in the economy, especially by the government of the United States.
While internal errors also contributed to the nation's problems, Russian said it's
likely that few countries in the world have ever suffered an "economic siege" like the one
Venezuelans are living under.
While the New York Times and the Washington Post have lately professed
profound (and definitely 100 percent sincere) concern for the welfare of Venezuelans, neither
publication has ever referred to Fundalatin.
Alfred de Zayas, the first UN special rapporteur to visit Venezuela in 21 years, told the
Independent (
1/26/19 ) that U.S., Canadian and European Union "economic warfare" has killed Venezuelans,
noting that the sanctions fall most heavily on the poorest people and demonstrably cause death
through food and medicine shortages, lead to violations of human rights and are aimed at
coercing economic change in a "sister democracy."
It's a great article. I want to thank CN, because I feel that Steve's conclusions and his
predictions are excellent.
But like anyone, I always hate to show my ignorance's, and do I have to admit that I need
some help. In this case my ignorance has to do with the word sanction.
For instance ( to name just a few ):
1- In order for the U.S. to legally implement sanctions, it declared "..a national emergency
with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign
policy of the United States". What, and where was this evidence provided, and was it
conducted under fair hearings with both sides represented?
2 – How does a State seize the property of another State when no trial has been
conducted?
3 – Isn't this punishing victims (34 million in this case) who have committed no
crime?
4 – Did countries like England, France, Germany, etc., provide any proof of
"emergency", in order to wholesale deny it's own citizens the right to free markets (.. let
alone, Venezuelans)?
5 – Since, sanctions only have significant (wmd) impact when they are implemented by
empires, does a collective body like the U.N., (that I assume) is suppose to represent every
country, want to touch sanctions with a forty foot pole?
6 – What about that "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement" with Israel?
I could go on & on with many more questions.. But, I know that most here can dissect
this word "sanction" much better than I. .. And, I wish you would.
This is from 2014: http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=2377482&CategoryId=10717
"President Obama today issued a new Executive Order (E.O.) declaring a national emergency
with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign
policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela. The targeted sanctions in
the E.O. implement the Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act of 2014, which
the President signed on December 18, 2014, and also go beyond the requirements of this
legislation.
..
"We are committed to advancing respect for human rights, safeguarding democratic
institutions, and protecting the U.S. financial system from the illicit financial flows from
public corruption in Venezuela," the White House said.
..
We are deeply concerned by the Venezuelan government's efforts to escalate intimidation of
its political opponents. Venezuela's problems cannot be solved by criminalizing dissent. We
have consistently called on the Venezuelan government to release those it has unjustly jailed
as well as to improve the climate of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, such
as the freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly. These are essential to a functioning
democracy, and the Venezuelan government has an obligation to protect these fundamental
freedoms. The Venezuelan government should release all political prisoners, including dozens
of students, opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez and Mayors Daniel Ceballos and Antonio
Ledezma."
.. And as I understand it, declaring that "national emergency" -- was of course, the legal
prerequisite to imposing today's sanctions..
Thank You.
jaycee , February 12, 2019 at 1:50 pm
The declaration of national emergencies is one facet of "executive power" as envisioned by
the lawyers Dick Cheney brought into the White House. This allows for policy to be declared
and implemented without Congress and without public debate. These theories of executive power
have never actually been challenged on Constitutional/ legal grounds, and in fact the W Bush
administration several times backed away from an executive power directed policy rather than
have it challenged in court. The Democrats, once assuming executive power themselves under
Obama, dropped their Constitutional objections to embrace the convenience a wide-ranging
executive power concept provided.
bevin , February 12, 2019 at 11:47 am
"How does it get more inappropriate, more threatening than American officials contacting
members of Venezuela's armed forces and luring them to revolt?
"Americans, is this the kind of work you elect your government to perform?"
It most certainly is. It is precisely the way that President Zelaya was removed, overnight,
in Honduras, after the State Department , under Hillary Clinton, had given permission.
Garrett Connelly , February 12, 2019 at 11:17 am
Only three brave congressional representatives voted against the united democratic and
republican party war lust directed at Venezuela.
Antonio Costa , February 12, 2019 at 10:46 am
The UN has recognized the Maduro government as the official administration. This was
determined by the UN's general assembly.
There is nothing in the Venezuelan constitution that would allow Guaidó (a small
time instigator and relatively small opposition party member) to swear himself in as
president. This was also confirmed by the Venezuelan high court. Furthermore, after the May
election of 2018, the opposition parties signed off on the election results (which were
monitored by hundreds on internation observers and declared fair election), Maduro was sworn
in, end of story.
Therefore any negotiation and/or aid must go through the Maduro administration, not
Guaidó. This is a covert thug regime change by the US.
torture this , February 12, 2019 at 10:14 am
"The stigma would undoubtedly scuttle their chances of maintaining longstanding majority
support and in doing so would undermine their authority and ability to govern."
Support of the people doesn't matter in the U.S. because all the avenues to power are
largely blocked for anyone except those endorsed by the elites, themselves. So, I doubt that
the oligarchs will have any problems in disappearing and murdering anybody who speaks up for
ordinary people in Venezuela. What the U.S. does to its own dissenters is anything but
democracy.
Sally Snyder , February 12, 2019 at 8:16 am
As shown in this article, American intervention to protect its economic interests in South
America is not unprecedented:
Unfortunately, Washington is incapable of seeing the unintended consequences of its global
agenda.
michael , February 12, 2019 at 7:13 am
While I am sure that the regime change in Venezuela is a long time in coming (with Trump
or not), as evidenced by most of the EU (UK, Spain, France, Germany, Sweden and Denmark)
'instant' recognition of Guaido, I am curious as to the lack of American politicians at least
giving lip service against the coup (has anyone outside of Tulsi Gabbard spoken up?)
In addition to the albatross of John Bolton around his neck, the neocons have also saddled
Trump with Elliott Abrams? There are no decent diplomats/ bureaucrats willing to work (and
risk their careers) with Trump?
Looks like events have complex dynamics and Washington did not fully understand possible blowback from its actions to unseat Maduro.
As usual Trump administration actions are not consistent with the rule of law and elementary knowledge of international
relations. It's pure imperial bulling and as such it might well backfire. In addition to the albatross of John Bolton
around his neck, the neocons put Elliott Abrams? looks like there are no decent diplomats/ bureaucrats willing to work (and risk
their careers) with Trump...
Notable quotes:
"... Furthermore, Venezuelans will perceive any sign of economic recovery under a Guaidó government as made possible by aid, if not handouts, from Washington, designed to discredit Maduro's socialist government, though such assistance will undoubtedly be used to further U.S. economic and political interests. In fact, U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton has indicated that he is already calling on oil companies to opt for investments in Venezuela once Maduro is overthrown. ..."
"... The U.S. effort to encourage the military to step in was again made evident on Wednesday in a tweet by John Bolton . ..."
"... The Wall Street Journal ..."
"... The Trump administration's blatant and undisguised interventionism may in fact backfire and help Maduro counter his sagging poll numbers, which last October the polling firm Datanálisis reported was 23 percent. Maduro recently lashed out on Twitter at the close nexus between Washington and the opposition, saying "Aren't you embarrassed at yourselves, ashamed at the way every day by Twitter Mike Pence, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo tell you what you should do." ..."
"... Anti-imperialism is, of course, a major cornerstone of the Chavista movement, born from resentment of U.S. interventionism and heavy-handedness that had for decades controlled many of Venezuela's resources and dictated its economic policies. The maneuvers of the Trump administration and its allies only double down on this narrative, and are counterproductive at best when it comes to solving the crisis. Their actions also risk fanning the flames of anti-Americanism throughout the continent ..."
"... Meanwhile, President Donald Trump appointed neocon Elliott Abrams as special envoy to Venezuela. As a longtime U.S. diplomat, Abrams has in many ways personified the application of the Monroe Doctrine with his blatant disregard for human rights violations and the principle of non-intervention in Guatemala , Nicaragua, and El Salvador in the 1980s and his alleged involvement in the 2002 coup against Hugo Chávez. ..."
"... While condemning anti-democratic actions and fraudulent elections in Venezuela, these sanctions ignore the rule of law. The Maduro government was never given the opportunity to defend itself and legal procedures were not followed ..."
"... Yet regardless of short-term results of U.S. support for Guaidó, the final outcome will be negative. There are a number of reasons why: first, it bolsters the position of the most radical elements of the opposition led by the VP party, thus contributing to the fragmentation of the anti-Chavista movement. Second, it attaches a "made in U.S.A." label to those positioned to govern should Maduro fall. ..."
"... the appeal to the military to save Venezuela has terrifying implications for a continent with a long history of military rule. And finally, the seizure of Venezuelan assets, which have then been turned over to a political ally, violates sacred norms of property rights, and in the process erodes confidence in the system of private property ..."
"... NACLA: Report on the Americas ..."
"... Latin American Perspectives ..."
"... The intention behind the pressure directed at Venezuela is quite clear: the current government is being told to resign and hand power over to a selected member of the opposition. To advance this strategy, various degrees of, frankly, organized crime style threats of punishment or positive inducement are daily publicized, iterated by US public officials. ..."
Trump's backing of Juan Guaidó's shadow government could weaken the opposition's longstanding support among the majority of Venezuelans,
writes Steve Ellner.
Since its outset, the Trump administration has ratcheted up pressure on Venezuela and
radicalized its positions. In the process, the Venezuelan opposition has become more and more associated with -- and dependent on
-- Washington and its allies. An example is the opposition protests that occurred last week. The actions were timed to coincide with
the European Union's "
ultimatum ," which stated they would recognize the shadow government of Juan Guaidó if President Nicolás Maduro had not called
elections within a week's time.
The opposition's most radical sectors, which include Guaidó's Voluntad Popular party (VP) along with former presidential candidate
María Corina Machado, have always had close ties with the United States. Guaidó, as well as VP head Leopoldo López and the VP's Carlos
Vecchio, who is the shadow government's chargé d'affaires in Washington, were educated in prestigious U.S. universities -- not uncommon
among Latin American economic and political elites. The ties between the opposition and international actors are strong: last weekend,
Vecchio called the campaign to unseat Maduro "an international
effort ." At the same time, Guaidó, referring to opposition-called protests, stated "today, February 2, we are going to meet
again in the streets to show our gratitude to the support that the European Parliament has given us." In doing so, Guaidó explicitly
connected the authority of outside countries to his own assumption of leadership.
The outcome of Washington's actions is bound to be unfavorable in a number of ways, regardless of whether or not they achieve
regime change. Most importantly, a government headed by Guaidó will be perceived both by Venezuelans and international observers
as "made in U.S.A." Further, the opposition's association with foreign powers has enabled the Maduro leadership to keep discontented
members of the Chavista movement in their ranks.
Furthermore, Venezuelans will perceive any sign of economic recovery under a Guaidó government as made possible by aid, if
not handouts, from Washington, designed to discredit Maduro's socialist government, though such assistance will undoubtedly be used
to further U.S. economic and political interests. In fact, U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton has indicated that he is already
calling on oil companies to opt for investments in Venezuela once Maduro is overthrown. As he
told
Fox News , "we're in conversation with major American companies now It will make a big difference to the United States
economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela."
Washington Dictating Strategy
Either explicitly or implicitly, Washington is dictating strategy, or at least providing input into its formulation. One of the
challenges the opposition faces is the need to demonstrate to rank-and-file Venezuelans that the current offensive against Maduro
will be different from the disastrous attempts of 2014 and 2017, when anti-government leaders assured protesters that the president
would be toppled in a matter of days. The opposition leadership claims that this time is different for two reasons. First, the regional
Right turn has deepened, and the opposition is more able than ever to rely on decisive support from Washington and other governments,
regardless of how democratic they are -- see the neofascist credentials of
Brazil's
Jair Bolsonaro .
Second, the opposition is counting on the backing of military officers, particularly lower-ranking ones who have allegedly lost
patience with Maduro. In addition to some defections, junior officers attempted to
stage a military coup just two days before
mass opposition protests on Jan. 23 when Guaidó declared himself president. Previously, the Venezuelan opposition expressed a degree
of contempt for military officers for their unwillingness to defy the Chavista government. The opposition's new perspective dates
back to Trump's three
meetings with
military rebels and his
statement
, made alongside President Iván Duque of Colombia in September of last year, that the Maduro government "could be toppled very quickly
by the military if the military decides to do that." The U.S. effort to encourage the military to step in was again made evident
on Wednesday in a tweet by
John Bolton .
Recently, Guaidó made a similar offer to military officers, implying continuity and closeness between Washington and the shadow
government.
Also noteworthy is that Guaidó and other VP leaders are closer to Washington than the rest of the opposition. The Wall Street
Journal reported that Guaidó consulted Vice President Mike Pence the night before his self-proclamation as president on Jan.
23. According to ex-presidential candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski the majority of the
opposition parties were not aware of Guaidó's intentions
and in fact did not support the idea.
Calling on Military
To make matters worse, the VP-led opposition is openly working hand-in-glove with Washington. Last week Guaidó announced that
he would attempt to transport
humanitarian aid the United States has deposited on the Colombian and Brazilian borders into Venezuela. He called on the Venezuelan
military to disobey orders from the Maduro government by facilitating the passage of goods, while Maduro ordered it blocked. While
playing political benefactor, Washington was clearly manipulating the optics of the situation to discredit Maduro and rally more
international support for Guaído. In an apparent rebuke to Washington and Guaidó, UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric on Wednesday
insisted that the humanitarian aid be "
depoliticized. "
Opposition leaders and the Trump government are also working together to isolate Venezuela economically throughout the world.
Julio Borges, a leading member of the opposition, has campaigned to convince international financial institutions to shun Venezuelan
transactions and has
urged Great Britain to refuse to repatriate Venezuelan gold stored in London. President Maduro has responded by calling on the
attorney general to open judicial proceedings against Borges on grounds of treason. Along similar lines, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury
Steven Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross are currently attempting to convince international business interests to
deny the Venezuelan government access to national assets in their possession.
The Trump administration's blatant and undisguised interventionism may in fact backfire and help Maduro counter his sagging
poll numbers, which last October the polling firm Datanálisis reported was 23 percent. Maduro recently
lashed out on Twitter at the close nexus between Washington and the opposition, saying "Aren't you embarrassed at yourselves,
ashamed at the way every day by Twitter Mike Pence, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo tell you what you should do."
Cornerstone of Chavista Movement
Anti-imperialism is, of course, a major cornerstone of the Chavista movement, born from resentment of U.S. interventionism
and heavy-handedness that had for decades controlled many of Venezuela's resources and dictated its economic policies. The maneuvers
of the Trump administration and its allies only double down on this narrative, and are counterproductive at best when it comes to
solving the crisis. Their actions also risk fanning the flames of anti-Americanism throughout the continent. It wouldn't be
the first time: In 1958, then-Vice President Richard Nixon was attacked by a riotous crowd in Caracas, and a decade later Nelson
Rockefeller's fact-finding tour arranged by then-President Nixon faced off with angry disruptive protests. Both incidents were responses
to Washington's self-serving support for regimes that came to power through undemocratic means, in some cases with U.S. involvement.
In its strategy towards Venezuela, Washington is invoking not only its Cold War policy but the
Monroe
Doctrine and its view of Latin America as the U.S.' "backyard," -- a claim that is especially anathema throughout the region.
Indeed, Pence told
Fox News
, in answering a question about why Trump is withdrawing troops from Syria and Afghanistan while intervening in Venezuela: "President
Trump has always had a very different view of our hemisphere. He's long understood that the United States has a special responsibility
to support and nurture democracy and freedom in this hemisphere and that's a longstanding tradition."
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump appointed neocon Elliott Abrams as special envoy to Venezuela. As a longtime U.S. diplomat,
Abrams has in many ways personified the application of the Monroe Doctrine with his blatant disregard for human rights violations
and the principle of non-intervention in
Guatemala , Nicaragua, and El Salvador in the 1980s and his alleged involvement in the 2002 coup against Hugo Chávez.
Finally, Trump's decision regarding CITGO, a U.S.-based company owned by Venezuela's state oil company, speaks to a dangerous
precedent. Last week he declared that jurisdiction over CITGO would be turned over to the shadow government, and appealed to other
countries to follow similar steps. While condemning anti-democratic actions and fraudulent elections in Venezuela, these sanctions
ignore the rule of law. The Maduro government was never given the opportunity to defend itself and legal procedures were not followed.
It is always a dubious exercise to guess at Trump's intentions. His actions in Venezuela could be designed to divert attention
from the multiple probes into his own unethical behavior, or they may be a way to draw attention away from the utter fiasco of U.S.
interventions in the Middle East, from Libya to Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Trump may also view his Venezuela policy as a quick
fix to Make America Great Again. Along similar lines, Trump evidently sees the downfall of the Maduro government as the ultimate
proof that socialism doesn't work. He indicated as much in his
State of the Union address when he used the topic of Venezuela as a springboard for declaring: "We are born free, and we will
stay free America will never be a socialist country."
Yet regardless of short-term results of U.S. support for Guaidó, the final outcome will be negative. There are a number of reasons
why: first, it bolsters the position of the most radical elements of the opposition led by the VP party, thus contributing to the
fragmentation of the anti-Chavista movement. Second, it attaches a "made in U.S.A." label to those positioned to govern should Maduro
fall.
The stigma would undoubtedly scuttle their chances of maintaining longstanding majority support and in doing so would undermine
their authority and ability to govern. Third, the appeal to the military to save Venezuela has terrifying implications for a continent
with a long history of military rule. And finally, the seizure of Venezuelan assets, which have then been turned over to a political
ally, violates sacred norms of property rights, and in the process erodes confidence in the system of private property. These four
considerations are an indication of the multiple adverse impacts that the Trump administration's rash approach to the Maduro government
will have on the United States, Venezuela, and the rest of the region.
Steve Ellner is a retired professor from Venezuela's University of the East, a long-time contributor to NACLA: Report on the Americas , and currently associate managing editor
of Latin American Perspectives . Among his over a dozen
books on Latin America is his edited "The Pink Tide Experiences: Breakthroughs and Shortcomings in Twenty-First Century Latin America"
(Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).
jaycee
,
February 12, 2019 at 1:34 pm
The intention behind the pressure directed at Venezuela is quite clear: the current government is
being told to resign and hand power over to a selected member of the opposition. To advance this
strategy, various degrees of, frankly, organized crime style threats of punishment or positive
inducement are daily publicized, iterated by US public officials.
The government-in-waiting is
supposedly preparing new elections, at least that's wha they say – but Guaido's representative in
Washington told reporters last week that such elections might happen by the end of the year, maybe
not, but a new government's priorities would be changing the structural underpinnings of the country's
economy.
So the new government will be installed and will swiftly dismantle all of the popular
programs instituted by the Chavistas over the past twenty years. That is, a political platform which
has lost elections consistently for these past twenty years will be engaged without popular mandate,
and before any new elections will be permitted. That's a coup, not a restoration of democracy.
"... Earlier this month, Maduro stated that smuggling seizure efforts in Colombia have recovered close to $400 million U.S. dollars worth of goods. Due to these smuggling incidents, the Venezuelan government intends to introduce a biometric tracking system that will limit citizens' food purchases via a fingerprint scanning. ..."
Venezuela's
government continues to battle a food hoarding and smuggling
epidemic . It accuses food smugglers of causing national food shortages in the country. The
government states that food smugglers hoard goods to resell for profit and smuggle such items
into Venezuela's neighboring countries.
Due to currency controls and a lack of U.S. dollars, Venezuela has found it to be
increasingly difficult to import foreign food products from other countries. One of the most
popular countries for food smuggling is Colombia , which borders Venezuela.
Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro
and Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos have both acknowledged the problem.
Earlier this month, Maduro stated that smuggling seizure efforts in Colombia have
recovered close to $400 million U.S. dollars worth of goods. Due to these smuggling incidents,
the Venezuelan government intends to introduce a biometric tracking system that will limit
citizens' food purchases via a fingerprint scanning.
A military spokesperson for the government told El Universal newspaper that the quantity of
goods smuggled to Colombia "would be enough to load the shelves of our supermarkets."
This July, the government seized more than 11 tons worth of fish, chicken and beef.
Last month, Venezuela began to close its border to Colombia at night and deploy thousands of
troops in an effort to stop the smuggling in Venezuela from taking place. However, opposition
to the plan suggests that the policy will treat Venezuelan citizens as criminals and even
breach individual privacy. Many have suggested that the policy leans toward food rationing.
Smuggling is a way of life in the Colombian border town of Cúcuta -- and for decades,
that's meant drugs. But in recent years it's ordinary goods like gasoline or oranges or diapers
that make their way from Venezuela to Colombia. The side of the road into Cúcuta is
dotted with illegal gasoline vendors, while the shelves of the local stores are stocked with
products labeled "Produced for the Venezuelan market." That's because the combination of the
extremely low valuation of the Venezuelan Boliviar -- it takes 800 boliviars to buy a U.S
dollar compared to just 200 one year ago -- and the strong price controls that the Venezuelan
government has applied to many basic goods has made it extremely profitable to buy just about
anything cheaply in Venezuela, and smuggle it into neighboring Colombia, where no such price
controls exist and the local currency, the peso, is significantly stronger.
Venezuela is hurting -- for the second year in a row, Bloomberg has ranked the Venezuelan
economy "the most miserable economy" and the IMF predicts that the country's inflation rate
will hit 720 percent this year, up from 141.5 percent near the end of last year. For
comparison, the U.S. has maintained an inflation rate between one and five percent over the
last decade. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has repeatedly blamed both the smuggling and
the migration of people into Venezuela to take advantage of the highly subsidized health and
education for his country's economic woes.
... ... ...
Though Maduro announced a crackdown on smuggling last year and closed the
major border crossings, the financial incentive to keep goods flowing is high. McDermott
estimates that the smuggling trade is back up to previous levels. And Colombian smugglers like
Gabriela and Camila -- two sisters in their 30s, each divorced, who work to support their
mother and multiple children -- are part of the reasons why.
Early each morning Gabriela and Camila hitch a ride along a road that runs north from
Cúcuta and traces the river that makes up the border between Colombia and Venezuela.
They head past the small city of San Faustino and across the river into Venezuela. Once there,
they meet a local who has purchased about 60 kilos of beef at the Mercal, the state subsidized
supermarket, for the equivalent of just $54. By the end of the day that same quantity of meat
will be on a market shelf in Cucuta, where it will sell for over $200.
On one recent morning, the sisters hitched a ride back to Cúcuta from Venezuela.
Along the way they had to pass back through San Faustino, where a police check point was
established to crack down on just this kind of smuggling. Their car was stopped, and as police
officers began to inspect the plastic bags of meat in the trunk, Camila slipped a 10,000-peso
bill–worth just over three dollars–to the police officer. After initially
expressing concern over the goods, he decides everything is fine and allows the car to continue
on.
... ... ...
The neighborhood of Escobal in Cúcuta was once a busy and free-flowing crossing point
between Venezuela and Colombia. Now, under orders from Maduro, the bridge has been blockaded to
prevent any vehicles from passing, while police and customs agents check the papers of those
who cross by foot. Even here, a location actively monitored by law enforcement, the smuggling
is obvious. Those crossing east into the Venezuelan town of Ureña are usually empty
handed or just carrying a backpack. Those on the return path lug huge bags, often working in
pairs just to carry the weight. Inside is everything from baby diapers to cooking oil to
cigarettes -- all illegal imports, all much cheaper in Venezuela than in Colombia.
These commuters are mostly Colombian citizens who lived in Venezuela for years before Maduro
announced a crackdown on both smuggling and migration following the murder of three Venezuelan
soldiers who were looking for smugglers late last year. The government expelled over a thousand
Colombians, while another 20,000 fled back over the border out of fear. Maduro accused many of
the banished Colombians of being part of paramilitary groups and involved in the long-running
Colombian civil conflict between the government and various paramilitary forces. However, many
of these same people had originally fled into Venezuela to escape violence in Colombia, and
were now being forced to return.
... ... ...
After months of negotiations, the two governments agreed to allow some Colombians to return
to Venezuela for schooling or health care. But the border remains officially closed at night.
In a land with rule-of-law that is vague at best, however, simply closing bridges at night
isn't anywhere near enough come to stop the flow of contraband across the border, though it has
pushed much of the activity to more rural areas.
... ... ...
Less than a quarter-mile downstream from the official crossing point in
Escobal, young smugglers gather on the under the shade of tropical trees on the riverbank
waiting for work. Using their rugged motorcycles, they spend the day and night ferrying people
across the border who don't have the proper papers to cross the nearby bridge, or they pick up
contraband brought back over the river by hikers or people on bicycles and deliver it to the
market towards the center of Cúcuta.
They might appear harmless and disorganized -- but they're not. A ruthless paramilitary
group controls this territory, like each of the areas along the border. Within Cúcuta
there are about a dozen such groups, and they have a well-earned reputation for violence.
Paramilitary-related murders are common in this part of Colombia. For many years Cúcuta
was a stronghold of an armed criminal group called the Rastrojos, but they have weakened in
recent years and since 2011 the Urabeños, one of the most powerful criminal
organizations in Colombia, has taken control of the contraband hub, according to InSight Crime,
a foundation that studies organized crime in the Americas.
Less than a thousand feet away from the riverbank is a police station. The motorcycles
travel right past with their freshly smuggled contraband. Those police officers, like the
majority of the police officers charged with cracking down on smuggling in Cúcuta, are
paid off, explained "El Jefe," a smuggler who has been in the business for decades and who
served three years in prison after getting caught smuggling cocaine several years ago. He got
out of the drug business, but still runs a profitable commodity depot where smugglers drop off
and repackage goods coming from Venezuela. In Cúcuta there is an unspoken rule: as long
as the officials remain paid off, business continues as usual. "The few times that local police
make big busts, it is often a punishment for a certain group of smugglers failing to pay off
the proper authorities," said El Jefe.
... ... ...
The majority of contraband moves over the border at night and arrives at the Cúcuta
market called Cenabustos in the early hours of the morning. At 1am wood-paneled trucks start
pulling into large parking lots outside sprawling warehouses. They are filled with rice,
citrus, onions, potatoes, plantains and any other kind of produce or commodity subsidized by
the Venezuelan government. The citrus gives away the smuggling operation. Citrus isn't produced
in Cúcuta or any of the surrounding areas, which means it must have come from
Venezuela
Gene Sharp recipes in action: the talking point in the article below were taken directly from EuroMaydan: opposition rallies are huge; pro-government rally are
tiny and
activists were delivered by buses.
This gambit with aid delivery is pretty inventive and might play in favor of opposition: they try present the
government as cruel and indifferent to sufferings of common people. Meanwhile smuggling food out of Venezuela continues unabated.
"Thousands of Venezuelans living near the border discovered years ago that smuggling heavily subsidized food into Colombia made them
far more money than the meager wages from regular jobs."
Reuters
Guaido, who says he's the rightful leader of Venezuela after Maduro's election was widely disputed, has made a
political tool of the food stalled in the Colombian border town of Cucuta. Traditional aid groups have shunned the
effort as a ploy, and it's been unclear whether the trailers of rice, flour and other staples would actually be
able enter the country. Maduro's security forces are using shipping containers and a tractor-trailer to close off
an international bridge.
'In Caravans'
Guaido's supporters had spoken of using clandestine means, even bringing it in by sea. He said Tuesday that
250,000 people have signed up on a website to volunteer for his initiative. "We'll have to go in caravans, as a
protest," he said.
While Venezuela faces deep shortages of necessities like antibiotics, first-aid supplies and baby formula,
Maduro has portrayed the shipments as a pretext for an invasion, sent to humiliate him and undermine his
presidency.
Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said at a news conference Tuesday that the food sent by the U.S. is a
"biological weapon."
"That humanitarian aid is contaminated and poisoned," she claimed. "It's carcinogenic. This has been proven by
different scientific studies."
'So Desperate'
The U.S. Agency for International Development has said the first phase of a $20 million assistance program will
include food and hygiene kits, nutritional supplements and emergency medical kits. Lester Toledo, Guaido's
international coordinator for humanitarian aid, said Brazil had authorized a collection center in the border state
of Roraima. Supplies will also come through a Caribbean island.
At the blocked Tienditas Bridge in Cucucta, small groups of opposition protesters gathered Tuesday, singing the
national anthem and praying the Lord's Prayer.
"Our relatives and our compatriots die for the lack of antibiotics or something as simple as a dehydration
caused by diarrhea," said Rafael Polos, a 48-year-old former airport manager who fled to Colombia and now sells
candies in the street. "The change in Venezuela is close. We are so desperate. In fact we wanted to enter the
bridge and take all that humanitarian aid to Venezuela, but we have to do things the right way."
Tuesday's protests were the third protest in the past two weeks against Maduro, the largest wave of overt
resistance since 2017. The regime has largely allowed citizens to march, however, police have raided neighborhoods
at night in search of opposition supporters. At least 35 people have died and more than 850 have been
detained, according to human-rights groups including Provea and Penal Forum.
In eastern Caracas, Guaido's supporters filled the streets. People streamed down Francisco de Miranda Avenue,
draping flags over their shoulders and holding signs. Shops and restaurants remained open, but some of the main
avenues in downtown Caracas were closed near a plaza where government supporters took in a video address from
Maduro. A large truck blasted reggaeton with government propaganda.
The opposition march filled several blocks with thousands of people, and it seemed more like a celebration than
a protest. Rap singers took selfies with demonstrators, who walked with small children or dogs. There were no
hooded protesters or the confrontational mood seen in 2017.
"We're moving forward. We have international support, and soon we'll open a path for elections," said Nathalie
Torres, 37, a shopkeeper. She was marching from the working-class neighborhood of La Candelaria alongside three
other women, all wearing white shirts and tricolor hats. At least one U.S. flag waved amid the Venezuelan colors.
Many fewer people came to the rally point for the regime's march: Hundreds filled only a couple of blocks,
despite the government buses that lined the streets to transport them. Many who marched were state employees and
wore shirts and hats representing ministries and public institutions.
"The United States refuses to understand that we are free," said Pedro Villegas, 25, a student leader in
Maduro's socialist PSUV party. "Guaido is a lackey; he has been imposed by a foreign agenda to steal power."
Thousands of Venezuelans living near the border discovered years ago that smuggling heavily
subsidized food into Colombia made them far more money than the meager wages from regular
jobs.
But with crisis-hit Venezuela suffering drastic food shortages this year and local resale
prices spiraling, some have decided to flip the business model: zipping into Colombia to buy
flour, rice and even diapers for desperate shoppers back in Venezuela.
... ... ...
Rice, for instance, can be bought in Colombia for the equivalent of about 1,300 bolivars and
sold in Venezuela for around 1,800 bolivars.
Venezuela's government fixes a kilo of rice at some 120 bolivars, but on the local black
market the coveted product now fetches approximately 2,000 bolivars - just $2 at the unofficial
foreign exchange rate but around one-fifth of a monthly minimum wage, factoring in monthly food
tickets.
"... These illegal operations for destabilization have a two-fold purpose: (1) To disrupt the lives of the people, create unrest and blame the government for inefficiency and inability to provide food and other essentials for the people. (2) To occupy government time and resources, diverting it from the regular daily work on infrastructure, social and security services that are normally expected from all governments. ..."
Anyone who has been paying attention to the economic war against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela will be familiar with the
hoarding, dumping and smuggling of food as part of destabilization efforts by opposition food processing plants, points of sale and
foreign entities.
Here in my home state of Aragua, we have been experiencing certain missing products in our retail markets for a week or two, only
to reappear in a later week to create long lines of people waiting to buy from the new delivery. That problem has to do with the
privately-run distribution system over which the government still hasn't gained control. When a big shipment of the missing item(s)
does arrive at a later date, it is typically off-loaded at a single store in this city of 300,000 people, creating the long lines
of buyers who may wait for hours to make their purchase. The store itself often opens only one cashier for the desired product to
make the sale of the product even slower. When the missing product does appear, another suddenly disappears. During the past two
weeks our local supermarkets suddenly had zero rice or pasta, products that were there in abundance during weeks past. The illegal
smuggling and hoarding operations are being busted on a weekly basis if not daily. But imagine the cost and difficulty for the government
to search out all the hidden sites in a country of 30 million people across 23 states. However, the fact that the smuggling mafia
are resorting to new innovative methods to hoard their stolen products (see second report with photos below) shows that the pressure
is on.
These illegal operations for destabilization have a two-fold purpose: (1) To disrupt the lives of the people, create unrest
and blame the government for inefficiency and inability to provide food and other essentials for the people. (2) To occupy government
time and resources, diverting it from the regular daily work on infrastructure, social and security services that are normally expected
from all governments.
We could report on Axis of Logic these discoveries of food held in secret warehouses and kept off the retail markets on a regular
basis but the two that follow will serve as examples for the doubters.
On August 13, Noticias 24 reported the confiscation of 14,144 tons of processed whole chicken in the State of Falcon. The government's
Superintendency for the Defense of Socio-Economic Rights (Sundde) coordinated the operation with the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB)
and authorities in Falcon State to locate and confiscate the birds. The final destination of the shipment a warehouse located in
Puerto Cumarebo on the northwest tip of Venezuela's Caribbean coast. The massive illegal cargo was detected through Sundde's contact
network.
The fact that the opposition can conspire and operate openly is proof that the
government has not suppressed them in any way. While it is dangerous that they continue to
collaborate to overthrow the government, they are emboldened by the freedoms granted and
upheld by the same Constitution they seek to obliterate. Their continued freedom is
evidence that Venezuela is not only a democracy, but a tolerant, peaceful society.
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Feb 12, 2019 9:47:29 AM | 60
In case the link between Scientology and Venezuela which I'm proposing isn't obvious, and
obviously reliant on pitiful levels of Public Gullibility, it is adequately illustrated by
the fact that the goals of the Venezuela Scam are just as nebulously unspecified as the goals
of Scientology itself.
In the doco mentioned above there's a segment exposing an entire lavishly funded Dept withing
Scientology which is tasked with recruiting celebrities.
The segment outlines the way the
decision to recruit Tom Cruse was planned and executed. It involved flattering Cruse into
accepting 'help' from cult members in every aspect of his life.
Fiendishly clever, but unflattering to Tom's intelligence, imo.
Posted by: anonymous | Feb 12, 2019 1:52:16 AM | 47
(Lots of questions NOT being asked about Guiado)
You've nailed it.
The whole charade is about tightly controlling the narrative, and there are many ugly
precedents for this modus operandi. There was a reminder of one particularly well-known and
infamous example on TV this evening in the form of one of a series of docos about Scientology
called Scientology And The Aftermath.
Basically, the crux of the Scientology scam is a set of Utopian Principles which
prospective members are required to swear to uphold at any cost and to pledge undying
devotion and obedience to the Church. These pledges are then used to blackmail members into
'proving' their loyalty to The Dream by undertaking unconscionable and unethical tasks in
pursuit of the Church's nebulously unspecified goals.
There's plenty of damning info about Scientology in general, and this series in
particular, on the www including a Rolling Stone article called 5 Things We Learned From Leah
Remini's Scientology TV Show.
When this phase of the Empire's regime change operation loses steam and Guido's moment in
the spotlight is fading, the CIA will murder him to provide the corporate mass media with
evidence of how brutal the Venezuelan government is. They will personally blame Maduro for
Random Guido's death. When Random Guido's trajectory of fame begins to turn from polarizing
figure to laughingstock, the CIA will terminate him to extract a bit of extra value and hide
the fact that the coup failed to win popular support.
Screenshots of today's pro-Guaido
demo show a rather tiny crowd exceedingly smaller than earlier boasts. The opposition
refuses to talk while the government continues to govern and attempt to alleviate its
citizen's complaints. The theft of National Wealth that's owned by all Venezuelans by the
Outlaw US Empire was a disastrous move. Every day that goes by Maduro grows stronger while
the usurper weakens further.
It's quite possible the outcome will be far worse than the Bay of Pigs for the forces of
reaction within the region.
Donald Trump imagines Juan Guaidó is the rightful president of Venezuela. Mr.
Guaidó, a man of impeccable illegitimacy, was
exposed by Cohen and Blumenthal as "a product of a decade-long project overseen by
Washington's elite regime change trainers."
Argentinian sociologist Marco Teruggi described Guaidó in the same article as "a
character that has been
created for this circumstance" of regime change.
Here, his constitutional credentials to be interim president of Venezuela are deconstructed.
Educated at George Washington University in DC, Guaidó was virtually unknown in his
native Venezuela before being thrust on to the world stage in a rapidly unfolding series of
events. In a
poll conducted a little more than a week before Guaidó appointed himself president
of the country, 81% of Venezuelans had never even heard of the 35-year-old.
To make a short story shorter, US Vice President Pence phoned Guaidó on the evening
of January 22rd and presumably asked him how'd he like to be made president of Venezuela. The
next day, Guaidó announced that he considered himself president of Venezuela, followed
within minutes by US President Trump confirming the self-appointment.
A few weeks before on January 5, Guaidó had been installed as president of
Venezuela's National Assembly, their unicameral legislature. He had been elected to the
assembly from a coastal district with 26% of the vote. It was his party's turn for the
presidency of the body, and he was hand-picked for the position. Guaidó, even within his
own party, was not in the top leadership.
Guaidó's party, Popular Will, is a far-right marginal group whose most enthusiastic
boosters are John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, and Mike Pompeo. Popular Will had adopted a strategy
of regime change by extra-parliamentary means rather than engage in the democratic electoral
process and had not participated in recent Venezuelan elections.
Although anointed by Trump and company, Guaidó's Popular Will Party is not
representative of the "Venezuelan opposition," which is a fractious bunch whose hatred of
Maduro is only matched by their abhorrence of each other. Leading opposition candidate Henri
Falcón, who ran against Maduro in 2018 on a neoliberal austerity platform, had been
vehemently opposed by Popular Will who demanded that he join their US-backed boycott of the
election.
The Venezuelan news outlet, Ultimas Noticias , reported that prominent opposition politician
Henrique Capriles, who had run against Maduro in 2013, "affirmed during an interview that the
majority of
opposition parties did not agree with the self-swearing in of Juan Guaidó as interim
president of the country." Claudio Fermin , president of the party
Solutions for Venezuela, wrote "we believe in the vote, in dialogue, we believe in coming to an
understanding, we believe Venezuelans need to part ways with the extremist sectors that
only offer hatred, revenge, lynching." Key opposition governor of the State of Táchira,
Laidy Gómez, has rejected
Guaidó's support of intervention by the US, warning that it "would generate death of
Venezuelans."
The Guaidó/Trump cabal does not reflect the democratic consensus in Venezuela, where
polls consistently show super majorities oppose
outside intervention . Popular opinion in Venezuela supports negotiations between the
government and the opposition as proposed by Mexico, Uruguay, and the Vatican. The Maduro
administration has embraced the negotiations as a peaceful solution to the crisis facing
Venezuela.
The US government
rejects a negotiated solution , in the words of Vice President Pence: "This is no time for
dialogue; this is time for action." This intransigent position is faithfully echoed by
Guaidó. So while most Venezuelans want peace, the self-appointed president, backed by
the full force of US military power, wrote in a New York Times
op-ed that it was possible to "end the Maduro regime with a minimum of bloodshed."
The Guaidó/Trump cabal's fig leaf for legitimacy is based on the bogus
argument that Article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution gives the National
Assembly the power to declare a national president's "abandonment" of the office. In which
case, the president of the National Assembly can serve as an interim national president, until
presidential elections are held. The inconvenient truth is that Maduro has shown no inclination
to abandon his post, and the constitution says no such thing.
In fact, the grounds for replacing a president are very clearly laid out in the first
paragraph of Article 233 of the Venezuelan
constitution and do not include fraudulent or illegitimate election, which is what the cabal
has been claiming . In the convoluted logic of the US government and its epigones, if the
people elect someone the cabal doesn't like, the election is by definition fraudulent and the
democratically elected winner is ipso facto a dictator.
The function of adjudicating the validity of an election, as in any country, is to be dealt
with through court challenges, not by turning to Donald Trump for his approval.
And certainly not by anointing an individual from a party that could have run in the 2018
election but decided to boycott.
The Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ), which is the separate supreme court branch of the
Venezuelan government has certified Maduro's reelection, as have independent international
observers. Further, no appeal was filed by any of the boycotting parties, while all
participating parties – including opposition ones – signed off on the validity of
the election after the polls closed.
The far-right opposition has boycotted the high court as well as the electoral process. They
contest the legitimacy of the TSJ because some members of the TSJ were appointed by a lame duck
National Assembly favorable to Maduro, after a new National Assembly with a majority in
opposition had been elected in December 2015 but not yet seated.
Even if President Maduro were somehow deemed to have experienced what is termed a falta
absoluta (i.e., some sort of void in the presidency due to death, insanity, absence, etc.), the
National Assembly president is only authorized to take over if the falta absoluta occurs before
the lawful president "takes possession." However, Maduro was already "in possession" before the
January 10, 2019 presidential inauguration and even before the May 10, 2018 presidential
election. Maduro had won the presidency in the 2013 election and ran and won reelection last
May.
If the falta absoluta is deemed to have occurred during the first four years of the
presidential term, the vice president takes over. Then the constitution decrees that a snap
election for the presidency must be held within 30 days. This is what happened when President
Hugo Chávez died while in office in 2013. Then Vice President Nicolás Maduro
succeeded to the presidency, called for new elections, and was elected by the people of
Venezuela.
If it is deemed that the falta absoluta occurred during the last two years of the six-year
presidential term, the vice president serves until the end of the term, according to the
Venezuelan constitution. And if the time of the alleged falta absoluta is unclear – when
Maduro presided over "illegitimate" elections in 2018, as is claimed by the far-right
opposition – it is up to the TSJ to decide, not the head of the National Assembly or even
such an august authority as US Senator Marco Rubio . Or the craven US press (too numerous to
cite), which without bothering to read the plain language of the Bolivarian Constitution,
repeatedly refers to Guaidó as the "constitutionally authorized" or "legitimate"
president.
As
Alfred de Zayas , United Nations independent expert on the promotion of a democratic and
equitable international order, tweeted: "Article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution is
inapplicable and cannot be twisted into legitimizing Guaidó's self-proclamation as
interim President. A coup is a coup ."
A self professed country calling itself a Capitalista and democracy erects a Gov't for the
people of Venezuela. What a shill murica has become. They did it for Ukraine as well. When
the capitalistas lost the prize, the Russian military port, they abandoned the whole country
an left it to the neo-nazis they erected. The neo nazi regime went after Russians living in
Ukraine and were killing them, while muricans sat by silently. The Russians stepped in and
took in the refugees to safety and also sent caravans of aid for those that choose to stay,
mostly the elderly.
Capitalists and democracy. POS dictators masking as a democracy while their own country
becomes a **** hole.
The latest senior military officer to defect from the Nicolas Maduro government claims that
90% of the armed forces are "unhappy" with Maduro and stand ready to defect, according to
The Times .
Colonel Rubén Paz Jimenez posted a short video to social media over the weekend
declaring his support for US-backed opposition leader Juan Guaidó. "Ninety per cent of
us in the armed forces are really unhappy," he said in the video message. "We are being used to
keep them in power." He further urged soldiers to resist orders to block humanitarian aid
shipped by the United States and to instead facilitate its entry into the country.
According
to The Times Col. Paz is a military doctor and appears to be taking advantage of Guaido's offer
of amnesty to army officers who switch loyalties to him
as interim president :
A stockpile of US aid -- medicines, medical equipment and nutritional supplements -- is in
the Colombian border city of Cucuta. Colonel Paz, a doctor, urged soldiers to help the aid
get into Venezuela . Mr Guaidó has offered amnesty to those in the army who abandon Mr
Maduro, 56, peacefully.
He's been further described as deputy of the Directorate of the Military Hospital in
Maracaibo and the timing of his defection is interesting given the contested issue of US
humanitarian aid.
Trump administration officials like John Bolton have also of late actively encouraged
Venezuelan military defections, something that so far has been limited to a tiny handful of
officers, at least one of them
an Air Force commander -- while also attempting to force the issue of American aid
delivery.
Colonel Ruben Paz Jimenez, deputy of the Directorate of the Military Hospital in Maracaibo,
announced his support for Guaido and urged others to follow: Bolton recently invoked the
"authorization" of Interim President Juan Guaido to ship humanitarian aid into the country
including "medicine, surgical supplies, and nutritional supplements for the people of
Venezuela" according to his statement. He urged Maduro "to get out of the way".
The Times report noted the Venezuelan pharmaceutical association has put the situation of
medicine access to the population at
extreme crisis levels :
The Venezuelan pharmaceutical association has said that 80 per cent of medicines are in
short supply . Most Venezuelans report involuntary weight loss over the past two years, and
three million people -- almost a tenth of the population -- have left since 2014. The economy
has collapsed and inflation is estimated at 2.7 million per cent .
Meanwhile the socialist government in Caracas insists it isn't experiencing a humanitarian
crisis; instead Maduro has slammed US aid to the country as a "political show".
The United States urged the UN to act by presenting a draft resolution before the security
council demanding that Venezuelan forces unblock the aid at the border, reportedly coming via
Brazil and US ally Colombia, in order for the people to access it. Russia is expected to block
the resolution.
Interestingly, prior to this latest defection of military doctor Col. Paz, another high
ranking officer had cited the exact same "90 percent" figure describing armed forces who are
actually against Maduro. The
highest ranking armed forces member to defect thus far, Air Force General Francisco Yanez,
who was part of the air force's high command, in his own video message early this month claimed
a wave of defections is coming.
The obvious question remains: is this a mere opposition propaganda talking point employed in
the hopes of gaining momentum? Given the scant number of high level officers willing to abandon
Maduro over the past two weeks as international pressure grows, it appears merely an empty
scripted claim.
Last month National Assembly leader and now US-recognized "Interim President" Guaido first
began appealing to the military to switch sides following a local and short-lived attempt of 27
officers to lead a revolt on Jan. 21, quickly put down by security forces after they stormed an
armory and police checkpoint.
To encourage more such defections, which so far hasn't appeared to penetrate the top layers
of military leadership, Guaido has offered amnesty protection to any officer previously accused
of corruption or human rights abuses should they defect.
But so far there's been a tiny - we might even say insignificant - trickle as the country's
most powerful institution continues to stand by Maduro's side against "foreign aggression" and
the regime change rhetoric issuing from the White House.
"... Maduro might not possess widespread legitimacy, but his government retains control of much of the state apparatus and remains far more entrenched than many opposition members and their supporters would like to believe. ..."
"... Nearly every day over the past two weeks, both National Security Adviser John Bolton and Republican Senator Marco Rubio have used their Twitter accounts to call on the military to align with Guaidó, "defend democracy," and oust Maduro. ..."
"... Guaidó's announcement assuming the role of interim president generated a wave of support from some capitals as well as the Organization of American States. Now the crisis is in a stalemate. Indeed, as Francisco Toro notes , the United States, in granting diplomatic recognition to Guaidó's "government," has created a precarious situation by confusing a normative judgment about who should run the country with the objective fact of who does run the country -- that is, who actually has control over national territory and the state apparatus. ..."
"... If this gamble, this all-or-nothing approach, does not go as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, NSA adviser Bolton, and others hope it will, what will happen in a few weeks, if Maduro remains president? Will Washington continue with economic sanctions and fall into a pattern similar to its decades-long standoff with Cuba? Will it take to exploding cigars and other absurd and criminal plots of subversion? ..."
"... The United States now has little room to play a constructive role in interim efforts, such as the negotiations proposed by Mexico and Uruguay to bring the two sides to the table ..."
"... In fact, Guaidó is from one of the most hard-line political parties among the opposition. ..."
"... More than anything else, Guaidó appears to be a product of the right-wing, middle-class student movement that developed in opposition to the Chávez government in the mid-to-late 2000s. This movement, which took to the streets of Caracas to demand the ouster of Chávez, received much of its funding and training from Washington ..."
"... Over the course of several years, Washington worked with middle-class, opposition-aligned students through the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and its Office for Transition Initiatives (OTI). Indeed, OTI often works in war-torn countries that are, as the office's name indicates, experiencing a "political transition," such as Burma, Iraq, and Libya. When Gill asked a former high-ranking USAID member why OTI worked in Venezuela, he stated that OTI are "the special forces of the democracy assistance community." Another USAID functionary told Gill that OTI allowed the United States to provide funds to opposition members in Venezuela faster than if they used traditional channels. ..."
"... What were the ultimate objectives of USAID/OTI in Venezuela during the years they worked with the student movement? US Ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield specifically laid them out in a secret embassy cable secured by Chelsea Manning and released by WikiLeaks: "1) Strengthening Democratic Institutions, 2) Penetrating Chavez' Political Base, 3) Dividing Chavismo, 4) Protecting Vital US business, and 5) Isolating Chavez internationally." ..."
"... Thereafter, USAID/OTI largely shifted its efforts toward the burgeoning student movement that developed in the mid-2000s -- the movement in which Guaidó "cut his political teeth," according to a report in The Guardian . A former USAID/OTI member who helped devise US efforts in Venezuela said the "objective was that you had thousands of youth, high school, and college kids that were horrified of this Indian-looking guy in power. They were idealistic. We wanted to help them to build a civic organization, so that they could mobilize and organize. This is different than protesting." In other words, USAID/OTI sought to take advantage of racialized fear of Chávez to organize middle-class youth around a long-term strategy to defeat him. ..."
"... most successful time was during 2007, when the student movement developed. The US had a very daring movement and brought a lot of money to the students through OTI, and it grew a lot as a result ..."
"... Although they could not confirm the specific US origins of this assistance, this sort of aid has been used for CIA operations in the past. ..."
"... While it is unclear what Guaidó's role was in these groups at the time, it is clear that US "democracy promotion" financed his cohort's formation and its demonstrations for over a decade . ..."
"... This is not to suggest that Guaidó, Goicoechea, or any other opposition member is merely a puppet of the United States. But it is clear that Guaidó and others in his circle share a worldview and certain goals with the US government. Many of them linked up with US agencies, which provided them with the resources needed to amplify their voices and reach a much larger audience. ..."
"... A recently released document outlining some of Guaidó's proposals -- accepting much-needed humanitarian aid, eliminating currency controls, and courting private investment -- did little to clarify his vision for the future. Still hanging in the air is how Guaidó intends to accomplish these goals. The lack of specificity is at least partly due to the heterogeneity of the opposition coalition, which is composed of former Communist Party members as well as proponents of neoliberalism. But Guaidó's already cozy relationship with the United States certainly raises concerns that his plans remain vague because they involve massive privatization, the rollback of state services, and other policies that would make Venezuela more "inviting" for foreign investors at the expense of many Venezuelans ..."
"... Finally, though most Venezuelans may not be aware of the ties between Guaidó's party and the United States, his uncritical acceptance of US support has filled some with uncertainty about his motives. ..."
"... At the international level, the stars have surely aligned for Guaidó and the opposition, with right-wing allies like Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Donald Trump in the United States now in power. ..."
"... The only real hope for a peaceful outcome lies in dialogue. Given that many citizens do not trust either Maduro or Guaidó, the two sides would need to make serious gestures toward working together to resolve both the economic and political crisis. This would require that Guaidó walk back his refusal to participate in negotiations. ..."
"... Decoupling humanitarian aid from political interests could also demonstrate that Guaidó isn't just focused on gaining power. The Red Cross has already cautioned the United States about the dangers of sending aid to Venezuela if it is not "shielded" from politics and does not have the approval of Venezuelan authorities. ..."
in February 4, more than a dozen European countries recognized the president of Venezuela's National Assembly, Juan Guaidó, as
the country's legitimate president. This decision came almost two weeks after the United States, Canada, and most countries in Latin
America backed Guaidó's claim to the presidential office. Despite continued Chinese and Russian support for Nicolás Maduro's government,
the international community is quickly isolating it, as never before. A strange coalition of left- and right-wing political parties
has formed to assist Guaidó, and knee-jerk support from both pundits and politicians who profess concern about the country's humanitarian
crisis has generated an allegiance to this little-known politician and his call for Maduro's resignation. Many of Guaidó's supporters
have cited Article 233 of the Venezuelan Constitution as grounds for his assumption of the presidency, arguing that the unfair nature
of the 2018 presidential election has rendered the Maduro government illegitimate. There is no question that Venezuelans are suffering
and want to see a change in governance. Maduro is wildly unpopular, even among the working class, and many have grown tired of the
economic crisis that has exploded under his watch. This doesn't mean, though, that citizens necessarily support the opposition or,
worse, US military intervention.
Many continue to identify as chavista , and even those who have shed this identification continue to acknowledge that the
Bolivarian Revolution once improved their livelihoods. Those improvements, though, have largely evaporated under Maduro.
Since some of the most powerful countries in the world have now decided to back Guaidó, there is good reason to ask who he is,
what sort of future he represents for Venezuela, and whether domestic support for Guaidó's call for Maduro's resignation equals support
for him as leader of the country.
Dangerous Brinkmanship
Maduro might not possess widespread legitimacy, but his government retains control of much of the state apparatus and remains
far more entrenched than many opposition members and their supporters would like to believe. In many ways, chavismo remains
dominant and has reshaped Venezuelan society. Whether they like it or not, the opposition will not be able to entirely overturn the
legacy of the Bolivarian Revolution or erase the fondness that many citizens still have for the late Hugo Chávez and the policies
he implemented as president. Some members of the opposition
seem to realize this.
There should not be any doubt, though, about what the United States, alongside other countries within and beyond the Western Hemisphere,
are pushing for in Venezuela: a military overthrow of the Maduro government. The situation is messy, and there are multiple interpretations
concerning the origins of the political-economic crisis in Venezuela, as well as how to solve the political crisis and reboot the
Venezuelan economy. But Washington and its allies seem intent on some basic interventionist strategies. Nearly every day over
the past two weeks, both National Security Adviser John Bolton and Republican Senator Marco Rubio have used their Twitter accounts
to call on the military to align with Guaidó, "defend democracy," and oust Maduro.
For now, the United States has seemed to settle for imposing harsh sanctions on Venezuela that portend economic catastrophe. These
sanctions target the lifeblood of the economy: the state oil company (PDVSA) and its sales to the United States. The aim, of course,
is to weaken Maduro's position by taking away the government's most important source of revenue. But this could very easily backfire.
Venezuelan citizens might blame the United States for worsening the economic crisis, though it won't automatically translate into
support for Maduro. And it certainly won't help build support for international mediation or fondness for the United States on the
part of most Venezuelans.
If these sanctions do break the government, it is likely some portion of the population will feel that whatever comes next is
the product of coercion. If the opposition centered around Guaidó then wins a presidential election, that government may face questions
regarding its own legitimacy. Even for many who do not support Maduro, anti-imperialist sentiments run deep; elections that take
place as a result of US strong-arming will be tainted by these dynamics.
Guaidó's announcement assuming the role of interim president generated a wave of support from some capitals as well as the
Organization of American States. Now the crisis is in a stalemate. Indeed,
as Francisco Toro notes
, the United States, in granting diplomatic recognition to Guaidó's "government," has created a precarious situation by confusing
a normative judgment about who should run the country with the objective fact of who does run the country -- that is, who actually
has control over national territory and the state apparatus.
If this gamble, this all-or-nothing approach, does not go as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, NSA adviser Bolton, and others
hope it will, what will happen in a few weeks, if Maduro remains president? Will Washington continue with economic sanctions and
fall into a pattern similar to its decades-long standoff with Cuba? Will it take to exploding cigars and other absurd and criminal
plots of subversion?
The United States now has little room to play a constructive role in interim efforts, such as the negotiations proposed by
Mexico and Uruguay to bring the two sides to the table.In fact, Washington's intransigence only bolsters opposition
intransigence. Indeed, since January 23, we have seen escalation upon escalation, potentially setting the stage for violent conflict,
even civil war.
Washington's Campaign: 'Dividing Chavismo' and 'Protecting Vital US Business'
Following the opposition's victory in 2015 parliamentary elections, opposition-party leaders agreed to a rotating cast of leadership
within the National Assembly. In 2019, Guaidó, representing the Voluntad Popular party, assumed the position of National Assembly
president. Very few know much about the 35-year-old Guaidó. Indeed, a common remark about him from Venezuelans is that he has "come
out of nowhere" ( viene de la nada ).
In fact, Guaidó is from one of the most hard-line political parties among the opposition. While some parties have sought
to displace chavismo through an electoral route, Leopoldo López, one of the founders of Voluntad Popular, led protests in 2014 --
many of which became violent -- demanding Maduro's exit. After Maduro's first election, in 2013, López justified undemocratic approaches
to removing him by declaring his government illegitimate. One of the few things we do know about Guaidó is that López has been one
of his political mentors; some have even suggested López is continuing to call the shots while still under house arrest in suburban
Caracas.
More than anything else, Guaidó appears to be a product of the right-wing, middle-class student movement that developed in
opposition to the Chávez government in the mid-to-late 2000s. This movement, which took to the streets of Caracas to demand the ouster
of Chávez, received much of its funding and training from Washington.
The following reporting is based on Tim Gill's extensive research on US foreign policy toward Venezuela under Chávez, and the
ways in which Washington sought to"promote democracy." Gill conducted interviews with numerous US state actors and members Venezuelan
civil society.
Over the course of several years, Washington worked with middle-class, opposition-aligned students through the US Agency for
International Development (USAID) and its Office for Transition Initiatives (OTI). Indeed, OTI often
works in war-torn countries that
are, as the office's name indicates, experiencing a "political transition," such as Burma, Iraq, and Libya. When Gill asked a former
high-ranking USAID member why OTI worked in Venezuela, he stated that OTI are "the special forces of the democracy assistance community."
Another USAID functionary told Gill that OTI allowed the United States to provide funds to opposition members in Venezuela faster
than if they used traditional channels.
What were the ultimate objectives of USAID/OTI in Venezuela during the years they worked with the student movement? US Ambassador
to Venezuela William Brownfield specifically laid
them out in a secret embassy cable secured by Chelsea Manning and released by WikiLeaks: "1) Strengthening Democratic Institutions,
2) Penetrating Chavez' Political Base, 3) Dividing Chavismo, 4) Protecting Vital US business, and 5) Isolating Chavez internationally."
These efforts initially focused on setting up community groups in working-class neighborhoods, which appeared neutral but were
actually operated by opposition activists. Since USAID/OTI could not directly fund political parties, they worked with party leaders,
including those from Voluntad Popular, to help opposition activists set up these community groups in neighborhoods where chavistas
were predominant. The groups, which claimed to promote and provide training related to participatory democracy, ultimately aimed
to put opposition activists in contact with Chávez supporters in an effort to generate chavista support for their political
parties. One USAID/OTI contractor who helped to organize these groups in Venezuela explained to Gill:
We even developed new NGOs that were looking very neutral in the eyes of the government; by them we can help people in the
poor neighborhoods. They looked neutral because they had no affiliation with no political party. They were people from the neighborhood,
even though they were opposition. They create the organizations with no past relation to political parties. So when they worked
in the barrios , they looked very neutral. So we gave them money, but they succeeded in helping democratic values. They
were pulling people away from Chávez in a subtle manner. We were telling them what democracy is, and showing them what democracy
means. We developed very nice materials and took care of every word to give them, so it didn't look like we were sympathizing
with the opposition.
The campaign didn't work out as planned. Chávez continued to garner support among the popular classes, and many barrio
inhabitants eventually caught on that the community groups were organized by the opposition, so most stopped attending.
Thereafter, USAID/OTI largely shifted its efforts toward the burgeoning student movement that developed in the mid-2000s --
the movement in which Guaidó "cut his political teeth," according to
a report in The Guardian . A former USAID/OTI member who helped devise US efforts in Venezuela said the "objective was that you
had thousands of youth, high school, and college kids that were horrified of this Indian-looking guy in power. They were idealistic.
We wanted to help them to build a civic organization, so that they could mobilize and organize. This is different than protesting."
In other words, USAID/OTI sought to take advantage of racialized fear of Chávez to organize middle-class youth around a long-term
strategy to defeat him.
How exactly did the United States help these students? One USAID/OTI contractor who worked directly with them on a routine basis
revealed to Gill that Washington provided funding and training to the student groups that developed at the same time Guaidó was part
of them. This contractor said that for USAID/OTI, the
most successful time was during 2007, when the student movement developed. The US had a very daring movement and brought
a lot of money to the students through OTI, and it grew a lot as a result. I can say with pride that a lot of people
[now] in the Congress -- I know them from our projects. I'm proud. It's like you see your son and daughter grow up. I knew them
when they grew up the potential leaders when/if there is a change of government, and we were the ones who showed them the first
steps.
Washington gave money to these student groups for a number of purposes. As one USAID/OTI employee put it, the funding was for
"all the things they needed: microphones, things for presentations, paper." Another USAID/OTI employee described hosting seminars
and courses with student protesters. One employee described the training this way: "what is democracy, what is the vote, all the
pillars with the democracy system, to reinforce them, what language they have to use." However, one USAID worker contended that Washington
-- albeit not through USAID -- was also providing the students with items that could "be used in the street and protect themselves,
[such as] masks, but it was not part of open grants." Although they could not confirm the specific US origins of this assistance,
this sort of aid has been used for CIA operations in the past.
While it is unclear what Guaidó's role was in these groups at the time, it is clear that US "democracy promotion" financed
his cohort's formation and its demonstrations for over a decade . Two of the key actors that USAID/OTI contractors interacted
with during this period were Yon Goicoechea and Freddy Guevara, who like Guaidó were from Voluntad Popular. All three have been widely
documented in the media as leading student protests against the Chávez government at the same time, putting them in the same organizational
circles.
This is not to suggest that Guaidó, Goicoechea, or any other opposition member is merely a puppet of the United States. But
it is clear that Guaidó and others in his circle share a worldview and certain goals with the US government. Many of them linked
up with US agencies, which provided them with the resources needed to amplify their voices and reach a much larger audience.When Gill asked one USAID/OTI member whether the goal was "to get Chávez out of office," the member responded, "That was the
idea."
What Does Guaidó Want?
Fast-forward to 2019, when Guaidó is at the forefront of the movement to oust Maduro. As with much of the Venezuelan opposition,
though, Guaidó has been vague about his actual policies. On January 30, he presented a "Plan País" at the Central University of Venezuela.
But much of this time was spent criticizing what the government has done and talking in generalities about how Guaidó would improve
the economy. This included vague references to "stabilizing the economy" and "establishing legal certainty for business."
A recently released document outlining some of Guaidó's proposals -- accepting much-needed humanitarian aid, eliminating currency
controls, and courting private investment -- did little to clarify his vision for the future. Still hanging in the air is how Guaidó
intends to accomplish these goals. The lack of specificity is at least partly due to the heterogeneity of the opposition coalition,
which is composed of former Communist Party members as well as proponents of neoliberalism. But Guaidó's already cozy relationship
with the United States certainly raises concerns that his plans remain vague because they involve massive privatization, the rollback
of state services, and other policies that would make Venezuela more "inviting" for foreign investors at the expense of many Venezuelans.
According to a glowing
recent article in The New York Times , "While it's still far from certain that Mr. Guaidó will ever set foot in the presidential
palace, the number of ordinary Venezuelans and foreign powers taking his side is growing." This formulation confuses provisional
support for Guaidó as a means of clearing the way for elections with support for Guaidó as president -- a dangerous conflation to
make in a country where it could take up to one or two years to organize elections. And so far, we still don't know what Guaidó is
more committed to: putting his friends and party members into power, or supporting democratic elections, regardless of the outcome.
The only thing we know for sure is that in the short term, he wishes to fully assume the presidency.
Guaidó's intransigent opposition to negotiations is perhaps another reason to question his motives. Undoubtedly, previous talks
have not generated confidence or optimism on either side. In lockstep with the United States and several other countries, Guaidó
has asserted that the time for dialogue is over. This position seems to have only encouraged Maduro to dig in his heels.
It's unlikely the Maduro government will simply calmly step aside and cede the government to Guaidó. High-ranking military members
seemingly remain on board with Maduro -- maybe because they fear an end to the economic benefits they now receive, or even prosecution
under an opposition government. The opposition, for its part, is working to provide an exit ramp for military officers tangled up
with the Maduro government. Given this standstill, Guaidó's resistance to dialogue only moves the needle closer to US military intervention.
And his embrace of economic sanctions will hammer the poor before anyone else.
Guaidó's calls for more protests and military defections, and his actions at the international level (for example, his rush to
appoint ambassadors to sympathetic countries) seem designed to bait Maduro into pursuing him legally. Bolton et al. have publicly
warned Maduro that actions against Guaidó will have consequences. Clearly, the Iraq War–endorsing national-security adviser and his
new colleague -- the
notorious neocon Elliott Abrams, Trump's recently appointed special envoy to Venezuela -- are eager to assert US political and
military dominance over a neighboring country that has irritated Washington for two decades.
Guaidó's Shaky Support
Over the past few years, discontent with the Maduro government has clearly grown, but we should not conflate that growth in opposition
with support for Guaidó. For years, the opposition coalition has asserted that it represents a majority of the country, even as it
has ignored the poor and working class. The fact that Guaidó's mobilizations in Caracas on February 2 were centered in Las Mercedes,
one of the richest neighborhoods, does not generate confidence that the opposition has moved beyond its narrow, elitist base. In
late January Rebecca Hanson conducted research in Catia, a conglomeration of poor and working-class neighborhoods in west Caracas
where she has worked since 2009, on perceptions of the self-proclaimed interim president. She found that even those who voice support
for Guaidó do so because he is not Maduro -- that is, they support him not for who he is, but for who he isn't. At most, there may
be tentative agreement that Guaidó represents una esperanza (a hope) for a change in government.
It was not excitement about potential change but rather pessimism and hopelessness that characterized one group interview that
Hanson organized with women in Los Magallanes, a section of Catia, only 10 days after Guaidó's proclamation. Though the women participating
said that Guaidó offered some hope, this was limited to getting Maduro out of office. Most of them felt that there is no real difference
between Maduro and Guaidó, with one fighting to maintain his position in power and the other fighting to seize it. As one participant
in the interview put it, the two are in a fight to distribute the spoils of war among their respective inner circle. "You don't know
who to believe"; "I don't believe in anyone"; and "All politicians want the same thing" were common refrains.
What is more, no one Hanson interviewed was under the illusion that the opposition under Guaidó was different from when it was
under López or Henrique Capriles, the opposition's 2012 and 2013 presidential candidate. In other words, no one was convinced that
Guaidó had the interests of the people at heart. These and other conversations suggest that at least some Venezuelans will support
Guaidó only, or at least primarily, because they feel they have been backed into a corner, either by Maduro's incompetence or his
unwillingness to make serious economic changes.
Finally, though most Venezuelans may not be aware of the ties between Guaidó's party and the United States, his uncritical
acceptance of US support has filled some with uncertainty about his motives.Some would prefer that he "put his house
in order" without outside intervention -- that he demonstrate his ability to generate support within Venezuela. For others, his very
public endorsement of the United States recalls memories of Venezuela's status decades ago, during the cuarta republica ,
when "our oil was not our own," as chavistas that Hanson has conducted research with often say. Still others worry that Venezuela
is being sold off bit by bit to Russia and China. The choice between Guaidó and Maduro could, sadly, end up being a question of which
empire to serve.
No Peace Without Chavismo
At the international level, the stars have surely aligned for Guaidó and the opposition, with right-wing allies like Jair
Bolsonaro in Brazil and Donald Trump in the United States now in power. Yet the Venezuelan government has fended off international
intervention before. Hugo Chávez survived Bush and his overt support for the 2002 coup (as well as former Colombian President Alvaro
Uribe and his saber rattling). However, in earlier years, the so-called Latin American Pink Tide, with leftist governments in countries
like Ecuador and Brazil, gave Venezuela firm regional allies. This is no longer the case.
True, Maduro does retain the support of China and Russia. Over the past decade they have supplied Venezuela with shipments of
missiles, advanced aircraft, and tanks, which have shored up a sizable military. This could make a US invasion more complicated than
what the Pentagon faced in Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989, two military forays that Trump and others often reference in defense
of this possibility.
The only real hope for a peaceful outcome lies in dialogue. Given that many citizens do not trust either Maduro or Guaidó,
the two sides would need to make serious gestures toward working together to resolve both the economic and political crisis. This
would require that Guaidó walk back his refusal to participate in negotiations. A few global actors like Mexico and Uruguay
understand this and have urged the government and opposition to sit down and work out a plan for the future.
Dialogue is a much better option than the current US plan to starve Venezuelans into revolt by applying crippling economic sanctions.
Have US elites learned nothing from the experience of Cuba, Iran, or Zimbabwe? These economies limped on, and their leaders clung
to state power for decades, despite sanctions. Far from damaging US foes, sanctions have primarily taken their toll on the citizens
they were allegedly designed to liberate.
Guaidó could invest less time in courting international actors and more time winning over sectors in Venezuela that have traditionally
supported chavismo . For example, he could take a page from the playbook of Henrique Capriles, who announced during his 2012
presidential campaign that social programs like Barrio Adentro, which provided free health care in popular sectors, should not only
be maintained but improved and extended. Although Guaidó has criticized militarized police raids that have killed hundreds in poor
neighborhoods, the Guaidó-led opposition has remained silent about how their government would protect the rights and well-being of
the poor, suggesting that it has yet to concede that these sectors, the majority of the population, must be the priority of any future
government. Given the high level of discontent with the Maduro government, this is a luxury he can probably afford -- in the short
term. Eventually, however, he will need to put forward a platform demonstrating that the poor and working-class sectors will not
end up bearing the brunt of the transition if he wishes to secure their support.
Decoupling humanitarian aid from political interests could also demonstrate that Guaidó isn't just focused on gaining power.
The Red Cross has already cautioned the United
States about the dangers of sending aid to Venezuela if it is not "shielded" from politics and does not have the approval of Venezuelan
authorities. Humanitarian aid should not be a bargaining chip, and using it as such contributes to the perception that the battle
Guaidó is waging is for power, not el pueblo . Finally, and not least, Guaidó should put forward a concrete plan for new elections,
guaranteeing the participation of chavista candidates. There is no political future in Venezuela without chavista participation,
and, one way or another, the opposition and chavismo will eventually need to work together toward a new future. See also
Dismal economic performance of Venezuelan economy and impoverishment of population created perfect environment for the color revolution...
Notable quotes:
"... But after a single phone call from from US Vice President Mike Pence, Guaidó proclaimed himself president of Venezuela. Anointed as the leader of his country by Washington, a previously unknown political bottom-dweller was vaulted onto the international stage as the US-selected leader of the nation with the world's largest oil reserves. ..."
"... CANVAS is a spinoff of Otpor, a Serbian protest group founded by Srdja Popovic in 1998 at the University of Belgrade. Otpor, which means "resistance" in Serbian, was the student group that gained international fame -- and Hollywood-level promotion -- by mobilizing the protests that eventually toppled Slobodan Milosevic. ..."
Juan Guaidó is the product of a decade-long project overseen by Washington's elite regime change trainers. While posing as a champion
of democracy, he has spent years at the forefront of a violent campaign of destabilization.
Before the fateful day of January 22, fewer
than one in five Venezuelans had heard of Juan Guaidó. Only a few months ago, the 35-year-old was an obscure character in a politically
marginal far-right group closely associated with gruesome acts of street violence. Even in his own party, Guaidó had been a mid-level
figure in the opposition-dominated National Assembly, which is now held under contempt according to Venezuela's constitution.
But after a single phone call from from US Vice President Mike Pence, Guaidó proclaimed himself president of Venezuela. Anointed
as the leader of his country by Washington, a previously unknown political bottom-dweller was vaulted onto the international stage
as the US-selected leader of the nation with the world's largest oil reserves.
Echoing the Washington consensus, the New York Times editorial board
hailed Guaidó as a "credible
rival" to Maduro with a "refreshing style and vision of taking the country forward." The Bloomberg News editorial board
applauded
him for seeking "restoration of democracy" and the Wall Street Journal
declared him "a new democratic leader."
Meanwhile, Canada, numerous European nations, Israel, and the bloc of right-wing Latin American governments known as the Lima Group
recognized Guaidó as the legitimate leader of Venezuela.
While Guaidó seemed to have materialized out of nowhere, he was, in fact, the product of more than a decade of assiduous grooming
by the US government's elite regime change factories. Alongside a cadre of right-wing student activists, Guaidó was cultivated to
undermine Venezuela's socialist-oriented government, destabilize the country, and one day seize power. Though he has been a minor
figure in Venezuelan politics, he had spent years quietly demonstrated his worthiness in Washington's halls of power.
"Juan Guaidó is a character that has been created for this circumstance," Marco Teruggi, an Argentinian sociologist and leading
chronicler of Venezuelan politics, told The Grayzone . "It's the logic
of a laboratory – Guaidó is like a mixture of several elements that create a character who, in all honesty, oscillates between
laughable and worrying."
Diego Sequera, a Venezuelan journalist and writer for the investigative outlet Misión Verdad, agreed: "Guaidó is more popular
outside Venezuela than inside, especially in the elite Ivy League and Washington circles," Sequera remarked to The Grayzone, "He's
a known character there, is predictably right-wing, and is considered loyal to the program."
While Guaidó is today sold as the face of democratic restoration, he spent his career in the most violent faction of Venezuela's
most radical opposition party, positioning himself at the forefront of one destabilization campaign after another. His party has
been widely discredited inside Venezuela, and is held partly responsible for fragmenting a badly weakened opposition.
"'These radical leaders have no more than 20 percent in opinion polls,"
wrote Luis Vicente León, Venezuela's leading pollster. According to León, Guaidó's party remains isolated because the majority
of the population "does not want war. 'What they want is a solution.'"
But this is precisely why he Guaidó was selected by Washington: He is not expected to lead Venezuela toward democracy, but to
collapse a country that for the past two decades has been a bulwark of resistance to US hegemony. His unlikely rise signals the culmination
of a two decades-long project to destroy a robust socialist experiment.
Targeting the "troika of tyranny"
Since the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez, the United States has fought to restore control over Venezuela and is vast oil reserves.
Chávez's socialist programs may have redistributed the country's wealth and helped lift millions out of poverty, but they also earned
him a target on his back.
In 2002, Venezuela's right-wing opposition briefly ousted Chávez with US support and recognition, before the military restored
his presidency following a mass popular mobilization. Throughout the administrations of US Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama,
Chávez survived numerous assassination plots, before succumbing to cancer in 2013. His successor, Nicolas Maduro, has
survived
three attempts on his life.
The Trump administration immediately elevated Venezuela to the top of Washington's regime change target list, branding it the
leader of a
"troika of tyranny." Last year, Trump's national security team
attempted
to recruit members of the military brass to mount a military junta, but that effort failed.
According to the Venezuelan government, the US was also involved in a plot, codenamed Operation Constitution, to capture Maduro
at the Miraflores presidential palace; and another, called
Operation Armageddon , to assassinate him at a military parade in July 2017. Just over a year later, exiled opposition leaders
tried and failed to kill Maduro with drone bombs during
a military parade in Caracas.
More than a decade before these intrigues, a group of right-wing opposition students were hand-selected and groomed by an elite
US-funded regime change training academy to topple Venezuela's government and restore the neoliberal order.
Training from the "'export-a-revolution' group that sowed the seeds for a NUMBER of color revolutions"
On October 5, 2005, with Chávez's popularity at its peak and his government planning sweeping socialist programs, five Venezuelan
"student leaders" arrived in Belgrade,
Serbia to begin training for an insurrection.
The students had arrived from Venezuela courtesy of the Center for Applied Non-Violent Action and Strategies, or CANVAS. This
group is
funded largely through the
National Endowment for Democracy , a CIA cut-out that functions as the US government's main arm of promoting regime change; and
offshoots like the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. According
to leaked internal emails
from Stratfor, an intelligence firm known as the "
shadow CIA ,"
CANVAS "may have also received CIA funding and training during the 1999/2000 anti-Milosevic struggle."
CANVAS is a spinoff of Otpor, a Serbian protest group founded by
Srdja Popovic in 1998 at the University of Belgrade.
Otpor, which means "resistance" in Serbian, was the student group that gained international fame -- and Hollywood-level
promotion -- by mobilizing the protests that eventually toppled Slobodan
Milosevic.
This small cell of regime change specialists was operating according to the theories of the late Gene Sharp, the so-called "Clausewitz
of non-violent struggle." Sharp had worked with a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, Col.
Robert Helvey , to conceive a strategic blueprint that
weaponized protest as a form of hybrid warfare, aiming it at states that resisted Washington's unipolar domination.
Otpor was supported by the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, and Sharp's Albert Einstein Institute. Sinisa Sikman, one
of Otpor's main trainers, once
said the group even received
direct CIA funding.
According to a
leaked email
from a Stratfor staffer, after running Milosevic out of power, "the kids who ran OTPOR grew up, got suits and designed CANVAS
or in other words a 'export-a-revolution' group that sowed the seeds for a NUMBER of color revolutions. They are still hooked into
U.S. funding and basically go around the world trying to topple dictators and autocratic governments (ones that U.S. does not like
;)."
Stratfor revealed that CANVAS "turned its attention to Venezuela" in 2005, after training opposition movements that led pro-NATO
regime change operations across Eastern Europe.
While monitoring the CANVAS training program, Stratfor outlined its insurrectionist agenda in strikingly blunt language: "Success
is by no means guaranteed, and student movements are only at the beginning of what could be a years-long effort to trigger a revolution
in Venezuela, but the trainers themselves are the people who cut their teeth on the 'Butcher of the Balkans.' They've got mad skills.
When you see students at five Venezuelan universities hold simultaneous demonstrations, you will know that the training is over and
the real work has begun."
Birthing the "Generation 2007" regime change cadre
The "real work" began two years later, in 2007, when Guaidó graduated from Andrés Bello Catholic University of Caracas. He moved
to Washington, DC to enroll in the Governance and Political Management
Program at George Washington University, under the tutelage of Venezuelan economist Luis Enrique Berrizbeitia, one of the top
Latin American neoliberal economists. Berrizbeitia is a
former executive director of the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) who spent more than a decade working in the Venezuelan energy sector, under the old oligarchic regime that was
ousted by Chávez.
That year, Guaidó helped lead anti-government rallies after the Venezuelan government
declined to to renew the license of Radio Caracas Televisión
(RCTV). This privately owned station played a leading role in the 2002 coup against Hugo Chávez. RCTV helped mobilize anti-government
demonstrators, falsified information blaming government supporters for acts of violence carried out by opposition members, and banned
pro-government reporting amid the coup. The role of RCTV and other oligarch-owned stations in driving the failed coup attempt was
chronicled in the acclaimed documentary The Revolution Will Not
Be Televised .
That same year, the students claimed credit for stymying Chavez's constitutional referendum for a "21st century socialism" that
promised "to set the legal framework for the political and
social reorganization of the country, giving direct power to organized communities as a prerequisite for the development of a new
economic system."
From the protests around RCTV and the referendum, a specialized cadre of US-backed class of regime change activists was born.
They called themselves "Generation 2007."
The Stratfor and CANVAS trainers of this cell identified Guaidó's ally – a street organizer named Yon Goicoechea – as a "key factor"
in defeating the constitutional referendum. The following year, Goicochea was
rewarded for his efforts with the Cato Institute's
Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty, along with a $500,000 prize, which he promptly invested into building his own Liberty
First (Primero Justicia) political network.
Friedman, of course, was the godfather of the notorious neoliberal Chicago Boys who were imported into Chile by dictatorial junta
leader Augusto Pinochet to implement policies of radical "shock doctrine"-style fiscal austerity. And the Cato Institute is the libertarian
Washington DC-based think tank founded by the Koch Brothers, two top Republican Party donors who have become
aggressive supporters of the right-wing across Latin America.
Wikileaks published a 2007 email from American
ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield sent to the State Department, National Security Council and Department of Defense Southern
Command praising "Generation of '07" for having "forced the Venezuelan president, accustomed to setting the political agenda, to
(over)react." Among the "emerging leaders" Brownfield identified were Freddy Guevara and Yon Goicoechea. He applauded the latter
figure as "one of the students' most articulate defenders of civil liberties."
Flush with cash from libertarian oligarchs and US government soft power outfits, the radical Venezuelan cadre took their Otpor
tactics to the streets, along with a
version of the group's
logo, as seen below:
"Galvanizing public unrest to take advantage of the situation and spin it against Chavez"
In 2009, the Generation 2007 youth activists
staged their most provocative demonstration yet, dropping their pants on public roads and aping the outrageous guerrilla theater
tactics outlined by Gene Sharp in his regime change manuals. The protesters had mobilized against the arrest of an ally from another
newfangled youth group called JAVU. This far-right group "gathered funds from a variety of US government sources, which allowed it
to gain notoriety quickly as the hardline wing of opposition street movements," according to academic George Ciccariello-Maher's
book, "Building the Commune."
While video of the protest is not available, many Venezuelans have
identified Guaidó as one of its key participants.
While the allegation is unconfirmed, it is certainly plausible; the bare-buttocks protesters were members of the Generation 2007
inner core that Guaidó belonged to, and were clad in their trademark Resistencia! Venezuela t-shirts, as seen below:
That year, Guaidó exposed himself to the public in another way, founding a political party to capture the anti-Chavez energy his
Generation 2007 had cultivated. Called Popular Will, it was led by
Leopoldo López , a Princeton-educated right-wing firebrand
heavily involved in National Endowment for Democracy programs and elected as the mayor of a district in Caracas that was one of the
wealthiest in the country. Lopez was a portrait of Venezuelan aristocracy, directly descended from his country's first president.
He was also the first cousin of
Thor Halvorssen , founder of the US-based Human Rights Foundation that functions as a de facto publicity shop for US-backed anti-government
activists in countries targeted by Washington for regime change.
Though Lopez's interests aligned neatly with Washington's, US
diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks highlighted the
fanatical tendencies that would ultimately lead to Popular Will's marginalization. One cable identified Lopez as "a divisive figure
within the opposition often described as arrogant, vindictive, and power-hungry." Others highlighted his obsession with street confrontations
and his "uncompromising approach" as a source of tension with other opposition leaders who prioritized unity and participation in
the country's democratic institutions.
By 2010, Popular Will and its foreign backers moved to exploit the worst drought to hit Venezuela in decades. Massive electricity
shortages had struck the country due the dearth of water, which was needed to power hydroelectric plants. A global economic recession
and declining oil prices compounded the crisis, driving public discontentment.
Stratfor and CANVAS – key advisors of Guaidó and his anti-government cadre – devised a shockingly cynical
plan to drive a dagger through the heart of
the Bolivarian revolution. The scheme hinged on a 70% collapse of the country's electrical system by as early as April 2010.
"This could be the watershed event, as there is little that Chavez can do to protect the poor from the failure of that system,"
the Stratfor internal memo declared. "This would likely have the impact of galvanizing public unrest in a way that no opposition
group could ever hope to generate. At that point in time, an opposition group would be best served to take advantage of the situation
and spin it against Chavez and towards their needs."
By this point, the Venezuelan opposition was receiving a staggering $40-50 million a year from US government organizations like
USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy, according to
a report by the Spanish think tank, the FRIDE Institute. It also had massive wealth to draw on from its own accounts, which were
mostly outside the country.
While the scenario envisioned by Statfor did not come to fruition, the Popular Will party activists and their allies cast aside
any pretense of non-violence and joined a radical plan to destabilize the country.
Towards violent destabilization
In November, 2010, according to emails obtained
by Venezuelan security services and presented by former Justice Minister Miguel Rodríguez Torres, Guaidó, Goicoechea, and several
other student activists attended a secret five-day training at the Fiesta Mexicana hotel in Mexico City. The sessions were run by
Otpor, the Belgrade-based regime change trainers backed by the US government. The meeting had
reportedly received the blessing of Otto Reich, a fanatically anti-Castro Cuban exile working in George W. Bush's Department
of State, and the right-wing former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.
At the Fiesta Mexicana hotel, the emails stated, Guaidó and his fellow activists hatched a plan to overthrow President Hugo Chavez
by generating chaos through protracted spasms of street violence.
Three petroleum industry figureheads – Gustavo Torrar, Eligio Cedeño and Pedro Burelli – allegedly covered the $52,000 tab to
hold the meeting. Torrar is a self-described "human rights activist" and "intellectual" whose younger brother Reynaldo Tovar Arroyo
is the representative in Venezuela of the private Mexican oil and gas company Petroquimica del Golfo, which holds a contract with
the Venezuelan state.
Cedeño, for his part, is a fugitive Venezuelan businessman who claimed asylum in the United States, and Pedro Burelli a former
JP Morgan executive and the former director of Venezuela's national oil company, Petroleum of Venezuela (PDVSA). He left PDVSA in
1998 as Hugo Chavez took power and is on the advisory
committee of Georgetown University's Latin America Leadership Program.
Burelli insisted that the emails detailing his participation had been
fabricated and
even hired a private investigator to prove it. The investigator
declared that Google's records showed the emails
alleged to be his were never transmitted.
Yet today Burelli makes no secret of his desire to see Venezuela's current president, Nicolás Maduro, deposed – and even dragged
through the streets and sodomized with a bayonet, as Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi was by NATO-backed militiamen.
The alleged Fiesta Mexicana plot flowed into another destabilization plan revealed in a
series of documents produced by the Venezuelan government. In May 2014, Caracas released documents detailing an assassination
plot against President Nicolás Maduro. The leaks identified the Miami-based Maria Corina Machado as a leader of the scheme. A hardliner
with a penchant for extreme rhetoric, Machado has functioned as an international liaison for the opposition,
visiting President George W. Bush in 2005.
"I think it is time to gather efforts; make the necessary calls, and obtain financing to annihilate Maduro and the rest will fall
apart," Machado wrote in an email to former Venezuelan diplomat Diego Arria in 2014.
In
another email , Machado claimed that the violent plot had the blessing of US Ambassador to Colombia, Kevin Whitaker. "I have
already made up my mind and this fight will continue until this regime is overthrown and we deliver to our friends in the world.
If I went to San Cristobal and exposed myself before the OAS, I fear nothing. Kevin Whitaker has already reconfirmed his support
and he pointed out the new steps. We have a checkbook stronger than the regime's to break the international security ring."
Guaidó heads to the barricades
That February, student demonstrators acting as shock troops for the exiled oligarchy erected violent barricades across the country,
turning opposition-controlled quarters into
violent fortresses known as guarimbas . While international media portrayed the upheaval as a spontaneous protest against
Maduro's iron-fisted rule, there was ample evidence that Popular Will was orchestrating the show.
"None of the protesters at the universities wore their university t-shirts, they all wore Popular Will or Justice First t-shirts,"
a guarimba participant said at the time. "They might
have been student groups, but the student councils are affiliated to the political opposition parties and they are accountable to
them."
Asked who the ringleaders were, the guarimba participant said, "Well if I am totally honest, those guys are legislators
now."
Around 43 were killed during the 2014 guarimbas . Three years later, they erupted again, causing mass destruction of public
infrastructure, the murder of government supporters, and the
deaths of 126 people, many of whom were Chavistas. In several
cases, supporters of the government were burned alive by armed gangs.
Guaidó was directly involved in the 2014 guarimbas . In fact, he tweeted video showing himself clad in a helmet and gas
mask, surrounded by masked and armed elements that had shut down a highway that were engaging in a violent clash with the police.
Alluding to his participation in Generation 2007, he proclaimed, "I remember in 2007, we proclaimed, 'Students!' Now, we shout, 'Resistance!
Resistance!'"
Guaidó has deleted the tweet, demonstrating apparent concern for his image as a champion of democracy.
On February 12, 2014, during the height of that year's guarimbas , Guaidó joined Lopez on stage at a rally of Popular Will
and Justice First. During a lengthy diatribe against the government, Lopez
urged the crowd to march to the office of Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz. Soon after, Diaz's office came under attack by armed
gangs who attempted to burn it to the ground. She denounced what she called "planned and premeditated violence."
In an televised appearance in 2016, Guaidó
dismissed deaths resulting from guayas – a guarimba tactic involving stretching steel wire across a roadway in
order to injure or kill motorcyclists – as a "myth." His comments whitewashed a deadly tactic that had
killed unarmed civilians like Santiago Pedroza and
decapitated a
man named Elvis Durán, among many others.
This callous disregard for human life would define his Popular Will party in the eyes of much of the public, including many opponents
of Maduro.
Cracking down on Popular Will
As violence and political polarization escalated across the country, the government began to act against the Popular Will leaders
who helped stoke it.
Freddy Guevara, the National Assembly Vice-President and second in command of Popular Will, was a principal leader in the 2017
street riots. Facing a trial for his role in the violence, Guevara
took shelter in the Chilean embassy, where he remains.
Lester Toledo, a Popular Will legislator from the state of Zulia, was wanted by Venezuelan government in September 2016 on charges
of financing terrorism and plotting assassinations. The plans
were said to be made with former Colombian President Álavaro Uribe. Toledo escaped Venezuela and went on several speaking tours with
Human Rights Watch, the US government-backed Freedom House, the Spanish Congress and European Parliament.
Carlos Graffe, another Otpor-trained Generation 2007 member who led Popular Will, was
arrested in July 2017. According to police, he was in possession of a bag filled with nails, C4 explosives and a detonator. He
was released on December 27, 2017.
Leopoldo Lopez, the longtime Popular Will leader, is today under house arrest, accused of a key role in deaths of 13 people during
the guarimbas in 2014. Amnesty International
lauded Lopez as a "prisoner of conscience" and slammed his transfer from prison to house as "not good enough." Meanwhile, family
members of guarimba victims introduced a petition for
more charges against Lopez.
Yon Goicoechea, the Koch Brothers posterboy and US-backed founder of Justice First, was arrested in 2016 by security forces who
claimed they found
found a kilo of explosives in his vehicle. In a New York Times
op-ed , Goicoechea protested
the charges as "trumped-up" and claimed he had been imprisoned simply for his "dream of a democratic society, free of Communism."
He was
freed in November 2017.
David Smolansky, also a member of the original Otpor-trained Generation 2007, became Venezuela's youngest-ever mayor when he was
elected in 2013 in the affluent suburb of El Hatillo. But he was stripped of his position and sentenced to 15 months in prison by
the Supreme Court after it found him culpable of stirring the violent guarimbas .
Facing arrest, Smolansky shaved his beard, donned sunglasses and
slipped into Brazil disguised as a priest with
a bible in hand and rosary around his neck. He now lives in Washington, DC, where he was hand picked by Secretary of the Organization
of American States Luis Almagro to lead the working group on the Venezuelan migrant and refugee crisis.
This July 26, Smolansky held what he called a "cordial reunion" with Elliot Abrams, the convicted Iran-Contra felon
installed by Trump
as special US envoy to Venezuela. Abrams is notorious for overseeing the US covert policy of arming right-wing death squads during
the 1980's in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. His lead role in the Venezuelan coup has stoked fears that another blood-drenched
proxy war might be on the way.
Four days earlier, Machado rumbled another violent threat against Maduro,
declaring that if he "wants to save his
life, he should understand that his time is up."
A pawn in their game
The collapse of Popular Will under the weight of the violent campaign of destabilization it ran alienated large sectors of the
public and wound much of its leadership up in exile or in custody. Guaidó had remained a relatively minor figure, having spent most
of his nine-year career in the National Assembly as an alternate deputy. Hailing from one of Venezuela's least populous states, Guaidó
came in second place during the 2015 parliamentary elections, winning just 26% of votes cast in order to secure his place in the
National Assembly. Indeed, his bottom may have been better known than his face.
Guaidó is known as the president of the opposition-dominated National Assembly, but he was never elected to the position. The
four opposition parties that comprised the Assembly's Democratic Unity Table had decided to establish a rotating presidency. Popular
Will's turn was on the way, but its founder, Lopez, was under house arrest. Meanwhile, his second-in-charge, Guevara, had taken refuge
in the Chilean embassy. A figure named Juan Andrés Mejía would have been next in line but reasons that are only now clear, Juan Guaido
was selected.
"There is a class reasoning that explains Guaidó's rise," Sequera, the Venezuelan analyst, observed. "Mejía is high class, studied
at one of the most expensive private universities in Venezuela, and could not be easily marketed to the public the way Guaidó could.
For one, Guaidó has common mestizo features like most Venezuelans do, and seems like more like a man of the people. Also,
he had not been overexposed in the media, so he could be built up into pretty much anything."
In December 2018, Guaidó sneaked across the border and junketed to Washington, Colombia and Brazil to coordinate the plan to hold
mass demonstrations during the inauguration of President Maduro. The night before Maduro's swearing-in ceremony, both Vice President
Mike Pence and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland called Guaidó to affirm their support.
A week later, Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Rick Scott and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart – all lawmakers from the Florida base of the right-wing
Cuban exile lobby – joined President Trump and Vice President Pence at the White House. At their request, Trump
agreed that if Guaidó declared himself president, he would back him.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met personally withGuaidó on January 10, according to the Wall Street Journal. However, Pompeo
could not pronounce Guaidó's name when he mentioned him in a press briefing on January 25, referring to him as "Juan Guido."
By January 11, Guaidó's Wikipedia page had been
edited 37 times, highlighting the struggle to
shape the image of a previously anonymous figure who was now a tableau for Washington's regime change ambitions. In the end, editorial
oversight of his page was handed over to Wikipedia's elite council of "librarians," who pronounced him the "contested" president
of Venezuela.
Guaidó might have been an obscure figure, but his combination of radicalism and opportunism satisfied Washington's needs. "That
internal piece was missing," a Trump administration
said of Guaidó. "He was the piece we needed for our strategy to be coherent and complete."
"For the first time," Brownfield, the former American ambassador to Venezuela,
gushed to the
New York Times, "you have an opposition leader who is clearly signaling to the armed forces and to law enforcement that he wants
to keep them on the side of the angels and with the good guys."
But Guaidó's Popular Will party formed the shock troops of the guarimbas that caused the deaths of police officers and
common citizens alike. He had even boasted of his own participation in street riots. And now, to win the hearts and minds of the
military and police, Guaido had to erase this blood-soaked history.
On January 21, a day before the coup began in earnest, Guaidó's wife delivered a
video address calling on the military
to rise up against Maduro. Her performance was wooden and uninspiring, underscoring the her husband's limited political prospects.
At a press conference before supporters four days later, Guaidó
announced his solution to the crisis: "Authorize a humanitarian
intervention!"
While he waits on direct assistance, Guaidó remains what he has always been – a pet project of cynical outside forces. "It doesn't
matter if he crashes and burns after all these misadventures," Sequera said of the coup figurehead. "To the Americans, he is expendable."
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling
Republican Gomorrah
, Goliath ,
The Fifty One Day War , and
The Management of Savagery . He has
produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including
Killing Gaza . Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic
light on America's state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.
Dan Cohen Dan Cohen is a journalist and filmmaker.
He has produced widely distributed video reports and print dispatches from across Israel-Palestine. Dan is a correspondent at RT
America and tweets at @ DanCohen3000 .
http://www.dancohenmedia.com/
@Tyrion 2 good, as Venezuela "resists" America." This is complete nonsense. "Doing
things" is corrupt" ? Thus, doing nothing is "good ? I mean, WHAT ? Venezuela is not "good",
per se, except that in this particular case of international relations its largely
innocent . The US has unilaterally decided that the election loser is the election
winner
( Clinton actually "won" in 2016; she's the real president).
US sanctions, threats & striving for a civil war is not just "doing something"
–but doing something wrong (but then, who gives a fuck for international law ?
Who respects sovereignty ?)
What a despicable ideology makes people think like that? It is cloying and maudlin and
resentful.
US sanctions, threats & striving for a civil war is not just "doing something"
–but doing something wrong (but then, who gives a fuck for international law ? Who
respects sovereignty ?
Sovereignty is exercised by the legitimate government. Maduro is not the legitimate head
of the Venezuelan government. Expecting him to step down or at least call a proper
Presidential election is respecting this.
We can argue about that, but pearl clutching appeals to "but America is competent so
America is bad" are gross.
@Tyrion 2 Your mindless postmodernism is astonishing. So you think that facts don' t
matter and you haven't noticed that people are commenting facts based on what is happening,
what different acteurs have done? If you have no idea about Venezuela, why don't you read
what Mark Weisbrot or Max Blumenthal and others have written about the theme recently?
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The United States will continue to use all measures available to stop
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's revenue streams, National Security Advisor John Bolton
said in a statement on Friday.
"The US will continue to use all tools to separate Maduro [and] his cronies from money that
rightfully belongs to the people of Venezuela", Bolton said via Twitter. "Those who continue to
plunder the resources of Venezuela & stand against its people will not be forgotten".
He also called on Russia and other nations to recognise Juan Guaido as Venezuelan
President.
Bolton added that countries and companies buying Venezuelan oil must take steps to ensure
that President Nicolas Maduro and his government cannot access and divert the payments for
their own use. In late January, the United States blocked all assets of Venezuela's state
energy giant PDVSA in its jurisdiction and imposed a ban on deals with the company. US Treasury
Secretary Steven Mnuchin explained the United States was taking care of the PDVSA in the
interests of the Venezuelan people and also protecting its own market.
On January 23, opposition leader Juan Guaido proclaimed himself interim president of
Venezuela after the opposition-controlled National Assembly claimed Maduro has usurped power.
The United States and some of its allies have recognised Guaido as interim
president.
Russia, China, Mexico and several other countries have said they recognise Maduro
as Venezuela's only legitimate president.
Maduro has accused the United States of orchestrating a coup and informed the US of his
decision to sever diplomatic relations. Washington, however, has refused to withdraw its
diplomatic mission personnel from the Latin American country.
"... The US State Department announced last month that Washington froze some $7 billion in assets belonging to Venezuelan state-owned oil company PDVSA in order to make some of that money available to Guaido and his team. ..."
"... Maduro, after launching a signature-gathering campaign against alleged US interference, has repeatedly stressed his sentiment that the main objective behind Washington's interest in the political outcome in Venezuela is the nation's oil reserves, said to the largest in the world. ..."
The US intelligence community is directly communicating with members of Venezuela's military
in attempts to convince them to abandon beleaguered President Nicolas Maduro while also
considering additional sanctions to ramp up the pressure, a senior White House official
divulged to Reuters. Despite the fact that only a few senior officers have to date abandoned
Maduro, the Trump administration expects additional military personnel to jump ship.
In late January, Juan Guaido, the head of the opposition-led National Assembly, proclaimed
himself the South American nation's interim president, in a move swiftly recognized by the US
and a handful of other countries.
"We believe these to be those first couple pebbles before we start really seeing bigger
rocks rolling down the hill," the unnamed White House official speaking on a condition of
anonymity, told Reuters. "We're still having conversations with members of the former Maduro
regime, with military members, although those conversations are very, very limited."
The unnamed official did not provide additional details regarding what form motivation was
being offered to top military officials to gain their support, according to Reuters.
Many members of the Venezuelan military remain loyal to Maduro, mostly in fear of being
targeted by the embattled leader. To convince those on-the-fence members to abandon Maduro, the
US must offer something that makes a turncoat move worthwhile, noted Eric Farnsworth, vice
president of the Council of the Americas think tank in Washington.
"It depends on what they're offering," Farnsworth told Reuters. "Are there incentives built
into these contacts that will at least cause people to question their loyalty to the
regime?"
A few European nations have joined the Trump administration in its support of Guaido as the
interim president, although those nations professing political support have not taken the
additional step of backing US sanctions on Venezuela's state-owned oil giant PDVSA as well as
other restrictions on financial transactions imposed by Washington.
The US State Department announced last month that Washington froze some $7 billion in
assets belonging to Venezuelan state-owned oil company PDVSA in order to make some of that
money available to Guaido and his team.
According to the US official who spoke anonymously to Reuters, the Trump administration is
also considering imposing sanctions on Cuban military and intelligence officials who are
thought to be assisting Maduro.
Maduro, after launching a signature-gathering campaign against alleged US interference,
has repeatedly stressed his sentiment that the main objective behind Washington's interest in
the political outcome in Venezuela is the nation's oil reserves, said to the largest in the
world.
"... Recently, Guaido addressed both Russia and China, trying to convince them that a change in government would actually be in their economic interests. "What most suits Russia and China is a change of government," he said. "Maduro does not protect Venezuela, he doesn't protect anyone's investments, and he is not a good deal for those countries." ..."
"... But despite these power projection ploys, Russia's real capabilities to influence the outcome of the crisis seem limited. After a new US oil embargo against PDVSA was announced last week, Maduro's regime was cut off from its main source of revenue. Analysts say that the fate of Venezuela now rests in the hands of the military – on whether, and how long, it will remain loyal to Maduro. ..."
As of 2017, Russia controlled 13% of Venezuela's crude exports, Reuters
reported . According to some experts, Rosneft has been taking advantage of Venezuela's
difficulties to secure deals which will be profitable in the long term.
The Kremlin's point man for Venezuela is Igor Sechin, CEO of Russian state-owned company
Rosneft and a close Putin ally, who has made frequent visits to Caracas in recent years.
Rosneft has provided $6 billion in loans to PDVSA, which is repaying them with oil. Rosneft has
also gained a share of ownership in five of Venezuela's petroleum projects, while playing a
middleman role in global markets, selling Venezuelan oil on to customers worldwide.
However, Russia's investments in Venezuela look far from lucrative. In 2017 the two
countries agreed to restructure Venezuela's debt, amounting to over $3 billion, by shifting the
repayment terms to 2027.
The beleaguered country's economy is on the verge of collapse and the oil sector, which
accounts for over 90% of national export revenues, has not been spared. Last year, oil
production dropped by 37% compared with 2017. So, Maduro has been struggling to pay back the
loans and last year, Sechin had to fly to Caracas to negotiate with the Venezuelan leader over
delayed oil supplies.
Russia's concern about a collapse in Venezuela's economy is tangible. A delegation of
high-ranking Russian officials flew to Caracas in October to advise the government on how to
overcome the crisis. With the country in a state of turmoil, Russia's Deputy Minister of
Finance Sergei Storchak
said he expects Venezuela to struggle to repay its debt, and the next $100 million tranche
is due next month.
... ... ...
Recently, Guaido addressed both Russia and China, trying to convince them that a change in
government would actually be in their economic interests. "What most suits Russia and China is
a change of government," he said. "Maduro does not protect Venezuela, he doesn't protect
anyone's investments, and he is not a good deal for those countries."
But Russia's switch of sides is highly unlikely at this point, for economic interests are
not the only factor involved.
Russian bridgehead
As Krutikhin pointed out, supporting Maduro is a matter of principle for Russia. Betraying
Maduro at this point would make the Kremlin look weak in front of its domestic audience.
Also, Russia's support for the Maduro regime is based on geopolitics. Together, with
Ecuador, Bolivia and Cuba, Maduro's regime is a key Russian ally on the American continent.
This alliance is essentially a Cold War legacy, dating back to when the Kremlin actively
supported anti-US governments in Latin America, such as Fidel Castro's Cuba and the Sandinista
regime in Nicaragua.
Today, Putin's Russia is defying the US-led world order by supporting leaders such as
Syria's Bashar Assad and Maduro's Venezuela, even though, in the case of the latter, that comes
with substantial economic costs.
In return, Venezuela has been taking Russia's side in international disputes. One example
came after the brief Russo-Georgian conflict in 2008. Venezuela was among the few states
recognizing the Russia-backed breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
On the strategic front, Russia has been granting Venezuela multi-billion dollar loans to buy
Russian heavy weaponry, such as Sukhoi fighter jets, T-72 tanks and S-300 air defense
systems.
In return, Maduro has been offering Russia a platform to showcase its military power right
in the US backyard. In late 2018, Russian TU-160 strategic bombers – which are capable of
carrying nuclear weapons – flew to Caracas for joint exercises. That provided proof of
Russia's global reach in a region a long way from its traditional area of influence.
According to Reuters, Russian military contractors arrived recently in Caracas to protect
Maduro from a possible violent coup. The mercenaries reportedly belong to the secretive private
military company "Wagner," which has been defending Russian interests in both Syria and Eastern
Ukraine. The Kremlin, however, denied these claims.
But despite these power projection ploys, Russia's real capabilities to influence the
outcome of the crisis seem limited. After a new US oil embargo against PDVSA was announced last
week, Maduro's regime was cut off from its main source of revenue. Analysts say that the fate
of Venezuela now rests in the hands of the military – on whether, and how long, it will
remain loyal to Maduro.
For Russia, a best-case scenario looks unlikely.
If Guaido's revolution succeeds, Russia will lose a major ally in the region. If Maduro
manages to hold on to power, the Kremlin will preserve its geopolitical foothold, but at a
hefty economic price.
The problem for the USA military intervention is whether the Venezuelan resistance can make
it a second Iraq?
Notable quotes:
"... It is stupid and dangerous for Guaido to be talking about U.S. military intervention, and in doing so he is almost certainly making it more difficult to resolve the crisis in Venezuela peacefully. ..."
"... Floating the idea of a foreign invasion for any reason gives the top military commanders an added incentive to stick with Maduro and resist attempts to depose him, and they already have several reasons to remain on his side. ..."
"... An all-or-nothing approach to the crisis is likely to lead to escalation, and so far that has been the only kind of approach that the Trump administration knows how to do. Military intervention would be the absolute worst form that approach could take, and Congress and the public need to oppose any moves by this administration in that direction. ..."
Venezuela's self-proclaimed acting president Juan Guaido refused to rule out on Friday the
possibility of authorizing United States intervention to help force President Nicolas Maduro
from power and alleviate a humanitarian crisis.
National Assembly leader Guaido told AFP he would do "everything that is necessary to save
human lives," acknowledging that US intervention is "a very controversial subject."
It is stupid and dangerous for Guaido to be talking about U.S. military intervention,
and in doing so he is almost certainly making it more difficult to resolve the crisis in
Venezuela peacefully. The military's support for Maduro remains the largest and most
significant obstacle to the opposition's claim to power. Floating the idea of a foreign
invasion for any reason gives the top military commanders an added incentive to stick with
Maduro and resist attempts to depose him, and they already have
several reasons to remain on his side.
U.S. military intervention in Venezuela must not happen, and members of Congress should make
clear that it is not an option. Rep. Ro Khanna responded to Guaido's statements earlier
today:
Attacking Venezuela would be a costly and unnecessary war for the U.S., but more than that
it would be a calamity for the people of Venezuela, whose country would be plunged into even
worse conditions for the duration of the conflict. The U.S. needs to be willing to consider
some sort of compromise solution, whether it is a power-sharing arrangement or negotiations
that lead to the holding of early elections. An all-or-nothing approach to the crisis is
likely to lead to escalation, and so far that has been the only kind of approach that the Trump
administration knows how to do. Military intervention would be the absolute worst form that
approach could take, and Congress and the public need to oppose any moves by this
administration in that direction.
From oil to infrastructure, why China has plenty to lose from political turmoil in
Venezuela
Caracas needs Chinese loans and investment in various sectors, but the relationship
offers mutual benefits
Instability and a struggling economy in the South American country have already cost
Beijing dearly
As Venezuela's biggest creditor, China is bound to be affected by the outcome.
Here are some of the Chinese investments that have already hit trouble in Venezuela:
Oil-for-loan deals
The last loan Maduro got from China was one of US$5 billion in September 2017. This was in
addition to US$65 billion loaned by China to Caracas over the past decade, which the South
American nation has been repaying in oil shipments.
Several state-owned Chinese oil corporations have bought stakes in or entered joint
ventures with Venezuelan counterparts.
But after the escalating political chaos, it was reported last week by Reuters that
PetroChina planned to drop Petroleos de Venezuela as a partner in a planned US$10 billion oil
refinery and petrochemical project in southern China.
China has provided more than US$100 billion in loan commitments to Latin American
countries and firms since 2005. This would mean China's loans to Venezuela accounted for well
over half of its loans to South America.
China, as the biggest oil importer in the world, is receiving 240,000 barrels of oil a day
– mostly as debt repayment – from Venezuela, which has the world's biggest oil
reserves.
Latin America's high-speed railway
Even before the current chaos over the presidential race, Venezuela's economy had long
been hampered by its political instability. This led to the abandonment in 2016 of a
Chinese-backed high-speed rail project that had cost US$7.5 billion.
The 462km Tinaco-Anaco line was intended to become part of South America's first
high-speed rail route and carry 5 million passengers and 9.8 million tonnes of cargo a
year.
Beijing-backed China Railway Engineering Corporation had a stake of 40 per cent in the
project, with Venezuela holding the rest, and construction began in 2009.
But it fell behind schedule and was abandoned by the Chinese state company in 2015,
according to an Associated Press report. By 2016, the construction sites and factories had
been ransacked for power generators, computers, metals, ceramics and other materials.
Mining opportunities
In 2017, China agreed to help diversify Venezuela's oil-dependent economy by developing
its mining sector. A US$400 million joint venture was established between the Corporacion
Venezolana de Mineria, Chinese firms CAMCE and Yankuang Group, and Colombia's Inter-American
Coal to boost Venezuela's coal mining and port operations.
CAMCE, a construction engineering affiliate of state-owned China National Machinery
Industry Corporation, and Yankuang, a Shandong-based coal company, have also promised to
invest US$180 million to develop the country's nickel industry.
No progress has been reported from the project so far, but other mining projects in the
country have been hindered.
Baoji Oilfield Machinery Company suspended its activities in Venezuela in 2015 following a
series of political protests. In March 2016, a gang gunned down 17 miners in an area of the
Orinoco Mining Arc site that was licensed to Yankuang.
Everything is as usual. Old American slogan: Do you have oil? We are going to you to teach
you democracy (that is, we will rob, but democratically). And after that, Americans sincerely
wonder why the rest of the world (except for Israel and Saudi Arabia) "loves" them so
much.
The USA has no interest in other communist regimes of the world that have no gold or oil.
Seems to me the MO is obvious. The use of the outdated MSM planting lies is also worth noting
because it's not even on the fringe of expansion or acceptance, it's dying a slow death.
The old American way of invading a country because it has oil and, coincidentally, is
experiencing a "humanitarian crisis" while using corrupt MSM outlets is so friggin'
old.......
I went to Venezuela to drink some beer. I find that it's pointless to try to tell the
truth about Venezuela to most Americans. People say that, because I went to a small town
instead of Caracas, I couldn't possibly know the 'real' situation.
Zorov description of Caracas is a giant Potemkin Village. The refugees flooding into
Columbia and Brazil are just actors hired by CIA to make Maduro look bad. Sounds like
paradise!
Gresham's Law is reversed in the socialist paradise and good money drives the bad from
circulation? Right. Got it. If this trolling reporter actually believes that, I have some
Continentals for him. I'll print them up to order.
I start to think that I don't feel sorry for Maduro at all. He really corrupted en
entire country with such generous handouts. And they willingly take, but no one says "thank
you," just that they want more and more.
Sounds familiar, I see this **** in the US and the left is setting up it's constituents to
starve and suffer.
Our Air France flight was grounded in Paris for 5 hours; no one wants to land in
Venezuela in the middle of the night, due to the "dangerous criminal situation."
So what would you call the situation in Paris, exactly? Mayberry? And this is precisely
why journalistic bias works better than anything else when it comes to exposing the kind of
stupidity that rivals what existed during the Dark Age. They call themselves out, shout "Hey!
I'm a moron!", and then we all laugh.
I don't know what ZH has gone but on the fake news this morning the experts were telling
me Maduro was stopping humanitarian aid sent from the US at the border.
This is the same thing that happens to anybody that questions Trump. Doing that means they
support Honest Hill'rey or is a "libtard". Without knowing much at all about Maduro, US
intervention in Venezuela is somthing I do not support at all and the maverick outside is
POTUS. So right or wrong I blame him.
This is the personal view of the correspondent on today's life of Caracas.
Translated by Scott
Day one...
Our Air France flight was grounded in Paris for 5 hours; no one wants to land in Venezuela
in the middle of the night, due to the "dangerous criminal situation." The airliner is half
empty, the passengers, judging by nervous conversations, are only Venezuelans. A taxi driver,
while leaving the airport, locks the doors, and sweetly warns that after dark, bandits scatter
spikes on the roads and rob the stranded cars. "Oh, don't worry, Amigo, I have an old car. They
are not interested in old, cars." That's where you understand why Caracas is ranked first in
the ranking of the most dangerous cities in the world. It's too late for supper, but I at least
want to exchange my US dollars for Venezuelan bolivars. I ask my cab driver. He violently
shakes his head:
"No, no, no. I do not mess with such things, it's illegal!"
"Whatever," I laugh at him.
"Tomorrow, someone will take the dollars, maybe even with my hands torn off." I was
wrong
The following morning, no one at the hotel wants to look at my dollars.
The hotel employee tells me to go to one of the official "exchange stores" but honestly
adds: "only Americans, or complete jerks go there."
In Venezuela, the official dollar exchange rate is 200 bolivars, and the "black market"
exchange rate is 2,715. And if you exchange your currency in a bank, then according to this
calculation, a bottle of ordinary water will cost 330 rubles, and a modest lunch in an
inexpensive cafe -- 7,000 rubles per person. Judging by the stories on the Internet, in
Venezuelan people should simply kill each other for dollars, but this is not the case.
There is also other things different from perception. On western news, it is shown that
demonstrators fight with police daily, tens killed, hundreds wounded, the sea of blood. But in
Caracas, all is quiet. In an afternoon, people are sitting in cafes and idly sipping rum with
ice, while maintenance crews sweep the streets. It turns out that the world 's leading TV new
sources (including CNN and the BBC) show some fantasy film about Venezuela. "Demonstrations?"
yawns Alejandro, a street vendor selling corn. "Well, Saturday there will be one, sort of. On
one end of the city will be a rally of opposition supporters, and on the other, Maduro
supporters. The police keep them separate to prevent fights."
Amazing.
You browse the Internet, you turn on the TV, and you see the revolution, the people dying on
streets to overthrow the "evil dictator Maduro." And you come here, and nobody cares.
Then it got even better. Never in my life have I had so many adventures while trying to
exchange one currency for another. The country has a problem with cash money, long queues
waiting for the ATM, and even the street dealers of "currency" have no "efectivo," as they call
cash. I wander inside a jewelry store and ask if they want some "green." The answer is "No."
Everyone acts like law-abiding citizens. I am told that police recently started arresting
people for private exchange, that's why people don't want to associate. One owner of the
jewelry store almost agrees.
"What do you have? Dollars? No, I won't take that."
"Why now?"
"I take only the Euros dollar, man, is the currency of the aggressor, they try to tell us
how to live!"
Damn it! I have money in my pocket, and I can't even buy lunch! Finally, a certain woman,
nursing a baby in a workplace, very reluctantly agrees to exchange 2,200 bolivars for a "buck."
I want to curse her out, but I have to live somehow. Bolivars seem like a beautiful,
unattainable currency, which hides all the benefits of the world, that's why they are so hard
to get. I'm nodding in agreement. The woman calls somewhere, and asks to wait. After 15 minutes
she tells me that "there is a problem." Of course, money is not to be found. Her man couldn't
withdraw them from the ATM, everywhere the ATMs are on a strict daily rate.
"President Maduro is fighting for the strengthening of the national currency," explained
the nursing mother. "We all use our cards to pay for everything."
I don't know how it works, but yesterday an exchange rate was 3,200 bolívars for 1
dollar, and today the "bucks" fell to 2,700. I have started to realize that in the very next
few days I'll starve to death with dollars in my pocket. A unique fate, perhaps, that has never
happen in history.
In the next kiosk cash for gold place I am offered a plastic debit card loaded with local
money, and then I would try my luck withdrawing bills from neighboring ATMs. "Or, maybe not, if
you're not lucky." Well, of course. By the way, an attempt to buy a SIM card for the phone also
fails. They don't sell them to foreigners, you need a Venezuelan ID card. Yes, and I have
nothing to pay for it. The feeling is that the dollar is a gift that no one wants. Sadly, I
walk by stores. People come out of there with packages of eggs, bread, packs of butter. The
range is not like in Moscow, of course, but again, if you believe the news on TV, Venezuela is
suffering from a terrible famine, supermarkets are empty, and people are fighting each other
for food. Nothing like that. There are queues, but not kilometers long. In general, television
stations in the United States and Europe (and ours too) created their own Venezuela, drawn like
a terrible cartoon. I walk into a cafe at random.
"Will you accept dollars for lunch?" I ask hopelessly.
"Yes, at the rate of "black market" they whispered to me.
"But the change will also be in dollars... sorry, no bolivars at all...we've been hunting
for them ourselves for weeks."
My first day in Venezuela is over. How unusual. I've been here for 24 hours, and I've not
held a Bolivian bill in my hand. Oh, but there will be more...
Day two...
60 liters of gasoline here cost five cents, and a basket of basic food products - 50 rubles
(about 90 cents).
"The gas station," my driver reaches into his purse and takes out a banknote of 2 Bolivar.
The exchange rate of the Venezuelan currency changes every day, and today it is 2,580 bolivars
per one dollar. In Russian money, that is 10 cents. "We must now fill a full tank," says the
taxi driver. 60 liters of gasoline cost 1 bolívar, but we give the 2 bolivars bill,
because there is no 1 bolivar bill. I can't believe that is a full tank of fuel costs FIVE
CENTS?
"And how much can you even fill at this price?"
"Once a day for every citizen. And it's enough for me."
All the way to the center city, the driver scolds President Maduro, and tells me how much he
loves America, and how it will be good when the "guy with mustache" is finally overthrow by the
Americans.
I start to think that I don't feel sorry for Maduro at all. He really corrupted en entire
country with such generous handouts. And they willingly take, but no one says "thank you," just
that they want more and more.
On the street there is a long line into a "social supermarket," a place you can buy 400
types of goods at the solid low prices. These shops were established by the late President Hugo
Chavez "to fight inflation and protect the poor." The stores are funded by the Venezuelan
government. The buyer comes with a passport, gets a number, and waits in line until they are
allowed to enter and buy a certain set of products. The selection isn't very impressive, only
the essentials: chicken, bananas, pineapples, sausages, milk. A box of these food items costs
of equivalent of 50 rubles. CNN and the BBC show videos of Venezuelans wrapped in rolls of
toilet paper and sadly wandering across the border with Colombia. The toilet paper is found in
absolutely every store, and without any problems. I am once again simply amazed: Western TV
news is something from Hollywood, they are not reporting but making fantasy blockbusters. On
the BBC website I read that hungry Venezuelan children after school go to take a look at the
street vendors cooking meat. I've been all over the town. Restaurants, cafes, eateries, during
the lunch hour are crowded, and people look well-dressed. The mass hunger, the Western media
paints for us, doesn't exist in reality.
I take a few pictures inside the supermarket, and I am immediately approached by the workers
or "Maduro followers."
"It's forbidden to take pictures here."
"Is this a military facility?"
"Leave or we'll call the police."
"Listen, everywhere on TV they tell us that there is hunger in Venezuela. I want to prove
that the reality is different."
"We are not interested, we just work here: leave immediately!"
I started to understand perfectly well why Nicolas Maduro lost the information war. Hugo
Chavez was often praised even in private conversations, but even Chavez supporters find little
positive to say about Maduro. When people protested against Hugo's endless nominations as the
head of state, he used to meet them with the open arms, smiling and saying : "Guys, what's the
problem? I'm your President, I love you, let's sit down and talk!" Maduro doesn't have this
image of being one of the guys. He is not able to communicate with the public, and his
assistants, like the employees of the social store, can only push and ban and threaten with the
police.
On the streets, provincial farmers sell fruits and vegetables: mango, tomatoes, cucumbers.
All about the same price of 25 rubles per kilogram. Here, a dozen eggs from street vendors is
4,800 bolivars or about 130 rubles, and that is not cheap . During the peak of oil prices, when
a barrel of oil was sold for $150, Venezuela lived on the principle of a rich fool. To develop
domestic production? No, what is that nonsense? We can buy every triviality abroad. Even the
managers of the oil production weren't local, they hired specialists from Europe, and paid them
a lot of money. Food imports into the country reached 95 percent. And now the situation is not
too different. When I order my meal in a cafe (incidentally, still paying in dollars, all
attempts to change dollars to bolivars failed), I get excellent pork. "Where is it from?" "From
Colombia." "And chicken?" "From Brazil, that's why it's so expensive." Even flour for bread
comes from neighboring Guyana. Chavez and his successor Maduro wanted to be "people's
presidents," handing out money left and right. But then oil prices collapsed, food shortages
began, and people rebelled. People demand as before: cheap food in supermarkets, gasoline for
nothing, and they don't want to hear anything more or less.
"Chavez was a great guy!" says a fan of the former president, 75-year-old Raul Romero,
dressed in a red "chavist" shirt.
"Maduro is nothing like him! There is speculators on the streets, he does nothing. In his
time, Chavez arrested the dealers raising food prices, closed their shops, confiscated land
from landowners, and gave it to the people. We need a firm hand, a real dictatorship!"
In the TV world, Maduro is portrayed as a dictator and executioner, although in Venezuela,
he is openly scolded for being meek; they draw cartoon of him, and insult him as much as they
can. But who cares about the truth? Much more colorful to show the suffering for the toilet
paper.
Day three...
"I got robbed by a COP for my phone. I'm talking on the cell phone outside, he walks over
to me, pokes in my side with his gun. "Give me your mobile." I don't understand immediately,
and automatically continue the conversation. He cocks his gun, and says, "Kill." I give him
my phone. It's still good, I love being robbed by cops. They are not bandits from the
"Barrios," the poor neighborhoods in the mountains, who can shoot you first and then rummage
your corpse's pockets. I'm lucky, I've lived in Venezuela for 27 years and this was the first
time I was "hop-stopped." A lot of people get robbed every year.
I am talking to Mikhail, a citizen of Russia living in Venezuela since the beginning of the
nineties. He helps me move around Caracas and instructs me on how to visit the local slums.
"You don't have protection? Oh, who would doubt that. Then leave your watch, phone, and camera
at the hotel. Take some money for a taxi, you also have to have some cash in case you get
ambushed, otherwise they might get offended and kill you. Sometimes, people get shot in an arm
and a leg, that survivable." After such a nice story, I still go to the "Barrios." It is there
that the supporters of President Nicolas Maduro mainly live. According to CNN and BBC,
impoverished people in Venezuela are revolting against the government. Nothing can be further
from the truth; it's a wealthy middle class that goes to demonstrate. Maduro is applauded in
poor neighborhoods, because the President gives their residents free food sets enough for a
month and gives free (!) apartments. Formally, they belong to the state, but people live in
them for generations.
"I will cut a throat for the President," a heavily-tattooed man smiles menacingly, and
introduces himself as Emilio.
"Who else would give me food and a 'roof ' for free? He is our father and benefactor."
Maduro deliberately does not touch such people, which is why crime in Caracas gushes over
the edge. I am advised not to stop on the street to look at anything, but just to keep going,
otherwise bandits will have time to look closely at me. That's why they have constant robberies
on the streets, plus the police and the national guard can easily take away your favorite
things. No one can be happy about all these. "I love Russians," told me the businessman Carlos
while conversing over coffee near the Plaza de Bolivar.
" But you'd better send Maduro economic advisers. Teach him a lesson! He doesn't know
anything about economy. He has one recipe for everything, to give more money to the poor,
more free apartments, free food, free gasoline, to build a full communism here. But with
this, sorry, any state would collapse ."
The opposition rally in the Western part of Caracas is huge, at least 100 thousand people
gathered. The protesters are friendly to me, Russia here is respected. It is not considered an
enemy. Zero aggression at all and then I wonder about what I see on CNN, videos of the
opposition being rolled into a pancake by tanks. The police keep the neutrality, it disappears
from the streets, to not give a cause to provocateurs. People are happily waving flying in the
sky military helicopter. Many-in t-shirts with the American flag, a man passes by, holding a
hand-written poster with the altered slogan of Donald Trump -"Make Venezuela great again."
"Do you love the U.S.?"
"Yes, adore it!"
"I remember you already had a pro-American President in 1993, Carlos Andrés
Pérez. He sharply raised the price of gasoline, 80% of the goods were imported, he
drove the republic into billions of IMF debts. People went to demonstrations, and
Pérez drowned them in blood, killing 2,000 people then he fled to America."
The man freezes, with his mouth open. Finally, he gets the gift of speech back.
"I hope this time the pro-American President will be different."
"Are you sure?"
"Sorry, I have nothing to say."
Asking the girl from the opposition how she feels about the US:
"The US is our neighbor, let them change the power here." "In countries where the US changed power like Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, hundreds of
thousands people were killed. Are you ready for this?"
Again, she pauses and sighs.
"No, no, no. We are not Africa or Asia. All will go peacefully. Venezuelans will not kill
each other."
Where the opinions splits is the question of whether the free gasoline and free food
packages will remain with an American-instilled government. Many are sincerely sure that the
"freebies" will remain under a new president. How else? The minority that recognizes that state
gifts will be canceled say that they at least "we will be free." As I said, the protesters are
mostly well-dressed, well-off people. By the way, the leader of the opposition, Juan Guido,
also has no real economic program promising to "quadruple the oil production." No one thinks
that after that price will fall four times. In short, I get a feeling that neither the
President, nor the opposition, know anything about the economy in Venezuela.
The demonstrations in support of Maduro take place at the other end of the city, to prevent
the opponents from fighting.
"You Americans are insolent!" screamed an old woman in a red t-shirt rushing towards
me. "Bastards! You should be hanged on a first tree! Cheers to socialism!"
"I'm Russian, grandma."
The old lady recoils.
"Sorry, please." "Don't get that upset, senora."
Many people gathered here are joyful, dancing and singing. A soldier stands in front of me and doesn't allow me to take any pictures. Not just me, but
also other passers-by.
"You can't take pictures here." "Says who?" "President Maduro."
No, Maduro is definitely doing everything he can to be disliked. Those gathering here are
poor, blue-collared workers and farmers from the suburbs. I am interested , honestly, were you
brought here on the busses? "Yes, he did!" says one grandfather, proudly displaying a portrait
of Che Guevara.
"But I would walk here for Maduro! It's a lie that we were paid to be here."
Other people applaud him happily. I shake hands. "Russians are welcome! Venezuela loves you,
you're home."
The day of rallies is over. The maintenance crews came to the sidewalk, strewn with plastic
bottles, crumpled packs of cigarettes, and other debris left after by a cloud. At the entrance
of an old house, old people drink coffee.
"They say that today some general has defected to the side of the opposition," says one of
them. "Some significant person." "What's this guy's name?" "Who knows?"
It is all moving same pieces of capitalistic BS around. Basic imperialistic struggle among
former hegemon who is going down due to stupidity and bad choices and newly rising hopefuls.
Once USA is safely put out and hopefully down, new great powers will suck lesser powers
dry probably by smarter and less aggressive means but nevertheless.
Souverenity is being used as a tool now, but truly sovereign can be only few great powers
in capitalistic world and Venezuela will never be sovereign.
Sacker as usually lacks imagination to go beyond his narrow views. He is also
contradictory.
Fighting the only successful socialist state in the world which was the only one capable
to put his anglozios in place yet defending this pathetic entity pretending to be
socialist.
If it is socialist how come all those oligarchs and their base is still around to keep
creating troubles? They should have gotten rid off long time ago and their all assets and
capitals nationalized for common good.
Regarding USA I have never had any illusions about this entity. Not even in 80s. All those
birth Mark's were there from the start. As with every old person they turned into marasm at
certain age.
Venezuela has claimed to have unveiled a mass conspiracy involving military personnel
and politicians trying to unseat the country's government by force, as well as plans of
potential U.S. military action.
Venezuelan Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez has alleged that Julio Borges, an
opposition politician and former head of the National Assembly, was behind both a failed
2014 coup and an assassination attempt last August against Venezuelan President
Nicolás Maduro. The information was allegedly gathered by confessions from
recently-arrested Colonel Oswaldo García, who was behind another unsuccessful
conspiracy to unseat Maduro last year and was seen confessing on video during Thursday's
conference.
I am not so sure the Pinochet would be able to overthrow Allende government so early without
CIA support and infiltration (people, money, intelligence)
Notable quotes:
"... what more do you to see or hear or read before you believe that US had been hyper -focused and heavily engaged and entirely illegally to destroy Valenzuela independence form crony capitalism? ..."
@mike k I try to separate the effects of US aggression from that effects of the
Venezuelan governments own failures.
I agree with what another commentator pointed out. US influence in Latin America is often
overestimated. In my opinion by both the "left" who see it as cause of most problems and the
"right" who tend to see it positive.
Certain groups in Latin America tend to ally with the US. But they do this so they can
easier to pursue their own interests. For example imho Pinochet would have successfully
overthrown Allende in Chile even without US support. Latin Americans aren't mindless puppets
that are controlled and played from Washington. Moscow or Beijing.
@EliteCommInc. I don't advocate and American (supposed you are American or British)
intervention in Venezuela. I merely wanted to point out that this article/interview one sided
and and therefore not better that the bullshit the Murdoch media and their likes are probably
spreading lately.
@Captain Willard A key to Chavez’s current weakness is the decline in
the electricity sector. There is the grave possibility that some 70 percent of the
country’s electricity grid could go dark as soon as April 2010. Water
levels at the Guris dam are dropping, and Chavez has been unable to reduce consumption
sufficiently to compensate for the deteriorating industry. This could be the watershed event,
as there is little that Chavez can do to protect the poor from the failure of that system.
This would likely have the impact of galvanizing public unrest in a way that no opposition
group could ever hope to generate. At that point in time, an opposition group would be best
served to take advantage of the situation and spin it against Chavez and towards their needs.
Alliances with the military could be critical because in such a situation of massive public
unrest and rejection of the presidency, malcontent sectors of the military will likely decide
to intervene, but only if they believe they have sufficient support. This has been the
pattern in the past three coup attempts. Where the military thought it had enough support,
there was a failure in the public to respond positively (or the public responded in the
negative), so the coup failed. --
The GiFiles,
Files released: 5543061
The GiFiles
Specified Search
@Matthias Eckert For example imho Pinochet would have successfully overthrown Allende in
Chile even without US support"
This is called softening of arguments and doubt and making room for possible exoneration
of US.
Tomorrow we will hear that Haiti's Aristides would have been forced by Haitian to board
plane and leave
Tomorrow we will know that Honduran president would have been anyways sent to the pasture
of retirement by some military without Clinton's ( Mrs this time ).
@Matthias Eckert 1 "Soldiers eat out of garbage cans & their families go hungry in
Venezuela while Maduro & friends live like kings & block humanitarian aid," Mr. Rubio
wrote. He then added: "The world would support the Armed Forces in #Venezuela if they decide
to protect the people & restore democracy by removing a dictator."
2
In a speech in April, when he was still White House policy chief for Latin America, Mr.
Cruz issued a message to the Venezuelan military. Referring to Mr. Maduro as a "madman," Mr.
Cruz said all Venezuelans should "urge the military to respect the oath they took to perform
their functions. Honor your oath."
3
Roberta Jacobson, a former ambassador to Mexico who preceded Ms. Aponte as the top State
Department official for Latin America policy, said that while Washington has long regarded
the Venezuelan military as "widely corrupt, deeply involved in narcotics trafficking and very
unsavory," she saw merit in establishing a back channel with some of them
4. Mr. Tillerson raised the potential for a military coup.
"When things are so bad that the military leadership realizes that it just can't serve the
citizens anymore, they will manage a peaceful transition," he said.
what more do you to see or hear or read before you believe that US had been hyper
-focused and heavily engaged and entirely illegally to destroy Valenzuela independence form
crony capitalism?
Analyst Canthama agrees with Pepe (BTL SyrPer #286513):
The Saker has a nice article on Venezuela, few days old, but quite balanced on his
analysis, people could disagree with one or two things but in general quite to the point on
all fronts.
Though Colombia and Brazil border Venezuela on its West and South, any sort of military
invasion from those directions will first have to conquer nature.
So there are only two ways to remove Maduro:
1) US cruise missiles hitting hundreds of spots in Venezuela would be completely
unacceptable for any Latina America population, a violence that would cause the US to lose
support even its most vassal States.
In parallel, such violence would spark the return of the Colombian guerrilla, blowback will
be very bad and wide spread. Thus military intervention is not likely.
2) The second option is assassination of Maduro , and this is where some of
Venezuela's allies are trying to help, either with security guards, intel and direct
protection.
As in Syria, time is an ally for Venezuela, the Venezuela Government will become stronger
and diplomacy will take shape, There is a real danger though for a false flag, and this is in
fact what Bolton and Pompeo are preparing with Guaidó's supporters knowledge [as in
Syria].
Time is also important since the US regime and its dying fiat economy, 2019 will be a
tough year for the G7, meaning theses regimes will either have to create another massive QE
that will bring them down or start a big war, which the vast majority of their country
citizens will never support, see France with yellow vest, many more countries would see the
same -- even the US.
So, time is good friend to the Venezuela, they must push it as long as they can, and
things will be all right.
Pepe Escobar gives the global view; with Venezuela, Iran, Russia and China abandoning the
mythical petrodollar, Uncle $cam's fiat currency is heading for the dustbin of history:
https://thesaker.is/venezuela-lets-cut-to-the-chase/
"That is a signal to every country that has or may have difficulties with the US, [that
they had] better get their money out of England and out of London because it's not the safe
place as it once was," he said.
"One of the few things left for Britain is to be the financial center that London has been
for so long. And one of the ways you stay a financial center is if you don't play games with
other people's money," he said.
Listening to David Graeber in this interview there is no mention of declining energy
surpluses in the discussion of the economic paradigm of the coming future. No consideration
of the role of the labour of fossil fuels in the economy of the past two centuries.
It's amazing, the argument seems not to have reached them, such that it is doesn't even get a
look in. (Listen from 40 min mark, and you will hear a completely opposite view of what is to
come -- " We are not going to have the problem of how to deploy scarce resources, given an
only moderate level of productivity ").
https://novaramedia.com/2019/02/01/david-graeber-bullshit-jobs-direct-democracy-the-end-of-capitalism/
Fittingly, there is a fascinating section (52.min 30 sec onwards) exploring Graeber's new
book project about how much of the enlightenment thinking of pre-revolutionary France was
either a pilfering of, or a reaction to, the ideas of social organisation coming from
pre-European Americans.
The Graun seems to have been anti-Chavez from the get go. With a set of 'journalists' who
seem to jave made it their lifes work to reverse that democratic revolution. It is not easy
to find their biogs.
This whole business of "recognizing a president" not yet in power has a precedent: Rwanda.
When the bUgandan army invaded Rwanda (with US, Canadian, British and Belgian backing) in
1990 (1 October), or in propaganda terms, the RPA started its "liberation," the US moved its
embassy to Mulindi, and sent the bUgandan chief of intelligence from his IMET junket at Fort
Leavenworth, to take over in northern Rwanda. I refer to Paul Kagame.
International institutions also started to deal with Mulindi, rather than Kigali.
Accusations of genocide within a year
Loathsome though he is, Bolton is probably the only honest neocon around. In Iraq, while the
likes of Blair were banging on about 45 minutes, human rights and democracy etc, Bolton
always made it clear that is was simply a matter of US interests. AKA Oil. He has never
pretended to represent anything but rapacious US self interest.
Fair play. At least you know what you're getting with that tash.
Prior to being assigned to Latin America, Phillips was the Guardian's China correspondent for
five years or so. His task, which he diligently accomplished, was to produce a couple of
articles a week on "Why China Is No Good" . I don't think he ever once found anything
positive to say about the place.
As an individual he's a complete Jodrell, but there are few to compare with him in his
ability to relentlessly toe the Washington neocon line. You couldn't get a fag paper in
between him and Luke Harding. I wonder if he's paid for it, or whether it's just that
seductive sense of 'belonging' that comes from rubbing shoulders with really powerful
people .
Principally, the principles , better said the absence of statute & principle in Law,
behind mass surveillance, was what Snowden was desperate to highlight and that the public's
principal concern of the Guardian's hard drives, were the least of our problems, legally
speaking , coz' other copies existed already elsewhere, anyway
OFFG could always ask Glen Greenwald to explain why he ceased to 'copulate' with the
Guardian and maybe even 'intercept' an opinion or two from Snowden, whilst he's at it
intercepting. Indeed , a few extra nails in the Guardian's coffin , could be delivered quite
speedily & succinctly , with some professional journalistic exchange of Question &
Answer, with nail-gun loaded & mutual benefit would seem to be an all round obvious
win-win debate on matters of principle, legal permissions & submissions.
In some ways it is refreshing to have these power hungry narcissists in charge of the US as
they cannot seem to not blurt out their naked ambitions, which in this example ftom the ft
basically shows kidnap is an agreeable part of trade negotiation.
'Five days after a top executive of Huawei, the Chinese telecoms group, was arrested on a
US request in Canada, President Donald Trump said he was willing to intervene -- if it helped
secure "the largest trade deal ever made". The detention of Meng Wanzhou, one of China's best
known executives, was undoubtedly an incendiary step, escalating trade tensions with Beijing.
But presidential interference in the case would send entirely the wrong message about the US
justice system -- and about how the administration conducts international affairs.
The US and western allies have legitimate concerns about China's reputation for digital
espionage and theft of intellectual property. They agree a more robust stance is needed
towards Beijing. But arresting a star of Chinese business -- Ms Meng has been called China's
Sheryl Sandberg -- on a Canadian stopover en route to Mexico from Hong Kong is not the way to
persuade Beijing to change its behaviour.
Even if the Huawei chief financial officer was held on unrelated charges of violating US
sanctions on Iran, the move smacks of using individuals as pawns in negotiations. It is seen
in Beijing as Washington rewriting the rules of engagement. Such waywardness and
unpredictability from a country that used to portray itself as a pillar of the international
rules-based order will tempt China to respond in kind, leading to a downward spiral of
tit-for-tat behaviour. Indeed, the detention of a former Canadian diplomat, Michael Kovrig,
in Beijing looks worryingly like retaliation.
It may be necessary to take at face value Mr Trump's claims that he was unaware of the US
extradition application, and of the detention itself -- which occurred on the day he was
holding talks on a trade truce with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Buenos Aires. Had
he known, even Mr Trump seems unlikely to have been cynical enough not to mention the arrest
to Mr Xi. Presidential ignorance, however, offers little reassurance.
That Mr Trump would not be notified of such a sensitive case by his justice department
strengthens the impression of a dysfunctional administration, whose different arms pursue
their agendas with little co-ordination, if not in open competition. It strains credibility
that his recent presidential predecessors would have been left in the dark in similar
situations. The Huawei incident comes in the same week that John Kelly's departure as chief
of staff seemed to confirm the extent to which the Trump White House defies conventional
management.
The president's offer to do "whatever's good for this country" regarding Ms Meng's case
reflects a dealmaker's desire to put his talks with Mr Xi back on track, while extracting
whatever advantage he can. But it amounts, in effect, to saying he is holding the Huawei CFO
hostage as a trade negotiating chip. The situation carries echoes of the White House's
reversal in July of a seven-year executive ban on ZTE, the Chinese telecoms equipment maker,
on purchasing critical equipment from the US, in what appeared a tactical concession to
Beijing.
Presidential interference in Ms Meng's case would send a worse signal: that rule of law in
the US is a function of the whim of the chief executive, or that illegal behaviour can be up
for negotiation. It risks creating an impression that there is little difference between
America's judicial system and that of, say, Turkey -- or indeed China. The Huawei executive's
detention was damaging. It is, however, not for the White House, but for independent courts
in Canada and -- if Ms Meng is extradited -- the US to determine what happens next.'
It all depends on your acceptance of "legality" of American sanctions on Iran. I don't,
therefore American action against Ms Meng imo is political and nothing to do with the rule of
law. Mr Trump's opinions are irrelevant.
President Trump's comments and opinions as expressed on Twitter will become relevant in
Sabrina Meng's court case. Her legal defence could use Trump's opinions as evidence that her
arrest was politically motivated and therefore she should not be extradited.
Canadian PM Justin Bieber Trudeau sacked the Ambassador to China for saying this and
expressing other opinions, among them Canada's view as to whether the current (and new) US
sanctions on Iran are binding on Canada.
The hypocrisy of the MSM in all this is yet again. So blatant it is sickening. At the same
time as Yemen is being battered by bombs with the Wests names on them. Deliberately starved
to death. With Western MSM indifference. Not to even mention. All the other countries Western
powers have illegally devastated. The hand ringing over the plight of the Venezuelan people
under Maduro is suddenly more then they can all bare. Western sanctioning and deliberate
sabotage by the West against the country. Undermining any chance of peace. Don't get a peep
of a mention by the MSM.
Here we go again. Roll up roll up. This is the latest hypocritical propaganda media show.
Maduro is evil we must save his country from this evil. Saintly peace bringing Western
alliance must save Venezuela. All that's needed is a more pliant Western puppet or chaos and
civil war. Oil Opps sorry shh don't mention the oil. Does any one really buy into this
deranged demented narrative any more. For gods sake how many more times do we have to say. NO
NOT IN MY NAME.
$13 billion in Venezuelan assets have been stolen by Uncle Sam and his satraps over the past
few days. Why oh why oh why do countries and foreign individuals persist in keeping their
assets in the US/ UK??????. Billions were stolen from Libya in a few days in 2011. Where it
all went is one of life's big mysteries. Cameron even stole a boat load of Libyan currency
that had been printed in the UK.
A Parliamentary Committee has been set up to agitate for sanctions against China on behalf of
the "poor oppressed Uighurs" in China. Shedding buckets of tears over the lack of "yuman
rights." While supplying British sniper rifles to the Zionists to gun down Palestinian kids
with dum dum bullets and planes, cluster bombs and RAF advisors to slaughter kids in Yemen.
Trump imposed broader economic sanctions on Venezuela because;
*serious human rights abuses (by Maduro),
*antidemocratic actions, and,
*responsibility for the deepening humanitarian crisis. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IF10715.pdf
So definitely nothing to do with the oil, or international relations between Venezuela and
other powers that neocons are at war with (wars being conducted in the media, financial
markets and on the ground) while the phony who preceeded Trump (Obama) claimed Venezeula
posed an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to US national security (which is a bit like
Tyson Fury saying he is frightened by a 90 year old woman who is blind and only has one
leg). https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/12885
Isn't there just one soul at the Guardian who will stand up for what is really happening
here (as in all other parts of the world where the US has harmed so many people because of
its insatiable pursuit of oil and power) -- just one?
I must admit I am not getting my hopes up -- while the Guardian excels at drawing
attention to Maduros failings they seem to be deaf, dumb and blind to the geopolitical
context in which Venezuela is doing its utmost to escape the tentacles of US-backed neocons
in their endless quest for violent regime change.
In general those in the know loath the MSM because of the role they play in backing the
gangsters.
"Our own fate as Latin American writers is linked to the need for profound social
transformations. To narrate is to give oneself: it seems obvious that literature, as an
effort to communicate fully, will continue to be blocked so long as misery and illiteracy
exist, and so long as the possessors of power continue to carry on with impunity their policy
of collective imbecilization through the mass media. (Open veins of Latin America -- Eduardo
Galeano)
Ingwe, I started reading the Counter Punch, agreed it was not _only_ the oil so what were the
other motives for U$ Grand Theft Larceny Fraud with Violence? Got as far as this:
"It should be remembered that the Obama Administration had imposed sanctions against
Moscow in March 2014 over the Russian annexation of Crimea, and later involvement in the
civil war in Eastern Ukraine."
Could not read follow that, because I remember no such things as Russian annexation of
Crimea (at least, not since Catherine the Great), nor do I remember a civil war in Eastern
Ukraine (though quite aware that the U$-imposed Jewish Junta with their neo-Nazi stormtroops
are continually shelling Russian-speaking Eastern Ukraine).
vexarb, pity you didn't bother to read further for, if you did, you'd get a rather more
serious analysis than "USA bad and after the oil; Russia good and bringing enlightenment to
the world" .
I think the reason some of us still look at the Graun is that we can't quite believe how
appalling it's got, especially when, like me, you're old enough to remember the old newspaper
from the time when it had some principles and a lot of good writing. It has the sickly
fascination of something you know is really bad for you, like Nutella or reality TV shows.
You end up wallowing in its sheer awfulness, unlike, say, the Mail and the Sun, which you
always know from the start are going to be barking mad and have no element of surprise.
It's pretty obvious Anthony. Because the Guardian, like the BBC and C4 News, presents itself
as and is widely regarded to be an authorititative, non-biased news source. Hence it is
hugely influential in forming opinion in the corridors of power and in educated society.
Opinion that allow bad things to happen and ends up impacting lives. That is reality
regardless of comments dismissing these news sources on the internet. And it is why it is
appropriate for offguardian and others to try and highlight and expose the dangerous lies and
omissions of these wide-reaching propagandists.
It's good for cricket: the best paper in Canada for cricket news. Also for cycling. Since I
first began to read the Manchester Guardian for Neville Cardus's famous writing on cricket, I
stick with it.
As for foreign affairs, once it has been told by the Foreign Office, who the current enemies
are it goes for them. Those who recall the 'good old days' when Latin America and the Middle
East, including Palestine got reasonable coverage which sometimes was very good indeed, ought
to bear in mind that, in those Cold War days, the main enemy was the Soviet Union and it was
necessary to be equivocal about liberation struggles. After all, 'we' were pretending to be
desperately sorry about the sufferings of the Russian people, and those of eastern Europe, so
it was necessary to tone down the imperialist message.
Now the Establishment is dead set on recovering Latin America in toto, banishing alien
(Chinese Russian) influences and consolidating its base in the western hemisphere.
Here comes the Atlantic Treaty Organisation ATO.
The oft-used cliche of the kid (not brain washed yet) saying out loud that the emperor has
no clothes amongst a crowd propagandized, hypnotized and incentivized not to see and not to
know truth from falsehood.
The role of the MSM it seems is to perpetrate this mass denial. Thanks to kids like Kit
and those that support sites such as this other kids are catching on. But, alas we are just
kids after all and the grown ups have the power to spank us for such blasphemy. It is a risk
we kids take to speak the truth we see. When you see and when you know remaining silent can
make you sick (despair, anhedonia, addiction etc.). I'll take my chances with the spanking
and say as loud as I can that the emperor is a fucking war-mongering liar and thief.
I have uploaded various things to DTube and Steemit This film from the Guardian is very
good and relevant to Venezuela its on Bit CHute and survives on Youtube for now.
Thank you Kit (and others) for starting up OffGuardian. Its a very precious place to vent,
and to read the very enlightened, highly informative, and at times profound comments of all
the other commenters here. Have made numerous comments about the situation in Venezuela on
other recent stories here, so not going to keep repeating myself. Regards the state of the
World: surreal and orwellian and just plain bonkers much of the time seems to be the case. At
least Bolton was honest in stating the bleedin obvious, which anyone with even one eye open
already knew. Thanks for your work.
Indeed. I came across Off Guardian not long ago and I'm highly impressed by the quality. A
site to vent -- yes but that's just a small part of it. What is it now -- 3,000 articles
published in just nearly 4 years?. A level of committment by its founders not matched in many
places elsewhere that I can see.
What I like about this is the quality and depth of the articles -- and the fact each
attracts a large number of readers commenting.
I've been looking around various sites lately. It seems to be a mixture of those which
produce good articles but don't seem to have the following -- or at least there's a lack of
reader participation. Or sites where the analysis is not so good but attract a large volume
of comments not necessarily of great quality.
Off G seems to have struck a really good balance which I think means it has more potential
to grow further and build on its success.
I wonder (maybe this has been done before) if Off G thought about organising an event to
celebrate its next birthday. Might be a good way to raise funds and further interest.
I am surprised that the Guardian even mentioned oil and Venezuela in the same story. Did they
also say it has lots of gold, coltron, and many other natural resources. Neoliberals just
can't stand seeing all those profits going to "waste on the serfs".
Very likely McCain. Fortunately though, he already croaked. There was never a regime change
or war he did not support, or demand. The sooner his warmongering Fascist buddies follow him,
the better for mankind. I can imagine what "Bomb. bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" would have
said about Venezuela. As I said before, Venezuela is venomous to those who want to destroy
it. For all American sheeple to understand: The Bucket stops here. Exactly here.
Bolton's casual mention of U.S. oil corporations going into Venezuela and controlling
operation of the nation's oil sector, as if it's already a "done deal", goes right along with
Pompeo's focused use of the term "former president Maduro" in the psychological operation
aspect of the fully-mapped out coup's full court press. Someone famously described the
U.S.-led coup in Ukraine of February 2014 as the most blatant, obvious coup ever, but
amazingly this one involving Venezuela has even surpassed Ukraine in insane illegal boldness.
USA Inc.'s use of criminal aggressive war as a business tactic since false flag 9/11
resulted in the self-destruction of American reputation in the Middle East and North Africa
region. For that reason the attack on the Venezuelan people for their oil was not surprising.
Who will stand for peace? People might think creatively and act to prevent any repeat of
senseless violence and horror as experienced by people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria,
Ukraine and Yemen.
For the record, the "USA Inc.'s use of criminal aggressive war as a business tactic since
false flag 9/11 resulted in the self-destruction of American reputation " Globally.
Sorry to correct you, but no matter where I go, my first test of any persons intellect is
"What do you think happened to WTC 7 ?" and until you get that sorted , the USA is the
laughing stock of the 'brave new world' outside Government & MSM >>> Fact ,
clearly "you cannot be serious", nor the Guardian nor the BBC nor Die Zeit nor Swiss national
Television, nor Le Monde &&& and the whole damn network of partners in deep state
crimes against innocent people , to further corporate goals.
to even contemplate something in Venezuela is so absurd , when US Governance is so
infiltrated with Deep State Dictators & actors, bolstered by Hollywood >>> get
own house in order , before becoming guests elsewhere. This clearly applies to Britain &
France , as well, indeed all NATO partners.
Trump is gonna' have a real tough time with Xi, coz' you don't get to insult the Chinese
in public & arrest CFO's for extradition , without some form of comeback &
consequence and Chinese & Russian Military towards region Panama seems almost assured and
the USS Fitzgerald warning ? how quickly people forget the 7 dead ! from just a container
ship, lol connect the 9 Dot line -- -- --
The world does not want and never needed policing by the U$A, nor their methods of
financial control & strangulation with credit on a scale far greater than Ponzi himself.
And as for WTC 7 , this made not only the USA a laughing stock in the minds of all
intelligent people, it dragged down & outed the very IN-credibility of every single
politician in the western world , who accepted the award winning WTC 7 TonyAndyPandy story
for CHILDREN !
it's time we got adults back into politics , coz' at present all we have, without
exception, is precisely what George Carlin described in 'a few cultural issues' "Garbage in
Garbage out" !
and we can be 100% sure that they are all GARBAGE, because they cannot even recognise a
controlled explosion, let alone cooking the history books >>> not even one !
The USA has YANKed all their strings, on behalf of Zion and corporate control >>>
fact, not one politician permitted to call a spade a spade or WTC 7 a controlled demolition
let alone MSM.
Long live the revolution & evolution of political conscience !
1. Switch payment for Venezuelan oil from yuan back to dollars.
2. Confiscate Chinese and Russian oil investments in Venezuela.
3. Privatise Venezuelan oil to Wall Street at knock down prices.
Or, as the Orange Baboon himself croaked like a two bit Mafia hood, "Grab the oil! Grab
the oil! Grab the oil!!"
This interview is a whitewash for the Venezuelan government. While I don't doubt that the
described sabotage and subversion orchestrated by the US the Chavistas are clearly
incompetent and corrupt.
They had 20 years to diversify the Venezuelan economy and failed completely. Instead of
decreasing the reliance on oil exports the increased it.
Most of what was left off the venezuelan agricultural sector got destroyed by handing it to
Chavez followers. Similar with almost all other economic sectors. Even the oil production is
much lower than it was in 1998 and this is not because of sanctions. They simply didn't
invest enough into replacing equipment that got worn out. They had 20 years to build
refineries for venezuelan oil in Venezuela, China or somewhere else out of US influence, they
didn't.
@Matthias Eckert Same goes for almost anything else. Why does Venezuela still have gold
deposited in the US and Britain? it's not like these never seized (not to say stole) foreign
assets before.
Just because the Chavistas are enemies of the American oligarchy doesn't mean the aren't
oligarchs themselves.
ps. That Anglo habit to start nationalities with a capital letter even when used as
adjective is an insult to logic
@Johnny Walker Read Natural resources get its value by the knowledge to create something
useful out of them. The economy is human activities, the way we create value by using our
knowledge and talents.
As Hudson say Chavez tried to create at mixed economy. Its not an easy task, something that
takes long time, e.g. raising the general educational level, infrastructure, health and so
on.
If Chavez and PSUV did approach this task good or bad I do not know.
As I understand are Venezuela a country riddled with enormous obstacles to achieve this. It
probably needs a high amount of social capital. Add on western hostility that third world
countries do this.
The prime example of success in fairly modern times are countries in Asia with national unity
and rather authoritarian government.
@Matthias Eckert "This interview is a whitewash for the Venezuelan government They had 20
years "
-- You are not a child, aren't you? How about the industrial base in the mighty US?
There is also the US infrastructure, the improvement of which requires some $4 trillion
"They" (the richest country in the world) had how many years?
Besides, the main point of the article is in a color graph showing % of votes /% of all
registered voters .
Look again at the graph, carefully. What are the numbers for Mr. Guaido? Have not we seen
enough of "democracy on the march" and other US-led "improvements" and "humanitarian
interventions" in Iraq, Libya, and Ukraine?
These pro-U.S. policies made Venezuela a typically polarized Latin American oligarchy.
Despite being nominally rich in oil revenue, its wealth was concentrated in the hands of a
pro-U.S. oligarchy that let its domestic development be steered by the World Bank and
IMF.
No amount of needle point proof can pop the balloon that is the collective brains of
Americans that have a CIA propaganda(via the media) myth inserted in their head that "it's
because of socialism!" Venezuela is in economic turmoil.
Other CIA created myths(that happen to work):
"They need democracy restored"
"They need our help"
"They have weapons of mass destruction"
"They harbor terrorists"
"They peddle fake news"
"They hack our elections"
Etc .
Collect your own, and trade them with your friends.
At least China and Russia can provide an alternative bank clearing mechanism to SWIFT,
so that Venezuela can bypass the U.S. financial system and keep its assets from being
grabbed at will by U.S. authorities or bondholders. And of course, they can provide
safe-keeping for however much of Venezuela's gold it can get back from New York and
London.
There's a good general rule here to keep independent country assets and financial
transactions away from the US – especially making them non- US dollar based.
This would confront U.S. financial strategists with a choice: if they continue to treat
the IMF, World Bank, ITO and NATO as extensions of increasingly aggressive U.S. foreign
policy, they will risk isolating the United States. Europe will have to choose whether to
remain a U.S. economic and military satellite, or to throw in its lot with Eurasia.
Europe would have to make this choice – and it looks like the European public is in
fact already starting to make it – which greatly troubles the US's elite European
collaborators.
Refusal of England and the U.S. to pay Venezuela means that other countries realize that
foreign official gold reserves can be held hostage to U.S. foreign policy, and even to
judgments by U.S. courts to award this gold to foreign creditors or to whoever might bring
a lawsuit under U.S. law against these countries.
True. Now is reflection time for any country that holds physical gold in New York or
London. Also time to think in general about reserves held in US dollars (Treasury bonds).
Being a Roman Catholic country, Venezuela might ask for papal support for a debt
write-down and an international institution to oversee the ability to pay by debtor
countries without imposing austerity, emigration, depopulation and forced privatization of
the public domain.
Whatever happens Venezuela is going to get austerity, but it could be a difficult self
respecting and self sufficient kind, excluding the US (the primary source of its problems)
and taking assistance from any friends that it may have.
Another Saker article that ignores the elephant in the room completely
Looking ahead, therefore, China, Russia, Iran and other countries need to set up a new
international court to adjudicate the coming diplomatic crisis and its financial and military
consequences. Such a court – and its associated international bank as an alternative to
the U.S.-controlled IMF and World Bank – needs a clear ideology to frame a set of
principles of nationhood and international rights with power to implement and enforce its
judgments.
A great idea but the world banks are NOT US controlled. They are run by the Rothschilds,
and until writers like Saker face up to this fact the problems will not be resolved.
Rothschild has to be dealt with, put out of business and closed down permanently.
What Mr Hudson's answers make clear is that Putin is increasingly bogged down in yet another
fight, a fight which Mr Hudson tacitly believes to be unwinnable.
@Michael Kenny Putin does not need to win, only impose more pain on the US than he
himself suffers. If Maduro stays in power, that is a big win for Russia and further proves
their ability to stand up the US of A.
Venezuela would prove Syria was not just luck but the start of a changing tide. If Guaido
eventually takes power, it will have costed the US much more now that Russia is there.
A couple old planes and 400 Russian special forces means that the US needed to put 5000
troops in Colombia.
When you stand up to a bully, you don't need to win, but to prove it's not worth going
after you in the future.
It looks like a specialist on illegal transferee of weapons is needed to make the color revolution a success...
Notable quotes:
"... Elliott Abrams got a new high level job last month, Special Envoy on Venezuela. Within weeks, the United States recognized a new President of Venezuela while the elected Venezuelan President is still in office. Chatter and rumor from the White House suggests that military intervention is possible. The "new" recognized-by- the-US-President of Venezuela is a veteran of color revolution type regime change, groomed for service with the help of the snakelike National Endowment for Democracy (NED). ..."
It's a sad fact that the full and unconditional
pardon given by President George H.W. Bush to Elliott Abrams (a member of the second
generation neo-conservative royalty by way of marriage to the daughter of neo-con co-creator,
Midge Decter), protected him from disbarment and possible prison. Abrams, who pled guilty to
the crime of lying to Congress in the investigation of the Iran-Contra, embraced the plea
option reportedly in order to avoid heavier charges from the office of then independent
counsel, Lawrence E. Walsh, prosecutor in the Iran-Contra cases. Bush is gone, Walsh is gone,
but Mr. Bush's Attorney General William Barr is – surprise – now Attorney General
of the United States.
What that portends for future regime change adventures remains to be seen, but the
historical record is ominous.
In 1992, when Bush issued the Iran-Contra pardons on the eve of his leaving office after
losing reelection to President Bill Clinton, William Barr fully supported the pardons.
Presidential pardons are, after all, Constitutional. But, Lawrence Walsh said at the time,
reported NPR, "It demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious
crimes in high office, deliberately abusing the public trust without consequences."
Now the Iran-Contra era neo-cons and the Dick Cheney/Iraq Invasion 2003 era neo-cons are
marching back into the institution of the Presidency.
Elliott Abrams got a new high level job last month, Special Envoy on Venezuela. Within
weeks, the United States recognized a new President of Venezuela while the elected Venezuelan
President is still in office. Chatter and rumor from the White House suggests that military
intervention is possible. The "new" recognized-by- the-US-President of Venezuela is a veteran
of color revolution type regime change, groomed for service with the help of the snakelike
National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Regime change, putting in questionable, if not nefarious new leaders, seems to be Abrams'
delight: Nicaragua, Iraq while a government official. Many others in his dreams.
In 1986, even before the Iran-Contra debacle was revealed, as Assistant Secretary of State
for Inter-American Affairs, Elliott Abrams told Congress that Nicaraguan "Contras" involved in
drug running didn't have the okay from Contra leaders. It was just underlings. This, while
Abrams and company were busy doing end-runs around the Boland Amendment and other Congressional
actions that barred military supplies to the Contras. Even Khomeini's Iran was not off limits
in getting money for the Nicaraguan fight.
In another time and place, i.e., Saudi Arabia, present day, where regime change in Syria was
a high priority, we've heard excuses similar to those made by Elliott Abrams about the Contras,
about the responsibility for the killing and butchering of the corpse of Saudi journalist Jamal
Khashoggi, and about the financing and arming of ISIS and Al Nusra terrorists by Saudi Arabia
in Syria. Deja vu.
With more neo-cons in the Administration, the trajectory is more wasted blood and
treasure.
Which means that Maduro movement is isolated within is own continent.
Notable quotes:
"... Since there can be no intervention without the presence of force or threats of its use the actions taken and threats made against Venezuela constitute the crime of aggression under international law. ..."
"... The US and Canada are now threatening the use of armed force against Venezuela. John Bolton stated that all options are on the table and has even threatened Maduro with imprisonment in the US torture chambers of Guantanamo Bay. Britain has seized Venezuelan funds sitting in London banks, and the US and its flunkies are now trying to stop Venezuela and Turkey from dealing in Venezuelan gold, and, to add to their net, accuse them of sending the gold to Iran in violation of their illegal "sanctions." ..."
"... "All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations." ..."
"... "refrain from any threats or acts, direct or indirect, aimed at impairing the freedom, independence or integrity of any State, or at fomenting civil strife and subverting the will of the people in any state."' ..."
"... "1. No State has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State. Consequently, armed intervention and all other forms of interference or attempted threats against the personality of the State or against its political, economic and cultural elements, are condemned.' ..."
"... "2. No State may use or encourage the use of economic, political or any other type of measures to coerce another state in order to obtain from it the subordination of the exercise of its sovereign rights or to secure from it advantages of any kind. Also, no state shall organize, assist, foment, finance, incite or tolerate subversive, terrorist or armed activities directed toward the violent overthrow of the regime of another State, or interfere in civil strife in another State." ..."
"... "refrain from armed intervention or the promotion or organization of subversion, terrorism or other indirect forms of intervention for the purpose of changing by violence the existing system in another State or interfering in civil strife in another State." ..."
"... "to refrain from organizing, instigating, assisting or participating in acts of civil strife or terrorist acts in another State or to allow such acts to be operated from its territory." ..."
"... Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel " Beneath the Clouds . He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine "New Eastern Outlook." https://journal-neo.org/2019/02/04/the-lima-group-international-outlaws/ ..."
The covert and overt interventions taking place against Venezuela by the United States and
its allies are a form of aggression and a violation of the fundamental principles of the United
Nations Charter making the nations involved international outlaws.
The attempted coup against President Maduro of Venezuela may have failed so far but the
jackals that instigated it have not given up their objective of forcing the majority of
Venezuelans benefiting from the Bolivarian revolution begun by President Chavez, back to the
misery the revolution is trying to save them from. The United States and its allied governments
and media, working with American military and civilian intelligence services, are pumping out a
constant flow of propaganda about the start of affairs in Venezuela to mislead and manipulate
their own peoples so that they support their aggression and to undermine Venezuelans support
for their revolution.
We have seen this type of propaganda before, the fake stories about "human rights" abuses,
economic conditions, the cries of "democracy," the propaganda about an "authoritarian" leader,
a "tyrant," "dictator", all labels they have used before against leaders of nations that they
have later murdered; President Arbenz, Allende, Torrijos, Habyarimana, Milosevic, Hussein,
Ghaddafi are examples that come quickly to mind, so that the same threats against Maduro are
not just propaganda but direct physical threats.
We see the same pretexts for military aggression used and same euphemisms being employed,
the same cries for "humanitarian intervention," which we now know are nothing more than modern
echoes of Hitler's pretexts for the invasion of Czechoslovakia, to "save the oppressed
Germans."
We see the same smug lies and hypocrisy about the rule of law as they openly brag about
their violation of international law with every step they take and talk as if they are gods
ruling the world.
The United States is the principal actor in all this but it has beside it among other
flunkey nations, perhaps the worst of them all, Canada, which has been an enthusiastic partner
in crime of the United States since the end of the Second World War. We cannot forget its role
in the aggression against North Korea, the Soviet Union, China, its secret role in the American
aggression against Vietnam, against Iraq, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine,
Haiti, Iran, and the past several years Venezuela.
Canada will take the lead in the aggression against Venezuela on Monday February 4
th when it hosts a meeting in Ottawa of a group of international war crime
conspirators, known as The Lima Group, a group of Latin American and Caribbean lackeys of the
United States, including Mexico and Canada which was set up by the United States at a meeting
in Lima, Peru on August 8, 2017 with the express purpose of overthrowing President Maduro.
Canada's harridan of foreign affairs, Chrystia Freeland, stated to the press recently that
"Canada needs to play a leading role in the Lima Group because the crisis in Venezuela is
unfolding in Canada's global backyard. This is our neighbourhood. We have a direct interest in
what happens in our hemisphere."
"In Canada's global backyard?" It's astonishing to read it. Canada regards the globe as its
backyard? She manages to reveal a severe case of megalomania and insult the rest of the nations
of the world at the same time. Her statement that Venezuela "is our neighbourhood" is almost a
direct adoption of the American claim to hegemony and "interventionism" in the western
hemisphere as if Canada completely identifies itself with the United States, that is, in terms
of foreign policy, has completely merged with the United States.
But, by doing so, the Canadian elite show themselves to be the enemies of progress and
economic and social justice; shows them to be the antihuman reactionaries that they are. They
also make themselves world outlaws.
Freeland claims that the Lima Group meeting will "address the political and economic crisis
in Venezuela," yet it is Canada that, along with the United States that has created the very
crisis they are using as a pretext to attack President Maduro. It is they that have tried to
topple both him and Chavez through assassination plots, threatened military invasion and
economic warfare that has the sole purpose of disrupting the social and economic life of
Venezuela, of making life as miserable as possible in order to foment unrest while conspiring
with internal reactionary forces.
The Lima Group, began its dirty work in 2017 by issuing statements condemning the Bolivarian
revolution, claimed that there was a break down of law and order in Venezuela and attempted to
cancel the elections just held which gave President Maduro a solid majority of 68% of the votes
in what all international elections observers judged free and fair.
Following the election of Maduro all of these nations withdrew their ambassadors from
Venezuela. They did all this while claiming that their actions were taken "with full respect
for the norms of international law and the principle of nonintervention" when they are plainly
violating all norms of international law and the principle of non-intervention. They are also
violating the UN Charter that prohibits any nation or group of nations from taken action
outside the framework of the UN Security Council against any other nation.
The Ottawa meeting is in fact a meeting of criminal conspirators that are intent on
committing acts of aggression, the supreme war crime against a sovereign nation and people.
Intervention is generally prohibited under international law because it violates the concept of
independent state sovereignty. All nations have the right to govern themselves as they deem fit
and that no nation could rightfully interfere in the government of another. Since there can
be no intervention without the presence of force or threats of its use the actions taken and
threats made against Venezuela constitute the crime of aggression under international
law.
The US and Canada are now threatening the use of armed force against Venezuela. John
Bolton stated that all options are on the table and has even threatened Maduro with
imprisonment in the US torture chambers of Guantanamo Bay. Britain has seized Venezuelan funds
sitting in London banks, and the US and its flunkies are now trying to stop Venezuela and
Turkey from dealing in Venezuelan gold, and, to add to their net, accuse them of sending the
gold to Iran in violation of their illegal "sanctions."
The hypocrisy hits you in the face especially when some of the same nations in the Lima Gang
recognised as far bas as 1826 at the Congress of Panama the absolute prohibition of
intervention by states in each other's internal affairs. In attendance, were the states of
Columbia, Central America, Mexico, and Peru. Led by Simon Bolivar, the Congress declared its
determination to maintain "the sovereignty and independence of all and each of the confederated
powers of America against foreign subjection."
At the Seventh International Conference of American States held in Montevideo in 1933, The
Convention on Rights and Duties of States, issued at the conclusion of the conference, to which
the U.S. was a signatory, declared that "no state has the right to intervene in the internal or
external affairs of another." The legal position of the doctrine of nonintervention was
solidified three years later at Buenos Aires with the adoption of the Additional Protocol
Relative to Non-Intervention. This document declared "inadmissible the intervention of any of
the parties to the treaty, directly or indirectly, and for whatever reason, in the internal or
external affairs of any other of the Parties." The U.S. government agreed to this treaty
without reservation as well.
The United Nations has become the primary source of the rules of International behavior
since World War II. The principle of nonintervention between states is everywhere implicit in
the Charter of the United Nations. Article 1 of the U.N. Charter sets out the four purposes of
the organization, one of which is "to maintain international peace and security," a task which
includes the suppression of "threats to the peace," "acts of aggression" and "other breaches of
the peace." Another is "to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the
principle of equal rights and self-determination of people." Article 2(1) goes on to base the
organization on "the principle of the sovereign equality of all its members."Articles 2(3) and
2(4) require Member States to utilize peaceful means in the settlement of disputes and to
refrain from the use of force.
Article 2(4) states:
"All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of
force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any
manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations."
Thus, Article 2(4) prohibits the use of the economic and political pressures and the
indirect subversion which is an integral part of covert action.
That covert action is forbidden under the law of the U.N. is supported
by the numerous resolutions passed by the General Assembly which assert the right to
national sovereignty and the principle of nonintervention in general, while specifically
condemning particular tactics used in covert action.
At the risk of tiring the reader, I think it is worthwhile to reiterate what the General
Assembly of the United Nations has stated over and again beginning with Resolution 290 (iv) in
1949. Referred to as the "Essentials of Peace"
Resolution, this enactment called upon every nation to "refrain from any threats or
acts, direct or indirect, aimed at impairing the freedom, independence or integrity of any
State, or at fomenting civil strife and subverting the will of the people in any
state."'
Resolution 1236(XII)passed in 1957, declared that "peaceful and tolerant relations among
States" should be based upon "respect for each other's sovereignty,equality and territorial
integrity and nonintervention in one another's internal affairs.'
The first General Assembly resolution specifically prohibiting covert action was Resolution
213 1(XX). Entitled the "Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic
Affairs of States and the Protection of Their Independence and Sovereignty," this resolution
was based on proposals made by the Soviet Union, nineteen Latin American States, and the United
Arab Republic, whose draft resolution
was co-sponsored by 26 other non-aligned countries. The declaration restated the aims and
purposes of the U.N. and noted the importance of recognizing State sovereignty and freedom to
self-determination in the current political atmosphere. The eighth preambular paragraph of
Resolution stated that, "direct intervention, subversion and all forms of indirect intervention
are contrary" to the principles of the U.N. and, "consequently,
constitute a violation of the Charter of the United Nations."' The operative portion of the
declaration consists of eight paragraphs, the first of which makes clear there can be no
"intervention as of right":
"1. No State has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason
whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State. Consequently, armed
intervention and all other forms of interference or attempted threats against the personality
of the State or against its political, economic and cultural elements, are condemned.'
In another paragraph the Resolution precisely defined the scope of its prohibition against
intervention, demonstrating the illicit status of covert activities:
"2. No State may use or encourage the use of economic, political or any other type of
measures to coerce another state in order to obtain from it the subordination of the exercise
of its sovereign rights or to secure from it advantages of any kind. Also, no state shall
organize, assist, foment, finance, incite or tolerate subversive, terrorist or armed activities
directed toward the violent overthrow of the regime of another State, or interfere in civil
strife in another State."
Resolution 2225(XXI) reaffirmed the principles and rules ex-pressed in Resolution 2131 (XX),
and urged "the immediate cessation of intervention,in any form whatever, in the domestic or
external affairs of States," and condemned "all forms of intervention . . . as a basic source
of danger to the cause of world peace."
Finally, the Resolution called upon all states to, "refrain from armed intervention or
the promotion or organization of subversion, terrorism or other indirect forms of intervention
for the purpose of changing by violence the existing system in another State or interfering in
civil strife in another State."
By Resolution 2625 (XXV), the General Assembly adopted the "Declaration on Principles of
International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in Accordance
with the Charter of the United Nations." The Declaration had its origins with the first meeting
of the Special Committee on the Principles of International Law held in 1964 in Mexico City.
This document asserted seven basic principles of international law, then elaborated how these
principles were to be realized. The seven principles embodied in the Declaration were: a) the
principle prohibiting the threat or use of force in international relations;b) the principle
requiring the peaceful settlement of disputes; c)the duty of nonintervention; d) the duty of
states to cooperate with each other; e) the principle of equal rights and self-determination of
all people;f) the principle of sovereign equality of states; and g) the good faith duty of
states to fulfill their obligations under the Charter.
In its discussion of the first principle – that states refrain from the threat or use
of force – the Declaration emphasizes the duty of each state "to refrain from organizing
or encouraging the organization of irregular forces or armed bands, including mercenaries, for
incursion into the territory of another state." In addition, the Declaration insists that every
state has a duty "to refrain from organizing, instigating, assisting or participating in
acts of civil strife or terrorist acts in another State or to allow such acts to be operated
from its territory."
I can go on listing other UN resolutions stating the same. Again and again the General
Assembly hammered home the importance of the principle of nonintervention as a central maxim of
international law.
Resolution 34/103 addressed the inadmissibility of the policy of "hegemonism" in
international relations and defined that term as the "manifestation of the policy of a State,
or a group of States, to control, dominate and subjugate, politically, economically,
ideologically or militarily, other States, peoples or regions of the world."' The
resolution,inter alia, called upon states to observe the principles of the Charter and the
principle of nonintervention. By this resolution it was declared that the General Assembly,
"Resolutely condemns policies of pressure and use or threat of use of force, direct or indirect
aggression,occupation and the growing practice of interference and intervention,overt or
covert, in the internal affairs of states."'
In 1981, the "Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention and Interference in the
Internal Affairs of States" was adopted by the General Assembly through Resolution 36/103. One
of the duties imposed upon states by the Declaration was: "The duty of a State to refrain from
armed intervention, subversion, military occupation or any other form of intervention and
interference,overt or covert, directed at another State or group of States, or any act of
military, political or economic interference in the internal affairs of another State,
including acts of reprisal involving the use of force.' In addition, the Declaration called
upon states to refrain from any action which seeks to disrupt the unity or to undermine or
subvert the political order of other States, training and equipping mercenaries or armed bands,
hostile propaganda, and the use of "external economic assistance" programs or "transnational
and multinational corporations under its jurisdiction and control as instruments of political
pressure and control."'
So, there you have it; the law. The world can see that the Lima Gang, who like to use the
phrase "the rule of law" in their diktats to others, are committing egregious crimes under
international law and together these crimes are components of the supreme war crime of
aggression. The Lima Group therefore is a group of international criminal conspirators and the
every individual involved is a war criminal. So when the Lima conspirators issue their press
statement after the Ottawa meeting, planning aggression against Venezuela, calling for the
overthrow, for the head of President Maduro and dressing it up in the usual language of the
aggressor, of "human rights" and "democracy" and their fake and illegal doctrine of
"responsibility to protect" it will not be issued by nations interested in peace or who have
respect for international law but by a gang of criminals, of international outlaws.
"... Interview conducted by The Saker with Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is ..."
"... . Cross-posted from Hudson's site . ..."
"... Maduro's defensive move is showing other countries the need to protect themselves from becoming "another Venezuela" by finding a new safe haven and paying agent for their gold, foreign exchange reserves and foreign debt financing, away from the dollar, sterling and euro areas. ..."
"... The Trump administration is destroying illusion more thoroughly than any anti-imperialist critic or economic rival could do! ..."
Interview conducted by The Saker with Michael Hudson, a
research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research
associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is J is for
Junk Economics . Cross-posted
from Hudson's site .
1. Could you summarize the state of Venezuela's economy when Chavez came to power?
Venezuela was an oil monoculture. Its export revenue was spent largely on importing food and
other necessities that it could have produced at home. Its trade was largely with the United
States. So despite its oil wealth, it ran up foreign debt.
From the outset, U.S. oil companies have feared that Venezuela might someday use its oil
revenues to benefit its overall population instead of letting the U.S. oil industry and its
local comprador aristocracy siphon off its wealth. So the oil industry – backed by U.S.
diplomacy – held Venezuela hostage in two ways.
First of all, oil refineries were not built in Venezuela, but in Trinidad and in the southern
U.S. Gulf Coast states. This enabled U.S. oil companies – or the U.S. Government –
to leave Venezuela without a means of "going it alone" and pursuing an independent policy with
its oil, as it needed to have this oil refined. It doesn't help to have oil reserves if you are
unable to get this oil refined so as to be usable.
Second, Venezuela's central bankers were persuaded to pledge their oil reserves and all
assets of the state oil sector (including Citgo) as collateral for its foreign debt. This meant
that if Venezuela defaulted (or was forced into default by U.S. banks refusing to make timely
payment on its foreign debt), bondholders and U.S. oil majors would be in a legal position to
take possession of Venezuelan oil assets.
These pro-U.S. policies made Venezuela a typically polarized Latin American oligarchy.
Despite being nominally rich in oil revenue, its wealth was concentrated in the hands of a
pro-U.S. oligarchy that let its domestic development be steered by the World Bank and IMF. The
indigenous population, especially its rural racial minority as well as the urban underclass,
was excluded from sharing in the country's oil wealth. The oligarchy's arrogant refusal to
share the wealth, or even to make Venezuela self-sufficient in essentials, made the election of
Hugo Chavez a natural outcome.
2. Could you outline the various reforms and changes introduced by Hugo Chavez? What did he
do right, and what did he do wrong?
Chavez sought to restore a mixed economy to Venezuela, using its government revenue –
mainly from oil, of course – to develop infrastructure and domestic spending on health
care, education, employment to raise living standards and productivity for his electoral
constituency.
What he was unable to do was to clean up the embezzlement and built-in rake-off of income
from the oil sector. And he was unable to stem the capital flight of the oligarchy, taking its
wealth and moving it abroad – while running away themselves.
This was not "wrong". It merely takes a long time to change an economy's disruption –
while the U.S. is using sanctions and "dirty tricks" to stop that process.
3. What are, in your opinion, the causes of the current economic crisis in Venezuela –
is it primarily due to mistakes by Chavez and Maduro or is the main cause US sabotage,
subversion and sanctions?
There is no way that's Chavez and Maduro could have pursued a pro-Venezuelan policy aimed at
achieving economic independence without inciting fury, subversion and sanctions from the United
States. American foreign policy remains as focused on oil as it was when it invaded Iraq under
Dick Cheney's regime. U.S. policy is to treat Venezuela as an extension of the U.S. economy,
running a trade surplus in oil to spend in the United States or transfer its savings to U.S.
banks.
By imposing sanctions that prevent Venezuela from gaining access to its U.S. bank deposits
and the assets of its state-owned Citco, the United States is making it impossible for
Venezuela to pay its foreign debt. This is forcing it into default, which U.S. diplomats hope
to use as an excuse to foreclose on Venezuela's oil resources and seize its foreign assets much
as Paul Singer's hedge fund sought to do with Argentina's foreign assets.
Just as U.S. policy under Kissinger was to make Chile's "economy scream," so the U.S. is
following the same path against Venezuela. It is using that country as a "demonstration effect"
to warn other countries not to act in their self-interest in any way that prevents their
economic surplus from being siphoned off by U.S. investors.
4. What in your opinion should Maduro do next (assuming he stays in power and the USA does
not overthrow him) to rescue the Venezuelan economy?
I cannot think of anything that President Maduro can do that he is not doing. At best, he
can seek foreign support – and demonstrate to the world the need for an alternative
international financial and economic system.
He already has begun to do this by trying to withdraw Venezuela's gold from the Bank of
England and Federal Reserve. This is turning into "asymmetrical warfare," threatening what to
de-sanctify the dollar standard in international finance. The refusal of England and the United
States to grant an elected government control of its foreign assets demonstrates to the entire
world that U.S. diplomats and courts alone can and will control foreign countries as an
extension of U.S. nationalism.
The price of the U.S. economic attack on Venezuela is thus to fracture the global monetary
system. Maduro's defensive move is showing other countries the need to protect themselves
from becoming "another Venezuela" by finding a new safe haven and paying agent for their gold,
foreign exchange reserves and foreign debt financing, away from the dollar, sterling and euro
areas.
The only way that Maduro can fight successfully is on the institutional level, upping the
ante to move "outside the box." His plan – and of course it is a longer-term plan –
is to help catalyze a new international economic order independent of the U.S. dollar standard.
It will work in the short run only if the United States believes that it can emerge from this
fight as an honest financial broker, honest banking system and supporter of democratically
elected regimes. The Trump administration is destroying illusion more thoroughly than any
anti-imperialist critic or economic rival could do!
Over the longer run, Maduro also must develop Venezuelan agriculture, along much the same
lines that the United States protected and developed its agriculture under the New Deal
legislation of the 1930s – rural extension services, rural credit, seed advice, state
marketing organizations for crop purchase and supply of mechanization, and the same kind of
price supports that the United States has long used to subsidize domestic farm investment to
increase productivity.
Along with the USA there is a group La countries (and Canada) with the specific goal of "regime change" in Venezuela. Much
like multinational forces in Iraq. From Wikipedia: ... established following the Lima Declaration on 8 August 2017 in the Peruvian
capital of Lima, where representatives of 12 countries met in order to establish a peaceful exit to the crisis in Venezuela.[1]
Among other issues, the now 14-country group demands the release of political prisoners, calls for free elections, offers
humanitarian aid and criticizes the breakdown of democratic order in Venezuela under the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela.
Notable quotes:
"... Not everyone agreed that Guaido and his Popular Will party should be the one to be pushed forward as "Interim President" but the moment it happened, this forced the opposition to immediately unify behind him, based on the no turning back momentum created : ..."
"... The results of that fateful decision are still being played out in the streets, and on the international stage as countries line up for and against Maduro (China, Russia and Turkey among Maduro supporters, with the US and European countries backing Guaido as legitimate leader). ..."
"... However, the WSJ report closes with crucial bombshell information regarding what it took for the opposition to cross that line, and for Guaido to step out in confidence. What was the key factor in the final push? First, Canada and US allies in Latin America initiated something dramatic... ..."
"... But most importantly, Washington came calling at a key moment the opposition was fractured and still indecisive and divided , in what is a central revelation concerning the anti-Maduro movement's calculations : ..."
"... And there it is -- a stunning mainstream media admission that the political drama and crisis now unfolding in Venezuela, now quickly turning into a global geopolitical pressure spot and conflagration -- was pushed forward and given assistance directly from the White House from the very beginning . ..."
A new WSJ report asks what the Hell is going on? in Venezuela and provides new information
behind
How a Small Group Seized Control of Venezuela's Opposition to make the extremely risky move
of pushing forward 35-year old opposition leader and National Assembly head Juan Guaido to
declare himself "Interim President" -- precipitating the crisis that's seen the noose tighten
around President Nicolas Maduro's rule as over a dozen countries led by the US have declared
him "illegitimate".
For starters, the report paints current events as having started with a "big gamble" that
was largely unplanned and unexpected within even the political opposition itself, and which
further had the hidden hand of the White House and State Department behind it from the very
beginning, pushing the opposition forward at the most critical juncture . Outlining the past
difficulties of Venezuela's "notoriously fractious opposition" and the deep divide over the
question of whether to enter direct negotiations or take more aggressive action to undermine
Maduro,
the WSJ describes :
When Juan Guaidó declared himself Venezuela's interim president on Jan. 23 in front
of a crowd of 100,000 people under a broiling sun, some leading opposition figures had no
idea he would do so, say people who work with Mr. Guaidó and other top leaders . That
included a few standing alongside him. A stern look of shock crossed their faces. Some
quietly left the stage.
"What the hell is going on?" one member of a group of politicians wrote to the others in a
WhatsApp group chat. "How come we didn't know about this."
The plan was so risky -- especially to Guaido personally as he had been arrested and
briefly detained after his vehicle was rushed by secret police only less than two weeks
prior -- that the final decision of public confrontation with the Maduro regime was left
entirely up to him in the hours leading up to the Jan.23 rally.
Not everyone agreed that Guaido and his Popular Will party should be the one to be pushed
forward as "Interim President" but the moment it happened, this forced the opposition to
immediately unify behind him, based on the no turning back
momentum created :
Mr. Guaidó himself only agreed to act the day before he declared himself interim
president, his aides said. Some politicians -- including those in the traditional Democratic
Action Party, the largest opposition party -- weren't told of the plan .
"We didn't want them to mess it up," said one opposition leader who knew of the
strategy.
The results of that fateful decision are still being played out in the streets, and on the
international stage as countries line up for and against Maduro (China, Russia and Turkey among
Maduro supporters, with the US and European countries backing Guaido as legitimate leader).
The high stakes maneuver "was largely devised by a group of four opposition leaders -- two
in exile, one under house arrest and one barred from leaving the country" and was predictably
immediately denounced by Maduro "as part of a U.S.-backed coup to overthrow his government."
But as the WSJ concludes, "The act of political skulduggery paid off. The crowd reacted
ecstatically to Mr. Guaidó, and one nation after another recognized him within hours."
Among the "plotters" included Guaido's political mentor Leopoldo López, now under house
arrest in Caracas, and Edgar Zambrano, vice president of the National Assembly of power allied
opposition party Democratic Action.
Zambrano related to the WSJ that the risk was so high that
in the end the "final decision" to pull the trigger laid with Guaido:
Mr. Zambrano, one of the opposition leaders who appeared surprised on stage on Jan. 23,
said the possibility of Mr. Guaidó assuming the presidency had been discussed in the
weeks before, but that the final decision was in the hands of the young leader because of the
risks it entailed .
However, the WSJ report closes with crucial bombshell information regarding what it took for
the opposition to cross that line, and for Guaido to step out in confidence. What was the key factor in the final push? First, Canada and US allies in Latin America
initiated something dramatic...
A breakthrough came on Jan. 4, when the Lima Group of 14 Latin American countries and
Canada issued a letter calling on Mr. Maduro to hand over power to the National Assembly. The
near-bellicose nature of the letter surprised opposition leaders, reinforcing the idea they
should take action .
But most importantly, Washington came calling at a key moment the opposition was fractured
and still indecisive and divided , in what is a central revelation concerning
the anti-Maduro movement's calculations :
When Mr. Guaidó should try to assume the interim presidency was up for debate. Some
argued that it should happen before Mr. Maduro took the oath. Others proposed creating a
commission to challenge Mr. Maduro's claim to office.
As late as Jan. 22, the day before it happened, Mr. Guaidó wasn't fully convinced .
He came around after Vice President Mike Pence called to assure that, if he were to invoke
the Venezuelan constitution in being sworn in as the country's rightful leader, the U.S.
would back the opposition.
And there it is -- a stunning mainstream media admission that the political drama and crisis
now unfolding in Venezuela, now quickly turning into a global geopolitical pressure spot and
conflagration -- was pushed forward and given assistance directly from the White House from the
very beginning .
Guaido: "Gee I can't wait for all that Western oil money to fill up meh pockets.
EhhhrrMMMmm I can't wait to sell out the Venezuelan people to the FED, BoE and ECB. D'oh-
where'd my CIA handler go?"
Also, lol at the Journal for this gem " The act of political skulduggery paid off. The
crowd reacted ecstatically to Mr. Guaidó, and one nation after another recognized him
within hours. " Translation: "Wow- we're SO surprised that the Western vassal states all
followed their master's lead by kowtowing in quick succession! Gee whiz- mind BLOWN!"
The WSJ has provided the "House" plausible deniability, will the "House" take it, or will
the minions sabotage? Stay tuned folks, as we discover who's honorable, who's courageous, and
who's pragmatic...
Further proof this guy is a treasonous little bitch that needs to be arrested and
prosecuted by the Supreme Tribunal Court of Venezuela. He's a traitor to ALL Venezuelans by
colluding with foreign powers to overthrow his elected president.
Lets be honest, sending in the US military was the first choice and all the rest of this
has been setting the stage. It's been 2 years, time for Trump to start a war, by the
prevailing MIC schedule.
Oh please. Maduro the elected president? He won his election after blocking the opposition
parties to take part. Please read the Venezuelan Constitution before commenting. Not any
election is valid or democratic. Maduro should be in jail. Guaido is asking for new and fair
elections. ... OOOOH how undemocratic!!! I am against foreign intervention, but in this case
the 3 million Venezuelan real refugees (10% of the Venezuelan population and not organised
political caravans trying to reach the USA) in neighbour countries tips my view. Therefore I
support the constitutional president Guaido and any help the international community can give
him.
Idiot . The opposition boycotted the election as they couldn't win. International
observers (usa wouldn't come) say it was fairer than usa elections lol. Sure maduro isn't a
saint. He also gave out prizes to collect after voting . But that's not bribing people could
vote for anyone and still collect a few foods in a bag
That a boy Trumpy! You got the right FukWits on the job. Bibi and Sheldon are jumping for
joy with the addition of Abrams. Now you got your Zio dream team. BoltON, PompAss, and
Abram's. Just think what a murderous war mongering team for IsraHell you could have if ya
rolled **** Chenney in the mix. Now there's someone who won't **** around getting a Zio war
going.
Cheney , the virtue less, honor less, 2 time OUI conviction,electricians apprentice , went
as far as helping to murder 3,000 Americans . All so he could impress his societal status
ambitious wife . A Rumsfeld ass kissing loser . Spineless goy are 50% of the problem .
Guaido is obviously an agent of the CIA. This fact does not absolve Maduro of his crimes.
But it does show that the US is balls deep in the Venezuela problem.
@50 bobzibub... your link doesn't bring me to the article, but i suspect it is more then just
crystallix - the canuck gold mining company - that are pushing for a change in power in
venezuala.. as i understand it, there are a number of canuck mining and oil related interests
where they would like to exploit venezuala and can't seem to get around the democractically
elected gov't of maduros..
looks like
this might be related, or the article you were trying to post? an american judge says
crystallex can have citgo, lol....
" Second, Venezuela's central bankers were persuaded to pledge their oil reserves and all
assets of the state oil sector (including Citgo) as collateral for its foreign debt. This
meant that if Venezuela defaulted (or was forced into default by U.S. banks refusing to make
timely payment on its foreign debt), bondholders and U.S. oil majors would be in a legal
position to take possession of Venezuelan oil assets."
Solid proof that it was the empire who invented the practice of "debt trap" and is still
flourishing with it.
hunor, February 7, 2019 at 6:24 am GMT
Thank you ! Made it very clear. Perfect reflection of the " Values of Western Civilization ".
Reaching to grab the whole universe, with no holds barred . And never show of any interest for the " truth". They are not
even pretending anymore , awakening will be very painful for some.
Reuben Kaspate, February 7, 2019 at 2:38 pm GMT • 100 Words
Why would the U. S. based White-Protestant aristocracy care a hoot about the Brown-Catholic elites in the far off land?
They don't! The comprador aristocracy in question isn't what it seems It's the same group that plagues the Americans.
The rootless louts, whose only raison d'ê·tre is to milk everything in sight and then retire to coastal cities, i.e. San
Francisco, if you are a homosexual or New York City and State, if you are somewhat religious.
Poor Venezuelans don't stand a chance against the shysters!
"... Qatar's ambassador in Mauritania allegedly offered his Syrian counterpart an advance payment of US$1 million and a monthly salary of $20,000 over 20 years, trying to convince the diplomat to defect and voice support for the opposition. ..."
"... All they need is a couple of snipers to kill protesters and the Mighty Wurlitzer of propaganda will supply the war, to paraphrase William Randolph Hearst. ..."
"... Elliot Abrams seems to be having trouble getting this coup off the ground. He must wonder what happened to the good old days of death squads and contras.... ..."
A day after the U.S. coup attempt in Venezuela the
U.S. game plan was already quite obvious:
The opposition in Venezuela will probably use access to that 'frozen' money to buy weapons
and to create an army of mercenaries to fight a 'civil' war against the government and its
followers. Like in Syria U.S. special forces or some CIA 'contractors' will be eager to
help. The supply line for such a war would most likely run through Colombia. If, like 2011
in Syria, a war on the ground is planned it will likely begin in the cities near that
border.
The U.S. is using the pretext of 'delivering humanitarian aid' from Columbia to Venezuela
to undermine the government and to establish a supply line for further operations. It is
another attempt to pull
the military onto the coup plotter's side:
[I]f the trucks do get across, the opposition can present itself as an answer to
Venezuela's chronic suffering, while Mr. Maduro will appear to have lost control of the
country's borders. That could accelerate defections from the ruling party and the military.
Dimitris Pantoulas, a political scientist in Caracas, called the opposition's aid
delivery plan a high-stakes gamble.
...
"This is 99 percent about the military and one percent about the humanitarian aspects," he
said. "The opposition is testing the military's loyalty, raising their cost of supporting
Maduro. Are they with Maduro, or no? Will they reject the aid? If the answer is no, then
Maduro's hours are numbered."
A New York Times op-ed by a right-wing former foreign minister of Mexico, Jorge
G. Castañeda, details the
escalation potential :
According to Mr. Guaidó and other sources, $20 million in American medicines and
food will be unloaded this week just outside Venezuelan territory in Cúcuta,
Colombia; Brazil, and on a Caribbean island -- either Aruba or Curaçao -- near the
Venezuelan coast.
Venezuelan military officials and troops in exile will then move these supplies into
Venezuela, where if all goes well, army troops still loyal to Mr. Maduro will not stop
their passage nor fire upon them. If they do, the Brazilian and Colombian governments may
be willing to back the anti-Maduro soldiers.
The threat of a firefight with their neighbors
might just be the incentive the Venezuelan military need to jettison Mr. Maduro, making the
reality of combat unnecessary.
This escalation strategy is unlikely to work unless some additional provocation is
involved. The Venezuelan government blocked the border bridge between Cúcuta in
Colombia and San Cristobal in Venezuela. Its military stands ready to stop any violation of
the country's border.
The U.S. responded to the blocking of the road with a sanctimonious tweet:
The Venezuelan people desperately need humanitarian aid. The U.S. & other countries
are trying to help, but #Venezuela's military under Maduro's orders is blocking aid with
trucks and shipping tankers. The Maduro regime must LET THE AID REACH THE STARVING PEOPLE.
#EstamosUnidosVE
The U.S. government, which actively helps to starve the people of Yemen into submission,
is concerned about Venezuela where so far no one has died of starvation? The lady ain't gonna
believe that.
The Venezuelan military has shown no sign of interest to change its loyalty. The fake aid
will be rejected.
The government of Venezuela does not reject aid that comes without political interference.
Last year it accepted modest UN
aid which consisted mostly of medical supplies from which Venezuela had been cut off due
to U.S. sanctions. The UN claimed that around 12 percent of Venezuelans are undernourished.
But such claims have been made for years while reports from Venezuela (vid) confirmed only some
scarcity of specific products. There is no famine in Venezuela that would require immediate
intervention.
The International Red Cross, the Catholic church's aid organization Caritas and
the United Nations rejected U.S. requests to help deliver the currently planned 'aid'
because it is so obviously politicized:
"Humanitarian action needs to be independent of political, military or other objectives,"
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York on Wednesday.
...
"What is important is that humanitarian aid be depoliticised and that the needs of the
people should lead in terms of when and how humanitarian aid is used," Dujarric added.
Rejecting aid out of political reasons is not unusual. When the hurricane Katrina in 2005
caused huge damage along the U.S. gulf coast, a number of countries offered humanitarian and
technical aid. U.S. President Bush accepted help from some countries, but rejected aid from
other ones
:
An offer of aid from the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, which included two
mobile hospital units, 120 rescue and first aid experts and 50 tonnes of food, has been
rejected, according to the civil rights leader, Jesse Jackson.
Mr Jackson said the offer from the Venezuelan leader, whom he recently met, included 10
water purification plants, 18 power generation plants and 20 tonnes of bottled water.
The U.S. intent to establish a 'humanitarian aid' supply line into Venezuela has a
secondary purpose. Such aid is the ideal cover for weapon supplies. In the 1980s designated
'humanitarian aid' flights for Nicaragua were filled with weapons . The
orders for those flights were given by Elliot Abrams who is now Trump's special envoy for
Venezuela.
While the trucks from Colombia are blocked at the border other 'humanitarian aid' from the
United States
reached the country .
Officials in Venezuela have accused the US of sending a cache of high-powered rifles and
ammunition on a commercial cargo flight from Miami so they would get into the hands of
President Nicolás Maduro's opponents.
Members with the Venezuelan National Guard [GNB] and the National Integrated Service of
Customs and Tax Administration [SENIAT] made the shocking discovery just two days after the
plane arrived at Arturo Michelena International Airport in Valencia.
Inspectors found 19 rifles, 118 magazines and 90 wireless radios while investigating the
flight which they said arrived Sunday afternoon. Monday's bust also netted four rifle
stands, three rifle scopes and six iPhones.
The pictures show
sufficient equipment for an infantry squad. Fifteen AR-15 assault rifles (5.56), one
squad automatic weapon (7.62) with a drum magazine, and a Colt 7.62 sniper gun as well as
accessory equipment. What is missing is the ammunition.
Where one such weapon transport is caught multiple are likely to go through. But to run a
war against the government pure weapon supplies are not enough. The U.S. will have to
establish a continuous supply line for heavy and bulky ammunition. That is where
'humanitarian aid' convoys come in.
Unless a large part of the Venezuelan military changes sides, any attempt to overthrow the
Venezuelan government by force is likely doomed to fail. The U.S. could use its full military
might to destroy the Venezuelan army. But the U.S. Senate is already quarreling about the potential use of U.S.
forces in Venezuela. The Democrats strongly reject that.
A Senate resolution to back Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, once expected to get
unanimous support, has been torpedoed by a disagreement over the use of military force,
according to aides and senators working on the issue.
...
"I think it's important for the Senate to express itself on democracy in Venezuela,
supporting interim President Guaido and supporting humanitarian assistance. But I also
think it should be very clear in fact that support stops short of any type of military
intervention," [Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J.] told NBC News.
It is unlikely that Trump would order a military intervention without bipartisan
support.
The a clandestine insertion of a mercenary 'guerrilla' force into Venezuela is surely
possible. Minor supply lines can be established by secret means. But, as the war on Syria
demonstrates, such plans can not be successful unless the people welcome the anti-government
force.
Under the current government most people in Venezuela are still better off than under the
pre-Chavez governments. This lecture and this thread explain the
economic history of Venezuela and the enormous progress that was made under Chavez and
Maduro. The people will not forget that even when the economic
situation will become more difficult. They know who is
pulling the strings behind the Random Guy Guaido who now claims the presidency. They know
well that these rich people are unlikely to better their plight.
U.S. politicians are making the same mistakes with regards to Venezuela as they made with
the regime change wars on Iraq and Syria. They believes that all people are as corrupt and
nihilistic as they are. They believe that others will not fight for their own believes and
their own style of life. They will again be proven wrong.
Never Mind the
Bollocks , Feb 7, 2019 2:20:56 PM |
link
US now has enough bootlickers signed up to the project that there will be no move against
the US at the UNGA. 'Protecting' its diplomats will be a big enough fig leaf for the Trump
admin.
thanks b, for this and all the links to read... i liked your line here "The U.S. government,
which actively helps to starve the people of Yemen into submission, is concerned about
Venezuela where so far no one has died of starvation?" indeed and as you note in the last
paragraph - "U.S. politicians are making the same mistakes with regards to Venezuela as they
made with the regime change wars on Iraq and Syria. They believes that all people are as
corrupt and nihilistic as they are. They believe that others will not fight for their own
believes and their own style of life. They will again be proven wrong."
all these people preaching this kind of crap, must be getting good returns from who is
paying them... the other person in the usa, europe and etc - don't believe this b.s.
anymore..
Bulletin Bulletin Bulletin. This just posted on RT. According to geography challenged (!!!!!)
Pompous Pompeo = Hezbollah is now in Zenezuela. Yes. You read that right. And further more
it's an Iranian Hezbollah. Look out.
Here's the money quote: "People don't recognize that Hezbollah has active cells -- the
Iranians are impacting the people of Venezuela and throughout South America," adding that "We
have an obligation to take down that risk for America."
He also is now referring to Guido-chump as "the duly elected president of Zenezuela."
Transmutation Does exist. Amazing.
"throughout South America" Wow. A population explosion!
Is this guy Pompous Pompeo very very very confused?
Thanks for the ongoing reporting of this spinning plate of late empire.
It is encouraging to read that others are standing up to empire in their own little ways
that all add up.
From reading comments here and on other sites I am also happy to be reading less BS about
Trump being some sort of hidden savior as compared to Clinton II. He is a front for the elite
just like Clinton II is/would have been.
"Indeed ,the more America began to lose its hold on its noncommunist allies, the closer
America
and the Soviet Union drew together, precisely to threaten Europe and Asia with what
Henry Kissinger called a new condominium, that is, joint imperialism of America and
Russia against their respective satellites."
This is what Kissinger and Trump are now trying to do.
Trumps friendliness toward Russia has nothing to do with peace and goodness and
everything to do with US domination of Asia and Europe.
@mauisurfer #9: The reason your link breaks the page is that it does not have enough hyphens
in it. So it stretches the page until there's a hyphen (between "michael" and "hudson"),
whereupon the link finally wraps to the next line. This is not the first time you are ruining
the page. In fact, we've talked about this quite recently. I will repeat what I wrote then:
press "Preview" button before posting, check that everything looks right, only then press
"Post". Please respect other posters.
Bloody Canada: Cheerleading the Lima Group's Plot to Overthrow the Government of
Venezuela
by Maria Paez Victor
(María Páez Victor, Ph.D. is a Venezuelan born sociologist living in Canada).
Guaidó, a son of Spanish immigrants, is a useful idiot, a thug who will be thrown
into the trashcan of history for his treason. He does not command any type of institution,
not one policeman, not one ministry, no official agency of any sort. He is a president in
his own mind and that of the USA Embassy where he is holed out.
Are there any bounds to indecency and intellectual bankruptcy of these people? Is there a
line, however desperate, they will not cross in order to achieve their goal? the answer is
NO. This is a lost country morally, socially and economically. US is a country that needs a
direct military intervention.......by all.
At Hudson's website, he gave the interview with Saker this
title : "Venezuela as the pivot for New Internationalism?" Spread out in answer to
Saker's questions are Hudson's suggestions for the institutions and mechanisms for such a new
internationalism:
"The only way that Maduro can fight successfully is on the institutional level, upping the
ante to move "outside the box." His plan – and of course it is a longer-term plan
– is to help catalyze a new international economic order independent of the U.S.
dollar standard. It will work in the short run only if the United States believes that it
can emerge from this fight as an honest financial broker, honest banking system and supporter
of democratically elected regimes. The Trump administration is destroying illusion more
thoroughly than any anti-imperialist critic or economic rival could do!...
"Looking ahead, therefore, China, Russia, Iran and other countries need to set up a new
international court to adjudicate the coming diplomatic crisis and its financial and military
consequences. Such a court – and its associated international bank as an
alternative to the U.S.-controlled IMF and World Bank – needs a clear ideology to
frame a set of principles of nationhood and international rights with power to implement and
enforce its judgments.
"This hostage-taking [of gold and other assets] now makes it urgent for other countries
to develop a viable alternative , especially as the world de-dedollarizes and a
gold-exchange standard remains the only way of constraining the military-induced balance of
payments deficit of the United States or any other country mounting a military
attack."...
"Given the fact that the EU is acting as a branch of NATO and the U.S. banking system,
that alternative would have to be associated with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,
and the gold would have to be kept in Russia and/or China ."...
"The best thing neighboring Latin American countries can do is to join in creating a
vehicle to promote de-dollarization and, with it, an international institution to oversee the
writedown of debts that are beyond the ability of countries to pay without imposing austerity
and thereby destroying their economies .
" An alternative also is needed to the World Bank that would make loans in domestic
currency, above all to subsidize investment in domestic food production so as to protect
the economy against foreign food-sanctions – the equivalent of a military siege to
force surrender by imposing famine conditions. This World Bank for Economic Acceleration
would put the development of self-reliance for its members first , instead of promoting
export competition while loading borrowers down with foreign debt that would make them prone
to the kind of financial blackmail that Venezuela is experiencing."...
" Two international principles are needed. First, no country should be obliged to pay
foreign debt in a currency (such as the dollar or its satellites) whose banking system acts
to prevent payment .
" Second, no country should be obliged to pay foreign debt at the price of losing its
domestic autonomy as a state: the right to determine its own foreign policy, to tax and to
create its own money, and to be free of having to privatize its public assets to pay foreign
creditors . Any such debt is a "bad loan" reflecting the creditor's own irresponsibility
or, even worse, pernicious asset grab in a foreclosure that was the whole point of the loan."
[Emphasis mine to highlight Hudson's suggestions.]
It ought to be clear that Hudson's proposing a new international financial and
political/judicial system to ultimately replace the UN and Bretton Woods created
institutions. This is certainly the minimum requirement since the Outlaw US Empire has
completely trashed the post WW2 system itself designed. Unfortunately, there's still the
issue of containing and disciplining the Outlaw US Empire and subduing it so it cannot
threaten the newly established institutions.
According to the German newspaper Junge Welt the border bridge between Cúcuta in
Colombia and San Cristobal in Venezuela, which you mentioned, has not been closed, since it
has never been open. The article says, the alleged closure of the bridge is fake news to
support the coup.
https://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/348717.kampf-um-venezuela-no-pasar%C3%A1n.html
Nevertheless, thank you for your thoughts and information and please keep up the good work!
Couldn't agree more - we are such a US flunky. Also, the cbc has become increasingly
pathetic and irrelevant - they're getting a good rogering on other sites such as Babble for
their extraordinarily biased coverage of everything imperial.
In case no one has linked to it, here's a letter sent to the EU re May 20 elections in
Venezuela:
"They know well that these rich people are unlikely to better their plight."
This is certainly correct but a terrible understatement. It should read: 'They know only to
well out of experience, that the Venezuelan Sucker class will take bloody revenge if they
succeed to gain power again.'
hope you are right, b. We will see how resilient the government is when the first public
massacre of demonstrators happen which appears to be imminent as we all have seen this so
many times.
to Zanon. # 7 Yes of course they are allies. However, you must, I hope, admit that the idea
of Hezbollah "cells" all over south america is a wee bit comical. The fact that the two
countries are allies does not necessarily translate to "we must take them down." The way His
Pomposity puts it, those cells are just sprouting up every where. It's a bit ridiculous.
B, don't forget the regime change playbook also involves bribing public officials to come
over to their side. Here's any example of how it was done Syria:
Qatar's ambassador in Mauritania allegedly offered his Syrian counterpart an advance
payment of US$1 million and a monthly salary of $20,000 over 20 years, trying to convince the
diplomat to defect and voice support for the opposition.
All they need is a couple of snipers to kill protesters and the Mighty Wurlitzer of
propaganda will supply the war, to paraphrase William Randolph Hearst. You would think that the propaganda receivers would learn by now, with the same propaganda
used time after time, year after year, war after war.
You would be wrong. I am losing sympathy for the people of the imperial countries, and their
inability to learn from experience.
@40 wagelaborer. Therein lies the challenge. Will Humanity keep listening to Ole Wurly's tune
til the end or will it learn from its mistake and abandon the old schemes? In other words,
will Man (and Woman, or course) become sovereign or will he/she stay a slave? Recent
developments in Ukraine and especially Syria give hope that Homo Sapiens Ethicus is
emerging..
According to military expert Yuri Liamin Venezuela has S-300VM Antey-2500 and Buk-M2E
long range air defenses, and Pechora-2M middle range air defenses. T-72B1V, BMP-3,
BTR-80A,
SAU Msta-S tanks. Noah-SVK, MLRS Grad and Smerch automatic propulsion arms. Su-30MK2
fighters.
Well trained ground troops with Igla-S MANPADS and ZU-23 / 30m1-4.
And thousands of armed and well trained militias, expected to grow
to over a million strong ( as per Fidel Castro instructions, haha)
Elliot Abrams seems to be having trouble getting this coup off the ground. He must wonder
what happened to the good old days of death squads and contras....
>Elliott Abrams, who leads the Trump administration's special envoy to Venezuela, said
on Thursday that several countries have offered to take in Venezuelan dictator Nicolás
Maduro.
"I think it is better for the transition to democracy in Venezuela that he be outside the
country," Abrams said. "And there are a number of countries who are willing to accept
him." "Which ones?" Bloomberg reporter Nick Wadhams asked. "He's got friends in places like Cuba and Russia," Abrams said. "And there are some other
countries actually, that have come to us privately and said they would be willing to take
members of the current illegitimate regime, if it would help the transition." "Can you name any?" Wadhams asked. "No," Abrams responded.<
Nice
graphic to support fact that "Unlike UK and most of EU - and contrary to BBC repetition -
'the international community' has not fallen into line behind Trump on Venezuela."
Victor J @44--
Pepe
Escobar posits there're "arguably 15,000 Cubans who are in charge of security for the
Maduro government; Cubans have demonstrated historically they are not in the business of
handing over power." They're likely well versed in the use of those Russian armaments. It's
also likely that there's a Russian or Chinese satellite in geosync orbit above the region
using its sophisticated sensors to detect infiltration attempts, something Central Americans
lacked during the Contra-Terror.
The embarassment of being associated with Trump must now be getting through even
to the most fanatical fascists such as Freeland. And the Europeans.
From a PR point of view statements such as Abrams' "The time to negotiate
with Maduro is long past." Or the original ultimatum demanding elections within 8 days!
Are completely over the top. And likely to be seen as such. Sanctioning members of the
Constituent Assembly- the elections to which were uncontroversial-also indicates that
what the opposition and the United States want is war, they will continue to turn down
peremptorily all offers to mediate or compromise.
If they don't end things soon they will be completely discredited everywhere outside
the political caste. Even the MSM are going to find it hard to keep up looking the other
way and pretending not to know the most elementary facts.
Yes, the corrupt Trump and his administration will be proven wrong as were Obama's and Bush's
administrations, but unfortunately Venezuelans, and perhaps Iranians soon, will be used as
pawns, and people will suffer, their lives will be destroyed as hell is being unleashed on
their lives. Meanwhile the media, damn them as well, are useful tools for the Administration,
spouting regime-change humanitarian propaganda, just like they did with the Syrian
Observatory's reports and White Helmet footage.
Debunking this avalanche of bull is what you do best as demonstrated with this article.
Let's not forget that alongside the proxy regime change civil war, a propaganda and mass
deception war is waged on the minds of Venezuelans deprived by sanctions and on all of us
sick and tired, weary, of the AZ Empire's successive wars. So pull down on to your
anti-bullshet visor cause it's just starting again, the worst is yet to come, and so far
Russia's hardly around to help with the pushback.
(I see someone unwittingly mucked up this thread misusing tags with an excessively long
link making it impossible to read comments. It's even difficult to comment. 😕)
@ bevin - i agree with @49 psychohistorian.. the msm is a huge part of the problem.. here in
canada, our national outlet - cbc - are a disgrace.. here) is
today's fluff piece on guaido and hit piece on maduro... the cbc have become so predictable
for carrying water for the empire, that many are getting ready turned off by them.. for a
national news outlet paid for by canuck taxpayers, it is truly pathetic.. they need to do hit
pieces on this fascist freeland, but instead want to turn reality upside down..
on a positive note, i am quite sure when the federal election happens in oct of this year,
as memory serves - the liberals will not remain in power and Freeland can get back to writing
George Soros memoirs..
"... There are also three or four books written by Anna Lilia Perez with regard to the sacking of PEMEX by the previous 4 presidents. She names Blackrock, the Carlyle Group and numerous Banks in the conspiracy. 60% of Mexican oil was being loaded on Tankers and sold in the Black Market. Google her name and you can get a list of her books. ..."
"... New York Times Article: Mexico could press bribery charges, it just hasn't https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/world/americas/mexico-odebrecht-investigation.html ..."
The US has been working to get to the point of invading Venezuela for a while now. They just
needed to wait for 2 things to fall into place. The election of Duque in Colombia and
Bolsanado in Brazil. Now that they have these two ultraright wing leaders to provide the
brunt of the invasion force, they can begin to execute their plan. There's a youtuber in
Florida that has been on top of this plan for a while now, informing his followers.
Here's a
link to his Florida Maquis site:
10 steps to understand what really happened in Venezuela
... ... ...
I'll attach a couple more links about Chavez talking about the Jews and the Assasination
of Chavez.
Shocking! Netanyahu
... ... ...
The Assasination of Hugo Chavez
... ... ...
Blackstone Intelligence has an interesting video that focuses on articles from The
Economists. I will also attach:
How NeoCons are helping the Bankers take over Venezuela
... ... ...
There are also three or four books written by Anna Lilia Perez with regard to the sacking
of PEMEX by the previous 4 presidents. She names Blackrock, the Carlyle Group and numerous
Banks in the conspiracy. 60% of Mexican oil was being loaded on Tankers and sold in the Black
Market. Google her name and you can get a list of her books. There is so much information in
her books, information she had to fight in court to get copies. She had to move to Germany
because of threats she received.
Today the new president shut down 26 of the 56 shell companies created under another shell
company of PEMEX, PEMEX International. The government is having a hard time investigating
these company's books because they claim to be private companies. They found a refinery in
Texas that they didn't even know existed, that is half owned by Royal Dutch Shell. 200
million dollars a year in business and none of it is shown on PEMEX's books.
Anyone with a brain always knew that Maduro is more legitimate than Trump, May, Sanchez, or
Macron. Now we have the numbers confirming that. Anyone with a brain knew that the Guaido
personage is no more than the puppet of the Empire, a nonentity with zero legitimacy.
But key point is, the US actions against Venezuela are not about legitimacy, they are
about oil and money. A robber takes your valuables not because you are not legitimate enough,
but because he is a robber. That's the whole point, the rest is hot air.
Guaido's party Voluntad Popular (VP), is the most violent and right wing opposition party
in Venezuela. One of its leaders, Maria Corina Machado was interviewed on the public Canadian
Broadcasting Company (CBC) on Feb. 1. She has openly, repeatedly, shamelessly and in front of
numerous TV and radio cameras, urged mobs to violence and she has most recently publicly
threatened the life of President Maduro. She has also been invited to speak with Ottawa
politicians.
Guaidó and his party carried out the terrible street violence of 2014, which they
named "La Salida" (The Exit). It resulted in 114 innocent people being killed. Several young
men were burned alive suspected of being "Chavistas". This was the worst street violence ever
seen on the streets of Venezuela. The leader of the party, Leopoldo López was jailed,
after a long and fair trial with the best lawyers money can buy, sentenced for his
responsibility for unleashing this terror and the ensuing 114 deaths.
Guaidó, a son of Spanish immigrants, is a useful idiot, a thug who will be thrown
into the trashcan of history for his treason. He does not command any type of institution,
not one policeman, not one ministry, no official agency of any sort. He is a president in his
own mind and that of the USA Embassy where he is holed out.
Exxon Mobil wants the oil. The international banks want the gold. Colombia wants to
control or possess the eastern oil rich area next to its border. Brazil wants carte blanche
for its big energy corporation. Guyana wants the Esequivo region on the eastern border handed
to them – that is, to Exxon Mobil, and Paraguay wants the huge debt it owes to
Venezuela to quietly disappear. And it is not a wild guess to think that Canada obtained its
recent Free Trade deal with Trump as a quid-pro-quo: lead the charge against Venezuela and
you get your deal. And the oil producers in Canada (mostly USA owned) will shed no tears over
the destruction of Venezuelan crude production. Make no mistake about it, these are the
modern carpetbaggers.
Just the kind of thing I come to Unz to read, and get a glimmer at the man behind the
curtain.
I'll share an anecdote, for what it's worth. Some years back I went into the local bank.
The (young and attractive) gal who helped me out, was -- it turned out, from Venezuela.
This was when Chavez was still alive, and after he had mocked the chimp at the UN, talking
about the smell of sulfur. I remember being impressed by his antics, and thinking 'wow,
there's a guy who not only hates Dubya almost as much as I do, but has the cajones to call
the bitch out in front of the whole world.
So I was curious what this pretty (many of them are) Venezuelan girl thought of Chavez,
and I asked her.
She did not like him. No effn' way. It turns out her father was a hard working schlep who
came from nothing, but had worked his arse off his entire life, to build a second home, and
to rent the first one out, as a retirement income of sorts.
Well, according to this gal, the Chavez regime had confiscated the rental home because it
was exploitation in their view. So I had to re-think my opinion of this guy, if her story is
true. Why don't these commies ever go after the One Percent's wealth? Why do they always go
after the working and middle class?
Just an anecdote for what it's worth.
Also glad someone posted the Economic Hit Man video.
The last sentence of this article, (in particular) made me think of that video.
But folks thinking we have designs on Venezuela are just nuts
the first thing that's necessary is to define who "we" are.
Because there are two Americas, and we should make the distinction.
First there is the America of the American people. Poor, working class, middle class, and
somewhat well-off upper-middle class. These are the "we" that had nothing whatsoever to do
with the wars, except to vote relentlessly for politicians to end them, and are always
betrayed.
Which brings us to the other "we". The Deepstate scumfucks who bomb and loot nations, when
they aren't looting the American working and middle class to fund their Eternal Wars, or
selecting cannon fodder from the working class or poor, to act as their Janissaries for
globo-domination and rapine.
Joe the Plumber is the poster boy for the first "we", and yes, there are lots and lots of
butt-hurt arseholes who would like to pin it all on Joe. He's white, CIS, American and the
perfect scapegoat for butt-hurt loser's (of all stripes) hate.
John McBloodstain in the perfect (if rotting) poster boy for the other "we". The Deepstate
scumfucks who are just as much the enemy of the American people as they are the enemy of all
who don't bow down to the Fiend.
So there are two very separate and very distinct "we"s.
The reason we can be sure the problems being caused in Venezuela are being done so by the
Deepstate 'Americans', is because Trump appointed one of the worst Deepstate scumfucks to
look after "our" interests down there; Eliot Abrams – a scumfuck of the highest order,
and an existential enemy of Joe the Plumber and all Americans of good will.
It would be good if this distinction between the two "we"s, could be made more routinely.
IMHO
"... Nixon and Kissinger, according to the notes kept by CIA Director Richard Helms, wanted to 'make the economy scream' in Chile; they were 'not concerned [about the] risks involved'. War was acceptable to them as long as Allende's government was removed from power. The CIA started Project FUBELT, with $10 million as a first installment to begin the covert destabilisation of the country. ..."
"... Emboldened by Western domination, monopoly firms act with disregard for the law. ..."
"... Unable to raise money from commodity sales, hemmed in by a broken world agricultural system and victim of a culture of plunder, countries of the Global South have been forced to go hat in hand to commercial lenders for finance. ..."
"... Impossible to raise funds, trapped by the fickleness of international finance, governments are forced to make deep cuts in social spending. Education and health, food sovereignty and economic diversification – all this goes by the wayside. International agencies such as the IMF force countries to conduct 'reforms', a word that means extermination of independence. Those countries that hold out face immense international pressure to submit under pain of extinction, as the Communist Manifesto (1848) put it. ..."
"... The migration out of Venezuela is not unique to that country but is now merely the normal reaction to the global crisis. Migrants from Honduras who go northward to the United States or migrants from West Africa who go towards Europe through Libya are part of this global exodus. ..."
"... Venezuela has faced harsh US sanctions since 2014, when the US Congress started down this road. The next year, US President Barack Obama declared Venezuela a 'threat to national security'. The economy started to scream. ..."
"... This is what the US did to Iran and this is what they did to Cuba. The UN says that the US sanctions on Cuba have cost the small island $130 billion. Venezuela lost $6 billion for the first year of Trump's sanctions, since they began in August 2017 ..."
On 15 September 1970, US President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry
Kissinger authorised the US government to do everything possible to undermine the incoming
government of the socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende. Nixon and Kissinger,
according to the notes kept by CIA Director Richard Helms, wanted to 'make the economy scream'
in Chile; they were 'not concerned [about the] risks involved'. War was acceptable to them as
long as Allende's government was removed from power. The CIA started Project FUBELT, with $10
million as a first installment to begin the covert destabilisation of the country.
CIA memorandum on Project FUBELT, 16 September 1970.
... ... ...
US business firms, such as the telecommunication giant ITT, the soft drink maker Pepsi Cola
and copper monopolies such as Anaconda and Kennecott, put pressure on the US government once
Allende nationalised the copper sector on 11 July 1971. Chileans celebrated this day as the Day
of National Dignity (Dia de la Dignidad Nacional). The CIA began to make contact with sections
of the military seen to be against Allende. Three years later, on 11 September 1973, these
military men moved against Allende, who died in the regime change operation. The US 'created
the conditions' as US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger put it, to which US President
Richard Nixon answered, 'that is the way it is going to be played'. Such is the mood of
international gangsterism.
Phone Call between Richard Nixon (P) and Henry Kissinger (K) on 16 September 1973.
... ... ...
Chile entered the dark night of a military dictatorship that turned over the country to US
monopoly firms. US advisors rushed in to strengthen the nerve of General Augusto Pinochet's
cabinet.
What happened to Chile in 1973 is precisely what the United States has attempted to do in
many other countries of the Global South. The most recent target for the US government –
and Western big business – is Venezuela. But what is happening to Venezuela is nothing
unique. It faces an onslaught from the United States and its allies that is familiar to
countries as far afield as Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The formula is
clichéd. It is commonplace, a twelve-step plan to produce a coup climate, to create a
world under the heel of the West and of Western big business.
Step One: Colonialism's
Traps.
Most of the Global South remains trapped by the structures put in place by colonialism.
Colonial boundaries encircled states that had the misfortune of being single commodity
producers – either sugar for Cuba or oil for Venezuela. The inability to diversify their
economies meant that these countries earned the bulk of their export revenues from their
singular commodities (98% of Venezuela's export revenues come from oil). As long as the prices
of the commodities remained high, the export revenues were secure. When the prices fell,
revenue suffered. This was a legacy of colonialism. Oil prices dropped from $160.72 per barrel
(June 2008) to $51.99 per barrel (January 2019). Venezuela's export revenues collapsed in this
decade.
Step Two: The Defeat of the New International Economic Order.
In 1974, the countries of the Global South attempted to redo the architecture of the world
economy. They called for the creation of a New International Economic Order (NIEO) that would
allow them to pivot away from the colonial reliance upon one commodity and diversify their
economies. Cartels of raw materials – such as oil and bauxite – were to be built so
that the one-commodity country could have some control over prices of the products that they
relied upon. The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), founded in 1960, was a
pioneer of these commodity cartels. Others were not permitted to be formed. With the defeat of
OPEC over the past three decades, its members – such as Venezuela (which has the world's
largest proven oil reserves) – have not been able to control oil prices. They are at the
mercy of the powerful countries of the world.
Step Three: The Death of Southern
Agriculture.
In November 2001, there were about three billion small farmers and landless peasants in the
world. That month, the World Trade Organisation met in Doha (Qatar) to unleash the productivity
of Northern agri-business against the billions of small farmers and landless peasants of the
Global South. Mechanisation and large, industrial-scale farms in North America and Europe had
raised productivity to about 1 to 2 million kilogrammes of cereals per farmer. The small
farmers and landless peasants in the rest of the world struggled to grow 1,000 kilogrammes of
cereals per farmer. They were nowhere near as productive. The Doha decision, as
Samir Amin wrote , presages the annihilation of the small farmer and landless peasant. What
are these men and women to do? The production per hectare is higher in the West, but the
corporate take-over of agriculture (as Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research Senior
Fellow P. Sainath shows) leads to increased hunger as it pushes peasants off their land and
leaves them to starve.
Step Four: Culture of Plunder.
Emboldened by Western domination, monopoly firms act with disregard for the law. As
Kambale Musavuli and I write of the Democratic Republic of Congo, its annual budget of $6
billion is routinely robbed of at least $500 by monopoly mining firms, mostly from Canada
– the country now leading the charge against Venezuela. Mispricing and tax avoidance
schemes allow these large firms (Canada's Agrium, Barrick and Suncor) to routinely steal
billions of dollars from impoverished states.
Step Five: Debt as a Way of Life.
Unable to raise money from commodity sales, hemmed in by a broken world agricultural system
and victim of a culture of plunder, countries of the Global South have been forced to go hat in
hand to commercial lenders for finance. Over the past decade, debt held by the Global South
states has increased, while debt payments have ballooned by 60%. When commodity prices rose
between 2000 and 2010, debt in the Global South decreased. As commodity prices began to fall
from 2010, debts have risen.
The IMF points out that of the 67 impoverished countries that they
follow, 30 are in debt distress, a number that has doubled since 2013. More than 55.4% of
Angola's export revenue is paid to service its debt. And Angola, like Venezuela, is an oil
exporter. Other oil exporters such as Ghana, Chad, Gabon and Venezuela suffer high debt to GDP
ratios. Two out of five low-income countries are in deep financial distress.
Step Six:
Public Finances Go to Hell.
With little incoming revenue and low tax collection rates, public finances in the Global
South has gone into crisis. As the UN Conference on Trade and Development points out, 'public
finances have continued to be suffocated'. States simply cannot put together the funds needed
to maintain basic state functions. Balanced budget rules make borrowing difficult, which is
compounded by the fact that banks charge high rates for money, citing the risks of lending to
indebted countries.
Step Seven: Deep Cuts in Social Spending .
Impossible to raise funds, trapped by the fickleness of international finance, governments
are forced to make deep cuts in social spending. Education and health, food sovereignty and
economic diversification – all this goes by the wayside. International agencies such as
the IMF force countries to conduct 'reforms', a word that means extermination of independence.
Those countries that hold out face immense international pressure to submit under pain of
extinction, as the Communist Manifesto (1848) put it.
Step Eight: Social Distress Leads
to Migration.
The total number of migrants in the world is now at least 68.5 million. That makes the
country called Migration the 21st largest country in the world after Thailand and ahead of the
United Kingdom. Migration has become a global reaction to the collapse of countries from one
end of the planet to the other. The migration out of Venezuela is not unique to that country
but is now merely the normal reaction to the global crisis. Migrants from Honduras who go
northward to the United States or migrants from West Africa who go towards Europe through Libya
are part of this global exodus.
Step Nine: Who Controls the Narrative?
The monopoly corporate media takes its orders from the elite. There is no sympathy for the
structural crisis faced by governments from Afghanistan to Venezuela. Those leaders who cave to
Western pressure are given a free pass by the media. As long as they conduct 'reforms', they
are safe. Those countries that argue against the 'reforms' are vulnerable to being attacked.
Their leaders become 'dictators', their people hostages. A contested election in Bangladesh or
in the Democratic Republic of Congo or in the United States is not cause for regime change.
That special treatment is left for Venezuela.
Step Ten: Who's the Real President?
Regime change operations begin when the imperialists question the legitimacy of the
government in power: by putting the weight of the United States behind an unelected person,
calling him the new president and creating a situation where the elected leader's authority is
undermined. The coup takes place when a powerful country decides – without an election
– to anoint its own proxy. That person – in Venezuela's case Juan Guaidó
– rapidly has to make it clear that he will bend to the authority of the United States.
His kitchen cabinet – made up of former government officials with intimate ties to the US
(such as Harvard University's Ricardo Hausmann and Carnegie's Moisés Naím)
– will make it clear that they want to privatise everything and sell out the Venezuelan
people in the name of the Venezuelan people.
Step Eleven: Make the Economy Scream.
Venezuela has faced harsh US sanctions since 2014, when the US Congress started down this
road. The next year, US President Barack Obama declared Venezuela a 'threat to national
security'. The economy started to scream. In recent days, the United States and the United
Kingdom brazenly stole billions of dollars of Venezuelan money, placed the shackles of
sanctions on its only revenue generating sector (oil) and watched the pain flood through the
country.
This is what the US did to Iran and this is what they did to Cuba. The UN says that
the US sanctions on Cuba have cost the small island $130 billion. Venezuela lost $6 billion for
the first year of Trump's sanctions, since they began in August 2017. More is to be lost as the
days unfold. No wonder that the United Nations Special Rapporteur Idriss Jazairy says that
'sanctions which can lead to starvation and medical shortages are not the answer to the crisis
in Venezuela'. He said that sanctions are 'not a foundation for the peaceful settlement of
disputes'. Further, Jazairy said, 'I am especially concerned to hear reports that these
sanctions are aimed at changing the government of Venezuela'. He called for 'compassion' for
the people of Venezuela.
Step Twelve: Go to War.
US National Security Advisor John Bolton held a yellow pad with the words 5,000 troops in
Colombia written on it. These are US troops, already deployed in Venezuela's neighbour. The US
Southern Command is ready. They are egging on Colombia and Brazil to do their bit. As the coup
climate is created, a nudge will be necessary. They will go to war.
None of this is inevitable. It was not inevitable to Titina Silá, a commander of the
Partido Africano para a Independència da Guiné e Cabo Verde (PAIGC) who was
murdered on 30 January 1973. She fought to free her country. It is not inevitable to the people
of Venezuela, who continue to fight to defend their revolution. It is not inevitable to our
friends at CodePink: Women for Peace, whose Medea Benjamin walked into a meeting of the
Organisation of American States and said – No!
As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump lambasted America's endless and wasteful wars. But
as president, he has surrounded himself with individuals who have made defending and advancing
American empire a full-time career. Why did Trump cave and what could be the consequences for
him and his presidency?
CrossTalking with George Szamuely, Jeff Deist, and Lee Spieckerman.
That Lee guy demonstrated perfectly why the world should fear the USA. Dangerous stupid.
71 Likes
You are correct!
21 Likes
The danger comes from the arrogance with the stupidity. American exceptionalism at its
ugliest, on par with bolton and pompeo for sure.
I don't think tRump really knows what he is saying, as in big disconnect between brain and
mouth. More empty bluster than arrogance with his 5th grader stupidity.
23 Likes
The scary part is a lot of Americans are like him
23 Likes
Show 2 more replies
The "Lee" entity encapsulates everything that is wrong with consecutive US governments:
arrogant, obnoxious, I'll mannered, undiplomatic, belligerent, misinformed and dangerously
stupid.
43 Likes
Thanks for having this Lee Spieckerman on. It proves RT tries to show all sides and is a
shocking example of how crazy the far right is.
Keep it real!
37 Likes
Spickerman is living in cuckoo land with his claim US is a force for good and billions are
so happy to live under a bunch of mobster's Wrong
22 Likes
Lee Spickerman is a typical Sociopath
18 Likes
Lee Spickerman is mad like the US Governement.!!
The Monroe Doctrine gets evoked yet again. In written form it was "anti-colonial", but in
practice it was "imperial anti-colonialism" and used as a declaration of hegemony and a right
of unilateral intervention over the Americas.
This is why I feel we need to stop using the term "regime change" which also hides the
reality of what are really coup d'etats and imperialist wars. It's not a regime being changed,
but a regime trying to do the changing. Like Peter says at the end, it would take a long show
to talk about them all.
Do us all a favor and take Mr. Spieckerman off your guest list. He advances our knowledge
not a bit. He is merely one of the Bush claque. As for his admired public servant, John Bolton,
rarely does this country produce so maniacal a political operator. Giving Bolton a responsible
position was Trump's most egregious personnel error.
The country is in deep economic crisis with rampant inflation and high unemployment rate. As such it is an easy target for color
revolutions...
Venezuela has around 32 Million population. unemployment is around total: 14.6% (2015 est.) Growth rate is negative -14% (2017 est.)
-16.5% (2016 est.). -6.2% (2015 est.) . Inflation rate is 254.4% (2016 est.) Exchange rate is 3,345 bolivars per dollar (2017 est.).
University professor salary is around US$ 27,449. The cost of living is three times lower then in the USA.
Venezuela was one of three countries that emerged from the collapse of Gran Colombia in 1830 (the others being Ecuador and New
Granada, which became Colombia). For most of the first half of the 20th century, Venezuela was ruled by generally benevolent military
strongmen who promoted the oil industry and allowed for some social reforms. Democratically elected governments have held sway since
1959. Under Hugo CHAVEZ, president from 1999 to 2013, and his hand-picked successor, President Nicolas MADURO, the executive branch
has exercised increasingly authoritarian control over other branches of government. In 2016, President MADURO issued a decree to
hold an election to form a "Constituent Assembly." A 30 July 2017 poll approved the formation of a 545-member Constituent Assembly
and elected its delegates, empowering them to change the constitution and dismiss government institutions and officials. The US Government
does not recognize the Assembly, which has generally used its powers to rule by decree rather than to reform the constitution. Simultaneously,
democratic institutions continue to deteriorate, freedoms of expression and the press are curtailed, and political polarization has
grown. The ruling party's economic policies have expanded the state's role in the economy through expropriations of major enterprises,
strict currency exchange and price controls that discourage private sector investment and production, and overdependence on the petroleum
industry for revenues, among others. Current concerns include human rights abuses, rampant violent crime, high inflation, and widespread
shortages of basic consumer goods, medicine, and medical supplies.
Location
: Northern South America, bordering the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, between Colombia and Guyana
Geographic coordinates
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territorial sea: 12 nm exclusive economic zone: 200 nm contiguous zone: 15 nm continental shelf: 200-m depth or to the depth
of exploitation Climate
: tropical; hot, humid; more moderate in highlands
Terrain.
Andes Mountains and Maracaibo Lowlands in northwest; central plains (llanos); Guiana Highlands in southeast
Elevation: 450 m elevation extremes: 0 m lowest point: Caribbean Sea 4978 highest point: Pico Bolivar
Natural resources
: This entry lists a country's mineral, petroleum, hydropower, and other resources of commercial importance, such as rare earth
elements (REEs). In general, products appear only if they make a significant contribution to the economy, or are likely to do so
in the future. petroleum, natural gas, iron ore, gold, bauxite, other minerals, hydropower, diamonds
Land use
: This
entry contains the percentage shares of total land area for three different types of land use: agricultural land, forest, and other;
agricultural land is further divided into arable land - land cultivated for crops like wheat, maize, and rice that are replanted
after each harvest, permanent crops - land cultivated for crops like citrus, coffee, and rubber that are not replanted after each
harvest, and includes land under flowering shrubs, fruit trees, nut trees, and vines, and permane . . .
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Population distribution
: most of the population is concentrated in the northern and western highlands along an eastern spur at the northern end of the
Andes, an area that includes the capital of Caracas
Natural hazards
: This entry lists potential natural disasters. For countries where volcanic activity is common, a volcanism subfield highlights
historically active volcanoes.
subject to floods, rockslides, mudslides; periodic droughts
Environment - current
issues Acidification - the lowering of soil and water pH due to acid precipitation and deposition usually through
precipitation; this process disrupts ecosystem nutrient flows and may kill freshwater fish and plants dependent on more neutral or
alkaline conditions (see acid rain). Acid rain - characterized as containing harmful levels of sulfur dioxi . . .
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sewage pollution of Lago de Valencia; oil and urban pollution of Lago de Maracaibo; deforestation; soil degradation; urban and
industrial pollution, especially along the Caribbean coast; threat to the rainforest ecosystem from irresponsible mining operations
Environment - international
agreements : This entry separates country participation in international environmental agreements into two levels - party to
and signed, but not ratified. Agreements are listed in alphabetical order by the abbreviated form of the full name.
party to: Antarctic Treaty, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol, Desertification, Endangered Species,
Hazardous Wastes, Marine Life Conservation, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Tropical Timber 83, Tropical Timber 94, Wetlands
signed, but not ratified: none of the selected agreements
Geography - note
: This entry includes miscellaneous geographic information of significance not included elsewhere.
note 1: the country lies on major sea and air routes linking North and South America
note 2: Venezuela has some of the most unique geology in the world; tepuis are massive table-top mountains of the western Guiana
Highlands that tend to be isolated and thus support unique endemic plant and animal species; their sheer cliffsides account for some
of the most spectacular waterfalls in the world including Angel Falls, the world's highest (979 m) that drops off Auyan Tepui
Birth rate
18.5 births/1,000 population (2018 est.) country comparison to the world:
Death rate
5.3 deaths/1,000 population (2018 est.) country comparison to the world:
187
Social investment in Venezuela during the CHAVEZ administration reduced poverty from nearly 50% in 1999 to about 27% in 2011,
increased school enrollment, substantially decreased infant and child mortality, and improved access to potable water and sanitation
through social investment. "Missions" dedicated to education, nutrition, healthcare, and sanitation were funded through petroleum
revenues. The sustainability of this progress remains questionable, however, as the continuation of these social programs depends
on the prosperity of Venezuela's oil industry. In the long-term, education and health care spending may increase economic growth
and reduce income inequality, but rising costs and the staffing of new health care jobs with foreigners are slowing development.
While CHAVEZ was in power, more than one million predominantly middle- and upper-class Venezuelans are estimated to have emigrated.
The brain drain is attributed to a repressive political system, lack of economic opportunities, steep inflation, a high crime rate,
and corruption. Thousands of oil engineers emigrated to Canada, Colombia, and the United States following CHAVEZ's firing of over
20,000 employees of the state-owned petroleum company during a 2002-03 oil strike. Additionally, thousands of Venezuelans of European
descent have taken up residence in their ancestral homelands. Nevertheless, Venezuela has attracted hundreds of thousands of immigrants
from South America and southern Europe because of its lenient migration policy and the availability of education and health care.
Venezuela also has been a fairly accommodating host to Colombian refugees, numbering about 170,000 as of year-end 2016. However,
since 2014, falling oil prices have driven a major economic crisis that has pushed Venezuelans from all walks of life to migrate
or to seek asylum abroad to escape severe shortages of food, water, and medicine; soaring inflation; unemployment; and violence.
As of October 2018,an estimate 3 million Venezuelans were refugees or migrants worldwide, with 2.4 million in Latin America and the
Caribbean (notably Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, Panama, Chile, Guyana, the Dominican Republic, Aruba, and Curacao).
Asylum applications
increased significantly in the US and Brazil in 2016 and 2017. Several receiving countries are making efforts to increase immigration
restrictions and to deport illegal Venezuelan migrants - Ecuador and Peru in August 2018 began requiring valid passports for entry,
which are difficult to obtain for Venezuelans. Nevertheless, Venezuelans continue to migrate to avoid economic collapse at home.
Age structure
: This entry provides the distribution of the population according to age. Information is included by sex and age group as follows:
0-14 years (children), 15-24 years (early working age), 25-54 years (prime working age), 55-64 years (mature working age), 65 years
and over (elderly). The age structure of a population affects a nation's key socioeconomic issues. Countries with young populations
(high percentage under age 15) need to invest more in schools, while countries with older population . . .
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urban population: 88.2% of total population (2018) rate of urbanization: 1.28% annual rate of change (2015-20 est.)
Major urban areas
- population : 2.935 million CARACAS (capital), 2.179 million Maracaibo, 1.734 million Valencia, 1.178 million Maracay, 1.189 million Barquisimeto
(2018) Sex ratio
: This entry includes the number of males for each female in five age groups - at birth, under 15 years, 15-64 years, 65 years
and over, and for the total population. Sex ratio at birth has recently emerged as an indicator of certain kinds of sex discrimination
in some countries. For instance, high sex ratios at birth in some Asian countries are now attributed to sex-selective abortion and
infanticide due to a strong preference for sons. This will affect future marriage patterns and fertilit . . .
more
Life expectancy
at birth Total population: 76.2 years (2018 est.) male: 73.2 years (2018 est.) female: 79.3 years (2018 est.) country comparison to the
world: 93
Total fertility
rate : 2.3 children born/woman (2018 est.) country comparison to the world:
87
Unemployment, youth
ages 15-24 : total: 14.6% (2015 est.) male: NA (2015 est.) female: NA (2015 est.) country comparison to the world:
92
Economy - overview
: Venezuela remains highly dependent on oil revenues, which account for almost all export earnings and nearly half of the government's
revenue, despite a continued decline in oil production in 2017. In the absence of official statistics, foreign experts estimate that
GDP contracted 12% in 2017, inflation exceeded 2000%, people faced widespread shortages of consumer goods and medicine, and the central
bank's international reserves dwindled. In late 2017, Venezuela also entered selective default on some of its sovereign and state
oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A., (PDVSA) bonds. Domestic production and industry continues to severely underperform and
the Venezuelan Government continues to rely on imports to meet its basic food and consumer goods needs.
Falling oil prices since 2014 have aggravated Venezuela's economic crisis. Insufficient access to dollars, price controls, and
rigid labor regulations have led some US and multinational firms to reduce or shut down their Venezuelan operations. Market uncertainty
and PDVSA's poor cash flow have slowed investment in the petroleum sector, resulting in a decline in oil production.
Under President Nicolas MADURO, the Venezuelan Government's response to the economic crisis has been to increase state control
over the economy and blame the private sector for shortages. MADURO has given authority for the production and distribution of basic
goods to the military and to local socialist party member committees. The Venezuelan Government has maintained strict currency controls
since 2003. The government has been unable to sustain its mechanisms for distributing dollars to the private sector, in part because
it needed to withhold some foreign exchange reserves to make its foreign bond payments. As a result of price and currency controls,
local industries have struggled to purchase production inputs necessary to maintain their operations or sell goods at a profit on
the local market. Expansionary monetary policies and currency controls have created opportunities for arbitrage and corruption and
fueled a rapid increase in black market activity.
GDP (purchasing
power parity) : $381.6 billion (2017 est.) $443.7 billion (2016 est.) $531.1 billion (2015 est.) note: data are in 2017 dollars country comparison
to the world: 47
GDP - real growth
rate : -14% (2017 est.) -16.5% (2016 est.) -6.2% (2015 est.) country comparison to the world:
222
GDP - per capita
(PPP) : This entry shows GDP on a purchasing power parity basis divided by population as of 1 July for the same year.
$12,500 (2017 est.) $14,400 (2016 est.) $17,300 (2015 est.) note: data are in 2017 dollars country comparison to the world:
126
Gross national saving
: 12.1% of GDP (2017 est.) 8.6% of GDP (2016 est.) 31.8% of GDP (2015 est.) country comparison to the world:
150
GDP - composition,
by end use : household consumption: 68.5% (2017 est.) government consumption: 19.6% (2017 est.) investment in fixed capital: 13.9% (2017 est.)
investment in inventories: 1.7% (2017 est.) exports of goods and services: 7% (2017 est.) imports of goods and services: -10.7% (2017
est.)
GDP - composition,
by sector of origin : agriculture: 4.7% (2017 est.) industry: 40.4% (2017 est.) services: 54.9% (2017 est.)
Agriculture - products
: This entry is an ordered listing of major crops and products starting with the most important.
corn, sorghum, sugarcane, rice, bananas, vegetables, coffee; beef, pork, milk, eggs; fish
Labor force
: 14.21 million (2017 est.) country comparison to the world:
40
Unemployment rate
: This entry contains the percent of the labor force that is without jobs. Substantial underemployment might be noted.
27.1% (2017 est.) 20.6% (2016 est.) country comparison to the world:
199
Central bank discount
rate : This entry provides the annualized interest rate a country's central bank charges commercial, depository banks for loans
to meet temporary shortages of funds.
29.5% (2015) country comparison to the world:
1 Commercial bank
prime lending rate : This entry provides a simple average of annualized interest rates commercial banks charge on new loans,
denominated in the national currency, to their most credit-worthy customers.
21.1% (31 December 2017 est.) 20.78% (31 December 2016 est.) country comparison to the world:
12 Stock of narrow
money : This entry, also known as "M1," comprises the total quantity of currency in circulation (notes and coins) plus demand
deposits denominated in the national currency held by nonbank financial institutions, state and local governments, nonfinancial public
enterprises, and the private sector of the economy, measured at a specific point in time. National currency units have been converted
to US dollars at the closing exchange rate for the date of the information. Because of exchange rate moveme . . .
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$149.8 billion (31 December 2017 est.) $163.3 billion (31 December 2016 est.) country comparison to the world:
29 Stock of broad money
: This entry covers all of "Narrow money," plus the total quantity of time and savings deposits, credit union deposits, institutional
money market funds, short-term repurchase agreements between the central bank and commercial deposit banks, and other large liquid
assets held by nonbank financial institutions, state and local governments, nonfinancial public enterprises, and the private sector
of the economy. National currency units have been converted to US dollars at the closing exchange r . . .
more
Exports - partners
: US 34.8%, India 17.2%, China 16%, Netherlands Antilles 8.2%, Singapore 6.3%, Cuba 4.2% (2017)
Exports - commodities
: This entry provides a listing of the highest-valued exported products; it sometimes includes the percent of total dollar value.
petroleum and petroleum products, bauxite and aluminum, minerals, chemicals, agricultural products
Imports : This
entry provides the total US dollar amount of merchandise imports on a c.i.f. (cost, insurance, and freight) or f.o.b. (free on board)
basis. These figures are calculated on an exchange rate basis, i.e., not in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms.
$11 billion (2017 est.) $16.34 billion (2016 est.) country comparison to the world:
100 Imports - commodities
: This entry provides a listing of the highest-valued imported products; it sometimes includes the percent of total dollar value.
agricultural products, livestock, raw materials, machinery and equipment, transport equipment, construction materials, medical
equipment, petroleum products, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, iron and steel products
Imports - partners
: This entry provides a rank ordering of trading partners starting with the most important; it sometimes includes the percent
of total dollar value. US 24.8%, China 14.2%, Mexico 9.5% (2017)
"... There is a great deal of controversy about the true shape of the Venezuelan economy and whether Hugo Chavez' and Nicholas Maduro's reform and policies were crucial for the people of Venezuela or whether they were completely misguided and precipitated the current crises. Anybody and everybody seems to have very strong held views about this. But I don't simply because I lack the expertise to have any such opinions. So I decided to ask one of the most respected independent economists out there, Michael Hudson, for whom I have immense respect and whose analyses (including those he co-authored with Paul Craig Roberts ) seem to be the most credible and honest ones you can find. In fact, Paul Craig Roberts considers Hudson the " best economist in the world "! ..."
"... I am deeply grateful to Michael for his replies which, I hope, will contribute to a honest and objective understanding of what really is taking place in Venezuela. ..."
"... : Could you summarize the state of Venezuela's economy when Chavez came to power? ..."
"... : Could you outline the various reforms and changes introduced by Hugo Chavez? What did he do right, and what did he do wrong? ..."
"... : What are, in your opinion, the causes of the current economic crisis in Venezuela – is it primarily due to mistakes by Chavez and Maduro or is the main cause US sabotage, subversion and sanctions? ..."
"... : What in your opinion should Maduro do next (assuming he stays in power and the USA does not overthrow him) to rescue the Venezuelan economy? ..."
"... What about the plan to introduce a oil-based crypto currency? Will that be an effective alternative to the dying Venezuelan Bolivar? ..."
"... Trade, Develpoment and Foreign Debt ..."
"... : How much assistance do China, Russia and Iran provide and how much can they do to help? Do you think that these three countries together can help counter-act US sabotage, subversion and sanctions? ..."
"... : Venezuela kept a lot of its gold in the UK and money in the USA. How could Chavez and Maduro trust these countries or did they not have another choice? Are there viable alternatives to New York and London or are they still the "only game in town" for the world's central banks? ..."
"... Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire ..."
"... : What can other Latin American countries such as Bolivia, Nicaragua, Cuba and, maybe, Uruguay and Mexico do to help Venezuela? ..."
"... : Thank you very much for taking the time to reply to my questions! ..."
Introduction: There is a great deal of controversy about the true shape of the Venezuelan economy and whether Hugo Chavez'
and Nicholas Maduro's reform and policies were crucial for the people of Venezuela or whether they were completely misguided and
precipitated the current crises. Anybody and everybody seems to have very strong held views about this. But I don't simply because
I lack the expertise to have any such opinions. So I decided to ask one of the most respected independent economists out there,
Michael Hudson, for whom I have immense respect and whose analyses (including those he
co-authored with Paul Craig Roberts
) seem to be the most credible and honest ones you can find. In fact, Paul Craig Roberts considers Hudson the "
best economist in
the world "!
I am deeply grateful to Michael for his replies which, I hope, will contribute to a honest and objective understanding
of what really is taking place in Venezuela.
The Saker
The Saker : Could you summarize the state of Venezuela's economy when Chavez came to power?
Michael Hudson : Venezuela was an oil monoculture. Its export revenue was spent largely on importing food and other necessities
that it could have produced at home. Its trade was largely with the United States. So despite its oil wealth, it ran up foreign debt.
From the outset, U.S. oil companies have feared that Venezuela might someday use its oil revenues to benefit its overall population
instead of letting the U.S. oil industry and its local comprador aristocracy siphon off its wealth. So the oil industry – backed
by U.S. diplomacy – held Venezuela hostage in two ways.
First of all, oil refineries were not built in Venezuela, but in Trinidad and in the southern U.S. Gulf Coast states. This enabled
U.S. oil companies – or the U.S. Government – to leave Venezuela without a means of "going it alone" and pursuing an independent
policy with its oil, as it needed to have this oil refined. It doesn't help to have oil reserves if you are unable to get this oil
refined so as to be usable.
Second, Venezuela's central bankers were persuaded to pledge their oil reserves and all assets of the state oil sector (including
Citgo) as collateral for its foreign debt. This meant that if Venezuela defaulted (or was forced into default by U.S. banks refusing
to make timely payment on its foreign debt), bondholders and U.S. oil majors would be in a legal position to take possession of Venezuelan
oil assets.
These pro-U.S. policies made Venezuela a typically polarized Latin American oligarchy. Despite being nominally rich in oil revenue,
its wealth was concentrated in the hands of a pro-U.S. oligarchy that let its domestic development be steered by the World Bank and
IMF. The indigenous population, especially its rural racial minority as well as the urban underclass, was excluded from sharing in
the country's oil wealth. The oligarchy's arrogant refusal to share the wealth, or even to make Venezuela self-sufficient in essentials,
made the election of Hugo Chavez a natural outcome.
The Saker : Could you outline the various reforms and changes introduced by Hugo Chavez? What did he do right, and what did
he do wrong?
Michael Hudson : Chavez sought to restore a mixed economy to Venezuela, using its government revenue – mainly from oil, of course
– to develop infrastructure and domestic spending on health care, education, employment to raise living standards and productivity
for his electoral constituency.
What he was unable to do was to clean up the embezzlement and built-in rake-off of income from the oil sector. And he was unable
to stem the capital flight of the oligarchy, taking its wealth and moving it abroad – while running away themselves.
This was not "wrong". It merely takes a long time to change an economy's disruption – while the U.S. is using sanctions and "dirty
tricks" to stop that process.
The Saker : What are, in your opinion, the causes of the current economic crisis in Venezuela – is it primarily due to mistakes
by Chavez and Maduro or is the main cause US sabotage, subversion and sanctions?
Michael Hudson : There is no way that Chavez and Maduro could have pursued a pro-Venezuelan policy aimed at achieving economic
independence without inciting fury, subversion and sanctions from the United States. American foreign policy remains as focused on
oil as it was when it invaded Iraq under Dick Cheney's regime. U.S. policy is to treat Venezuela as an extension of the U.S. economy,
running a trade surplus in oil to spend in the United States or transfer its savings to U.S. banks.
By imposing sanctions that prevent Venezuela from gaining access to its U.S. bank deposits and the assets of its state-owned Citco,
the United States is making it impossible for Venezuela to pay its foreign debt. This is forcing it into default, which U.S. diplomats
hope to use as an excuse to foreclose on Venezuela's oil resources and seize its foreign assets much as Paul Singer hedge fund sought
to do with Argentina's foreign assets.
Just as U.S. policy under Kissinger was to make Chile's "economy scream," so the U.S. is following the same path against Venezuela.
It is using that country as a "demonstration effect" to warn other countries not to act in their self-interest in any way that prevents
their economic surplus from being siphoned off by U.S. investors.
The Saker : What in your opinion should Maduro do next (assuming he stays in power and the USA does not overthrow him) to
rescue the Venezuelan economy?
Michael Hudson : I cannot think of anything that President Maduro can do that he is not doing. At best, he can seek foreign support
– and demonstrate to the world the need for an alternative international financial and economic system.
ORDER IT NOW
He already has begun to do this by trying to withdraw Venezuela's gold from the Bank of England and Federal Reserve. This is turning
into "asymmetrical warfare," threatening to de-sanctify the dollar standard in international finance. The refusal of England and
the United States to grant an elected government control of its foreign assets demonstrates to the entire world that U.S. diplomats
and courts alone can and will control foreign countries as an extension of U.S. nationalism.
The price of the U.S. economic attack on Venezuela is thus to fracture the global monetary system. Maduro's defensive move is
showing other countries the need to protect themselves from becoming "another Venezuela" by finding a new safe haven and paying agent
for their gold, foreign exchange reserves and foreign debt financing, away from the dollar, sterling and euro areas.
The only way that Maduro can fight successfully is on the institutional level, upping the ante to move "outside the box." His
plan – and of course it is a longer-term plan – is to help catalyze a new international economic order independent of the U.S. dollar
standard. It will work in the short run only if the United States believes that it can emerge from this fight as an honest financial
broker, honest banking system and supporter of democratically elected regimes. The Trump administration is destroying illusion more
thoroughly than any anti-imperialist critic or economic rival could do!
Over the longer run, Maduro also must develop Venezuelan agriculture, along much the same lines that the United States protected
and developed its agriculture under the New Deal legislation of the 1930s – rural extension services, rural credit, seed advice,
state marketing organizations for crop purchase and supply of mechanization, and the same kind of price supports that the United
States has long used to subsidize domestic farm investment to increase productivity.
The Saker: What about the plan to introduce a oil-based crypto currency? Will that be an effective alternative to the dying
Venezuelan Bolivar?
Michael Hudson : Only a national government can issue a currency. A "crypto" currency tied to the price of oil would become a
hedging vehicle, prone to manipulation and price swings by forward sellers and buyers. A national currency must be based on the ability
to tax, and Venezuela's main tax source is oil revenue, which is being blocked from the United States. So Venezuela's position is
like that of the German mark coming out of its hyperinflation of the early 1920s. The only solution involves balance-of-payments
support. It looks like the only such support will come from outside the dollar sphere.
The solution to any hyperinflation must be negotiated diplomatically and be supported by other governments. My history of international
trade and financial theory, Trade, Develpoment and Foreign Debt , describes the German reparations problem and how its hyperinflation
was solved by the Rentenmark.
Venezuela's economic-rent tax would fall on oil, and luxury real estate sites, as well as monopoly prices, and on high incomes
(mainly financial and monopoly income). This requires a logic to frame such tax and monetary policy. I have tried to explain how
to achieve monetary and hence political independence for the past half-century. China is applying such policy most effectively. It
is able to do so because it is a large and self-sufficient economy in essentials, running a large enough export surplus to pay for
its food imports. Venezuela is in no such position. That is why it is looking to China for support at this time.
The Saker : How much assistance do China, Russia and Iran provide and how much can they do to help? Do you think that these
three countries together can help counter-act US sabotage, subversion and sanctions?
Michael Hudson : None of these countries have a current capacity to refine Venezuelan oil. This makes it difficult for them to
take payment in Venezuelan oil. Only a long-term supply contract (paid for in advance) would be workable. And even in that case,
what would China and Russia do if the United States simply grabbed their property in Venezuela, or refused to let Russia's oil company
take possession of Citco? In that case, the only response would be to seize U.S. investments in their own country as compensation.
At least China and Russia can provide an alternative bank clearing mechanism to SWIFT, so that Venezuela can by pass the U.S.
financial system and keep its assets from being grabbed at will by U.S. authorities or bondholders. And of course, they can provide
safe-keeping for however much of Venezuela's gold it can get back from New York and London.
Looking ahead, therefore, China, Russia, Iran and other countries need to set up a new international court to adjudicate the coming
diplomatic crisis and its financial and military consequences. Such a court – and its associated international bank as an alternative
to the U.S.-controlled IMF and World Bank – needs a clear ideology to frame a set of principles of nationhood and international rights
with power to implement and enforce its judgments.
This would confront U.S. financial strategists with a choice: if they continue to treat the IMF, World Bank, ITO and NATO as extensions
of increasingly aggressive U.S. foreign policy, they will risk isolating the United States. Europe will have to choose whether to
remain a U.S. economic and military satellite, or to throw in its lot with Eurasia.
However, Daniel Yergin reports in the Wall Street Journal (Feb. 7) that China is trying to hedge its bets by opening a back-door
negotiation with Guaido's group, apparently to get the same deal that it has negotiated with Maduro's government. But any such deal
seems unlikely to be honored in practice, given U.S. animosity toward China and Guaido's total reliance on U.S. covert support.
The Saker : Venezuela kept a lot of its gold in the UK and money in the USA. How could Chavez and Maduro trust these countries
or did they not have another choice? Are there viable alternatives to New York and London or are they still the "only game in town"
for the world's central banks?
Michael Hudson : There was never real trust in the Bank of England or Federal Reserve, but it seemed unthinkable that they would
refuse to permit an official depositor from withdrawing its own gold. The usual motto is "Trust but verify." But the unwillingness
(or inability) of the Bank of England to verify means that the formerly unthinkable has now arrived: Have these central banks sold
this gold forward in the post-London Gold Pool and its successor commodity markets in their attempt to keep down the price so as
to maintain the appearance of a solvent U.S. dollar standard.
Paul Craig Roberts has described how this system works. There are forward markets for currencies, stocks and bonds. The Federal
Reserve can offer to buy a stock in three months at, say, 10% over the current price. Speculators will by the stock, bidding up the
price, so as to take advantage of "the market's" promise to buy the stock. So by the time three months have passed, the price will
have risen. That is largely how the U.S. "Plunge Protection Team" has supported the U.S. stock market.
The system works in reverse to hold down gold prices. The central banks holding gold can get together and offer to sell gold at
a low price in three months. "The market" will realize that with low-priced gold being sold, there's no point in buying
more gold and bidding its price up. So the forward-settlement market shapes today's market.
The question is, have gold buyers (such as the Russian and Chinese government) bought so much gold that the U.S. Fed and the Bank
of England have actually had to "make good" on their forward sales, and steadily depleted their gold? In this case, they would have
been "living for the moment," keeping down gold prices for as long as they could, knowing that once the world returns to the pre-1971
gold-exchange standard for intergovernmental balance-of-payments deficits, the U.S. will run out of gold and be unable to maintain
its overseas military spending (not to mention its trade deficit and foreign disinvestment in the U.S. stock and bond markets). My
book on Super-Imperialism explains why running out of gold forced the Vietnam War to an end. The same logic would apply today to
America's vast network of military bases throughout the world.
Refusal of England and the U.S. to pay Venezuela means that other countries realize that foreign official gold reserves can be
held hostage to U.S. foreign policy, and even to judgments by U.S. courts to award this gold to foreign creditors or to whoever might
bring a lawsuit under U.S. law against these countries.
This hostage-taking now makes it urgent for other countries to develop a viable alternative, especially as the world de-dedollarizes
and a gold-exchange standard remains the only way of constraining the military-induced balance of payments deficit of the United
States or any other country mounting a military attack. A military empire is very expensive – and gold is a "peaceful" constraint
on military-induced payments deficits. (I spell out the details in my Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire
(1972), updated in German as Finanzimperium (2017).
The U.S. has overplayed its hand in destroying the foundation of the dollar-centered global financial order. That order has enabled
the United States to be "the exceptional nation" able to run balance-of-payments deficits and foreign debt that it has no intention
(or ability) to pay, claiming that the dollars thrown off by its foreign military spending "supply" other countries with their central
bank reserves (held in the form of loans to the U.S. Treasury – Treasury bonds and bills – to finance the U.S. budget deficit and
its military spending, as well as the largely military U.S. balance-of-payments deficit.
Given the fact that the EU is acting as a branch of NATO and the U.S. banking system, that alternative would have to be associated
with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the gold would have to be kept in Russia and/or China.
The Saker : What can other Latin American countries such as Bolivia, Nicaragua, Cuba and, maybe, Uruguay and Mexico do to
help Venezuela?
Michael Hudson : The best thing neighboring Latin American countries can do is to join in creating a vehicle to promote de-dollarization
and, with it, an international institution to oversee the writedown of debts that are beyond the ability of countries to pay without
imposing austerity and thereby destroying their economies.
An alternative also is needed to the World Bank that would make loans in domestic currency, above all to subsidize investment
in domestic food production so as to protect the economy against foreign food-sanctions – the equivalent of a military siege to force
surrender by imposing famine conditions. This World Bank for Economic Acceleration would put the development of self-reliance for
its members first, instead of promoting export competition while loading borrowers down with foreign debt that would make them prone
to the kind of financial blackmail that Venezuela is experiencing.
Being a Roman Catholic country, Venezuela might ask for papal support for a debt write-down and an international institution to
oversee the ability to pay by debtor countries without imposing austerity, emigration, depopulation and forced privatization of the
public domain.
Two international principles are needed. First, no country should be obliged to pay foreign debt in a currency (such as the dollar
or its satellites) whose banking system acts to prevents payment.
Second, no country should be obliged to pay foreign debt at the price of losing its domestic autonomy as a state: the right to
determine its own foreign policy, to tax and to create its own money, and to be free of having to privatize its public assets to
pay foreign creditors. Any such debt is a "bad loan" reflecting the creditor's own irresponsibility or, even worse, pernicious asset
grab in a foreclosure that was the whole point of the loan.
The Saker : Thank you very much for taking the time to reply to my questions!
As the US strives to overthrow the democratic and independent Venezuelan government, the
historical record regarding the short, middle and long-term consequences are mixed.
We will proceed to examine the consequences and impact of US intervention in Venezuela over
the past half century.
We will then turn to examine the success and failure of US 'regime changes' throughout Latin
America and the Caribbean.
Venezuela: Results and Perspectives 1950-2019
During the post WWII decade, the US, working through the CIA and the Pentagon, brought to
power authoritarian client regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, Peru, Chile, Guatemala, Brazil and
several other countries.
In the case of Venezuela, the US backed a near decade long military dictatorship (Perez
Jimenez ) roughly between 1951-58. The dictatorship was overthrown in 1958 and replaced by a
left-center coalition during a brief interim period. Subsequently, the US reshuffled its
policy, and embraced and promoted center-right regimes led by social and christian democrats
which alternated rule for nearly forty years.
In the 1990's US client regimes riddled with corruption and facing a deepening
socio-economic crises were voted out of power and replaced by the independent, anti-imperialist
government led by President Chavez.
The free and democratic election of President Chavez withstood and defeated several US led
'regime changes' over the following two decades.
Following the election of President Maduro, under US direction,Washington mounted the
political machinery for a new regime change. Washington launched, in full throttle, a coup by
the winter of 2019.
The record of US intervention in Venezuela is mixed: a middle term military coup lasted less
than a decade; US directed electoral regimes were in power for forty years; its replacement by
an elected anti-imperialist populist government has been in power for nearly 20 years. A
virulent US directed coup is underfoot today.
The Venezuela experience with 'regime change' speaks to US capacity to consummate long-term
control if it can reshuffle its power base from a military dictatorship into an electoral
regime, financed through the pillage of oil, backed by a reliable military and 'legitimated' by
alternating client political parties which accept submission to Washington.
US client regimes are ruled by oligarchic elites, with little entrepreneurial capacity,
living off of state rents (oil revenues).
Tied closely to the US, the ruling elites are unable to secure popular loyalty. Client
regimes depend on the military strength of the Pentagon -- but that is also their weakness.
Regime Change in Regional-Historical Perspective
Puppet-building is an essential strategic goal of the US imperial state.
The results vary over time depending on the capacity of independent governments to succeed
in nation-building.
US long-term puppet-building has been most successful in small nations with vulnerable
economies.
The US directed coup in Guatemala has lasted over sixty-years – from 1954 -2019. Major
popular indigenous insurgencies have been repressed via US military advisers and aid.
Similar successful US puppet-building has occurred in Panama, Grenada, Dominican Republic
and Haiti. Being small and poor and having weak military forces, the US is willing to directly
invade and occupy the countries quickly and at small cost in military lives and economic
costs.
In the above countries Washington succeeded in imposing and maintaining puppet regimes for
prolonged periods of time.
The US has directed military coups over the past half century with contradictory
results.
In the case of Honduras, the Pentagon was able to overturn a progressive liberal democratic
government of very short duration. The Honduran army was under US direction, and elected
President Manual Zelaya depended on an unarmed electoral popular majority. Following the
successful coup the Honduran puppet-regime remained under US rule for the next decade and
likely beyond.
Chile has been under US tutelage for the better part of the 20th century with a brief
respite during a Popular Front government between 1937-41 and a democratic socialist government
between 1970-73. The US military directed coup in 1973 imposed the Pinochet dictatorship which
lasted for seventeen years. It was followed by an electoral regime which continued the
Pinochet-US neo-liberal agenda, including the reversal of all the popular national and social
reforms. In a word, Chile remained within the US political orbit for the better part of a
half-century.
Chile's democratic-socialist regime (1970-73) never armed its people nor established
overseas economic linkage to sustain an independent foreign policy.
It is not surprising that in recent times Chile followed US commands calling for the
overthrow of Venezuela's President Maduro.
Contradictory Puppet-Building
Several US coups were reversed, for the longer or shorter duration.
The classical case of a successful defeat of a client regime is Cuba which overthrew a
ten-year old US client, the Batista dictatorship, and proceeded to successfully resist a CIA
directed invasion and economic blockade for the better part of a half century (up to the
present day).
Cuba's defeat of puppet restorationist policy was a result of the Castro leadership's
decision to arm the people, expropriate and take control of hostile US and multinational
corporations and establish strategic overseas allies – USSR , China and more recently
Venezuela.
In contrast, a US military backed military coup in Brazil (1964) endured for over two
decades, before electoral politics were partially restored under elite leadership.
Twenty years of failed neo-liberal economic policies led to the election of the social
reformist Workers Party (WP) which proceeded to implement extensive anti-poverty programs
within the context of neo-liberal policies.
After a decade and a half of social reforms and a relatively independent foreign policy, the
WP succumbed to a downturn of the commodity dependent economy and a hostile state (namely
judiciary and military) and was replaced by a pair of far-right US client regimes which
functioned under Wall Street and Pentagon direction.
The US frequently intervened in Bolivia, backing military coups and client regimes against
short-term national populist regimes (1954, 1970 and 2001).
In 2005 a popular uprising led to free elections and the election of Evo Morales, the leader
of the coca farmers movements. Between 2005 – 2019 (the present period) President Morales
led a moderate left-of-center anti imperialist government.
ORDER IT NOW
Unsuccessful efforts by the US to overthrow the Morales government were a result of several
factors: Morales organized and mobilized a coalition of peasants and workers (especially miners
and coca farmers). He secured the loyalty of the military, expelled US Trojan Horse "aid
agencies' and extended control over oil and gas and promoted ties with agro business.
The combination of an independent foreign policy, a mixed economy , high growth and moderate
reforms neutralized US puppet-building.
Not so the case in Argentina. Following a bloody coup (1976) in which the US backed military
murdered 30,000 citizens, the military was defeated by the British army in the Malvinas war and
withdrew after seven years in power.
The post military puppet regime ruled and plundered for a decade before collapsing in 2001.
They were overthrown by a popular insurrection. However, the radical left lacking cohesion was
replaced by center-left (Kirchner-Fernandez) regimes which ruled for the better part of a
decade (2003 – 15).
The progressive social welfare – neo-liberal regimes entered in crises and were ousted
by a US backed puppet regime (Macri) in 2015 which proceeded to reverse reforms, privatize the
economy and subordinate the state to US bankers and speculators.
After two years in power, the puppet regime faltered, the economy spiraled downward and
another cycle of repression and mass protest emerged. The US puppet regime's rule is tenuous,
the populace fills the streets, while the Pentagon sharpens its knives and prepares puppets to
replace their current client regime.
Conclusion
The US has not succeeded in consolidating regime changes among the large countries with mass
organizations and military supporters.
Washington has succeeded in overthrowing popular – national regimes in Brazil, and
Argentina . However, over time puppet regimes have been reversed.
While the US resorts to largely a single 'track' (military coups and invasions)in
overwhelming smaller and more vulnerable popular governments, it relies on 'multiple tracks'
strategy with regard to large and more formidable countries.
In the former cases, usually a call to the military or the dispatch of the marines is enough
to snuff an electoral democracy.
In the latter case, the US relies on a multi-proxy strategy which includes a mass media
blitz, labeling democrats as dictatorships, extremists, corrupt, security threats, etc.
As the tension mounts, regional client and European states are organized to back the local
puppets.
Phony "Presidents" are crowned by the US President whose index finger counters the vote of
millions of voters. Street demonstrations and violence paid and organized by the CIA
destabilize the economy; business elites boycott and paralyze production and distribution
Millions are spent in bribing judges and military officials.
If the regime change can be accomplished by local military satraps, the US refrains from
direct military intervention.
Regime changes among larger and wealthier countries have between one or two decades
duration. However, the switch to an electoral puppet regime may consolidate imperial power over
a longer period – as was the case of Chile.
Where there is powerful popular support for a democratic regime, the US will provide the
ideological and military support for a large-scale massacre, as was the case in Argentina.
The coming showdown in Venezuela will be a case of a bloody regime change as the US will
have to murder hundreds of thousands to destroy the millions who have life-long and deep
commitments to their social gains , their loyalty to the nation and their dignity.
In contrast the bourgeoisie, and their followers among political traitors, will seek revenge
and resort to the vilest forms of violence in order to strip the poor of their social advances
and their memories of freedom and dignity.
It is no wonder that the Venezuela masses are girding for a prolonged and decisive struggle:
everything can be won or lost in this final confrontation with the Empire and its puppets.
Did you know this information? January 18, 2019 The US Has Military Forces in Over 160
Countries, but the Pentagon Is Hiding the Exact Numbers
The US has 95% of the world's foreign military bases, with personnel in more than 160
countries. But the Pentagon is leaving hundreds of outposts out of its official reports.
The U.S. and its allies have decided to throw their weight behind yet another coup attempt
in Venezuela. As usual, they claim that their objectives are democracy and freedom. Nothing
could be farther from the truth...
On January 23rd, 2019 Venezuela's opposition leader Juan Guaidó declared himself
acting president, and called on the armed forces to disobey the government. Very few had ever
heard of this man -- he had never actually run for president. Guaidó is the head of
Venezuela's national assembly; a position very similar to speaker of the house.
Within minutes of this declaration U.S. president Donald Trump took to twitter and
recognized Guaidó as interim president of Venezuela; writing off the administration of
Nicolas Maduro as "illegitimate". U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo followed by urging
Venezuela's military to "restore democracy", affirming that the US would back Mr Guaidó
in his attempts to establish a government. They also promised
20 million dollars in "humanitarian" aid . To put this into context, Trump is on record
saying he was " Not
Going to Rule Out a Military Option " in Venezuela.
This is roughly the equivalent of Nancy Pelosi or Mitch Mcconnell declaring themselves
president, calling on the military to overthrow Trump, and having China pledge to fund and
assist the effort.
Now if you happen to be in the camp that wouldn't actually mind seeing Donald Trump forcibly
removed from office, I would encourage you to imagine replacing Trump's name with Obama, Bush,
Merkel or Macron.
You know there have been a lot of protests in France, and the Yellow Vests have demanded
that Macron step down Why don't we restore democracy in Paris?
Let's get this straight. Trump is an illegitimate president and should be removed from
office (because of Russian interference), but you're perfectly comfortable with that same
illegitimate president toppling foreign governments via twitter?
Though support for Guaidó was quickly parroted by Washington's most dependable
allies, and lauded by virtually every western media outlet, the Venezuelan military responded
by condemning the coup, and reconfirmed
their loyalty to Maduro .
That same day Pompeo announced that Elliott Abrams -- the man who oversaw regime change wars
in Nicaragua and El Salvador , was
deeply involved in the Iran Contra scandal, and who was an architect of both the Iraq war and
the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela (which culminated in the kidnapping of Maduro's predecessor
Hugo Chavez) -- would be in charge of the effort to "restore democracy and prosperity to their
country".
So why do you suppose Washington really wants regime change in Venezuela? You'd have to be
pretty naive to buy the "democracy and prosperity" drivel.
They talk about how the Venezuelan economy is in shambles, but by their own admission (
and according to the U.N. ) U.S. sanctions have played a significant role in creating that
situation.
"With respect to Libya I'm interested in Libya if we take the oil. If we don't take the
oil no interest. We have to have Look, if we have wars, we have to win the war. What we do is
take over the country and hand the keys to people who don't like us. I'll tell you what Iraq,
100% Iran takes over Iraq after we leave, and what really happens with Iraq is they want the
oil fields. And I have it on very good authority that Iran probably won't even be shooting a
bullet because they are getting along better with the Iraqi leaders better than we are. After
all of those lives, and after all of the money we spent. And if that's going to happen we
take the oil."
Maduro's predecessor Hugo Chavez nationalized the oil industry and used the proceeds to fund
his socialist vision for the country. Now you could make the case that this vision was flawed,
and horribly mismanaged, however he had strong public support for this mandate; so much support
in fact, that when U.S. backed coup plotters kidnapped Hugo Chavez in 2002 crowds took to the
streets en mass and he was quickly reinstated.
Which brings us back to Juan Guaidó. There's not much information available on Mr.
Guaidó, but if you look up the man who tapped him to lead the opposition party Voluntad
Popular you'll find Washington's fingerprints all over the place. Leopoldo Lopez, the founder
of Voluntad Popular,
orchestrated the protests in 2002 that led up to the kidnapping of Hugo Chavez .
Compared to who? Which paragon of good governance will we refer to as the model? Trump?
Theresa May? Angel Merkel? Macron? Take your time.
This isn't democracy, it's a neo-colonial power grab. Juan Guaidó never ran for the
office he claimed, and the fact that he directly colluded with a foreign nation to overthrow
the man who was elected president marks him as a traitor.
Juan Guaidó is a puppet. If installed, he will serve the interests who bought his
ticket. Venezuela's oil industry will be privatized, and the profits will be sucked out of the
country by western corporations.
What's happening in Venezuela right now is a replay of the 1973 U.S. backed coup in Chile,
where the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, was overthrown, and
replaced with the military dictatorship of Pinochet. Pinochet murdered over 3000 political
opponents during his rule, and tortured over 30,000, but he was friendly to American business
interests so Washington looked the other way.
One could make the case that Maduro is incompetent. One could make the case that his
economic theories are trash. (The same can be said for the haircuts in suits calling for his
removal.) But the reality of the matter is that unless you happen to be a Venezuelan citizen,
how Venezuela is governed is actually none of your business.
Given how things turned out in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine you'd think
people would get the hint. When it comes to spreading democracy, you suck. U.S. regime change
operations have left nothing but chaos, death and destruction in their wake. If you want to
make the world a better place, maybe, just maybe, you should start at home.
Venezuelan officials have announced the seizure of a large shipment of American weapons
which they say were bound for anti-Maduro "terrorist groups" . This comes following US national
security advisor John Bolton's pledge to deliver "humanitarian aid" into the country, covertly
if need be, despite embattled President Nicolas Maduro's vow to prevent such unauthorized
shipments from entering.
WASHINGTON -- In an impassioned call for preemptive action against the Middle Eastern
nation, United States national security advisor John Bolton insisted Thursday that Iran was
likely harboring the dangerous terrorist Osama bin Laden. "For the good of our nation, we must
act immediately," said Bolton, citing several intelligence reports providing significant
evidence that Iran is currently providing sanctuary to the Al-Qaeda leader and mastermind of
the Sept. 11 attacks.
"We must never rest until this fugitive is brought to justice, and the only way to achieve
that is through repeated and prolonged military strikes on Iran.
We have reason to believe that he's living in a compound there where he's training a legion
of bloodthirsty Iranian civilians to take up arms as the next generation of terrorists. It is
our solemn duty as the international safeguard of freedom to prevent this at all costs."
At press time, Bolton had left the podium to follow up on an important tip that Iranian
leaders had hired American nuclear physicist Otto Gunther Octavius.
Sanctions without an approval by UN are criminal and represent a war crime.
Notable quotes:
"... Russia shows no signs of abandoning its increasingly beleaguered and isolated ally. Mr. Putin has called Mr. Maduro to relay his support for the regime, and Russian officials reacted angrily to President Trump's suggestion Sunday that U.S. military action was an option to resolve the crisis. ..."
"... "The international community's goal should be to help [ Venezuela ], without destructive meddling from beyond its borders," Alexander Shchetinin, head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Latin American department, told the Interfax news agency Monday. ..."
"... Russia has repeatedly opposed U.S. suggestions of foreign intervention to install opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela 's interim president, and supported Mr. Maduro 's calls for mediation on the crisis. ..."
"... But with Mr. Maduro defying calls to step down, the Russian mission may be more extensive than reported, said John Marulanda, a U.S.-trained intelligence officer and adviser to conservative Colombian President Ivan Duque, an opponent of Mr. Maduro . Mr. Marulanda said the recent Russian arrivals are special forces -- Spetsnaz -- who are being embedded among Venezuela 's elite military units to better resist any U.S. intervention or internal coup against Mr. Maduro . ..."
Under anti-U.S. populist leader Hugo Chavez, Mr. Maduro 's late predecessor and
political mentor, Russia became one of Venezuela 's strongest allies with
economic ties including crude oil, loans and arms sales. That helps explain why Moscow has emerged as one of Mr. Maduro 's most
vocal defenders and one of the biggest critics of the pressure campaign waged by Washington and a number of
countries in Latin America.
The pressure grew Monday as France, Germany, Britain and 13 other European countries
announced that they were withdrawing their recognition of Mr. Maduro and called for new
national elections as soon as possible. The EU powers held off in joining the U.S. pressure
campaign to see whether Venezuela would agree to new
elections. "We are working for the return of full democracy in Venezuela : human rights, elections and
no more political prisoners," Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told reporters in Madrid on
Monday.
But Russia shows
no signs of abandoning its increasingly beleaguered and isolated ally. Mr. Putin has called Mr. Maduro to relay his support for
the regime, and Russian officials reacted angrily to President Trump's suggestion Sunday that
U.S. military action was an option to resolve the crisis.
"The international community's goal should be to help [ Venezuela ], without destructive meddling
from beyond its borders," Alexander Shchetinin, head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Latin
American department, told the Interfax news agency Monday.
Russia has
repeatedly opposed U.S. suggestions of foreign intervention to install opposition leader Juan
Guaido as Venezuela 's interim president, and
supported Mr.
Maduro 's calls for mediation on the crisis.
The arrival of 400 Russian military contractors after Mr. Trump's Jan. 23 recognition of Mr.
Guaido, the head of the National Assembly, triggered speculation that Moscow was reinforcing Mr. Maduro 's personal security
or even preparing his evacuation.
But with Mr.
Maduro defying calls to step down, the Russian mission may be more extensive than reported,
said John Marulanda, a U.S.-trained intelligence officer and adviser to conservative Colombian
President Ivan Duque, an opponent of Mr. Maduro . Mr. Marulanda said the
recent Russian arrivals are special forces -- Spetsnaz -- who are being embedded among
Venezuela 's
elite military units to better resist any U.S. intervention or internal coup against Mr. Maduro .
The strong support for Venezuela has another motive for
Moscow , analysts
say: to increase the diplomatic, economic and military cost of any campaign by Washington to oust
Mr. Maduro
.
Joseph Humire, a lecturer for the U.S. Army's 7th Special Forces Group, said in an interview
that Russia wants to
"draw the U.S. into a quagmire," which Mr. Maduro has warned that would be
"worse than Vietnam."
Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino recently announced that he was inviting Russian
combat pilots who fought in Syria's civil war to "share their experience" with Venezuela's air
force. Playing the long game
Mr. Marulanda said Moscow is playing a long-term game aimed at
pressuring the U.S. along its southern borders to counter NATO moves along Russia 's border with the Baltic states
and Ukraine. Recent visits to Venezuela by nuclear-capable Tupolev 106
strategic bombers represented a clear show of force and support.
" Russia wants to
at least have a 'symbolic involvement' in Latin America as payback for U.S. intervention in the
[Russian] 'Near Abroad,'" Vladimir Rouvinski, a foreign policy analyst at Icesi University in
Colombia, recently told the Al Jazeera news website.
Then there's the money aspect.
Venezuela ,
with the world's largest proven oil reserves helping fill government coffers, is Russia 's second-biggest arms
client after India, the Pentagon said. U.S. analysts calculate that Caracas has purchased more
than $11 billion in Russian hardware over the past decade.
Acquisitions include high-performance Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets equipped with cruise-type
BrahMos missiles; Mi-35m attack helicopters; surface-to-air SS-200 and Pechorev missile
batteries; T-72 tanks; and production plants for AK-103 rifles.
Russia is also
building a cyberwarfare base on the island of Orchila off Venezuela 's northern coast operated by
Cuban technicians. Through military leverage, Russia has gained major oil concessions in
mainly offshore drilling blocs between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago.
Russia is interested
in keeping Venezuelan oil production at reduced levels to maintain high world prices for its
own oil, energy analysts say.
Russian companies also have been using Venezuela to penetrate the U.S. and other
energy markets closed off to them by sanctions. Russia 's main state oil company, Rosneft,
has lent $6 billion to Venezuela in recent years through
negotiations in which Venezuela 's state-owned oil firm, PDVSA,
offered its U.S. subsidiary, Citgo, as collateral, according to U.S. intelligence sources.
The Trump administration has tried
to head off such maneuvers by placing PDVSA's U.S.-based assets under control of the
alternative government that Mr. Guaido is trying to form.
Some say the Kremlin isn't looking for a "win" in Venezuela so much as it is trying to
entangle the Trump administration in
another long, grinding foreign policy crisis with no resolution in sight.
"It would demonstrate the failure of the American strategy of unlawful regime change and the
success of the Russian line of supporting legitimate power," Vladimir Frolov, a Russian foreign
policy analyst, wrote in a recent commentary on the Republic.ru news website.
Mr. Marulanda said Russia is building an anti-U.S. "tripod" in
the Caribbean region linking leftist governments in Venezuela , Cuba and Nicaragua. The strategy is unlikely
to please military planners in Washington .
" Russia has
taken a big gamble," said Evan Ellis, a Latin America specialist with the U.S. Army War
College.
"If Maduro falls, Moscow 's position in the Western
Hemisphere would collapse, as its other allies would soon be equally pressured by democratic
revolts."
This reminds me EuroMaydan. Poland, Sweden and Germany were very active promoters of opposition.
Notable quotes:
"... Imposing some decisions or trying to legitimize an attempt to usurp power, in our view, is both direct and indirect interference in the internal affairs of Venezuela," ..."
The UK, France, Spain, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Netherlands,
Germany, Portugal,among a number of countries, have announced their recognition of Juan Guaido
as Venezuela's interim president Domino effect ensues as EU leaders line up to recognise
Venezuela's Guaido
Europe has begun turning its back on Venezuela's incumbent president, Nicolas Maduro, after
he missed his Sunday deadline to call for presidential elections to take place. One by one, European leaders publicly announced their recognition of National Assembly chief,
Juan Guaido, as the country's interim president. But according to Reuters , diplomatic sources said Italy blocked a joint EU position to
recognise Guido as the interim leader, as the government in Rome is deeply divided over the
issue.
Italy
vetoed EU recognition of Venezuelan opposition leader Guaido
4 Feb, 2019
Rome has effectively derailed an EU statement meant to recognize
Juan Guaido as Venezuela's interim leader if President Nicolas Maduro fails to set up snap
elections, a Five Star Movement source confirmed to RT. Italy announced the veto at an informal
meeting of EU foreign ministers that started on January 31 in Romania, the source said. The
statement, which was supposed to be delivered by EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini
recognized Guaido as interim president if snap elections were not held.
EU states' recognition of Guaido is 'direct interference' in Venezuela's affairs –
Kremlin
Moscow slammed EU states for trying to legitimize "an attempt to usurp power" in
Venezuela after a number of key European countries recognized opposition figure Juan Guaido as
interim president. " Imposing some decisions or trying to legitimize an attempt to usurp
power, in our view, is both direct and indirect interference in the internal affairs of
Venezuela," Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, told the media
on Monday, while commenting on the recognition of Guaido.
The freezing of Venezuelan gold by the Bank of England is a signal to all countries out of
step with US interests to withdraw their money, according to economist and co-founder of
Democracy at Work, Professor Richard Wolff. He told RT America that Britain and its central
bank have shown themselves to be "under the thumb of the United States."
"That is a signal to every country that has or may have difficulties with the US, [that
they had] better get their money out of England and out of London because it's not the safe
place as it once was," he said.
This was true in 2015 for Syria. Now this is true for Venezuela... So one can expect iether chemical attack opposition from Madura
government or "Snipergate" in EuroMaydan style. Or may some some more sophisticated, more nasty "false flag" operation in British style
like Skripal poisoning.
It will be interesting if Madura manage to survive despite the pressute...
Notable quotes:
"... Sorry but you're wrong. The funding a training of rebel forces by the west has done exactly what is was intended to do, mainly destabilise an entire region, sell billions in extra arms, introduce extra anti-terrorism laws in the west, create more fear and panic, then destabilise Europe through the mass-migration. This was the plan and it worked! ..."
"... To the great disappointment of those of us who voted for Obama, the first time out of hope for change, and the second time out of fear for someone even worse, he is a weak and chameleonic leader whose policies are determined by the strongest willed person in the room. Recall that he was also "talked into" bombing Libya! ..."
"... This isn't Bay of Pigs; its a bloated military trying to figure out what to do with its extra cash. Financially, it doesn't matter if the program is a failure. The cost is minuscule for the budget they have. ..."
"... Bush reached the Oval Office not because he was bright, for indeed he was not, he reached the Oval Office because he was dumb enough not to realise he was clearly easily manipulated, believed in neoliberalism and was rich and rich backers and a rich Dad. ..."
"... In Iran, we have a saying which says; take off a Mullah's turban and you will find the words "Made in England" stamped on his head. ..."
"... ISIS/ISIL is a creation of the US in an attempt to remove Assad. The long-term goal being to isolate Iran before going in there for the natural resources. ..."
"... The White House statement specifically refers to the "Syrian opposition". That's the term we use to describe anti-government forces. This recruitment and training programme has gone awry because the people originally recruited would have been anti-Assad. Now the Obama administration has tried to change the same people to fighting to ISIS instead. No wonder there's only "four to five" left. This is one big fustercluck! ..."
"... The CIA has probably been the greatest destabalising force in the world since the second world war and seem like more a subsidiary of the weapons trade than a government department. ..."
Why does the US continually send deadly weapons to the Middle East, make things even more chaotic than they were before and expect
better results the next time?
As pretty much everyone who was paying attention predicted, the $500m program to train and arm "moderate"
Syrian rebels is an unmitigated, Bay of Pigs-style disaster, with the head of US central command
admitting to Congress this week that the year-old
program now only has "four or five" rebels fighting inside Syria, with dozens
more killed or captured.
Even more bizarre, the White House is
claiming little to do with it. White House spokesman Josh Earnest attempted to distance Obama from the program, claiming that
it was actually the president's "critics" who "were wrong." The
New York Times reported, "In effect, Mr Obama is arguing that he reluctantly went along with those who said it was the way to
combat the Islamic State, but that he never wanted to do it and has now has been vindicated in his original judgment."
This bizarre "I was peer pressured into sending more weapons into the Middle East" argument by the president is possibly the most
blatant example of blame shifting in recent memory, since he had every opportunity to speak out against it, or veto the bill. Instead,
this is what
Obama said at the time: "I am pleased that Congress...have now voted to support a key element of our strategy: our plan to train
and equip the opposition in Syria."
But besides the fact that he clearly did support the policy at the time, it's ridiculous for another reason: years before Congress
approved the $500m program to arm the Syrian rebels, the CIA had been running its own separate Syrian rebel-arming program since
at least 2012. It was
reported prominently by the New York Times
at the time and approved by the president.
In fact, just before Congress voted, Senator Tom Udall
told Secretary of State
John Kerry, who was testifying in front of the foreign relations committee, "Everybody's well aware there's been a covert operation,
operating in the region to train forces, moderate forces, to go into Syria and to be out there, that we've been doing this the last
two years." In true Orwellian fashion, Kerry responded
at the time: "I
hate to do this. But I can't confirm or deny whatever that's been written about and I can't really go into any kind of possible program."
Also conveniently ignored by Congress and those advocating for arming the rebels was a
classified
study the CIA did at the time showing that arming rebel factions against sitting governments almost always ends in disaster or
tragedy.
You'd think whether or not the current weapons-running program was effective – or whether any similar program ever was – would
have been a key factor in the debate. But alas, the CIA program is never mentioned, not by politicians, and not by journalists. It's
just been conveniently forgotten.
It is true that perhaps the best advocate for why we never should've armed the Syrian rebels to begin with came from President
Obama himself. He told the
New Yorker in early 2014 that "you have an opposition that is disorganized, ill-equipped, ill-trained and is self-divided. All
of that is on top of some of the sectarian divisions." Critically,
he cited that same above-mentioned
classified study:
Very early in this process, I actually asked the CIA to analyze examples of America financing and supplying arms to an insurgency
in a country that actually worked out well. And they couldn't come up with much.
He didn't mention the CIA's already-active weapons-running program. Why he didn't stick to his guns since he supposedly was weary
of getting the US military involved in yet another quagmire
it could not get out of is beyond anyone's comprehension. Instead, he supported Congress's measure to create yet another program
that sent even more weapons to the war-torn region.
Per usual, Republicans are taking the entirely wrong lessons from this disaster, arguing that if only there was more force then
everything would've worked out. Marco Rubio exclaimed
during the GOP presidential debate on Wednesday that if we armed the rebels earlier – like he allegedly wanted, before
voting against arming them when he had the chance – then the program would've worked out. Like seemingly everyone else in this
debate, Rubio has decided to ignore the actual facts.
Sadly, instead of a debate about whether we should continue sending weapons to the Middle East at all, we'll probably hear arguments
that we should double down in Syria in the coming days and get US troops more cemented into a war we can call our own (that still
to this day has not been authorized by Congress). There are already reports that there are
US special operations forces on the ground in Syria
now, assisting Kurdish forces who are also fighting Isis.
When the vicious and tragic cycle will end is anyone's guess. But all signs point to: not anytime soon.
Oliver2014 19 Sep 2015 21:27
" Why does the US continually send deadly weapons to the Middle East, make things even more chaotic than they were before and
expect better results the next time? "
Because the US doesn't understand the culture of the people it meddles with.
The US goes in with a messianic belief in the righteousness of its objective. This objective is framed in naive terms to convince
itself and the people that it's motives are benevolent - such as "we must fight communism" or "we will bring democracy to Iraq"
or "Saddam Hussein is an evil man who uses chemical weapons on his own people and hence must be ousted" or "Assad is an evil man
who is fighting a civil war with his own people".
As a superpower it feels compelled to interfere in conflicts lest it be seen as impotent. When it does not interfere, as in
WW2, things do indeed get out of control. So it's damned if it does and damned if it doesn't.
The CIA did not understand Afghan history of fighting off invaders when it was arming the Mujaheddin and that after the Soviets
were defeated it would perceive the Americans as invaders and not as liberators who were there to bring them democracy and teach
them that growing poppy was bad. (Like alcohol in the 1930s, a national addiction problem cannot be solved on the supply side
- as the CIA and DEA learnt in South America.)
Bush Sr. was right when he left Saddam alone after bloodying his nose for invading Kuwait because he understood that Saddam
was playing a vital Tito-esque role in keeping his country and the neighborhood in check. He had no WMDs but wanted his adversaries
in the region to believe otherwise. If Saddam were alive today we wouldn't have an Iraq problem, an ISIS problem, an Iran problem
and a Syria problem.
Smedley Butler 19 Sep 2015 21:12
"Why he didn't stick to his guns since he supposedly was weary of getting the US military involved in yet another quagmire
it could not get out of is beyond anyone's comprehension."
Maybe it's because he hasn't stuck to his guns on anything during the entire time he's been President. He always takes the
path of least resistance, the easy way out, and a "conservative-lite" position that tries to satisfy everyone and actually satisfies
no one.
What an utter disappointment.
DavidEG 19 Sep 2015 20:01
The Machiavellian machinations of the empire become less relevant with every passing day. It's Europeans now who are eating
sweet fruits of "mission accomplished". And they may rebel, and kick out last remnants of their "unity", and sacred NATO alliance
alongside.
PamelaKatz AndyMcCarthy 19 Sep 2015 18:33
Obama said the US would take 10,000 Syrian refugees. When I heard this, I thought surely a zero must be missing from this figure.
And what no one has publicly mentioned is the immigration process for these few will require at least a year of investigative
background checks.
PamelaKatz jvillain 19 Sep 2015 18:15
The largest manufacturers and global distributors of weaponry are the US, the UK, France, Russia and China, in that order.......
also known as the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council. One should read the UN Charter, which states the purpose and
parameters for forming this international organization. The word 'irony' comes to mind.
ID108738 19 Sep 2015 17:36
Saddam Hussein was a friend while he gassed the Iranians, then he invaded Kuwait; as long as Bin Laden fought the Russians,
he was tolerated and funded; now there's Syria. The only thing needed to take the strategy to new levels of idiocy was a compliant
nincompoop as prime minister in Britain. Will they ever learn?
Toi Jon 19 Sep 2015 17:27
The US understands how to create a market for their military hardware industry but has never understood how their interference
in the Middle East creates mass human misery.
Samantha Stevens 19 Sep 2015 17:09
Quite simply the US is breaking international law by doing this. Every time they do it the world ends up with another shit
storm. If they cannot behave responsibly they should be removed from the security council of the UN. Same goes for the Russians
and any other power abusing their position.
Syria may not have been the epitome of humanity before being destabilised but it is certainly worse now. The same is true of Iraq.
In fact have the US successfully overturned any government they deem un-American (LOL) without it leading to a civil war?
Andy Freeman 19 Sep 2015 17:06
Sorry but you're wrong. The funding a training of rebel forces by the west has done exactly what is was intended to do,
mainly destabilise an entire region, sell billions in extra arms, introduce extra anti-terrorism laws in the west, create more
fear and panic, then destabilise Europe through the mass-migration. This was the plan and it worked!
People will call for a solution, the solution will be tighter integration in Europe, the abolition of national governments,
the removal of cash to stop payments to "terrorists", more draconian spying laws, less from and eventually compulsory registration
and ID for all Europeans.
Meanwhile, we'll have a few more false flag attacks supposedly caused by the refugees and more fear in the news. Open your
eyes
Laurie Calhoun 19 Sep 2015 16:49
"Why he didn't stick to his guns..." Not the most felicitous metaphor in this case, but here is the answer to your question:
To the great disappointment of those of us who voted for Obama, the first time out of hope for change, and the second time
out of fear for someone even worse, he is a weak and chameleonic leader whose policies are determined by the strongest willed
person in the room. Recall that he was also "talked into" bombing Libya!
Sad but true. For more details on how this works, read Daniel Klaidman's book Kill or Capture: The war on terror and the soul
of the Obama presidency.
after the libya disaster the US should have abandoned plans for regim change in syria.
and the US missed a golden opportunity to recitfy what had already become a syria disaster by allowing turkey and the ludicrous
SNC to so thoroughly undermine the Geneva talks.
The U.S and U.K's commitment should be to those in Iraq. Secure, rebuild and invest in helping that Nation come with the
best solution to a, rid itself of ISIS, b, be able to stay that way, c have a government that is inclusive to the needs of
the Sunni's, Shia's and Kurds
Just as I thought that you can not surpass yourself in writing stupid comments, and you are immediately reassured me.
Thus, the US and the UK spent nearly ten years in Iraq and failed to make any of this what you write, but but the whole mess practically
they themselves have created. And now you're saying that if the US and UK troops returned again to Iraq they will be able to fix
everything that they had previously screwed and to create an "inclusive society" of Iraq. So, if the US and UK troops set foot
again on the soil of Iraq, it will be the strongest reason for Iraqi Sunnis to reject the inclusion in the Iraqi society. Iraqi
officials themselves are aware of this very well, and for that reason they are the first to oppose such an intervention.
BAGHDAD - Iraq's prime minister strongly rejected the idea of the U.S. or other nations sending ground forces to his country
to help fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, saying Wednesday that foreign troops are "out of the question."...
Al-Abadi, a Shiite lawmaker who faces the enormous task of trying to hold Iraq together as a vast array of forces threaten
to rip it apart, welcomed the emerging international effort, but stressed that he sees no need for other nations to send troops
to help fight ISIS.
"Not only is it not necessary," he said, "We don't want them. We won't allow them. Full stop."
"The only contribution the American forces or the international coalition is going to help us with is from the sky," al-Abadi
said. "We are not giving any blank check to the international coalition to hit any target in Iraq."
He said that the Iraqi military will choose and approve targets, and that the U.S. will not take action without consulting
with Baghdad first. Failure to do so, he warned, risks causing civilian casualties like in Pakistan and Yemen, where the U.S.
has conducted drone strikes for years.
Well, Well, whether i notice here distrust even of Iraqi Shiites toward the US Air Force. On the other hand, they want to strengthen
friendship with neighboring governments in Syria and Iran: ;
Al-Abadi,
however, said that Iraq doesn't have the luxury of testy relations with Damascus, and instead pushed for some sort of coordination.
"We cannot afford to fight our neighbor, even if we disagree on many things," al-Abadi said. "We don't want to enter into
problems with them. For us sovereignty of Syria is very important." The two countries, both of which are allies of Iran, appear
to already be coordinating on some level, and Iraq's national security adviser met Tuesday with Assad in the Syrian capital,
where the two agreed to strengthen cooperation in fighting "terrorism," according to Syria's state news agency.
The U.S. hopes to pull together a broad coalition to help defeat the extremist group, but has ruled out cooperating with
neighboring Iran or Syria, both of which also view ISIS as a threat. Both countries were excluded from a conference this week
in Paris that brought the U.S., France and other allies together to discuss how to address the militant threat.
Al-Abadi said that excluding Damascus and Tehran was counterproductive.
So, it is obvious that the Iraqi government is not against inclusion, but they're for such inclusion, which will exclude the US
and UK of interfering in their internal affairs. I think it is a good step towards reconciliation with their Sunni brothers because
they also seem to support such a thing. And if they managed to do it, maybe Ukrainians will also draw some lesson from it and
be able to reconcile with their brothers Russians.
Ieuan ytrewq 19 Sep 2015 14:04
ytrewq said: "USSR and China supplied a lot of support and material to N. Vietnam."
Very true.
However the Viet Minh were formed and initially supplied by OSS (later called the CIA) forces from the US. In fact Ho Chi Min
had a naive hope that the US would support him in his struggle against foreign occupation of the country after the war (French
colonialism) and made several appeals to President Truman for help (all of which were ignored).
Instead of which, the US supported the French, so Ho asked around and got help from the Russians and Chinese. The rest we know.
marginline AndyMcCarthy 19 Sep 2015 13:54
The UK and France [...], they destroyed Libya.
The causality of which led to an Islamic terror attack on June 26th, 2015 ten kilometers north of the city of Sousse, Tunisia,
where thirty-eight people; thirty of whom were British - were murdered.
sashasmirnoff JoJo McJoJo 19 Sep 2015 13:40
The US is always wrong, and always responsible for every bad thing that happens on Earth.
They are always wrong, and are indeed responsible for almost every geopolitical disaster, usually a result of overthrowing
governments and installing their own tyrant, or else leaving a vacuum that Islamists fill.
Zaarth 19 Sep 2015 13:34
This $500m program cost less than 0.1% of the US annual defense budget. When you're dealing with sums of money as obscenely
large as the US spends on its military, its inevitable that huge quantities will be wasted because you've passed the point where
there's worthwhile things to spend it on. This isn't Bay of Pigs; its a bloated military trying to figure out what to do with
its extra cash. Financially, it doesn't matter if the program is a failure. The cost is minuscule for the budget they have.
In recent years the right has been very concerned with balancing the national budget and shrinking debt. They're willing to
cut spending for social programs and research, but god forbid you take money away from the military. It just wouldn't be patriotic.
marginline -> GeneralMittens 19 Sep 2015 13:14
Great summary GeneralMittens. You have expressed in layman's terms the facts eluded to by journalist Mehdi Hasan when he quantified
the depth of the strategic disaster the Iraq war actually was – or, as the Conservative minister Kenneth Clarke put it back in
a 2013 BBC radio discussion...
the most disastrous foreign policy decision of my lifetime [ ] worse than Suez
The invasion and occupation of Iraq undermined the moral standing of the western powers; empowered Iran and its proxies; heightened
the threat from al-Qaeda at home and abroad; and sent a clear signal to 'rogue' regimes that the best (the only?) means of deterring
a preemptive, US-led attack was to acquire weapons of mass destruction. [ ] Iraq has been destroyed and hundreds of thousands
of innocent people have lost their lives, as the direct result of an unnecessary, unprovoked war that, according to the former
chief justice Lord Bingham, was a...
serious violation of international law
This leads me to the conclusion and I apologies for flogging this dead horse yet again BUT...why are Bush and Bliar not being
detained at The Hague?
Ieuan 19 Sep 2015 12:45
" I actually asked the CIA to analyze examples of America financing and supplying arms to an insurgency in a country that actually
worked out well."
Well, they (the OSS at the time) supplied arms and training to the Viet Minh. When they were fighting the Japanese. Which worked
out well, when they were only fighting the Japanese.
But when they used their expertise (and the arms they had left over) to carry on fighting the French, and later the Americans
themselves, it worked out very well for the Viet Minh, not so well for the French and Americans.
GangZhouEsq 19 Sep 2015 12:27
The first President Bush, who decided not to topple President Saddam Hussein after routing his military forces out of Kuwait,
and instead to leave him in power for the sake of the Middle East stability is, in retrospect, probably the wisest foreign policy
decision ever made by the 41st President, thanks not only to his own personal judgment but also to his foreign policy aides' wisdom.
Though it is now too late for the son to learn from his father, it is still not too late for the present administration to learn
a thing or two from the former senior President Bush.
twoheadednightingale 19 Sep 2015 12:25
Nice to read an article coming at the war from this angle, seems like people are finally starting to question the effectiveness
US foreign policy - ie bombing for peace. However the article is fairly nieve in places - like who actually believes the president
of the US has control over all its intelligence agencies? JFK told the world in april '61, not long after the CIA had set him
up over the bay of pigs and months before being assassinated exactly that. So enough of the 'blame the president' bullshit, it
doesn't get to the root of the problem
GangZhouEsq 19 Sep 2015 12:17
The last major armament, including heavy guns, tanks and armored personnel carriers, as sent by the United States to the now
notoriously incompetent Iraqi military forces is now reportedly in the hands of ISIS after these US-trained Iraqi military personnel
simply abandoned their posts of defense and deserted for their own dear lives, thus leaving the centuries-old, formerly safe haven
of Mosul for Iraqi Christians to the mercy of ISIS. See "60 Minutes", Sunday, September 13, 2015, "Iraq's Christians", at
http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/iraqs-christians-the-shooting-at-chardon-high-king-of-crossfit.
pfox33 19 Sep 2015 12:04
The fact that Putin is coming to Assad's aid is a game-changer that the US was unprepared for. For one thing, it's highlighted
how inconsequential US efforts to bolster "moderate" rebels and degrade ISIS capabilities have been.
From the time it was reported that the Russians were upgrading an airbase at Latakia to the time that it was reported that
they had dispatched helicopters and jets and that the Syrians had started to take the fight to ISIS in Raqqah and Palmyra was
only a matter of weeks. The CIA's program, after a year, had produced five soldiers at a cost of 500 million.
Previously the US had free reign over Syrian skies as did Israel who would bomb what they deemed to be convoys of military
supplies for Hezbollah. Things aren't so free and easy now with the Russians in town. And both the Americans and Israelis now
realize they have to check in with them before them they make sorties over northern Syria.
It's fairly obvious, to me anyway, that the US and Israel's only endgame was the fall of Assad and that ISIS had their tacit
approval. Assad's good relations with Iran and Hezbollah meant he was a marked man. Putin, as is his wont, has complicated their
plans and the results are yet to be seen.
BradfordChild TastySalmon 19 Sep 2015 11:58
"Iraq, Libya, Syria. What do/did these countries have in common? Unfriendly leaders who want nothing to do with the US."
Actually, Gaddafi had shown an interest in engaging with the West-- happened under Bush, but was never really followed up on.
Still, it was headed in a more positive direction until Obama rather arbitrarily decided that Gaddafi had to go.
The real net effect of US intervention in the Middle East has been to destabilize Europe.
Tony Page bravo7490 19 Sep 2015 11:32
I would agree but, as a former intelligence professional, I'd remind you that there's always a story behind the story. Not
that it's a "good" story! But more must be going on there...
ByThePeople 19 Sep 2015 11:12
"Why does the US continually send deadly weapons to the Middle East, make things even more chaotic than they were before and
expect better results the next time?"
It depends on how you define better. To think that these ops take place with the intent to solve an issue is naive, they don't.
You state yourself that the CIA freely admits it's never worked.
The reason the United States funds and arms groups in the Middle East is that 9 times out of 10, these same groups are then
later labeled 'terrorists' and a new US war campaign is justified.
It's not about solving problems - unless the problem being solved is: How do we create more opportunities to half-ass justify
engaging in another war effort so the US coffers can be continuously raped.
Iraq is the perfect example of succeeding in achieving this goal. Years before the Iraq war ever began, US war planners knew
that a power vacuum, attracting the likes of Al-Qaeda and or ISIS would subsequently result. Thus, providing a for a second war,
derived from the first seemingly pointless invasion. The Iraq plan worked fabulously as not only did the newly created enemy materialize,
they also became a much more formidable enemy once they conveniently came into possession of all the military equipment we let
behind.
Point is, they wouldn't continue implementing all these operations if the goal wasn't being achieved.
I will add too - McCain and Co. clamored so hard to arm the al-Assad opposition McCain might as well have claimed that if we
did not, then America would be blown up in its entirety in 48 hours the same as all the other fear mongering done in a effort
to continue the war efforts. Who knows, maybe he did, I try not to listen to him anymore - he needs to be put out to pasture.
TastySalmon 19 Sep 2015 11:10
Iraq, Libya, Syria. What do/did these countries have in common? Unfriendly leaders who want nothing to do with the US.
To suggest that funding radicals to overthrow these governments is a "whoops" or something that will never work is completely
wrong. The plan has worked exactly as planned: destabilize the region by promoting dissent, covertly arm and fund "rebels" through
back-channels (Saudi, UAE, Turkey, etc.), create a new boogeyman (ISIS), and reforge alliances with enemies (AQ) who will then
turn on us again in the future.
The goal is to flatten Syria, and it seems to be working out very well. When you consider what the ultimate outcome will be,
it starts becoming fairly clear: push Russia into a corner militarily and economically, open new LNG pipelines, appease allied
caliphates, and put billions of dollars into the pockets of the wealthiest people.
Their policy is chaotic and consists of repeating the same thing over and over again hoping to get different results, which
is, as we all know, the definition of madness.
I think the problem may well be the bloated MIC in the US. Too many strategic game plans for to many, often contradictory ends.
There are no doubt there are intelligence analysts in the US MIC who have a genuine interest in collecting actual information
and present it honestly. The numerous leaks show us this.
The problem is, this often good information, once it's been spun through political/economic vested interests, think tanks,
cold war jar head imperialists and so forth, it (foreign policy) ends up complete fubar.
To the point where, as you rightly say imo, their foreign policy looks like nothing more than "malicious wily manipulators,
deliberately buggering up the world to make money out of the consequences."
david wright 19 Sep 2015 10:49
For a full century now, from the Balfour Declaration and the secret Sykes-Picot arrangement, the currently-top 'Western' dog
(UK; then US) has been meddling and futzing around in the Middle East, notionally in someone's 'National Interest.'
Oil, access to Empire (route to India etc) and 'national prestige' have been the usual excuses. The result has been unmitigated
disaster.
Ignoring everything up to Gulf 1 (1991) we've a quarter century century of determined scoring of own-goals. This shows no sign
of changing. This is a helter-skelter race to destruction, greatly presently aided and abetted by Asad. So far, it's lasted two-and-a-half
times longer than the combined lengths of both World Wars.
One conclusion is that by any rational assessment, we don't deserve to 'win', whatever that would constitute, any more than
did one side or the other in the 16th -17th century's European religious wars. An equally rational assessment is that we neither
have, nor can. The final rational conclusion, that we find a way to disengage - remarkably simply, by stopping doing all the things
we have been - is a fence refused by the relevant horses - again, mainly US and (as very eager, jr partner indeed) UK.All apart
from the monstrous outcomes for the people in the region, we destabilize our own security then make things worse by tightening
our own internal 'security' at the expense of civil liberties. This gives away, at no gain, the slow and scrabbling accretion
of these, over centuries. And Cameron and co remain sufficiently delusional to want to keep on bombing, but whatever toys they
have, whatever seems a good idea on the day. How can we win? the war isn't on 'terror', but ion logic. Ours. |Neither the US nor
UK governments have ever shown much interest in the fates of the millions of people their casual actions have ended, or made hell.
Of the multiple ironies (shall I count the ways?) attending all this is that Saddam, while a murderous thug, and no friend to
his own people, was doing for us, for free, what we've been unable to do for ourselves - keep Iraq al-Quaida free. AS to his murderous
propensities, clearly far fewer of his people (alone) would have been killed had we not intervened, than we have directly or indirectly
killed. Much of this stems from the fact that during the same recent period (1991 on) there has been no effective counter to Western
power and inclination, which has simply projectile-vomited its baneful influence. Ironic too that the reason we armed and greatly
helped create al-Quaida was to destabilize Russia by getting it bogged down in Afghanistan. Thus the only real fear which limited
US action, was removed when that policy was successful. We removed the brakes as the train was beginning to accelerate down the
incline. Wheeee!
teaandchocolate smifee 19 Sep 2015 10:47
Bush reached the Oval Office not because he was bright, for indeed he was not, he reached the Oval Office because he was
dumb enough not to realise he was clearly easily manipulated, believed in neoliberalism and was rich and rich backers and a rich
Dad.
As to "not having a serious mark against his name", forgive me if I laugh hysterically while crying with pain.
The least said about the moron Reagan and his jolly pal Thatcher the better. Oh how well their unregulated market shenanigans
have turned out.
Crackpots the lot of them.
LethShibbo AndyMcCarthy 19 Sep 2015 10:35
Doing nothing and minding your own business is kinda the same thing.
And the civil war in Syria isn't purely a result of what happened in neighbouring Iraq.
What you're essentially saying is 'America, you've started this fire. Now let it burn.'
pansapians DrDrug 19 Sep 2015 10:28
Well of course ISIS were miffed that the U.S. was paying lip service to not arming ISIS. If you think there was ever any serious
difference between the FSA and ISIS then I hear that the Queen having to sell Buckingham palace due to losses gambling on corgi
races and I can get you a good deal for a cash sale
IrateHarry Havingalavrov 19 Sep 2015 10:17
Make Iraq work first..
ROFLMFAO...
Iraq has been so thoroughly screwed over by the UKUSA clusterfuck, there is no chance of it working ever again.
AndyMcCarthy LethShibbo 19 Sep 2015 10:12
Sorry, the US doesn't HAVE to make a choice, do nothing or bomb. All the US needs to do is mind it's own business.
We wouldn't be having this refugee crises if the US hadn't invaded Iraq.
Tomasgolfer 19 Sep 2015 10:10
For a little insight, see "The Red Line and the Rat Line", by Seymour M. Hersh. Published in the
London Review of Books
The US (and the UK and France for that matter) has been openly arming and training the "rebels". The US had a vote in congress
to openly do just that last year. Covertly, they've been doing it since 2012, again this has been well reported and admitted to.
The problem for the US is their so called "moderates" don't exist. They either switch allegiance once back in Syria or end
up captured or killed just as quickly.
Your user name seems somewhat of a parody.
ArtofLies richardoxford 19 Sep 2015 10:00
How does that compute ?
it computes once one answers this slightly naive question from the article
Why does the US continually send deadly weapons to the Middle East, make things even more chaotic than they were before
and expect better results the next time?
surely at some point people have to realise that chaos is the result the US is looking for.
IrateHarry 19 Sep 2015 09:56
Why does the US continually send deadly weapons to the Middle East
Because that is the backbone business of America - making and selling deadly weapons. Deadlier the better, and no matter whom
they are supplied to. If foreign governments don't buy, does not matter, just supply it to "rebels", and they will be paid for
by the tax payers across the west (not just the American ones, NATO has been set up as the mechanism to tap into European tax
payers as well).
The rest of the bullshit like democracy, freedom, etc are marketeers' crap.
No wonder there's only "four to five" left. This is one big fustercluck!
There was a report in the NY Times last year by a reporter who was kidnapped by the FSA (his mission was to find them and find
out who they were) and handed straight over to Al-Nusra. Twice. He was imprisoned and tortured by them.
In his revealing report, talking of the couple of days he spent back with the "FSA", his release having been negotiated by
the west, he asked the "FSA" fighters about the training they received from the US in Jordan. The reporter put it to the fighters
that the training was to fight AN/IS. Their response? "We lied to the Americans about that".
The WSJ also recently reported that the CIA mission to arm/train "moderates/FSA" had gone totally tits up. Most of them reported
as defecting to one of the number of more extreme groups, some having been captured or killed.
It's been clear for about 2 years now that these so called "moderates" only exist in the deluded minds of western policy makers.
JacobHowarth MushyP8 19 Sep 2015 09:51
ISIS do not control that large a number of people. Many Kurds are fleeing because of IS, that's true, but for the most part
the civil war is a horror show from both sides and Syrians are - rightly - getting the hell out of there.
Or are all of those 'taking advantage of the opportunity to move to Europeans [sic] countries' proposing to do so by going
to Lebanon and Jordan?
The suspiciously unasked questions as to motives of all parties at Benghazi, by all twelve (12) members of the Select Committee,
suggests collaboration to question Hillary Clinton to make her appear responsible only for bungling security and rescue, for the
sole purpose of diverting attention from Hillary Clinton's role in the CIA and the CIA operative Ambassador Stevens' arming of
terrorists. The obvious question to ask would have gone to motives: "What activities were Stevens and the CIA engaged in, when
they were attacked at Benghazi?"
GreenRevolution 19 Sep 2015 09:10
The use of religion(Islam specifically) in politics was first employed by the British in the Middle East in the early parts
of the 20th century. In Iran, we have a saying which says; take off a Mullah's turban and you will find the words "Made in
England" stamped on his head.
nnedjo 19 Sep 2015 09:09
Even more bizarre, the White House is claiming little to do with it. White House spokesman Josh Earnest attempted to distance
Obama from the program, claiming that it was actually the president's "critics" who "were wrong."
Yes, it seems that it has become a tradition of US presidents to boast with the fact that "they do not interfere much in their
own job".
For example, in the last campaign for the GOP candidate for the US president, Jeb Bush defended his brother George for a false
pretext for war in Iraq in the form of non-existent WMD, claiming that everyone else would bring the same decision on the start
of the war, if the same false intelligence would be presented to him.
Thus, the president of the United States can not be held accountable for its decisions if the CIA deliver him false intelligence,
or deliberately conceal the true intelligence. On the other hand, since no one has heard of any person from the CIA which is held
responsible for the wrong war in Iraq, it turns out that nobody is responsible for this war.
And, to us, mere mortals, it remains only to conclude that the most powerful war machine in the world moves "without a driver",
or maybe it is "driven by some automatic pilot".
So, how tragic it is, and yet we can not help laughing. :-)
mikiencolor 19 Sep 2015 09:06
It was obvious to anyone with a modicum of sense from the beginning that the "moderate" rebel training programme would be an
utter disaster. But if the lessons you are taking is that nothing should be done at all, I'd submit you are taking the wrong lessons
from the debacle. Doing nothing at all would have condemned tens of thousands more to genocide. Doing something saved thousands
of Yezidi and saved Rojava.
Wherever the Kurds have been supported they have proved capable, trustworthy and have created functional civil societies. To
broadly and undiscerningly dismiss "sending weapons to the Middle East" is disingenuous. Something must be done, and things can
be done to help rather than harm if there is a sensible policy maker, and doing nothing certainly can be more immoral and evil
than doing something - as I thought we'd learned from Nazi Germany.
The reality is one that neither right wing nor left wing hardliners are willing to face: the Sunni Arab jihadis are the source
of most of the problems and the reason is entirely to do with their noxious genocidal and imperialistic ideology and culture.
They are a source of instability, enmity and fear, and not just in the Middle East either. And they are being supported and bankrolled
by Western allies in the Gulf. The world is a big place with many peoples and ways of thought, and many disagreements - but we
nearly all of us seem able to find a way to coexist in this new globalised technological human civilisation. The jihadis are a
barbarian throwback, a movement of violent primitivists. There is no place for jihadism in the future and they are a threat to
everyone in the world.
ID0020237 -> teaandchocolate 19 Sep 2015 09:01
Insanity I believe, not madness, but what's the difference. The CIA may get it right, but after political interference and
manipulation, they change their conclusions. We've seen this with the Iraq debacle and elsewhere. Just as political interference
in military operations, Viet Nam for example, causes imminent failure, so it is with intelligence ignored.
GeneralMittens 19 Sep 2015 09:01
So basically America invades and bombs the shit out of everywhere and the europeans have to clean up the mess and deal with
the resulting refugee crisis?
At some point America should be held accountable for their actions in the middle east. Whether thats taking their fair share
of refugees from syria or footing the bill for this clusterfuck.
At the very least, other countries should stop enabling their warmongering.
LittleGhost 19 Sep 2015 08:58
US foreign policy in the ME proves Einstein's maxim
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
GreenRevolution 19 Sep 2015 08:57
It has been 14 years since 911 and Bush's so called "war on terror". Not only barbaric wahabi terror has not been defeated
it has grown its barbarism to magnitudes unimaginable previously. Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have been allowed to arm them
to the teeth by the very states who claim to be waging "war on terror". Since Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are close allies
of the west and one is a member of NATO, it follows that the west is in fact arming the wahabi terrorists who have turned the
Middle East into a wasteland murdering and looting at will. Millions are now refugees, countries laid to waste and yet Mr Kerry
and Hammond talk as if they have done such magnificent jobs and Russian involvement would only "complicate" things.
teaandchocolate 19 Sep 2015 08:56
I don't think they have the brightest people working in the CIA and the military in the USA. They are probably bullies, relics
from the Cold War, jar-heads, devout 6000-year-old-world Christians, neocons and fruitcakes. Their policy is chaotic and consists
of repeating the same thing over and over again hoping to get different results, which is, as we all know, the definition of madness.
smifee 19 Sep 2015 08:52
To be honest, I don't see any confusion.
Obama comes across as a (comparatively) humane person, and I am sure that his personal preference would be for there to be
no violence in the middle east. As President of the USA, however, he has to set aside his personal preferences and act in the
wider interests of his country.
The US set out to realign the political make up of the middle east. No doubt, they want to make sure Islam will never again
be able attack US interests.
Successive Administrations have controlled the funding and arming of various factions within the Middle East to ensure that
Muslims kill each other and weaken social structures. The US will fill the ensuing political vacuum and economic waste-land with
local leaders loyal to 'freedom, democracy and the American Way'. The next Administration will continue to stoke up the violence,
and the one after, and the one after that until the US is satisfied it has achieved its objective.
It seems almost all of us have to contain our personal views if we want to succeed in our place of work. Even the P of the
USA.
GoldMoney -> celloswiss 19 Sep 2015 08:51
True, in a democracy, moderates don't need bombs and assault weapons.
Consider this - how would you feel if foreign governments were arming and funding the IRA in Northern Ireland?
What if foreign governments recognised the IRA as a legitimate opposition to the Belfast government and gave them bombs to
take over the country?
MichaelGuess 19 Sep 2015 08:46
Who are the real terrorists, the group that bombs indiscriminately, the group that sells arms to both sides, the group that's
lies to its "coalition" partners, the group that spies on all its friends, the group that is happy to be starting wars everywhere
and then blame other parties for their lack of support.
These are the real terrorists.
MushyP8 19 Sep 2015 08:46
ISIS/ISIL is a creation of the US in an attempt to remove Assad. The long-term goal being to isolate Iran before going
in there for the natural resources.
Assad won 89% of the vote in a 74% turnout, how many world leaders have 65% of the population supporting them, hence why Assad
hasn't fallen. Naturally the US refuted this alongside its lapdogs, the EU and the UK, as it disproves all the propaganda they've
been feeding the west. RT news did an interview with Assad which was very insightful.
Putin seems to be the only one who's got his head screwed on in this situation, which is of course leading to hissy fits by
the US because he's proving a stumbling block. More nations need to get behind Putin and Assad, although of course the US wont.
GoldMoney DrDrug 19 Sep 2015 07:52
Moderates do, when the simple act of protesting against the mutilation of children detained by the states secret police
are met with a volley of snipers.
No such evidence has been bought to the UN security council. Even the chemical attack that the media claimed from day one was
Assad's forces doing turned out to be IS rebels actions. The two human rights groups operating in Syria are western funded NGO's
- hardly a neutral point of view given the US's long stated aim of removing Assad (even before 2011).
geedeesee 19 Sep 2015 07:25
This $500 million from June 2014 was for recruiting Syrian rebels seeking to oust President Bashar al-Assad - not to fight
iSIS.
The White House said at the time:
"This funding request would build on the administration's longstanding efforts to empower the moderate Syrian opposition,
both civilian and armed, and will enable the Department of Defense to increase our support to vetted elements of the armed
opposition."
The White House statement specifically refers to the "Syrian opposition". That's the term we use to describe anti-government
forces. This recruitment and training programme has gone awry because the people originally recruited would have been anti-Assad.
Now the Obama administration has tried to change the same people to fighting to ISIS instead. No wonder there's only "four to
five" left. This is one big fustercluck!
kingcreosote 19 Sep 2015 07:12
The CIA has probably been the greatest destabalising force in the world since the second world war and seem like more a
subsidiary of the weapons trade than a government department.
@Bill Instead of looking at this issue using a microscope, reading history about how
Empires fall lends wisdom and insight. Arrighi's book, (I believe) is called "The Long
Twentieth Century." He details how empires and huge trading giants rise and fall.
He details the rise of Italy's banking system during the Middle Ages as well as Spain's
Empire, the Dutch trading hegemonies and most enlightening how the British Empire rose and
fell.
We are seeing tell-tale symptoms of a US that's in trouble with a slow erosion of the US
$$ hegemony. The financial growth of China has begun degrading the US market with hi-tech and
other products. Thusly, you see Tim Cook of Apple apoplectic over China's Huwaii (sp?)
flooding the European market with less expensive computers, cellulars, notebooks, etc.
We see the practical nature of Exxon Mobile that views the short geographic distance
between the US (its military) to Venezuela's oil and mineral-rich soil. An easy pick, rather
than becoming further embroiled in the Middle East.
Targeting Venezuela suggests a geopolitical shift away from the Middle East (and Israel)
to countries that are less expensive to plunder yet with vast resources to be stolen. A
telling sign in the slow deteriorating US Hegemony.
Anglo Zionists have been working this scheme to take Venezuela for many years --
The Chávez Plan to Steal Venezuela's Presidential Election: What Obama Should
Do
September 19, 2012
Ray Walser
Former Senior Policy Analyst
Ray is the former Senior Policy Analyst
Abstract: On October 7, 2012, Venezuela's Hugo Chávez will stand for re-election
against opposition candidate Henrique Capriles. The Venezuelan presidential election
matters to the U.S.: Venezuela is a major oil supplier to the U.S.; Chávez's
anti-American worldview has led to alliances with Iran, Syria, and Cuba; and Chávez
offers safe havens to FARC and Hezbollah. Chávez also works to weaken democratic
governance throughout the Americas. Under the Obama Administration, the U.S. has offered no
comprehensive strategy or policy for dealing with the man who continuously demonstrates his
ruthlessness in implementing an anti-American, socialist, Bolivarian Revolution across the
Americas, but there is still time for the U.S. to support democratic freedoms before the
election. [becuz zio-bolshies luvs them their "democratic freedoms," and if that doesn't
work, bump off Chavez. Cancer. Poor guy. Prolly caught it from Arafat.].
https://www.heritage.org/americas/report/the-chavez-plan-steal-venezuelas-presidential-election-what-obama-should-do
Small counties in LA are essentially defenseless against 300 pound gorilla -- the USA. And neoliberalism still can take
revenge, as it recently did in Argentina and Brazil.
Notable quotes:
"... Agence France-Press ..."
"... As monarchs were forced to realize, they served a function to society, in order to be served by it. It was a two way street. Now finance is having a, "Let them eat cake." moment, as they become more predator than organ of society. It is the heart telling the hands and feet they don't need so much blood and should work harder for what they do get. As well as telling the head it better go along, or else. ..."
"... As this regime change process unfolds, it is difficult not to feel deep sadness for Venezuelans. Chavez failed to lift the poor into a permanent middle class, Maduro failed to protect the accomplishments that had been achieved, and now, the state seems unprepared to cope with what was inevitable. ..."
"... It's a tragic moment in Latin American history. Though Maduro has some backing from the four most Resistant of all Resistors, Russian, China, Cuba and Iran, the nation's geography is too distant for them to flex their full restraint. The lesson of Nicaragua in the 80's should have been learned. ..."
"... "The wealthy few have declared war on the many poor. They should not be allowed to lose their bet and maintain their stakes. The world doesn't work that way. " Unfortunately Bevin I think that is exactly how the world works. The real never ending war is between the haves and have nots. ..."
"... I'm a bit more pessimistic. Washington seems united on getting rid of Maduro and installing a friendly regime. While Maduro can hang in there for awhile, the economic sanctions and covert operations (including sabotage, killings, bribery etc.) will cause severe problems for the government. Maduro is not Assad and lacks friendly neighbors--in fact, Latin America has pretty much returned to direct Washington rule. ..."
"... Like with the attacks on Syria, Trump becomes presidential when he attacks the likes of Iran and Venezuela. ..."
"... I wonder how many of the pro-USA protesters, willing to take the US coin to protest on the street, are also willing to take the US coin to die on the street. ..."
"... A U.S. military incursion could have significant unintended consequences, "including a deterioration of our relationship with currently supportive countries in the region." -- Gustavo Arnavat, a former Obama administration official and a senior advisor to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. ..."
"... I don't justify intervention anywhere (except in D.C. where the Tyranny and Hegemon resides). I point to missed opportunities, failures, corruption and not taking advice from your closest friends (China, Russia, Cuba). If they had brought in the Chinese petroleum experts and Russian economic experts, much of the disaster would have been avoided. When you have a huge enemy and you are weak and relatively small, you need help. Maduro waited until too late. ..."
"... Self-evidently all the governments which have followed the US are not only agreeing but are acting in compliance with a pre-set US timetable. They all waited for the US to give the signal, then like synchronized swimmers performed according to choreography pre-determined by the US. ..."
"... Maduro to his navy --- "Today the future of Venezuela is decided: if it becomes one more star of the United States flag or if it will continue to fly its eight tricolor stars," said the president. ..."
"... As usual, the AZ regime change machine is mightily backed up by billions of puff dollars (printed out of thin air), but among the puppets, the tie-eating Saakashvili is Optimus Prime compared with the Murky Guy's leadership. ..."
"... Ha, how 40 tons of the "barbaric relic" which disappeared from Ukraine after a similar "revolution" got to be mentioned also in relation to Venezuela. ..."
"... Well, the headline of this post is kinda problematic now ("U.S. Coup Attempt In Venezuela Lacks International Support"). I think it was problematic from the start, b, because 1) several countries had already joined with USA; 2) Europe's falling in line was never really in doubt. Note: The EU poodles have toed the line on Russia, Iran*, and now Venezuela. ..."
"... Instead, Guaido called for further "pressure", which is at this point limited to a further tightening of the economic isolation of the country. Canada seems to have anticipated this position by announcing a $53 million aid package which will be focussed on assisting current and future "refugees" headed to Columbia and Brazil. ..."
"... Hugo Chavez has repatriated most of Venezeulan gold whilst still alive. This is how the CIA and the Venezuelan Central Bank could invent the story that a part of this gold is being sent to Russia by Maduro. The 41 ton of Venezuelan gold still remain in Bank of England was a necessary collateral for buying naphtha (for pre-processing oil for export) and subsidised food for the Venezurlan population. ..."
U.S. Coup Attempt In Venezuela Lacks International SupportZanon , Feb 3, 2019
12:44:33 PM |
link
There is little doubt where 'western' media stand with regards to the U.S. led
coup-attempt (vid) in Venezuela. But their view does not reflect the overwhelming
international recognition the Venezuelan government under President Nicolás Maduro
continues to have.
The Rothschild family's house organ, the Economist , changed the background of
its Twitter account to a picture of the Random Dude™, Juan Guaidó, who the U.S.
regime changers
created to run the country.
The supposedly neutral news agencies are no better than the arch-neoliberal
Economist . The Reuters ' Latin America office also changed its header
picture to Random Dude. It reverted that after being called out.
Agence France-Press stated at 11:10 utc yesterday that "tens of thousands" would
join a rally.
Cont. reading: U.S. Coup Attempt In Venezuela Lacks International Support "Lacks
international support" unfortunately doesnt matter much. Regardless, even if a majority of
nations backed the coup doesnt mean its right. Also remember Ukraine coup, majority didnt
support that - but it didnt matter.
Empire is testing the waters of support by its DazzleSpeak about the spinning plate of
Venezuela. I hope it is learning that much of the world no longer wants to live in a world
motivated by fear.
Threat of US global default on Reserve Currency is coming soon because empire is out of
ammunition to maintain and extend supremacy. It will be interesting to see what the fall back
status will be and how maintained....the last thralls of Might-Makes-Right.....one would
hope.
The Bank of England should be holding closer to 30 tonnes of Venezuela's gold, not the 14
tonnes they're holding from Marudo under U.S. orders. The Venezuelan Central Bank (BCV) just
closed a huge gold swap with someone and now should have a total of maybe 2500 gold bars in
the BoE dungeons with their original serial numbers and weights. Custodians of gold like this
can't melt it down and make new bars - that's why state depositors stamp all of them with
serial numbers and precise weights. They want to be sure THEIR gold is there and THEIR gold
is returned.
The news isn't the U.S. demand that it won't be returned. The real news is that neither
the BCV nor the BoE will show anyone the original or current gold bar inventory list.
Usually, nobody cares. But with the U.S. and BoE chosing a new, rightful owner (Random Guy),
they should at the very least provide the inventory list.
It shouldn't be a secret - there is absolutely no security risk. The gold belongs to the
(starving) people of Venezuela. Or at least it did. What are the BoE and Rothschild BCV
hiding? Did they melt it down or sell it to someone else?
I think the deeper conceptual issues need to be considered, that would place the political
and social situations going on around the world, from France, to Venezuela, in perspective.
That money is the social contract enabling mass societies to function, not a commodity to
be mined from society and stored as government debt, to finance militaries, as well as making
the entire economy subservient to the gambling addictions of Wall St.
Humanity went through s similar evolutionary process, when monarchies, as private,
hereditary governments, reached the limits of their effectiveness. As the executive and
regulatory function, government is the central nervous system of society, while finance is
its circulation mechanism, basically the head and heart.
As monarchs were forced to realize, they served a function to society, in order to be
served by it. It was a two way street. Now finance is having a, "Let them eat cake." moment,
as they become more predator than organ of society. It is the heart telling the hands and
feet they don't need so much blood and should work harder for what they do get. As well as
telling the head it better go along, or else.
As it is now, all this government debt is setting the world up for predatory
lending/disaster capitalism, when the governments cannot run up more debt and those holding
the old debt start trading it for more public properties, from mineral rights to roads.
After watching the whole central meeting in Bolívar Avenue, Caracas,live
broadcasted by RTSpanish, which extended for several hours, in which were projected images of
other regions´meetings as well, and after watching live too, broadcasted by the same
channel, the pro-Random Dude meeting only in that rich neighborhood, which extended for about
half an hour and dispersed itslef very fast, I would calculate the numbers at both meetings
just in reverse as you have done.
I would say 200-300 thousands for Maduro´s supporters ( and i would say I get it
short..) and 20-30 thousands ( in the best case )for the Random Dude....
I notice that that photo you are basing your estimations on corresponds only to the front
of the square where the tribune for speechers of the pro-Maduro rallie was placed, but other
people has showed the whole Bolívar Avenue ( the longest and largest in Caracas ) full
of pro-Maduro people as long as the sight can catch ....See for example, Abby Martin´s
capture:
Blooming Barricade , Feb 3, 2019 1:31:10 PM |
link
The European Parliament voted on the Venezuela issue a few days ago, and naturally, the
centre-right wing European People's Party (Merkel, Tusk), the Liberals (Macron), and most of
the so-called Socialists voted to recognise the US coup minion as president. The European
United Left and most of the Greens along with the far-right wing voted against this, which
just shows you that the so-called liberal democrats are bought and paid for employees of
US/NATO multinational imperialism.
With the "Electoral College" method determining winners not in current favor, perhaps the US
MSM may wish to state that by world population, Maduro beats Guaidó by a factor of at
least 4 to 1 in public opinion.
thanks b... it is interesting @5 sashas comments if they can be verified..
@3paveway - it is much as @4 john merryman says, with the additional note that the boe are
essentially stealing venezualas gold in a might makes right type of undemocratic and
undignified way.. i always thought the federal reserve was an extension of the boe... both of
them are privately run, with some minor face saving image that they belong to the respective
gov'ts.. they don't... they are controlled and run by the 1% that are quite okay starving off
venezuala, or going to the next step - military intervention.. they are one sick group of
predators only focused on the god of mammon.. we have to figure out a way to get rid of them
before they completely destroy the planet..
Other than Russia../China/Iran....practically the entire world is under uncle sham's
thumb now.
The outlook is very depressing indeed.
Don't worry, China has an enormous amount of leverage:
"
Boeing predicts China will need more than 7,200 new aircraft worth over $1 trillion in
the 20 years through 2036."
Trump slaps some tariffs, here and there, on a few billion dollars of China's products.
But this is trivial compared to what China can do to Boeing, if Trump really annoys Xi. And
Boeing is just of many US companies that the Chinese can retaliate against.
Juan Guaido enjoys legislative immunity to arrest but Venezuela's Supreme Court barred him
from leaving the country, and the court also approved a request that all of Guaido's
financial assets be frozen.
As we have seen he's rather harmless, without any real power in the country, and so the
longer he's free and obviously ineffective the better. Plus it enables Maduro to appear
reasonable and unafraid of the young man.
The 800 lb elephant in the room here is the reality of class struggle in Caracas. Those
backing the imperialists seem to constitute the majority of Venezuela's small elite of rich
people. Despite their complaints, continual sabotage of the economy and outright treason in
their collaboration with its enemies they have been allowed to hold onto their ill gotten,
and inherited, wealth.
How long is that likely to last?
On the other side of the divide are millions of poor people, their livelihoods and their
democracy at risk. Many of them are having difficulty finding food to feed their families-
the deliberate result of sanctions supported by the wealthy, and the light skinned. Many are
finding it impossible to find the medicines their sick people desperately need.
If Venezuela is to maintain its independence it will do so because the poor refuse to give
it up. Their rewards and the means of rebuilding the economy lie in the wealth of the
rich.
The wealthy few have declared war on the many poor. They should not be allowed to lose
their bet and maintain their stakes. The world doesn't work that way.
As this regime change process unfolds, it is difficult not to feel deep sadness for
Venezuelans.
Chavez failed to lift the poor into a permanent middle class, Maduro failed to protect the
accomplishments that had been achieved, and now, the state seems unprepared to cope with what
was inevitable.
To assume that the Hegemon would keep its hands off the nation, return the gold, leave the
assets in the US untouched, not use the neighboring countries to mount an insurgency, seems
naive at best. The lessons learned from Cuba's 60 year fight for dignity taught the regime nothing.
Watching the tear down of Brazil's socialist leadership (two of them) taught the regime
nothing. Stupidity atop corruption atop a blind belief in an ideology that destroyed the wealth of
the nation (or at least crippled it) has led to the moment of truth. Will enough poor people
and some middle class defend the sovereignty of the nation? And will the military leadership and rank and file remain patriots?
It's a tragic moment in Latin American history. Though Maduro has some backing from the four most Resistant of all Resistors, Russian,
China, Cuba and Iran, the nation's geography is too distant for them to flex their full
restraint. The lesson of Nicaragua in the 80's should have been learned.
Now he faces invasion of convoys of aid on three borders. He must control his borders. The
odds are very long he can.
I am not sure if anyone has posted about this, my apologies if it is redundant. I was
wondering where our Random Dude was now located and what he was up to:
"For the role of President they chose a "poster boy" who doesn't represent anything and
who shouted out something at a meeting with 30,000-40,000 protesters, and after this he
immediately ran to the Embassy of Colombia, where he still sits to this day.
This boy refuses
any contact with the authorities. But since you are being informed by "different media
agencies" and certain authors on "Aftershock" – he communicated with army Generals on
twitter however the Generals are unaware of this but he communicated "in secret". Or he
appointed a certain official from among the immigrants in the US also on twitter "
Your analysis of the economic problems is too harsh directed at Chavez/Marduro and their
"ideology". Nafeez Ahmed's piece in Medium, which has been shared on this forum, does a much
better job describing the perfect storm of coinciding events which have combined to sink
Venezuela's economy. Short of two or three of these events, and the situation could be bad
but not as terrible as it is.
The programs instituted by the government over the past twenty
years remain extremely popular, as was acknowledged yesterday when Guaido made a vague
promise of government "subsidies" to those in need.
The aid caravans will be entirely symbolic, and offer little to nothing to a population of
over 30 million people. The sponsors of the aid caravans are also the same people who have
placed harsh economic sanctions on the country, a fact which will not be lost.
"The wealthy few have declared war on the many poor. They should not be allowed to lose their
bet and maintain their stakes. The world doesn't work that way. " Unfortunately Bevin I think that is exactly how the world works. The real never ending war
is between the haves and have nots.
Why don't the coup mongers name Hillary president of Venezuela. The biggest sore loser of all
time is currently "resting", as they say of out-of-work actors, and desperately wants to be
president of SOMETHING. Not being a native Venezuelan should be no drawback in her case. She
would simply trade her old Cubs/Yankees hat for a big V and probably discover some Venezuelan
great-great-grandmother hanging on her family tree. The coup mongers' current choice, the
sock puppet "Guido" Guadio, is about as legit as a Confederate nickel. And coups are by
definition NOT legit. So haul out those unused "I'm With Her" signs and ship them down there.
In the meantime, she can head for the Venezuelan Embassy and hole up there (a la Julian
Assange?) while awaiting the moment to parachute into Caracas. Mission Accomplished!
Let's remember that the US position is that Guaido is only the interim president of a
transitional government, which suggests that (1) the US has its real choice under cover in
Miami somewhere, possibly a Rubio house guest, or (more likely) (2) the US really doesn't
have a clue about what to do next. Hey, humanitarian aid, that's a good regime change
strategy (??).
Meanwhile they can demonstrate all they want, it never accomplishes anything (MLK
attendance the exception).
I'm a bit more pessimistic. Washington seems united on getting rid of Maduro and installing a
friendly regime. While Maduro can hang in there for awhile, the economic sanctions and covert
operations (including sabotage, killings, bribery etc.) will cause severe problems for the
government. Maduro is not Assad and lacks friendly neighbors--in fact, Latin America has
pretty much returned to direct Washington rule.
I suspect the Trump admin does have a plan for Venezuela and will push it through no
matter what anybody thinks. Trump's opinion of the bobbling heads or trained seal lot that
call themselves heads of state is about the same as he showed the Iraqi's when visiting the
US base in Iraq.
Trumps plans will only be stopped by the likes of Russia, China, Iran ect. No matter how
outlandish the claims of the lies of Bolton or himself are, MSM seems to take it up with all
seriousness.
Like with the attacks on Syria, Trump becomes presidential when he attacks the likes of Iran
and Venezuela.
USAMO . Same Old. First, engineer sanctions through compliant UN, then squeeeeze the
population until they understand the changing electoral requirements and their howl reaches
pitch
-in the meantime picking a favourite pony to front the 'peoples will' regime change op;
training him/her up in latest provocateur methodology and introducing them to their master
racketeers back in DC
then,
with malevolent mercenary gangs helping stirring street protest
offer emergency security assistance and food AID thru sanctified UN allowing your chosen
one to ride the front of the food wagon, saving the day.
Democracy, Yankee Doodle Dandy style.
Scotch Bingeington , Feb 3, 2019 7:16:18 PM |
link
jayc | 33
"The aid caravans will be entirely symbolic, and offer little to nothing to a population
of over 30 million people." Yes, and also those of the 30 million who support the Anti-Maduro movement are probably
not in need of basic foodstuffs, but will want their iPhone and their Netflix account.
I think this is the guy they would like to install--Leopoldo Lopez
Yes, good chance of that, if they could work it somehow (unlikely) and it would tie into
Guaido's reference to Feb 12.
wiki--During the crisis in Bolivarian Venezuela, Leopoldo Lopez called for protests in
February 2014. López, a leading figure in the opposition to the government, began to
lead protests. . .He was arrested on 18 February 2014 and charged with arson and conspiracy;
murder and terrorism charges were dropped. Human rights groups expressed concern that the
charges were politically motivated. . .Leopoldo López, a leading figure in the
opposition to the government, began to lead protests.. .
In September 2015, he was found
guilty of public incitement to violence through supposed subliminal messages, being involved
with criminal association, and was sentenced to 13 years and 9 months in prison. He was later
transferred to house arrest on 8 July 2017 after being imprisoned for over three years.
re: Trump's state of the union speech Tuesday night.
on VZ-- from WaPo Trump will
"... actively intervene in the political upheaval in Venezuela, aides said in previewing the
speech Friday."
here
I wonder how many of the pro-USA protesters, willing to take the US coin to protest on the
street, are also willing to take the US coin to die on the street.
I suspect these protests
are paper thin at best, the poor are unlikely to support the rich without financial
inducement, but the one thing the coup organisers have is plenty of money. If these are
indeed poor people protesting (who knows) then it would be interesting to know what quantity
of cash was offered to the participants. Maybe 30 USD for half a day of protesting? Decent
money for the protesters, easily affordable to the USA.
A countries domestic issues need to be kept separate from US attacks on a country. US is
not attacking Venezuela for humanitarian reasons. This is aside from the fact as Jen pointed
out, that Venezuela's economy has been under attack from the US for some time.
The expectations that a country that is under US attack should have a leader that is far
above average in terms of ability to withstand the economic attack of a superpower with
perfect, far seeing decisions is unreasonable. People lie that are rare and only occurred
occasionally in history.
What does matter is that the Maduro government is doing the best it can for its people,
rather than working in the interests of a foreign power to the detriment of its people.
As for a better leader - one that will resist the US and provide a better economy for
Venezuela while under US sustained attack....
Bart Hansen@20 - Oil production costs are complex, secret and mostly lies. With that caveat,
Venezuela was thought to have about $10 - $15 production costs on average. That includes
their light and medium crude, and zero investment in repair of their distribution networks.
Well over half of Venezuela's reserves are Orinco extra-heavy, sour crude. Essentially tar
sands, but buried 500m - 1500m deep that require solvent or steam extraction. So (guess)
maybe $30-range/bbl for production. Those tar sand oils produced are so heavy that they need
pre-processing and dilution before they can be refined or exported. Naphtha or other refined
products are used as dilutent and cost maybe $55/bbl today, but were around $75/bbl last
October.
U.S. refineries were pretty much the only ones paying cash for their 500,000 b/d of
Venezuelan crude. Trump's sanctions not only ban those imports, but also ban the 120,000 b/d
of naphtha and other dilutents we sold them.
Interesting to note that part of Trump's beat-down of the Venezuela little people is a ban
on the 120,000 b/d of dilutent last week. That will completely shut down their exports. They
could find another source of naphtha, but that source will be looking for $6.6 million a day
hard cash for it.
Maduro needs to sell Venezuela's gold to buy naphtha to export oil for ANY revenue. The
$2.5 billion the Bank of England can't find and won't deliver is meant to hasten the food
riots and CIA-orchestrated coup. But Mercy Corps is setting up concentration camps on the
Colombian border and we're delivering food aid, so the U.S. is really the hero, here. God
bless America! Obey, or die.
expectations that a country that is under US attack should have a leader that is far above
average
I appreciate your discussion of leaders, but let's not forget the people. It has been the
goal of the US to demonize leaders and go after them. Ho Chi Minh, Saddam Hussein, Bashar
Assad, Osama Binh Laden etc. etc.
But it's the people not the leaders that have formed the most resistance. It took the US Army
little time to track down big bad Saddam Hussein, but Baghdad wasn't pacified (controlled)
for four years, and people elsewhere in Iraq fought the "liberators" like the very devil.
Apply that to Venezuela. Heck, you and me, we'd all respond the same way given a foreign
invasion, right?
There are some warnings about avoiding dialogue and pushing a Venezuelan military option. The
opposition's courting of military officers carries potential dangers. If it leads to a schism
in the armed forces, that could be disastrous for the country, said Michael Shifter,
president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington policy anti-VZ forum.
A U.S. military incursion could have significant unintended consequences, "including a
deterioration of our relationship with currently supportive countries in the region." --
Gustavo Arnavat, a former Obama administration official and a senior advisor to the Center
for Strategic and International Studies.
Juan Guaido hopes that the United States will not use force in Venezuela, instead limiting
pressure on Maduro's government to diplomatic and economic measures, the Colombian newspaper
Tiempo reported Monday. . . here
If corruption or mismanaging a country's economy were justification for foreign
intervention to remove a leader, Israelis should be lobbying Washington DC to remove Binyamin
Netanyahu as their prime minister since he and his wife Sara have been charged by police for
fraud and bribery.
Indeed, depending on how it defines corruption, whether vaguely or narrowly, and on what
criteria, the US would have its work cut out for decades hunting down "corrupt"
politicians.
If I'm not mistaken the front page of the Washington Post, today showed a picture of a large pro-government protest, and
claimed that it was an opposition protest.
This will be something to watch and may be part of the answer to why now, why did the US go
after Venezula at this point. I think it is because Venezuela was historically captive to US
refineries, but no longer. India is capable of refining Venezuela oil and has a significant demand for it. If India
decides to do ignore the sanctions, I wonder if the US will impound tankers going to
India?
And tankers to China as China is building a refinery just for Venezula oil, it isn't
scheduled to come online until 2020, but perhaps China will push to make it happen asap?
to Paveway lV and Bart Hansen. It doesn't really matter the breakeven point for Venezuelan
oil if they can't access the money. I just read (15 minutes ago) on Seeking Alpha, that Trump
et al is blocking payments for Venezuelan oil. He is trying to force the payments into a
blocked account such that Maduro's gov cannot access it but Guido can. There are still
refineries in the US which need Venezuelan heavy crude to blend w/ the frack=crap. Volero is
stated to have two tankers which it cannot unload due to the payments issue. This is an
unusual way to provide "humanitarian aid."
Sorry I cannot give a link - the Seeking Alpha site seems to be done.
Re the Indian refineries, I believe they are currently buying Iranian oil so they may
resist sanctions against Venezuela. However, according to Paeway lV, without naphtha
Venezuela cannot pump oil. Maybe a swap with someone?
The aid caravans will be entirely symbolic, and offer little to nothing to a population
of over 30 million people.
I agree, Guaido's aid caravans will probably be something like 5% humanitarian and 95% for
smuggling arms into Venezuela.
However, China has the largest container ships in the world. Just one visit from a vessel
like the COSCO Shipping Universe could deliver more than 20,000 truckloads of stuff, which
would probably dwarf anything Guano is envisaging (even if his "humanitarian" caravans were
totally legitimate).
Would the Empire let it happen? I have little doubt that Bolton's sick enough to want to
stop a true humanitarian effort, but as I'm not as sick as Bolton is (at least I hope so), I
have a hard time imagining what excuse he could use to stop it -- especially after Guano's
caravans.
I don't justify intervention anywhere (except in D.C. where the Tyranny and Hegemon
resides). I point to missed opportunities, failures, corruption and not taking advice from your
closest friends (China, Russia, Cuba).
If they had brought in the Chinese petroleum experts and Russian economic experts, much of
the disaster would have been avoided. When you have a huge enemy and you are weak and relatively small, you need help. Maduro waited until too late.
There were many object lessons for better practices and better preparation for the
inevitable. Now, we can hope and pray that the Venezuelan people demonstrate their own will to resist
against intervention and regime change. Because if it comes, their wealth will be stolen
completely.
A sane government which really wanted the best for the people would've launched a crash
program to break free of the oil dependency which not only guarantees one remains at best a
US-colonized power, but which requires the physical destruction of one's own land and the
basis of one's future life.
I'm not just saying this about Venezuela, although destroying the Orinoco rain forest
necessary for our very lives in order to extract heavy oil is perhaps the most extreme
example on Earth of the self-destroying paradigm.
But any country afflicted with the oil curse ought to treat the deposits like very hot
radioactive waste and enforce at all costs a Chernobyl-type non-go zone. This also would
conserve critical ecological zones like the Amazon. If enough places did that simultaneously
it would prevent the US from "opening them up" by force and accelerate the collapse of the
empire and its globalization system. But any place which doesn't do this automatically
becomes a de facto colony and a target for aggression intended to turn them into a de jure
colony, as we see in this case.
From the evidence it seems that in the end a thing like Bolivarianism isn't offering any
real alternative to the US paradigm. Both equally want to burn every last fossil BTU's worth,
pump every last CO2 molecule, hack down and burn every last acre of forest. Both are on the
same mass murder-suicide ride.
Do the Venezulean people really want a better life than this? The American people sure
seem to want the worst.
It's my understanding that when Chavez was President, he did bring Chinese and Vietnamese
agriculture experts to Venezuela to study the country's potential for growing food staples.
The Vietnamese experts identified areas which originally had been considered by their former
wealthy owners as unproductive but which turned out to be ideal for growing rice.
Although Venezuela imports huge quantities of wheat from Russia, it's doubtful that
Russians can give much agricultural advice as Venezuela lies in the tropics and Russia does
not.
On the other hand, the way the Venezuelan government appears to be dealing with Juan Guaido, allowing him to shout in the wilderness and making himself look a fool, seems similar
to the way Russia treats Alexei Navalny, letting him make an idiot of himself, and might
suggest that Venezuela is taking advice from or copying Russia in this respect. Russia also
sold two S300 anti-missile defence systems to Venezuela though I do not know how often the
Venezuelans maintain them.
Thanks for the correction. I tend to skim history. I think the point still stands, that
politicians can't be left in control of the money supply. The impulse to abuse it is strong
The Maduro demo seems to have taken place on the Avenue Bolivar which is about 20 meters wide
and about 1.25 km long. The demo crowd appears to be packed so there could be 50 to 80
thousand people there. I haven't been able to locate the Guiado demo but it is possibly in
the upscale Las Mercedas district not far from the US Embassy. The photos of the Guiado are
generally close in and from a low angle which tends to exagerate the numbers. Even so, it
does not appear to be as densely packed / extensive as the Maduro event.
More disgraceful news:
Major EU nations recognize Guaido as Venezuela's acting president
Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, the Netherlands and Germany's
coordinated move came after the expiry of an eight-day deadline set last weekend for Maduro
to call a new election. Austria and Lithuania also lined up behind the self-declared
interim president Guaido.
Self-evidently all the governments which have followed the US are not only agreeing but
are acting in compliance with a pre-set US timetable. They all waited for the US to give the
signal, then like synchronized swimmers performed according to choreography pre-determined by
the US.
These European governments already were illegitimate in that they had surrendered
sovereignty to the EU. Now they're doubly illegitimate in that they've openly exposed
themselves as nothing but extensions of US policy. These are puppet governments.
So I'm not just joking when I say that any truly radical parties in Europe, "right" or
"left", should declare these fake national governments illegitimate and set up their own
shadow presidencies/premierships and governments.
Maduro to his navy --- "Today the future of Venezuela is decided: if it becomes one more star of the United
States flag or if it will continue to fly its eight tricolor stars," said the president.
"You saw the failed coup plotters yesterday ... with the gringo flag behind them. They no
longer hide, they no longer hide their identity. They no longer hide what they have inside,
they want to deliver our country, in pieces, to the gringo empire and the local
oligarchies."
Haiti is one of the countries that recognize Guano as president of Venezuela---
"Haiti's economy is reeling as unemployment & hunger is on the rise due to corruption
& mismanagement under #PHTK ruling party. On Jan. 31 many businesses shuttered in many
parts of the country as exchange rate of HT Gourd to US Dollar reached highest inflation
yet.
Exactly. They are US puppets.
Most obviously what we see is the most obvious top puppets in the EU; nordic, western europe
and the baltics. The meddling is apparent, still the corrupt EU/US governments keep on with their
aggression:
Russ: "So I'm not just joking when I say that any truly radical parties in Europe, "right" or
"left", should declare these fake national governments illegitimate and set up their own
shadow presidencies/premierships and governments."
This, so totally this, so absolutely and definitively this.
All these governments should be discarded and sued for breaching international norms.
Spain is specially ridiculous. Isn't Sanchez supposed to be "left", and not liberal scum?
I would not call the puppet character a Random Guy because he was clearly groomed for the
role over a number of years. Yet, he is obviously not a very capable guy because his claim to
fame is, for example, stringing a metal wire across the road to kill random motorbike riders
in a poor part of Caracas. Selection of such an untalented Murky Guy is another sign of the
desperation of the AngloZionist empire to grab resources after the Syrian debacle.
As usual,
the AZ regime change machine is mightily backed up by billions of puff dollars (printed out
of thin air), but among the puppets, the tie-eating Saakashvili is Optimus Prime compared
with the Murky Guy's leadership.
Ha, how 40 tons of the "barbaric relic" which disappeared from Ukraine after a similar
"revolution" got to be mentioned also in relation to Venezuela. And nobody even remembers
what happened to all the Ghadaffi's gold. You do not really think that hippo's Wooden Puppet
Guido (lol) will ever get to even touch this banksters' secret favorite? It will just
disappear into the Atlantic Ocean on the way to Guido. Just as carpenter Mastro Geppetto
carved his Pinocchio out of block of wood, so did the hippo carve his Guido out of another
block of rotting wood. This is why only the Italians, of all Europeans, could see through the
mischievous acts of the long-nosed Guido and his puppet master.
Yesterday I linked to an AP article
here on Charge d' Affaires James "Jimmy" Story who manages the US embassy in Caracas. In
the article was: "Chief among his interlocutors is Rafael Lacava, governor of the central
state of Carobobo, who presented him with a painting of two joined fists in the colours of
the U.S. and Venezuelan flags that now hangs in the entrance to Story's official residence in
Caracas."
So I looked up Rafael Lacava's twitter here which includes some glimpses of local
life in the small state of Carabobo just west of Caracas. Carabobo State was the site of the
Battle of Carabobo on 24 June 1821, a decisive win in the war of independence from Spain, and
was led by Simón Bolívar. The capital city of this state is Valencia, which is
also the country's main industrial center.
The tweets include some from Nicolas Maduro, including warnings that Trump wants another
Vietnam in Venezuela.
Russia has no choice than to boost the military to stand with Maduro. That may bring violence
including possibly the physical elimination of Guaido. That may trigger the West to intervene
militarily like in Libya without a UNSC approval.
That would rally the Venezualians around Maduro and the army.
As the american ( except the neocons) are against a war at their borders, Trump will have to
find a compromise.
Ultimately the Russians may push for a military takeover once they identified a military
leader.
Trump will have to accept that if he does not want to invade Venezuela
Well, the headline of this post is kinda problematic now ("U.S. Coup Attempt In Venezuela
Lacks International Support"). I think it was problematic from the start, b, because 1) several countries had already
joined with USA; 2) Europe's falling in line was never really in doubt. Note: The EU poodles have toed the line on Russia, Iran*, and now Venezuela.
=
* EU countries pretend to support JCPOA but have dragged their feet. Most commercial
interests will not cross USA and the EU states have done little to discourage that. It has
been announced that EuroSWIFT will be for humanitarian aid only.
It is important to remain as properly informed and nuanced as possible given the difficulties
of access to reliable information in the world of today. I, therefore, contribute this link
in which a Venezuelan sociologist presents a different view of the support Maduro has in the
country : https://therealnews.com/stories/defusing-the-crisis-a-way-forward-for-venezuela.
I have no way of knowing the de facto situation, as most of us. I do, however, have
experience of such turmoil, divisions, rallies and counter-rallies, lies, threats, etc. from
a country, my country, that, sadly, no longer exists. I would say - we should listen to the
people on the ground, always with a critical mind.
The implications of this barbaric assault for our world as whole, for South America and,
of course, for Venezuela, are far reaching. The role of the EU and its largest states in this
barbarism has been consistent and in the service of the US and European ruling class. The EU
has been supporting, promoting and awarding the Venezuelan opposition for a long time. Now it
is recognising the self-proclaimed person who wants to make Venezuela great again. Yet, my
fellow Europeans are more or less silent, more or less indifferent and very badly informed.
Being European is becoming a source of deep shame and we Europeans are starting to make
excuses when we introduce ourselves, just like the better informed Americans have been doing.
But there is a good side to this - all the masks have fallen off now. Everyone can see what
the US and the EU really are.
If not today, tomorrow their barbarism will be recognised as their defining feature. One
would think that change is then inevitable, even if long overdue.
One piece in the article you linked to does not seem to match events. Maduro was elected
president in what international observers said were a fair election. A number of opposition
figures chose, of there own accord not to run in the election.
Your article says the majority of Venezuelans do not want Maduro as president, yet on a few
weeks ago he was elected as president in a fair election.
@3 PavewayIV The Bank of England gold issue is pretty crazy to think about. If the Bank of
England can just give the Gold of a nation to a guy who just declares himself President
without running for office than their is no rule of law regarding the gold stored by BoE from
other countries. Surely any country that has assets held by other major UK, US banks should
be moving towards retrieving their gold after this fiasco. Its very scary to see the highest
parts of the banking sector; use of the Swift system; access to the US dollar and seizure of
assets by the US courts being increasingly used in the aggressions of the empire. If Maduro
is able to weather this storm and Venezuela is returned to some degree of stasis than Maduro
will ask to repatriate all of the gold held in Europe in order to prevent its future seizure
in case a Chavista is elected again next election. The BoE can't possibly just steal it based
on politics can it?
One sure sign of Maduro's popularity in Venezuela is the calls for a new election in which
Maduro is not allowed to participate. This was the same for Assad in Syria. The US know that
in any free and fair election, both Assad and Maduro would at anytime gain the most
votes.
Although Maduro was only recently inaugurated, the elections were May 2018. Maduro received
67.8 percent of the vote with a 46 percent voter turnout the next runners received 20.9 and
10.8 percent of the vote.
The wikipedia page has the vote numbers, but the article mostly goes on about Maduro blocking
opposition. If this were correct, then the US would not be vehemently opposed to Maduro even
running in another election.
What an embarrassment - Canada refused press credentials to Sputnik, RIA Novosti, and Telesur
for its multi-national celebration of "smart power".
"Richard Walker, a spokesman for Canada's foreign ministry, explained to Sputnik's
correspondent that the agency was denied accreditation because it "hasn't been cordial" with
Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland in the past."
That is, the Russian media published factually correct information which demonstrated
Freeland as less than candid regarding her family history. Her feelings were hurt, and her
feelings apparently take precedent in her position as Foreign Minister.
The rational and sensible way forward in Venezuela - international mediation - continues
to be rejected by the "interim president", the USA, and Canada's pet Lima Group project.
Instead, Guaido called for further "pressure", which is at this point limited to a further
tightening of the economic isolation of the country. Canada seems to have anticipated this
position by announcing a $53 million aid package which will be focussed on assisting current
and future "refugees" headed to Columbia and Brazil.
Hugo Chavez has repatriated most of Venezeulan gold whilst still alive. This is how the
CIA and the Venezuelan Central Bank could invent the story that a part of this gold is being
sent to Russia by Maduro. The 41 ton of Venezuelan gold still remain in Bank of England was a
necessary collateral for buying naphtha (for pre-processing oil for export) and subsidised
food for the Venezurlan population.
Once Western sanctions are imposed on a country, the only
way anyone would trade with such credit-worthless country, is if hard assets are used as
collateral. Maduro will probably be forced to send a part of the repatriated gold to Shanghai
gold market, forcing the Venezuelan Centeral Bank by military force to dispatch, or the
Venezuelans will go hungry. Having national gold under the Central Bank control is only
second worst to having it under control of the Central Bank's foreign masters in BoE.
I cannot think of one Central Bank in all the countries of the World which is not under
the control of the international (Jewish) banking cartel. If the "revolution" succeeds, the
gold inside Venezuela will disappear just as the gold in BoE. Since 2017 Bolshevik
Revolution, the revolutions are fueled by gold.
@Peter AU 1 | Feb 4, 2019 1:28:47 PM | 85 Maduro was elected president in what international observers said were a fair
election.
The May 20, 2018 election it self was declared "free and fair" here by four independent committees who had
camped outside the polling places but (as in the US and other "democratic" countries) the
shenanigans leading up to the election called the fairness into question.
The elections were boycotted by the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) coalition of opposition
parties and dismissed as illegitimate by the United States, the European Union (EU), and14
Western Hemisphere nations (the Lima Group). So we can say for sure that the boycott was a
tool to later call the elections illegitimate .
[How ironic since the US doesn't even (de facto) allow "opposition parties" (plural) but
restricts the quadrennial show to two look-alike parties, which Ralph Nader referred to as
tweedledum and tweedledee. Obviously neither of the two parties would ever boycott an
election.]
UN rapporteur to Venezuela and expert on international law Alfred de Zayas:
"I believe in democracy. I believe in the ballot box. If you believe in democracy, you can
not boycott an election. The name of the game is that you actually have to put your candidate
out and expect that the people will vote for you or against you," he said, referring to the
Venezuelan opposition's decision to boycott the recent presidential election, which saw
Maduro re-elected. . . here
Secretary of state John Kerry. "During my most recent visit to Kyiv, I was deeply impressed
by all you have accomplished in the more than two years since the Revolution of Dignity."
Secretary of state Pompeo. "The United States stands with the brave people of Venezuela as
they strive for a return to dignity and democracy."
This lot haven't much of an imagination. Just reading thev lines that were printed for the
Ukraine show.
The whole US and vassal States plan was for a swift removal of Maduro, that did not happen
thus time now runs in Maduro's favor. There won't a military invasion of Venezuela, there is
no apetite for that in Latin America at all, nor the vast majority of the Latin Americans
would support any sort of military intervention, even if head of States would promote it,
thus leaving two options for the US:
1) A cruise missile attack to destroy Venezuela Military and Government building, following a
false flag prepared and conducted by CIA's and Guaidó's supporter, such an attempt
would be received worldwide as an aggression, though the false flag would be used as
justification, that would not be tolerated by many many countries and could escalate in a
ugly way, and or
2) An attempt to assassinate Maduro to be blamed on the Venezuelan Military thus leaving
Guaidó out of it to legitimize him for power.
The second is a very likely scenario and may be in progress as of now.
Seriously, Ron Paul or Tulsi Gabbard speaking of democracy is one thing, but having
gangsters and psychopathic thugs like Pompeo, Bolton or Abrams in charge really sends a message
and that message is that we are dealing with a banal case of highway robbery triggered by two
very crude considerations:
First, to re-take control of Venezuela's immense natural
resources. Second, to prove to the world that Uncle Shmuel can still, quote , " pick up some small crappy
little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business ",
unquote.
The obvious problem is that 1) nobody takes the US seriously because 2) the US has not been
capable of defeating any country capable of resistance since many decades already. The various
US special forces, which would typically spearhead any invasion, have an especially appalling
record of abject failures every time they stop posing for cameras and have to engage in real
combat. I assure you that nobody in the Venezuelan military cares about movies like "Rambo" or
"Delta Force" while they carefully studied US FUBARs in Somalia, Grenada, Iran and elsewhere.
You can also bet that the Cubans, who have had many years of experience dealing with the (very
competent) South African special forces in Angola and elsewhere will share their experience
with their Venezuelan colleagues.
"... Why does everyone make Trump out to be a victim, poor ol Trump, he's being screwed by all those people he himself appointed, poor ol persecuted Trump. Sounds like our Jewish friends with all the victimization BS. ..."
"... I think Israel is just a capitalist creation, nothing to do with Jews, just a foothold in he middle east for Wall St to have a base to control the oil and gas there, they didn't create Israel until they discovered how much oil was there, and realized how much control over the world it would give them to control it. ..."
"... It is the love of money, the same thing the Bible warned us about. Imperialism/globalism is the latest stage of capitalism, that is what all of this is about, follow the money. ..."
I heartily dislike and find despicable the socialist government of Maduro, just as I did
Hugo Chavez when he was in power. I have some good friends there, one of whom was a student
of mine when I taught in Argentina many years ago, and he and his family resolutely oppose
Maduro. Those socialist leaders in Caracas are tin-pot dictator wannabees who have wrecked
the economy of that once wealthy country; and they have ridden roughshod over the
constitutional rights of the citizens. My hope has been that the people of Venezuela,
perhaps supported by elements in the army, would take action to rid the country of those
tyrants.
Hard to take this guy seriously when he spouts Fox News level propaganda.
Why does everyone make Trump out to be a victim, poor ol Trump, he's being screwed by
all those people he himself appointed, poor ol persecuted Trump. Sounds like our Jewish
friends with all the victimization BS.
Its clear that voting no longer works folks, this is an undemocratic and illegitimate
"government" we have here. We let them get away with killing JFK, RFK, MLK, Vietnam, we let
them get away with 9/11, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria. They've made a mess in Africa. All
the refugees into Europe, all the refugees from Latin America that have already come from CIA
crimes, more will come.
We wouldn't need a wall if Wall St would stop with their BS down there!
You can't just blame Jews, yes there are lots of Jews in Corporate America, bu t not all
of them are, and there are lots of Jews who speak out against this. We were doing this long
before Israel came into existence. You can't just blame everything one one group, I think
Israel/Zionist are responsible for a lot of BS, but you can't exclude CIA, Wall St,
Corporations, Banks, The MIC either. Its not just one group, its all of them. They're all
evil, they're imperialists and they're all capitalists.
I think Israel is just a capitalist creation, nothing to do with Jews, just a foothold
in he middle east for Wall St to have a base to control the oil and gas there, they didn't
create Israel until they discovered how much oil was there, and realized how much control
over the world it would give them to control it.
Those people moving to Israel are being played, just like the "Christian Zionists" here
are, its a cult. Most "Jews" are atheists anyhow, and it seems any ol greedy white guy can
claim to be a Jew. So how do you solve a "Jewish Problem" if anybody can claim to be a Jew? I
think solving the capitalist problem would be a little easier to enforce.
All of the shills can scream about communists, socialists and marxists all they want.
Capitalism is the problem always has been always will be. Its a murderous, immoral,
unsustainable system that encourages greed, it is a system who's driving force is maximizing
profits, and as such the State controlled or aligned with Corporations is the most advanced
form of capitalism because it is the most profitable. They're raping the shit out of us,
taking our money to fund their wars, so they can make more money while paying little to no
taxes at all. Everything, everyone here complains about is caused by CAPITALISM, but nobody
dares say it, they've been programmed since birth to think that way.
We should nationalize our oil and gas, instead of letting foreigners come in and steal it,
again paying little or no taxes on it, then selling the oil they took from our country back
to us. Russia and Venezuela do it, Libya did it, Iraq did it, and they used the money for the
people of the country, they didn't let the capitalists plunder their wealth like the traitors
running our country. We're AT LEAST $21 trillion in the hole now from this wonderful system
of ours, don't you think we should try something else? Duh!
It is the love of money, the same thing the Bible warned us about.
Imperialism/globalism is the latest stage of capitalism, that is what all of this is about,
follow the money. Just muh opinion
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said "we're getting ready to defend our country" as the
U.S. presses him to cede power.
While President Donald Trump signaled he's confident a transition of power to opposition
leader Juan Guaido is under way and said the use of U.S. military force in Venezuela remains
"an option," Maduro went on Spanish television to denounce foreign meddling.
... ... ...
"Nobody in the world can come and disavow our constitution and our institutions and try and
impose ultimatums," Maduro told broadcaster La Sexta in comments aired Sunday, referring to
attempts by Spain and other European Union countries to set a deadline for an early
presidential election. Venezuela's armed forces and civilian militias are preparing for an
invasion, he said...
... ... ...
The allegiances of the military, Venezuela's most powerful institution, may determine the
outcome of the power struggle between Maduro and Guaido...
Three miles away, Maduro ... told thousands of red-clad supporters and soldiers: "Venezuela
doesn't surrender. Venezuela charges forward."
"Mr. Bolton proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel -- throwing
things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door and, generally, behaving like a
madman."
"... Historically those kinds of gangs are among the prime recruiting grounds for coup-supporting thugs. So the US propaganda lies about them also indicates coup planner interest in recruiting them to help Guano's usurpation attempt. ..."
Historically those kinds of gangs are among the prime recruiting grounds for
coup-supporting thugs. So the US propaganda lies about them also indicates coup planner
interest in recruiting them to help Guano's usurpation attempt.
"... This coup has entered bizarro land even for a coup. The lack of current military action suggests to me that Trump is bluffing. And by the way he will lose in 2020 if he opens up a flagrant military intervention in another country. Just Air strikes are possible but without a real ground support, I"m not sure they'll do much and I think these will also cost him 2020. ..."
"... This is almost 'destabilisation by numbers and it is so obvious and in-you-face that it is deeply offensive to any person of conscience. But therein lies the point....psychopaths have no conscience, and the team running this gig probably all got to the top leaving a trail of sh1t and corpses behind them. ..."
"... Anyone remember the notorious Operation Fast and Furious scandal about ten years ago in which the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) ran a sting operation allowing licensed gun dealers to sell firearms to buyers working for Mexican drug cartels, in the belief that tracking the guns would lead to making arrests of their ultimate owners? ..."
"... How much of the gang violence in Venezuela is associated with drugs, the US War on Drugs in other parts of Central and South America, and the United States' own involvement in selling drugs through the CIA and other agencies in those areas, and the gang networks that have benefited and allowed to grow from there into other countries in the Western Hemisphere: that would be interesting to know. ..."
"... An article published at Stalkerzone , gives a glimpse of what could be described as an informational coup, where fake news with fake images are spreaded, mainly through Twitter, and this way they the US and its puppets in Venezuela try to create and "alternative reality" in which crowds who belong to events where supporters of President Maduro take part, are presented as the crowd supporting that unknown personage till some days ago, Guaido, and assertions about alleged meetings of the US appointed new president of Venezuela with members of the FANB are also presented as facts without any graphic evidence and the very FANB denying any contact with the coupist. ..."
"... The crisis in Venezuela is not simply a matter of left wing versus right wing political and economic systems. It is also rooted in competing ideas about racial and cultural worth. The ugly truth is that for some, it is still a matter of civilisation versus barbarism ..."
"... Claiming a commitment to ending foreign wars while threatening Venezuela with a coup is the epitome of Orwellian doublespeak. Is it really necessary to get in to the semantics of "war"? ..."
"... anyone who was really committed to peace wouldn't have psycho war hawks like Bolton and Pompeo around. Even dusting off a Reagan-era war criminal speaks volumes. ..."
"... Also have to give a tip of the hat to SST/W. Patrick Lang for linking his 12 page paper "Bureaucrats Versus Artists " While it's always easy to hate the CIA and U.S. IC, he reminds me that they do or at least did have an crucial politically-neutral information gathering mission for leaders in a democratic republic, and that mission has mostly been usurped by internal forces over the years. ..."
"... The idea that government policies are a well oiled machine, well, not so much. More like psychotic many multiples of the three stooges. Galbraith comments elsewhere about the military hardliners, wanting total victory. He points out that what they are actually advocating is total annihilation. Suicide. ..."
"... "Nothing has changed." You got that wrong. Now if Hillary, the Libya destruction architect, had been elected that would be true. But Trump has been a fresh air to anarchists especially. ..."
"... Half a million children under 5 were killed in Iraq just from the sanctions. The dead, the injured, and the displaced are still dead, injured, and displaced regardless of what weapon was used. ..."
"... Since the West cannot complete its World Order project they must revitalize the war strategy into a long term cold war type. What we see is a circling of wagons and threats against any who are not "with us". I think the speed with which steps are being taken are because of the threat of questions about finance that need to be silenced with more war and fear of any sort. ..."
"... I hope what folks are seeing by the actions of the West is that Rule-Of-Law is really just Rule-Of-Power/Control begat by owning the global tools of finance with a myth cover of Rule-Of-Law just like economics is a myth cover for the elite making all the big investment decisions and those results trickling down so to speak.... ..."
"... The [Trump's] agenda is not to destroy the Empire but to transform it to meet the challenge from Russia and China. Anyone that sees those changes and reads 'disintegration' is only seeing what they want to see. ..."
"... The transformation is to a much darker place and far from anything like democracy. For those of us that don't truck in misguided fantasies, the psyops, economic warfare, and militarism tells us all we need to know. Is it any wonder that the one chosen to lead us down the garden path to dystopia is an egotistical maniac? Trump was SELECTED, not elected, by the likes of: Hillary, McCain, Brennan, Mueller, Clapper, Kissinger, and Schumer. ..."
"... Sorry but does Mr. Maduro have a fetish of repeating every step from the Maidan playbook. You just let foreigners run around Caracas inciting the coup? Remember, the very last step from that playbook, of Russian spetznatz coming to rescue your sorry ass, is not available to you because you live a bit out of the way. These regime-change "journalists" are foreign agents who must be rounded up pronto (for their own protection of course). ..."
"... I remember how Reagan started to wobble a bit towards the end of his term. Part of me suspects that Trump is himself in a bit of a decline and is thus the best vehicle for his cadre of Iagos to subvert his power into their projects. Clinton would have been even better in that respect. ..."
"... More on topic, however, is the general characteristic of South and Central American rebellion. Savage, well-armed, even if only with Machetes, and shades of evil rather than a clear moral choice. If your hobby is pouring billions of dollars into the fire to sow mayhem there is no better place. ..."
"... I would predict that given the well-orchestrated push to recognize Guaido that the plan to overthrow Maduro's government is both inevitable and long-expected. The question is how the aftermath will roll out depending on whether or not the Columbian rebel groups link up with the Venezuelan resistance and the whole region explodes. Just a question. But I would bet that such a scenario is not unforseen by the American puppeteers. ..."
"... 'Old habits die hard', or as Pindar via Herodotus opined, 'Custom rules'. Key elements of the customary process for Empires' regime change efforts are to demonize the targeted leader, economic warfare on the targeted country, make up lurid stories, infiltrate with foreign saboteurs and NED-type internal subversion. John Perkin's 'Economic Hit Man' described the process of gaining leverage via financial means, debt the key. As Perkins noted, then there are the assassination squads, and then finally the US military, which has of late been heavily supplemented with mercenaries and private armies. ..."
"... Grayzone ..."
"... Venezuelan economist Luis Enrique Berrizbeitia, one of the top Latin American neoliberal economists, is a former executive director of the International Monetary Fund... ..."
"... Elliott Abrams is notorious for overseeing the U.S. covert policy of arming right-wing death squads during the 1980s in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. ..."
"... Historically those kinds of gangs are among the prime recruiting grounds for coup-supporting thugs. So the US propaganda lies about them also indicates coup planner interest in recruiting them to help Guano's usurpation attempt. ..."
"... They would make Venezuela the new Pinochet-era Chile. Trump is not alone in supporting Saudi Arabia and its Wahabi terrorists acting, as Lyndon Johnson put it, "Bastards, but they're our bastards." ..."
"... The proof that what the US and its appointed fake president Guaido are looking for is a civil war in Venezuela, which would dismantle the sate and transform it into a failed state, is to e found in Guaido´s beligerent speech in front of the crowd concetrated to hear him in an Eastern rich neighborhood, people who dispersed themselves quite fast, after showing so excited by what Guaido was saying, once his disapassionate and clearly anti-Venezuelan speech finished.. ..."
"... The oil part may be the selling point for Trump but the real deep state motive is to crush socialism. ..."
"... Is Bolton in charge, or is Pence? Pence certainly has been the face of much of the Venezuela policy. Is it because 1) He's modeling the office of the VP after GHW Bush's and Cheney's lead? 2)Trump has been so consumed with the congressional showdown and govt. shutdown, that he's let Pence, Pompeo and Bolton take the lead on Venezuela? 3) Trump is planning to go out in a blaze of glory -- declare Mission Accomplished on his agenda (even if he has to declare a State of Emergency to get his Wall) and resign, leaving Pence in charge (with the power to pardon him if need be). ..."
"... On thing I left out of my original coverage was that during the Q&A the Coup representatives were asked about how they would treat international agreements signed by the Maduro government and they basically said 1) that would not acknowledge any agreement signed by Maduro's government since 2015 and 2) they specifically called out Russia & China saying that if they wanted any of their agreements with Venezuelan honoured they would need to remove their support for Maduro - needless to say I don't think talking smack to the Russians or Chinese will accomplish much for the coup plotters. Nor do I think the Cuban government is threatened in the least by the latest threats to Cuba ..."
"... Finally, in regard to the coup in Venezuela, I just finished watching a documentary about the torture and murder of Victor Jara after the Chilean coup. A man who had been an 18 year Chilean Military conscript and participated in the human rights abuses after the coup said he still suffered from the guilt of his actions. He appeared very sad and old beyond his years. Meanwhile a retired CIA officer expressed no regret for his actions and looked great. It helps to be a psychopath or sociopath. I'm sure that Trump, Bolton, Pompeo, etc. will not suffer if their actions regarding Venezuela result in death and suffering. ..."
"... That's some convoluted reasoning and you are clearly very invested in it and are able to adapt it to anything Trump does. Failure isn't a strategy for success and appointments of rabid neocons isn't a strategy for peace. ..."
To demonize the President of Venzuela, Nicolás Maduro, and Venezuelan government forces, a concerted effort is made to falsely
depict gang violence, and the police reaction to it, as a confrontation between coup supporting protesters and the Maduro government.
Gang violence in the various slums in Caracas and elsewhere has been a problem for decades. The phenomenon is by far not exclusive
to Venezuela. The gangs mostly fight each other over territory, but sometimes collide with the police that tries to keep the violence
level down. This violence has nothing to do with the recently attempted coup or the anti-government protest by the mostly well-off
people who support it.
On January 29 the Washington Post , the CIA's
favored outlet ,
launched the campaign . As
detailed yesterday an incident of gang violence and the police's reaction to it was manipulated into a story of anti-government
protest.
The first three paragraph of the story told of an alleged anti-government protests in a slum in Caracas which included the arson
of a culture center. The next day the police arrested some culprits which led to more violence. Some twenty propaganda filled paragraphs
about the coup attempt follow. Only at the end of the Washington Post piece was revealed what really happened. The arson
incident took place a January 22, a day before the coup attempt. It was a gang attack:
Around midnight, neighbors say, a group of hooded boys threw molotov cocktails at the culture center.
The following day the police arrested some of the arsonists. More rioting followed:
A group set fire to barricades, threw stones and attacked an outpost of the National Guard. ... Neighbors said that criminal gangs
were among the crowd and created havoc by violently confronting the police .
The whole tit for tat incident was typical gang vs. police violence. It likely had nothing to do with the coup attempt.
BigLie Media tries again with the same old lies inside a somewhat new package. BigLie Media can't seem to make up its mind--first
it attacks Trump and his policies, then it supports Trump and his policies. How many others notice do ya think?
Lather, rinse, repeat. In France police are targeting nonviolent gilets jaunes protesters which has resulted in many serious injuries,
amputations, and loss of eyesight from rubber bullets. The plan here is to link black bloc violence with the protests as a way
of discrediting the movement and justifying a violent crackdown. One wonders to what level black bloc is acting as agents provocateurs,
as evidence shows is the case from past events. Check out Vanessa Beeley's reporting from France:
Demonization and propaganda are the normal operating mode of the US regime. If the the Washington Post is the CIA's favored outlet
then the NYT is a close second.
Many Thanks B. The garbage I am reading on MSM and sites that purport to be alternative news like zerohedge indicate war is imminent
and maybe necessary to prevent bloodshed. It's the WMD and babies killed in incubaters thing all over again. Your piece explains
the violence and gives great in depth and insight rather than drum beating.
This coup has entered bizarro land even for a coup. The lack of current military action suggests to me that Trump is bluffing.
And by the way he will lose in 2020 if he opens up a flagrant military intervention in another country. Just Air strikes are possible
but without a real ground support, I"m not sure they'll do much and I think these will also cost him 2020.
The longer this goes on, the worse Guiado looks. If it drags on he loses his legitimacy among the rather illegitimate coup
supporters. The question is what happens next?
Emmanuel Goldstein , Feb 1, 2019 4:49:13 PM |
link
This is almost 'destabilisation by numbers and it is so obvious and in-you-face that it is deeply offensive to any person
of conscience. But therein lies the point....psychopaths have no conscience, and the team running this gig probably all got to
the top leaving a trail of sh1t and corpses behind them.
I wonder what stunts they will pull in the U.K if Corbyn&Co come
to power. They really, really don't like socialism of any sort. Will they refuse to recognise Corbyn an PM and only deal through
the Maybot? That's the logical outcome of this new MO...
"...Gang violence is a huge problem in Venezuela. Like in other countries it is a side-effect of rapid urbanization and the
uncontrolled growth of new city quarters or slums. Other factors are drugs and the availability of weapons. Some six million guns
are believed to be in civilian hands and drug dealing is rampant. Youth unemployment exacerbates the problem ..."
One might want to ask where the weapons originally were made and sold, and where the drugs originally came from and who supplied
them.
Anyone remember the notorious Operation Fast and Furious scandal about ten years ago in which the US Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) ran a sting operation allowing licensed gun dealers to sell firearms to buyers working for Mexican
drug cartels, in the belief that tracking the guns would lead to making arrests of their ultimate owners? Eventually so many
guns ended up south of the US border in Mexico that the ATF couldn't track any of them. Quite a few of those guns ended up killing
US border patrol police. We would be naive to think that some version of Operation Fast and Furious hasn't been repeated elsewhere.
How much of the gang violence in Venezuela is associated with drugs, the US War on Drugs in other parts of Central and
South America, and the United States' own involvement in selling drugs through the CIA and other agencies in those areas, and
the gang networks that have benefited and allowed to grow from there into other countries in the Western Hemisphere: that would
be interesting to know.
Blooming Barricade , Feb 1, 2019 5:13:21 PM |
link
These people are completely embarrassing and just sad. Another weapons-company funded talking point, pushed out via the Foundation
for Defence of Democracies, says that Maduro is a representative of "Russian Imperialism," or even "Cuban(!) Imperialism." Such
nonsense is meant to deflect the obvious imperialism of the USA and has sadly been repeated by so-called anarchists at Libcom.
Even the Wall Street Journal is more honest about the fact that this is obviously a US-led regional coup plan. Parroting Lockheed-Martin
to own the "tankies."
Note that most real world anarchists not backed by disinfo agencies are not insane and don't believe FDD sludge
Blooming Barricade , Feb 1, 2019 5:21:35 PM |
link
The New York Slimes had a front page story on the alleged "extermination units" of Maduro, needless to say all of their information
came from "human rights and civil society groups" OBVIOUSLY funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and therefore worthy
and democratic organizations such as Exxon-Mobil, McDonald's, Goldman Sachs, Boeing, CitiGroup, the US Chamber of Commerce, Visa,
Hilton Hotels, and more. See here:
https://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2019/01/us-regime-change-in-venezuela.html
Blooming Barricade , Feb 1, 2019 5:25:16 PM |
link
Abby Martin on the beat:
"War danger is very real. Bolton threatens to send Maduro to US torture house Guantanamo if he doesn't resign in insane,
unhinged interview where he claims Russian & Cuban agents are in Venezuela assassinating peaceful protesters on behalf
of the government" https://twitter.com/AbbyMartin/status/1091443808636522496
The business of conflation of gang violence with protest is not new. See the kidnapping of Aristide in 2004 by US special forces,
and the associated coup.
The Canadian government was working with former police chief of Gonaives, turned international cocaine trader, Guy Philippe
(see the confession of 9 November 2004 in the Canadian parliament, as made by then Canadian ambassador the Haiti, Hon. Dr. Claude
Bucher re cooperation with Philippe, and Internet archive backups of DEA fugitive lists for Miami Florida circa 2013 e.g. for
Philippe's involvement in the cocaine trade; there were much earlier indications, but they have been scrubbed off the internet,
e.g. a 2007 Reuters article regarding a DEA raid on Philippe's compound).
In cooperation with the Canadian government, Philippe illegally returned to Haiti. When the leader of the "Cannibal Army" street
gang was killed in a intergang shootout, Philippe took over leadership of the Cannibal Army gang, and accused Aristide of killing
said leader, which the financial press parroted (the Cannibal Army became peaceful opposition protesters in the official propaganda),
and after the coup, former Haitian prime minister Yvon Neptune was held for two years on genocide charges (sic), regarding the
gang shootout.
When Phillipe took over leadership of the Cannibal Army gang, be renamed it several times, settling on "the national revolutionary
front for the liberation of Haiti."
The reason the press felt that they could get away with such a lie was that certain gangs had agreed not to attack the police,
including both the Cannibal Army, and the gang which killed the then leader of the Cannibal Army. The financial press (including
notoriously The Economist) had been referring for some time prior to the coup to such gangs as "Aristide supporters" and to gangs
that refused, as "political opposition."
The reason for such arrangements (police negotiating with gangs) was a Clinton law, nominally passed against the Cedras junta,
but only enforced upon Aristide's return, preventing the Haitian the government from importing automatic arms, thus putting the
police at a disadvantage relative to the gangs.
When the coup started, and the Cannibal Army started attacking the Gonaives police, said police started fighting back. When
it became obvious that the police would win, the US special forces conducted their kidnapping of Aristide. For an overview, see
Kevin Pina's Haiti We Must Kill the Bandits.
Since the coup, Canada and USA have run several fraudulent elections in Haiti, in violation of the Haitian constitution. Tactics
have included burning dumpsters full of ballots, preventing Aristide's party from running, and outright ballot stuffing, with
an attendant drop in voter participation.
One correction to my above comment: Not ballot stuffing, but giving fraudulent counts for ballot boxes. After five boxes were
checked in the last fraudulent US run Haitian election, in which the actual ballots were anti-US puppet while the official count
was in favour of the US puppet, the US corrected the totals for the examined boxes, while refusing to allow recounts of any other
boxes, thereby giving the US puppet a win.
I'm amazed that you can read through the drivel and lies published by the likes of the New York Times and Washington Post regards
Venezuela. Once the NYT, on day one of the coup, pretended there some some question regards the legitimacy Maduro's election,
I lost all patience. I watch Jimmy Dore talking to Abby Martin, someone who has been there recently.
But thank you for posting on this further spewing of idiocy and lies from the NYT and WashPost. Those publications don't even
seem to care to base their critiques of Venezuela and Maduro on some kind of verifiable reality.
Fixing Bloomberg's text to apply to events closer to home:
The capitalist regime has regularly sent the police forces racing into slums in personnel carriers. Its masked and helmeted
members, equipped with full military gear, helmets, batons, and shields, attack demonstrators with weapons including tear gas,
guns and even grenades.
By the way, Guy Philippe now
is appealing
his own plea bargain (money laundering in cocaine trade related activities). In one of the articles that was scrubbed off
the internet, an interview with "before it is news" with Philippe, Philippe protested that US puppet dictator of Haiti (and former
pole dancer / rapper, Michel Martelly aka Sweet Mickey) was far more involved in the international cocaine trade than Philippe
ever had opportunity to be. Also, Philippe has been involved in the cocaine trade since at least
1999 .
Duterte has a solution to drug and gang violence. The west protests vigorously, now why is that? Duterte learned from the events
in Haiti that the west will use the gangs to destroy him. Eh Maduro!! learn from Duterte.
Since nothing about any of this makes sense, let me run another theory past you.
Trump accused of 'stopping working' as schedule reveals he averaged one event per day in January. As the link says,
if Trump has stopped doing anything except "hate-tweeting" and watching Fox News, this would be an opening for Pence and his friends
to do whatever they please. Venezuela might be as simple as killing some time and gaining some practice while waiting for events
in the mideast to come to a boil.
I've seen claims Trump was desperately looking to get out of the Shutdown while still saving face. If being President isn't
fun anymore, he may be looking for a "heroic" way out of that position as well.
"Anyone remember the notorious Operation Fast and Furious scandal about ten years ago in which the US Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) ran a sting operation allowing licensed gun dealers to sell firearms to buyers working
for Mexican drug cartels, in the belief that tracking the guns would lead to making arrests of their ultimate owners?"
I recall reading there was a further goal of the Fast and Furious project; when the guns eventually showed up in the US it
would be used as justification for draconian gun control as clearly regulating dealers didn't "work." I don't recall where I read
that, it was sometime ago.
It is estimated that 5 million Colombians entered Venezuela in the last two decades, some of whom brought a culture of violence
with them (a sort of Jihad)...
Thanks b, as always, you just cut right through the BS.
Jen@14 -My thoughts exactly. Drugs, money, guns, and violence. The gangs should be considered proxy forces of the Empire. Their
role is to destabilize and terrorize.
In the US, heavily militarized police forces have impunity to kill unarmed, non-threatening people of color, even children,
with barely a peep from the presstitutes. That thought leads to the white-suprematist nature of the Empire and how the genocide
and ethic cleansing of the US has been so complete that indigenous people today are less than 1% of the population and are still
viewed by the ptb as an impediment to "progress". Remember how the Standing Rock protests ended?
The hubris and hypocracy of the Empire knows no bounds.
By the way, that pinnacle of journalism the Daily Mail is blocking pro Maduro posts on its Vz stories, people are noticing it
and posting comments complaining on other stories.
Sorry, reference from 2015: 5 millones de colombianos han huido hacia Venezuela (5 million Colombians have escaped to Venezuela).
Sabemos que Semana, El Tiempo, El Espectador, Caracol, RCN (por nombrar algunos) mantienen una incesante campaña mediática
desde Colombia contra Venezuela y la Revolución Bolivariana. La matriz derrocha tinta y baba cotidianamente contra el país
mientras hace caso omiso de los problemas internos colombianos (que, por fuerza, se han impuesto por actores foráneos).
EL CIUDADANOMARCH 2, 2015
(We know that Semana, El Tiempo, El Espectador Caracol, RCN to mention only some have created an incessant media campaign
against Venezuela and the Bolivarian Revolution.)
Colombia is less violent overall than Venezuela, on a per capita basis, by about a factor of two. Colombia banned
leaded petrol in the early 1990s, although smuggling of subsidized and leaded Venezuelan petrol (until 2005) has resulted in Colombian
border towns having higher murder rates than the nearby Venezuelan towns from where the petrol was smuggled. If excessive violence
in Venezuela is being perpetrated by Colombians, they will largely be from border areas.
Oh, Come on, do you not know how the fucking empire works? Colombia is what Cuba was pre 1959, a playground for elites with prostitution
the major dollar earner.
In his latest
, Pepe Escobar gives Bolton a new moniker--"psycho killer"--which I find quite apt. An excellent addition to Hudson's essay, Pepe's
piece provides new information for us:
"Psycho killer Bolton's by now infamous notepad stunt about '5,000 troops to Colombia', is a joke; these would have no
chance against the arguably 15,000 Cubans who are in charge of security for the Maduro government; Cubans have demonstrated
historically they are not in the business of handing over power."
Brazil has said they'll be no invasion from its land. I seem to recall similar noise coming from Colombia despite the Outlaw
US Empire's having leased 8 bases. The upshot is Economic War is the worst aggression the Outlaw US Empire is capable of visiting
on Venezuela. But has Hudson details, a method of resisting/counter-attacking now exists and continues to gain strength. The old
"Core" nations are slowly being relegated to the periphery while committing treason to the principles they once sought to impose
globally. No, the Hybrid Third World War isn't yet over, but we can now discern how it will end.
"President Donald Trump will reaffirm his intention to end US involvement in foreign military conflicts when he delivers his
State of the Union (SOTU) address next week, a senior administration told reporters.
"'In terms of protecting America's national security, the president will update Congress on his diplomatic and military
efforts around the world and reaffirm his determination to protect American interest and bring to an end our endless foreign
wars,' the official said on Friday."
I learned a lot from Hudson's piece, but I fact-checked one statement of his and it seems wrong - he claims the President of the
World Bank is traditionally a post for US Secretary of Defense (presumably after being SecDef), but looking at the list of past
World Bank Presidents, I only see one secdef, and 2ish assistant/deputy secdefs. The others seem unrelated to the US Dept of Defense.
Does anyone know more about this? Is Hudson mistaken? Or is there more to it than what I found out?
@ karlof1 | Feb 1, 2019 8:04:07 PM | 41
I don't doubt that Trump wants to end foreign wars, which the US is consistently losing, a no-brainer decision, it's his lack
of sensibility that's a worry when he also supports --
>a large increase in the size of the army, which is only required for foreign wars (Mexico and Canada are quite benign).
> an Army general for Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, out of rotational order (which would have favored Air Force).
> big bucks going for Army modernization
The fact is that the US doesn't need a standing army* at all, and having one only contributes to the chance of (plans for) foreign
wars.
My guess is Trump's trying to buy loyalty, what with all the impeachment talk, which is serious, but who knows. He offers no explanation.
* Constitutional scholars out there know about Article I, Section 8 which favors a standing navy, but not a standing army:
1: The Congress shall have Power. . .
12: To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
13: To provide and maintain a Navy;
An article published at Stalkerzone , gives a glimpse of what could be described as an informational coup, where fake
news with fake images are spreaded, mainly through Twitter, and this way they the US and its puppets in Venezuela try to create
and "alternative reality" in which crowds who belong to events where supporters of President Maduro take part, are presented as
the crowd supporting that unknown personage till some days ago, Guaido, and assertions about alleged meetings of the US appointed
new president of Venezuela with members of the FANB are also presented as facts without any graphic evidence and the very FANB
denying any contact with the coupist.
Also, gets debunked the general message on Maduro´s incompetency to manage Venezuelan economy and state, spreaded, not only
by the US and its puppet media/governments, but also by those who are supposed to be in the "resistance" side, those whose anti-socialist
views makes them contribute to the informational coup.
On the same vein, debunking all the lies who make Maduro and the Bolivarian system and government responsible for the straits
produced by an organized harassment which started not this month but several years ago,
a Spanish professor has written a letter to Spanish president,
Sánchez , so as to, not only ashame him, but also warn him about the posible outcome of allowing this outrage to happen and
the breaking point reached with what at all ights seem the full abolishment of International Law...he is offering economic data
to defintiely debunk all the authors, "analysts", and commenters out there spreading plain lies, without offering any fact to
support their claims against Maduro
"Mr. President You, as your party has done so many times, have had the cowardice to put aside a new aggression against a
country that defends its sovereignty at all costs, aligning itself with the US guidelines in this respect.
But, Mr. President, you know very well that Venezuela is the most advanced democracy in all of Latin America, which has
held some 29 elections since 1999 (the year in which Chávez arrived at the head of state), the majority under international
supervision, and with the system of "The most advanced electoral count in the world" according to the Jimmy Carter Foundation.
In fact, the last legislative elections were won by the opposition.
You know, because in your office it is impossible not to know, that Venezuela has some of the most important achievements
of the continent. It appears as the country of the area with the greatest reduction in the percentage of poverty, which went
from 28.9% in 1998 to 19.6% in 2013; and the percentage of households in extreme poverty decreased from 10.8% to 5.5% in the
same period.
You also know, how could you not know? That Venezuela is the country in the region that has fought the most against inequality.
The Gini coefficient (according to which 0 is the maximum equality and 1 the superlative inequality) in 1998 was 0.486 and
in 2013 it reached 0.398, the lowest in Latin America.
Also, if you do not know for sure that some of the diplomats of your government did, Unesco declared Venezuela under
the Chávez government "Free of Illiteracy Territory", and this country has a net primary schooling rate of 95.90. %.
I would also have to know that the evolution of child malnutrition in children under 5 years of age went from 7.70% in
1990 to 2.53% in 2013. This country deserves recognition from the United Nations Food and Nutrition Organization. Agriculture-FAO.
While the vacancy rate went from 15.2% in 1999 to 7.1% in April 2014 (the one that the Kingdom of Spain already wanted far
away). Venezuela reached 0,771 in the HDI, which includes it in the group of countries considered with a "High Level of Human
Development", to be above the average of Latin America and the Caribbean. You also know, I am sure, that the government of
Venezuela provides housing for its population and that there are no evictions.
You must also know, how you will not know if even your party mate Rodríguez Zapatero let you see when he was a mediator
in Venezuela, that the serious crisis in this country is caused by the ruthless economic war that is perpetrated against him,
launched first of all by USA and seconded by subaltern countries as unfortunately is the Kingdom of Spain.
I remind you of some of the characteristics of that war. The unilateral closure of bank accounts of the Venezuelan State
to make it difficult for suppliers to pay essential goods and to meet other commitments. The cancellation, for exclusively
political reasons, of vital imports, as was the case of treatments for malaria. Withholding crucial currencies to purchase
basic goods (for example, in November 2017, financial services provider Euroclear retained 1.65 billion dollars of Venezuela
that were destined to the purchase of foods and medicines). The Venezuelan Executive has retained close to 2.5 billion dollars
of international operations, in different banks, either for debt or import payments, or for oil bills. Wells Fargo Bank withheld
and canceled payments of 7.5 million dollars for the sale of energy to Brazil. It also has retained foreign currency to pay
back payments to pensioners abroad. And they have been retaining food shipments for the population that were already paid (for
example, in December 2017, 2,200 tons of pork were kept for two weeks at the Colombian border, rotting during retention).
Now they also want to take away their gold reserves from foreign banks and steal the profits from their oil. To which
is added the internal economic warfare that the Venezuelan business class carries out, hoarding all kinds of products to cause
a widespread shortage, or playing with currency exchange rates to destabilize the country.
And afterwards, governments like yours that collaborate with all of this proclaim that it is necessary to send "humanitarian
aid" to Venezuela.
Size cynicism is also part of that brutal economic war to which I referred, whose steps and specific objectives I already
explained in this same medium and that seeks to cause deaths and suffering without limits in the Venezuelan population, in
order to surrender and lift up against your government. That war is accompanied by a terrible media bombardment that is almost
unprecedented. The means of mass dissemination have always been used to "soften" the consciences of societies before initiating
a war against any population. They did it recently in Iraq, in Yugoslavia, in Ukraine, in Libya, in Syria ... but what Venezuela
is suffering is already truly long and exhausting. In fact, this monotonous bombardment is so insistent that it already convinces
almost all European people that something bad has to have that government so that they persecute him so much. When in reality
they should ask themselves what a good government does so that all the powerful and the extreme-right, starting with the "crazy"
Trump, want to sink him.
And it is that the main weapon of massive destruction of the USA, that has no rival in the world, is the monopolistic
control of mass media, the dictation of world news (with the consequent systematic and planned disinformation), or which is
the same, the reality construction machine.(...)
But I suppose that if the great world powers that give instructions to your government resort to such a crude option,
it is because things go very badly for them and they must be quite desperate, enough to put the world in a new phase without
rules, where war and aggression between countries prevails over any convention. Because you, with your position, are also complicit
in a probable military intervention of unpredictable consequences in the heart of the Great American Homeland. It will make
all of Spain complicit in it.
Mr President, you know perfectly, to finish, that any European government would have reacted by totally closing the democratic
space before a threat of external interference, coup d'état or armed insurgency sponsored by third parties. Look, if not, how
the Spanish governments have reacted just because someone asks for urns in Catalonia. Or how Britain closed the "freedom of
the press" for the Falklands war that was thousands of kilometers away. All this has been faced by Venezuela, however, without
leaving a permanent path of dialogue, as again our former head of government, Zapatero, can testify.
I believe that you do not feel any remorse for your crude ultimatum to the legitimate president of Venezuela, but do
you really feel no concern before the free way that is giving to others in the Kingdom of Spain? A country, which as its name
indicates, can not choose its head of state, nor (at least not yet) has it chosen you either.
I am with you. Results given to DJT will have to be in terms measured in a tangible wind-down to these occupations. He is not
a politician who excels in Orwellian-speak as those above mention. His apolitical nature is the only true bright spot in his presidency.
His contributions have given terminology like "globalism" back its weight for the public to peruse, when of course they are not
frothing at the mouth with TDS. He deserves a lot of credit and speaking on a soapbox about this important terminology and turning-point
can truly affect the impressionable in the coming generations.
There is a racial and cultural angle to the Venezuela discord (which the US and its puppets are taking advantage of). Chavez was
and Maduro is at least partly indigenous, and that rankles some who favor the white Spanish..
. . .from a 2017 article on the web...
. . .While the Chávez government attracted international attention for its economic and political programmes, it also addressed
cultural injustices. Through new cultural policies and social programmes, such as Misión Cultura, Chavismo raised the symbolic
status of the historically excluded poor and mixed-race masses.
The opposition protests that have flared up since Chávez first came to power need to be understood within this cultural
and racial context. Radical sectors of the right wing opposition have repeatedly refused to accept the legitimacy of Chavismo
and what it represents. In 2002, they helped organise both a short-lived US-backed coup and oil strikes meant to create chaos
and bring the government down. The street demonstrations raging today are aimed at achieving regime change, but the opposition
has not indicated what policies they would introduce and how they would deal with the country's problems if they were in power.
The crisis in Venezuela is not simply a matter of left wing versus right wing political and economic systems. It is
also rooted in competing ideas about racial and cultural worth. The ugly truth is that for some, it is still a matter of civilisation
versus barbarism. . .
here
Yes, I particularly like the way he kicks in the teeth the old alliances of the
US and its world-wide puppet networks favored by the establishment which Trump has threatened and acted against. Yet they still
persist. From the news
As part of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress required the Secretary of Defense, in concert with the
Secretary of State, to "assess the foreign military and non-military activities of the People's Republic of China that could
affect the regional and global national security and defense interests of the United States. // Wow, "regional and global
national security and defense interests of the United States" leaves nothing out.
thanks b... if we could send bolton to gitmo, that'd be the beginning of something truly relevant and worthwhile - let him go
with all the other neo cons down the line since before bush2's time too.. nyt /wapo and etc...water carriers for the same evil
empire.. no surprise.. lies are all they have and they have endless reams of them...
@don bacon and nemesiscalling.. you two are still in love with trump, lol... i suppose you figure it's all an accident and
he really does want to stop the wars of aggression on various countries and etc... give it up.. the guy is off the charts unstable
and doesn't know his ass from the hole in his head.. nothing has stopped under his watch.. it has only gotten worse and now he
threatens venezuala... he will sell what the corporatocracy wants him to sell, plain, simple and just as vacuous as it sounds..
Claiming a commitment to ending foreign wars while threatening
Venezuela with a coup is the epitome of Orwellian doublespeak. Is it really necessary to get in to the semantics of "war"?
Read that second sentence very carefully, it is a case study in obfuscation.
Very interesting, thank you. I wonder how widely noticed, read or discussed this letter will be in Spain, or outside of Spain
for that matter? I've sent a heads-up to GlobalResearch.ca re Andrés Piqueras's letter.
Interdasting! No tweets, but who THEY follow is rather telling.
Related: I hate 'list of' or 'rules for' articles, but I'll make an exception for this Jefferson Morley article published yesterday
on Salon's site. Nothing earth-shattering for the whiskey bar crowd, but certainly worth a read for the history lessons.
We have not devoted a cent to toppling Venezuela as of yet, other than the career diplomats and their salaries whose job is
to fuck with their brains down in Socialist-land.
Huge difference btw the perilous chasms in the ME and Afghanistan and those in LA. How is that for obfuscation?
No one is allowed by the USA and its poodle nations to nationalize oil or any other resources. No one is allowed to do anything
tangible for poor people. However, every country is entitled to "self-determination" as long as its resources are handed over
to multinational corporations approved of by the USA.
It is the stuff of Lewis Carroll's "Through The Looking Glass".
Like it or not, James, what I said about Trump reintroducing concepts like globalism back into the public lexicon can be laid
only at the feet of one DJT.
You don't do any service to the movement by constantly decrying his poor points and not recognizing the positive or that which
we can build off.
Fuck me! Who's this AOC? The lady who has yet to mention the term "globalism" or relate to any of those that have suffered
under its ghastly load. Yeah...heap on the green jobs or we'll be dead in 12 years!
yeah, sure... someone thinks the usa neo cons haven't
Tpent a cent on trying to topple venezuala leadership, in spite of the fact they have been trying since the era of chavez!!
lets forgot about however many 100's of millions that have been spent on this ongoing exercise, not to mention probably a whole
lot more and hey - it's only money... if a few innocent people die, whatever... trump is clean, lol...
nemesiscalling.. i am not picking a side... the whole 2 party system in the usa is fucked... and while i thought trump was a breathe
of fresh air at the time he was running for the presidency, i think we have had enough time to see him for who he is - another
person who happily rubber stamps the same bs that has been an ongoing byproduct of usa foreign policy - wars, murder and mayhem
around the world 24/7... and, as a canuck, i am just as disgusted by the shills running canada at present - tru dope and unfreeland
- 2 losers from the get go... so, i am not taking sides in any of this.. i don't see any good from trump at this point.. sorry..
Apparently james and some others would be quite pleased if only the outsider Trump coming to Washington, against a continuing
establishment resistance, would start a war (like Bush did) or send 70,000 fresh troops to an existing war (as Obama did in his
first year), killing injuring and displacing millions. Well I'll go with Trump and his ending of the Afghan and Syria commitments,
and finally ending the Korea war. Perfection in life? Doesn't exist. You gotta settle for good enough.
no don... trump hasn't stopped any wars.. that is the reality, in spite of any pretensions otherwise...and there is constant talk
of more wars... sorry, but trump has been a disaster for anyone who thought something was going to change.. nothing has changed..
NemesisCalling@56
Obfuscation? Yep, you nailed it with that sentence. Lol
Since James already responded to your claim about the money I won't, but I will point out that anyone who was really committed
to peace wouldn't have psycho war hawks like Bolton and Pompeo around. Even dusting off a Reagan-era war criminal speaks volumes.
Also have to give a tip of the hat to SST/W. Patrick Lang for linking his 12 page paper
"Bureaucrats Versus Artists
" While it's always easy to hate the CIA and U.S. IC, he reminds me that they do or at least did have an crucial
politically-neutral information gathering mission for leaders in a democratic republic, and that mission has mostly been
usurped by internal forces over the years.
You are wrong because you fail to see that his actions are paving the way. Every minor concession now will not be able to be
won back by the neocon estab. Not unless they want to start WW3. With a Trump presidency, for the neocon/neolib estab, it is death
by a thousand cuts. Lickily DJT has the patience and wisdom to realize this. Like I have said many times before, he clearly idolizes
Putin and his long-game strat.
The reason there has always been a fever pitch about toppling Trump is because the estab is aware of this slow, impending death
under DJT. Hell, I have even conceded that he may not even be mindful of his own role in this slow-mo disintegration. But an ignorant
harbinger of death I would take anyway.
Sometimes, imo, we lose sight of how many different cliques and cults and agendas and interests and inertia and customs and
stupidities etc go to make up a government.
Here is a quote from J.K. Galbraith, from 1961, when he was serving under JFK as ambassador to India.
"It is hard in this job not to develop a morbid dislike for the State Department. It is remote, mindless, petty, and above
all pompous, overbearing, and late."
The idea that government policies are a well oiled machine, well, not so much. More like psychotic many multiples of the
three stooges. Galbraith comments elsewhere about the military hardliners, wanting total victory. He points out that what they
are actually advocating is total annihilation. Suicide.
Often brainy people seem especially geared to inflict massive destruction and mass murder. It has been pointed out that the
carnage the US inflicted on Indochina in the nineteen sixties and seventies was presided over by a bunch of Rhodes Scholars and
other brainy folk.
Sometimes very pleasant and good people can combine conventional success with extreme deficits in knowledge. A person of some
accomplishment once asked me if there was gravity on the moon. I checked for a moment to see if he was serious, and he was. I
answered, yes, but less than we have on Earth. On the moon, I explained, people can leap like kangaroos and kangaroos are in danger
of achieving escape velocity. But I think my humor went over his head.
So Donald Trump may not be the worst thing to happen to us. We'll have to see how this develops.
"Nothing has changed." You got that wrong. Now if Hillary, the Libya destruction
architect, had been elected that would be true. But Trump has been a fresh air to anarchists especially. Talk about a bull
in a china shop, or a tweet in a twitter shop, nothing is the same any more. Wake up and smell the coffee, james!
It's Friday night, so I bet most barflies are out at their local watering holes given the paucity of responses to Trump's planned
announcement. Smacks of Owrellianism to be sure. Ending "neverending" wars to begin anew? IMO, the Economic Wars being waged against
Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, and others count as neverending endeavors.
Most of us realize the degree of Evil deeply bound-up within the Outlaw US Empire and its network providing domestic support.
It's been several generations since the entire edifice faced a concerted push-back effort; but within the public at large, several
factions not yet coalesced are trying differing approaches--although we hear/read little thanks to BigLie Media's blackout. Much,
as we read, is happening internationally since not all sources of information are censored or blacked-out. And the push-back on
that level is very serious indeed. The point is that little victories are far better than none--history shows Paradigm Changes
do not occur rapidly--so patience is required as is a Long Game strategy. IMO, much about the Outlaw US Empire is exposed to light
now than ever before thanks to the efforts of many and advances in technology. We must keep working on our push-back-- everywhere
, in Europe most especially to get it turned from West to East, and from EU back to the European Family of Sovereign Nations.
Duterte has a solution to drug and gang violence. The west protests vigorously, now why is that? Duterte learned from the events
in Haiti that the west will use the gangs to destroy him.
Not sure where you are sourcing your information from, perhaps the MSM? Duterte is just another filipino gangster/politician.
I used to think that Philippine politics was just like American politics, but a cruder version. America has now caught up with
the Philippines. Oh, and there has been no solution to the drug and gang violence. Just a lot of dead poor sods who had done nothing
wrong other than buy from the wrong dealer. In the dead of night, the back alleys are still swarming in a fog of Shabu, and gang
violence in the Philippines is almost exclusively an activity of police and military gangs fighting over turf.
Ending "neverending" wars to begin anew? IMO, the Economic Wars being waged against Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, and others
count as neverending endeavors.
Nothing economic compares with dropping one ton exploding bombs on buildings full of people, leaving them dead injured and
displaced. Nothing. And it has gone uninterrupted for too many years.
I expect the reason that the aforementioned incident of gang violence is getting so much coverage is because it was organized
by team Guaidó, as it seems a little too convenient that the corporate media and people like Bolton can now reference it as an
example of what they claim to be the repressive nature of the Maduro government towards the poor. It wouldn't take much to pay
off one of the gangs to create an incident like this in order to provoke a police crackdown, and none the gangs would have any
loyalty to the Maduro government, given that gangs consider the police to be the enemy and the police work for the government.
Yes, Prof Hudson made a few errors in his hastily written essay, but some of his observations have simmered for awhile:
"This break has been building for quite some time, and was bound to occur. But who would have thought that Donald Trump would
become the catalytic agent? No left-wing party, no socialist, anarchist or foreign nationalist leader anywhere in the world could
have achieved what he is doing to break up the American Empire. The Deep State is reacting with shock at how this right-wing real
estate grifter has been able to drive other countries to defend themselves by dismantling the U.S.-centered world order. To rub
it in, he is using Bush and Reagan-era Neocon arsonists, John Bolton and now Elliott Abrams, to fan the flames in Venezuela. It
is almost like a black political comedy. The world of international diplomacy is being turned inside-out. A world where there
is no longer even a pretense that we might adhere to international norms, let alone laws or treaties.
"The Neocons who Trump has appointed are accomplishing what seemed unthinkable not long ago: Driving China and Russia together
– the great nightmare of Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. They also are driving Germany and other European countries into
the Eurasian orbit, the 'Heartland' nightmare of Halford Mackinder a century ago....
"Trump's agenda may really be to break up the American Empire, using the old Uncle Sucker isolationist rhetoric of half a century
ago. He certainly is going for the Empire's most vital organs. But is he a witting anti-American agent? He might as well be
– but it would be a false mental leap to use 'cui bono' to assume that he is a witting agent. [My Emphasis]
"After all, if no U.S. contractor, supplier, labor union or bank will deal with him, would Vladimir Putin, China or Iran be
any more naïve? Perhaps the problem had to erupt as a result of the inner dynamics of U.S.-sponsored globalism becoming impossible
to impose when the result is financial austerity, waves of population flight from U.S.-sponsored wars, and most of all, U.S. refusal
to adhere to the rules and international laws that it itself sponsored seventy years ago in the wake of World War II."
IMO, what prompted Hudson to write was the publication of Bolton's threats to the ICC justice that forced him to resign that
I provided an article about several threads back. Note that he devoted an entire section of his essay to that topic and more generally
on Law. Plus, the essay's not nearly as well edited as his usually are. So, I forgive his tiny errors as they don't detract from
his essay's main thrust.
One thing about Trump I believe we'd all agree upon: He certainly isn't a rabid Neoliberalcon like the person he defeated for
POTUS. That and he's roiled domestic and international politics more than anyone would have imagined on 8 November 2016.
We both want the carnage to cease ASAP, along with all the other damage being inflicted. You've read enough of my views to
know how I feel, and vice-versa. Have you heard of Dr. Francis Boyle?
Here's a link to a review
of one of his many works and one that's as germane today as it was in 2008. I mention him because IMO the only surefire way to
defeat the War Party is through the courts as what they've been doing since 1945 is unconstitutional and illegal, and IMO can
be easily proven as such.
Don Bacon@72 Half a million children under 5 were killed in Iraq just from the sanctions. The dead, the injured, and the displaced are
still dead, injured, and displaced regardless of what weapon was used.
I have some big picture thoughts I want to share. China is a growing threat to the existence of the Western way because it seems
to be successfully mostly socialist and is projecting that win-win around the world. Empire has used the ME and SE Asia for war
focus until now but are stymied there and need to have an "enemy" (real of made up) to continue fueling the war economies.
Since the West cannot complete its World Order project they must revitalize the war strategy into a long term cold war type.
What we see is a circling of wagons and threats against any who are not "with us". I think the speed with which steps are being
taken are because of the threat of questions about finance that need to be silenced with more war and fear of any sort.
I hope what folks are seeing by the actions of the West is that Rule-Of-Law is really just Rule-Of-Power/Control begat
by owning the global tools of finance with a myth cover of Rule-Of-Law just like economics is a myth cover for the elite making
all the big investment decisions and those results trickling down so to speak....
I hope folks also grok that the elite have known about the power of "intelligence" long before countries created groups to
gather such information. To think that those who run our world do not have access to the intelligence of all Western country's
governments is in error. Look at for how many centuries the elite have maintained control and ask yourself how.....they own the
leadership.....money buys access.
I'm not sure which is worse, the Trump apologists or the Empire detractors that spin every apparent set-back or assumed over-reach
into a hopeful "this too shall pass" fantasy. Now we have the twisted conspiracy theory of Trump as "unwitting agent" of the Empire's
demise.
The [Trump's] agenda is not to destroy the Empire but to transform it to meet the challenge from Russia and China. Anyone
that sees those changes and reads 'disintegration' is only seeing what they want to see.
The transformation is to a much darker place and far from anything like democracy. For those of us that don't truck in
misguided fantasies, the psyops, economic warfare, and militarism tells us all we need to know. Is it any wonder that the one
chosen to lead us down the garden path to dystopia is an egotistical maniac? Trump was SELECTED, not elected, by the likes of:
Hillary, McCain, Brennan, Mueller, Clapper, Kissinger, and Schumer.
A very unanticipated announcement: (Trump's intention to end US involvement in foreign military conflicts) ... Reactions
from the bar?
Posted by: karlof1 | Feb 1, 2019 8:04:07 PM | 41
The world dodged a bullet when Trump won the 2-horse race from that lazy, demented old nag, Crooked Hillary. I couldn't believe
she'd be dopey enough to pretend that she didn't know about the Electoral College factor.
Trump must thoroughly enjoy uphill battles. How else to explain his Drain the Swamp declaration as the hallmark of his first
term? I took it to mean that he's putting them on notice and there's not much, short of JFK-ing him, that they can do to stop
him. And that's the way it's panning out.
I hope he's as smart as he thinks he is because his Drain the Swamp promise, and self-preservation, guaranteed that the course
of his Presidency would be hard to follow and impossible to predict. I'm in the Open Slather demographic i.e. ANYTHING he decides
to do is OK EXCEPT start a new war.
I'm expecting his SOTU to be as ambiguous as everything else he says because he's the only one with a Drain the Swamp plan
and he hasn't explained which ducks have to be lined up, in which sequence, before he'll be ready to deliver the coup de grâce.
I don't understand why there's so much anti-Trump bitching. The Swamp was winning and the Little People were F**ked financially
and peace-wise long before Trump came along. He's already done some unusually and comparatively sane things and I expect him to
do more of the same.
Sorry but does Mr. Maduro have a fetish of repeating every step from the Maidan playbook. You just let foreigners run around
Caracas inciting the coup? Remember, the very last step from that playbook, of Russian spetznatz coming to rescue your sorry ass,
is not available to you because you live a bit out of the way. These regime-change "journalists" are foreign agents who
must be rounded up pronto (for their own protection of course).
Then once this is over, Washington can have them back in exchange for the stolen billions. Remember, impunity is the Dark Throne's
greatest weapon; give them some skin in the game, and suddenly it's their side that has to think twice.
Posted by: Ma Laoshi | Feb 2, 2019 1:50:06 AM |
link
I remember how Reagan started to wobble a bit towards the end of his term. Part of me suspects that Trump is himself in
a bit of a decline and is thus the best vehicle for his cadre of Iagos to subvert his power into their projects. Clinton would
have been even better in that respect.
If you consider the size of potholes and mass suicide by opiate to be indicators, the decline of the USA is well underway.
More on topic, however, is the general characteristic of South and Central American rebellion. Savage, well-armed, even
if only with Machetes, and shades of evil rather than a clear moral choice. If your hobby is pouring billions of dollars into
the fire to sow mayhem there is no better place. The miraculous banana that is stocked in every grocery store even up in
Calgary or Alaska may well get there by the grace of tribute paid to local warlords. The cocaine that is sniffed in Hollywood
and New York by the ton comes from Colombia or Peru. Worldwide, restaurants thrive on beef from Argentina... as well as horse
meat from Mexico.
I would predict that given the well-orchestrated push to recognize Guaido that the plan to overthrow Maduro's government
is both inevitable and long-expected. The question is how the aftermath will roll out depending on whether or not the Columbian
rebel groups link up with the Venezuelan resistance and the whole region explodes. Just a question. But I would bet that such
a scenario is not unforseen by the American puppeteers.
Invoking Auschwitz liberation, and the anti-semitism of Maduro, Venezuela 'president' Juan Guaido WELCOMES Israel recognition!!
Referring to Soviet troops' victory, Juan Guaido thanks Netanyahu for supporting him 'just as our country is also fighting for
its freedom' Trump's special envoy for international negotiations, (((Jason Greenblatt))), applauded Jerusalem for its "courageous
stand in solidarity with the Venezuelan people." Israel takes a courageous stand in solidarity with the Venezuelan people!
https://t.co/9i8z9NOHA1
-- Jason D. Greenblatt (@jdgreenblatt45) January
27, 2019
While Venezuela once had one of the largest Jewish communities in the region, numbering some 25,000 in 1999, only about 6,000
Jews are believed to remain in the country, with many of the rest having fled to Israel, Canada, the US and elsewhere.
Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chavez, who broke off ties with Israel in 2009, have both been strident critics of Israel,
and some Jewish community leaders have expressed fears of the government stoking anti-Semitism.
At the United Nations on Saturday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged all nations to end Venezuela's Auschwitz "nightmare"
and support Guaido.
"Now is the time for every other national to pick a side," Pompeo told the Security Council.
"No more delays, no more games. Either you stand with the (((forces of freedom))), or you're in league with Maduro and his
anti-semitic mayhem."
'Old habits die hard', or as Pindar via Herodotus opined, 'Custom rules'. Key elements of the customary process for
Empires' regime change efforts are to demonize the targeted leader, economic warfare on the targeted country, make up lurid stories,
infiltrate with foreign saboteurs and NED-type internal subversion. John Perkin's 'Economic Hit Man' described the process of
gaining leverage via financial means, debt the key. As Perkins noted, then there are the assassination squads, and then finally
the US military, which has of late been heavily supplemented with mercenaries and private armies.
What has changed in recent
years has been the context in which this customary process takes place. Some of that: Russia and China are now stronger militarily,
and their presence and technology is spreading, the ability of the Empire to bomb with impunity is being reduced. Countries are
setting up alternative financial arrangements. The lurid story routine has lost some of its punch and audience.
The false nature of the self-congratulatory advertisements of the Empire are widely recognized. Its 'might is right' doctrine
and repudiation of common law and and common decency and common sense and common honesty is palpable.
Then along comes Donald Trump, and here it is very important to distinguish between the real character, real motives, real
plans of someone, and what actually occurs or is actually strengthened or weakened.
So, for example, one can accurately designate someone as a dishonest criminal, and still applaud that criminal's act of catching
a child as he is tossed from three stories up out of a burning building to the criminal below.
As Hudson points out, it is Trump's actual impact that is the important matter. As I've pointed out previously, Trump, Putin
and Hitler are arguably the three most frequently and harshly denigrated public figures over the last century. I don't think Stalin
and Mao are in the same league, when it comes to sheer quantity of denigration. And why has Trump been so harshly targeted: Trump
was viewed as ideologically anti-Empire, a nationalist, and Trump's effect has been to accelerate the weakening of the Empire's
full spectrum domination ways and means and ambition.
And among the many loud howls of outrage vs Trump, his stated preference/intention of removing American troops from Syria,
and his musing over vaccines and autism, are two examples.
Now note again that this is not a discussion about his 'real' motives. I'm not a mind reader. But in the case of the vaccine
and autism issue, Trump handed something of a baton to Robert Kennedy Junior, who was recently given the opportunity to speak
on the subject for five minutes on I think it might have been FOX. Kennedy said it was only the second time in ten years that
he had been given the opportunity in MSM to do do so. Trump deserves some credit here. Note that in Italy recently a common vaccine
was found to be a phony gimmick, though any reference to this in mass media was along the lines of the Italian government being
anti-science, etc.
In so far as Trump's getting out of Syria statement is concerned, the point is that by saying that Trump created a new dynamic
of sorts. It for example opened a slight door/opportunity for Tulsi Gabbard to advance her anti-war theme. Trump's statement also
made it necessary for the outraged responders to attempt to assemble some kind of rationale for leaving American troops in Syria.
They didn't come off looking all that wonderful. "So why are we in Syria again?' became part of the discussion. The best they
could do was if we leave (our ISIS) creation might metastasize, and Russia and Syria and Iran will have 'won'. In other words,
Trump's sudden 'we're getting out of Syria' declaration had to some extent a 'lancing of a boil' effect, irregardless of whether
or not it actually happens or to what extent.
First: to personne #83. In fact, the zionists have a long history of involvement in coups in central america. Read up on Sam Zemurray
and United Fruit, and also his practice run in Honduras. Second, to Sasha #47. Thank you very much for posting that letter. It
is amazing (!!!!) that the gov of Spain can be so hypocritical regarding "democracy" in Venezuela, having ruthlessly crushed the
Catalan Independence movement and Jailed (!!) it's leaders.
Finally, regarding the press and the Lima group: the mainstream press seems to be touting the same line as the US press. Trump
et al are the heroes, "Guido" is the new savior, and Maduro is a "dictator." I am not going to provide links, but I will give
examples and websites for those who wish to check. Example: the Mercurio in chile, which mostly reprints NY Times. AP and Wall
Street Journal stories portraits the coup as a done deal, with photos of "Giuido" kissing babies. Please to remember that "it's
just business." The family of chile president, Pinera, has large holdings in Latam and MasterCard. Other major chilean interest
are mining and lumber. There is already much salivating over the prospect of clear cutting the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. Venezuela
has great riches in natural resources. Qui bono? I think is the expression. website: www.emol.com. There is push back. the Tercera
has printed a two full page interview with Jorge Arreaza, Canceller de Venezuela, denouncing Pinera. "El Presiente Pinera vendio
su soberania y su autonomia a Estados Unidos." President Pinera sold his sovereignty and autonomy to the united states.
www.latercera.com edition of friday, 1 february.
It's difficult to know where this patently illegal - well - crime against humanity, in the sense that starving people to "free"
them is criminal - will end. If you strip off the expensive suits, it just looks like a gang rape to me.
On subject of Venezuela and propaganda - Excellent article about pattern of propaganda from NYT.
Article at TruthDig
But the above article is limited in background -
WIKI article on Yellow Journalism
Pulitzer himself was know for/sort of invented "Yellow Journalism".
Individuals (as in author of the 1st article) may speak contrary to the status quo, but no organization can for long and no
idividual within an organization. I've tried speaking against my boss on occassion - did not pan out well career-wise.
In short, it's not a bug, it's a feature. It's not to express dismay about but to know and understand and proceed accordingly.
The alt media does well to educate the public on this issue but also needs to present a positive alternative.
Great post, sir. You eloquently examine the effect of a DJT presidency, which many can not realize has shifted the full spectrum
dominance doctrine of the empire and rendered it gasping for air in a ditch.
We don't like DJT because he is president that models himself after Kant's Categorical Imperative. We like Trump because he
is not a true believer and that because of his inaction, unlike the last 30 years of Prezs who have taken it upon themselves to
blow up at least one country, his presidency has been marked with frequent threats of withdrawing from the ME entirely and rendering
our presence there ineffectual while also sparring with the IC community which has consistently gone on record spouting the BS
that Trump is a dangerous hand at the wheel of our FP, which has been part and parcel of the smearing attempt by the MSM to make
DJT look like an imbecile who is leading us to ruin.
But for those of us in the know, this is a good thing that we should be applauding DJT for. I will watch his SOTU with keen
interest.
After a single phone call from from U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, Guaidó proclaimed himself as president of Venezuela...
CANVAS is funded largely through the National Endowment for Democracy...
CANVAS "turned its attention to Venezuela" in 2005 after training opposition movements that led pro-NATO regime change operations
across Eastern Europe...
Venezuelan economist Luis Enrique Berrizbeitia, one of the top Latin American neoliberal economists, is a former executive
director of the International Monetary Fund...
Milton Friedman was the godfather of the notorious neoliberal Chicago Boys who were imported into Chile by dictatorial
junta leader Augusto Pinochet to implement policies of radical "shock doctrine"-style fiscal austerity...
Leopoldo López is a Princeton-educated right-wing firebrand heavily involved in National Endowment for Democracy programs
and elected as the mayor of a district in Caracas that was one of the wealthiest in the country...
Elliott Abrams is notorious for overseeing the U.S. covert policy of arming right-wing death squads during the 1980s
in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala.
@Posted by: Robert Snefjella | Feb 1, 2019 10:07:51 PM | 54
@Posted by: mourning dove | Feb 1, 2019 10:59:07 PM | 65
@Posted by: Grieved | Feb 1, 2019 11:12:04 PM | 69
Thanks to you all for reading and, obviously, indulging on my poor translation ( in which I have detected several grammar and
spelling mistakes...), but, you must know that I did it at wee hours here in Europe, with my eyes falling from sleep over the
keyboard...I was almost incapable of proofread the last paragraph of the letter which I added to the previous part i had selected
to translate.
Related to this I must say that I did not translate the whole letter, but almost all, leaving without translation some few
less relevant parts in the fear the comment would be banned here because of its longitude.
The letter was originally published at Spanish newspaper Público.es , which I found republished at Spanish site Rebelión.org
, both sites I fear with wide readership at least amongst Spanish, European left and of the world too .
I would only wish to be able to express myself better in English than I do, anyway, only I would wish you get to understand
me. You can contribute by spreading amongst your network of friends and relatives, and may be, even perfectioning my clumsy translation
to get it better shaped to be psublished at other media.
I do as much as I can, many times sacrifying too much hours of sleep to be healthy to just post comments, the reason why i can
not engage in long discussions here, or responding every one who adresses me here, since many times i have not time availale at
all to read all the comments and so your adressing may get without response. So sorry, but I prioritize forwarding the message
or the interesting article/information over discussion, for which I regrettably have not time, and which, in any way, should not
get us without the time to direct the fight to where is most needed, directly adressing our representatives on responding for
their clear transgressions of International and National Laws and the basic principles and values we deem mandatory to assure
a dign human existence on planet Earth.
Finally, I would wish saying that I do this only for solidarity and compassion towards my Venezuelan comrades, but the reality
is that I do it out of selfish interest since what is being built in front of our very eyes is the "New Totalitarian Order", where
any human right known to this date will be abolished in the benefit of transnational capital and corporations.
Historically those kinds of gangs are among the prime recruiting grounds for coup-supporting thugs. So the US propaganda lies
about them also indicates coup planner interest in recruiting them to help Guano's usurpation attempt.
In an interview with Russia's RIA Novosti news agency that aired Wednesday, Maduro said he has sent letters to the governments
of Bolivia, Mexico, Russia and Uruguay to involve them in a new process of dialogue with the opposition. Russia, which has been
Maduro's most vocal international supporter and is a major investor in Venezuela, applauded his willingness to negotiate. "The
fact that President Maduro is open to dialogue with the opposition deserves high praise," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told
reporters in a phone call. . .
here
Mexico calls for "peace and dialogue" in Venezuela -- The Mexican government recognizes Nicolas Maduro as Venezuela's president
and sees dialogue as the answer to political strife blamed for 13 deaths, Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said Thursday, citing
his country's tradition of not interfering in the affairs of other nations.
"Mexico will maintain its stance. In synthesis: no intervention and a readiness to contribute however we can to any process that
leads to peace and dialogue," he said during President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's daily morning press conference. .
here
UN chief urges dialogue in Venezuela to avert 'disaster' --
DAVOS, Switzerland: UN chief Antonio Guterres on Thursday (Jan 24) appealed for dialogue to stop Venezuela's political crisis
spiralling out of control, after opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself interim president. "What we hope is that dialogue
can be possible, and that we avoid an escalation that would lead to the kind of conflict that would be a disaster for the people
of Venezuela and for the region," he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos. . .
here
Canada joins efforts by the Venezuelan right-wing opposition, the United States, and right-wing governments in Latin America
to oust democratically elected President Nicolas Maduro, Canada's Labour Congress, representing over three million Canadian workers,
issued a statement Wednesday calling on the Justin Trudeau government to promote dialogue instead of intervention and a military
coup. "Venezuelans need to resolve their differences through constructive dialogue and democratic processes without resorting
to violence," said CLC President Hassan Yussuff. .. .
here
"Let's be clear," [Pence] said. "This is no time for dialogue. This is time for action. And the time has come to end the
Maduro dictatorship once and for all." . .
here
I have just returned from Germany and seen a remarkable split between that nation's industrialists and their political leadership.
For years, major companies have seen Russia as a natural market, a complementary economy needing to modernize its manufacturing
and able to supply Europe with natural gas and other raw materials. America's New Cold War stance is trying to block this commercial
complementarity. Warning Europe against "dependence" on low-price Russian gas, it has offered to sell high-priced LNG from
the United States (via port facilities that do not yet exist in anywhere near the volume required). President Trump also is
insisting that NATO members spend a full 2 percent of their GDP on arms – preferably bought from the United States, not from
German or French merchants of death.
The U.S. overplaying its position is leading to the Mackinder-Kissinger-Brzezinski Eurasian nightmare that I mentioned above.
In addition to driving Russia and China together, U.S. diplomacy is adding Europe to the heartland, independent of U.S. ability
to bully into the state of dependency toward which American diplomacy has aimed to achieve since 1945.
The World Bank, for instance, traditionally has been headed by a U.S. Secretary of Defense. Its steady policy since its
inception is to provide loans for countries to devote their land to export crops instead of giving priority to feeding themselves.
That is why its loans are only in foreign currency, not in the domestic currency needed to provide price supports and agricultural
extension services such as have made U.S. agriculture so productive. By following U.S. advice, countries have left themselves
open to food blackmail – sanctions against providing them with grain and other food, in case they step out of line with U.S.
diplomatic demands.
They would make Venezuela the new Pinochet-era Chile. Trump is not alone in supporting Saudi Arabia and its Wahabi terrorists
acting, as Lyndon Johnson put it, "Bastards, but they're our bastards."
Venezuelan general recognises opposition leader Guaido as president: Twitter video. A high-ranking Venezuelan air force general
said he had disavowed President Nicolas Maduro and now recognised opposition leader Juan Guaido as interim head-of-state, according
to a video circulating on Twitter on Saturday. In the video, General Francisco Yanez, a member of the air force's high command,
called on other members of the military to defect. He also reportedly claimed that 90 percent of the armed forces no longer support
Maduro.
The high command's web page lists Yanez, along with a photo, as the air force's head of strategic planning.
On its Twitter account, the high command of the military accused the general of treason.
Yanez is the first active Venezuelan general to recognise Guaido since he proclaimed himself president on Jan. 23.
Al Jazeera's Latin America editor Lucia Newman, reporting from Caracas, said the defection of the first active general is "another
blow" to the Maduro administration.
"Juan Guaido has been publicly appealing to the armed forces to defect, to abandon Nicolas Maduro, whose main support comes
from the military. Without it, he would have a difficult time to stay in power."
But the question now is whether Yanez commands a number of troops, and orders members of the armed forces to follow him, our
correspondent said.
F
Twitter report of a supposed Air Force general defecting to Guaido. Abrams was surely bound to be able to corrupt a few officers
but I doubt it will be enough to tip the scales..
https://twitter.com/oulosp/status/1091697589307797504?s=21
There is theory being bantered about that goes like this:
Trump is leaving Syria and Afghanistan. The move on Venezeula signals a turn toward neighborhood concerns. And Trump is so
foolish that he is helping to bring down the Empire (which he hates because he's an "America First" nationalist).
This "paper tiger" hopium has the feel of other false assertions such as: "Erdogan is turning east!" and "Putin is a Zionist!"
The reality is:
Expect lies/fibs/misleading statements/distracts The establishment has a long history of deceit that MSM works hard
to smooth over, cover-up, and memory-hole. They litterally think you're stoopid.
Trump 'good intentions' haven't produced anything concrete We have, in fact, only seen 'back-tracking' on the 'good
intentions' announcements. US is still assisting the genocide in Yemen. Trump's "immediate" Syrian troop withdrawal was delayed.
And the rumored reduction in US forces in Afghanistan was nothing more than a rumor.
Furthermore: It's clear that IF THERE IS any US 'pull-out' from Syria, the territory will not be returned to Syria. That
means US would likely provide support for whatever proxy forces take their place and that could lead to increasing US involvement
in Syria over time.
There is no evidence that Venezuela represents a 'turn' by the AZEmpire Venezuela has long been on their radar.
Trump is a faux populist front man for the Deep State He is the Republican Obama. We are seeing the same sort
of duplicity from Trump as we saw from Obama. What I call the 'Obama psyop' embodied peace via inclusiveness but that was a
smokescreen for covert war. The 'Trump psyop' embodies peace via anti-interventionalism but that is also a smokescreen. It
masks economic war; propaganda war; increased belligerence (INF treaty) and militarism (space force); etc.
Welcome to the rabbit hole.
Blooming Barricade , Feb 2, 2019 11:46:29 AM |
link
@104
@105
Isn't it lovely how they are now making their coup appeals right out in the open? Not hidden, and yet no condemnation, only
cheers from the corporate/government media NYTimes, BBC, CNN, Guardian, which I say should be renamed the counterinsurgency media
as they (attempt to) act to sway hearts and minds of neocolonial subjects (Read: everyone not in the elite class) backed by the
multinational imperialists Exxon, Jair Bolsonaro, Israel, etc and their mouthpieces. We really need to work on reestablishing
basic norms that this sort of thing should not be backed. In the Vietnam/Chile era this would be shameful...here we are listening
to the songs of the mockingbirds...
Blooming Barricade , Feb 2, 2019 11:48:44 AM |
link
Again, they are calling for a MILITARY COUP. How is the opposition frontman even allowed to walk free and solicit attacks on the
people of his country, backed to the hilt by the forces of ecocide and greed.
>Gen. Francisco Yañez (controls nothing) - A high-ranking Air Force general announced his support for Mr Guaidó in a video
message posted online.. . here . In response,
the Air Force's high command called him accused him of treason.
"No se podía esperar menos del TRAIDOR GD Francisco Esteban Yanez Rodriguez, sobrino del corrupto Gral Yanez Mendez que por cierto
tiene un expediente en la Contraloría General de la #FANB por corrupto!" . .
here
google translation: "You could not expect less from the GD TRAITOR Francisco Esteban Yanez Rodriguez, nephew of the corrupt Gral
Yanez Mendez who incidentally has a file in the General Comptroller's Office of the #FANB for corrupt!"
>MIAMI -- Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans are preparing massive protests in cities worldwide today to pressure the country's
president, Nicolás Maduro out of office. Venezuelans are planning to fill the streets in more than 70 cities around the world,
including Caracas, Miami, Madrid, Milan, Frankfurt, Melbourne, Athens, and Beirut.
>Canada to convene Lima Group and other countries about Venezuela crisis Monday -- The Honourable Chrystia Freeland, Minister
of Foreign Affairs, today announced that Canada will host the 10th ministerial meeting of the Lima Group in Ottawa, Ontario on
February 4, 2019. The Lima Group was established in August 2017, in Lima, Peru, to co-ordinate participating countries' efforts
and apply international pressure on Venezuela until democracy is restored. The group's meetings have included representatives
from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru
and Saint Lucia. -- Canada rules the world on anti-Venezuela as a US stooge to avoid the "Yankee go home" and 'stupid gringo"
tags.
Trumps statements about the endless or the expensive wars must be balanced against his military build up and his statements
on taking the oil in countries the US has attacked. According to a current piece in Sputnik, Raytheon began building facilities
for short and medium range missiles shortly after Trump came to power.
https://sputniknews.com/us/201902021072066039-satellite-images-inf/
Production of low yield nuclear warheads or tactical nukes has begun, with the intention of having sufficient numbers for military
use (operational capability) by September of this year.
It is useful to look at this situation through the perspective that Hudson offers in his article. The petrodollar which has buttressed
US power since 1971 is crumbling. The ability of the US Treasury to print inflation proof dollars and buy anything it wants is
coming to an end. So is US domination over the world financial system, SWIFT etc.
The card game is ending with the US ruling class as the loser. But, instead of throwing in its hand, smiling and returning to
the serious business of real life (climate change, pollution, ecocide, famine etc) it decides on one last gamble. A desperation
move. (You don't let Bolton retrieve Elliot Abrams from his tomb for anything less.)
And that is where the sudden decision to
change course in Venezuela, from the slow steady squeezing of sanctions and full spectrum pressure to a coup, literally a devastating
blow, aimed at leveling the regime in Caracas because America's last chance requires a dictatorship over Latin America.
Already it looks, according to Pepe Escobar, as if Bolsonaro is being pushed aside to serve as a figurehead and nothing more,
for a military dictatorship. He will welcome that. Honduras is already under such a dictatorship. Ecuador is doing what it is
told again. My guess is that Argentina, falling apart under neo-liberal fanatics is going to return to military rule too. Chile
is not far from it.
In short the US response to losing its reserve currency monopoly is going to be to strengthen its own bloc-in which its currency
will rule- and, soft power having failed, turn to brutal military measures.
That's not to suggest that such a lunatic plan will succeed. I don't think it can. But that is no reason to believe that narcissistic
Washington, drunk on its own propaganda, its ruling class completely invested in exceptionalist, militaristic projects, won't
give it a try.
And kill a few tens of millions, maybe billions if things go nuclear, in the attempt. Fascism generally ends in the way that
it did in Hitler's bunker. La lutte finale may be coming.
Concentration pro-coupist
Guaido aleardy dispersing , once concluded theri well payed duty, after a speech composed of one line slogan after another,
hailed in a crazy shouting way by the crowd concetrated in an obviously very rich neighborhood...( one wonders why is that they
have complaints agaisnt Maduro when they are doing so well already ) all seasoned with high-sounding hymns like "Odd to Joy"
( all very Venezuelan..) and the so worn-out of so much use, "Sí se puede" ( "Yes, we can" if more was needed to show that
this stooge is pretended to remind Obama...)
Maduro asks the astonishing crowd concentrated in Bolivar Avenue now for ours already if they want new elections to reinforce
the power of the people and the people answers "Yes"...!
This disarticulates clearly the EU position....and the Pence´s position on non negotiation under any circunstances.... The
plotters, looters and undemocratic forces at work, left bottom up unveiled before the whole world to see.... Now he is claiming
to all workers and employers to continue the path of development and recovering.....
The strategy of calling in new parliamentary elections once Guaido has been unmasked as foreign agent is the best to clean the
National Assembly from traitors sold to foreign actors and capital.
Venezuelans take to streets in push to force Maduro from power Demonstrators say they are close to achieving objective
of forcing president to step down Tens of thousands of Venezuelan protesters streamed on to the streets of the nation's
capital on Saturday for what they described as the final push to force Nicolás Maduro from power.
There are not enough of them on the street. If the report mentioned hundreds of thousands or millions, then I'd say that Maduro
might be deposed but as it is no.
If they want more bottom-feeders to turn out for their fake rallies, why are they being so stingy with the freebees? They ought
to offer free booze. The US coupsters got the money for it. It worked for George Washington, and various Roman politicians.
Can someone tell me (despite tag I am not North American based) what the average Trump voter thinks of all this? Is this a vote
winner amongst his support base?
"We have decided to steal Venezuela's oil and gold" - maybe a lot of Americans support him? Please someone enlighten me.
Hudson overstates his case, mostly by making Trump central to his thesis.
1) Russia and China were driven together long before Trump.
2) Virtually all countries looking to de-dollarize were already at odds with USA (before Trump)
3) The number of countries that have supported USA's Venezuelan coop attempt actually demonstrates the strength of the AZEmpire.
4) European SWIFT is a nothing burger. The European poodles complain but go along with USA on anything that USA cares about.
Example: Europe now says that they will EuroSWIFT only to trade in humanitarian goods for Iran.
5) USA 'meddling', duplicity and hegemonic intentions have been long known by other countries. What has changed is NOT that
countries have 'woken up' to this, but that China and Russia offer an alternative.
6) IMO the move to the right in the West has been long anticipated. And Trump has co-opted the right in the US as effectively
as Obama co-opted the left. Expect the right in other countries to be co-opted also.
A backlash against the left's support and encouragement for large immigrant populations has been building for two decades.
Cui bono? Western society is increasingly resembling Israel and Saudi Arabia which have large population of poor service workers
with few rights (Palestinians, "guest workers").
7) Hudson ignores the fact that AZEmpire has woken to the threat posed by Russia and China to their hegemonic NWO plans -AND-
ignores the real failure of neocon asshats: that they 'lost the peace' after the Cold War by their abusive treatment of Russia
as they hoped for Russia's total capitulation. This failure was magnified by the fact that they NEEDED Russia to join with the
West so that China could be isolated. Assisting China's "peaceful rise" without isolating her was a recipe for disaster: a disaster
that is now playing out.
@ Sasha | Feb 2, 2019 12:44:02 PM | 114 "Yes, we can" if more was needed to show that this stooge is pretended to remind Obama...)
I saw the boy wonder Guaidó walking with some people in a video today, and his mannerisms reminded me of Obama. . . Could it be?
Hugo Chavez was sworn in as Venezuela president twenty years ago today, Feb 2 1999. The anti-US presstitutes, especially NBC's
Carmen Sesin, are predicting large demonstrations today: "Venezuelans are planning to fill the streets in more than 70 cities
around the world, including Caracas, Miami, Madrid, Milan, Frankfurt, Melbourne, Athens, and Beirut." . . .and of course the "news"
can be predictive also, so the headline reads "Venezuelans take to the streets worldwide calling for an end to Maduro's presidency."
.
here . . . . We'll see.
1. Why tell me? All I did was describe the lay of the land under your capitalism and your general authoritarian political system.
People are right to distrust it in general. If that leads some to make objectively incorrect decisions (and I'm not saying non-vaccination
in any particular case is right or wrong), blame your leaders and cadres who systematically destroyed all bonds of social trust.
If some epidemics become more likely because more and more people find it impossible to trust doctors, scientists, and government
officials who all are clearly corporate shills, that's the fault of your system, not of the people who don't trust. Don't blame
the people. You sound like a specimen of the exact boot-licking conformist authoritarian yahoos I was talking about.
2. In spite of the best rigged efforts of your corporate researchers, non-vaccinators have never been found to have caused
an epidemic. Meanwhile your globalization, your climate change, and your forcing tens of millions of people off their land and
into immiseration camps (shantytowns) all are driving new epidemics and reviving old ones. A handful of non-vaccinators could
never injure the public health remotely as much even if they deliberately tried for a thousand years.
3. If you really care about public health (in my experience members of the lynch mob are invariably frauds), what have you
done to help put a stop to the systematic campaign of corporations and governments to destroy antibiotics as a medically effective
treatment? Through systematic abuse of antibiotics in factory farms, genetic engineering, and the slathering of the environment
with herbicides (the most used herbicides like glyphosate are also broad-scale antibiotics), industrial agriculture is deliberately
and massively generating a pandemic of antibiotic resistant pathogens. This is guaranteed to generate lethal pandemics among humans.
By orders of magnitude this is a vastly worse campaign against the public than a handful of ad hoc non-vaccinators could ever
be. So if you have such venom left over for this fugitive handful, your actions against the corporate/government campaign to destroy
the efficacy of antibiotics must be extraordinary. Please direct me to your record here. I want links. Otherwise you're a total
fraud, like every other mobber I've encountered.
4. I have no doubt if you were handed a gun and ordered to be part of a firing squad you'd wet your pants and start crying.
Most people in US could not find Venezuela on a map even with the current news cycle. Most Trump supporters are interested
in jobs. Most are not war hawks. Anti war Trump supporters hope he is draining the swamp. Exposing, disgracing and getting rid
of neocons. (From the political scene)
Scotch Bingeington , Feb 2, 2019 3:14:26 PM |
link
I have yet to read about a halt in Venezuelan crude-oil shipping to the US. And whatever became of the request for US-embassy
personnel to leave the country? Is anything actually being followed through?
More and more I get the feeling that the Maduro administration is just not up to it. War has been declared on them, but what do
they do? If you challenge the US – and that's exactly what they did, by circumventing the dollar, by trying to increase business
with the US's minions in the Caribbean, by inviting Russia to get a foothold in the USA's mainland oil business, by doling out
free heating oil to charitable institutions and families in need across the US, by publicly aligning with Syria and China and
so on – surely you would have contingency planning in place? Trying to foresee the USA's reaction and how to respond to it, in
turn?
So I recon CITGO is still being supplied by PDVSA. Imagine that. Possibly employees are still getting their pay checks by cash-deprived
Venezuela, too. It's insane. Guiado still free and able to diligently follow his script.
Crude shipments to CITGO should have been stopped completely two weeks ago. Non-domestic staff at CITGO should have been laid
off asap. Venezuelans among staffers should have been offered to return home or be expatriated. Given the current volatility in
Western economies and especially the impending doom coming for the US shale business, such measures might have put considerable
further strain on the West, might even have sent us on a downward spiral towards a full-blown economic crisis.
In the meantime, the embassy in Washington plus the various (!) consulates across the US should have seen to it that business
is wound down. Then leave. After that, expel diplomats at the US embassy in Caracas – by all means. Also sever ties with any other
country that has supported Guiado's blatant act of high treason. I wonder how the Netherlands would have reacted, given its vulnerability
in Curacao.
Guiado should simply have been deported, GDR-style. Why bother with him in a trial? Just get rid of him. Let him move to Miami,
to follow in Marco Rubio's footsteps.
As a reciprocal step in light of what the Bank of England did with Venezuela's gold, one or two of Royal Caribbean's flagship
cruisers should be captured, or "forfeited". Disrupt the happy-go-lucky cruising business in the Caribbean a little. Now, any
further gold transport, to the UAE or wherever, should only be conducted by the Navies of the two countries involved.
Finally, spread the word that any country volunteering to become the staging ground for a US invasion will be considered an enemy
at war. That should make at least some people in Colombia, Brazil, Aruba and Curacao gulp.
The Washington regime won't let go. So for Maduro to try and just sit it out is a patently insane idea. Because for now, time
is on the US side.
And what about firing squads for those who have murdered untold millions by giving them cancer by poisoning the food, water, air,
and general environment? I missed the part where you already joined those firing squads, or called for them to exist.
I can say w/o fear of contradiction that Trump feels like me, that this Venna-zwala thing will fail, providing another opportunity
to fire some more old guard neocons and Make America Great Again. Maybe all three: Pence, Pompeo and Bolton. Package deal. Like
it was fun doing Mad Dog.
"I have yet to read about a halt in Venezuelan crude-oil shipping to the US. And whatever became of the request for US-embassy
personnel to leave the country? Is anything actually being followed through?
More and more I get the feeling that the Maduro administration is just not up to it. War has been declared on them, but what
do they do?"
If a nation has committed itself to (1) a de facto colonized extraction-based economy (which also involves physically destroying
your own country, just as much as if it were from an external military attack), (2) which is at the mercy of a global commodity
system, (3) which is controlled by vastly more powerful forces which are aggressive, militarist bullies under the best of circumstances
and are irrationally hostile toward that nation in particular; then I don't see any way to exist other than at the mercy of such
hostile forces.
I don't know what possible way out Venezuela has within the framework of the globalized extreme energy civilization.
@ Scotch Bingeington | Feb 2, 2019 3:14:26 PM | 133 . . .Because for now, time is on the US side.
Why? This exercise is actually about more than Maduro, as the Wall Street Journal published
here , shortened by paywall:
U.S. Push to Oust Venezuela's Maduro Marks First Shot in Plan to Reshape Latin America
The Trump administration's
broader aim is to gain leverage over Cuba and curb recent inroads in the region by Russia, Iran and China
WASHINGTON -- The Trump administration's attempt to force out the president of Venezuela marked the opening of a new strategy
to exert greater U.S. influence over Latin America, according to administration officials.
In sight isn't just Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro, but also Cuba, an antagonist that has dominated American attention in the
region for more than 50 years, as well as recent inroads made by Russia, China and Iran.
Russia and China especially have lots of money invested so we can bet that Maduro is listening very closely to what they are telling
him, and acting accordingly. So far, it's working. There is no indication that the US efforts will be successful, is there? Meanwhile,
it seems to me that time is on Maduro's side.
Following your recommended script would be serving US wish for war/military invasion in a silver plate. What Maduro is doing,
as got clear during his speech at Bolivar Avenue in front of the crowd concentrated there to celebrate the 20 anniversay of Bolivarian
Revolution, is following a similar path Russian is doing, by keeping in the side of law abiding countries, while unveiling the
real thuggish character of the US, most naked than ever....
He stated that the fight to recover Venezuelan assests seized y the US and UK will e claimed at the corresponding tribunals,
he claimed for time for things to develop and fall by their own weight.
He most probably finds no point in harming other countries populations, including those of the countries who are openly participating
in this outrage and assault on the Venezuelan people. By doing so, he will be behaving like the warmonger scoundrels currently
ruling in the US/UK/Canada/EU/Colombia/Brazil/Peru/Argentina, and so on....Most of them are most probably going off in the next
elections at heir respective countries....due their approvation ratings... Why rush at all?
He called the Venezuelan people to continue working hard without falling into provocations, and took the opoortunity to dismantle
part of the plot y calling for new parliamentary elections...That he did not follow the path and script wished by the US and his
minion Guaido does not mean he is succumbing to threats.
"The Washington regime won't let go. So for Maduro to try and just sit it out is a patently insane idea."
Madero isn't sitting it out: he has called for new elections, is getting vote in Parliament and is asking a people's referendum
on it as well The wannabe President didn't run in the election because polls indicated that they would lose badly. This is a sensible
tactical move on Madero's part IMO, both the call for elections and the people's referendum
Its not sensible to call for elections for Maduro. The oppostion will reject the elections again along with the US/EU. Does anyone
really believe west will somehow accept Mauduro if is there was an election (how many is necessary? They just had one!) one is
naive as Maduro seems to be himself.
The proof that what the US and its appointed fake president Guaido are looking for is a civil war in Venezuela, which would
dismantle the sate and transform it into a failed state, is to e found in Guaido´s beligerent speech in front of the crowd concetrated
to hear him in an Eastern rich neighborhood, people who dispersed themselves quite fast, after showing so excited by what Guaido
was saying, once his disapassionate and clearly anti-Venezuelan speech finished..
The regular parliamentary elections were expected to be held in Venezuela in 2020. However, Maduro said that the body needs
to be "re-legitimized" as he addressed a large crowd of his supporters during a rally in Caracas.
The president said that he would consult the Venezuelan Constituent Assembly – a body elected in 2017 to draft the new constitution
– on the issue. If the assembly backs the proposal the vote will be scheduled for some time this year. Earlier, Venezuela's
Supreme Court declared all acts of the National Assembly, headed by Guaido, as null and void.
Meanwhile, Venezuela continues to witness both pro and anti-government rallies. Tens of thousands of people took to the
streets of the Venezuelan capital on Saturday to join a pro-government demonstration to celebrate 20 years since the late Venezuelan
president, Hugo Chavez, launched the Bolivarian revolution.
A sea of people can be seen flooding a kilometers-long stretch of Bolivar Avenue in downtown Caracas to listen to Maduro's
speech. Crowds were waving Venezuela's national flags and holding placards with portraits of Chavez.
Tens of thousands of people also gathered in the eastern part of the capital for a rally organized by the opposition. The
national flag-waving crowds also occupied a long stretch in the city as they came to listen to Guaido.
In his speech, Maduro hailed the determination and "deep loyalty" of the people as demonstrated over the last 20 years,
and called on Guaido-led opposition to engage in a dialog.
The president appealed to the reason of the opposition politicians and said he is ready to meet them "the day they want."
He also said economics and "national peace" would be the focus of the conversation .
The opposition leader's statements were more belligerent, however. He declared that the upcoming month would become a
"breaking point" in the opposition's struggle for power and called for new massive protests on February 12. He also claimed
that 90 percent of Venezuelans "want change" and "no one here fears a civil war ."
I saw the boy wonder Guaidó walking with some people in a video today, and his mannerisms reminded me of Obama. . . Could it
be? Posted by: Don Bacon | Feb 2, 2019 2:19:46 PM | 126
Hmm. The suggestion being that both politicans are barbaric products of a God-forsaken and eternally-damned CIA laboratory factory-farm?
That is a far-fetched thesis, I think. Still, this Guaidó character is a certifiable doppleleganger for the richie Crassus
who led the Roman Legions into one of their most humiliating defeats against the Parthians.
IS it within the realm of possiblity
that the ghost of Crassius, stuck in the desert out there in what is now West Iran, can't locate the golden ray, so he is animating
Obama and Guidó? Inquiring minds want to know. As the big-shots always say: nothing is off the table, so...
See minutes 0:22 and 1:00 and tell me that Crassus is not Guidó. And at 1:22: Do eyes deceive? does the young Bolton appear
in the Guidó's royal entourage?
Repy to: Zanon 143
"It's not sensible to call for elections for Maduro. The opposition will reject the elections again along with the US/EU. Does
anyone really believe west will somehow accept Mauduro if is there was an election (how many is necessary? They just had one!)
one is naive as Maduro seems to be himself."
I respectfully disagree. This fellow wants to be president, fine go for it, apply for the job; run for office. Does he feel
the election will be stolen, fine have election observers from all over the world. If he still says no, then he shows himself
to be a fraud to the world.
The UN will back Maderos on this; Maderos is using the Russian playbook, stay calm, stay sane, call for the rule of law.
A far-left faction within Germany's socialist Left Party goes briefly where no one is allowed to go, concerning Venezuela...
then gets reminded of all those revisionists who are imprisoned in Germany
so they instantly reverse themselves, grovel on their knees, apologize profusely...
When will they ever learn who you are not allowed to criticize or even make fun of?
German Left Party group slammed over "anti-Semitic" Venezuela cartoon
The Cuba Si Hessen group posted the image on Facebook on Wednesday. It shows a grim reaper cloaked in a United States flag
and holding a bloody scythe painted to resemble the flag of Israel.
The figure knocks at a door titled "Venezuela." Blood spills out of other opened doors marked "Iraq," "Libya," "Syria" and
"Ukraine."
The group captioned the image with: "We stand on the side of the legitimate Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, and oppose
any form of intervention. Yankee go home!"
Why have elections if you arent sure you will win?
Maduro would likely win, yes - but its not sensible since Guiado and other will not participate since they will risk losing,
besides election observers from EU/US will say the election result is a fraud.
For US/EU Guaido, the issue isnt with "elections", the issue is Maduro/socialist party.
UN and have no power when the bullets, chaos is ignited by US/EU.
Call for the rule of law, why? Neocons dont give a damn about it.
This is the reality. Maduro should play hard too, not appease anyone with "elections" or "dialogue", not because that is wrong,
but because it doesnt work with the parties (US/EU Guiado) involved.
I appreciate your thoughtful analysis of the vaccination crisis. It's bitterly amusing that pro-vaccination orthodoxy purports
to have sole, exclusive ownership and occupancy of both the scientific and ethical high ground, and superciliously denounces and
condemns any rational skepticism of the current state of the Big Pharma (as opposed to "medical science") driven Total
Vaccination imperative as mad or bad heresy.
I don't have children, but my experience in recent years 1) avoiding dubious "flu shots", and 2) dutifully, and so far unsuccessfully,
submitting to the vexing, Kafkaesque ordeal of getting the newest shingles vaccine is more than enough to make me a proud
heretic.
If vaccinations were developed and marketed with the same exemplary scientific and ethical standards manifested by Jonas Salk,
the horror-story "side-effects" and abuses (e.g., the CIA using vaccination programs as a cover for black ops) wouldn't exist--
at least on a scale that causes some of the public to rightly doubt their virtue and efficacy.
The Stern Adult "their blood is on your hands" j'accuse is pathetic. Moderate progressives who loyally supported the
abominable "Obamacare" health-corporation bailout used the same shrill invective: "Obamacare saved my granny's life! If you dare
to criticize it, why, you're either expressing self-absorbed 'privilege' or sociopathy!"
Age of Autism, a very useful compendium of vaccine issues.
Just viewed a segment on Sharyl Attkisson's show how Paraguay has all but eradicated malaria since 2011. To bring back towards
topic, you can bet that Big Pharma is itching to get back into Venezuela to roll out its vaccine programmes. Ask India how that
has been going.
Zanon
where do you get this crap about an presidential election for Venezuela. Maduro has called for a parliamentary election, not a
presidential election.
Parliament members like this Guiado have now shown their colors. most will be booted out of the parliament if an election is held
now.
@Peter that would be a great maneuver, sure to be torpedoed by the Opp/US as it wont bring the desired results. If & when sniper
fire starts we'll get a clear understanding of Venezuela's ennemies resolve. Until then, I dont think this putch attempt is working
very well..
History proves that you can't appease this kind of aggressor. For those who think Maduro needs to make every kind of concession,
I don't know who the target audience for that is supposed to be.
Meanwhile, judging from how you froth at the mouth and spew death threats upon hearing mention of a small group engaged in
civil disobedience, you're definitely in need of the Big Pharma Medication Regime you so ardently worship. Just pray you never
need those antibiotics you're content to see destroyed!
I've had bad experiences with doctors myself, and heard horror stories from many other people. Not involving vaccines in my
case, but the same principle and enough to make me regard all doctors as not just corporate agents but effectively extensions
of the police state.
As for my corporate troll here, as I demonstrated his type doesn't really care about public health at all. That's why I call
them "proxxers", because their hysteria over the non-vaccinators is clearly a proxy for something else. Part of it is that they
regard this type of civil disobedience as an intolerable affront to their cult of scientism and statism.
Maduro/his party will likely win such an election, but no point since the other side - EU/US Guaido will reject that, they
have already shown their real colors in not reconizing Maduro/his party, they have nothing to lose now unfortunately.
>>>>: NemesisCalling | Feb 2, 2019 3:39:12 PM | 140
Besides the measles being relatively innocuous
Tell that to the one hundred and fifty thousand people who die from it each year
In 2011, the WHO estimated that 158,000 deaths were caused by measles. This is down from 630,000 deaths in 1990. As of 2013,
measles remains the leading cause of vaccine-preventable deaths in the world . In developed countries, death occurs
in one to two cases out of every 1,000 (0.1–0.2%). In populations with high levels of malnutrition and a lack of adequate healthcare,
mortality can be as high as 10%. In cases with complications, the rate may rise to 20–30%. In 2012, the number of deaths due
to measles was 78% lower than in 2000 due to increased rates of immunization among UN member states.
For comparison:
The death rate from diarrhoeal diseases decreased by almost 1 million between 2000 and 2016, but still caused 1.4 million deaths
in 2016. Similarly, the number of tuberculosis deaths decreased during the same period, but is still among the top 10 causes
with a death toll of 1.3 million. HIV/AIDS is no longer among the world's top 10 causes of death, having killed 1.0 million
people in 2016 compared with 1.5 million in 2000.
So, measles has 10% of the lethality of tuberculosis. Please go and peddle your anti-vaccine conspiracy theories elsewhere.
Parliamentary elections will not appease the US, but for Venezuela they will clean out the crap that has shown its colors.
This will put Venezuela in a stronger, more united position to resist the US.
I agree with you, that would work in a normal world yes, but they arent interested in elections. They already have the backing
of their neighbous, EU, US. All this saying about they will look like fools is long overdue by now. Its not about "looks" but
who gains the power by any means. Simply, they play dirty and so shall also Maduro play IMO.
What conspiracy theory pray tell am I peddling?
That people should have a choice as to how they want to approach a relatively innocuous disease. Yes I highly doubt your WHO stats.
Sanitation has been the prime mover with regards to disease eradication the world over. I am speaking as an American for Americans.
Go peddle your compulsory vaccine agenda for 3rd worlds elsewhere.
The US have been very public about trying to buy the Venezuelan military, hoping, as in the early days of Syria, many will swap
sides. An election that kicks out of parliament all those flying the US flag will make it much more difficult for the US to cause
defections in the military.
Russia has done a good job (although still a work in progress) of reuniting Syria and I can see Russia's hand in Maduro's call
for parliamentary elections.
I think the people who are discussing here about vaccines should wait for the possible imminent Open Thread of every weekend here
to discuss there that topic, so as to not derail the important discussion about Venezuela here at this thread.
Just thinking about the folks who credit Trump for not starting any wars. Seems to me the the empire starting wars kinda hit a
brick wall when Russia stuck its nose in Syria and that precedes Donald by a couple of years.
I hope it (your first link) was picked at random, because this author is not doing his cause any favors:
As it turns out, all it takes to find out what is really in the vaccines is to break rank, seize a sample of what is being
injected into the children, put it in a real lab that is not compromised by kikes , and VOILA!!! suddenly it is known that
the vaccines are not at all what they are claimed to be.
I think a Vz parliament vote on having parliament elections early and a citizens referendum on such a vote helps Maduros rally
his base and shores up Russian calls for the rule of law to be upheld.
Sure the US and co will disparage the effort but it would not be done for them but for the Vz people.
If he holds the people, he wins the war.
And my apologies, I thought the proposed election would include the office of President, I was wrong.
The call by Maduro for elections is brilliant IMO.
This was one of the Empire's demands--
'Spain, France, Germany and Britain have given embattled Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro an ultimatum, saying the nations
would recognise opposition leader Juan Guaido as president unless he calls elections within eight days."
At this point, the pro-vaxxers are a Mengele death cult. The vaccine schedule amounting to dozens of vaccinations, before infants
even have a developed immune system, is creating generations of cretins and invalids. Just the hpv vaccine alone has caused horrific
injuries, including total debilitation and paralysis,just like the polio vaccines in India caused 100s of thousands of cases of
paralysis. It is probable that the mortality from vaccinations exceeds the mortality from the contagious diseases themselves,
but the pro-vaxxer cult think they have the right to play god.
The pro-vaxxer cult has the blood and suffering of countless individuals on their hands, and the people who cover up the deaths
of infants from vaccinations with fancy sounding syndromes like shaken baby syndrome and SIDS should be hanged form lampposts.
My South American friends say that most with money and critical skills have left and are living in other South American countries
until the mess clears itself up. I have worked with a few of key types of workers kicked out in the early days by Chavez for not
being sufficiently Marxist. According to them it was a be one of us or die proposition. That type of expertise is critical, not
easy to replace, and not prone to lean Marxist. It takes 15 to 20 years to earn your bones in those types of businesses.
As the Marxists grabbed all the means of production the economy collapsed. Their enemies have deep pockets and are experts
at regime change. A propaganda war to soften the hearts and minds of the taxpayers is usually the first step. The people suffer,
the empire howls, the people suffer. If the Empire wins; the people suffer, the Marxists howl, the people suffer. Not many options
there but to leave.
Don Bacon@135
Re: Pence, Pompeo, and Bolton
Trump picked all 3 of them, nobody forced them on him. He can replace Pompeo and Bolton today if he wants to, he doesn't need
an excuse or an opportunity to do that. His appointments are a much clearer expression of his intentions and policy that anything
he says or tweets.
The Pretender has a cunning plan; free money, free food and if you like your oil co, you can keep your oil company:
from a zerohedge commenter:
"President Guaidó Unveils Giant Government Program to Fix Venezuela
The plan consists of three key elements: social renewal, economic renewal, and control of petroleum supplies. First, the government
would create 11 social programs, all part of a larger social security plan, that would help Venezuelans back on their feet. The
economic plan would consist of government subsidies to "every family that needs them," as well as heavy investment in government
education and health care.
The petroleum plan saw Guaidó's government vow to return Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the state-run oil company, to pre-socialist
production levels. The opposition team promised not to privatize the industry, but to return it to the hands of capable oil experts
who can adequately find and process the crude oil.
key takeaway "..return it(the oil co) to the hands of capable oil experts." That would be Exxon et al. At the old rates of
70% US and 30% Vz is my guess, and didn't Vz have to repay the US for all upfront costs before they ever saw the 30%??
Is Bolton in charge, or is Pence? Pence certainly has been the face of much of the Venezuela policy. Is it because 1) He's
modeling the office of the VP after GHW Bush's and Cheney's lead? 2)Trump has been so consumed with the congressional showdown
and govt. shutdown, that he's let Pence, Pompeo and Bolton take the lead on Venezuela? 3) Trump is planning to go out in a blaze
of glory -- declare Mission Accomplished on his agenda (even if he has to declare a State of Emergency to get his Wall) and resign,
leaving Pence in charge (with the power to pardon him if need be).
The Venezuelans taking to the streets worldwide today as promised by NBC
here didn't happen. Even CNN "breaking news" couldn't find a few Venezuelans loitering on the street somewhere in any city
besides Caracas.
Guaido has his marching orders from Washington, refusing mediation from Mexico and Uruguay.
tweet
Ratificamos a los gobiernos de México y Uruguay nuestra posición de restituir el orden constitucional en Venezuela. Tenemos una
ruta clara:
1. Cese de la usurpación
2. Gobierno de transición
3. Elecciones libres
¡Únanse a nuestro llamado democrático! . . here
google translate
We ratify to the governments of Mexico and Uruguay our position of restoring the constitutional order in Venezuela. We have a
clear route:
1. Cessation of usurpation
2. Transitional government
3. Free elections
Join our democratic call!
Maduro called his bluff with his snap election suggestion.
Guaido is obeying Pence: "Let's be clear," [Pence] said. "This is no time for dialogue. This is time for action. And the time
has come to end the Maduro dictatorship once and for all." . .
here
I posted a comment in the prior thread's comments (venezuela-coup-attempt-part-of-a-larger-project-military-intervention-likely-to-fail
#173), that is relevant to this discussion, I won't repost in full but the gist is last Thursday I watched the Atlantic council's
livestream of their "Supporting the New Venezuelan Interim Government" forum, featuring two representatives of the Guaido Coup
(Carlos Vecchio & Julio Borges) as well as The Ambassadors of the EU, Paraguay & Chile. All of whom were extremely hostile to
the true Venezuelan government and stressed the new for a rapid response to drive Maduro and that this coup was just the first
step in a larger mission and that the entire region must go through a "fall of the Berlin Wall" process [their terminology) ending
the influence of Cuba throughout Latin America. This the process must be irreversible and redefine the ideological prism of the
economic and human rights, a historic change in the direction of Latin America. This was openly and bluntly stated at the forum.
On thing I left out of my original coverage was that during the Q&A the Coup representatives were asked about how they
would treat international agreements signed by the Maduro government and they basically said 1) that would not acknowledge any
agreement signed by Maduro's government since 2015 and 2) they specifically called out Russia & China saying that if they wanted
any of their agreements with Venezuelan honoured they would need to remove their support for Maduro - needless to say I don't
think talking smack to the Russians or Chinese will accomplish much for the coup plotters. Nor do I think the Cuban government
is threatened in the least by the latest threats to Cuba
Juan Guaido, Venezuela's self-proclaimed president, has been recognized by president Trump and the European Parliament as interim
president of Venezuela, but on his twitter account here Guaido still
calls himself the president of the national assembly of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Such humility by the boy wonder!
@ mourning dove, Rusty Pipes
President Trump's MO is that for him to succeed others have to fail. So he set up Mattis to fail in Afghanistan and Syria, which
he did, and was fired. Now we're onto a new generation of failures, including Pence Pompeo and Bolton. Clever, what?
El Cartero Atómico , Feb 2, 2019 8:32:07 PM |
link
I have no position in the pros and cons of the vaccine discussion but laws such as the one below make me wonder. If vaccines are
safe why is this law in place and did the pharmaceutical companies lobby for this.
U.S. Code Title 42. THE PUBLIC HEALTH AND WELFARE (1) No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable in a civil action for damages arising
from a vaccine-related injury or death associated with the administration of a vaccine after October 1, 1988, if the injury or
death resulted from side effects that were unavoidable even though the vaccine was properly prepared and was accompanied by proper
directions and warnings.
After doing research about other drugs such as statins I think the secrecy and misleading actions of Big Pharma can lead people
to lose faith in them.
Finally, in regard to the coup in Venezuela, I just finished watching a documentary about the torture and murder of Victor
Jara after the Chilean coup. A man who had been an 18 year Chilean Military conscript and participated in the human rights abuses
after the coup said he still suffered from the guilt of his actions. He appeared very sad and old beyond his years. Meanwhile
a retired CIA officer expressed no regret for his actions and looked great. It helps to be a psychopath or sociopath. I'm sure
that Trump, Bolton, Pompeo, etc. will not suffer if their actions regarding Venezuela result in death and suffering.
I think it had to do with the protests in so far that the thugs saw a chance to commit their violence under the cover of wider
protests. Much like the fringe violent elements of the Gilets Jaunes.
I am going to assume that the coup in Venezuela is going to fail given the early movements by both parties. So that plate of empire
becomes maybe like the Ukraine spinning plate. What comes next? We can't be out of plates and spinners for money.
On the road
to a multi-polar world will there be a time of total breakdown in trade and border porosity? Will there be 2 global internet backbones
and traffic between each will be restricted and monitored? Maybe we even get 2 UN organizations which would be a hoot if there
was any sort of transparency.
Guaido is an Apprentice that is about to be fired by the Venezuelan people in the election he called for....after lots of money
spent on the spinning plate.
That's some convoluted reasoning and you are clearly very invested in it and
are able to adapt it to anything Trump does. Failure isn't a strategy for success and appointments of rabid neocons isn't a strategy
for peace.
These things are self evident, but ultimately irrelevant if you are committed to maintaining an untenable position.
"EU lawmakers voted 439 in favor to 104 against, with 88 abstentions, at a special session
in Brussels to recognize Venezuelan congress head Guaido as interim leader. In a statement
with the non-binding vote, the parliament urged the bloc's 28 governments to follow suit and
consider Guaido "the only legitimate interim president""
"lawmaker" aka the EU pseudo-parliament.
In Venezuela the people can trigger a recall referendum on the government/president (is
there any country in EU where the people can do this?)
The process to instigate a recall referendum in Venezuela:
The image we are getting from MSM are that almost all Venezuelans hate Maduro
"dictatorship", how hard could it be to get 20% of the voters for a referendum?
INSTEX seems to be set up to fail. US-poodle UK as its supervisory board. It was UK that
refused to ship gold to Venezuela just this week.
No way the EU misleadership will do something to make life better for its citizens.
"to promote an unconditional transition in Cuba to democracy, the rule of law and the free market." is code words for the
neoliberal coup and stealing resources of the country. just look at Ukraine.
Notable quotes:
"... So how does the "Merkelization" concern relate to the US plans to start nation-breaking in Latin America? ..."
"... Now to the main points of the Journal article . It stresses that Cuba and Venezuela have been aiding each other, with Venezuela donating oil to Cuba and Cuba providing support to Venezuela's military and security forces. ..."
"... The U.S. strategy carries major risks. If the administration's support for opposition leader Juan Guaidó in Venezuela fails to unseat Mr. Maduro, or if it fails to weaken ties between Caracas and Havana, the desperate conditions in Venezuela could worsen and tether the U.S. more closely with the crisis. An estimated three million Venezuelans have fled their country. ..."
"... Mr. Cutz laid out options to escalate pressure on the Maduro regime, including a financial strike at Venezuela's oil exports. At first, the administration held back, fearing such an action would allow Mr. Maduro to blame the country's woes on Washington. ..."
"... Mr. Bolton, named national security adviser last year, has long taken a tough line on Cuba and Venezuela. He was later joined by Mr. Claver-Carone, who took over western hemispheric affairs at the National Security Council and shared Mr. Bolton's view. ..."
"... An archived edition of Capitol Hill Cubans described Mr. Claver-Carone as the co-founder and director of U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, a donation vehicle for House and Senate members. It was founded in 2003 "to promote an unconditional transition in Cuba to democracy, the rule of law and the free market." ..."
"... The story describes in detail how the US perceived that, "The decision by two of Venezuela's major opposition parties and past rivals -- First Justice and Popular Will -- to join forces a year ago provided for the first time a potential alternative to the Maduro regime." ..."
"... The US decided to leverage street protests at the time of the inauguration for Maduro's second term, on January 10. Other plans: ..."
"... The imposition of sanctions on Venezuela's oil company, PdVSA, announced by the U.S. on Jan. 28, could be worth as much $11 billion in U.S. crude oil sales. ..."
"... Among the next steps, U.S. officials said, are proposed new measures against Havana, such as restoring Cuba's designation as a state sponsor of terrorism. That could hit financing and investments from countries outside the U.S. that now do business there, as well as the funds the country gets from international tourists. ..."
"... I am similarly depressed. I don't think we'll see any real improvement in the situation until the last of the neo-cons die off (hopefully slow, painful deaths.) ..."
"... There is an appalling scene in Fahrenheit 119 where Obama rips his mask off to the people of Flint. Far too many of today's leaders are sociopaths. ..."
"... Link to Bolton's statement about US wanting Venezuela's oil: ..."
"... "Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, also announced the settlement of their country's oil exports would be in euros. Was this not a stab in American backs?" ..."
"... "It's been depressing to be an American for a very long time." That really is an understatement. I came across this yesterday and it just blew me away. https://grayzoneproject.com/2019/01/29/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuelas-coup-leader/ This is not the type of thing that I want to read about my country's doings .but you feel like you need to know. ..."
"... why are so many people fleeing their home countries? ..."
The Wall Street Journal has
just published an important, disheartening story,
U.S. Push to Oust Venezuela's Maduro Marks First Shot in Plan to Reshape Latin America .
The Trump Administration has apparently decided to embark on a large-scale interventionist
campaign to reverse supposed undue influence of Russia, China, and Iran in Latin America.
Venezuela and Cuba are the first targets, and Nicaragua is next on the list. John Bolton, in
too obvious a nod to Bush's "axis of evil" has called them the "troika of tyranny".
One would think the fact that our "remake the world in our image" plans worked out so well
in the Middle East might curb US adventurism. And it isn't just that we made a mess of Iraq,
failed to break Iran, and failed to install new regimes in Afghanistan and Syria. The New
American Century types are deep in denial that this geopolitical tussle not only cost the US
greatly in terms of treasure, but it also wound up considerably enhancing Russia's
standing.
Consider another bad outcome from US war-making in the Middle East: the rise of the radical
right in Europe. American nation-breaking had produced a flood of refugees trying to enter
Europe. In a misguided show of humanitarianism, European countries welcomed the over one
million migrants that arrived in 2015, with the upsurge due mainly to the civil war in Syria.
Angela Merkel in particular backed the idea of taking in the refugees, in part because German
has a lower-than-replacement birth rate, and Syrian has a high level of public education.
However, the EU members had patchy and generally poor programs for helping the migrants
assimilate and find jobs. The result was what one hard core left wing political scientist who
has spent a considerable amount of time in Germany calls "Merkelization": a rise of nativist
right wing parties like AfD in response to large-scale, poorly-managed migrant inflows.
Consider how this tendency might play into US nation-breaking near our borer. Many readers
have pointed out that the "caravans" from Central America are heavily populated with people
from countries like Honduras that our tender ministrations have made much worse. My colleague
was warning of Merkelization of the US even before the US launched its coup attempt, that it is
one thing to have an immigration process that is generous towards asylum-seekers, and quite
another to have open borders when political and economic conditions in countries to the South
are unlikely to get better.
Bernie Sanders was browbeaten into holding his tongue after pointing out early in his
Presidential campaign that "open borders" is a Koch Brothers position, and that the top 10%
professional class that has become the base of the Democratic party are now heavy employers of
servants, in the form of nannies and yard men. When I was a kid, even the few times we lived in
middle/upper middle class suburbs full of senior corporate managers and professionals, no one
had servants. Men worked full time and wives did the housework; the most you'd see would be a
housekeeper in once a week to give the wife some relief.
In 2005, a left-leaning blogger wrote, "Illegal immigration wreaks havoc economically,
socially, and culturally; makes a mockery of the rule of law; and is disgraceful just on
basic fairness grounds alone." In 2006, a liberal columnist wrote that "immigration reduces
the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants" and that "the fiscal burden of
low-wage immigrants is also pretty clear." His conclusion: "We'll need to reduce the inflow
of low-skill immigrants."
That same year, a Democratic senator wrote, "When I see Mexican
flags waved at pro-immigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic
resentment. When I'm forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I
feel a certain frustration."
The blogger was Glenn Greenwald. The columnist was Paul Krugman. The senator was Barack
Obama.
Prominent liberals didn't oppose immigration a decade ago. Most acknowledged its benefits
to America's economy and culture. They supported a path to citizenship for the undocumented.
Still, they routinely asserted that low-skilled immigrants depressed the wages of low-skilled
American workers and strained America's welfare state. And they were far more likely than
liberals today are to acknowledge that, as Krugman put it, "immigration is an intensely
painful topic because it places basic principles in conflict."
A larger explanation [for the change] is political. Between 2008 and 2016, Democrats
became more and more confident that the country's growing Latino population gave the party an
electoral edge .
Alongside pressure from pro-immigrant activists came pressure from corporate America,
especially the Democrat-aligned tech industry, which uses the H-1B visa program to import
workers .
According to a comprehensive new report by the National Academies of Sciences,
Engineering, and Medicine, "Groups comparable to immigrants in terms of their skill may
experience a wage reduction as a result of immigration-induced increases in labor supply."
But academics sometimes de-emphasize this wage reduction because, like liberal journalists
and politicians, they face pressures to support immigration.
Many of the immigration scholars regularly cited in the press have worked for, or received
funding from, pro-immigration businesses and associations.
I suggest you read the Beinart piece in full; it makes clear that immigration is a thorny,
complex problem, which is not something you'd infer from either party now.
So how does the "Merkelization" concern relate to the US plans to start nation-breaking in
Latin America? Republicans may feel they can tolerate the risk of increased levels of refugees
seeking to enter the US because it could work out in their favor. Right now. Trump looks
screechy to anyone but true believers when he tries to whip up fears about border security. But
what happens if the levels of arrivals were to increase three or four fold, as they did from
2014 to 2015 in Europe? You have realistic odds of a backlash with high migration levels
overwhelming systems that already were doing only a so-so job of handling them.
Now to the main points of
the Journal article . It stresses that Cuba and Venezuela have been aiding each other, with
Venezuela donating oil to Cuba and Cuba providing support to Venezuela's military and security
forces.
Interestingly, it isn't all gung ho for the Trump plans. It points out, for instance, that
while the US has some international support for mixing it up in Venezuela, the US won't find
backers for getting aggressive with Cuba. Similarly:
The U.S. strategy carries major risks. If the administration's support for opposition
leader Juan Guaidó in Venezuela fails to unseat Mr. Maduro, or if it fails to weaken
ties between Caracas and Havana, the desperate conditions in Venezuela could worsen and
tether the U.S. more closely with the crisis. An estimated three million Venezuelans have
fled their country.
Failure also would hand both countries a David-and-Goliath diplomatic victory and
potentially strengthen the hand of China, Moscow and Iran in the region. The chief reason
President Obama pursued an entente with Cuba was his administration's conclusion that decades
of tough measures had failed to topple the Castro regime to make way for a democratic
alternative.
The article presents US allegations against a key Maduro official, including ties to
Iran:
One of the Trump administration's first actions after the election was to dust off an
unused plan from the Obama administration to sanction Tareck El Aissami, Mr. Maduro's vice
president until last year:
U.S. law-enforcement officials say they have evidence Mr. Maduro directed state resources
to create what they allege has become one of the most powerful international
narco-trafficking operations in the world, and with links to Hezbollah, the Lebanese group
designated by the U.S. as a terror organization.
Part of why U.S. officials express concern about Iran's influence in the region is that
Iran is a major backer of Hezbollah, and its South American operations are a significant
source of cash
Among the first officials to lay out options for the Trump administration was Fernando
Cutz, a career USAID foreign-service officer, who had previously worked on the rapprochement
with Cuba for the Obama administration
Mr. Cutz laid out options to escalate pressure on the Maduro regime, including a financial
strike at Venezuela's oil exports. At first, the administration held back, fearing such an
action would allow Mr. Maduro to blame the country's woes on Washington.
Mr. Bolton, named national security adviser last year, has long taken a tough line on Cuba
and Venezuela. He was later joined by Mr. Claver-Carone, who took over western hemispheric
affairs at the National Security Council and shared Mr. Bolton's view.
Mr. Claver-Carone, an adviser to the Trump campaign, rose to prominence in foreign-policy
circles for running a blog called the Capitol Hill Cubans.
An archived edition of Capitol Hill Cubans described Mr. Claver-Carone as the co-founder
and director of U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, a donation vehicle for House and Senate members. It
was founded in 2003 "to promote an unconditional transition in Cuba to democracy, the rule of
law and the free market."
The PAC has raised and spent about $4.7 million since its inception. It contributed
$20,000 to Mr. Rubio's Senate campaign since June 2016 and gave Diaz-Balart's campaign $5,000
in February 2018, records show.
Mr. Claver-Carone also led the nonprofit group Cuba Democracy Advocates from 2004 to 2017.
And he ran a small lobbying firm called the Cuba Democracy Public Advocacy Corp for about 10
years, ending in 2016.
True believers in the driver's seat is not a good sign.
The story describes in detail how the US perceived that, "The decision by two of Venezuela's
major opposition parties and past rivals -- First Justice and Popular Will -- to join forces a
year ago provided for the first time a potential alternative to the Maduro regime." The US
opened up communications with Juan Guaidó. Over the New Year break, Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo met with senior officials in Brazil and Colombia to develop plans. The US decided
to leverage street protests at the time of the inauguration for Maduro's second term, on
January 10. Other plans:
The imposition of sanctions on Venezuela's oil company, PdVSA, announced by the U.S. on
Jan. 28, could be worth as much $11 billion in U.S. crude oil sales.
Among the next steps, U.S. officials said, are proposed new measures against Havana, such
as restoring Cuba's designation as a state sponsor of terrorism. That could hit financing and
investments from countries outside the U.S. that now do business there, as well as the funds
the country gets from international tourists.
Also on the list: new sanctions on Cuban officials and their networks and ending a waiver,
known as Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, signed by every U.S. administration since its
inception in 1996.
Ending the waiver would allow U.S. citizens to sue individuals and companies in U.S.
courts for property seized by the Cuban government. Its impact would likely be to freeze
billions of dollars worth of foreign investment in Cuba including hotels, golf courses and
other projects.
The Trump administration is expected to announce new measures against Cuba in coming
weeks, with the goal of crippling Havana's ability to bolster the Maduro regime.
I had really hoped that Trump would tire of Bolton's aggressiveness and need for the
limelight, but that clearly isn't happening fast enough, if at all. In the meantime, kicking
small and poor countries who pose no threat is not the behavior of a confident superpower. And
grabbing Venezuela's oil because we can is theft. It's been depressing to be an American for a
very long time, and there's no prospect for improvement.
I'd like to prefrece my comment by saying that I am very angry about this coup and the US
messing about in its "back yard".
What is one of the most depressing aspects of this saga is that we are literally replaying
what we have been doing for the past 20 years. And it's never worked. Never. We won't get the
oil. People will needlessly die in awful deaths. People will be torn from their home and do
desperate things. And we will continue to punish them, hurt them for their attempts to live.
Perhaps this is what always happens to US Presidents since Truman – "Now I am become
Death, the destroyer of worlds." (Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad Gita) And they must
transform totally into Death.
I will end with Dr. Thompson again (in this instance discussing our invasion of Iraq by
Dubya)
"We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world – bullies and bastards
who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are whores for power and oil with hate and
fear in our hearts."
Dr Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the
Final Days of the American Century
I am similarly depressed. I don't think we'll see any real improvement in the situation
until the last of the neo-cons die off (hopefully slow, painful deaths.)
Thanks for these comments (and thanks Yves for highlighting this latest adventure in
imperialism). I'd only add one point. We've been doing this for much longer than 20 years,
and it predates the existence of the neocons (at least as an official entity). As a long time
observer, if there is one tiny positive I take from this, it is that the internet allows
critics of the Empire to follow its offenses in nearly real time today. The Mighty Wurlitzer
is more powerful than ever, but it no longer takes months, years, or even decades for the
truth to trickle out for those who know where to look.
Many Americans have had, and will continue to have, their eyes wide shut, as Ives alluded
to in her post and that includes both the credentialed 10-20%ers (WHERES MY CHEAP FOREIGN
INDENTURE !!) and many lowly shlubs as well ( AMERICA – F#UKIN A .. Let's Kick some
Romulan Ass !!!)
So, the only eventual outcome I see .. is where the Romulans kick ours back, good-n-hard
!
Maybe after such an event, we'll come to our senses. I believe more likely that that's when
secession, in its various forms, makes a strong appearance.
This saga has been going on since the end of WW2. For 70 years. In 1948 we were headed for
recession and Truman sent us off to fight the Korean War. Before WW2 it was a similar story
but less brutal, as I read it. Maybe not. But the last 20 years has been astonishing brutal,
I'll give you that.
And add to the obvious failures (or depending how you look at it, successes) Libya where
slaves are today for sale at knockdown prices: the conduit for African migrants to Europe,
courtesy of the UK, France and, 'very discretely', the USAians Barack Obama and Hillary
Clinton (Wasn't that something about 'leading from behind'?, maybe one of the all-time acmes
of doublespeak. I'd nearly forgotten how Obama was such a master at uttering deceptive
inanities with a straight face, yet tinged with a shadow of a smile.)
Saw that the night before last. Didn't Moore go on to say that black voter turnout dropped
off a cliff in 2016 in numbers that would have made all the difference for Clinton in that
State? I saw how he kept his lips closed and the water level stayed the same. Probably even
had Vaseline on his lips too for protection. I hope that people will never forget that
performance.
Just so you know, reported reserves are not a good metric. Matt Simmons wrote about this a
ton when he was alive. OPEC member would regularly increase them by not-credible amounts.
Why? OPEC quotas based on a country's reported oil reserves. I don't doubt that Venezuela has a lot of oil. But consider this view:
The U.S. holds more oil reserves than anyone else in the world, including Saudi Arabia,
Russia, and Venezuela.
That conclusion comes from a new independent estimate from Rystad Energy, a Norwegian
consultancy. Rystad estimates that the U.S. holds 264 billion barrels of oil, more than
half of which is located in shale. That total exceeds the 256 billion barrels found in
Russia, and the 212 billion barrels located in Saudi Arabia.
The findings are surprising, and go against conventional wisdom that Saudi Arabia and
Venezuela hold the world's largest oil reserves. The U.S. Energy Information
Administration, for example, pegs Venezuela's oil reserves at 298 billion barrels, the
largest in the world. Rystad Energy says that these are inflated estimates because much of
those reserves are not discovered. Instead, Rystad estimates that Venezuela only has about
95 billion barrels, which includes its estimate for undiscovered oil fields.
Moreover, Rystad argues that there are not uniform ways of measuring oil reserves from
country to country. Some countries report proven reserves, using conservative estimates
from existing oil fields. Other countries, like Venezuela, report undiscovered reserves.
But Rystad applied similar metrics to all countries in its report to make comparisons
easier. "
Completely agree. Canada is a case in point since a large part of those reserves are in
tar sands if I am not mistaken. I am not particularly fond of the argument that the US wants
Venezuela's oil but the US oil companies might like the idea of going back in after if the
1976 nationalization policy is canned a very likely price for US support to oust Maduro
Bolton said so on TV this week. Quite a few tweets with the clip.
Due to the hour I'm not going to track it down now but hopefully an obliging reader also
saw it and won't find it hard to provide a link. Otherwise I will come back and give the
link, but I desperately need to turn in and have non-blog stuff I must attend to when I get
up, so it will be a while for me to deliver the evidence.
Indeed, Venezuela oil is sweet, probably the best quality in OPEC, and better than most
USA oil. Many refineries on the Gulf can't run Sands (or Alaskan) Oil, which is why much is
exported to China, who can run Saudi Oil (among the worst quality).
Venezuela has both "sweet" and "heavy" oil, which the latter is predominately shipped to
only a few refineries (many in the US) which are set up for "heavy" oil.
Expanding on my earlier comment, last week I posted a link to John Pilger's excellent
documentary film The War On Democracy – https://vimeo.com/16724719
While John's focus in the film is primarily on Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, and the Bolivarian /
Chaveznista Revolution the film also presents deep background on US interventions in Chile,
Nicaragua, El Salvador, ect.
Pilger's style of interview reminds of Det. Columbo. The complete film is worth watching,
but if you're in a hurry / too busy at least watch the interview segment (57:00 > 1:07:00)
with
Duane Clarridge, Head of CIA Latin America Division from 1981 to 1987. Mr. Clarridge puts the
UGLY in Ugly American. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Clarridge
It would not be a stretch to think that Duane Clarridge and Elliot Abrams were close
associates back then.
My father worked in Riyadh for 21 years, after the RAF, and never believed any of the
stats coming out from there. He worked for the ruling family and military and in public
health and academia. He often tells the story about the kingdom's AIDS stats to the WHO. The
kingdom denied it had any problem, a problem often incurred by wealthy men visiting
"Natashas" in the Gulf playgrounds and Thais on their home ground. There was one hospital
ward in Riyadh dedicated to AIDS patients alone. The other stats not kept, or kept under lock
and key, were about the tiny Jewish and Christian communities along the Red Sea coast. Dad
imagined that the oil stats were similarly mythical.
The recent DeGolyer and McNaughton report on Saudi Arabia is probably accurate. There is
more oil there than they thought. D and M are not going to sell themselves out, I don't
believe. So that means SA remains the giant we thought it was.
Hmm. Venezuela is one of only 16 countries to recognize Taiwan. Taiwan is about the same
distance from mainland China as Cuba is from mainland US. Qiao Liang specifically mentioned
Venezuela in ' One Belt One Road ':
"Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez, also announced the settlement of their country's oil exports would be
in euros. Was this not a stab in American backs?"
Not a prediction, but Venezuela and Cuba look like excellent spots to park wei qui stones.
Just sayin'.
The interventions in favour of the coup by "plucky, little" Belgium, la France perfide and
Spain were timely reminders that after Brexit neo con and neo liberal "racaille" remain in
the EU27. It's too convenient to blame the UK for the neo con and neo liberal plague in
Europe and imagine that things will be better after Brexit.
With regard to servants, it's not just the US. Last year, some figures were published that
there are as many people "in service" in the UK as there were in 1860. Another study
suggested that there were more people in service than in the UK armed forces.
With regard to Germany, my employer and some of its clients have recruited some of the
refugees. Some of the stories have been published on the intranet. Our team PA mentors one
recent recruit, a Syrian of Palestinian origin. It has suited much of the German business
elite and its political puppets (CDU, CSU, FDP and, let us never forget, the SPD and Greens)
to import workers and keep German workers from getting uppity. The chief economist of the IMF
recently commented on how little many Germans earn, how much pay has stagnated this century
("Danke vielmal, Herren Hartz, Schroeder und Eichel!") and how she was not surprised by the
rise of the AfD.
A couple of days ago, when discussing Brexit with a Frankfurt based colleague, a German,
he said that a German exit from the EU was not inconceivable. There's a lot of discontent and
any EU related vote risked being influenced by other matters, just like Brexit. I have heard
a lot of this from German banksters, officials and academics in London since last summer.
French and Italians, too.
I forgot to mention that one commentator on the BBC said that Hizbollah and Iranian
Revolutionary Guards were in Venezuela, supporting the government crackdown and also in
business. It was all part of the UK MSM messaging before a military intervention. It's not just American oligarchs salivating. The Vestey family, "Victorian millionaires,
not one of our old families" (Agatha Christie about someone else), are itching to get their
own back and more.
According to the rousing song I once sang along to with such shared gusto and near-tears
credulity, "This land is your land, this land is my land, from California to the New York
Island," and all that -- well, he had the "bicoastal" part right, but as we mopes are maybe
starting to recognize, "this land," that was "settled" by genocide, theft and corruption,
does not and never has "belonged to you and me." You and I are "American" by accident of
birth, that's all. And are just along for the ride, chivvied and herded by the few who
actually, "legally," own it all, and control and mandate all the "policy," that undefined
term that is the reality of "rule of law."
Bushie used the term "rule of law" and fooled a lot of people. Most people don't realize
that the more money you have more you can exercise the "rule of law".
Very well researched article by the always insightful Max Blumenthal. The page also
publishes polling data showing huge numbers of Venezuelans opposed to military intervention
and sanctions, something both sides making their case about what to do in Venezuela routinely
ignore.
I have been making it a habit to (quite literally) troll my congress-critter on a daily
basis for the past couple of years, and those along with the Elliott Abrams profile were
today's contributions to the cause. These people really do disgust me, and never let it be
said that I have not made it my project to say so.
An excellent, if somewhat sickening, long-form article on the lead-up to what we are now
witnessing. It seems there is no limit to the lengths the U.S. government will go to in order
to destroy any government that refuses to acquiesce to U.S. hegemony and implement a
neoliberal economic system. Thanks for the link.
Canada has supported Guaido so I sent the grayzone article to the PM and the Minister of
Foreign Affairs. It is very depressing to read about how countries are destabilized by
others. If only we respected each other's aspirations instead of imposing ideology on each
other.
You have to see:
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Chavez – Inside the Coup.
It's free on YouTube. From 2002.
I saw it back in 2002ish when it came out.
A British (or Aussie?) film crew was covering the election of Chavez.
Then they ended up being on the ground capturing the coup from the streets to inside the
palace.
Watch as millions of Venezuelans, largely poor, give a lesson in Big D Democracy.
They hit the streets in such large numbers and the miltary turned on the coup leaders.
You have to see it.
And I fear for them. The USA will probably send troops this time.
Is it naive to think that Bolton and Pompeo are playing on Trump's crude insecurities and
he is enabling them to act out theirs? That this is a crucial aspect in addition to greed? I
always thought that a key motivation for the Iraq war was Cheney playing on Bush's fragile
male ego. I think leadership factors for good or ill are important if not exclusively so.
It's the same in the industry where many NC commentators and I work. "Bid 'em Bruce" got
his name from that ability to play on fragile male egos. Mr Botin at Santander and his
adviser Andrea Orcel played the same trick on Fred Goodwin at RBS.
You are getting insider-y even for Americans, or at least non-investment bankers, and even
then of a certain age.
"Bid 'em up Bruce" = Bruce Wasserstein, one of the top M&A bankers of the 1980s (in
the 1990s, he was still a big player, but corporate preferences move to greyer technocrats).
He was famed for amping up CEOs to keep fighting to win competitive bids for companies with
his "Dare to Be Great" speeches.
The term "Merkelization" should be used with caution. While an uncontrolled flood of
illegal aliens inciting racist rhetoric may indeed be a threat to the USA, also because it
has in fact happened over many years, it did not happen in Germany 2015. In 2015 masses of
refugees, many of them originally displaced by the catastrophic failure of the American
invasion of Iraq, trekked across southeastern Europe seeking safety and opportunity in
Western Europe. The vast majority of those who entered Germany entered legally, were
identified and registered by German immigration authorities and were given support by German
federal and state offices. The vast majority of those who remain in Germany remain legally in
Germany. There are surely some unregistered refugees living underground in Germany but the
number is effectively zero. The refugees are used by neo-Nazi groupings to win support among
the not insignificant racist demographic in Germany, and they are in Germany legally. I
understand that relatively few of them have real prospects of remaining permanently in
Germany. The majority live tenuous and legal existences in Germany, and accordingly enjoy a
degree of security and comfort that was not available to many of them in countries of origin
after the cascade of disasters that began with the American invasion of Iraq.
Often forgotten in American discussions of immigration is that the American way of doing
immigration is not the only way of doing immigration. In fact it is deeply flawed. Many
leading first-world democracies use citizen registration. Accordingly travellers can enter,
in some cases with a visa, and if they want to stay they must register with the local
authorities. Access to essential residential services and privileges is dependent on this
registration. Every change of address requires a new registration. Accordingly what happens
at points of entry is relatively unimportant because local authorities are responsible for
who is in fact using services and enjoying privileges.
This system is in contrast to the American model in which effectively the only control on
entry is at legal points of entry. If travellers can avoid the legal points of entry or can
enter as tourists then there is effectively no further tracking of their presence.
With all due respect, you are missing the point my colleague made, who reads the German
press daily, spent years studying in Germany, has many professional and personal contacts
(including individuals at a high level in government, the party structures and academia), and
he also wind up going to Europe for typically 2-3 months a year, a lot of that in Germany. In
other words, he's extremely well plugged for a non-German.
His point was that Merkel was naive and idealistic about Germany's ability to integrate so
many foreigners, with no language skills. This has nothing to do with legality of the
process. It has to do with the capacity of a society to help large numbers of people
assimilate (language, culture, work place norms), give them additional training if needed,
and help match them with employers.
Even if a program of this scale were developed and implemented successfully, which it
wasn't, you then run into second order problems: resentment. "Why are we spending so much on
foreigners when we have all these domestic needs [list]?"
Or put it another way: differences of degree become differences of kind. I don't know
where the tipping point is, but there are operational and political issues when annual
immigration levels exceed a certain point. Blaming it on neo-Nazis is simplistic. The US had
precisely the same issue with the big immigrant wave around the turn of the 20th century and
a very contentious political debate. Tell me how that had anything to do with neo-Nazis or
fascists.
I didn't mean to seem harsh, and I may not have given a long form enough explanation of
the idea. Merkel was operating from both noble motives as well as pragmatic ones, but badly
misjudged what she was taking on, and even if the #s had been more manageable, neglected to
address the huge challenge of integration and making sure the refugees wound up getting jobs.
It was a deadly mistake for her and the EU.
Agree that Merkel's rationale was complex. Did she make a deadly mistake? Interestingly
the UK does not have citizen registration.
To clarify: under citizen registration regimes, for example in many continental European
countries, all residents, non-natives as well as natives, are required to register with the
local authorities whenever they change address.
The UK does not have citizen registration and it experienced, as a result of agreeing to
EU treaties that guarantee freedom of movement, a larger influx of foreigners than Germany
did in 2015. In other words decades of neoliberal deregulation and the arrival of 3 million
EU citizens did enough damage to the living standards of registered voters in the UK to
produce a simple majority in favor of Brexit. While the lack of citizen registration in the
UK was not the cause of Brexit, this abscence of practical controls may have contributed to
the present crisis.
In contrast Germany did not surrender completely to deregulation of the labor market
– though there has been liberalization particularly in unskilled sectors, wages in
major industries continue to be governed by collective bargaining agreements that extend
across employers. And the influx of foreign labor is tracked and controlled through the
citizen registration regime.
I think that it's more likely that Blair et al. made a deadly mistake in not establishing
greater controls in the wake of both EU as well as native liberalization fantasies. I think
Germany and the EU will survive and Merkel, though a lame duck chancellor today, will go down
in history as a great European.
That all depends on who writes the history books. An honest assessment of Merkel would
admit, though, that she was one of the last truly savvy European politicians and demagogues.
This a woman, who even in a weakened position, staved off three consecutive coup attempts
from the hard-right of her party in as many years, and still managed to get her pick of
replacement on the way out of the party leadership. So to characterize her as in anyway naive
is to my mind is not really fair. That she misjudged the situation may be closer to the mark.
It was definitely the key factor in her downfall. Regardless of her motives or the perceived
results of her policy, allowing asylum, even to so many, was absolutely the right thing to
do! And one has to remember that when she had taken enough heat from the long racist right of
her party she shut that policy down. As someone who stood out in the cold at large
pro-refugee rallies here in Munich, I'm loath to believe it was a waste of my time.
A remark about Merkels rationale: It was to a great extent a marketing- (or propaganda)
driven decision from Merkel and her entourage: After making Greece more or less
single-handedly into a debt colony, Merkel was looking for an improvement of her damaged
image; a journalist from the german newspaper DIE WELT, Robin Alexander, showed in his book
about the migration crisis that all the necessary administrative arrangements were in place
to close the german border in September 2015 but home secretary de Maizière was
overruled by Merkel and her advisors – they did not want to have ugly pictures because
of Merkels still damaged image from the mishandling of Greece.
Thanks for the insightful article about the US & Latin America and the great
discussion!
thanks but bitte – it wasn't vanity that opened the doors to a million refugees.
Like Greece, Brexit is a lesson in the incoherencies of the EU. The truly disturbing
evidence tends to turn up after the shit has hit the fan. Greece had (still has?) a deeply
dysfunctional public purse. They had (still have?) no objective and reliable public record of
private property ownership, which for example could serve as the basis for property taxation.
They should never have been allowed to enter the monetary union. Similarly England
liberalized its labor market and then took little or no action to defend it when the EU
expanded to eastern Europe allowing millions of talented and energetic if not highly
qualified, low-wage (from the perspective of the British labor market) workers to enter and
compete. The Germans were a little better at defending their labor market. The point is that
every EU member should have been prepared appropriately for the consequences of EU expansion
to the east and the availability of effectively underpriced human resources.
We have occasional interest pieces in the local media following some refugee immigrants
and the paths they have followed since arriving. They are quite eye-opening in terms of
describing the challenges involved, which can include cultural dislocation, finding
employment and social connections, and trauma and ongoing issues around the situation they
were escaping. Kids and teens especially seem to have a hard time, as they have frequently
lost siblings or family members or been separated from them, have had traumatic or disturbing
experiences that they struggle to process, and find little that's familiar about their new
environment and living situation.
You also get to see the support structure and community resources at their disposal to
help them manage, which can be substantial. New Zealand only takes a relatively small number
(1000 or so) of refugees per year and it's easy to see why.
FWIW Moon of Alabama blogger Bernhard, who lives in Germany, has said that Merkel's policy
was at least in part about depressing wages.
And Dimitri Orlov gives his take on the US coup attempt.
Here's the real problem: the fracking bonanza is ending. Most of the sweet spots have
already been tapped; newer wells are depleting faster and producing less while costing
more; the next waves of fracking, were they to happen, would squander $500 billion, then $1
trillion, then $2 trillion The drilling rate is already slowing, and started slowing even
while oil prices were still high. Meanwhile, peak conventional (non-fracked) oil happened
back in 2005-6, only a few countries haven't peaked yet, Russia has announced that it will
start reducing production in just a couple years and Saudi Arabia doesn't have any spare
capacity left.
A rather large oil shortage is coming, and it will rather specifically affect the US,
which burns 20% of the world's oil (with just 5% of the world's population). Once fracking
crashes, the US will go from having to import 2.5 million barrels per day to importing at
least 10 -- and that oil won't exist. Previously, the US was able to solve this problem by
blowing up countries and stealing their oil: the destruction of Iraq and Libya made
American oil companies whole for a while and kept the financial house of cards from
collapsing. But the effort to blow up Syria has failed, and the attempt to blow up
Venezuela is likely to fail too because, keep in mind, Venezuela has between 7 and 9
million Chavistas imbued with the Bolivarian revolutionary spirit, a large and well-armed
military and is generally a very tough neighborhood.
"FWIW Moon of Alabama blogger Bernhard, who lives in Germany, has said that Merkel's
policy was at least in part about depressing wages. "
Don't know tons about Germany's economy. But I will point out that Costas Lapavitsas, in
his book "Profiting Without Producing", makes the argument that a big factor in Germany
realizing such large surpluses relative to other countries in the EU is Germany being able to
minimize nominal unit labor costs. According to the data in the book, the nominal unit labor
costs have flatlined in Germany, while they increased in a number of peripheral countries. He
talked about how German capitalists have been able to also successfully exploit non-unionized
labor forces. It wouldn't surprise me if that was at least one of the motivations.
But if we were rational (we being the US collectively), if our government weren't a
bi-partisan train wreck, we would be figuring out ways to compensate countries like Venezuela
for keeping the oil in the ground. It has a market value, but the environmental damage isn't
obviously included in the market price. If it was, if we could truly price such a thing, I
think it would clearly show a net aggregate cost for humanity on the whole. Instead of
stealing and consuming Venezuela's oil, we would be paying them and countries like them to
keep it in the ground, and then radically change the structure of the domestic and
international economic system to deal with the environmental crisis. I think in some ways
that liberals are just as deluded about the changes needed as many on the right. Trump,
though, is doing things horribly wrong on every level in Venezuela, and previous presidents
were great either. Ecuador at one point asked the world to pay it to leave the oil in the
ground. We didn't, of course. We could pay Brazil to not cut its forests down too, but kind
of problematic, given who now runs the country, and I don't know whether we would devote
enough resources to monitor the forests thereafter anyway.
FWIW Moon of Alabama blogger Bernhard, who lives in Germany, has said that Merkel's
policy was at least in part about depressing wages.
I believe that this is generally recognized as a deliberate part of an effort to maintain
export competitiveness. Iirc they were able to pull the feckless SPD into collaboration after
the Soviet bloc collapse led to an influx of labor, some of it quite skilled, that was
already lowering wages.
On another note, we're talking about an increase an immigration in a way that slides over
what a coup would set off. My impression is that Chavista support among working class
Venezuelans and both strong and armed. At worst, the army will be divided, though writers
like Moon of Alabama think they are pretty much behind Maduro. (It's not for nothing that the
Times ran a piece a couple of days ago playing up divisions in the army.) I don't think this
will be a "put tanks in the streets, kill some demonstrators, send in the death squads to mop
up" kind of deal.
> differences of degree become differences of kind
uh, the source on that, in a paragraph about nazis, umm
"so also has the European boy inherited an aptitude for a certain moral life, which to the
Papuan would be impossible." ["Hereditary Influence, Animal and Human", 1856]
Maybe a joint China-Russia deployment of their most advanced first strike missiles
stationed in Cuba and aimed directly at America would do the trick of slamming the U.S back
to reality. Let America feel what China and Russia feel, when they see the U.S. massing arms
along their border.
Well, the US is not alone. The European Parliament, in its plenary session today, voted
the recognition of 'Guido' as the legitimate president of Venezuela. One reason they invoke
is article 233 of the constitution. But that article says that when the presidency is vacant
(not true!), the vice-president takes over, not some US-selected dimwit. (the full text as
adopted is here ).
And in other news, Israel is "aligning" with autocratic regimes in Africa and other
regions, indicating, as an aside for the mopes, its "distaste" for having to do so "to
preserve the nation and its democracy," and prove that the Likud rule really has yuuuge
international support.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/netanyahu-is-welcoming-authoritarians-to-israel-sparking-debate-1.6242028
Another kind of Bernaysian log-rolling, akin to the works of the trio of troubles, Bolton,
Pompeo and Abrams, and their adherents.
"Democracy," like "war," has become an undefined, maybe undefinable, shibboleth. What does
anything mean, any more? All there appears to be is power and wealth and domination, serving
up sacrifices to Moloch to extend and expand the rule of the destroyers of course the
neo-neos would just note that it has always been thus, for humankind, those who eat, and
those whose destiny it is to serve, die, and be eaten
I worked in and with "Brussels" from 2007 – 16 and know how venal many of that lot
are.
From the behaviour that I observed on Thursday evenings in Brussels (as the European
Parliament does not sit on Fridays and MEPs are encouraged to visit their constituencies) and
their away weeks in Strasbourg, I suspect that spooks are active and keeping an eye out for
material to enable "chantage".
The European Parliament did but they still have to urge their members to go along with
them. I have seen this Parliament in action before and remain seriously unimpressed-
One would think the fact that our "remake the world in our image" plans worked out so
well in the Middle East might curb US adventurism. And it isn't just that we made a mess of
Iraq, failed to break Iran, and failed to install new regimes in Afghanistan and Syria. The
New American Century types are deep in denial that this geopolitical tussle not only cost
the US greatly in terms of treasure, but it also wound up considerably enhancing Russia's
standing.
Should any of these things really be perceived as failures for the New American Century
types? They've been conducting an incredibly successful looting project, as Kelley Vlahos has
documented in The American Conservative.
They may be in denial about the moral virtues of what they do, or any ostensible benefits
to regular Americans, but it's tough to deny the material success that it has brought to war
profiteers and their enablers, measured in terms of things like real-estate values in DC
suburbs.
The 'grow or die' mantra needs oil to keep on keeping on, and the Venezuela gambit came as
news that fracking wasn't all that was made public. Interesting intersection.
The only actions a bully responds to is force. Russia and China especially will need to
become more aggressive even if that means the end of the human race via nuclear war. The
current situation perpetuated by the nihilists that run things is so painful to watch given
the loss of life of millions of innocents that ending the whole thing quickly sometimes seems
merciful.
I think that there are some people in Washington that have really not thought this all the
way through. Look, it is one thing to blow up countries like Iraq, Libya and Syria but apart
from all the blood and treasure lost, America has two things in its favour shielding it from
the worse effects – the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans. America has never had to deal
with the waves of refugees released that Europe has had to deal with. A side effect of this
is the rise of right wing movements in response to tone deaf governments as well as local
terrorist attacks.
But, if America now starts to blow up countries in South America, the effects will not be
limited to just those countries alone but will ricochet around the whole continent and up the
isthmus. Then you will see not caravans of refugees but human waves. Is this why Trump is so
gung-ho on building a wall? To keep all those fleeing refugees out of America to warp the
politics there like it has in Europe? Is America ready for a bunch of Vietnams in South
America? Look, Vietnam in size is about the same size as California but the Vietnamese were
never defeated there. How about something similar throughout a whole continent? Do they
really want to find out?
The U.S. blew up a string of South and Central American countries in the 1960-70s –
Brazil, Argentina, Chile and others. Much as I would like to believe there will be negative
effects on the U.S. this time around I can't say I remember hearing of any then. In the
1990-2000s there was a backlash against U.S. control and this is what is being rolled back
now.
Americans have been wreaking Central and South America since William Walker temporarily
took over Central America using private American armies in the 1840s. The aim was to
establish slave plantations. Southern style Manifest Destiny.
All of the present day coups and embargoes is normal for the United States even
when we didn't have an army we had the navy, the marine, and banks.
Vietnam might be a different case. Seems to me there was more of a sense of peoplehood
there than in a lot of the central and South American places, with their colonial histories
and geographic and demographic divides. Not so sure if there would be resistance to invasion
and subversion on the scale of Vietnam's in a lot of those places, where the "legitimate
authorities" are in the bag already, have a long schooling in oppression and looting, and the
Empire has done so much groundwork and homework prepping the military and police forces (and
various militias and of course the narco sub-governments) to pile on to any popular unrest
and solidarity notions. What are the Guatemalan and Venezuelan and Colombian and Brazilian
etc. equivalents of the Gilet Jaune? What is the life expectancy of a peasant or labor
organizer in a lot of those places, or of a determined investigative reporter?
And let us remember that the Empire has been kicking a$$ and taking names in "our
backyard" since the commercial classes declared (many of them at least) that the Divine Right
of the English King, at least, did not float across the Atlantic in their little wooden
ships.
Recall the observations of that old guy, Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, regarding the nature of
what he reduced to a simplification, "war," and explained from his long experience as a thug
for the Empire that all the stuff the Marines and Navy and the rest were doing through the
latter half of the 19th and his part of the 20th Centuries was "nothing but a racket." (Note
that the Marines still nominally "revere" Butler as a successful general officer, the
quintessential multiple-Medal-of-Honor-holding Marine, but completely obfuscate his
"sedition" in exposing the real nature of all that Valorous Glorious Victorious "carrying of
guns to every clime and place "
Human waves which will strengthen right-wing politicians and their police state, while
depressing wages. I'm sure Trump and the PNAC crowd would never want anything like that. How
silly of them.
An interesting article on the aftermath of oil rich Ecuador adopting the US$ as their
currency. It brought stability to a country wracked by hyperinflation, but the knock-on
economic effects make for a nasty hangover.
Every day since 2015, thousands of Ecuadorians have crossed the bridge from Tulcán,
Ecuador to the border town of Ipiales, Colombia to go shopping. Goods they purchase in
Colombia include food, cars, television, and even bulldogs. On a holiday weekend between
May 27 and 29, more than 50,000 Ecuadorians crossed the border to Ipiales. Some shoppers
come from as far as Quito, a five-hour drive south of the border. Ecuadorians purchase
goods in Colombia en masse due to a simple fact: prices in Colombia have become
significantly cheaper. For example, a 50-inch TV costs $1,300 USD in Ecuador, but less than
$800 USD in Colombia.[2] The situation has become of such concern to the Ecuadorian
government that last year, President Rafael Correa issued a "call of conscience" to
Ecuadorians, asking his compatriots to "offer support to the national production" by buying
Ecuadorian products.
In addition to Panama and El Salvador, Ecuador is one of the Latin American countries
that uses the U.S. dollar as the only official currency. Ecuador does not print its own
bank notes. In recent years, the U.S. dollar has continuously appreciated against other
currencies in Latin America, making the price of goods in Ecuador higher than that in
neighboring Colombia and Peru. Ecuador abandoned its old currency, the sucre, during a
severe economic crisis in 2000 and has been using U.S. dollars ever since. With the
appreciation of the U.S. dollar, doubts have emerged regarding the fate of dollarization. A
recent Wall Street Journal article stated that Ecuador "has the misfortune to be an oil
producer with a 'dollarized' economy that uses the U.S. currency as legal tender."The
appreciation of the U.S. dollar against other currencies has decreased the net exports of
non-oil commodities from Ecuador, which, coupled with the fall in oil prices, has
constrained the country's potential for economic growth.
I don't think Guaidó has any plan to sell PDVSA to foreign countries. So far
his plans are to replace Chavistas in the company and put his own guys in charge. The
same has occured during any government change in Venezuela after oil nationalization. (sorry
link in spanish )
As Karl Rove famously said "we're an Empire now ."–I think people continually miss
this simple statement of fact. The USA is an Empire and like the period of Augustus still has
the old republican institutions including "elections" that we all would have to admit are not
particularly democratic. The ideals those of us from the baby-boom generation grew up with
were only partially bullshit then and are completely bullshit now. Washington sees its
opportunity to open Venezuela up for "bidness" and is taking steps to get rid of a weak
President of a democratic country and, by now, we should understand that the official
Washington does not like democracy abroad or domestically. Immigration from Venezuela and
other countries is always good, as many people above have pointed out, because it depresses
wages, eliminates workers ability to bargain with bosses, makes working conditions worse and
so on. All good things for the rulers. Just face the fact that we are ruled by oligarchs and
we have, really, no say in what they do and haven't had any say for some decades. They do
what they want to do whether we think it is moral or not.
The people at the top are gangsters–some of them just like hurting people for fun,
most just do it for profit which comes in many forms usually outside public scrutiny.
Americans have a tendency to hide in illusions–particularly on the left we believe that
the System is reformable–it isn't. As for Europe following along, they are vassal
states and, when it's important, and it's no skin of their asses they'll step into line.
Though European leadership has some concern for the average citizen (unlike American
leadership of both parties) Europeans (ruling elites and citizens) love the comfort and
security of the Empire as did people in other great empires of Rome and the Ottomans. At any
rate, European firms can descent on Venezuela and loot to their heart's content when the US
takes it.
On the other hand, if the US fails at taking Venezuela then the Empire is on its way
out.
Poverty has a cost. And this cost is always paid by the workers. Massive (and possible
artificially organized) immigration is the price rich countries' workers pay for poverty
everywhere else. It seems they are targeting the wrong responsible.
What depresses me about all this is the propaganda push isn't even trying to make sense
anymore. We are supposed to believe that they had a invalid election and want genuine
democracy but then just pick a guy who never even ran for president and pretend that he's
legit.
And that we are so concerned for the suffering of its people, but the first thing we do is
cut off all their oil money.
It reminds me of violent cops who continue beating a suspect when he's down and then wonder
why he's not cooperating.
Just sick beyond words.
I see the US move against Venezuela as having a domestic political agenda as well.
Look at how democratic socialism is being demonized by the MSM and leaders of both
parties.
How long before AOC and Bernie are labeled as Bolivarian sympathizers?
I agree. How soon until we see adjacent images of AOC and Maduro in some media context or
other? Odds are you can already find this somewhere on ZeroHedge, perhaps sourced from The
Mises Institute.
It's already happening. A writer for the conservative Lake County Journal yesterday
referred to Illinois as "the Venezuela of the Midwest," apparently referring to the new
governor and his (fairly) progressive agenda.
I want to give this title again – free doc on YouTube.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Chavez Inside the Coup.
From 2002 shows the first coup attempt against Hugo Chavez. How it failed. You don't see
any "authoritarianism" but you will get a big dose of Democracy in action as the storm the
streets and get their President back.
Okay, I took a look. Massive street demonstrations effectively turned the tide. No
doubt.
Now imagine that happening in the US. Oh, wait. It did happen. In the Sixty's and then
again in 2000's, in an attempt to stop the genocide in Vietnam and more recently the
Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Livable wages for the American Working Class and open borders are incompatible.
What would be less expensive and quicker to implement? Building the wall?, or making
E-Verify mandatory if a business wants to write off an employee's wages against income?
If the government can administer Medicare and Social Security, they can make E-Verfiy
work.
Of course Medicare fraud of all descriptions is a constant challenge to "government
administration." We got a new FL senator who managed to walk away "Scott-free" after
presiding over the looting of Medicare and MEdicaid of some what, $4 or was it $5 billion?
https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2010/11/rick-scott-alex-sink-florida/
Social Security might be a better exemplar, though a lot of people are harmed by the way
benefits are ruled on by the administrative processes and institutionalized tight-fistedness
there. https://thinkprogress.org/paul-ryan-legacy-toward-the-poor/
"We could do better." Will the Empire ever "do better," at anything other than chaos and
exploitation and corruption of the sort that lets the California ag cartel keep on using
virtual slave labor from south of the border? And the 10% having their house slaves and yard
workers?
If there is such a plan to remake america (I doubt it) it is clear that Venezuela was the
weakest piece in the move. The least we can say about Maduro is that he has grossly
mismanaged the best resource of the country and nobody outside Venezuela likes him.
It is not Maduro's fault that the oil price stumbled between 2014-2015, and it is not his
fault that more
than 80% of Venezuelan exports are Oil and oil-derived products . It is not probably
Maduro's fault that 2,5 million venezuelans migrated after the fall in oil prices.
Nevertheless, they blame Maduro. But it is Maduro's fault that oil production in Venezuela
has been reduced making a big problem bigger (and now US sanctions make it even worse). But
this is not all.
Most Venezuelan oil exports go to China to repay the enormous debt that Venezuela
accumulated (I believe during Chaves tenure mostly) So, the real income that Venzuela obtains
from oil has decreased dramatically due to 1) oil price crash 2) repay chinese debt with oil
and 3) lower pproduction, and now we add 4) US sanctions. Maduro was already in a very weak
position before the sanctions. Anyway I wonder if Guaidó can do anything except pray for
oil price rise.
Venezuela exports to China account to about 5% of China Oil imports and I was thinking if
Trumps move was just an indirect move to put China in jeopardy, and by the way, get rid of a
leftist government that doesn't get along with the US. The fact is that China has motives to
be angry with Maduro but migth take bigger losses with Guaidó. Anyway 5% is not a big
share of imports.
I'm hesitant to comment on this with any criticism of Maduro or challenging the narrative
that he is a 21st century Allende for fear of being called the Blob (as commenters have been
doing), but it is undeniable that Maduro has far less support than Chavez did, and I would
add that there are real doubts as to the legitimacy of the 2018 constitutional convention
elections. Of course, Guaidó has even less legitimacy and popular support.
Here is an
interview (in English!) with a chavista development expert I actually got to meet in
person years ago whose opinions I still trust. His take: the Venezuelan right wing+US-led
international neoimperialist forces are a big part of the crisis. However, the biggest issue
is the collapse in the price of oil and Venezuela's dependence on oil (partly the fault of
chavismo) and official corruption. In the face of this, Maduro cracked down on dissent both
legally and illegally, buying temporary power at the cost of sacrificing support.
With the ebbing of progressive forces of the region, we see the right staging violent
protests in 2014 and 2017, rejecting election results in 2013, and sabotaging the economy.
Then comes a covert blockade and then later an open one together with interference by the
United States and other right-wing governments. All this has made [Maduro's] government
very weak since its coming into being in 2013. The government manages to stay in power, but
it fails to overcome the crisis, to say nothing about maintaining the program of a
democratic transition to socialism.
A part of the Chavez leadership took control of the state apparatus and the PSUV
[Maduro's party]. It closed ranks and carried out purges, opting for a strategy that
implies the progressive elimination of democratic spaces. That group legitimizes its
actions by pointing to the economic war and the conspiracy of the right – which are
very real – and then its proceeds to limit various forms of expression of the popular
will.
This takes place in relation to questions of state. Examples include cancelling the
recall referendum promoted by the opposition, delaying by one-year the elections for
governors, deciding not to do a popular referendum to convene the constituent assembly. But
it also takes place in popular organizational spaces. In 2016, they suspended the elections
of the Communal Councils throughout the country, and, in 2017, the new line was that only
PSUV members could head up these institutions.
In one way there is, if not a silver lining, at least something new in this current bout
of dollar diplomacy in Venezuela: Trump and Bolton getting on the TV in all their piggish and
crass glory showing the nation exactly what drives US foreign policy. Perhaps it will be an
education for some of our less informed citizens helping to recast previous gory
interventions "for democracy" in their proper light. Truthfully its not like the US
government is doing anything different than any other state does: wielding the violent,
brutal power it has on behalf of its ruling class. Perhaps now we can do away with the
pretense of spreading freedom and democracy once and for all. The incessant duplicity and
false righteousness is almost as sickening as the death dealing. At least from afar.
1. We should be also talking about how we do support in the region. Say Venezuela's
neighbor, Colombia. Deadliest place in the world for union organizers, among the deadliest
places for journalists and human rights workers. Thousands of politicians and activists on
the left have been killed in recent decades, over 80 priests killed since the 1980's. The US
government event admits that violent death squads (which the CIA helped to create and which
are responsible for most of the human rights abuses in the country) have been eliminating
dozens of indigenous groups through violent land grabs. The country has among the largest
number of internally displaced people in the world, and many politicians in the government
have strong ties to death squads and cartels. As of a few years ago, millions of Colombians
were living in Venezuela, and the CIA data on net migration flows shows massive amounts of
people fleeing Colombia. Does the media talk about this? Have we attacked the country like we
have Venezuela? No, Colombia has gotten more US aid than any country in the world, not named
Egypt and Israel. And Colombia is helping to overthrow the government in Venezuela right now,
the media just calls the country an "ally" of ours. Bush gave Uribe, the former right wing
president, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and Uribe was identified in the early 1990's by
the DEA as being among the worst offenders in Colombia's government regarding connections to
cartels, there is evidence that hits were planned on his ranch with death squads, his family
has ties to these groups too. Obama, as many know, also signed a "free trade" deal with the
country. So, take that activists in the US trying to organize unions and places like car
factories in the South.
2. Chomsky and Herman had two books on the political economy of human rights, and they
showed the strong correlation between US financial and military support, and human rights
abuses. We support the overwhelming majority of the world's dictatorships right now, and
William Blum has a great book (Killing Hope) showing the CIA's role in supporting coups,
dictatorships and destabilization in the last half of the 20th century. The NED and USAID are
right there too, as are private organizations like the Atlas Network (which gets money from
the NED), the AFL-CIO and the International Republican Institute. This is to say nothing of
our murderous wars, going back decades. We are in no position to lecture anyone on democracy
and human rights, and it is absurd to accept those things as the reasons we are doing this to
Venezuela.
3. Venezuela's economic situation is complex. Maduro is corrupt, the Venezuelan government
has failed to diversify the economy, and there has been mismanagement. However, the economy
shrank by 26% in the decades leading into Chavez taking over, a majority of the country was
in extreme poverty as of the mid-1990's, and as the country became increasingly under the
control of the IMF, riots and coups ensued. Inflation was high under Chavez, but it was much
higher in the years before he took over than it was most of his time in office, and the
hyperinflation started years after he died, when the economic war intensified. Venezuela also
suffers from many problems other major oil producers struggle with and other developing
countries struggle with.
4. The economic war has been devastating, and is in violation to international law,
domestic law and the OAS charter. Cut off needed exports, cut off access to foreign capital,
barred it from re-negotiating its debt with creditors, stolen gold, among other things. The
opposition controls key markets and produces many of the basic products working people depend
on, and they have intentionally cut back production to cause harm, which has also contributed
to the hyperinflation. The opposition has set up many companies that steal state subsidized
goods and sell them at a mark-up in places like Colombia.
5. The US developed behind what was among the largest industrial tariffs among what are
now OECD countries in the 19th and early 20th century. We were highly protectionist
thereafter, and still have a highly protectionist agricultural system. Ha Joon Chang has
written a lot about how countries like the US rose up with certain policies, like that, but
when they got to the top, they kicked away the ladder, so other countries couldn't implement
those very policies. China has also developed by radically violating the types of policies
that the WTO and the IMF force on countries, it is responsible for the overwhelming majority
of the decline in worldwide poverty in recent decades (directly and indirectly), but it is an
exception, not the rule, on policy. Raul Prebisch wrote about infant industry protection in
places like Venezuela, and he talked a lot about the overdependence of developing and
underdeveloped countries on raw material exports, which generally have poor terms of trade.
The IMF has said that about two thirds of developing countries rely on a small handful of raw
material exports for at least 60% of their export revenue, and other developing countries
with comparable oil reserves (like Saudi Arabia and Iran) also heavily rely on oil export
revenue. So, to the extent that Venezuela hasn't diversified, all previous governments failed
to do this, and it is hard for countries like Venezuela to actually diversify their
economies, especially in the modern economy with the way it has been set up.
7. If I were to go on TV and threaten John Bolton, I could get thrown in jail. He, on the
other hand, can threaten entire countries, and pushed for a war in Iraq that has killed
millions, and destabilized an entire region. Over 80% oppose the US militarily intervening,
and over 80% oppose the sanctions. However, in 2004, polling Iraq showed that a similar
number of people there opposed the privatization of the country's oil, and our leaders and
fascists like Bolton didn't care. Both Kerry and Bush at the time essentially supported the
privatization, and so did horrible people like Abrams and Bolton. There really is no justice
in the world if immoral people like him and Abrams can not only remain free, but continue to
be re-hired by this government of ours. Bolton is even given space by our media to call for
violence against countries like Iran that pose no threat to us.
Wow Great article about a complex subject with long term historical roots and more recent
causes that have been only superficially plumbed. Wouldn't know how to even begin a
conversation about this emotionally laden and complicated topic. Thank you.
Perceptive take on the neocons' current view of the involvement of other foreign nations
in the region and Venezuela's oil. Have had questions about the extent to which US engagement
in the MENA presented China et al with a strategic opportunity given a perceived US policy
focus vacuum in Latin America (other than looting by the usual suspects); as well as the
historical and current involvement and roles of US military and contractor elements and
training in various countries; that of transnational banks and corporations (palm oil and
other agricultural products, money laundering) that may have indirectly contributed to the
emigration issues; as well as the rise of criminal cartels and gangs and the emergence of
near narco-states against a backdrop of the Whys of U.S. demand. How is the imposition of
sanctions against Venezuela a constructive policy measure? Setting aside the damaging effects
on the nations' people and other considerations, It has not been notably successful as a tool
to impose regime change.
Hard not to agree with the concluding paragraph of this post and many of the comments.
FWIW Moon of Alabama blogger Bernhard, who lives in Germany, has said that Merkel's
policy was at least in part about depressing wages.
I believe that this is generally recognized as a deliberate part of an effort to maintain
export competitiveness. Iirc they were able to pull the feckless SPD into collaboration after
the Soviet bloc collapse led to an influx of labor, some of it quite skilled, that was
already lowering wages.
On another note, we're talking about an increase an immigration in a way that slides over
what a coup would set off. My impression is that Chavista support among working class
Venezuelans and both strong and armed. At worst, the army will be divided, though writers
like Moon of Alabama think they are pretty much behind Maduro. (It's not for nothing that the
Times ran a piece a couple of days ago playing up divisions in the army.) I don't think this
will be a "put tanks in the streets, kill some demonstrators, send in the death squads to mop
up" kind of deal.
The fact that the entire establishment is behind this coup is not altogether surprising
but the level of hypocrisy on display is absolutely family bloggin insane.
The Russiagaters and their media partners, who have been screaming for the last two years
about the Russkies "meddling" in our election and Trump "colluding" with Putin, do not even
blink as they brazenly advocate the overthrow of a sovereign government and the
destabilization of a country (a move that could well lead to civil war).
The blatant doubles-standard at play here and the public's wholesale acceptance of it is
just one more sign that as a society we are moving away from "reality based" thinking and
letting emotions and tribal affiliation (which are,of course, manipulated by TPTB) guide our
actions and reactions.
At some point people will have to learn how to think critically again and how to socialize
and communicate without an intermediary layer of tech, and the people who control it,
observing their every thought, word and action and using this god's eye view to run psyops on
them.
And we will all have to make the shift from compulsivey consuming information, and hoping
that we can elect our way to a more just and sane society, to taking decisive action in the
real world. If/when a revolution happens or we reach a critical mass of discontented and
angry citizens desiring real change we will realize just how deeply the establishment has
hooked into our brains and our lives via the tools and toys they so generously provide us
with.
When the family blog hits the fan, the sinister, and totalitarian, nature of the Facebook,
Amazon, Palintir etc. partnership with the CIA/NSA and state and local LEAs will suddenly be
very real indeed. Here's hoping that day comes soon so we can start working on the next
level.
Do the people who advocate for open borders and unlimited immigration ever stop and think
about how many people actually want to leave their homes, friends and families
behind and risk their lives and well-being escaping to the United States or Europe to work
thankless low-paying Jobs in societies that are doing away with upward social mobility?
How many Syrians, Afghans, Guatemalans, Malians, Mexicans would rather be able to make a
respectable living in their home countries? With the IMF/World Bank/gobalized capitalism,
NATO, a belligerent dying empire and a few of its shame inhibited lackeys, rigging their
nations economies to make corrupt leaders and western businesspeople rich and richer (while
consigning their governments to never ending debt peonage) or raining bombs and shells on
their heads and/or fomenting social chaos and civil war it is no wonder many thousands of
people are heading north to try their luck in the lands of freedom, liberty and
"Enlightenment values." But these are desperate people fleeing death, chaos and
grinding poverty not "emigrants" from stable societies deciding to live somewhere else for a
while.
Many western leftists have a wholly warped and unrealistic view of crisis immigration.
They don't ask the most obvious questions such as why are so many people fleeing their
home countries? and who benefits from that situation? And many are so afraid of
being labeled racist (a fate worse than death) they don't dare move past the virtue signaling
stage.
Ideally the internationalist left would be forging partnerships with parties and
organizations in the global south to build a bulwark against western imperialism – both
economic and military – and putting pressure on their own governments to stop these
practices. But that requires more than slinging around self-righteous rhetoric and would
involve actual work and stuff. So
Likewise, the demagoguery from the anti-immigrant right is willfully disingenuous in that
the root causes of mass migration are ignored and the most desperate and powerless people are
scapegoated and made into lightning rods for all the bigotry and projected existential angst
of people living in failing societies of their own.
Meanwhile those responsible for the current upheaval – i.e. the captains of
industry, "wealth creators", generals, heads of state who champion overt and covert
imperialism – are left largely unscathed.
The amount of BS, "fake news" and wildly contradictory and irrational nonsense that gets
pumped out by TPTB and the media with nary an incredulous peep from the weary or braindead
citizenry indicates that there will likely have to be some sort of crisis before more people
begin to take notice of their surroundings and let the scales fall from their eyes.
I think preventing the current order from dragging us into a dark abyss will be an
incredibly difficult slog. But so was every fight against unjust power in the history of the
world. Now all we have to do is organize as a group/class/whatever and come up with a battle
plan to put into action when the crisis hits ;-)
"... with minor exceptions the 5 eye countries are no different.. ..."
"... His History has often been applied as analogous to the post-cold war era, with the US empire usually compared to the arrogant, bullying, tyrannical, over-stretched Athenian empire. The speeches of the Corinthian and Theban ambassadors trying to convince Sparta to join them in war could be transposed almost word for word to anyone who fiercely opposes the empire today. ..."
"... Interesting times, or as one source said today, an Arch Duke moment could well be here. ..."
"... Why Venezuela? Why now? We've looked at these questions before. The answer to the first is, I think, most interesting: It represents a return of the Empire to its natural sphere of influence. It is as untenable for Russia to control Venezuela as it is for the US to run Ukraine. Or Syria. Or Afghanistan, for that matter. ..."
This article at https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/01/29/the-empires-propagandists/
may be of interest to some. Not saying that any of it is new to readers here nor is it
exhaustive but imo a decent piece that pulls together a lot and might be interesting to those
who mainly follow MSM.
An extract:
"The ruling class of the US imperium will simply not tolerate any government that opposes
its financial and geopolitical dominance, attempts socialism, or transfers its nexus to
another powerful state entity, like Russia or China for instance. If one chooses to do so it
is instantly targeted for assault either by crippling economic sanctions or embargoes, which
make governance nearly impossible and primarily harms the general population, or covert
subversion, or by direct and indirect military intervention. And the corporate media, when it
chooses to cover these issues, generally parrots State Department and Pentagon talking points
and obfuscations about the intentions of the US government, the role of corporations and
global capitalism, and the character of the governments the US happens to be opposing at the
time. And all of this is done with virtually no historical analysis. But of course none of
this is new."
It is interesting, the seeming rush to mess with Venezuela.
I guess whether it was in fact rushed, depends on how much we want to believe the data we are
fed.
I believe it was and suspect that that was the reason for resumption of operation of the
government - to support the intervention in Venezuela. Otherwise, it seemed like too sudden a
reversal by Trump.
I think in their analysis of where to intervene next, they look at an array of
factors:
Venezuela is weak
Venezuela espouses something like socialism
Venezuela has been associating with unsavory "competitors"
Venezuela is nearby (and very nearby our asset, Colombia)
Venezuela can be portrayed as in need of humanitarian intervention
Maduro has said some unkind things about U.S. government (Bush)
Venezuela holds a grand prize
In there discusions, I assume the issue of right/wrong is not mentioned.
Imagine someone attempting to raise the issue:
- But what will the media say?
- But what will the U.N. say?
- But what will the Pope say?
- But what will the voters say?
- But what will the other party say?
- But is it really the moral thing to do, what would God say?
with minor exceptions the 5 eye countries are no different..
i suppose the main
difference is not being served up a regular diet of 'we are the greatest' bs, accounts for
some of it.. the general curiousity about what the fuck is going on outside of the usa seems
sorely lacking in people who live in the usa... maybe the media can be blamed for a chunk of
this... generally canucks know a lot more about the usa, then the usa people know about
canada.. that is something i have witnessed in my life.. but, the simple answer to your
question is there isn't a lot of difference.. and yes - trudeau senior must be really
disappointed in tru dope jr... he is nothing compared to his dad... canada is on a downhill
trajectory and fast with this buffoon.. i expect worse in the next election too.. we will get
our trump as we are one cycle behind..
His History has often been applied as analogous to the post-cold war era, with the US
empire usually compared to the arrogant, bullying, tyrannical, over-stretched Athenian
empire. The speeches of the Corinthian and Theban ambassadors trying to convince Sparta to
join them in war could be transposed almost word for word to anyone who fiercely opposes the
empire today.
Also, similar to some who get impatient with the seeming over-conservatism of Russia and
China today, so the aggressive, hot-headed Corinthians and Thebans often get frustrated with
the more conservative Spartans.
I wonder when/if there'll be an American version of the Athenians' disastrous Sicilian
expedition.
Attached to that Venezuelanalysis.com that CE linked to @ 2 was this odd piece of
information:
"EREPLA deal "unusually favourable to foreign company"
... [A] 25-year deal was signed with unknown US based firm EREPLA in November 2018,
which has been described by financial firm Argus as "unusually favourable" to the US
company.
Little is known of EREPLA or its board of directors, with Reuters claiming that Harry
Sargeant III, magnate and ex-Financial Chairman of the US Republican Party, is one of their
owners. The small company, which was only legally registered in the US on November 8,
2018, a mere day before signing the PDVSA deal, has managed to extract a contract from PDVSA
which revives a number of practices, previously eliminated in the Chavez-era, of oil
so-called service contracts. PDVSA is yet to make any official comment on the deal, and analysts have already expressed concern that the deal violates Venezuela's 2001
Hydrocarbons Law.
The deal, which is extendable for a further 15 years, is due to bring US $500 million
of investment to the Tia Juana, Rosa Mediano fields in Maracaibo Lake and the Ayacucho 5
field in the Orinoco Belt. It assigns 49.9 percent of the new mixed company to EREPLA, and
passes 100 percent of the output to the US firm, which is expected to repatriate 50.1 percent
of sale profits back to PDVSA.
Day to day running, purchasing, exporting, and the sale of the oil produced is to be
completely controlled by EREPLA, except in the case of fulfilling PDVSA's hefty oil quota to
China, which will be agreed upon by both parts.
Whilst EREPLA is due to supply the rigs and crews for the fields, other costs will be
split between the two partners, whilst the US firm find themselves exempt from Venezuelan
labour laws under the Service Contract clause, as well as from paying its share of the 30
percent oil royalty which PDVSA is due to cover.
"We believe that the new model created in this agreement is in the national interest of
the United States," stated a Harry Sargeant Oil Management Group lawyer who signed the
documents on behalf of EREPLA.
An EREPLA statement on the deal describes how it looks to "revitalise" Venezuela's oil
industry. It goes on to explain that new terms and conditions have been applied as previous
contracts "fermented corruption and bad management." EREPLA also argued that the deal will
help prevent "US adversaries" such as Chinese and Russian firms from gaining further ground
in the oil-rich country.
It is unclear at this point how the new deal will function in light of US financial
sanctions against Caracas, as a license from the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)
is still pending, but the statement assures that the company's work "will be carried out in
accordance with the economic sanctions enforced by the U.S. Treasury Department."
Oil deals in Venezuela were notoriously favourable to foreign firms until 2001, in
terms of profit [repatriation], labour laws, running costs, and local accountability, until
Hugo Chavez' Hydrocarbons Law broke the tradition, ensuring Venezuelan control over joint
ventures. Another Chavez decree in 2007 capped foreign participation in oil deals at 40
percent. However, in December 2017 the National Constituent Assembly approved a "Foreign
Investment Law" meant to improve conditions for foreign capital investments in
Venezuela.
A company that is incorporated only a day before it signs a major oil extraction and
production deal (parts of which violate Venezuela's own laws governing working conditions and
pay for Venezuelan workers and national control over joint ventures) with Venezuela? Does
anyone else not smell a rat?
What could PDVSA have been thinking? Did it not enter their
heads that EREPLA could be a front acting for elements in the US government?
Venezeula has become the tipping point for loss of GRC for the USD.
Venezeulan oil is being shipped to India, refined by the new Rosneft refinery then being
sold in anything but USD.
Added to the now over 100 country's that are rejecting the USD by using bi-lateral trade,
KSA already selling in yuan, the desperation of Uncle Scam is palpable.
Interesting times, or as one source said today, an Arch Duke moment could well be here.
Why Venezuela? Why now?
We've looked at these questions before. The answer to the first is, I think, most
interesting:
It represents a return of the Empire to its natural sphere of influence. It is as untenable
for Russia to control Venezuela as it is for the US to run Ukraine. Or Syria. Or Afghanistan,
for that matter.
It seems to me that the major blocs might be pulling back, and settling for easy gains.
Not that this coup is likely to be easy, it may prove to be impossible. It may even prove to
be the spark that sets Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil and the rest of Latin America alight.
But the way the clowns in the White House- who haven't had a new idea since 1981-see it all
resources will be mobilised to make the region safe for imperialism: Venezuela, Cuba,
Nicaragua and Bolivia: in the proverbial cross hairs.
The second question |Why now?) could be a reflection of the fact that the neo-conservative
axis has only recently re-established full spectrum domination over the White House. As the
Hitler Youth Freeland has been hinting: the running in this matter has been made by the Lima
Group in which Canada has been playing a leading and thoroughly despicable role. It was they
who did the pseudo legalistic groundwork for the coup. No doubt Bolton et al found it
convenient to have the Lima group demands presented to it on a plate. That meant that even
Ponce, who together with Bolton and Pompeo takes the role of the Three Weird Sisters in this
tragedy, could trigger the crisis with a phone call to Guido. Whose role is clearly to be
martyred, probably by a CIA sniper, so that he can die, if not for his country at least for
its corrupt elites.
We've seen this movie before.
Melians. As we think, at any rate, it is expedient--we speak as we are obliged, since
you enjoin us to let right alone and talk only of interest -- that you should not destroy
what is our common protection, the privilege of being allowed in danger to invoke what is
fair and right, and even to profit by arguments not strictly valid. And you are as much
interested in this as any, as your fall would be a signal for the heaviest vengeance and an
example for the world to meditate upon.
Athenians. The end of our empire, if end it should, does not frighten us: a rival
empire like Lacedaemon, even if Lacedaemon was our real antagonist, is not so terrible to the
vanquished as subjects who by themselves attack and overpower their rulers. This, however, is
a risk that we are content to take. We will now proceed to show you that we are come here in
the interest of our empire, and that we shall say what we are now going to say, for the
preservation of your country; as we would fain exercise that empire over you without trouble,
and see you preserved for the good of us both.
Melians. And how, pray, could it turn out as good for us to serve as for you to
rule?
Athenians. Because you would have the advantage of submitting before suffering the
worst, and we should gain by not destroying you.
Melians . So that you would not consent to our being neutral, friends instead of
enemies, but allies of neither side.
Athenians. No; for your hostility cannot so much hurt us as your friendship will be
an argument to our subjects of our weakness, and your enmity of our power.
Melians. Is that your subjects' idea of equity, to put those who have nothing to do
with you in the same category with peoples that are most of them your own colonists, and some
conquered rebels?
Athenians. As far as right goes they think one has as much of it as the other, and
that if any maintain their independence it is because they are strong, and that if we do not
molest them it is because we are afraid; so that besides extending our empire we should gain
in security by your subjection; the fact that you are islanders and weaker than others
rendering it all the more important that you should not succeed in baffling the masters of
the sea.
Melians. But do you consider that there is no security in the policy which we
indicate? For here again if you debar us from talking about justice and invite us to obey
your interest, we also must explain ours, and try to persuade you, if the two happen to
coincide. How can you avoid making enemies of all existing neutrals who shall look at case
from it that one day or another you will attack them? And what is this but to make greater
the enemies that you have already, and to force others to become so who would otherwise have
never thought of it?
Athenians. Why, the fact is that continentals generally give us but little alarm;
the liberty which they enjoy will long prevent their taking precautions against us; it is
rather islanders like yourselves, outside our empire, and subjects smarting under the yoke,
who would be the most likely to take a rash step and lead themselves and us into obvious
danger.
Melians. Well then, if you risk so much to retain your empire, and your subjects to
get rid of it, it were surely great baseness and cowardice in us who are still free not to
try everything that can be tried, before submitting to your yoke.
Athenians. Not if you are well advised, the contest not being an equal one, with
honour as the prize and shame as the penalty, but a question of self-preservation and of not
resisting those who are far stronger than you are...
Looks like Trump is counting that "slam dunk" color revolution will lift his reelection
chances. Will it?
Notable quotes:
"... First parallel to today comes from Oberholtzer's brief description of Cleveland in Volume 5 of his History of the United States Since the Civil War. "His horizons were narrow. His mind had not been enlarged by travel." "It was only necessary to implant in his mind" a notion to "stir him to a moral fury". Ring any bells? ..."
"... Cleveland drifted along on the international front until he installed Richard Olney as Secretary of State. Olney did his damnedest to provoke a conflict with Britain about a boundary issue in Venezuela by sending that nation the dumbest and most most arrogant declaration of American Exceptionalism ever seen till then. Likely Olney was an arrogant bonehead, but 2019 Secretary of State Michael "Pompous" Pompeo is all of that and a Rapture Fan as well. Maybe this time Jesus will finally get off the can . ..."
Mini Rant: I propose to attempt a comparison of the situation in 2019 Venezuela with the
Crisis of 1895 – also involving Venezuela. From what I can tell both are/were as fake
as a stack of $3 bills. (This is a slightly modified version of a post which disappeared
elsewhere in "moderation".)
The Republican elites of the earlier era seem to have been a bunch of wealthy
industrialists who had been coasting along as the Morally Superior "Party of Lincoln". They
had spread a wide and tightening net of tariffs to protect their enterprises, and the
Voters were getting tired of the situation. But the election of Democrat Grover Cleveland
turned out badly for those Voters (don't ask me why!) and having nowhere else to go
they returned to the Republicans in 1888. Benjamin Harrison was a wishy-washy nobody and
the Republicans raised the tariffs to astronomical levels during his "administration". By
the midterms of 1890, the rage of the Voters was such that the Republicans were crushed in
the House and Senate.
Here is where it gets interesting. Harrison's slimy but brilliant Secretary of State
James Blaine understood something must be done. His solution was to distract the Voters
with Foreign Adventures so they'd have something to talk about besides the tariffs. So he
began raising a ruckus in the nations of Hawaii and Chile. But before the new program could
get very far along, those same furious Voters returned Cleveland to the White House.
First parallel to today comes from Oberholtzer's brief description of Cleveland in
Volume 5 of his History of the United States Since the Civil War. "His horizons were
narrow. His mind had not been enlarged by travel." "It was only necessary to implant in his
mind" a notion to "stir him to a moral fury". Ring any bells?
Cleveland drifted along on the international front until he installed Richard Olney
as Secretary of State. Olney did his damnedest to provoke a conflict with Britain about a
boundary issue in Venezuela by sending that nation the dumbest and most most arrogant
declaration of American Exceptionalism ever seen till then. Likely Olney was an arrogant
bonehead, but 2019 Secretary of State Michael "Pompous" Pompeo is all of that and a Rapture
Fan as well. Maybe this time Jesus will finally get off the can .
Cleveland was immediately on board with the intervention. Congress was overjoyed in a
bipartisan way. Mostly the US people loved it too – We're Number One! The News Media
of the day - even the Republican papers - were delighted with Cleveland's truculence, just
as the likes of the Bezos' Blog Washington Post is thrilled with Trump's new 2019 nuttery.
Naturally when Cleveland left office and the warmongering Republicans returned to office,
the Kingdom of Hawaii was taken over, the USS Maine "somehow" got itself sent to Cuba and
sunk there by mysterious villains, a whole lot of Spanish islands were grabbed, and a few
hundred thousand Philippine folks ended up dead. Will bullying 2019 Russia/China work out
as well as kicking around 1895 Britain? And what are they trying to distract us from this
time?
BTW, this is cut/paste stuff from some of my history books, and I may be quite off base.
Feel free to tear these remarks to itty bitty pieces if that's what they deserve.
:)
"... it seems that crystia freeland is working directly for soros, or something like that... perhaps soros is still young enough to profit from another try at disaster capitalism on venezuala? ..."
"... Canada to host Lima group in effort to find solution to Venezuela crisis .. what a friggin witch she is! and this will be on the lima groups meeting agenda too.. ah yeah.. give it a human rights, humanitarian type twist.. ..."
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's opposition-run congress on Tuesday issued a resolution
calling deals between state-run oil company PDVSA [PDVSA.UL] and U.S. and French companies
announced this week illegal, since they had not been sent to lawmakers for approval.
The body said the oilfield deals with France's Maurel & Prom (MAUP.PA) and little-known
U.S. company Erepla violated article 150 of Venezuela's constitution, which requires that
contracts signed between the state and foreign companies be approved by the National
Assembly, as Venezuela's congress is known.
"They are giving concessions that violate the law," said lawmaker Jorge Millan, mentioning
the two contracts.
Congress, largely stripped of its power since the opposition took it over in 2016, is
unlikely to be able block the deals from going forward. But the rejection could create legal
complications under a future government. " more at link... i don't fully understand it, or
necessarily believe the way it is being presented in the reuters article, but it is worth
reading and might reflect some of the reality on the ground..
@46 bevin and @58 mandrau...
it seems that crystia freeland is working directly for soros, or something like
that... perhaps soros is still young enough to profit from another try at disaster capitalism
on venezuala?
"... Here's an article written by a self-professed Progressive and published on a self-professed Progressive website espousing "A Progressive Alternative to Trump's Dangerous Venezuela Policy." Yet the writer fails to even mention two salient facts of the utmost importance: First, that Trump's actions are Illegal, and second that they're Unconstitutional, both of which provide grounds for Impeachment of Trump, Pence, Bolton, and Pompeo at minimum. ..."
Here's an article written by a self-professed Progressive and published on a
self-professed Progressive website espousing "A Progressive Alternative to Trump's Dangerous
Venezuela Policy." Yet the writer fails to even mention two salient facts of the utmost importance: First,
that Trump's actions are Illegal, and second that they're Unconstitutional, both of which
provide grounds for Impeachment of Trump, Pence, Bolton, and Pompeo at minimum.
Thus the writer unwittingly provides an excellent example of what I described on the
previous thread as Civic Illiteracy. So far, I know of no public figure who has stood up and
said: Trump, you can't do what you're doing as it's illegal and unconstitutional!
Now I know why Dean Acheson called his book Present at the Creation as it was
during his tenure at the State Department when Illegal and Unconstitutional acts by the
executive become the norm.
The US, we have been repeatedly told, is the chief repository of democracy in the world, and
seeks to promote democracy everywhere.
from the US State Department:
Democracy and respect for human rights have long been central components of U.S. foreign
policy. Supporting democracy not only promotes such fundamental American values as
religious freedom and worker rights, but also helps create a more secure, stable, and
prosperous global arena in which the United States can advance its national interests. . .
here
And what is the US definition of democracy? Reading further to see its ultimate
meaning:
Identify and denounce regimes that deny their citizens the right to choose their leaders in
elections that are free, fair, and transparent.
So democracy mainly consists of choosing leaders, and has nothing to do with affecting
governmental policy, war and peace, aid to the poor and disadvantaged, etc. In the US that
means an occasional choice between two people, bad and worse, then sit down and shut up.
For foreign countries this mainly works in the negative for the US government, with a
determination that selected foreign leaders have not measured up to US standards.
Personalizing the enemy in order to gain control of the country is the way it's done. Saddam!
Assad! Maduro! These leaders according to Washington were not properly selected (not true in
most cases) and that justifies US military and/or economic warfare against that country,
mostly including its citizens of course. Kill them! Destroy their "human rights!" The
citizens were deprived of a free vote so let's deprive the citizens with sanctions and death!
. . . It makes no sense, but that's how it is done.
Jason Raimondo's hopes that the tide slowly was turning against the War
Party with Trump's appointment of Tillerson are dashed for good with the appointments of
Abrams, Bolton and Pompeo. The thugs for Wall Street have taken DC.Trump might as well go
home. Raimondo wrote of Abrams in 2017 in "The End of Globalism":
Excerpt:
Oh yes, the times they are a changin', as Bob Dylan once put it, and
here's the evidence :
"Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has ordered his department to redefine its mission and
issue a new statement of purpose to the world. The draft statements under review right now are
similar to the old mission statement, except for one thing – any mention of promoting
democracy is being eliminated."
All the usual suspects are in a tizzy .
Elliott Abrams , he of Contra-gate fame , and one of the purest of
the neoconservative ideologues , is cited in the
Washington Post piece as being quite unhappy: "The only significant difference is the
deletion of justice and democracy. We used to want a just and democratic word, and now
apparently we don't."
Abrams' contribution to a just and democratic world is well-known : supporting a
military dictatorship in El Salvador during the 1980s that slaughtered thousand s, and then
testifying before Congress that massive human rights violations by the US-supported regime were
Communist "propaganda." US policy, of which he was one of the principal architects, led to the
lawlessness that now plagues that country, which has a higher murder rate than Iraq: in Abrams'
view, the Reagan policy of supporting a military dictatorship was "a fabulous achievement." The
same murderous policy was pursued in
Nicaragua while Abrams was Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian
Affairs, as the US tried to overthrow a democratically elected government and provoked a civil
war that led to the death of many thousands . In Honduras
and Guatemala
, Abrams was instrumental in covering up heinous atrocities committed by US-supported
regimes.
And, now, Venezuela. The economic hit man has arrived.
" 'I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I
spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the
bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and
especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a
decent place for the National city Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of
half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify
Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light
to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras
right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that
Standard Oil went on its way unmolested." --
Smedley Butler
The plan might be is to unleash Venezuelan civil war and install pro-US regime by force, using uprising as a ram to depose the
current governmnet. Which looks somewhat neoliberal to me with some deals with foreign companies what probably harm long
term Venezuelan interests, so it might be credible to attach it for corruption like they did with Yanukovich. With full
understanding that the next. more neoliberal Venezuelan government will be even more corrupt and top 1% oriented.
In other work Venezuela looks like Ukraine in 2014 but with oil as a huge price. Discontent with the current government
is real and can be exploited.
Notable quotes:
"... A Venezuelan civil war would result in mass death and even more economic misery!" CashMcCall, 2 hours ago Ron Paul used to be the darling of ZH. But with Trumptards, now RP is discredited because he doesn't support Trump's Tariffs, bullying, economic sanctions, weaponizing the dollar reserve, bombing Syria, or any of the rest of the Trump bullying **** head garbage. ..."
"It's ironic that a president who has spent the first two years in office fighting charges
that a foreign country meddled in the US elections would turn around and not only meddle in
foreign elections but actually demand the right to name a foreign country's president!
" According to press reports, Vice President Mike Pence was so involved in internal
Venezuelan affairs that he actually urged Guaido to name himself president and promised US
support. This is not only foolish, it is very dangerous.
A Venezuelan civil war would result in
mass death and even more economic misery!" CashMcCall, 2 hours ago Ron Paul used to be the
darling of ZH. But with Trumptards, now RP is discredited because he doesn't support Trump's
Tariffs, bullying, economic sanctions, weaponizing the dollar reserve, bombing Syria, or any of
the rest of the Trump bullying **** head garbage.
The Thrust of Trumptards is the ruder the US Acts the better. Bullying everyone is the way
to doe it. Trump is a punk, a draft dodging punk and he is wrecking the country.
But his self dealing is the underlying root. His phony work vacations. He fills rooms at
Trump resorts with secret service. Last year alone Trump Organization was paid half a billion
dollars for these phony work vacations.
Trump claims he works for free. But he donates his salary and deducts the full amount off
his taxes. He is being paid Trumptards. He is a self dealer. He is a slime and a con artist.
That is all Trump is.
Jason Raimondo's hopes that the tide slowly was turning against the War
Party with Trump's appointment of Tillerson are dashed for good with the appointments of
Abrams, Bolton and Pompeo. The thugs for Wall Street have taken DC. Trump might as well go
home. Raimondo wrote of Abrams in 2017 in "The End of Globalism":
Excerpt:
Oh yes, the times they are a changin', as Bob Dylan once put it, and
here's the evidence :
"Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has ordered his department to redefine its mission and
issue a new statement of purpose to the world. The draft statements under review right now are
similar to the old mission statement, except for one thing – any mention of promoting
democracy is being eliminated."
All the usual suspects are in a tizzy .
Elliott Abrams , he of
Contra-gate fame , and one of the purest of
the neoconservative ideologues , is cited in the
Washington Post piece as being quite unhappy: "The only significant difference is the
deletion of justice and democracy. We used to want a just and democratic word, and now
apparently we don't."
Abrams' contribution to a just and democratic world is
well-known : supporting a
military dictatorship in El Salvador during the 1980s that slaughtered thousand s, and then
testifying before Congress that massive human rights violations by the US-supported regime were
Communist "propaganda." US policy, of which he was one of the principal architects, led to the
lawlessness that now plagues that country, which has a higher murder rate than Iraq: in Abrams'
view, the Reagan policy of supporting a military dictatorship was "a fabulous achievement." The
same murderous policy was pursued in
Nicaragua while Abrams was Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian
Affairs, as the US tried to overthrow a democratically elected government and provoked a civil
war that led to the death of many thousands . In
Honduras
and Guatemala
, Abrams was instrumental in covering up heinous atrocities committed by US-supported
regimes.
And, now, Venezuela. The economic hit man has arrived.
" 'I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I
spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the
bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and
especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a
decent place for the National city Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of
half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify
Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light
to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras
right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that
Standard Oil went on its way unmolested." --
Smedley Butler
Brazen Heist II, 4 hours ago (Edited)
...The Orange Buffoon might as well open the door to Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Perle. Hell even get Scooter Libby in some
cameo. You know, keep them enemies closer and all that.
napper, 4 hours ago (Edited)
He will, if he gets a second term!!!
Abrams' appointment is no accident or mistake. By now even the most casual (but intelligent) observer should have seen
through Donald Trump's contemptuous disregard for legal institutions and a criminal propensity for lawlessness.
Brazen Heist II, 4 hours ago(Edited)
And most American sheeple are dumb as a pile of rocks. The few good people left are largely powerless and have to deal
with so much BS in all directions. I hope they will get through the coming implosion with their sanity intact.
Glad I left that shithole. I saw it coming. What's coming won't be pretty.
CananTheConrearian1, 3 hours ago
OK, Great Mind, name a populace that is as smart as Americans. Europeans? Chinese? We're glad you left, ********.
"... War with Russia will be the agenda just as the left wanted to begin with. The " pick sides" is the warring cry of the old Bush regime of " either you're with us or against us" theme. ..."
"... Radical capitalism on the left and conservative traditional capitalism on right.... Both fighting for the same select few who run the show generation after generation. ..."
"... He's not really attacked by anyone. Its a bipartisan play to distract the gullible from the sick and subhuman policy they enact while you are distracted with the wall or fantasizing bout his tiny mushroom. ..."
"... So Trump jerks a couple of gators from the swamp, but only to make room for the T-Rex. Amazing. And why the hell is Bolton still involved in our government? He penned an article during the bush admin explaining why the posse comitatus doesn't really mean what it really says. Scary sob ..."
"... Trump is Zahpod Beeblebrox. Anyone remember the Hitchhiker's Guide? The role of the galactic president was not to wield power, but to distract attention away from it. Zaphod Beeblebrox was remarkably good at his job. ..."
"... When he bombed Syria in the first weeks of his presidency, giving the MIC, a $100 million of bomb sales ( to a company he had shares in, raytheon) was enough for me that tRump is what he always has been, a bankrupt, loud mouth yankee puppet who the plutocrats chose to continue the usual US empire evil ****. ..."
"... I had my suspicions prior with his choice of vp, mad eyes pence, a protege and smoker of **** cheney. Then pompous pompeo, 150% arsehole bolton and now this official pos. Only a trumptard or patriotard would accept this ****. ..."
"... it's just too much to keep track of it all. My scorecard booklet was all used up about the 1st week in after all the neocons and bankster slime who galloped into the WH on Trump's coattails. ..."
"... After having expressed antagonism towards nation-building during the 2000 campaign, newly elected President George W. Bush appointed Abrams as deputy national security adviser, where Abrams' role was essentially nation builder-in-chief. ..."
Abrams is obviously a Bush plant from left over CIA Bushys.
Abrams lied to Congress twice about his role with the Contras. He pleaded guilty to both counts in 1991 but was pardoned
by George H.W. Bush just before the latter left office.
A decade later, while working as special Middle East adviser to President George Ws Bush, Abrams was an enthusiastic advocate
of the disastrous Iraq invasion.
Abrams was also in the Bush White House at the time of the abortive coup in 2002 against the late Venezuelan President
Hugo Chávez.
Abrams helped lead the U.S. effort to stage a coup to overturn the results of the 2006 Palestinian elections, complete
with murder and torture.
War with Russia will be the agenda just as the left wanted to begin with. The " pick sides" is the warring cry of the old
Bush regime of " either you're with us or against us" theme.
This is the precise crap people were hoping to avoid with Trump, but the left has put Trump administration in a vice by having
constant fires to put out and disyractions with FALE RUSSIAN COLLUSION
... It's a psychological ploy to wear down the President and search for legitimate excuse to gain public opinion to go against
Russia and they found it. Venezuela is a **** hole from socialism which AOL and dems are embracing now. Of course having sorry
liberal advisors like Kushner doesn't help... That is a huge mistake to have the opposition ( democrate Kushner and wife) in the
hen house with great pursasive power over an overwhelm Trump... Strategy working.
But politics as it is run mostly out of " The City of London" and old lynn Rothschild wanted puppet Hillary in ( Rothschild's
play dirty to get what they want and hold a full house of cards with the financial tools to " persuade people to their way of
thinking"... A battle us penny picker uppers must live with.... It's the only change we get.
Radical capitalism on the left and conservative traditional capitalism on right.... Both fighting for the same select few
who run the show generation after generation.
He's not really attacked by anyone. Its a bipartisan play to distract the gullible from the sick and subhuman policy they
enact while you are distracted with the wall or fantasizing bout his tiny mushroom.
So Trump jerks a couple of gators from the swamp, but only to make room for the T-Rex. Amazing. And why the hell is Bolton
still involved in our government? He penned an article during the bush admin explaining why the posse comitatus doesn't really
mean what it really says. Scary sob
Abrams was convicted of lying to congress meanwhile congress lies to us all day everyday and what happens to those bastards?
They vote themselves raises and sit on their *** all day taking bribes from their paymasters and writing laws and regulations
to control their chattel. Yes I hate politicians because they're ******* criminals and all of them and the useless bureaucrats
that infest that cesspool in D.C should be out of work permanently.
Trump is Zahpod Beeblebrox. Anyone remember the Hitchhiker's Guide? The role of the galactic president was not to wield
power, but to distract attention away from it. Zaphod Beeblebrox was remarkably good at his job.
When he bombed Syria in the first weeks of his presidency, giving the MIC, a $100 million of bomb sales ( to a company
he had shares in, raytheon) was enough for me that tRump is what he always has been, a bankrupt, loud mouth yankee puppet who
the plutocrats chose to continue the usual US empire evil ****.
I had my suspicions prior with his choice of vp, mad eyes pence, a protege and smoker of **** cheney. Then pompous pompeo,
150% arsehole bolton and now this official pos. Only a trumptard or patriotard would accept this ****.
You're excused...it's just too much to keep track of it all. My scorecard booklet was all used up about the 1st week in
after all the neocons and bankster slime who galloped into the WH on Trump's coattails.
Seriously though, it's interesting that ZH has said nothing about the big corruption scandal going on now in Brasil. The guy
who won on platform of anti-corruption has been exposed within a month of taking office, surprise...surprise, as part of one of
the worst. Talk is vp taking over with the backing of the military. "soft-hard" coup you could say.
I too, got very angry about the exact things you mention. However, I perspective is something that keeps me grounded. Remember
what was happening in 2016, and what the options were. Remember BLM, march's in like every city, and Cops getting ambushed every
few weeks?
Remember, "We came, We saw, he died", from Queen Hillary? Or how about Queen Hillary calling Putin a Thug, and saying we had
to stand up to him in Ukraine, and Syria?
dude, we all know she is part of the same ****. The ******** election is over, the plutocracy chose their puppet. Think of
it, sure Killary would have done the same, but she wouldn't have been able to get away with it and the schizoid msm would have
had a breakdown trying to sell the same ol, same ol us empire games. People don't like surprises. Repubelicans as aggressive warmongers
doesnt surprise. Sadly they think they cant do anything about it. But they can, and not by talking **** on ZH.
See Ralph Nader's, How the Rats Re-Formed the Congress for tips.
It's 10 dimensional to the fifth power chess right? Just kidding. It's a big club and you ain't in it. Trump is not going to
save you. Did you really think one guy defied the odds and overcame the voter fraud and beat Hillary? Puhleez. All by design.
You're watching a movie...
After having expressed antagonism towards nation-building during the 2000 campaign, newly elected President George W. Bush
appointed Abrams as deputy national security adviser, where Abrams' role was essentially nation builder-in-chief.
Didn't W run on a 'bring the troops home and world leave us alone' platform in 2000?
when i think about what Trump did so far I think about that mandatory Obama care tax that I had to pay if I* didn't get Obama
care Well it's gone and that was a big deal for me cause I've got four kids that would have to pay it and that would be six thousand
out of pocket every year that's for starters with out Trump running interference in the FL house and senate elections we'd have
Obama lite new and antique Bill still that makes a huge difference in things like taxes and EPA enforcement in this state I really
think he has made the general public more aware of the Mexican invasion cause I see less and less Latinos on the jobs sites around
here He has really caused the Dems to lose it Trump did that not any other politician he has exposed election fraud he has exposed
the deep state like never before
Yes I'm a Trump supporter a thoughtful one I consider the options and will go with this till it impacts me negatively on an
economic personal level not an emotional one brought on by pundits and MSM never Trump ilk
why don't you ask me if I think he is perfect I think his wife is pretty much ok however I hate that he is from NYC and acts
like it his friends are not much to be proud of and his social skills are lacking but I think he showers regularly and has good
hygiene and moral habits except for golf but that's just me He's a bossy kind of guy and I might not get along with him He doesn't
do things country folks do and wouldn't fit in around here his hair sucks and is a narcissistic affectation for sure but i like
his foreign policy so far how am i doing think I'm being killed slowly I liked Ike but he was weak and I liked Buchanan bur preferred
Goldwater and on and on they are politicians and deserve the loyalty they give and " that's all I have to say about that"
Trump is a psychopath and he loves to hire even bigger psychopaths. Your whole admin is a swamp of sociopaths, psychopaths
and other sick deranged people.
Who is next? Paul
Wolfowitz now would be the most logical choice. Id the invasion of Venezuela decided already,
like Iraq war under Bush II.
That means that Rump can say goodbye to independents who votes for him because of his
anti-foreign wars noises during previous election campaign
Notable quotes:
"... Abrams, who had served in the Reagan State Department, faced multiple felony charges for lying to Congress and defying U.S. law in his role as a mastermind of the Iran-Contra debacle. Abrams' dishonesty almost destroyed Ronald Reagan's presidency and put Reagan in jeopardy of impeachment. Abrams was allowed to plead guilty to two reduced charges and later was pardoned by George H.W. Bush, who feared impeachment because of his own role in Iran-Contra. ..."
"... Abrams was even more consequential as nation-wrecker. He was one of the principal architects of the invasion of Iraq. He is an inveterate advocate of "regime change" against countries whose policies he doesn't like. He has a track record in attempting to overthrow foreign governments both by covert action and outright military invasion. ..."
"... At the beginning of the Trump administration, foreign policy establishment types lobbied clueless Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to accept the convicted criminal Abrams as deputy head of the department - the person running all day-to-day affairs at State. ..."
"... Abrams suddenly appeared deus ex machina at the side of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who said in a news conference that Abrams was appointed, "effective immediately" as special envoy to deal with resolution of the situation in Venezuela in a way that supposedly would advance U.S. interests. ..."
"... Abrams' special envoy post will be far more powerful than that of an ordinary ambassador or assistant secretary of state -- offices that require Senate confirmation. Should the Senate acquiesce in letting Abrams work without Senate confirmation? ..."
"... Abrams is a close friend and constant collaborator of Bill Kristol and Max Boot, both of whom are waging campaigns to impeach Trump or deny him re-election. There are no -- repeat, no -- policy differences between Abrams, Kristol, and Boot. ..."
"... If the appointment is supposed to be a sharp move to "hug your friends close and your enemies closer," then the test of its efficacy would be that Kristol, Boot, Jonah Goldberg, David French et. al., would halt their anti-Trump campaigns. One would think that if the Abrams appointment is one side of a shrewdly calculated transaction, then silencing Team Kristol would be a necessary condition. ..."
"... The Orange Buffoon might as well open the door to Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Perle. Hell even get Scooter Libby in some cameo. You know, keep them enemies closer and all that. ..."
On Friday, following the dramatic arrest of a prominent Trump supporter on charges of lying
to Congress, President Trump gave one of the nation's most sensitive national security and
diplomatic posts to another controversial figure who already had been convicted of lying to
Congress.
Has the NeverTrump Republican echo chamber gone berserk over this irresponsible
appointment?
Have Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio taken to the Senate floor to speak out against the
president's defiance of honesty in government? Have they demanded hearings and a confirmation
vote?
Has House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned that Trump's action is so egregious it might call for
an article of impeachment?
Not at all. Turns out, the appointee is one of the president's worst enemies, a man
forcefully opposed to almost all of Trump's policies and campaign promises, a man who
repeatedly has said Trump is morally unfit for his office. He is Elliott Abrams, the
71-year-old éminence grise of the NeverTrump movement.
Abrams is the pre-eminent prophet and practitioner of hyper-interventionist approaches to
destabilize or overthrow governments - of foes and friends alike - that do not pass his
democracy-is-the-end-all-and-be-all litmus test. His closest friends and associates, from whom
his political positions are indistinguishable, include some of President Trump's most rabid
enemies, false-flag "conservatives" Bill Kristol and Max Boot.
Abrams, who had served in the Reagan State Department, faced multiple felony charges for
lying to Congress and defying U.S. law in his role as a mastermind of the Iran-Contra debacle.
Abrams' dishonesty almost destroyed Ronald Reagan's presidency and put Reagan in jeopardy of
impeachment. Abrams was allowed to plead guilty to two reduced charges and later was pardoned
by George H.W. Bush, who feared impeachment because of his own role in Iran-Contra.
After having expressed antagonism towards nation-building during the 2000 campaign, newly
elected President George W. Bush appointed Abrams as deputy national security adviser, where
Abrams' role was essentially nation builder-in-chief. Abrams was even more consequential as nation-wrecker. He was one of the principal architects
of the invasion of Iraq. He is an inveterate advocate of "regime change" against countries
whose policies he doesn't like. He has a track record in attempting to overthrow foreign
governments both by covert action and outright military invasion.
At the beginning of the Trump administration, foreign policy establishment types lobbied
clueless Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to accept the convicted criminal Abrams as deputy
head of the department - the person running all day-to-day affairs at State. Trump, who would
have had to sign off on the nomination, rejected Abrams when he learned of Abrams' background.
The truth about Abrams, while not by any means a secret,
came to Trump's attention from Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.). Paul, who held a deciding vote in
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he would block Abrams if he were nominated.
Abrams already knew then what Trump took nearly a year to discover, that Tillerson was
hopelessly unprepared to serve as the nation's chief diplomat and indeed was, as Trump
colorfully put it, "dumb as a rock." Nothing about Abrams, the NeverTrumper who believes Trump cannot govern effectively without
him, has changed since then.
Following his rejection by Trump, Abrams wrote a sour-grapes article for
Politico , disparaging the president, along with Vice President Pence and Abrams' erstwhile
patron Tillerson, for not having international human rights policies identical to Abrams' own
views.
Abrams has been outspoken against sensitive Trump international policies right up to the
moment of his surprise appointment. He is unapologetic about his role in masterminding the Iraq
war. He has opposed Trump concerning American troops in Syria and America's relationship with
Saudi Arabia. As recently as January 14, 2019, he published a withering
attack on Trump's Middle East policies and diplomacy.
As events in Venezuela last week reached a crisis with rival claimants to the nation's
presidency, Abrams suddenly appeared deus ex machina at the side of Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo, who said in a news conference that Abrams was appointed, "effective immediately" as
special envoy to deal with resolution of the situation in Venezuela in a way that supposedly
would advance U.S. interests.
Immediately? An appointee to a sensitive post needs a background investigation and security
clearance. These investigations can take months. If he indeed has a valid clearance, that means
his appointment was decided long ago.
Abrams' special envoy post will be far more powerful than that of an ordinary ambassador or
assistant secretary of state -- offices that require Senate confirmation. Should the Senate
acquiesce in letting Abrams work without Senate confirmation?
What is Pompeo thinking? Has Pompeo read Abrams' anti-Trump articles? In particular, has he
read Abrams' January 14 anti-Trump article that mocks Pompeo with a hugely unflattering photo
of the secretary of state?
What is going on?
Abrams is a close friend and constant collaborator of Bill Kristol and Max Boot, both of
whom are waging campaigns to impeach Trump or deny him re-election. There are no -- repeat, no
-- policy differences between Abrams, Kristol, and Boot.
If the appointment is supposed to be a sharp move to "hug your friends close and your
enemies closer," then the test of its efficacy would be that Kristol, Boot, Jonah Goldberg,
David French et. al., would halt their anti-Trump campaigns. One would think that if the Abrams
appointment is one side of a shrewdly calculated transaction, then silencing Team Kristol would
be a necessary condition.
So far there are no signs of this.
What did Trump know about the new Abrams appointment, and when did he know it?
It's amazing seeing the holdout Trump supporters continually writhe in mental contortions
to support his every move..as I've said all along..TDS affects the sheep on both right and
left equally.
Brazen Heist II 4 minutes ago (Edited)
... The Orange Buffoon might as well open the door to Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Perle. Hell even get Scooter Libby in
some cameo. You know, keep them enemies closer and all that.
uhland62, 5 minutes ago
This guy is just picking up a couple more paychecks. He may think he can whip up Trump for more wars, Trump may think he
can control this guy because 'I am President and you are not'. The main thing is that the military can make more wars and
destroy more countries.
The-Post, 15 minutes ago
Trump loves those Bush criminals.
readerandthinker
Venezuelan army defectors appeal to Trump for weapons
Caracas, Venezuela (CNN)Venezuelan army defectors are calling on the Trump administration to arm them, in what they call
their quest for "freedom."
Former soldiers Carlos Guillen Martinez and Josue Hidalgo Azuaje, who live outside the country, told CNN they want US
military assistance to equip others inside the beleaguered nation. They claim to be in contact with hundreds of willing
defectors and have called on enlisted Venezuelan soldiers to revolt against the Maduro regime, through television broadcasts.
"As Venezuelan soldiers, we are making a request to the US to support us, in logistical terms, with communication,
with weapons, so we can realize Venezuelan freedom," Guillen Martinez told CNN.
Tell me who is your friend and I will tell who you are. With friends like Pompeo and
Bolton...
Notable quotes:
"... Trump-bashing Iraq war architect Elliott Abrams to lead US regime change in Venezuela ..."
"... Abrams is already not well-liked in El Salvador and Nicaragua, so I can't imagine the Venezuelans welcoming him with open arms. ..."
"... Elliot Abrams, George W. Bush lackey and arch-Neocon: (1) senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at Council on Foreign Relations (2) core member of Project for the New American Century (PNAC) along with such greats as Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, and John Bolton. ..."
Ever since the Trump administration announced that it was
no longer recognizing the legitimacy of the elected government of Venezuela I've been
arguing with people on social media about this president's brazen coup attempt in that
country.
The people arguing with me in favor of Trump's interventionism are almost exclusively Trump
supporters, with leftists and antiwar libertarians more or less on my side with this issue and
rank-and-file centrists mostly preferring to sit this one out except to periodically mumble
something about it being a distraction from the Mueller investigation.
... ... ...
this one is easily the most common and most stupid of all the arguments i've been receiving.
i'm not familiar enough with pro-trump punditry to be able to describe how the maga crowd got
it into their heads that attacking venezuela has something to do with fighting socialism, but
it's clear from my interactions over the last couple of days that that is the dominant
narrative they've got swirling around in their collective consciousness. most of my arguments
on this issue have either begun as or very quickly spun into an attempt to turn the debate
about us interventionism in yet another south american nation into a debate about socialism vs
capitalism.
Which is of course absurd. The campaign to topple Venezuela's government has nothing to do
with socialism, it's about oil and regional hegemony. The US has long treated South America as
its personal supply cabinet and destroyed anyone who tried to challenge that, and the fact that
Venezuela has
the most confirmed oil reserves of any nation on the planet makes it all the more central
in this agenda. Yes, the fact that large sectors of its economy are centrally planned means
there are fewer hooks for the corporatocracy to find purchase to manipulate it with, but that
just helps explain why the US is targeting it with more aggressive measures, it doesn't excuse
the aggressive targeting. Venezuela does not belong to the United States, and attempting to
control what happens with its resources, its economy and its government is an obscene violation
of its national sovereignty.
Trying to turn a clean-cut debate about US interventionism into a debate about socialism is
like if your family found out that your sister had just been raped, and you all started
bickering about the pros and cons of feminism instead of focusing on the crime that had just
happened to your loved one. It wouldn't matter what kind of economic system Venezuela had;
trying to overthrow its government is not okay. The narrative that this has something to do
with championing capitalism is just a hook used to get Trump's base on board with another
unconscionable foreign entanglement.
... ... ...
Oh yes it is interventionism.
Crushing economic sanctions ,
CIA covert ops , illegally occupying embassies ,
and a
campaign to delegitimize a nation's entire government are absolutely interventionism, and
that is happening currently . It's stupid to make "boots on the ground" your line in the sand
when, for example, vast amounts of US resources can easily be poured into fomenting a "civil"
war that could kill hundreds of thousands and displace millions as we saw with Syria. And from
today's news about the Trump administration's appointment of bloodthirsty psychopath Elliot
Abrams as the special envoy to Venezuela, it's very reasonable to expect things to get a whole
lot bloodier. Modern warmongering isn't limited to the form of "boots on the ground", and
making that your litmus test is leaving yourself open to all the same disasters ushered in by
the Obama administration.
... ... ...
Again, that's not the argument. The argument is whether it's okay for the US government and
its allies to violate Venezuela's sovereignty with starvation sanctions, CIA covert ops, an
active campaign to delegitimize its government, and possibly much worse in the future in order
to advance the agenda of overthrowing its political system.
Of course there are people in Venezuela who don't like their government; that's true in your
own country too. That doesn't make it okay for a sprawling imperialist power to intervene in
their political affairs. You'd think this would be obvious to everyone, but over and over again
I run into people conflating Venezuelans sorting out Venezuelan domestic affairs with the
US-centralized empire actively meddling in those affairs.
The US government doesn't give a shit about the Venezuelan people; if it did it wouldn't be
crushing them with starvation sanctions. It isn't about freedom, and it isn't about democracy.
The US backs 73 percent of the world's dictatorships because those dictators facilitate the
interests of the US power establishment , and a leaked State Department memo in 2017 spelled
out the way the US government coddles US allies who violate human rights while attacking
nonconforming governments for those same violations as a matter of policy. Acting like Trump's
aggressions against Venezuela have anything to do with human rights while he himself remains
cuddly with the murderous theocracy of Saudi Arabia in the face of intense political pressure
is willful ignorance at this point, and it's inexcusable.
5. "You don't understand what's going on there! I talk to Venezuelans online!"
Do you now?
First of all, this common argument is irrelevant for the reasons already discussed here;
sure there are Venezuelans who don't like their government, but their existence doesn't justify
US interventionism. Secondly, it's a known fact that online trolls will be employed to help
manufacture support for all sorts of geopolitical agendas, from Israel's shill army to the MEK
terror cult's anti-Iran troll farm to the Bana Alabed psyop for Syria. And here's this example,
just for your information, of a Twitter account talking about how much fun she's having in
Paris and then a few days later claiming she's in Venezuela waiting in "5+ hour queues to buy a
loaf of bread."
Be skeptical of what strangers on social media tell you about what's happening inside a
nation that's been targeted by the empire, please.
And that's about it for this article. Let's all try and talk about this thing with a little
more intelligence and sanity, please.
* * *
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I'm surprised ZH hasn't posted anything about this yet! Abrams is already not well-liked
in El Salvador and Nicaragua, so I can't imagine the Venezuelans welcoming him with open
arms.
Elliot Abrams, George W. Bush lackey and arch-Neocon: (1) senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at Council on Foreign Relations
(2) core member of Project for the New American Century (PNAC) along with such
greats as Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, and John Bolton.
Elliott Abrams was born into a Jewish family [6] in New York in 1948.
His father was an immigration lawyer. Abrams attended the
Little Red School House in New
York City, a private high school whose students at the time included the children of many of
the city's notable left-wing activists and artists. [7] Abrams'
parents were Democrats .
[7]
British Playwright Harold Pinter says 1980s chaos in Nicaragua was for to protect "Casino"
interests - - https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2005/12/pint-d09.html
- Jews control the casinos in Central America (think Meyer Lansky in Cuba) - throughout the
80's, our media warned us of a communist threat in Central America -- there was no goddam
threat -0 our media was protecting Jewish interests in Central America -- Eliott Abrams was one of the ringmasters back then
in the Central American conflict ...
that oil belongs to the usa fair and square. the dictator maduro stole it from exxon. the
usa is jusr returning the oil to its rightful owner. you christian people out to understand
that concept.
This article is asinine. By the book, Bolton takes orders from Trump... not the other way
around. Bolton is just being used as an excuse. Trump was never serious about getting the US
out of any wars. I confidently predict that US troops will still be in Syria this time next
year.
"Was he aware of Bolton's request for a menu of targets in Iran for potential U.S.
strikes? Did he authorize it? Has he authorized his national security adviser and secretary
of state to engage in these hostile actions and bellicose rhetoric aimed at Iran? "
Yes, Yes and Yes, that's why he's an orange fucktard.
Bolton's former deputy, Mira Ricardel, reportedly told a gathering the shelling into the
Green Zone was "an act of war" to which the U.S. must respond decisively.
This war mongering harpy fortunately was kicked to the curb by melania trump!
Send the House, Senate, FBI, CIA, IRS & all others state operatives to fight in Iran.
Include the TSA for gods sake. Include the Obamas, Clintons and Bush's. So they can verify
that their weapons are all delivered again and work properly. Bring our troops home to defend
are border. Include NYT, WaPo and most of our current media in the Iran light brigade, so
they can charge with the rest of the parasites. Many problems will be solved in very short
order.
He's a temporary useful idiot for Trump who will flush him at his convenience. He's handy
to have around to encourage the Hawks do a group masturbation.
Seriously, if Ertogen tells Bolton to go **** off, he has no sauce. He's been neutered.
Let him act all important and play in the sand box all he wants.
trust the plan. there are white hats in government who have your best interest in mind.
you don't need to do anything other than pretend like everything is fine, they'll take care
of the rest. go to work and continue accepting continually devalued worthless fiat in
exchange for time you spend away from your family and doing things you love. trust the plan,
it's all going to be alright
"... By Jessica Corbett, staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams ..."
"... Wall Street Journal ..."
"... Daniel W. Drezner, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, called the news "a reminder that when it comes to Iran, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo are batshit insane ..."
"... Trita Parsi, founder of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), tweeted, "Make no mistake: Bolton is the greatest threat to the security of the United States!" Parsi, an expert on U.S.-Iranian relations and longtime critic of Bolton, called for his immediate ouster over the request detailed in Journal ..."
"... Bolton: Chickenhawk-in-Chief ..."
"... Great point. None of my fellow comrades who actually participated in firefights (not just drove trucks behind the lines) are eager to be led into battle by National Guard and bone-spur deferrals, much less student deferral draft dodgers. ..."
"... Why did Trump appoint Bolton? ..."
"... I think Bolton is a sop to Sheldon Aldelson. He may be playing a similar role to "The Mooch", I hope. ..."
"... Likewise, Pompeo is the Koch brother's man. Both authoritarian billionaires trying to guarantee their investment in Trump. You see the US is being run like a business, or is that like a feudal fiefdom? ..."
"... Steven Cohen has an interesting editorial in RT, not about directly about Bolton but about the war parties' demand for ongoing M.E. conflict. https://www.rt.com/op-ed/448688-trump-withdrawal-syria-russia/ ..."
"... see what we could do ..."
"... Trump is interested in what is good for Trump. Why he thinks Bolton at his side is good for him is a mystery. Rather a hand grenade with the pin pulled in your pocket than Bolton. Much the same can be said of Pompeo. ..."
"... I agree with author Nicholas Taleb's view of the military interventionists, who include Bolton, that have repeatedly urged that we "intervene in foreign countries -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria -- whose governments did not meet their abstract standards of political acceptability." Besides the losses suffered by our troops and economy, as Taleb observed each of those interventions "made conditions significantly worse in the country being 'saved'. Yet the interventionists pay no price themselves for wrecking the lives of millions. Instead they keep appearing on CNN and PBS as 'experts' who should guide us in choosing what country to bomb next." Now, after imposing economic sanctions on Iran, they're evidently again seeking war. ..."
Posted on
January 14, 2019 by Yves Smith Yves here. I am surprised
that Bolton has lasted this long. Bolton has two defining personal qualities that are not
conducive to long-term survival with Trump: having a huge ego and being way too obvious about
not caring about Trump's agenda (even with the difficulties of having it change all the time).
Bolton is out for himself in far too obvious a manner.
By Jessica Corbett, staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at
Common Dreams
Reminding the world that he is, as one critic put it, " a reckless advocate
of military force ," the Wall Street Journalrevealed
on Sunday that President Donald Trump's National Security Adviser John Bolton "asked the
Pentagon to provide the White House with military options to strike Iran last year, generating
concern at the Pentagon and State Department."
"It definitely rattled people," a former U.S. official said of the request, which Bolton
supposedly made after militants aligned with Iran
fired mortars into the diplomatic quarter of Baghdad, Iraq that contains the U.S. Embassy
in early September. "People were shocked. It was mind-boggling how cavalier they were about
hitting Iran."
"The Pentagon complied with the National Security Council's request to develop options for
striking Iran," the Journal reported, citing unnamed officials. "But it isn't clear if
the proposals were provided to the White House, whether Mr. Trump knew of the request, or
whether serious plans for a U.S. strike against Iran took shape at that time."
Daniel W. Drezner, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy at Tufts University, called the news "a reminder that when it comes to Iran, John
Bolton and Mike Pompeo are batshit insane."
Trita Parsi, founder of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), tweeted, "Make no
mistake: Bolton is the greatest threat to the security of the United States!" Parsi, an expert
on U.S.-Iranian relations and longtime critic of Bolton, called for his immediate ouster over
the request detailed in Journal 's report.
"This administration takes an expansive view of war authorities and is leaning into
confrontation with Iran at a time when there are numerous tripwires for conflict across the
region," NIAC president Jamal Abdi warned in a statement . "It is
imperative that this Congress investigate Bolton's request for war options and pass legislation
placing additional legal and political constraints on the administration's ability to start a
new war of choice with Iran that could haunt America and the region for generations."
In a series of moves that have elicited concern from members of Congress, political experts,
other world leaders, and peace activists, since May the Trump administration has
ditched the Iran nuclear deal -- formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPOA) -- and reimposed
economic sanctions .
NIAC, in November, urged the new Congress that convened at the beginning of the year to
challenge the administration's hawkish moves and restore U.S. standing on the world stage by
passing measures to block the sanctions re-imposed in August and November , and
reverse Trump's decision to breach the deal -- which European and Iranian diplomats have been
trying to salvage .
Iran continues to comply with the terms of JCPOA, according to the United Nations nuclear
watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). However, Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's
nuclear chief, told state television on Sunday
that "preliminary activities for designing modern 20 percent (enriched uranium) fuel have
begun." While Iran has maintained that it is not pursuing nuclear weapons, the nation would
still have to withdraw from the deal if it resumed enrichment at the level.
As Iran signals that it is considering withdrawing from the JCPOA, the Journal
report has critics worried that Bolton and Pompeo have the administration on a war path -- with
Bolton, just last week, insisting without any evidence that Iranian leadership is committed to
pursuing nuclear weapons. Some have compared that claim to former Vice President Dick Cheney's
infamous lie in 2002, to bolster support for the U.S. invasion, that Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction.
As the Journal noted, "Alongside the requests in regards to Iran, the National
Security Council asked the Pentagon to provide the White House with options to respond with
strikes in Iraq and Syria as well."
So Bolton wants war with Iran? Pretty tall talk from a man who during the war in 'Nam
ducked into the Maryland Army National Guard because he had no desire to die in a Southeast
Asian rice paddy as he considered the war in Vietnam already lost. His words, not mine. The
Iranian military will not be the push over the Iraq army was. They are much better equipped
and motivated and have a healthy stock of missiles. They even have the Russian-made S-300
anti-aircraft missile system up and running.
Once you start a war, you never know where it will go. Suppose the Iranians consider –
probably correctly – that it is Israel's influences that led to the attack and so
launch a few missiles at them. What happens next? Will Hezbollah take action against them as
well. If the US attacks Iran, then there is no reason whatsoever for Iran not to attack the
various US contingents scattered around the Middle East in places like Syria. What if the
Russians send in their Aerospace Forces to help stop an attack. Will they be attacked as
well? Is the US prepared to lose a carrier?
And how will the war end? The country is mountainous like Afghanistan so cannot be occupied
unless the entire complete total of all US forces are shipped over there. This is just lunacy
squared and surely even Trump must realize that if the whole thing is another Bay of Pigs, it
will be his name all over it in the history books and so sinking his chances for a 2020
re-election. And if the justification for the whole thing is a coupla mortars on a car park,
how will he justify any American loses? At this point I am waiting for Bolton to finish each
one of his speeches and tweets with the phrase-
Great point. None of my fellow comrades who actually participated in firefights (not just
drove trucks behind the lines) are eager to be led into battle by National Guard and
bone-spur deferrals, much less student deferral draft dodgers.
Calling Bolton on Pompeo "batshit crazy" cries out for revisions in the APA Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual (DSM).
Why did Trump appoint Bolton? A saying of LBJ, I believe attributed to Sam Rayburn, might
illuminate. "It is better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent
pissing in."
Likewise, Pompeo is the Koch brother's man. Both authoritarian billionaires trying to
guarantee their investment in Trump. You see the US is being run like a business, or is that
like a feudal fiefdom?
Not to be a broken record but should we blame the Dems? Arguably Trump's "out there"
gestures to the right are because he has to keep the Repubs on his side given the constant
threat of impeachment from the other side. Extremes beget extremes. There's also the Adelson
factor.
Of course this theory may be incorrect and he and Bolton are ideological soul mates, but
Trump's ideology doesn't appear to go much beyond a constant diet of Fox News. He seems quite
capable of pragmatic gestures which are then denounced by a horrified press.
The point might be, sure the Dems as part of the duopoly created the context within which
Trump now acts as president. Nonetheless there is a direct linear responsibility for his
actions that rests with him.
Unless you consider him so impaired as not to be responsible for his actions ;-)
So will the buck stop with Obama/Hillary for destroying Libya, the half million dead in
Syria, the covert support for the Saudis in Yemen which started under Obama, the coup in
Honduras, the deterioration in US/Russia relations to the point where nuclear war has once
again started to become thinkable? By these standards Trump's wrecking ball is quite
tiny.
It's not like the Obama administration and the EU didn't strike a nuclear deal with Iran
to freeze nuclear capable production and allow for lifting of sanctions -- how could they
have gone further? How could its deal be worse then the saber rattling of Trump/Bolton? Not
saying this as a fan of the Obama administration in general.
Pied Piper Memo. It's up in Wikileaks. Clinton campaign laid out a strategy to help Trump along so he would be their opponent.
They bet that he was too far out there for the general public to vote him in as
president.
...Everyone
including Trump was shocked he won. He has made an only partly successful hostile takeover of
the Republican party. The fact that he got only at best the second string, and mainly the
fourth string, to work in his Administration, Trump's repudiation of international
institutions and his trade war with China are all evidence that he was chosen by anyone, much
the less a cabal you create out of thin air called "the oligarchy"
As Frank Herbert said in Dune, the most enduring principles in the universe are accident
and error. Trump did not want to win. This was a brand-enhancing stunt for him that got out
of control.
Something for our would be Croesus and his minions: If you go to war with Persia, you will
destroy a mighty empire OK, not so mighty, but an empire nevertheless.
The US has previously run multiple conventual war simulations and in all cases the US lost
against Iran, only when the US used its nuclear option did the US prevail. The implications of a nuclear strike and how the Russian Federation will react, to having
yet another one of its allies attacked is unknown?
Really -- who cares? Any claim of 'all' is difficult to support under the best of
circumstances and unwise. Besides, suppose we could 'prevail' in a war with Iran -- why
should or would we want to? Are you OK with a little war with Iran if a couple of
conventional war simulations suggest we could win?
1) I really hope jim webb gets the def sec job. That would be a strong signal.
2) if the TDS infected bi-partisan consensus wants to impeach. They can build on this. I
suspect they won't though.
3) Keep in mind Trump like some trash talk. Pompeo seems here to stay. Not sure about
Bolton. But, as we saw with N. Korea, sometimes the crazy gets dialed up to 11, right before
things get calmed down.
Because that worked so well in the Balkans and Iraq and Libya, etc, etc etc. The world is
not what you think it is. Let us compare Iran as a country with America's loyal ally Saudi
Arabia as an example. Would you believe that Iran has a Jewish population that feel safe
there and have no interest in moving to Israel? In Saudi Arabia, if you renounce Islam that
is a death sentence. Women have careers in Iran and drive cars. Woman have burkas in Saudi
Arabia and have very few freedoms. Iran has taken in refugees from the recent wars. Saudi
Arabia has taken virtually none from Syria. Iran wants to have their own country and work out
their own problems as they are a multicultural country. Saudi Arabia is a medieval monarchy
that has been exporting the most extremist view of Islam around the world using their oil
money. Ideologically, all those jihadists the past few decades can be traced to Wahhabi
teachings. Now tell me that if you had a choice, which country sounds more attractive to live
in?
Having been to Iran, it is an amazing place and they are the most welcoming of people. One
of the few places I have seen female taxi drivers, too. Women are very self-assured there
– they will blow past men to get to what they want to do. Lots of people don't like the
Islamic government (and they will note that to you), but as you mentioned, they are NOT
medieval.
The government praises science and technology in roadside ads up and down the
country. The ads, by the way, are almost always in Farsi and English, as English is the 2nd
language of the country. And I'd like to add that they love Americans. It didn't matter what
town I was in and we went to some small towns. I literally had people yelling "We love
America" and asking for my autograph. And no – I am not famous. They are the most
generous, gregarious people I have ever met in my life.
I have odd memories of my trip like being in a taxi going into Tehran listening to a
instrument only version of Madonna's La Isla Bonita (they really like Madonna). And going to
beautiful mosques which are filled with mirrors and coloured light so it's almost like a
disco (mirrors and water are ancient pre-Islamic symbols). And the gardens – in odd
places like underpasses that happen to have a bit of opening to light and rain. Where ever
they can stick a garden they will do it.
Iran is a hodgepodge of so many thoughts, peoples, and currents. One thing they are though
– is fiercely loyal to Iran. Not the government, but to their homeland, to their
people. There is no way we would win. Due to geography and due to the losses they would be
willing to sustain we would be destroyed. We would lose so badly that it would look like the
First Anglo-Afghan War where only one Brit got back after the entire army was destroyed. We
tussle with them on their own land at our peril.
Saudi Arabia is America's loyal ally! You mean the SA that financed, planned, and manned
the 9/11 attacks?
Because SA is a bigger shithole than Iran is no argument. What does need to be faced is that
SA has a lock on American politics through its financial control of Washington DC swamp
dwellers.
The Balkans is quiet now. Iraq became a mess when Paul Bremer snatched defeat from near total
victory.
Libya, Syria and Ukraine are the victims of malevolent US meddling (as was Vietnam). I am
hoping that President Trump can reverse course and create a foreign policy that puts the
interests of people first, particularly the interests of the people of the USA. Forlorn hope
perhaps.
I would not want to live in either of them.
Well said. All religious fundamentalists are dangerous because they believe they are the
"chosen ones" and therefore superior to "non-believers", whose lives are less important and
therefore expendable if and when they feel so inclined.
(1) Echoing other responses, I suggest we ask the "Iranian people" if they would like the
U.S. to help them into modernity. Given our track record in Iran and other ME nations, I'm
not sure they would welcome our assistance, particularly if it involved "a few explosions" or
so.
(2) It is "the people" that are always hurt first, and the most, in such interventions,
not the government.
I wasn't sure if this was a serious comment or one meant to provoke. It did provoke me to
make an earlier response. I thank the moderators for blocking it (sincerely – not being
sarcastic).
Bah, who cares about a little collateral damage. The Iranian people obviously don't know
what's good for them. We just need to bring back Wolfowitz to make sure they are on hand to
lay down palm fronds before the US forces as they enter Baghdad after we nuke it into rubble.
Speaking of sociopaths, I am sure Darth Vader would make himself available to advise from
Wyoming. Where the hell is Elliot Abrams when you need him. What's Rumsfeld doing these days?
How great would it be to get the old gang together again, under the maniacal leadership of
Bolton. Maybe Dubya would be willing to do the "mission accomplished" as the smoke clears
over the whole MENA region. What a great bunch of guys.
You're a regular humanitarian bomber. Reminds me of "Assad must go" and the fact 'we'
never bombed him but all the people, all around the nation of the ilk you pretend to want to
help by doing the same thing in Iran.
At best, you are speaking a bunch of hooey without thinking. Oh, and last I heard Iran has
not invaded another country for something like 400 years. Look in your mirror.
Are the Iranian people asking us to invade their country? In the U.S. there seems to be
this bizarre nonchalance about war, which used to be considered a terrible scourge. After the
recent disasters in Libya, Ukraine, and Iraq, "regime change" should be discredited. The U.S.
has caused nothing but misery in the third world. We should focus on our own human rights and
democracy problems. If we want to do something abroad I favor ending our support for Israeli
crimes against Palestinians.
Gotta keep the military industrial complex well fed.
George Orwell was right, sadly; constant state of military alert and occasionally shifting
loose alliances between three competing major military powers.
What a waste of human resources.
IMHO, Bolton serves two roles in the Trump Administration.
As a symbol for the hawkier folks in Congress and the media
As a foil to Trump in a good cop-bad cop, or bad cop-worse cop role, if you prefer
The first provides air cover and the second forestalls ground action. The air cover says
see what we could do , and the ground action blusters to draw attention by
the media thereby serving to defuse any escalationist tendencies pushed by neo-cons.
Bolton is a price of admission, and will not have much of a purpose as the effects of the
Iran sanctions become more evident and that regime becomes more pliable. The people on the
ground in Iran seem to want de-escalation and more normal lives, like so many around the
world and at home.
Trump is interested in what is good for Trump. Why he thinks Bolton at his side is good
for him is a mystery. Rather a hand grenade with the pin pulled in your pocket than Bolton.
Much the same can be said of Pompeo.
I have never understood the lust for war with Iran it looks entirely irrational to me. The
Iranian government may not be to your taste and pursue policies you dislike in the
extreme, but is this a reason to gin up a war. I could never support such a conflict and would
do whatever I could to thwart it.
This is not news and while concerning is not fundamental.
Bolton was hired precisely because of his uberhawk obsession with Iran. That is in fact
the central credential that he brought to the table and as such there should be zero surprise
in this. Indeed the only real shocker is that he asked for plans rather than pulling them out
of his own fevered mind as he usually does.
And as others have noted the Pentagon draws up plans like this all the time. This kind of
speculative planning is a big part of what the Pentagon does and somewhere no doubt is
someone who is paid to prepare for the "inevitable" war in Jamaca.
The question really is whether we will act upon these plans, or some others, and from what
I read of this article that is no more likely than it was a few months ago. Scary yes but no
scarier than it already was.
Well, what do they want us to think? Of course this is predictable–even
SOP–for Bolton. But someone in the Pentagon is offering some pushback, or wants to
suggest there is resistance. Or someone in the CIA. Some of these people prefer wars to
quagmires, especially after an exhausting 20 years. And climbing into bed with the Saudis and
Israelis to fight Iran may not appeal to everyone.
Some may even see that Iran is a much more promising place for consumer and capital
growth, and implementation of bourgeois democracy, than Saudi Arabia. But Mr. Bolton might
say that that's the point.
I think we may be closer to war with Iran than most of us care to think. Trump is under
siege from multiple investigations with no room to run, the Democrats now have the House and
will only intensify the pressure, Pompeo and Bolton–both Iran hawks–are now in
charge of our foreign policy, and a former Boeing executive (with stock options?) is in
charge of the Pentagon, Trump is also being pushed into war by Saudi Arabia and
Israel–his two closest buddies–and probably the two most malign influences on US
policy, and finally, our economy is beginning to look shakey, and the normal functions of
government are now in shutdown. Shock doctrine holds that now is the time to act.
I recall a piece by Chris Hedges and Ralph Nader posted by another commenter here that he
would likely do so BEFORE the Dems took control of the House. I thought there was a lot of huffing and puffing going on, except for the likelihood of
wagging the dog, a tried and true tactic of US presidents.
Was chatting to a someone who was a junior official in the GWB administration. He
suggested the first thing Bolton does when he joins an administration is request these plans.
If you didn't, you wouldn't be able to take advantage of any interesting events to bomb Iran.
Besides, he hasn't actually implemented them yet!
Amusingly its standard bureaucratic form to ensure you have plans on file. Otherwise when
asked to list the options, how would you make sure your plan for covert opps, or democracy
subsidizing/subverting payments appeared to be the most reasonable plan on the table?
Bolton is the same paleoconservative he ever was. And in that sense he is refreshing. One
gets tired of seeing Israelis and Saudis make proposals for spending American lives on
countless critically important projects.
There's also word that the US and Bolton have been giving quiet encouragement, with the
new President in Brazil, for a Venezuela intervention.
I think it's important, though, not to simply characterize these people as monsters but to
finger the system behind them. There was word before the election that Ms. Clinton has become
chummy with Bolton and some of the other neocons; we might be looking at much the same if she
had been elected.
Also, Kissinger bombed Cambodia and set off a genocide. Bolton is awful, but nothing
whatsoever will make me yearn for Mr. K. I have a friend who's still unhappy with me because
I turned down an invite to dine with him long ago, but I was just too frightened of what I
might say in his presence.
We can take it for granted that they are nuts–but nuttiness is like monstrousness,
not always so useful as explanation. They're also operating out of the logic of a
contradictory and decaying system. The neocons are the ideological successors of the
neoliberals (who liked to follow with the velvet fist rather than lead with it, but hardly
eschewed it). . . the culmination of much of the same logic. Egalite and fraternite trail far
behind these days.
I agree with author Nicholas Taleb's view of the military interventionists, who include
Bolton, that have repeatedly urged that we "intervene in foreign countries -- Afghanistan,
Iraq, Libya, Syria -- whose governments did not meet their abstract standards of political
acceptability." Besides the losses suffered by our troops and economy, as Taleb observed each
of those interventions "made conditions significantly worse in the country being 'saved'. Yet
the interventionists pay no price themselves for wrecking the lives of millions. Instead they
keep appearing on CNN and PBS as 'experts' who should guide us in choosing what country to
bomb next." Now, after imposing economic sanctions on Iran, they're evidently again seeking
war.
The National Security Advisor is a senior official in the executive branch. Who placed
these people in charge of our nation's foreign policy and to act in our name?
There is no threat to the United States involved here. I don't recall being given the
opportunity to vote on them or the policies they represent and push. It's past time these
individuals be removed from positions of power and influence and for American soft power and
diplomacy to be restored to preeminence. I want this country to stand for peace, freedom,
equal opportunity and hope; not war, chaos, fear and death.
The US foreign policy generally doesn't depend on individual people. It is the Swamp which
drive neolib/neocon policy which is driven mostly by the Deep State which means the coalition of
MIC, Wall Street and intelligence agencies and their agents of influence within the
government.
The most important question is how he managed to get into administration?
bolton is a bully and such people have no friends.
Notable quotes:
"... The National Security Advisor has had a reputation of being an abrasive and obnoxious colleague for a long time, and his attempts to push his aggressive foreign policy agenda have made him even more enemies. ..."
"... If Bolton is "under attack" from within the administration, it is because he has behaved with the same recklessness and incompetence that characterize his preferred policies overseas. He should be attacked, and with any luck he will be defeated and driven from office. Unfortunately, we have been seeing the opposite happen over the last few weeks: more Bolton allies are joining the administration in important positions and at least one major rival has exited. ..."
"... the longer he remains National Security Advisor the worse it will be for U.S. interests. ..."
Henry Olsen is
very worried that other people in the administration might be out to get Bolton:
Whatever the motive, conservatives who favor more robust U.S. involvement abroad should
sit up and take notice. One of their strongest allies within the administration is under
attack. Whether Bolton's influence wanes or even whether he remains is crucially important
for anyone who worries that the president's impulses that deviate from past American foreign
policy will weaken American security.
There have been a number of unflattering reports about Bolton in the last few weeks, but for
the most part those stories are just proof that Bolton has no diplomatic skills and does a
terrible job of managing the administration's policy process. If Bolton had done a better job
of coordinating Syria policy, the administration's Syria policy wouldn't be the confused mess
that it is. If he hadn't made such a hash of things with the Turkish government, there would
have been no snub by Erdogan for anyone to report. There may be quite a bit of hostile leaking
against Bolton, but that is itself a testament to how many other people in the administration
loathe him.
The National Security Advisor has had a reputation of being an abrasive and obnoxious
colleague for a long time, and his attempts to push his aggressive foreign policy agenda have
made him even more enemies.
If Bolton is "under attack" from within the administration, it is because he has behaved
with the same recklessness and incompetence that characterize his preferred policies overseas.
He should be attacked, and with any luck he will be defeated and driven from office.
Unfortunately, we have been seeing the opposite happen over the last few weeks: more Bolton
allies are joining the administration in important positions and at least one major rival has
exited.
Bolton's influence in the administration is an important indication of what U.S. foreign
policy will look like in the months and years to come, and the longer he remains National
Security Advisor the worse it will be for U.S. interests.
In any case this was a positive step by Trump. Which was done after several disastrous,
typical neocon style actions.
Notable quotes:
"... Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of ..."
"... "Trump being Trump?" Seriously? He's proven through his actions and his appointments that he's a full-blown neocon ..."
"... If nothing else, appointing Bolton as national security advisor speaks volumes. Personnel is policy, as they say. ..."
"... Nothing to wonder at, war is the most lucrative racket going, for those who profit mightily from supplying weapons. It's become so important to an otherwise shrunken manufacturing base, that downsizing would affect employment, and there's nowhere domestic to absorb the overseas demobilized. ..."
"... Bolton is a national disgrace. This vile piece of trash is desperate to get the USA into a disastrous war with Iran. The quicker Bolton is removed the better. Any stooge who supported the Iraq invasion should be precluded from consideration. ..."
"... "Before we credit Trump with stumbling on something sensible for once, it might be wise to remember that we're still talking about -- Trump. Who now says that American troops still in Iraq can still raid into Syria as necessary, and by the way, they'll be staying in Iraq. So already it's shaping up as not so much a withdrawal as a reshuffling. After a minor adjustment to the game board, play can continue as necessary, such as whenever Bolton or Fox media whispers into the casino bankrupt's ear. Always always always a swindle, with Trump. It's an iron law." ..."
"... You do know that Trump wants to increase the military budget. Yet you maintain that he wanted to pull us out of foreign wars. Curious. Where would all that extra money go? ..."
"... Only an incompetent imbecile with no experience in leadership or government could be so dim-witted as to appoint people who would willfully defy and disregard his agenda. Surely our country would never put give such an incompetent so much authority. Oh wait sorry, never mind. ..."
"... I took his decision of withdrawal from Syria and seemingly from Afghanistan is his survival strategy for 2020 presidential election to appeal to war weariness American voters because Mr. Cohen's plea deal and the revelation of Trump signature on the license agreement for Moscow Trump Tower project would kill his 2020 chance. It is a good strategy but over the last two days his approval rating has not been improved." ..."
"... Those of us who want to see Bolton gone should first ask why he was chosen in the first place. Clearly Trump had to appease Adelson in order to make that appointment because he depends on his campaign donations. ..."
"... To those who say Trump has no foreign policy vision, you are wrong. His vision is simple, dismantle parts of the Empire, become a little more isolationist, and focus on 'America First'. Trump is not very intelligent, but he has the right instincts. He is up against the War Party, the most influential power center in the US, and that is not easy. Obama is more intelligent than Trump, but the results were very bad add one more destroyed country, Libya to his credit, and almost another, Syria (although thankfully the Russians stopped that). ..."
After Syria, Trump Should Clean Out His National Security BureaucracyThey're
undermining his positions and pursuing their own agendas. John Bolton should be the first to
go.
President Donald Trump has at last rediscovered his core foreign policy beliefs and ordered
the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria. Right on cue, official Washington had a collective
mental breakdown. Neocons committed to war, progressives targeting Trump, and centrists
determined to dominate the world unleashed an orgy of shrieking and caterwauling. The
horrifying collective scream, a la artist Edvard Munch, continued for days.
Trump's decision should have surprised no one. As a candidate, he shocked the Republican
Party establishment by criticizing George W. Bush's disastrous decision to invade Iraq and
urging a quick exit from Afghanistan. As president, he inflamed the bipartisan War Party's
fears by denouncing America's costly alliances with wealthy industrialized states. And to
almost everyone's consternation, he said he wanted U.S. personnel out of Syria. Once the
Islamic State was defeated, he explained, Americans should come home.
How shocking. How naïve. How outrageous.
The president's own appointees, the "adult" foreign policy advisors he surrounded himself
with, disagreed with him on almost all of this -- not just micromanaging the Middle East, but
subsidizing Europeans in NATO, underwriting South Korea, and negotiating with North Korea. His
aides played him at every turn, adding allies, sending more men and materiel to defend foreign
states, and expanding commitments in the Middle East.
Last spring, the president talked of leaving Syria "very soon." But the American military
stayed. Indeed, three months ago, National Security Advisor John Bolton announced an entirely
new mission: "We're not going to leave as long as Iranian troops are outside Iranian borders
and that includes Iranian proxies and militias."
That was chutzpah on a breathtaking scale. It meant effectively that the U.S. was entitled
to invade and dismember nations, back aggressive wars begun by others, and scatter bases and
deployments around the world. Since Damascus and Tehran have no reason to stop cooperating --
indeed, America's presence makes outside support even more important for the Assad regime --
Bolton was effectively planning a permanent presence, one that could bring American forces into
contact with Russian, Syrian, and Turkish forces, as well as Iranians. As the Assad government
consolidates its victory in the civil war, it inevitably will push into Kurdish territories in
the north. That would have forced the small American garrison there to either yield ground or
become a formal combatant in another Middle Eastern civil war.
The latter could have turned into a major confrontation. Damascus is backed by Russia and
might be supported by Ankara, which would prefer to see the border controlled by Syrian than
Kurdish forces. Moreover, the Kurds, under threat from Turkey, are not likely to divert forces
to contain Iranians moving with the permission of the Damascus government. Better to cut a deal
with Assad that minimizes the Turks than be Washington's catspaw.
The Pentagon initially appeared reluctant to accept this new objective. At the time,
Brigadier General Scott Benedict told the House Armed Services Committee: "In Syria, our role
is to defeat ISIS. That's it." However, the State Department envoy on Syria, Jim Jeffrey, began
adding Iran to his sales pitch. So did Brian Hook, State's representative handling the
undeclared diplomatic war on Iran, who said the goal was "to remove all forces under Iranian
control from Syria."
Apparently this direct insubordination came to a head in a phone call between President
Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "Why are you still there?" the latter asked
Trump, who turned to Bolton. The national security advisor was on the call, but could offer no
satisfactory explanation.
Perhaps at that moment, the president realized that only a direct order could enforce his
policy. Otherwise his staffers would continue to pursue their militaristic ends. That
determination apparently triggered the long-expected resignation of Defense Secretary Jim
Mattis, who deserves respect but was a charter member of the hawkish cabal around the
president. He dissented from them only on ending the nuclear agreement with Iran.
Still in place is Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who so far has proven to be a bit more
malleable though still hostile to the president's agenda. He is an inveterate hawk, including
toward Tehran, which he insists must surrender to both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia as part of any
negotiation. He's adopted the anti-Iran agenda in Syria as his own. His department offered no
new approach to Russia over Ukraine, instead steadily increasing sanctions, without effect, on
Moscow. At least Pompeo attempted to pursue discussions with North Korea, though he was
certainly reluctant about it.
Most dangerous is Bolton. He publicly advocated war with both Iran and North Korea before
his appointment, and his strategy in Syria risked conflict with several nations. He's
demonstrated that he has no compunctions about defying the president, crafting policies that
contradict the latter's directives. Indeed, Bolton is well-positioned to undermine even obvious
successes, such as the peaceful opening with North Korea.
Supporting appointments to State and the National Security Council have been equally
problematic. Candidate Trump criticized the bipartisan War Party, thereby appealing to
heartland patriots who wonder why their relatives, friends, and neighbors have been dying in
endless wars that have begotten nothing but more wars. Yet President Trump has surrounded
himself with neocons, inveterate hawks, and ivory tower warriors. With virtually no aides
around him who believe in his policies or were even willing to implement them, he looked like a
George Bush/Barack Obama retread. The only certainty, beyond his stream of dramatic tweets,
appeared to be that Americans would continue dying in wars throughout his presidency.
However, Trump took charge when he insisted on holding the summit with North Korea's Kim
Jong-un. Now U.S. forces are set to come home from Syria, and it appears that he may reduce or
even eliminate the garrison in Afghanistan, where Americans have been fighting for more than 17
years. Perhaps he also will reconsider U.S. support for the Saudis and Emiratis in Yemen.
Trump should use Secretary Mattis's departure as an opportunity to refashion his national
security team. Who is to succeed Mattis at the Pentagon? Deputy Secretary Patrick Shanahan
appears to have the inside track. But former Navy secretary and senator Jim Webb deserves
consideration. Or perhaps it's time for a second round for former senator Chuck Hagel, who
opposed the Gulf war and backed dialog with Iran. Defense needs someone willing to challenge
the Pentagon's thinking and practices. Best would be a civilian who won't be captured by the
bureaucracy, one who understands that he or she faces a tough fight against advocates of
perpetual war.
Next to go should be Bolton. There are many potential replacements who believe in a more
restrained role for America. One who has been mentioned as a potential national security
advisor in the past is retired Army colonel and respected security analyst Douglas
Macgregor.
Equally important, though somewhat less urgent, is finding a new secretary of state.
Although Pompeo has not so ostentatiously undermined his boss, he appears to oppose every
effort by the president to end a war, drop a security commitment, or ease a conflict. Pompeo's
enthusiasm for negotiation with Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin is clearly lagging. While the
secretary might not engage in open sabotage, his determination to take a confrontational
approach everywhere except when explicitly ordered to do otherwise badly undermines Trump's
policies.
Who to appoint? Perhaps Tennessee's John Duncan, the last Republican congressman who opposed
the Iraq war and who retired this year after decades of patriotic service. There are a handful
of active legislators who could serve with distinction as well, though their departures would
be a significant loss on Capitol Hill: Senator Rand Paul and Representatives Justin Amash and
Walter Jones, for instance.
Once the top officials have been replaced, the process should continue downwards. Those
appointed don't need to be thoroughgoing Trumpists, of whom there are few. Rather, the
president needs people generally supportive of his vision of a less embattled and entangled
America: subordinates, not insubordinates. Then he will be less likely to find himself in
embarrassing positions where his appointees create their own aggressive policies contrary to
his expressed desires.
Trump has finally insisted on being Trump, but Syria must only be the start. He needs to
fill his administration with allies, not adversaries. Only then will his "America First" policy
actually put America first.
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former special assistant to
President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire
.
After two years in office, I am utterly flabbergasted that there are still people out
there who take seriously the notion that Trump wants to extricate us from our wars around the
globe and refrain from starting new ones. Virtually every foreign policy decision he has made
has been contrary to that.
Finally, for once, he decides to pull out of Syria (a mere few weeks after he announced we
would stay there indefinitely) and somehow this one, as yet unimplemented decision represents
"Trump being Trump?" Seriously? He's proven through his actions and his appointments that
he's a full-blown neocon . Maybe I'll rescind the "full-blown" part of that judgment if
he actually does withdraw from Syria. But it would still be a pretty tiny exception to his
thoroughly neocon actions up to this point.
If nothing else, appointing Bolton as national security advisor speaks volumes.
Personnel is policy, as they say. And you'd have have spent the last two decades in a
coma living on another planet not to know that Bolton is the biggest warmonger around. He
makes most of the neocons look like pacifists by comparison. Even the people who think Trump
a complete idiot can't really imagine that Trump didn't know what he was getting when he
hired Bolton.
Let's get real here. It'll be great if he withdraws from Syria. It'd be even better if he
replaces his national security team along the lines suggested in this article. But don't hold
your breath. It would go against nearly everything he has done since taking office.
It's time to come to grips with the non-existence of the tooth fairy.
"heartland patriots who wonder why their relatives, friends, and neighbors have been
dying in endless wars that have begotten nothing but more wars."
Nothing to wonder at, war is the most lucrative racket going, for those who profit
mightily from supplying weapons. It's become so important to an otherwise shrunken
manufacturing base, that downsizing would affect employment, and there's nowhere domestic to
absorb the overseas demobilized.
The downside of this, therefore, is it may only be redirection and consolidation, to be able
to concentrate forces on Iran instead. The budget's not getting any smaller, so there's got to
be compensatory warmaking somewhere.
Bolton is a national disgrace. This vile piece of trash is desperate to get the USA into
a disastrous war with Iran. The quicker Bolton is removed the better. Any stooge who supported
the Iraq invasion should be precluded from consideration.
"Yet President Trump has surrounded himself with neocons, inveterate hawks, and ivory
tower warriors."
In fairness to Trump, there just was nobody else. He had nobody lined up to be an
administration that believed what he did. Republicans were all hawks. Democrats wouldn't think
of helping, and were also all hawks anyway.
Trump's first effort to break out of that with second or third-line people went bust with
the likes of Gen. Flynn, and he was left with going back to the very people he'd defeated.
At this point in time I don't think Trump will be able to win a second term, such is the
chaos he's brought about to his Presidency. So that leaves to question which of the men you
have suggested to help lead Trump to a less warlike America would choose to serve? Perhaps
first, we need an "Adult" as POTUS and maybe then, we can get "men of wisdom" who can help
America get out of it's "Military Misadventures" in the Middle East.
There is no problem replacing someone who should never have been tapped in the first place.
John Bolton. Never too soon to right a wrong. Get rid of neocon Bolton and his types now. Not
later. He marches to another drummer not to USA interests. I doubt Trump can even beat Kamila
Harris (darling of the illiberal left) in 2020 if he keeps Bolton and Co. around.
I wouldn't get overly excited about this. Trump has habitually initiated all levels of chaos
throughout his incompetent administration. This is nothing new but more of the same. If anyone
believes Trump actually found his brain, they are smoking something
What a joke. Trump has no "foreign policy vision," just a series of boisterous, bellicose
talking points that to his isolationist base and his own desire to be the strongman.
"Before we credit Trump with stumbling on something sensible for once, it might be
wise to remember that we're still talking about -- Trump. Who now says that American troops
still in Iraq can still raid into Syria as necessary, and by the way, they'll be staying in
Iraq. So already it's shaping up as not so much a withdrawal as a reshuffling. After a minor
adjustment to the game board, play can continue as necessary, such as whenever Bolton or Fox
media whispers into the casino bankrupt's ear. Always always always a swindle, with Trump.
It's an iron law."
However, just 6 days ago sglover said on another thread ("Washington Melts Down Over Trump's
Syria Withdrawal" -- Dec 21, 3:26 pm):
"I despise Trump, but if he's managed to stumble on doing something sensible, and actually
does it (never a certainty with the casino swindler) -- great! There's no sane reason for us
to muck about in Syria. However it comes about, we should welcome a withdrawal there. If the
move gives Trump some of the approval that he plainly craves, maybe he'll repeat the
performance and end our purposeless wallow in Afghanistan. It doesn't say anything good about
the nominal opposition party, the Dems, that half or more of them -- and apparently *all* of
their dinosaur 'leadership' -- can't stifle the kneejerking and let him do it. Of course many
of them are "troubled" because their Israeli & Saudi owners, er, 'donors' expect it. But
some of them seem to have developed a sudden deep attachment to 'our mission in Syria' for no
better reason than, Trump is for it, therefore I must shout against it. And then, of course,
there's the Russia hysteria. Oh yeah, what a huge win for Moscow if it scores the 'prize' of
occupying Syria! If that's Putin's idea of a big score, how exactly does it harm any American
to let him have it? I wonder if the Democratic Party will ever be capable of doing anything
other than snatching defeat from the jaws of victory?"
The problem with they article begins with it's first sentence "President Donald Trump has at
last rediscovered his core foreign policy beliefs " I can't find any core foreign policy
beliefs. What I have seen is a mosh-mosh of sound bites that resound well with his audiences at
rallies, and various people attempt to link those together and fill in the white space between
with what they WANT his foreign policy beliefs to be. But to go so far as to say he has any
consistent beliefs that combine to form a foreign policy is going way too far.
Replace Bolton with Mike Flynn after all charges are dropped against him. Then have Robert
Mueller et al. arrested to be tried and put to death for High Treason. Then liberate Britain,
Bomb the Vatican, and put a naval blockade on China.
You do know that Trump wants to increase the military budget. Yet you maintain that he
wanted to pull us out of foreign wars. Curious. Where would all that extra money go? I'd
look for it at the top of Trump Tower. Certainly not in the pockets of ordinary citizens.
Hmm This article makes it seem like there's these renegades who have somehow held onto power
and are charting America's course on their own. But doesn't the President hand pick the members
of his cabinet? Wasn't every single one of them given their authority *by Donald Trump*?
Only an incompetent imbecile with no experience in leadership or government could be so
dim-witted as to appoint people who would willfully defy and disregard his agenda. Surely our
country would never put give such an incompetent so much authority. Oh wait sorry, never
mind.
We have a "peaceful opening" with North Korea? How many months ago did Mr. Bandow last read
about the NoKos counter-proposal to unconditional nuclear disarmament? And what about all the
Trump saber-rattling that preceded this so-called opening? If Trump was "played" by his own
advisers on Afghanistan, he was equally duped by the mirage offered by Kim.
Trump had no lofty notions underpinning this decision. He did it in an impetuous, chaotic
manner in which he obtained nothing in return from Russia or Turkey or Iran to address our
broader strategic interest in the region, such as ending the war in Yemen. Like everything he
does, it reeks of corruption and no doubt will be added to Muellers investigation.
Contrary to Bandows libertarian take, it is an expression of Trumps imperial presidency. The
Syrian involvement has strong bipartisan support even if lacking a resolution in support (and
the Libertarian Sen. Paul never got anywhere with a resolution against.) Leaving Syria was the
correct long term strategic decision.
I'm sure 99% of democrats in Congress supported the action. Only trump, with his
narcissistic incompetence could take an action that his opponents would overwhelmingly support
if done in a credible manner and turn it into controversy. Trump looks like the servant of
Russians and Turks in his conduct. Jan 2021 can't come soon enough.
I find it interesting that so many people (the author apparently included) are still so slow
to understand that Trump can't afford to get rid of people, because he literally can't find new
cabinet members.
He started with mostly C-listers, and most of them are gone. He is on to hiring TV hosts,
bloggers, professional political grifters, his family, or just being stuck with straight-up
vacant posts.
Only the worst sorts would voluntarily work for such an angry, undisciplined, chaotic boss
in the smoking shambles of an organization like this administration.
You just go ahead and ask Chuck Hagel if he would join this train wreck.
I blogged on December 22 when I read a similar article like this;
"Every time I read such article as this about Mr. Trump's decisions of any sort, I always
wonder if the authors believe that he has solid political philosophy or consolidated policy
agenda.
I took his decision of withdrawal from Syria and seemingly from Afghanistan is his
survival strategy for 2020 presidential election to appeal to war weariness American voters
because Mr. Cohen's plea deal and the revelation of Trump signature on the license agreement
for Moscow Trump Tower project would kill his 2020 chance. It is a good strategy but over the
last two days his approval rating has not been improved."
Mr. Trump seems to have delivered a speech in Iraq saying that the withdrawal from Syria
would not give any adverse effect on Israel security because the US government gives more than
$45 billion every year according to a local newspaper of Middle East.
This is another tactic to appeal to AIPAC to make sure his own security for 2020 candidacy,
isn't it?
First 2000 troops is not much more than a reinforced battalion the USMC shuffles that many
warriors and more around the Mediterranean every six months. I think the issue with Trump is,
as it's always been, his gut seat of his pants way of handling virtually everything he does.
There's no control or consideration apparent in any action other than to pitch chum at his
largely illiterate followers.
In this case he's handed a huge victory to Putin (my my what a surprise that is) and
essentially screwed the Kurds. If nothing else those 2000 troops were at least keeping a cap on
things to some small degree. That's out the door now and I can't help but think that ISIS (aka
the enemy here) will have a vote on what happens next.
Those of us who want to see Bolton gone should first ask why he was chosen in the first
place. Clearly Trump had to appease Adelson in order to make that appointment because he
depends on his campaign donations. What makes anyone think that the situation has changed
in such a way as to permit Trump more autonomy in his choice of his cabinet?
To those who say Trump has no foreign policy vision, you are wrong. His vision is
simple, dismantle parts of the Empire, become a little more isolationist, and focus on 'America
First'. Trump is not very intelligent, but he has the right instincts. He is up against the War
Party, the most influential power center in the US, and that is not easy. Obama is more
intelligent than Trump, but the results were very bad add one more destroyed country, Libya to
his credit, and almost another, Syria (although thankfully the Russians stopped that).
What is mysterious is the following from the article:
'Yet President Trump has surrounded himself with neocons, inveterate hawks, and ivory tower
warriors. With virtually no aides around him who believe in his policies or were even willing
to implement them, he looked like a George Bush/Barack Obama retread.'
Why he does this, I don't know.
Pulling out of Syria will be a good thing for everyone. The reason is largely nonsense, as
it was Russia/Syria that destroyed Isis (we did manage to destroy another city, Raqqa), but I
don't care, and neither will the American Public, who understand nothing of Syria.
The Kurds will make an arrangement for limited autonomy with Damascus (already happening as
they just asked for protection from Turkey in Manbij). Turkey will not invade Syria as long as
they feel Damascus can control the border. Syria, Russia, and maybe even the Kurds will wipe
out the last of Isis and those militants in Idlib that would rather die than give up the fight
(the fanatics), will be killed.
Then, the reconstruction of Syria can begin in earnest, and it is to be hoped that the
Chinese will get off their butt and provide some assistance.
Israel is probably unhappy, which pleases me no end, and I hope this is an indication that
there is some limit to the number of people we are willing to murder on their behalf.
@ NEexpert.Integrity is a quality severely lacking in many politicians in the US.Not being
American , but watching closely, if Senator hagel is such a man , it would do American politics
much good ,not only for the US but the US standing in the world .Gods speed in chnaging the
likes of Bolton and Pompeo to begin with.
@ Kurt Gayle -- I don't think you'll find any contradiction between my two remarks.
All I'm saying is that in all the ways that really matter the sudden "withdrawal" from Syria
is already shaping up to be a typical Trump bait-and-switch. Sure, troops won't be bivouacing
in Syria. Instead, they'll be stationed next door in Iraq, so they can continue to muck around
in Syria. And Trump emphasized that as far as he's concerned we'll be staying in Iraq.
(Of course, that "strategic doctrine" is only valid until his next Fox media wallow in front
of the idiot box. I.e., maybe until tomorrow afternoon)
Melania slap of Bolton face might be a good sobering measure. But neocons can't probably recover from their
addition
Notable quotes:
"... Ricardel is a longtime friend and associate of national security adviser John Bolton, who brought her into the National Security Council from the Department of Commerce, where she served as Undersecretary for Export Administration. Ricardel reportedly angered Ms. Trump over seating arrangements on a flight by Ms. Trump to Africa two weeks ago. Ricardel, who was to accompany the First Lady, did not make the trip. Ms. Trump, in an interview conducted with ABC News during the trip, said there were people in the White House she did not trust. Apparently, Ricardel was one of them. ..."
"... Perhaps no one in recent memory brought such a degree of ethnic baggage to her job like Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Albright's Czech roots and the Yugoslav warrant issued for the arrest of her professor-diplomat father, Joseph Korbel, for the post-World War II theft of art from Prague, brought forth extreme anti-Serbian policies by the woman who would represent the United States at the United Nations and then serve as America's chief diplomat. Albright's hatred for Serbia was not much different than Zbigniew Brzezinski's Polish heritage evoking an almost-pathological hatred of Russia, while he served as Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser. ..."
"... In 1981, Ronald Reagan appointed Valdas Adamkus as the regional administrator for the US Environmental Protection Agency, responsible for the Mid-West states. Retiring from the US government after 29 years of service, Adamkus was elected to two terms as President of Lithuania. ..."
"... One might ask whether Ilves and Adamkus were kept on the US government payroll merely to support them until they could return to their countries in top leadership positions to help lead the Baltic nations into NATO membership. ..."
"... From 1993 to 1997, Army General John Shalikashvili served as Chairman of the Joint Chefs of Staff. Shalikashvili was born in Warsaw, Poland to a Georgian and Polish mother. During World War II, his father served in the Georgian Legion, a special unit incorporated into the Nazi German "SS-Waffengruppe Georgien." General Shalikashvili served as commander of all US military forces during a time of NATO expansion into Eastern Europe. It was no surprise that he was an avid cheerleader for NATO's expansion to the East. ..."
America has always fancied itself as a "melting pot" of ethnicities and religions that form
a perfect union. The Latin phrase, E Pluribus Unum, "out of many, one," is even found on the
Great Seal of the United States.
However, as seen in a recent blow-up between First Lady Melania Trump and now-former Deputy
National Security Adviser Mira Ricardel, old feuds from beyond the borders of the United States
can result in major rifts at the highest echelons of the US government.
On November 13, Ms. Trump's communications director, Stephanie Grisham, fired off a tweet
that read: "it is the position of the Office of the First Lady that she [Ricardel] no longer
deserves the honor of serving in this White House." The White House announced Ricardel's
departure the next day, November 14.
Ricardel is a longtime friend and associate of national security adviser John Bolton, who
brought her into the National Security Council from the Department of Commerce, where she
served as Undersecretary for Export Administration. Ricardel reportedly angered Ms. Trump over
seating arrangements on a flight by Ms. Trump to Africa two weeks ago. Ricardel, who was to
accompany the First Lady, did not make the trip. Ms. Trump, in an interview conducted with ABC
News during the trip, said there were people in the White House she did not trust. Apparently,
Ricardel was one of them.
The bitter feud between Melania Trump and Mira Ricardel likely has its roots in their
backgrounds in the former Yugoslavia. Ricardel was born Mira P. Radielović, the daughter
of Peter Radielovich, a native of Breza, Bosnia-Herzegovina in the former Yugoslavia. Ricardel
speaks fluent Croatian and was a member of the Croatian Catholic Church. Melania Trump was born
Melanija Knavs [pronounced Knaus] in Novo Mesto in Slovenia, also in the former Yugoslavia.
Villagers in the village of Sevnica, where Ms. Trump was raised, claim she and her Communist
Party parents were officially atheists. Ms. Trump later converted to Roman Catholicism. She and
her son by Mr. Trump, Barron Trump, speak fluent Slovenian. The Yugoslav Civil War, which began
in earnest in 1991, pitted the nation's ethnic groups against one another. There are ample
reasons, political, ethnic, and religious, for bad blood between the Slovenian-born First Lady
and a first-generation Croatian-American. The "battle royale" between Ms. Trump and Ricardel is
but one example of a constant problem in the United States when individuals with foreign ties
bring age-old inter-ethnic and inter-religious squabbles to governance.
Perhaps no one in recent memory brought such a degree of ethnic baggage to her job like
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Albright's Czech roots and the Yugoslav warrant issued
for the arrest of her professor-diplomat father, Joseph Korbel, for the post-World War II theft
of art from Prague, brought forth extreme anti-Serbian policies by the woman who would
represent the United States at the United Nations and then serve as America's chief diplomat.
Albright's hatred for Serbia was not much different than Zbigniew Brzezinski's Polish heritage
evoking an almost-pathological hatred of Russia, while he served as Jimmy Carter's National
Security Adviser.
Albright's bias against Serbia saw her influence US policy in casting a blind eye toward the
terrorism carried out by the Kosovo Liberation Army and its terrorist leader Hashim Thaci. That
policy resulted in Washington backing an independent Kosovo, a state beholden to organized
criminal syndicates protected by one of the largest US military bases in Europe, Camp
Bondsteel.
Ties by US foreign policy officials to their countries of origin continued to plagued
administrations after Carter. For example, Kateryna Chumachenko served in the Reagan White
House and State and Treasury Departments and later worked for KPMG as "Katherine" Chumachenko.
She also worked in the White House Public Liaison Office, where she conducted outreach to
various right-wing and anti-communist exile groups in the United States, including the Friends
of Afghanistan, on whose board Afghan refugee and later George W. Bush pro-consul in Iraq,
Zalmay Khalilzad, sat. Khalilzad, like Chumachenko, worked in the Reagan State Department.
Chumachenko was married to Ukrainian "Orange Revolution" President Viktor Yushchenko, and,
thusly, became the First Lady of Ukraine. Khalilzad became the Bush 43 ambassador to the UN,
where he often was at loggerheads with Iran, Libya, Syria, and other Muslim states. As was the
case with Albright and her anti-Serb underpinnings, it was difficult to ascertain whose agenda
Khalilzad was serving.
After being fired from the White House, there were reports that Ricardel was offered the
post of ambassador to Estonia. That Baltic country was no stranger to hauling foreign baggage
into the US government. Former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, a bow-tie wearing
former Estonian language broadcaster for the Central Intelligence Agency-funded Radio Free
Europe ; long time resident of Leonia, New Jersey; could have just as easily ended up in a
senior State Department position rather than President of Estonia. Such is the nature of
divided loyalties among senior US government officials of both major political parties.
In 1981, Ronald Reagan appointed Valdas Adamkus as the regional administrator for the US
Environmental Protection Agency, responsible for the Mid-West states. Retiring from the US
government after 29 years of service, Adamkus was elected to two terms as President of
Lithuania.
One might ask whether Ilves and Adamkus were kept on the US government payroll merely to
support them until they could return to their countries in top leadership positions to help
lead the Baltic nations into NATO membership.
From 1993 to 1997, Army General John Shalikashvili served as Chairman of the Joint Chefs of
Staff. Shalikashvili was born in Warsaw, Poland to a Georgian and Polish mother. During World
War II, his father served in the Georgian Legion, a special unit incorporated into the Nazi
German "SS-Waffengruppe Georgien." General Shalikashvili served as commander of all US military
forces during a time of NATO expansion into Eastern Europe. It was no surprise that he was an
avid cheerleader for NATO's expansion to the East.
Natalie Jaresko served in positions with the State Department, the Departments of Commerce,
Treasury, the US Trade Representative, and Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). In
2014, she became the Finance Minister for Ukraine. Earlier, she served as a financial adviser
to Yushchenko. The United States is not the only "melting pot" in North America that suffers
from officials burdened by ethnic dual loyalties. Halyna Chomiak, the Ukrainian-born
émigré mother of Canada's Foreign Minister, Chrystia Freeland, weighs heavily on
Freeland's ability to advance Canada's interests over those of the nation of her mother's
birth.
Trump's entire White House Middle East police team is composed of individuals who place
Israel's interests ahead of the United States. Trump takes his Middle East advice from
principally his son-in-law Jared Kushner, a contributor to and member of the board of the
"Friends of the IDF," an American non-profit that raises funds for the Israeli armed forces.
Kushner was named by Trump as a "special envoy" to the Middle East, while Jason Greenblatt, a
former attorney with the Trump Organization, was named as special envoy in charge of the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Although the two positions appear to overlap, Kushner and
Greenblatt, both Orthodox Jews who have little time for Palestinians, are on the same page when
it comes to advancing the West Bank land grabbing policies of the Binyamin Netanyahu government
in Israel. Trump thoroughly Zionized his administration's Middle East policy with the
appointment of another Israel supporter, David M. Friedman, as US ambassador to Israel.
Friedman had been a bankruptcy lawyer with the Trump Organization's primary law firm, Kasowitz,
Benson, Torres & Friedman.
Trump has nominated as US ambassador to South Africa, handbag designer Lana Marks, who was
born in South Africa. Marks, who is known only to Trump from her membership in his Mar-a-Lago,
Florida "billionaires club," left South Africa in 1975, when the country was under the
apartheid regime. Marks claims to speak Afrikaans, the language preferred by the apartheid
regime, and Xhosa, the ethnic language of the late President Nelson Mandela. Because Marks
embellished her professional tennis career by claiming, without proof, participation in the
French Open and Wimbledon in the 1970s, her mastery of Xhosa can be taken with a grain of salt.
So, too, can her ability to deal with the current African National Congress government led by
President Cyril Ramaphosa, who had just been released from prison when Marks left the country
in 1975. The claims and politics of Marks and every official and would-be US official who
failed to shed their biases from their native and ancestral homelands, can all be taken with a
metric ton of salt.
Melting pots are fine, so long as they truly blend together. However, that is not the
situation in the United States as high government officials have difficulty in consigning the
bigotry inherent in family folklore and beliefs to the family scrapbooks.
by Justin
Raimondo Posted on November 15,
2018 November 14, 2018 We don't really hear all that much about Melania Trump in the
media except occasional digs at her immigration status and a few daring photos. That's
because the FLOTUS is one of the few unreservedly good things about this administration, and
of course the media doesn't want to go there. Her grace, her reserve, her remarkable calm at
the epicenter of a tumultuous White House, and, strikingly, her sense of style (and I don't
just mean her clothes) puts her on a different plane from the Washington circus that
surrounds her.
She had managed to keep her distance from the cutthroat politics of the Beltway, that is,
until her
collision with Mira Ricardel, National Security Advisor John Bolton's top aide and
enforcer. Ricardel apparently disparaged the First Lady to other members of the White House
staff, and tried to withhold resources from her on her recent trip to Africa. Whatever
personal interactions of an unpleasant nature may have passed between these women, it's hard
to imagine what provoked the office of the FLOTUS to issue the following statement :
"It is the position of the Office of the First Lady that she no longer deserves the
honor of serving in this White House."
Ricardel is described by those who know her as abrasive, a bureaucratic in-fighter, and
one "who doesn't suffer fools lightly." Having mistaken the First Lady for a fool, Ms.
Ricardel is the one who will suffer – along with Bolton, who has protected her since
her appointment from a chorus of critics, but who cannot stand against Melania.
So Team Bolton is on the outs, which means the America Firsters within the administration
who oppose our foreign policy of globalism and perpetual war are on the rise. Which leads us
to contemplate the meaning of this incident. The War Party's ranks are not filled with Mr.
Nice Guys. They are nearly all of them pushy self-serving aggressive SOBs, with about as much
personal charm as a rattlesnake.
I'm reminded of an essay by the
conservative philosopher Claes Ryn, professor of politics at Catholic University, in which he
describes the obnoxious behavior of the children of our political class in a local
MacDonald's just inside one of the Beltway's more prestigious neighborhoods:
"Deference to grown-ups seems unknown. I used to take offense, but the children have
only taken their cue from their parents, who took their cue from their parents. The adults,
for their part, talk in loud, penetrating voices, some on cell phones, as if no other
conversations mattered. The scene exudes self-absorption and lack of self-discipline.
"Yes, this picture has everything to do with U.S. foreign policy. This is the emerging
American ruling class, which is made up increasingly of persons used to having the world
cater to them. If others challenge their will, they throw a temper tantrum. Call this the
imperialistic personality – if 'spoilt brat' sounds too crude."
The Imperialistic Personality, indeed! It seems Ms. Ricardel had one too many temper
tantrums so that even in the permissive atmosphere of Washington, D.C., it was too much.
There are a lot of imperialistic personalities in that particular location, it seems, for one
reason or another. But things are different in Donald Trump's Washington, and even if we have
to take down the Ricardels one by one, just think of the numbers we can rack up in the next
six years.
A NOTE TO MY READERS : My apologies for the short column: I have some medical
issues to take care off this week and I'm a bit pressed for time.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
You can check out my Twitter feed by going here . But please note that my tweets are sometimes
deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out
loud.
If this is Trump policy, then Trump is 100% pure neocon. It took just three months for the Deep state to turn him.
Notable quotes:
"... Bolton shrugged off the reality that Iran is still doing business internationally, saying that he believes Iran is "under real pressure" from the sanctions, and that he's determined to see it keep getting worse. ..."
With the newly reimposed US sanctions against
Iran having little to no perceivable economic impact, national security adviser John Bolton
is talking up his plans to continue to escalate the sanctions track, saying he will "
squeeze
Iran until the pips squeak ."
Bolton shrugged off the reality that Iran is still doing business internationally, saying
that he believes Iran is "under real pressure" from the sanctions, and that he's determined
to see it keep getting worse.
Bolton went on to predict that the European efforts to keep trading with Iran would
ultimately fail. He said the
Europeans are going through the six stages of grief , and would ultimately led to
European acceptance of the US demands.
Either way, Bolton's position is that the US strategy will continue to be
imposing new sanctions
on Iran going forward. It's not clear what the end game is, beyond just damaging
Iran.
Sort of like how Bolton and his merry band of neocons seized upon Ahmad Chalabi and his merry
men as some sort of Authentic Voice of Resistance to teh Evil Saddam. Does anyone else
remember that?
Bolton et al. know better. As long as this gets them the regime change that they and their
owners in Jerusalem and Riyadh demand, they do not care.
You can always tell just how deep our understanding is of a country by the opposition we
choose to support.
As @Sid Finster pointed out, the fraudulent Chalabi was a good bellwether of our true
understanding of Iraq, and the MEK shows just how equally deep we understand Iran.
Can't say if Bolton is just a nut; but Giuliani, et. al are probably just being paid; like
any other prostitute. IF the $$ stop; they will then say "who knew?" .
AS with Trump; S.A. would have no problem paying enough for them to perform any act demanded.
So Obama sees a "Responsibility to Protect" MEK war criminals and the business interests of
Dean, Bolton, Guiliani et.al, but is perfectly happy to let the Saudis "cross the blood red
line" for years to save himself some headaches on JCOPA – an "agreement" that was not
worth the paper it was written on without Congress actually binding itself by ratification.
But his minions did consider designating the Houthi "terrorists".
The intended Clinton-Obama "transition" had all the marks of a protection racket, all
governance transient and passing and resting on the edifice of unconstitutionally expansive
claims of executive power.
@rayray, thank you for the kind words, but my position is more accurately stated as follows:
I suspect that in 2003, Bolton knew and knew full well that Chalabi was an opportunist at
best. A fraudster, a monster, a sociopath, delusional, to put it more bluntly. That his
support in Iraq was nil, and that Chalabi would be rejected immediately and rightfully, as an
American puppet. Bolton may even have known that Chalabi was in the pay of Iran.
Like the MEK now, as long Bolton gets the war he so craves, he doesn't care about any of
that.
John Bolton suffers a crippling shortage of olives.
Notable quotes:
"... "As far as I remember, the US coat of arms features a bald eagle that holds 13 arrows in one talon and an olive branch in another, which is a symbol of a peace-loving policy," ..."
"... "Looks like your eagle has already eaten all the olives; are the arrows all that is left?" ..."
Meeting with US national security adviser John Bolton in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir
Putin made a comment about Washington's hostility that went right over the hawkish diplomat's
head. "As far as I remember, the US coat of arms features a bald eagle that holds 13 arrows
in one talon and an olive branch in another, which is a symbol of a peace-loving policy,"
Putin said in a meeting with Bolton in Moscow on Tuesday.
"I have a question," the Russian president added. "Looks like your eagle has
already eaten all the olives; are the arrows all that is left?"
About 15-20 minutes to get through (the facilitator seems like a bit of a wet blanket), but
fascinating to read, if like me, most of what you hear about Putin has been filtered through
the MSM.
A couple of reflections:
Putin does detail. He is courteous and patient. He is highly pragmatic and appears to be
widely (and, for my money, effectively) briefed.
For those of us lucky enough to follow VVP in his native language – it is indeed a
delight. (And – mind you – it was only after I took the time to follow him in his
native language that I was able to appreciate this person and his leadership abilities. If one
follows him through NYT – no chance that would give one an accurate picture.) He is erudite, informed, and has a wicked sense of humour, as shown in this clip: https://www.rt.com/news/442068-putin-olives-eagle-bolton/
Bolton pushes for the US to break out of the 1987 INF Treaty. Not surprising considering
that all those ABM components they are deploying around Russia are dual use and violate the
INF. The INF is also a joke (showing us what a comprador Gorby was) since it allows the US to
deploy unlimited range nuclear missiles in its Naval assets. So Russia cannot have any land
based intermediate range nukes, but the US can park its ships in EU harbours and deploy
unlimited amounts of the "banned" class of missiles.
I say let the US break the INF. The INF helps the USA and its NATzO minions more than it
helps Russia.
There may be several motivations for Bolton
– an attempt to force Russia into a ruinously expensive arms race;
– to create a regional Cold War to reverse the nascent rapprochement between Western
Europe and Russia;
– an attempt to limit war to the European/Russian region as much as possible if a war
against Russia is needed by the US.
Bolton is an idiot carrying out a moron's strategy. What could go wrong?
Bolton is a certified retard if he thinks he will bankrupt Russia with an arms race.
1) I find the theory that the USSR couldn't afford the 1970-80s arms race and went
bankrupt to be of zero credibility. The USSR was a command economy and various estimates of
how much it allegedly spent on the economy to be ridiculous western attempts to impose their
capitalist accounting on a command economy.
The USSR collapsed due to internal political rot and not some "budget deficit" which was
meaningless in command economics and never exiting in reality anyway. The only valid metrics
of deficits in command economies if there are labour shortages in various industries.
The USSR had more than enough engineers, researchers, workers and material resources to
keep up with the arms race.
This is why command economics is vastly superior to capitalist profiteering. Capitalism
only triumphs because humans are genetically deficient to live optimally under a command
economy since they need all sorts of superfluous incentives and feel-good junk.
2) Nuclear weapons are the cheapest option out of all military costs. Tanks, ships and
armed troops are much more expensive. In the current rocket era, these expensive options are
outdated and much less potent. Russia can neutralize any US move by deploying appropriately
designed missiles and warheads.
"... Earlier today, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo spoke to the hard-line, misleadingly-named pressure group, United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), and delivered their usual attacks on and threats against Iran. ..."
"... An agreement that eliminates any pretext for preventive war, imposes no costs on America, and succeeds through cooperation with multiple governments is anathema to someone like Bolton, because it is proof that diplomacy works and can achieve things that coercive and punitive policies never could. ..."
"... UANI audience members react this way to bad economic news from Iran because they desire the destabilization and overthrow of the government. The fact that the Secretary of State and National Security Advisor headlined their event this week confirms for us that this is the administration's goal as well. ..."
Earlier today, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo spoke to the hard-line, misleadingly-named pressure group, United Against
Nuclear Iran (UANI), and delivered their usual attacks on and threats against Iran. One line from Bolton's speech
stood
out for being as delusional as it was representative of the Iran hawk worldview:
The Iran Deal was the worst diplomatic debacle in American history [bold mine-DL]. It did
nothing to address the regime's destabilizing activities or its ballistic missile development and proliferation.
Worst of all, the deal failed in its fundamental objective: permanently denying Iran all paths to a nuclear bomb.
Bolton loathes diplomacy. That is the key thing to understand about him, and it helps explain almost everything he
has done in his career. He regards any successful diplomatic agreement as something of a debacle because it involves
striking a compromise with another government, usually an adversary or rival, and because it means that the other side
wasn't forced to give in to our every demand. When he denounces the JCPOA as "the worst diplomatic debacle in American
history," he is simply expressing the intensity of his hatred for the government with which the agreement was made. His
previous and ongoing support for the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) shouldn't be forgotten when we try to make sense of this
fanatical rhetoric.
If Bolton considers something to be the "worst diplomatic debacle" of our entire history, that
tells us that the agreement required very little of the U.S., that it reinforced habits of multilateral cooperation,
and that it successfully resolved an outstanding dispute that Bolton wished to resolve through regime change and war.
An agreement that eliminates any pretext for preventive war, imposes no costs on America, and succeeds through
cooperation with multiple governments is anathema to someone like Bolton, because it is proof that diplomacy works and
can achieve things that coercive and punitive policies never could.
The venue for Bolton and Pompeo's speeches was no accident. It was an audience of
hard-liners that detest Iran being addressed by like-minded speakers. UANI intensely
opposed the nuclear deal and recited the usual false claims about it. Their vehement
hostility to the most important and successful nonproliferation agreement of its kind is a
testament to how little they care about actually restricting Iran's nuclear program. Like other
Iran hawks, UANI is simply against Iran, and therefore they hate anything that might relieve
international pressure on Iran. The group celebrates Trump administration sanctions and its
members laugh about the deteriorating economic conditions inside Iran:
UANI audience members react this way to bad economic news from Iran because they desire the
destabilization and overthrow of the government. The fact that the Secretary of State and
National Security Advisor headlined their event this week confirms for us that this is the
administration's goal as well.
Well, more evidence that the three stooges still drink Bibi's kool-aid. Perhaps AIPAC has
promised to arrange for the Pompeo-Haley GOP Ticket to succeed Trump, with Bolton as Sec of
State and Defence all-in-one.
John Bolton is, I believe, the scariest character in Trump's administration. How did Trump
pick him? It makes no sense, but this whole mess literally makes none. There has got to be a
way to get him out of there. Sheldon Adelson's money is the connection between Trump, Haley,
Bolton. Bolton wants war with Iran, has been intent on it since Bush 2 administration. He is
quite dangerous, and has connections to Netanyahu and even Meir Dagan of Mossad. I can't copy
this link to Gareth Porter's article but maybe Joe or someone can, it's cited below. Everyone
should read it. The facts in the article are quite alarming about Bolton. With all the
political drama going on from the Mueller probe, there are possibilities of dreadful
consequences, and I think Bolton could bring disaster. He may be the origin as well as the
mouthpiece of this latest provocative threat about Assad using chemicals. Here is the
article:
"The Untold Story of John Bolton's Campaign for War with Iran", by Gareth Porter, in The
American Conservative, March 22, 2018.
"... Trump's authorization for the establishment of a "US Space Force" as an additional military branch was one of the more egregious trashing of a longstanding international treaty. ..."
"... In June 2018, America's Israeli-style harassment was also meted out to former Spanish Foreign Minister and NATO Secretary General Javier Solana. He was denied a US visa waiver because he had visited Iran in 2013 to attend President Hassan Rouhani's inauguration. ..."
On December 6, 2017, Trump announced official US recognition of Jerusalem
as the capital of Israel. In 1980, a UN Security Council abstention permitted
the adoption of Resolution 478. The measure supplemented the earlier Resolutions
252, 267, 271, 298, and 465, which required that all UN member states, including
the United States, are under an obligation not to recognize the illegal Israeli
occupation of East Jerusalem. The passage of Resolution 478 resulted in nations
that had moved their embassies to Jerusalem, including Costa Rica and El Salvador,
moving them back to Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, or Herzliya. Trump's action reversed
that action, with Guatemala, Paraguay, and Honduras moving their embassies back
to Jerusalem.
On May 8, 2018, Trump renounced the US signature on the Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action (JCPOA) between Iran, the nuclear agreement with Iran. Even though
the pact was signed by the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, Germany, the
European Union and endorsed by the United Nations Security Council, Trump, taking
his cues from the Israeli war hawk, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, decided,
once again, to make the United States an outlier. Trump effectively gave the
back of his hand to the international community to placate Netanyahu. Moreover,
Trump threatened "secondary sanctions" against foreign nations and firms that
continued to engage in commerce with Iran after a November 4, 2018 deadline.
Trump's authorization for the establishment of a "US Space Force" as
an additional military branch was one of the more egregious trashing of a longstanding
international treaty. The 1967 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities
of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and
Other Celestial Bodies, known simply as the "Outer Space Treaty," established
the basis for international space law. The original signatories were the United
States, Soviet Union, and United Kingdom. Since 1967, 107 nations have fully
ratified the treaty, which bans the placement of weapons of mass destruction
in Earth orbit and the establishment of military bases, installations, and fortifications
on the Moon and other celestial bodies.
Trump's creation of a military Space Force to supplant the civilian National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in US space operations and his call
for space to be a "new warfighting domain" effectively violate US treaty obligations.
The US Air Force's X-37B robotic space planes, smaller versions of NASA's
discontinued space shuttle orbiter, are believed to have carried out top secret
military-oriented missions since 2010. Trump's creation of a Space Force represents
a public admission of America's desire to militarize space, even as the Air
Force remains mum on the actual purpose of the X-37B program.
The basis in international law for the Outer Space Treaty was the Antarctic
Treaty of 1959. The Antarctic Treaty bans military activity of the continent.
Only scientific research in Antarctica is permitted under the Antarctic Treaty
System. However, Trump's disregard for the entire international treaty system
has placed the Antarctic Treaty in as much jeopardy as the Outer Space Treaty.
The suspected presence of rare earth minerals and gas hydrates under melting
Antarctic ice shelves has Trump's cronies in the mining and fossil fuel industries
anxious to undermine the Antarctica Treaty and open the continent to commercial
exploitation.
Considering the schoolmarmish haughtiness of Trump's ambassador to the UN,
former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, someone who had no foreign policy
experience before taking over at the US Mission to the UN, the 1947 US-UN treaty,
titled the "Agreement Between the United Nations and the United States of America
Regarding the Headquarters of the United Nations," may also be violated. The
imposition of draconian visa bans and other sanctions and travel restrictions
on government officials of Iran, Turkey, Russia, Venezuela, North Korea, Nicaragua,
Cuba, China, Chad, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Pakistan, Yemen, Myanmar, Laos, Syria,
Somalia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Eritrea places in jeopardy US law that requires
the facilitation of travel for delegations of UN member states and official
observers to and from the UN headquarters in New York.
Trump's total disregard for international laws and treaties may eventually
see leaders and diplomats of foreign nations detained or arrested when they
arrive in New York to attend UN sessions. Such harassment began in earnest just
a few weeks after Trump was inaugurated as president. In February 2017, former
Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik was caught up in Trump's visa
ban against visitors from Muslim nations. Bondevik was detained at Dulles International
Airport outside of Washington and subjected to questioning about an Iranian
visa in his diplomatic passport.
In June 2018, America's Israeli-style harassment was also meted out to
former Spanish Foreign Minister and NATO Secretary General Javier Solana. He
was denied a US visa waiver because he had visited Iran in 2013 to attend President
Hassan Rouhani's inauguration. Solana told Spanish television, "It's a
bit of a mean decision... I don't think it's good because some people have to
visit these complicated countries to keep negotiations alive." Trump's renunciation
of the US signature on the Iran nuclear deal showed the world what Trump and
his neo-conservative advisers think about peace "negotiations." Although the
general purpose visa waiver ban was instituted by Barack Obama, the Trump administration
has been violating the spirit and intent of the US-UN Treaty by applying it
to those, like Bondevik and Solana, possessing diplomatic passports.
Trump has made no secret of his disdain for foreign government officials
and the countries they represent. During a briefing on the Indian sub-continent,
Trump reportedly delighted in referring to Nepal as "nipple" and Bhutan as "button."
According to the "tell-all" book by former White House adviser Omarosa Manigault
Newman, Trump, after viewing a video of his pushing aside Montenegro Prime Minister
Duško Marković at the 2017 NATO summit, called him a "whiny punk bitch." Trump
referred to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as "meek and mild" over a
rift on US-Canadian trade policy.
One of Trump's first phone calls as president with a foreign leader resulted
in Trump complaining that his discussions with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm
Turnbull were "most unpleasant." Before warming to North Korean leader Kim Jong
UN, Trump referred to him as "little rocket man." During remarks at the UN in
September 2017, Trump referred to Namibia as "Nambia." Later, he called African
countries and Haiti "shithole" countries.
Cities that have served as hosts for international summits and meetings have
also earned Trump's scorn. He called Brussels a "hell hole," London a magnet
for Muslim terrorist immigrants, and Paris not being Paris any longer because
of Muslim immigrants.
Trump, ever the America Firster – a phrase invented by pro-Hitler politicians
in the 1930s – has decimated international law on issues ranging from the environment
and outer space to the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and international guarantees
for the right of the Palestinians. Trump's tearing up of international treaties
signed by his predecessors with the chiefs of various Native American tribes
warrants it own article. Mr. Trump's damage to international relations represents
a historical watershed event and it will take decades to recover from the current
"dark ages" of American diplomacy.
"... His crude realism is underestimated by a contemptuous media, dismissive of everything he does. They portray him as an ill-informed crackpot who makes up his policy on the spur of the moment, but this is often much saner than it looks: despite all his jingoism, he has yet to start a war; his belligerent threats towards countries such as North Korea and Iran appear to be designed primarily as negotiating positions in pursuit of a deal; he respects power and will talk to those who possess it, such as Vladimir Putin , enraging other parts of the US government that are trying to isolate Russia as a pariah state. ..."
British commentators – the BBC is particularly prone to this – tend to adopt a
patronising and derisive approach to Trump's demagoguery about "making America great again".
But he can get away with the most bizarre antics because the US is a political, economic and
military superpower regardless of Trump, even if it does not have the primacy it had after the
Second World War or, once again, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Its status is
not changed by Trump's words and actions, though these are usually more carefully calculated
and rooted in the real world than his critics give him credit for.
His crude realism is underestimated by a contemptuous media, dismissive of everything he
does. They portray him as an ill-informed crackpot who makes up his policy on the spur of the
moment, but this is often much saner than it looks: despite all his jingoism, he has yet to
start a war; his belligerent threats towards countries such as North Korea and Iran appear to
be designed primarily as negotiating positions in pursuit of a deal; he respects power and
will talk to those who possess it, such as Vladimir Putin , enraging other parts of the US
government that are trying to isolate Russia as a pariah state.
The pro-Brexit vote in the referendum in 2016 is said by Trump to have given vital extra
momentum to the populist-nationalist surge that elected him president later that year. But the
danger of looking at everything through an isolationist and nationalist lens is far greater in
Britain than it is in the US simply because it leads to the British systematically overplaying
their hand. The price of doing so is illustrated by every stumbling step Britain takes out of
the EU, contradicting the Brexiteer mantra that Britain has political and economic potential
that will make it better off outside the EU.
Those measures and the resulting uncertainty are prompting some European countries to go
their own way on major industry projects, including the development of a next-generation
fighter jet, potentially leaving U.S. firms behind.
"I think it is forcing Europe together in ways that have unanticipated consequences for the
U.S. defense industry," said Byron Callan, an analyst with Capital Alpha Partners.
The aerospace and defense industry is a huge driver of U.S. jobs and economic growth. In
2017 alone, it generated $865 billion, supporting 2.4 million high-paying American jobs. The
industry produced a positive trade balance of $86 billion in 2017, the largest of any U.S.
industry, which reduced the country's trade deficit by 10 percent.
It is also an important component of U.S. foreign policy. Arms sales are key to
strengthening security partnerships and improving military cooperation with allies.
"Partners who procure American weaponry are more capable of fighting alongside us and
ultimately more capable of protecting themselves with fewer American boots on the ground,"
Peter Navarro, the White House director of trade policy, said during an April press
conference.
So it came as no surprise when the Trump administration announced the decision to send a
large delegation to help sell U.S. products at Farnborough, including top officials such as
Navarro. The administration also used the opportunity to roll out the Conventional Arms
Transfer (CAT) Policy, also known as the "Buy America" plan, an initiative to improve U.S. arms
transfer processes and increase the competitiveness of U.S.-made products.
But the U.S. government showing at Farnborough was disappointing from the start of the
weeklong exhibition Monday. Navarro pulled out at the last minute, as did Ellen Lord, the
Pentagon's top weapons buyer; Heidi Grant, the U.S. Air Force's head of international affairs;
and other U.S. government officials. At the show itself, only five U.S. military aircraft
appeared on static display in the Defense Department corral that normally showcases products
built for the armed services by Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and other U.S. defense giants.
Another theory is that Trump is just like every other spokesmodel for the US part of the
AZ Empire.
He in a SAG actor, with decades of experience in professional entertainment though, so he
knows how to play to his audience. They love the sh*t out of him, even as he sticks it to
them harder and harder.
A highly critical view on Trump. Many aspects of Trump foreign policy are captured correctly:
an objective evaluation is the evaluation of a person we do not like ;-)
Trump changed US neoliberalism from "classic" variant to what can be called "National
neoliberalism", which denies neoliberal globalization. And that's a huge change.
When John Feller mentions that "The allies that Trump has cultivated -- Poland, Hungary,
Russia, North Korea, the Philippines -- don't advance any particular national security interests.
They reflect only the personal preferences of Trump himself." he certainly sniffed something
strong. Russia is probably the only country capable to make the USA uninhabitable. And neocon's
Russophobia while lining their pockets is threat to the USA as nation and as a country. After the
war with Russia both might be gone ( as well as Russia, as the USA still enjoys technical
superiority).
Notable quotes:
"... In this week's Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg canvassed administration officials for their one-sentence characterization of this Trump Doctrine. Goldberg narrowed it down to the pugnacious phrase: "We're America, Bitch." ..."
"... When he calls other leaders "weak," Trump is resorting to the old playground epithet: they are "pussies." And, as he put it so indelicately in the Access Hollywood tape, he feels perfectly free to grab them by the pussies. The president is using the power invested in his office to take what he wants. ..."
"... Rape, it has often been said, is not about sex: it's about power. ..."
"... To Trump's followers, "We're America, Bitch" could be understood as a middle finger directed at a cold and unfair world, one that no longer respects American power and privilege. ..."
"... To much of the world, however, and certainly to most practitioners of foreign and national-security policy, "We're America, Bitch" would be understood as self-isolating, and self-sabotaging. ..."
"... John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus and the author of the dystopian novel Splinterlands. ..."
ada and the successful summit in Singapore, it's hard to know what to call U.S. foreign
policy these days.
It's not just unilateralism, where Washington acts alone and allies be damned. Nor is it
merely unipolarism, in which the United States targets all hegemonic challengers in an effort
to preserve its position as the world's dominant military and economic power.
Let's coin a new term: unileaderism .
According to unileaderism, only the U.S. president makes foreign policy decisions of any
import. Those decisions do not betray any strategic thinking. They may well be contradictory.
And they often leave other members of the administration -- not to mention Congress and the
American people -- totally baffled.
Unileaderism, at least as it's embodied by Donald Trump, is a philosophy bound up entirely
in the personal quirks of the president himself. Instead of strategy, there are only tactics:
wheedling, bluffing, threatening. It's like playing tennis against someone with John McEnroe's
legendary temper and will to win, but few if any of his actual skills.
Neither unilateralism nor unipolarism can explain the spectacle of the last week, when Trump
blasted U.S. allies at the G7 meeting in Canada and then blasted off for Singapore to negotiate
with the leader of the longest standing adversary of the United States. Only unileaderism can
capture this surreal reversal of traditional U.S. foreign policy norms.
The summit with Kim Jong Un was Trump at his most theatrical. He flattered the North Korean
tyrant and signed a declaration of little substance. He showed off his limousine. He played Kim
a White House-produced video crafted
to appeal to the North Korea leader's vanity and nationalism (for instance, by juxtaposing
images from North Korea with those from around the world, by barely mentioning South Korea, and
by ignoring China and Japan altogether).
Don't get me wrong: I'm thrilled that Trump sat down with Kim and initiated a détente
between the two countries. Trump's
pledge to stop war games with South Korea is a major step forward. As for the declaration,
it was a good thing, not a bad thing, that it didn't go into details. North Korea doesn't want
to denuclearize immediately, and Trump doesn't really understand the particulars of the process
anyway. Anything more detailed would have been a conversation stopper.
But the mutual respect that the two leaders expressed was all about unileaderism: their
preference to rule without any regard for democracy or human rights. The format of their
30-minute colloquy was telling: just the two leaders with their translators and no advisors. It
was a throwback to the diplomacy of yesteryear, when royals met to determine the boundaries of
their respective kingdoms.
The contretemps in Quebec was far more disturbing. Trump refused to sign the G7 declaration,
continued to pursue tariffs against major U.S. trading partners, and insulted Canadian leader
Justin Trudeau to boot. It was an extraordinary display of presidential pique.
Trump's tantrum about Trudeau divided his administration into those who leapt into the
fracas to slap the Canadian prime minister and those who shifted into high gear to repair the
fraying U.S. relationship with its northern neighbor. U.S. Trade Representative Robert
Lighthizer continued to work with his Canadian counterparts to negotiate a new NAFTA. But White
House trade advisor Peter Navarro sided with Trump by saying that "there's a special place in
hell" for Trudeau -- the kind of epithet once reserved for the mortal enemies of the United
States.
It was like something out of
Canadian Bacon , the satirical 1995 film about a president hoping to boost his dismal
popularity by promoting a war against the Canucks. Has America been suddenly plunged into
wag-the-beaver territory?
Meanwhile, Trump's proposal to bring Russia back into the G7
caught many of his colleagues off guard, including the National Security Council. Methinks
the NSC doth protest too much. This is the same president who congratulated Russian President
Vladimir Putin on his recent electoral win even though his aides
had written "DON'T CONGRATULATE" in all-caps on his briefing notes. This president delights
in ignoring even is closest "advisors."
Trump's invite to Russia is no surprise. The president wants his buddies at the G7. Angela
Merkel is not his buddy. Vladimir Putin is. Trump treats world affairs like it's an elementary
school club.
Unileaderism may well be the logical endpoint for a country that has used unilateralism to
preserve its unipolarism. And Trump is certainly the product of a particular tendency within
the U.S. political culture that rejects [neo]liberalism and multilateralism.
But it goes beyond that. In its rejection of strategy in favor of tactics, Trumpism is a
repudiation of geopolitics altogether. Trumpism isn't a new kind of opening in the chess game
of international relations. The president, out of rage and stupidity and arrogance, has simply
picked up the board with all of its pieces and flung the whole thing against the wall. He's
playing a different game altogether.
The Trump Doctrine
Ordinarily when pundits come up with a doctrine to define an administration's approach to
the world, they put a label on a collective stance -- even though the label inevitably goes by
the president's name.
In the case of the Trump doctrine, however, the philosophy points more to the president's
gut instincts rather than an approach hammered out by a group of "Vulcans" (in the case of
George W. Bush) or a set of [neo]liberal internationalists (Barack Obama). The Trump doctrine
boils down to Trump. And the word "doctrine" is something of an overstatement.
In this week's Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg
canvassed administration officials for their one-sentence characterization of this Trump
Doctrine. Goldberg narrowed it down to the pugnacious phrase: "We're America, Bitch."
The phrase reveals the Trump approach for what it is: sexual harassment.
When he calls other leaders "weak," Trump is resorting to the old playground epithet:
they are "pussies." And, as he put it so indelicately in the Access Hollywood tape, he feels
perfectly free to grab them by the pussies. The president is using the power invested in his
office to take what he wants.
Rape, it has often been said, is not about sex: it's about power. Having divided
the international community into female (Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, Justin Trudeau) and
male (Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un), Trump is now buddying up with his locker-room
pals and boasting of how's taken advantage of the "weaker sex."
Goldberg writes:
To Trump's followers, "We're America, Bitch" could be understood as a middle finger
directed at a cold and unfair world, one that no longer respects American power and
privilege.To much of the world, however, and certainly to most practitioners of
foreign and national-security policy, "We're America, Bitch" would be understood as
self-isolating, and self-sabotaging.
Sexual harassment, thanks to the #MeToo movement, has become self-sabotaging. Has the G7
just had their #MeToo moment? Perhaps America's top allies are finished with appeasing Trump
and saying "yes" when they really mean "no." I look forward to the photo op with Merkel and
Macron both wearing their pink pussyhats in solidarity with Trump protesters worldwide.
The End of Geopolitics?
The G7 represents the [neo]liberal international order: an attempt by the world's top
economies to manage disputes and develop a common commitment to certain principles like free
trade. The grouping is an acknowledgment that global capitalism can't survive by the "invisible
hand" alone and needs the guidance of many hands.
The G7 has been spectacularly ineffective in addressing the major issues of the time: global
poverty and inequality, climate change, pandemics. It doesn't represent robust multilateralism.
It leaves out obvious players like China and India. It makes no effort to represent voices of
the powerless.
Still, the G7 has been a very modest check on both U.S. unilateralism and unipolarism. And
now it's emerging as a counterbalance to Trump's unileaderism. The president's combative trade
policies and indiscriminate use of personal invective are uniting much of the world against the
United States. The approval rating of the United States, across 134 countries, dropped in two
years from 48 percent to 30 percent, according to
a 2018 Gallup poll .
On the other hand, the American public's satisfaction with U.S. standing in the world
reached a
13-year high in 2018, a worrisome sign for those of us pushing for progressive foreign
policy alternatives. Trump's unileaderism strikes a chord with a segment of the American
public. It's not just the Russians who crave an "iron fist" leader.
Trump's tactics run afoul of the basic laws of geopolitics: identifying long-term goals,
developing corresponding strategies, and cultivating key allies to achieve those goals. The
allies that Trump has cultivated -- Poland, Hungary, Russia, North Korea, the Philippines --
don't advance any particular national security interests. They reflect only the personal
preferences of Trump himself.
According to a progressive take on foreign policy, the United States should relinquish its
unipolar status as part of a transition to a peaceful multilateral order. Trump's unileaderism
won't, in the end, preserve this unipolar status. It will ultimately destroy the international
community and the very possibility of geopolitics. As the United States sinks further into
aggressive resentment, the world will splinter into hundreds of "Make [My Country] Great Again"
warring factions.
Bush Times Ten
Beginning with the Reagan administration, the concept of a "unitary executive" has gathered
force in both constitutional law and presidential practice. According to this theory, the
president controls the entire executive branch. So, for instance, George W. Bush expanded
presidential power through his use of signing statements that reinterpreted legislative
decisions.
Trump has taken this concept to a whole new level with his meddling in the Russiagate
investigations and his willingness to pardon everyone indicted in the matter, even himself.
Here's a president who can't seem to wait to get rid of his chief of staff because he
no longer wants to have anyone managing him. Trump can't be bothered with briefings because
he prefers to make decisions based on some cocktail of his own hormonal urges and what he
gleans, often mistakenly, from Fox News.
Unileaderism raises the doctrine of the unitary executive to the power of 10. It's bad
enough that a deeply insecure man-boy has latched on to this doctrine. Much worse will happen
when a canny adult adopts the same approach. Trumpism without Trump would finalize America's
descent into the maelstrom.
John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus and the author of the dystopian
novel Splinterlands.
With Mueller Trump is on a very short leash indeed, so I doubt that he has great freedom of maneuver.
Notable quotes:
"... Trump has a free hand from his base to negotiate peaceful coexistence with Russia, but he nevertheless must successfully deal with the passion of the neocon wing of the Borg (foreign policy establishment). They still swoon at the thought of the ongoing renewal of the Cold War. ..."
"... John Bolton is an arch-neocon, a neocon's neocon. Trump has sent him to Moscow to arrange an agenda, date and location for a meeting with Vladimir Putin. IMO this is a stroke of genius. What it does is put an enemy of good US-Russia relations in charge of arranging the schedule for discussions to improve US-Russia relations. In LBJ's vulgarism, Bolton is going to be inside the tent peeing out rather than outside peeing in. Having arranged the meeting, he will be personally invested in its success. How sweet that is! ..."
"... People want to believe so badly. I also want to believe, but I live in the real world. What happened the last time Trump made noises about leaving Syria to its own devices, most recently in April? Instant false flag, that's what. With Trump, it's worked twice already, I see no reason that it will not work a third or fourth time, or as often as needed. ..."
"... Without Russia as a selected enemy the US Army, with its expanding budget and end-strength has no important raison d'être , and what will the Borg do about that? First we can expect a large increase in the "Russia-bad" propaganda, similar to that on Iran (the greatest state sponsor of this and that). So I suppose Bolton is busy on his back-channel, etc. ..."
"... Between the end of Peace of Vienna and the start of Peace of Yalta there was a 50-year interval - filled with 2 world wars. Let us hope it be different this time. ..."
"... My biggest concern remains that Bibi's support itself will not guarantee acquiescence from the ultra-nationalist elements in Israel and their supporters elsewhere, who want to drag the US into the war. If the folks that carried out Khan Sheikhoun & other false flag CW attacks can be controlled, peace may have a chance. Otherwise, Trump's hand could still be forced. ..."
"... A stroke of genius. Bolton either demonstrates his obedience or is sacked, along with most of other neocons, for trying to spike the upcoming Putin summit. ..."
On a gestalt basis it seems to me from all the bits and pieces of information and rumor that DJT is attempting "The Deal of the
Century!" (an episode or two of his soon to be award winning series on the subject of "The Greatest President.")
Russian cooperation in this is clearly needed. Trump is blessedly lacking in ideological fervor. His Deplorable base is also a
bit short on ideology being focused on wages, prices, taxes and other everyday living issues. Their patriotism expresses itself in
devotion to the flag and the anthem and a willingness to serve in the armed forces, something increasingly absent in the "resistance."
Trump has a free hand from his base to negotiate peaceful coexistence with Russia, but he nevertheless must successfully deal
with the passion of the neocon wing of the Borg (foreign policy establishment). They still swoon at the thought of the ongoing renewal
of the Cold War.
John Bolton is an arch-neocon, a neocon's neocon. Trump has sent him to Moscow to arrange an agenda, date and location for a meeting
with Vladimir Putin. IMO this is a stroke of genius. What it does is put an enemy of good US-Russia relations in charge of arranging
the schedule for discussions to improve US-Russia relations. In LBJ's vulgarism, Bolton is going to be inside the tent peeing out
rather than outside peeing in. Having arranged the meeting, he will be personally invested in its success. How sweet that is!
Trumps is IMO trying for a grand ME bargain to be achieved with Russian help:
Peace in Syria in the context of abandonment of regime change. Trump the pragmatist recognizes that the R+6 forces have won
the civil war and, therefore he wishes to accept the sunk costs of previous American ineptitude in Syria and to walk away. US Embassy
Amman has signaled to the FSA rebels in SW Syria that they should not expect the US to defend them. This is a traditional American
stab in the back for guerrilla allies but the warning indicates to me that some group in the US Government (probably the CIA) has
enough conscience to want to give warning. As soon as that warning was issued the rate of surrenders to the SAA rose.
The US has thus made it clear that the SAA and Russian forces in Syria have a free hand in the SW and it seems that Israeli
air and missile attacks are unlikely against the SW offensive. This has been insured through a Russian mandate that Hizbullah and
IRGC dominated Shia militias stay out of the fight in Deraa and Quneitra Provinces.
The Egyptians have been talking to Hamas about their willingness to enter into a hudna (religiously sanctioned truce) with
Israel. Hamas has frequently offered this before. Such truces are renewable and are often for 10 years. Kushner's team thinks it
has attained Natanyahhu's support for this. The deal would supposedly include; a Gaza-Egyptian industrial zone in the area of Raffa,
an airport, a seaport. In return Hamas would be expected to police the truce from their side of the border. People on SST who have
deep access in Israel doubt the sincerity of apparent Israeli assent, but there is little doubt I think that DJT considers this part
of the Grand Bargain he is attempting to forge.
Nowhere in any of this is anything concerning Iran and I assume that regime change remains the policy. Nor is there anything about
Saudi Arabia and the UAE's mercenary manned war in Yemen. Ah, well, pilgrims, everything in its time. pl
People want to believe so badly. I also want to believe, but I live in the real world. What happened the last time Trump made
noises about leaving Syria to its own devices, most recently in April? Instant false flag, that's what. With Trump, it's worked
twice already, I see no reason that it will not work a third or fourth time, or as often as needed.
Without Russia as a selected enemy the US Army, with its expanding budget and end-strength has no important raison d'être
, and what will the Borg do about that? First we can expect a large increase in the "Russia-bad" propaganda, similar to that on
Iran (the greatest state sponsor of this and that). So I suppose Bolton is busy on his back-channel, etc.
No, I mean the Army is especially invested in Europe and has been. I attended C&GSC at the peak of Vietnam and in exercises they
were still mostly concerned with the Fulda Gap, division trains, etc. Big Army. Similar to how Army is going now, back to their
roots so to speak. Even when they claimed they were short of funds, they found a way to send forces to Europe based on the claims
that after Crimea, Russia was (and is) a threat to. . .the U.S.?
Peace with Russia would be a severe blow to Army especially
with the shift to Indo-Pacific which involves Navy and Marines, and Army not much. I know Army was greatly involved with island
operations in WWII, but China is not Japan regarding imperialism, IMO, and anyhow island invasions are not popular in Army.
So I look for a beefed up "Russia threat" campaign to counter Trump, and insider Bolton to be a big part of it.
Good analysis of the political implications of having Bolton establishing a summit as it worked with Pompeo. Always keep your
friends close and your enemies closer good way to clean up the nest of venomous asps.
Gen Sisi must have made an offer too good to resist. We know the House of Saud will finance it. Are they going to political legitimatize
Hamas, turn Gaza in a statelet ? Perhaps Hamas sees, or is being threaten with the money spigot being turned off ? The only way
to get money will be their share of offshore Natural Gas ? All for Hamas perhaps ? Nothing buys peace faster then lining a whole
lot of pockets. With more money and Airports and a Shipping port, opens dangerous doors. Is Israel ready for that ? How will that
be monitored ? So many damn questions. This may prove more problematic then the status quo, in the long run. Something does have
to be done, the conditions in Gaza are unacceptable.
Excellent analysis. In related news, a week or so ago semi-official Russian Vzglyad made a first media shot across the bow for
Iran in which it stressed that the manner of Iran's "presence" in Syria is a complicating factor.
Russia doesn't want to "dislodge" Iran from Syria but she needs Iran out of the border area with Israel. This is the key to a
new arrangement, including, in the long run, Iran's security.
Is there a new ABM Treaty in the works? Another SALT? Another Peace of Yalta?
First two are important but are not clear and present danger for Russia for a number of reasons. Militarization of space is
more important now. The last point, however, is extremely important because either there will be some kind of new geopolitical
arrangement or we will see probability of a global military conflict grow exponentially.
Iranians do not need to be at the border area. All they need is to deploy their true and tested method of arming Syria with tens
of thousands of precision rockets aimed at Haifa and Tel-Aviv. It worked for North Koreans.
No global peace is in the works.
Between the end of Peace of Vienna and the start of Peace of Yalta there was a 50-year interval - filled with 2 world wars.
Let us hope it be different this time.
Between the end of Peace of Vienna and the start of Peace of Yalta there
was a 50-year interval - filled with 2 world wars. Let us hope it be
different this time.
It must be different, plus I disagree with historic parallel--two entirely different paradigms both in warfare, geopolitical
balance and media.
Well I certainly wish The Greatest President luck. Who knows, I'm done underestimating the guy.
My biggest concern remains that Bibi's support itself will not guarantee acquiescence from the ultra-nationalist elements
in Israel and their supporters elsewhere, who want to drag the US into the war. If the folks that carried out Khan Sheikhoun &
other false flag CW attacks can be controlled, peace may have a chance. Otherwise, Trump's hand could still be forced.
The point of maximum danger appears to be at hand, given your characterization of the Daraa op as "betting the farm". Today's
grant of new powers to the OPCW to apportion blame (designed to side-step the Russian veto at the UNSC) now means this body can
effectively determine casus belli . Let us pray the OPCW will not have reason to exercise its new powers in Syria.
A stroke of genius. Bolton either demonstrates his obedience or is sacked, along with most of other neocons, for trying to
spike the upcoming Putin summit.
On topic #2. If the SAA isn't feeling it's oats by now, forcing them fight a major battle that culminates a campaign by themselves
would seem to be the ideal way to exorcise any remaining self doubts and engender a lasting esprit de corps. Stupid is what stupid
does... Once these guys finish up in the SW and head east enforce it'll be show time.
"... There is no indication that Bolton was aware that Cambridge Analytica was exploiting the personal data of tens of millions of Facebook users -- but he was certainly aware that it was using an extensive trove of personal data to target voters ..."
"... What Bolton was paying Cambridge Analytica to do is, perhaps, more damning than his use of the shady data firm. "The Bolton PAC was obsessed with how America was becoming limp wristed and spineless and it wanted research and messaging for national security issues," Wylie told the Times . "That really meant making people more militaristic in their worldview," he added. ..."
"... "That's what they said they wanted, anyway." Cambridge Analytica produced fear-mongering advertisements aimed at drumming up support for Bolton and other hawkish Republicans. The relationship between the firm and the Super PAC grew "so close that the firm was writing up talking points" for Bolton after only a few months of collaboration. ..."
Speaking at CPAC in 2017, John Bolton boasted that his Super
PAC's implementation of "advanced psychographic data" would help elect "filibuster majorities"
in 2018. According to a New York Times
report published on Friday, Bolton's Super PAC paid $1.2 million to Cambridge Analytica,
the British firm that has come under scrutiny for its misuse of Facebook data to influence
voters. Bolton's Super PAC, moreover, was heavily funded by the Mercer family, who gave
millions to Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 presidential campaign.
There is no indication that Bolton was aware that Cambridge Analytica was exploiting the
personal data of tens of millions of Facebook users -- but he was certainly aware that it was
using an extensive trove of personal data to target voters. "The data and modeling Bolton's PAC
received was derived from the Facebook data," Christopher Wylie, the co-founder of Cambridge Analytica turned whistleblower, told the Times . "We definitely told them about how we
were doing it. We talked about it in conference calls, in meetings."
What Bolton was paying Cambridge Analytica to do is, perhaps, more damning than his use of
the shady data firm. "The Bolton PAC was obsessed with how America was becoming limp wristed
and spineless and it wanted research and messaging for national security issues," Wylie told
the Times . "That really meant making people more militaristic in their worldview," he
added.
"That's what they said they wanted, anyway." Cambridge Analytica produced fear-mongering
advertisements aimed at drumming up support for Bolton and other hawkish Republicans. The
relationship between the firm and the Super PAC grew "so close that the firm was writing up
talking points" for Bolton after only a few months of collaboration.
"... In early 2002, a year before the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration was putting intense pressure on [José] Bustani to quit as director-general of the [Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons]. ..."
"... Bolton continued, according to Bustani's recollections: "You have 24 hours to leave the organization, and if you don't comply with this decision by Washington, we have ways to retaliate against you." ..."
"... John Bolton was also behind a campaign against the IAEA and its chief Mohamed ElBaradei. ElBaradei's phone was tapped and rumors were launched against him to oust him from his office. ..."
In early 2002, a year before the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration was putting
intense pressure on [José] Bustani to quit as director-general of the [Organization
for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons].
...
Bolton -- then serving as under secretary of state for Arms Control and International
Security Affairs -- arrived in person at the OPCW headquarters in the Hague to issue a
warning to the organization's chief. And, according to Bustani, Bolton didn't mince words.
"Cheney wants you out," Bustani recalled Bolton saying, referring to the then-vice president
of the United States. "We can't accept your management style."
Bolton continued, according to Bustani's recollections: "You have 24 hours to leave
the organization, and if you don't comply with this decision by Washington, we have ways to
retaliate against you."
There was a pause.
"We know where your kids live. You have two sons in New York."
José Bustani successfully negotiated to get OPCW inspectors back into Iraq. They
would have found nothing. That would have contradicted the U.S. propaganda campaign to wage war
on Iraq. When Bustani did not leave voluntarily, the U.S. threatened to cut the OPCW's budget
and "convinced" other countries in the executive council to kick
him out .
John Bolton was also behind a campaign against the IAEA and its chief Mohamed ElBaradei.
ElBaradei's phone was tapped and rumors were launched against him to oust him from his
office.
The U.S. administration, the neoconservatives and the media are running
a remake (recommended) of the propaganda campaign they had launched to wage war on Iraq.
This time the target is Iran:
As with Iraq, it's easier for Bolton and Netanyahu to achieve that goal if they discredit the
current system of international inspections. Bolton has called the inspection efforts
established by the Iran nuclear deal "fatally inadequate" and declared that "the
International Atomic Energy Agency" is "likely missing significant Iranian [nuclear]
facilities." In his 2015 speech to Congress attacking the Iran deal, Netanyahu insisted that
"Iran not only defies inspectors, it also plays a pretty good game of hide-and-cheat with
them."
Anyone who counters their propaganda must go. Bolton, who demands to
bomb Iran , is back in charge. One of his natural targets is the IAEA which certifies that
Iran sticks to the nuclear deal. It seems that Bolton
succeeds with his machinations:
The chief of inspections at the U.N. nuclear watchdog has resigned suddenly, the agency said
on Friday without giving a reason.
The departure of Tero Varjoranta comes at a sensitive time, three days after the United
States announced it was quitting world powers' nuclear accord with Iran, raising questions as
to whether Tehran will continue to comply with it.
Varjoranta, a Finn, had been a deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy
Agency and head of its Department of Safeguards, which verifies countries' compliance with
the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, since October 2013.
Another
casualty is the State Department bureaucrat who certified Iran's compliance with the
nuclear deal:
One of the State Department's top experts on nuclear proliferation resigned this week after
President Donald Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, in what
officials and analysts say is part of a worrying brain drain from public service generally
over the past 18 months.
Richard Johnson, a career civil servant who served as acting assistant coordinator in
State's Office of Iran Nuclear Implementation, had been involved in talks with countries that
sought to salvage the deal in recent weeks, including Britain, France, and Germany -- an
effort that ultimately failed.
...
The office Johnson led has gone from seven full-time staffers to none since Trump's
inauguration.
The man who launched the war on Iraq now gets
awards . Netanyahoo is
agitating for war on Iran just like he agitated
for war on Iraq. Shady groups of
nutty "experts"peddle
policy papers for 'regime change'. U.S. "allies" are put under pressure. With their
willingness to "compromise" they actually further the prospect of
war . When they
insist on sticking to international rules malign
actors prepare
measures to break their resistance. All that is still just a "shaping operation", a
preparation of the battlefield of public opinion. This buildup towards the war will likely take
a year or two.
What is still needed is an event that pushes the U.S. public into war fever. The U.S.
typically uses false-flag incidents - the Tonkin incident, the sinking of the Maine, the
Anthrax murders - to create a psychological pseudo-rationale for war. An Israel lobbyist
begs for
one to launch war on Iran.
One wonders when and how a new 9/11 like incident, or another Anthrax scare, will take
place. It will be the surest sign that the countdown to war on Iran has started.
Posted by b on May 12, 2018 at 06:35 AM | Permalink
John Bolton's a man? Does a coward who instigated others to fight get to be called a man?
Likewise Cheney Bush Clinton Obama Trump Bibi etc etc etc.
Easy to be ruthless when others take the risks and pay the costs.
isn't the same unity throughout the powers that be, particularly in the mainstream media,
that there was when Bush was President. Trump through the hatred he generates theoughout the
'upper crust', makes it hard for many deep staters to get on board a war drive he would lead.
And as you said, b, Trump needs a real or false flag, one with many casualties, and
something that won't fall apart from lack of evidence and a few days of rational scrutiny.
Sounds like a job for the Saudi mercenaries, Al Qaeda or ISIS.
People in high places are leaving due to team Trump threats.
Receiving mail from team trump employed black cube is no small thing. Kudos to you b for
sticking with it.
Two thoughts on US going to war with Iran. 10 It will destroy the US or certainly the US
empire and hegemony. 2) Iran needs plenty of help and respect during and after as they will
destroy the US. Not physically, but they will destroy US power.
The question we all want to know is, did Trump appoint lunatic Bolton entirely of his own
volition, or was he forced to appoint this psychopath? The reach of the US deep state seems
to be limitless. A curious thing happened the other day when someone in the US administration
announced that America would no longer be funding the white helmets propaganda outfit. Over
here in the UK parliament an opposition member of parliament was practically foaming at the
mouth with rage and demanded of prime minister Mrs May that the UK would be continuing to
fund the white helmets. When she assured him that the UK was fully behind the white helmets
and that funding would remain in place, there was a cheer from around the house. I'm amazed
that Bolton allowed the administration to cut off funding when even the UK idiots in
parliament want to fund the propaganda arm of the head choppers.
I am just curious to know how much influence John Bolton can exercise as National Security
Advisor: is his position part of the President's Executive Office and does he (Bolton, that
is) have a department to answer to him and a budget? Is his position any more secure than,
say, Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State?
The more that Trump is pushed into a corner by investigations of various scandals, the more
he needs something to distract from them. A war in a far-off country would be the perfect
thing to get people rallying around the President.
Jen @9:
From what I understand, Pompeo is much higher on the food chain. The SoS is in the line of
succession; advisors are not. I believe the position is just a single individual with closer
access to the POTUS.
I said it many times before, and I can safely repeat it again, there wont be a hot war with
Iran. Entire NATO couldnt defeat Iran, and US would go alone (maybe Israel would piggyback
few shots). It would end as catastrophe for US and de-facto end as the main superpower.
Pentagon (and even CIA) are many things, but suicidally stupid isnt one of them, neither is
Trump, or even Nutjobyahoo.
What we will see is more sanctions (to try to create civil unrest) and another "color
revolution" endeavor, and it will fail too.
Trump coopted by the neo-cons? Exactly what lever would they have on Trumpty Dumbdy that
isn't already public knowledge? Misogyny, Philandering?... already tried that pussy-grabbing
Stormy front. Financial improprieties? That Trump Inc. was/is a serial bankrupt corporation,
even screwing low-income students and any building contractor it could?... Old news. That
Trumpty Dumbdy is too stupid to read the full documentation presented to him, that he can't
write/deliver a coherent, logical line of thought?... obvious from well before the day he
officially declared his candidacy.
Trump (and his real estate "empire") was and is a product of the Rothschild cabal, and he
was deliberately foisted on the US electorate to be the only one in the country Killary could
beat... OOPS!
So we are now seeing Plan-B, where Trumpty is manipulated and browbeaten to shed the few
shreds of intelligence and decency he still possessed. All the Deep State/Rothschild-enablers
have to do is appeal to Trumpty's fragile ego, or Melania's emotional jags, and they are in
control.
But even Bolton's ilk must know Russia and China will not stand by while FUKUS/Nutty/MBS
openly attack Iran. Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya show the likely course of events where the
Zionists are allowed to carry on with the Yinon Plan. Syria is the line in the sand, despite
Erdogan trying to play the US off Russia for historical gotcha gains. Don't forget, Erdogan
owes his life to Putin, who ensured the US coup failed by targeting the rogue Turk jets
tasked with shooting Erdogan's plane down... I'd bet the Turk pilots were told that if they
even turned on their targeting systems, they would be shot down... self preservation is a
strong deterrent.
Israel/Saudi on their own cannot withstand even Syria, Hizbolla and Iran directly, even if
the russian military only backstopped the Syrian alliance. Ahe US public won't tolerate
another Iraq debacle, as zero body bags landing at Edwards AFB is the limit. Let alone that
Iran would be Iraq on steroids especially for the several 1,000 in the western Syria caldron.
It's a big caldron right now, but with Russian-manned mobile S-400's/etc. protecting all
Syrian, Iranian and possibly Iraqi airspace, those soldiers/mercenaries are sitting ducks
after the first bomb lands in Iran.
Apologies if following musings are a bit disjointed.
American chronic hostility towards Iran, and long standing American economic and
informational and low-level war gainst Iran, has an insane, out-of-touch with reality,
ideological/mythological tinge/component to it. I won't try a broad psycho-analysis, or
assemble many possible reasons why that might be.
But among those possible components there is a long standing implacable totalitarian bent
to US power wielders, reflected in their ordained geo-political communications in the United
States. The American economic sanctions and continuously variously hostile policy towards
Cuba over more than half a century is an example. The former 'brothel dof the Caribbean' was
apparently fine for the US, and the death squad ridden countries of Central America are quite
acceptable, but Cuba out of the capitalist orbit? Cuba as attempting a different ideology,
and approach: terrible recalcitrant. The very demon of the hemisphere.
In his revelatory book The Praetorian Guard, former CIA John Stockwell noted that as he
was growing up, basically nobody questioned the prevailing American ideology and system. Real
searching basic debate was absent. Within the context of a culture where freedom of speech is
technically prioritized, lauded as an ideal, somehow self-censorship and discussion is
limited to within-the-box of convention, thus discussion as scripted theatre, propaganda,
dominated overwhelmingly.
No real debate, but what was repeated ad infinitum were messianic messages'we swear
allegiance to the flag', we're number one, we're the free world, we're the good guys.
After the JFK coup d'etat, basically everything in American media became an exercise in
controlling all political discourse and trying like crazy to make sure pretense prevailed.
This was if anything accentuated after the 9/11 false flag treasonous mind-f**k.
There was also a deadly military doctrine adopted by the US after WW2, when segments of US
power decided to go for global military domination, basically permanent war and war
preparation. The cliche is that the first casualty of war is truth, but in the case of the
United States, doubly so, as that train had already left the station.
The United States is a kind of astonishingly cautionary historical example of the deranged
trajectory that dishonesty, pretense and censorship as normalized and dominant will ensure.
So many natural advantages, but the external manifestation of the US became mass murder and
subterfuge; internal problems of the US are festering, metastisizing, and tens of millions of
Americans are deeply demoralized, anxiety ridden, emotion-related
drug-medication-dependent.
Back to Iran. A few years ago while driving in the evening I turned on the car radio and
the first words I heard from a (Jewish) talk show host on a Toronto station was the question:
Do you think the Americans have the balls to nuke Iran? Really bizzarre sick question that
apparently could be sent out glibly and sefely into the Canadian political discussion
universe as an intellectual feat. And on numerous occasions for many years it has been
commonplace in Canadian mass media to depict Iran in a hostile, negative light. And as German
writer Udo Ulfkotte bravely told us before his untimely death, the CIA also influences and
controls and thus contaminates much of European mass media communication.
So the American insanity and dishonesty and war mongering is playing itself out on a broad
stage, (witness the truly crazy pathetic British government's behaviour of late) and crazy
people do crazy things, so yah, Iran is still in the crosshairs. But there is a kind of
desperate, fading, dated quality to the American obsession with 'evil Iran', and lies and
make-believe and insanity cannot escape colliding with reality. The collision can make a
helluva a mess, but at some point hopefully the pendulum swings towards a reassertion of
sanity and decency and honesty.
How many times will Americans shoot themselves in the foot for Israel and fairy tales?
"But even Bolton's ilk must know Russia and China will not stand by while FUKUS/Nutty/MBS
openly attack Iran"
It appears Putin and Russia have decided to sit all this out. While Putin was enjoying the
Victory Parade with Netanyahu,,, Netanyahu was bombing his ally Syria. Putin was all smiles
and so far all we hear is crickets.
Putin will sell his S-400 systems to anyone that wants them EXCEPT Syria and all they want
is the S-300.
I don't know what's going on but as far as Russia is concerned I wouldn't bank on their
helping Iran.
China? China can be purchased like cloths on a rack.
No,,, I think it's pretty open right now for the US to attack Iran. Whether it can survive
a war with Iran is doubtful,,, but that's never stopped them before.
Yes "take out" as I defined not through occupation/invasion but fighter jet strikes and/or
from sea. That wont take more than 1 day for 3 top Nato nations.
I wonder what is going through the minds of Kim and the South Korean leadership. It is
obvious that the US is not agreement capable. What sort of guarantees can the US provide.
Even if China and Russia provide guarantees it may not be enough. Kim sees that if a deal is
made, then the crippling sanctions could be reimposed or remain. Kim and his sister are not
stupid.
Neocons and Bolton are Trotskyites. Permanent Revolutionists
The ruling elite never really knew how dumb people were until the internet and social
media. With the help of Trumps supporter and Facebook investor Thiel and his company Palintir
and Facebook to help them figure out all the data they collected, they know they can make the
cattle believe anything without making it believable to anyone with an IQ under 120
The few that figure it out without being members of the cult are isolated and
inconsequential.
Plato told us what he hoped would happen. Leo Straus who is the godfather of the neocons
emphasized Platos Noble Lie which is behind all of todays fake news/history . Plato was
heavily influenced by Irans Zoroastrianism
I believe elements behind the reformation in the 16th century and Sabbateans from the 17th
century, Frankists , Freemasons and Jesuits from the 18 th century and Zionists , and
Martinists and Marxists from the 19th century joined forces to create a NWO that is a
Luciferian cult of Global Synachrists
The neocons are the latest manifestation of the Synarchists, and unfortunately for the
world this means global terror much like the Rothschild back Trotsky hoped to accomplish
in
the 20th century before being thwarted by Stalin. It also means the end of Religion as
Neocons corrupt Protestant Christianity, in US and Across the Atlantic while CIA controlled
Jesuit Pope Francis destroys Catholicism. Zionism and the Holocaust wiped out Torah believers
and the GWOT and neocons are proceeding to destroy Islam after corrupting it with Islamism
with help from the Saudi Arabias corrupt Wahhabism which has spread Islamic extremism along
with US and Israel
For those who believe the US can be destroyed, you are in denial. There is no stopping the
US/Israel//British/EU alliance. The only hope is that once the perpetual revolution is over
that the philosopher kings described by Plato will be merciful. Unfortunately, given many of
them are neo-malthusians who think most of humanity are worthless consumers of Gaias precious
resources, i am not optimistic
However you would define war US (Israel) and Iran is at war footing for decades, nothing new
here, so I would not panic here that Bolton would do something.
It cannot be more clear that as much as Trump is a flaccid clown of ignorance and
belligerence to cover up his tax evasion crimes from Muller, Bolton plays role of barking
poodle that all, did not get anything done what global oligarchic interests tell him or he
will be put down.
And Please do not compare Iran to Iraq especially after two Iraqi wars, Iran is in
position to cause major damage to global oligarchic interests and hence there will be no
escalation despite fire and fury rhetoric as it was in NK case, it is all about reintegration
of Iranian oligarchy to global oligarchic country club and what we witness is negotiating of
condition of selling out Iranians to neoliberal globalists and by that advance a step in
isolating Russia to achieve the same purpose, surrender to globalism.
Also I do not see Netanyahu welcoming hundreds of Iranian missiles landing in Tel Aviv as
Saddam only shot few Soviet museum item at Israel and back then all hit their however random
targets. There would be no random targets this time so there would be death and vital damage,
not to mention that Israel could loose Golan Height in the process. Also there is no way in
hell for US to invade Iran, or gather 600k troops as it was in 1991 for one quarter Iran size
Iraq.
I know that spreading fear brings clicks but here on this blog we know better than
that.
Don't underestimate Trump. He came to office on an audacious promise to drain The Swamp. It's
a very specialized task. It was never going to be easy and I'm quite certain that he went in
knowing that his first misjudgment would probably be his last. I don't know how to drain The
Swamp but if Trump thinks he can then I do too. I've been pleasantly surprised at his ability
to engage with senior officials on the World Stage and appear Presidential. Compared with
bumbling fools like Ronny Raygun, Jimmy Carter and Dubya, Trump leaves them for dead in the
"100% on the ball" stakes. Whilst I'm waiting, with fingers crossed, I console myself with
the following thoughts:
1. Hillary would have been worse.
2. The non-people he wants to neutralise are the worst bunch of scum and arseholes on the
planet.
3. Since he's the only person with a Swamp plan, we shouldn't be too picky about his timing
and tactics.
4. Trump is an extremely clever individual.
thanks b... and thanks for the Atlantic article from peter beinart... i thought it was a good
article.. here's a quote from it "More than 60 percent of Republicans, according to a March
Pew Research Poll, think the United States was right to invade Iraq. George W. Bush's
approval rating among Republicans, according to a January CNN poll, is 76 percent." and "It's
rare to see non-Americans on political talk shows. That matters because non-Americans
overwhelmingly think pulling out of the Iran deal is nuts. And non-Americans are more likely
to raise fundamental questions about American nuclear policy -- like why America isn't
pushing for inspections of Israel's nuclear program, and why America keeps demanding that
other nations denuclearize while building ever more nuclear weapons of its own."
then you can read @20 Robert Snefjella post - thanks robert - and note the radio interview
from toronto..
sorry to say, but this 'neo-con' term is a quick term to describe so much of what looks
like the koolaid american citizens drink regularly.. and there is plenty of it to go around
in canada too..
americans by and large look like a nation of idiots, spoon fed everything they know..
i tend to agree with harrys view @13... colour revolution will continue.. but unlike
harry, i do believe the bombs will fall and we will enter some type of ww3 scenario.. the
usa-israel are too much led by the neo con koolaid to step away from any of their ongoing
insanity.. i just can't see the insanity stopping with rational, reasonable people having a
say.. so, maybe i don't fully agree with harry other then in the short term..
I agree with your assessment that Trump is a very clever individual - when it comes to
manipulating the media and distracting from his words and actions, but I disagree with every
other assertion you have made and find that he has filled his administration with grifters
and con artists that rival the days of Grant or Harding.
And if you have grown up in America under DACA and are about to be deported or are losing
your health insurance coverage because key provisions of ACA have been overturned, just try
reciting "Hillary would have been worse!"
Utter nonsense. The US and Israel are coward bullies. They will pounce when the odds are
good, but they are quite rational about when they are not. There have been endless threats
and sabre rattling by the US and Israel against Iran for decades, but they never followed
through. They will most certainly not do so now, when the relative military position of Iran
is better than ever. And this "crying wolf" article will join the the countless others
written before on the junkpile of historical falsification...
There is a strong delusion that maintains its satanic grip on the "leadership" in DC.
The depiction of Mordor in Tolkien's "Fellowship of the Rings" series is very fitting in
describing the present pure evil and absolute darkness of those who plan for war and
destruction in the secret chambers in the upper echelons of our society.
What will stop the madness, death, and destruction that has rained down and continues to
rain down on so many millions of hapless men, women, and children in the Middle East and
abroad? Will it take a few US cities completely destroyed and hundreds of thousands of
Americans vaporized before the insanity of US Empire is stopped?
I pray for peace for the sake of my children and grandchildren. I pray for a "great
awakening" amongst the nations of the world to demand an end to the evil US/Zionist madness
before it is too late.
Any US attack on Iran will be by air, not ground. Though special ops will be inserted in the
Afghan border provinces (where the last protests were the largest, fertile ground for
insurgents).
Missiles of all kinds will fall on the regime, the military, the Quds, the militias.
And it will be huge, maybe the largest, heaviest attack ever. Once the air defenses are
down, bombers will cover the major infrastructure sites with the heaviest bombing since
Belgrade and Nam.
Only when the UNSC convenes, probably, no sooner than five or six days, will the attack
slow or cease.
Iran will have been set back a few decades. That is the soft goal. The harder goal will be
the insurgency and destabilization of the regime and final regime change.
It will take nothing special for this attack to happen. Trump has already made up his
mind.
When it will happen is when the US and Israel feel they can suppress the Hezbollah missile
threat. Until they have a workable plan for that, not much can happen on a large scale.
But it will come. Small or large, a missile attack will come to Iran. The regime is in the
sights of the Hegemon.
Top 3 nato countries could take out Iran military within a day, but nato cannot invade,
occupy it in my opinion.
Rubbish.
I assume you're referring to countries other than the United States. In which case, you do
know that Germany has about half-a-dozen airworthy attack aircraft, the Royal Navy and
France's aircraft carriers would require just about every ship in the other European navies
to protect them and part of the reason the British and French begged the United States to
intervene in Libya was because they'd run out of PGMs.
Give the European NATO countries a couple of years to build up their forces and force
projection skills and European NATO might be in a position to bomb Iran, but as soon as they
started building up their forces in the Gulf States, Iran could go to the UNSC to demand that
this obvious aggression should be stopped and when FUKUS veto any resolution, Iran has carte
blanche to launch preemptive strikes across the Persian Gulf. End of European NATO's war on
Iran
And after the Iraq fiasco, I suspect the only country that would go to war without a UNSC
resolution is the United States. Germany would almost certainly decide to sit it out, France
most probably would and the UK would probably also sit it out.
Finally, even if the top 3 NATO countries did try to get away with a limited air attack,
the best response for Iran would be to sink every ship in the Persian Gulf and go on doing so
until the United States invades and becomes bogged down in a quagmire far worse than Iraq or
Afghanistan.
I have to agree with those who say a direct attack on Iran is imminent. Sure, some would love
this to happen whether Yahoo or Bolton but for now will be happy to apply the "squeeze" of
sanctions, ostracism/propaganda. The goal seems to have been to destroy and if not that, then
to set the countries back ... under the thumb as it were.
Yes, the US with some assistance could rip Iran's military apart but not take over the
country. A majority are somewhat satisfied with the theocratic setup. They know the history
with the US/West. And how would Iran react? Long range attacks on Israel or much
closer-to-home attacks on the Gulf States and the Saudis as well as blocking at Hormuz?
Saddam lobbed a few Scuds at Israel and Riyadh but didn't have much. Iran has more and better
missile tech ... which TPTB are going after now ... while Yahoo still pushes "nuclear
programs" since he knows (like Iraq) there are no real weapons there.
The US will do everything possible to reimpose sanctions. Hence gaining control of the IAEA
and inspection process. This is designed to offer the Europeans a face saving way to back
down and submit to US will regarding sanctions. It will probably succeed. Europe, whether it
likes it or not, is playing good cop in the game.
War, as in an actual US attack in Iran itself, is pretty much out if the question. A false
flag designed to be blamed on Iran and big enough to warrant a war will be placed under
enormous scrutiny. Not by the US MSM, of course, but by the rest of the world and the
alternative media.
The fact is, before anyone can attack Iran, they have to win in Syria and it doesn't look
like they are going to.
As far as sanctions, Iran's best bet may be to give the EU 3 weeks to prove its intent to
confront the US (which is unlikely) Then Iran can resume its civilian nuclear development at
the fastest possible pace, with the offer to discontinue once the US returns to the
JCPOA.
Peter Beinart, the author of the "As with Iraq" piece above, gets all wound up in the details
of nuclear inspections and forgets that in 2003 he supported the misbegotten Iraq invasion
and war because a (supposed) peaceful aftermath would help the people of Iraq, and so the
people who oppose the war were wrong.
The truth is that liberalism has to try to harness American military power for its purposes
because American tanks and bombs are often the only things that bring evil to heel.
Opposing this war might have helped liberals retain their purity, but it would have done
nothing for the people suffering under Saddam. If liberals are betrayed a second time in
the Gulf, hawkish liberalism may well go into temporary eclipse. But one day we, and they,
will need it again. . . here
That's akin to the position that Trump has taken on Iran.
In this effort, we stand in total solidarity with the Iranian regime's longest-suffering
victims: its own people. The citizens of Iran have paid a heavy price for the violence and
extremism of their leaders. The Iranian people long to -- and they just are longing, to
reclaim their country's proud history, its culture, its civilization, its cooperation with
its neighbors. . . here
Old Microbiologist , May 12, 2018 11:12:51 AM |
38
IMHO what we are seeing are the last ditch efforts of a failing nation. Russia isn't sitting
it out but is taking a wait and see attitude. The same for China. All the bluster and twitter
tweets in the world mean nothing until someone actually does something. Israel managed to
shoot off a massive strike which at best was 50% effective. This was against "old" Pantsir
S-1 systems which were quite effective. No one has seen the S-300 yet in action and Russia is
holding it back keeping the ECM signature still secret until it is absolutely necessary.
Russia cannot fight the US or Israel in Syria. They simply doesn't have the forces present.
But, what they can do is push gently and make the FUKUS+I over-commit. Don't forget that the
US is working at a current $22 Trillion of debt and these debacles are going to burn money
faster than they can print. In the mean time Russia/China are creating an alternate economic
system to bypass the petrodollar and especially the SWIFT banking. That is in place and
perhaps we will see more countries deciding to bail on the dollar and join the growing crowd.
The US has demonstrated a complete lack of respect for sovereignty and has so far reneged
on every treaty. This means that the US is at best an unreliable partner. The South Koreans
have wised up seeing that the US is very willing to sacrifice the entire peninsula and every
soul living there to kill off the DPNK. That should scare the bejeezus out of every nation
friendly to the US anywhere in the world. They are losing friends so fast now it is scary.
This only forces the inevitable and the US is going to have to bet the farm to try and keep
the hegemony alive. It won't work and the US has the worst record of war fighting imaginable.
They can't beat the goat-herders in Afghanistan for example over a span of now 17 years.
Fighting a real military such as Iran would be impossible and especially if China throws in
her weight. Iran is very important to China and to a lesser extent Russia as well. There is
no danger of the US or NATO winning there. However, this could break the bank if it goes
south. So, what we are seeing is an existential threat to the US in the form of rebellion
against the dollar. Finally, we are seeing countries that have the weight of forces (nuclear)
with serious resistance. It is for this reason we are not seeing a counter-attack against
Israel. As Napoleon said "Never interfere with the enemy when he is in the process of
destroying himself".
The two FUKUS mass missile attacks on Syria, as well as Israel's latest jab, were a test of
the Russian systems and general Syrian ability to interdict said missiles. If the missiles
can't get through even at such short range, it is obvious Israeli/FUKUS aircraft can't
either. Attempting the same "air war" stunt in Iran will just give the US MIC a big boost
replacing virtually every piece of hardware sent over Iran airspace.
Again, the US soldiers/mercenaries currently in eastern Syria are in a caldron-in-making.
They can no longer count on escaping via land transport through Iraq or Turkey, and without
any air support/transport, they are trapped. Does anyone think the US public will tolerate
the Deep State sacrificing about 5,000 soldiers/mercenaries immediately after the bombing of
Iran starts? The handful of body bags from other recent US misadventures were not
well-received at home, so the potential for another Vietnam?
Iran will not be the turkey-shoot Iraq was, Saddam was still under the delusion Rumsfeld's
handshake gave him immunity from Deep State/Zionist machinations. Iran's leadership is under
no such delusion, remembering the admitted 1953 CIA overthrow of democratically elected
Mossadegh and the installation of the Shah.
Putin and Assad know time is on their side, and the longer they can delay a major
FUKUS/Israeli/Saudi offensive, the better prepared they are and the less effect Zionist
propaganda has worldwide. The IDF murdering unarmed Palestinians using a Gandhiesque tactic
of showing how venal Nuttyyahoo's regime is... like Britain in India... there is no way to
make this slaughter seem justified, and attempting to keep it out of the public consciousness
has not worked.
"But it will come. Small or large, a missile attack will come to Iran. The regime is in the
sights of the Hegemon."
That would be 'former Hegemon'.
The likelihood of war other than the predictable guerrilla campaigns launched from abroad,
campaigns with which Iran has been successfully dealing for decades, seems to me to be
low.
While everyone is watching Iran and Syria, the most important developments are those taking
place in Korea, where some sort of peace agreement seems inevitable. And where anything short
of war will mean an immense strengthening of the positions of Russia and China.Not least
because Japan and Taiwan will be forced to adjust to the new reality.
In Korea... and in western Europe.
This is where the worst cracks in the US hegemonic facade are beginning to show: the logic of
Eurasia and the illogic of Atlanticism are inescapable. The western european economies,
including Germany's, France's and (the weakest link of all?) Italy's are dying for access to
the eastern markets. Historically Germany has shared its technologies and culture with
Russia, which has been the great source of its raw materials and food. The ending of the Iran
deal seems to be the excuse needed to slip back into that relationship.
Those who rave against Putin's 'betrayal' understand nothing. It is necessary to lower the
tension internationally in order for the tectonic movements, which are already well advanced,
to settle.
Bolton and the warmongers depend on perpetuating war but all the momentum, internationally,
is against war. The propaganda which has been their main weapon, is failing, their
credibility is rapidly declining.
Outside Israel, the rump of the Saud family court which supports the Riyadh regime and the
degenerated dregs of NATO trotskyism-inhabited by elderly, aethereal creatures who live in
the Academy and know nothing of the world- the only people who want war are the speculators.
And they are just as happy to have peace, anything that excites the market.
Those who claim that Iran could be defeated in a couple of days are, presumably, talking of
nuclear weapons. Do they really believe that such an attack would not be deterred by Iran's
allies?
Trump is "clever", not intelligent. He is the personification of "bullshit baffles brains"
methodology. Indications are he is marginally literate, as all info briefs have to be a
couple pages at most and point form. It is obvious he has no patience to work through the
finer details of complex situations, simply taking the position of whatever of his advisers
can spread the BS in the most eloquent or forceful way.
But mostly whatever panders to his ego. Make Trumpty think he is being "the decider" (like
Gerge W. Stupid) or that he is being the "tough guy" and he'll sign or say anything.
@ 33, It took NATO 73 days to bring Serbia down, and in the end it required trickery
(promising Milosovich he can stay then color revolutionizing him out)
Serbia did not have the means to close the straights of Hormuz. Nor did it have a missile
arsenal that could strike at several regional US bases. Nor could it destroy Saudi and
Kuwaiti oil refineries. Nor did Serbia have several thousand US ground troops in easy
reach.
Serbia also had the misfortune of being attacked during the weakest point in Russian
history since the 1600s. Russia is quite certain to help Iran because it has a strong
interest in Iran repelling a US attack. Even if you believe Russia is 100% cynical, they will
have an enormously strong reason to see the US bogged down for a decade and bled white.
The Pentagon is aware of all of this and they aren't idiots. The fact is, the US was in a
much better position to attack Iran in 2006 or 7, and they still didn't do it, because it was
a terrible idea even back then. They will not do it now when it is a much worse idea.
Simply put, if attacking Iran were so easy, they would have done it a long, long time
ago.
Now, attempts to destabilize and possibly preach rebellion to Iran's minorities, that they
will do (without much success) But open war is a line they won't cross.
@38 -- "This was against "old" Pantsir S-1 systems which were quite effective. No one has
seen the S-300 yet in action and Russia is holding it back keeping the ECM signature still
secret until it is absolutely necessary."
My reading is the S-300 has a range that would cover commercial airports in Tel-Aviv and
it is probably too much risk for Putin to deliver these to Damascus in case an 'event' occurs
and a civilian jet goes down. In any case, some suggest there are more effective equipment
solutions for Syrian defense/response. Of course, in the wryly Russian way, Israeli
destruction of "old" Pantsir S-1 systems simply opens up the rational and legal opportunity
to provide a whole lot of 'new' updated replacement Pantsir S-1 systems. Background:
https://sputniknews.com/military/201804171063644024-pantsir-top-facts/
I think that the UN has always been mostly a circus court for empire....make it look like US
is benevolent.
So now when the fig leaf comes off in public people are aghast. Empire only works like
empire and when the wheels start to come off, the whole facade is exposed for the dog and
pony show it has always been.
Will this be enough to change the world of global private finance? Iran, remember, refuses
to become a member of the Western banking/elite cabal.
So just why might Trump be directed to attack Iran in his regular pompous manner. Is this
a religious war we are fighting for Israel?
NO!!! It is all about the continuation of the Western form of social organization that has
as its core religion the God of Mammon. Those at MoA who read me know that the God of Mammon
that I write about have the tenets of private finance and property along with the rules of
inheritance which has resulted in the elite of the past few centuries.
I continue to posit that all that is happening relates to that issue and the struggles
around it not discussed in public for whatever reasons.
But carry on educating me and others about all the proxy shit going down and its relevance
to how our society works....or doesn't........I want evolution and I want it this
morning!!!!!!!
The coming "war on Iran" will be an excuse for all kinds of mischief. Some possibilities:
>> seizing western Iraq further isolate Syria by blocking Iran-Syria land route
>> attack and occupation of Lebanon to clear Hezbollah and allow for Israeli land grab up to Litani river (a goal previously
expressed)
>> new round of terror attacks (from new/re-branded groups) focused on
Syria, Iranian, and Russian interests (with a few attacks on the West to muddy the
waters) The psychological part of a war of attrition
>> intensified Ukraine-Russian frictions full court press
>> ISIS expansion into Central Asia accelerate what has already begun
>> Shut down of North Stream and Turk Stream expect the 'cage match' with "recividist nations" to get nasty
Curious how things have calmed down on the Israel front. Things not gone quite as well as
hoped? Or perhaps it is that they've figured out that there's nothing to do. SOHR, opposed to
the Syrians, but with good telephone connections in Syria, has now come up with a list of a
handful of Iranian dead. So I suppose a few Iranian camps were actually hit. But the only
actual videoed strikes were against Syrians. It's what you'd call a nothing-burger, much like
the 102 missile strike.
And this is the launch of a campaign against Iran?? Strange way of showing it. In my view,
the US and Israel are so boxed in by their constraints, that it's very difficult to act
decisively. No casualties, so no overflights of Syria, let alone Iran. No interruption of
Gulf oil exports, as the Gulfies wouldn't like it. Gulf emirates not to be overturned. I'm
sure I can think of some more....
@40 -- "The handful of body bags from other recent US misadventures were not well-received at
home, so the potential for another Vietnam?"
More likely an unlearned repeat of 'rhyming' history with Trump playing Jimmy Carter and
the "5,000 soldiers/mercenaries" playing the suckers (in summer heat). How's the Big 'D'
going to negotiate that deal over the mid-terms?
But that was Democrat 'smart' -- perhaps this re-mix will be closer an up-scaled rerun of
Reagan's Iran–Contra scandal? Who's playing Oliver North?
Another great post. Thank you. Implied I think in your musings is, 'What will people
remember of the U.S.' in a hundred years? The 20th century popular music. Blues, Jazz, Rock
'n Roll, and Country & Western for starters.
When have UNSC ever done to stop aggression by the same states that commit the
aggression?
The topic wouldnt even raised in the UNSC.
Of course Iran wont start a "preemptive" war. Not atleast since that will be a suicide
mission for themselves.
Russia wont do anything then (us attack on iran), just look how they treated previous US
wars, everytime people have said the same that RUssia will help and repel an attack, it have
never happend and will never happen.
At 51...uh, you do realize Russia has an expeditionary force that is actually fighting and
keeping Syria alive as we post, right? Perhaps they are not fighting as much as you would
like, but they are fighting and Syria continues to exist because of it. As regards Iran, if
Iran falls the Syria falls and Russian bases will be gone. Fortunately for all, that won't
happen.
It is difficult to say what kind of scope the false flag would need to be to rally public
opinion at home for an Iranian incursion. In many ways, pre-9/11, the antiwar movement was
much stronger as was shown by the rallies against leading up to the Iraqi invasion. And yet
this couldn't forestall it.
OTOH, independent media has come a long way in its reach and so cries of "false flag" have
already been sounded, and, by and large, I believe America is fatigued with the ME. It is
doubly ironic that dems like Schumer have been crying foul against DJT for playing soft with
NoKo. I know that the current dem/lib establishment has thrown its antiwar credentials out
the window, in favor of color revolutions, freedom, and LGBTQUIOGDTFBJK rights to fornicate
in public spaces, but, my god, I would never have imagined the globalists to be THAT stupid
in their disregard for basic human needs the world over for soverignty and national
pride.
People have touched on it before, but is this whole current theater just an old money vs.
new money second showing? The return of the repressed, with the globalist/neolib model being
rundowned and usurped by nationalist oligarchs? It would seem the DJT has chosen to err to
the old money side to the betterment of the world. And I, for one, as an American would
rather have my elites localized so we would actually have access to their asses when we
decide to put a pitchfork up them. It is very difficult to get past TSA with weaponized
peasant tools.
Israel's a bit late there then. The disturbances were at the beginning of the year.
They're over now. The effect of the sanctions will be to swing people behind the regime, for
the moment, at any rate.
No thats wrong too, Russia is not on a mission to save Syrians state, they are in Syria
due takfiri threat. Nothing else, as we all see proof of past days...
As for your other statment, I am well sure that Syria have fallen long long before Iran
(if they ever do that).
@52 Lysander. I agree (btw never mind anon's trolling attempts). Simply put, the road to
Tehran goes through Damascus and last I checked the Jasmine City was doing fine ;) If
US/KSA/IL attempts a hot war on Iran it will only precipitate its fall..
Am reminded of the 3 Stooges, whenever I read about these warmongers, like " Bombs Away"
Bolton. Moe tells a group of people, "We will fight till the last drop of.....", then points
to Curly and finishes, "....your blood!" These bastards love war, but never are at the front
line, fighting and dying along side our best. They sit at their plush offices and conference
halls in the best hotels, sipping champagne and eating the best foods, making six or seven
figure incomes. While our brothers, neighbors, fathers, sons, uncles die overseas, or come
back a mental mess, and get crapped on by out government. What these no good for nothing rat
bastards need is to experience the hell they unleash upon us and the rest of the world.
i read this line a lot, from all spheres, and it always perplexes me. to be
fatigued you'd have to be overwhelmed, inundated, and i'd wager that the ME and what's
going on there hardly crosses the vast majority of minds in more than a peripheral way, you
know, like beyond certain key words they hear on tv.
one thing's for sure though, the ME is most definitely fatigued with America!
Looks like there might not be a Coalition Of The Willing in any anti-Iran military operation.
Quite the opposite, it's a further lessening of US world hegemony.
. . .Cartoon of Trump giving the middle finger Goodbye,
Europe! in Der Spiegel.
Why are commentators assuming that, *if* the US does launch a war of aggression against Iran,
it will do so in tandem with its NATO allies--and the UK, France, and Germany in particular?
It is doubtful that these allies will even abide by the new US economic sanctions imposed
upon Iran. Why think that they will be willing, or even politically able, to follow the US
orders for war?
b is right that the neocons are setting up a replay of the 2001-2003 Iraq propaganda
campaign. But the global and domestic conditions that enabled the success of that campaign no
longer hold. The US is far weaker now than then; Iran is more powerful and unified than Iraq
ever was; NATO countries have hundreds of billions of dollars of trade contracts in place or
projected with Iran; Russia and China are far stronger. It just doesn't add up.
I suppose what I was trying to say is that the narrative TPTB have spun over the last
twenty years has gone beyond the realm of convoluted to the average American and now has
completely unwound into chaos. It was only three years ago that we were being told about the
surging threat of ISIS to Americans. Well...that didn't last long...and now they are back to
Iran which the west knows very little about and really doesn't care to. Us Americans like the
good guy/bad guy fight. But if you can't drum up a good enough backstory for the black hats,
I'm afraid that the average American will simply change the channel.
That being said...a compelling backstory isn't really needed for pyschopaths to wage their
war anyway.
Several here ave wondered what kind of false flag could motivate the populace in NA and the
EU to support an attack on Iran. May I propose one?
First stage - Israel (using the EW cover from AlTanf) bombs the Iranian nuclear plant.
Radiation release threatens tens of thousands.
Second stage - Supposed 'Iranian' counter-attack sets oil tankers ablaze (For maximum PR
effect do not sink them) in the Hormuz straights closing the gulf to shipments of Gulf
sourced oil. Oil prices temporarily spike to over $200 a barrel,
Europe's supply of oil is cut drastically, industries world-wide are paralysed and the US
(secure with its' supply sourced outside the gulf)is free to ride to the rescue - all while
RUSSIA (and China) have NO LEGITIMATE REASON to oppose the aggression.
bevin 41 The likelihood of war other than the predictable guerrilla campaigns launched from abroad,
campaigns with which Iran has been successfully dealing for decades, seems to me to be
low.
Yes, the US Army is demonstrably weak especially for any foreign invasion.
Historically Germany has shared its technologies and culture with Russia, which has
been the great source of its raw materials and food. The ending of the Iran deal seems to be
the excuse needed to slip back into that relationship.
And also China's BRI -- coming up June 28-- -- The China Germany BRI Summit 2018
As the first and third largest exporters globally, China and Germany will prove crucial
drivers of trade along the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road.
Together these form the Belt and Road Initiative, a landmark shift in the global economic
order that will touch over 65 countries across four continents.
The China Germany BRI Summit 2018 will dispel myths on what the Belt and Road Initiative
means for the world, tackle the challenges for global financial institutions and
corporations looking to leverage the initiative, and identify the enormous opportunities in
M&A, capital markets and trade finance. here .
@ Anon 64 Dont bet on that, May, Trump Agree to Counter Iran's 'Destabilising Activity' - Downing
Street
OMG, not the powerful UK military!! (heh)
Besides, haven't you heard? The UK isn't in Europe any more, or soon won't be.
Posted by: Don Bacon , May 12, 2018 1:45:05 PM |
73
@ Anon 64 Dont bet on that, May, Trump Agree to Counter Iran's 'Destabilising Activity' - Downing
Street
OMG, not the powerful UK military!! (heh)
Besides, haven't you heard? The UK isn't in Europe any more, or soon won't be.
Posted by: Don Bacon | May 12, 2018 1:45:05 PM |
73 /div
The extremely complex entanglement of Germany with (roughly) the NATO/EU alliance on the
one hand and Russia/China on the other is a prime reason why I do not believe that Germany
(which is by far the biggest economy in the EU) will be able to be strong armed or enticed
into signing up with another Zionist driven US war of aggression with a country as major as
Iran.
Re the possibility of a "united front" of western powers confronting Iran, the truth is that
no one knows for certain at this point how it this will play out.
We have to remember the deafening silence of the western media during the obvious
Skripjal-Ghouta fakery, so there's a good chance the US/Israel axis will again have a
relatively free hand to concoct any number of escalating false flags, not all of which will
stick, but some probably will. So that is a cause for concern re any future "coalition".
As for enforcing the sanctions, I've seen people argue both ways - that this is a bridge
too far for Europe, and accepting it will both do too much economic damage and make Europe
appear too obviously as US toadies; and OTOH, Europe will be blackmailed into knuckling under
when confronted with illegal US fines and secondary sanctions.
> Curious how things have calmed down on the Israel front. Things not gone quite as
well as hoped?
This is all that needs to be noted about the absurdity of even the idea that the US regime
is capable of attacking Iran.
This delusion appears to be the same type thinking as the "Generals Always Fight the
Previous War" saying.
The days of the Israeli regime flying at will over countries bombing at will are over. And
the days of the US regime parking an aircraft carrier off the coast of a country and
leisurely taking out its air defense network are long gone.
Russian air defense and electronic warfare tech are now being shown to be significantly
superior to US regime offensive capabilities in real world combat. So much so that the most
common reaction has been to try to rationalize the fact with crazy conspiracy theories about
behind the scenes wink and nod agreements between the US regime and Russia.
Trump foolishly trying to attack Iran to distract from his political problems would end up
as the first modern US regime leader who lost an aircraft carrier and ten dollar gas
prices.
Israeli's were cowering in their sewers while their junk air defense network repeatedly
failed to defend against a minor Syrian retaliatory barrage while Syrians in Damascus were
cheering on their rooftops as their Russian air defense network knocked Israeli missiles from
the sky.
Syria smacking down the Israeli regime is going to have Trump's military advisors sitting
him down and giving him a hard dose of reality about the Israeli/Saudi/Neocon delusions about
attacking Iran.
Pompeo(US) and Zarif(Iran) are currently making the diplomatic rounds, the former looking for
a new & improved plan, and the latter emphasizing that the US never adhered to the old
plan and united opposition to sanctions is in everyon'e best interest.
from the Iran statement:
Since taking office, Mr. Trump has not only made explicit and official statements against
the agreement in violation of its provisions, but has in practice also failed to implement
U.S. practical – and not merely formal commitments under the JCPOA. The Islamic
Republic of Iran has recorded these violations in numerous letters to the Joint Commission
convened under the JCPOA, outlining the current U.S. Administration's bad faith and
continuous violations of the accord. Thus Mr. Trump's latest action is not a new
development but simply means the end of the obstructionist presence of the United States as
a participant in the JCPOA. . .
here
The apparent US line now, as before, is to "change the regime's malign behavior" which is
ridiculous and thus doomed.
@ MISchi 69: There have been Russian-operated S-400's in Syria for years. Even the US
propaganda rags admit it is significant in reducing FUKUS attacks. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34976537
So just because Russia isn't giving the SAA S-300's doesn't mean Syria has no protection.
The fact the updated S-200s and Pantsirs are doing the job reasonably well will give FUKUS
and Israeli/Saudi military planners pause. Note that the cowardly Israeli jets attack from
Lebanese or Jordanian airspace.
And Nuttyyahoo merely crashed the Victory Day festivities, and Putin is too gracious a
host to kick Nutty out. But the body language between them was obvious, Putin was not happy
to see Nutty trying to capitalize on Putin's good manners.
@ Ian 77 According to Reuters it is.
Reuters doesn't take comments so I'm telling you (and others), if you don't mind, because you
are misleading people with something that isn't true.
As much as Bolton and his ilk would love to attack Iran, I have to disagree that a
full-fledged war is likely. USrael will ratchet up tensions all they can, hoping that Iran
will take the bait and actually respond, but the only way an actual war MAY be fought is with
a massive false flag attack. However, it took a massive false flag attack to allow the
neocons to invade Iraq, so said black op would have to be on that magnitude. Here's the thing
though, the neocons seem to be getting worse at false flags and more over the world ain't
buying them like they used to.
Sure you can get your European lackeys to sign up to a few sanctions, but will anyone
actually support the utter tanking of the world economy? Because that will be the end result
of war with Iran and behind closed doors everyone knows this. Look up the Millennial War
Games simulation that pitted the US against Iran. And how did that $200 million exercise turn
out? The US had to "refloat" its fleet in order to win. Using older Chinese anti- ship
missiles the Iranians decimated US naval assets. The US hasn't developed counter measures
against these while the Iranians have undoubtedly improved on these missiles. No matter what
happens to its ground forces and population centers, shipping in the Persian Gulf will be
shut down. That one action will raise the price of oil to over $200 a barrel overnight,
possibly much higher. And with that the global economy will be left in tatters. Too many of
the world's leaders understand this completely and simply will not go along with the US and
line up against Iran like they did with Iraq.
no, Netanyahu was invited. I read about it a week before the parade. Lavrov always says that
you don't need to negotiate with your friends, but you do with your enemies. Hence the
invite.
Like the Godfather said in the eponymous movie "Keep your friends close but your enemies
closer."
UKs military is of course far stronger than Iran,
we will see renewed sanctions against Iran and EU will be onboard and have already mentioned
they "need" to pressure Iran more.
The attacks on Iran will be only financial, not military, is my guess. The big news in the
military sector is often on cyber attacks. Cyber will be a "new military front."
Financial is akin to cyber. No shooting. The military experts don't discuss financial, I
guess because the U.S. is the only country capable of it, controlling world finance as it
does. But a full-on sanctions regime on another small country like Iran could do a lot of
damage and hurt a lot of people, as it did in Iraq previously. Sort of like what the U.S. did
to Japan to precipitate the war in the Pacific, except Iran's reactions must be much more
limited.
So the big question is Europe, and if it is able to legislate any significant
counter-sanction laws that would encourage Iran-Europe business. France looks good on this,
Germany is more significant.
I do wish people would stop calling themselves Anon. It's very difficult to know which is
which. It's easy enough to anonymise yourself with a distinctive handle. Maybe b should ban
it as a handle.
Many years ago I got to hear Sir Edmond Hillary speak to the assembled students at my
school, just a few years after his amazing climbing feat. No multimedia or lasers pointers or
cheesy-brand tee-shirt cannons, ... just an electric performance by an incredible man that
shaped my life, one foot at a time.
Several decades later, I watched SEH demonstrate Simple Green soap at REI. So incredibly
sad. I'll never forget either presentation. The Man in the Moon had become another Soapy
Salesman.
At the same time I first heard SEH speak, my father, an international businessman, brought
home a Buddhist monk exchange student from Asia for the holiday. It was spellbinding to meet
a bright and well-off monk, who knew all this amazing arcane reality, that we call the Wheel.
It shaped my entire approach to the summit.
Several decades later, in fact, just recently, I watched a performance by a Tibetan monk
troupe, after which they essentially begged for sponsors for the remaining exiled monks now
starving in India by the 1000s. They are dying out, like the 1,000s, the 10,000s of
aboriginal valley cultures that once walked the Earth.
Soapy Sales and Starving Monks, who only decades ago were both sitting on Top of the
World. Kind of like everyone's experience, even John Bolton's, former UN ambassador, now a
sleazy salesman-demonstrator for Death Inc, too proud to sell soap, or to busker for alms.
He's pathetic.
So let me bring it on home.
A student of mine is a senior monk in Asia. His charge is to free the spirits of the just
dead. Not the two monks chanting and incense and sprinkling with flower petal water in front
of a cherished photo. No, he blesses the *dying*, the human roadkills from the reckless
Chinese Escalades bombing through SEAsian commute traffic, the black and blue herion addicts
with the needle still in their arm, bright red blood bubbling out of their noses, the raped,
strangled, discarded and bloating young girls, dumped in the nearest rice paddy ditch.
He gets those calls. He never talks about his work, never shows the horror pictures or
trashes the perps. He sends selfies, pics of meals, flowers and temples. So I asked him,
doesn't this bother you at night, the carnal evil, the rape, the murder? Don't you wanna see
justice done?
He said simply, we're all going to die, many of us soon, we have very little time away
from the Wheel. We should spend every precious second of free time uplifting those who are
below us, the poor, the infirm, the feeble, the indentured, the slave, ...because we're all
gonna die as beggars some day. We should hold faith with the beggars.
Bolton is a sick fuck, in a pantheon of sick fucks. Why squander a nanosecond meditating
on any of them? They are nothingness, the void. MoA seems to have a fascination with evil and
death, and making Death's bit players into pop-idols. Selling a different brand of soap, I
guess.
Closing Hormuz would likely be the Iranian response to a sustained bombing campaign. A
single strike on a nuclear facility could elicit a missile strike on the attacking party (US,
Isreal or both.) Or it could involve multiple attacks on vulnerable US troops in Iraq and
Syria. Iran has several rungs in its escalation ladder. It doesn't have to jump to the top
one all at once.
Of course financial sanctions are the main, if not the only, US war-winning tactic
available today. Mainly the control of the VISA and SWIFT exchange systems. But I'm not
financially knowledgeable. It was one reason that Iran signed in 2015. I remember well, about
10 years ago, the husband of an Iranian student arriving with $20K (?) sewn into his
overcoat, to pay for his wife's studies.
However, the US has used this tactic so often now, that people must be looking to ways of
getting round the problem. I'm not quite sure how much success they may have had. People talk
about Russia-China erecting a parallel to the SWIFT system. I hope this does happen, though
it must be expensive. Non-US allies need it.
@lLaguerre: Russia already has set up its version of SWIFT. As has China, as well as both
agreeing to transactions in rubles/yuan first for petroleum, then recently for all other
trade, to bypass the US$ SWIFT system. The US gets a "cut", every time a corporation/country
converts from local currency to US$, then again when that same US$ cash is converted to the
currency of the second trading partner. To avoid this, non-US countries keep US$ reserves to
trade between themselves. This scam was set up at Bretton Woods after WW2 when the US economy
was the only economy/industrial-base left unscathed.
"In 2017, the head of the Central Bank, Elvira Nabiullina, said at a meeting with
President Vladimir Putin that Russia is ready for disconnection from SWIFT."
Because of their large inertia, these things, when they get moving, cannot be stopped and
proceed to the inevitable. The ziocons have pushed the boulder and it's starting to roll.
That is what a lot of panicky people said in 2013, that Obama's invasion of Syria was
inevitable because Assad was gassing his people in Ghouta. It didn't happen. As it turned
out, the "massive momemtum" was in the Zionist propangda, hoping to sucker the U.S. into the
Middle East again.
i think swift and bis are linked in with imf.. unfortunately i don't know how it all works,
but russias central bank is part of imf.. the way imf is set up favours the developed
countries over the developing countries.. they have some other tricks to keep control over it
too, but i do believe it is tricky navigating moving away from it all, which is why the
financial system is the first line of action to put other countries deemed out of line - into
line.. some have tried to get the imf to change without success which is why i believe brics
was working towards an alternative.. of course the b in brics went thru a type of regime
change under a different facade and i am not sure where they are at with that at this moment
in time...
Julian Assange
@JulianAssange
There is something very odd about the Joseph Mifsud story and the role of the UK in the 2016
US presidential election:
(thread)
5:07 PM · Mar 22, 2018
DEVELOPING: A major new front is opening in the political espionage scandal. In summer 2016,
Brennan with his FBI liaison Strzok, along with help from Kerry @ State, were trying to set
Russian espionage traps for minor players in the Trump campaign through cultivated intel
assets
@MISchi: Israel may have been "invited", but only as a standard diplomatic courtesy, not as a
"guest of honour" as the MSM and Hasbara would have us beleive. The US was probably invited
too... and didn't have the grace to show up? The US and EU were for sure in 2014, but
"boycotted" it over the US coup in Ukraine. Nuttyyahoo was just looking for MSM cover for the
illegal bombing he knew was going to happen, making it look like Putin was "in on it".
I'd guess Putin is simply giving Nutty all the rope Nutty needs to hang himself in the
court of world public opinion. When I see an official statement from Putin (or any Russian
senior official) saying Putin gave any approval of Israel's past and present illegal
incursions in Syria, let alone the illegal occupation of the Golan, I'll believe Nutty being
at the Victory Parade was some sort of endorsement by Putin of Nutty's insanity.
I agree with Lysander's logic. Iran will not be attacked in the "normal" manner; it will be
asymmetrical. The performance of not-so antiquated air defenses in Syria are the big game
changer as Iran has those and its own S-300 version. Plus all those big stationary targets.
Plus, I figure Bolton has a target on his back, as do other neocons--you don't murder over a
million without creating some enemies. I see lots of bluster to foment as much chaos as
possible to accentuate the asymmetrical impact. But as for an actual military assault, Bolton
and company are a decade plus too late.
To negate the potential effect of another Operation Northwoods, I think it wise to pull up
those old pdf docs and spread them around the world via social media--a move I'm frankly
surprised has yet to be made--along with some additional contemporary context.
@james: The Russian central bank is a member of the IMF/World Bank/BIS/SWIFT system as are
nearly every other central bank in the world. Not being "in" this club severely restricts the
ability to do international trade. Russia and China are quietly spearheading the move to
conduct international trade in local currencies, outside the US$-reserve-currency scam
(sorry, system). Both Russia and China have set up alternative systems, which along with the
SCO/AIIB offer participating countries a way to side-set US economic terrorism and sanctions.
The Rothschilds may have managed to stall the BRICS for now, but that won't last long.
Roger Stone said that he has known John Bolton since the Reagan years. Stone claims Bolton is
not a neocon warmonger but a guy who is a staunch believer in the old doctrine of peace
through strength. Interesting as Stone despises neocons. Bolton went to Yale undergrad and
Yale Law. Haley has a degree in accounting from Clemson, a mediocre land grant public
university in South Carolina.
Ok, you all, I have a personal story about John Bolton that I'm gonna drop here. This story
comes from someone who used to live next door to John Bolton in Bethesda (or Chevy Chase?).
Bolton's former (and current?) neighbor is a Harvard-trained medical doctor and a liberal
Jewish guy. He has two daughters who are now grown. One is now a veterinarian in North
Potomac. Anyway, his daughters were like 10 and 12-years old when they would water Bolton's
plants when he was away on travel. One time when Bolton was traveling he asked the older girl
to water his plants and he'd pay her $25. She agreed. Then a few days later she had something
come up and would not be able to do it and asked her younger sister if she could take care of
it she could have the full $25. The younger sister agreed. After Bolton returned from his
trip the younger sister went over to Bolton and explained what happened and that she, not her
older sister, had taken care and watered his plants. Bolton told her that he was not going to
pay her because the agreement was strictly between him and her older sister. That was last
interaction they had with Bolton. End of story.
I've posted the following deep in the previous thread, so here for those who missed
it:
As to the OPCW making "political decisions", The Intercept had an
interesting piece by Mehdi Hasan recently, about a certain John Bolton.
In 2001, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell had penned a letter to [OPCW head
José] Bustani, thanking him for his "very impressive" work. By March 2002, however,
Bolton -- then serving as under secretary of state for Arms Control and International
Security Affairs -- arrived in person at the OPCW headquarters in the Hague to issue a
warning to the organization's chief. And, according to Bustani, Bolton didn't mince words.
"Cheney wants you out," Bustani recalled Bolton saying, referring to the then-vice
president of the United States. "We can't accept your management style."
Bolton continued, according to Bustani's recollections: "You have 24 hours to leave the
organization, and if you don't comply with this decision by Washington, we have ways to
retaliate against you."
There was a pause.
"We know where your kids live. You have two sons in New York."
Looks like Iran is Carnage for Bolton and neocon fellow travelers in Trump administration
such as Haley and Pompeo.
Notable quotes:
"... Wall Street Journal ..."
"... In that vein, it is Bolton who merits historical comparison: to Cato the Elder, a conservative-yet-eccentric Roman statesman who, according to Plutarch, would often and invariably call for the destruction of Carthage, even though the Carthaginian threat was neither imminent nor apparent. Eventually, Cato's words wended their way into the ears of power and hundreds of thousands of Carthaginians were pointlessly slaughtered. According to the Greek historian Polybius, Scipio Aemilianus, the young Roman General who led the attack, at seeing the carnage of a great people, "shed tears and wept openly." ..."
"... Michael Shindler is an Advocate with Young Voices and a writer living in Washington, D.C. Follow him @MichaelShindler . ..."
Last week, John Bolton ascended to the office of National Security Advisor, following in the
hurried footsteps of Michael Flynn and H.R. McMaster. Two peculiar characteristics set Bolton
apart from most folks in D.C.: an unabashedly luxurious
mustache and an unmatched penchant for unjustified preemptive violence.
At the University of Chicago in 2009, Bolton warned
, "Unless Israel is prepared to use nuclear weapons against Iran's program, Iran will have
nuclear weapons in the very near future." Thankfully, Israel didn't take Bolton's advice and,
as most predicted, Iran never lived up to his expectations. Similarly, in a 2015 op-ed in the
New York Times , Bolton opined ,
"The inescapable conclusion is that Iran will not negotiate away its nuclear program. Nor will
sanctions block its building a broad and deep weapons infrastructure . Time is terribly short,
but a strike can still succeed." Three short months later, a non-proliferation deal wherein
Iran agreed to a 98 percent reduction in its enriched uranium stockpile and a 15-year pause in
the development of key weapons infrastructure was negotiated.
More recently in February, Bolton advised in
the Wall Street Journal that "Given the gaps in U.S. intelligence about North Korea,
we should not wait until the very last minute . It is perfectly legitimate for the United
States to respond to the current 'necessity' posed by North Korea's nuclear weapons by striking
first."
By this point Bolton's record of calling for war in every possible situation had lost the
ability to shock. Still, the Founding Fathers would probably be appalled.
A comparatively irenic vision pervades the philosophy of the founders. James Wilson, in his
Lectures on Law, wrote that when a nation
"is under an obligation to preserve itself and its members; it has a right to do everything"
that it can "without injuring others." In Federalist 4, John Jay
advised that the American people ought to support steps that would "put and keep them in
such a situation as, instead of inviting war, will tend to repress and discourage it." And in
his Farewell Address, George Washington asserted that the United States should be "always
guided by an exalted justice and benevolence."
A preemptive nuclear strike justified on the flimsy basis of "gaps in U.S. intelligence"
hardly seems concordant with such military restraint and "exalted justice." And lest it be
thought these ideals were mere lofty notions, consider how, as American history proceeded, they
became enshrined in American diplomacy.
In 1837, Canadian rebels sailing aboard the Caroline fled to an island in the
Niagara River with the help of a few American citizens. British forces boarded their ship,
killed an American member of the crew, and then set the Caroline ablaze before forcing
it over Niagara Falls. Enraged, American and Canadian raiders destroyed a British ship. Several
attacks followed until the crisis was at last ended in 1842 by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty. In
the aftermath, the Caroline test was established, which stipulates that an attack made in
self-defense is justifiable only when, in the words of Daniel Webster, the necessity is
"instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation." This
principle remains the international standard, though some like Bolton think it's outdated.
With the Caroline test in mind, Bolton wrote while
arguing in favor of a preemptive strike against North Korea, "The case against preemption rests
on the misinterpretation of a standard that derives from prenuclear, pre-ballistic-missile
times." In other words, Bolton believes that we can no longer afford to wait for the situation
to be "instant" and "overwhelming," and makes an offense out of abstaining from immediate
preemptive action, regardless of the potential costs involved.
Relatedly, one of Bolton's most colorful jabs at President Obama involved likening him to
Æthelred the Unready, a medieval Anglo-Saxon king remembered for his tragic
indecisiveness. Yet given the costs of groundless preemption, indecisiveness is often a midwife
to careful contemplation and peace. Had Prime Minister Netanyahu or Obama been persuaded by
Bolton's retrospectively warrantless calls for preemption in Iran, tragedy would have
followed.
In that vein, it is Bolton who merits historical comparison: to Cato the Elder, a
conservative-yet-eccentric Roman statesman who, according to Plutarch, would often and
invariably call for the destruction of Carthage, even though the Carthaginian threat was
neither imminent nor apparent. Eventually, Cato's words wended their way into the ears of power
and hundreds of thousands of Carthaginians were pointlessly slaughtered. According to the
Greek historian Polybius, Scipio Aemilianus, the young Roman General who led the attack, at
seeing the carnage of a great people, "shed tears and wept openly."
In order that we never find ourselves standing alongside Scipio knee-deep in unjustly spilt
blood, Bolton should reconsider whether the flimsy merits of rash preemption truly outweigh the
durable wisdom of the Founding Fathers and the lessons of history.
Michael Shindler is an Advocate with Young Voices and a writer living in Washington,
D.C. Follow him @MichaelShindler .
During the 1969 Vietnam War draft lottery, Bolton drew number 185. (Draft numbers
corresponded to birth dates.) As a result of the Johnson and Nixon administrations' decisions
to rely largely on the draft rather than on the reserve forces, joining a Guard or Reserve
unit became a way to avoid service in the Vietnam War. Before graduating from Yale in 1970,
Bolton enlisted in the Maryland Army National Guard rather than wait to find out if his draft
number would be called. (The highest number called to military service was 195.) He saw
active duty for 18 weeks of training at Fort Polk, Louisiana, from July to November
1970.
After serving in the National Guard for four years, he served in the United States Army
Reserve until the end of his enlistment two years later.[1]
He wrote in his Yale 25th reunion book "I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast
Asian rice paddy. I considered the war in Vietnam already lost." In an interview, Bolton
discussed his comment in the reunion book, explaining that he decided to avoid service in
Vietnam because "by the time I was about to graduate in 1970, it was clear to me that
opponents of the Vietnam War had made it certain we could not prevail, and that I had no
great interest in going there to have Teddy Kennedy give it back to the people I might die to
take it away from."
Why is it that the US leads the world in production of chicken-hawks? Even these mangy
ex-colonial countries like the UK and France do not have as many chicken-hawks as we do.
Comparing Obama to Athelred is absurd. Athelred's problem was not that he was indecisive, but
rather that he refused to listen to advice from anyone (the moniker "Unready" actually meant
"Uncounseled" in Old English) and that he was extremely impulsive and deeply bigoted. Hence
he ordered a general massacre of the Danes in England. Luckily it was only carried out in a
limited region, unluckily the victims included the King of Denmark's sister and her children,
leading to an open blood feud war, and also cost Aethelred any support he might have had from
his wife's kinsman, the Duke of Normandy. If anyone is a good match for old Aethelred, it's
Donald Trump.
"... Given that a key function of that position is to ensure that the bureaucracy provides the relevant options and most accurate information to the president before major national security decisions, it is hard to think of anyone more ill-suited to that duty. Bolton's method of policy formation has been to try to bully any part of the bureaucracy that does not subscribe to his personal agenda, and to try to bully away any part of the truth that does not serve his objectives. ..."
"... The Senate is about to have an opportunity to weigh in on another highly important foreign policy position, that of secretary of state, for which President Trump has nominated Mike Pompeo. Senators ought to consider that nomination in tandem with the appointment of Bolton as national security adviser, even though the Senate formally has a role with only one of those appointments and not with the other. Senators should consider the two as a package deal. They should not vote to confirm Pompeo if they are uncomfortable with either part of the package. ..."
"... The main reason to approach the Pompeo nomination this way is that the nation currently has a president who, sad to say, needs restraint. He will need restraint all the more during the coming months as troubles of his own making increase the chance that he will lash out in destructive ways . ..."
"... But both Pompeo and Bolton are more likely to accentuate Trump's impulses than to restrain them. Bolton got his job because the sort of things he says on Fox are more what Donald Trump likes to hear than the briefings that H.R. McMaster gave him, which evidently were too long for Trump's taste or for his short attention span. ..."
"... Pompeo did not rise so quickly from being a relatively junior congressman functioning as a partisan attack dog to where he is now, on the verge of occupying Thomas Jefferson's chair, by telling Trump what he needs to hear rather than what he wants to hear. ..."
This week John Bolton assumes the job of national security adviser. Given that a key
function of that position is to ensure that the bureaucracy provides the relevant options and
most accurate information to the president before major national security decisions, it is hard
to think of anyone more ill-suited to that duty.
Bolton's method of policy formation has been to try to bully any part of the bureaucracy
that does not subscribe to his personal agenda, and to try to bully away any part of the truth
that does not serve his objectives. Bolton's objectives are characterized by never meeting
a war or prospective war he didn't like. He still avows that the Iraq War -- with all the costs
and chaos it has caused, from thousands of American deaths to the birth of the group that we
now know as ISIS -- was a good idea. That someone with this perspective has been entrusted with
the job Bolton now has is a glaring example of how there often is no accountability in
Washington for gross policy malpractice.
Appointments as national security adviser are not subject to Senate confirmation. If they
were, it would be appropriate for the Senate to react as it did the last time Bolton came
before that body as a nominee for a job that does require confirmation. In 2005 the Senate
turned down his nomination to be ambassador to the United Nations. The Senate review brought to
light some of the uglier aspects of Bolton's conduct in his previous job as an undersecretary
of state. President George W. Bush gave him a recess appointment to the U.N. job, but
fortunately that meant there was a time limit to the destruction Bolton could wreak in that
position.
The Senate is about to have an opportunity to weigh in on another highly important
foreign policy position, that of secretary of state, for which President Trump has nominated
Mike Pompeo. Senators ought to consider that nomination in tandem with the appointment of
Bolton as national security adviser, even though the Senate formally has a role with only one
of those appointments and not with the other. Senators should consider the two as a package
deal. They should not vote to confirm Pompeo if they are uncomfortable with either part of the
package.
The main reason to approach the Pompeo nomination this way is that the nation currently
has a president who, sad to say, needs restraint. He will need restraint all the more during
the coming months as troubles of his own making increase the chance that
he will lash out in destructive ways . The copious commentary during the fifteen
months of the Trump presidency about having "adults in the room" to restrain the worst urges of
an inexperienced and impulsive president speaks to an important truth. Whether adult
supervision of this sort succeeds or fails depends on the collective impact of all of the
president's senior subordinates. To the extent any one subordinate is especially influential in
this regard on foreign policy, it probably is the national security adviser who is best
positioned either to accentuate or to restrain Trump's impulses. Having Bolton in that job
makes the restraining ability of the secretary of state all the more important.
But both Pompeo and Bolton are more likely to accentuate Trump's impulses than to
restrain them. Bolton got his job because the sort of things he says on Fox are more what
Donald Trump likes to hear than the briefings that H.R. McMaster gave him, which evidently were
too long for Trump's taste or for his short attention span. P
Pompeo's winning of favor with Trump, during what reportedly has been lots of face time with
him at the White House during the past year, has a similar dynamic. Pompeo did not rise so
quickly from being a relatively junior congressman functioning as a partisan attack dog to
where he is now, on the verge of occupying Thomas Jefferson's chair, by telling Trump what he
needs to hear rather than what he wants to hear.
Senators hold up confirmation of nominees, and sometimes vote against them, for all kinds of
reasons unrelated to the resumé of the nominee. It would be proper for them to vote
against a nominee for secretary of state partly because of who the national security adviser
is, given that both of them are in service to an unstable president.
There are other reasons to consider Pompeo and Bolton in tandem. In several respects they
are two hazardous peas in a pod. On North Korea, Bolton's bellicose posture is matched by
Pompeo's statements about seeking ways to
"separate" Kim Jong Un from his nuclear weapons , suggesting a priority to regime change
over keeping a volatile situation on the Korean peninsula from blowing up. Both Pompeo and
Bolton, along with Trump, have sworn eternal hostility to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action (JCPOA), the multilateral agreement that closed all possible paths to an Iranian nuclear
weapon. Neither man bothers to explain how destruction of the agreement, which would free Iran
to produce as much fissile material as it wants and would end the intrusive international
inspections of the Iranian program, could possibly
"... North Korea's negotiating position has not really changed with the announcement. They have repeatedly said for years they are willing to agree to denuclearization of the Peninsula in return for security guarantees. I find the media trumpeting this as a new development rather vexing. Anyways, China has been putting the screws on them since about September/October (Apparently, they told Kim Jongun they know they can't overthrow the DPRK government, but they can get rid of him personally), which is also why there have not been any new nuclear tests. ..."
"... I think Yves has got it right: USA threatens PRC with tariffs, so PRC pressures NK to make concessions to the USA. i.e. Two big guys screwing the little guy. ..."
"... In the USA, imperialist machtpolitik is a thoroughly bipartisan affair. It doesn't matter how faithfully NK or PRC might fulfill obligations. Trump's successors, whoever they may be, will simply apply more pressure and demand more concessions. They won't stop until somebody else stops them. ..."
I believe Trump could negotiate a deal. But I also believe he could blow up the whole talk
before it even happens. He has shown that he'll bend quickly to neocon pressure, with
increased interest in foreign war (Bolton hiring) and the ramping up of hostilities by
bouncing Russians from the U.S. over the phony poisoning story in the UK.
I don't disagree with your comment, but not comfortable with the term "bend to". Trump
gets enamored with different people at different times, but he always is looking
down at them. They may get enough rope to scare the rest of us, but they are still on a
rope.
Bolton is horrible, but a lot of other horrible people have come and gone in this really
quick year.
Bolton is horrible but probably won't last long. Nobody at Trump's ear has, including his
own children.
Trump just announced that we're withdrawing from Syria. That's more than Obama ever
did.
Part of being a nationalist demagogue is that you're not as interested in foreign wars
unless they enrich the country. Not a single one of our wars does that. There's nothing
interesting in mercantilism, for instance, that we can't do at home (drill baby drill).
I'm not saying I agree with that view, I'm just saying that if he's a nationalist
demagogue, it only follows that he's not interested in, uh, "non-for-profit warmaking".
I am NO Trump fan or voter, but it does appear that he's the first one to apply sanctions
to those specific Chinese banks handling the trade with North Korea.
(Somewhat) OT, but it strikes me that the best way to look at Trump is through the lense
of what he is – the US version of Sylvio Berlusconi. A sleazy billionaire Oligarch with
no core principles and a fondness for Bunga Bunga parties.
Rather than as LITERALLY HITLER as per the verbiage of hashtag the resistance.
Thus, rather than as a crazed madman bent on "evil" at all times one wonders whether Mr.
Bunga Bunga would do a deal with Lil' Kim. Sure he would, assuming that the ruling military
Junta allows him to. It might be in the interest of the latter to de-escalate this particular
hotspot (as NK crisis/hype fatigue may set in) and simply push Iran as the next flashpoint to
hype.
Indeed! They even sound quite similar -- I recall in a speech that Berlusconi gave when he
was still the Italian president and the Italian left was screaming for his resignation,
Sylvio claimed such demands were making him uneasy, since if he was to go home, and he had 20
homes, it would be difficult for him to decide which house or mansion to go to!
It seems the bottom line for negotiations with North Korea have little to do with this
article which covers Trump's thoughts on nuclear proliferation between major powers that have
massive stockpiles.
North Korea is mainly interested in protecting itself from regime change and from becoming
a US outpost (as in target) butt up against China. It is hard to believe that Kim Jong-Un
would get any advantage whatsoever out of dismantling his nuclear arsenal, however small. One
assumes he is aware of Gaddafi in particular and US's track record on keeping it's promises
– particularly over the span of different administrations – in general.
The above comment assumes full disarmament as the minimum condition of any "negotiation"
since Trump has gone so far out of his way to make that clear.
Oh, and now see the lead story at the Financial Times, China uses economic muscle to bring
N Korea to negotiating table:
China virtually halted exports of petroleum products, coal and other key materials to
North Korea in the months leading to this week's unprecedented summit between Kim Jong Un,
the North Korean leader, and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
The export freeze -- revealed in official Chinese data and going much further than the
limits stipulated under UN sanctions -- shows the extent of Chinese pressure following the
ramping up of Pyongyang's nuclear testing programme. It also suggests that behind Mr Xi's
talk this week of a "profound revolutionary friendship" between the two nations, his
government has been playing hard ball with its neighbour.
I would normally agree but Kim Jong-Un was just summoned to China. Not even given a state
visit. The Chinese announced North Korea would denuclearlize:
North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un pledged his commitment to denuclearization and to meet
U.S. officials, China said on Wednesday after his meeting with President Xi Jinping, who
promised China would uphold friendship with its isolated neighbour.
China has heretofore pretended that it couldn't do anything about North Korea. It looks
like Trump's tariff threat extracted China jerking Kim Jong-Un's chain as a concession. I
don't see how Kim Jong-Un can defy China if China is serious about wanting North Korea to
denuclearlize. Maybe it will merely reduce its arsenal and stop threatening Hawaii (even
though its ability to deliver rockets that far is in doubt) and just stick to being able to
light up Seoul instead.
Agree. I wasn't aware of the details you mention above regarding the export freeze. (I
won't use Google and my normal 'trick' doesn't work to get around FT's paywall – and I
won't use the trial membership either). I'm hopeless.
Anyway, you make a very convincing case. I can only imagine that Kim Jong Un is one
miserable scared rat. My point about a "silk noose" below was perhaps on the mark.
Kim might agree on paper or through an insincere promise to denuclearize, but I don't see
a closed authoritarian regime like the North agreeing to an inspection regime that would
insure that such a pledge would be lived up to. Reduction, but build-up on the sly w/o
inspections.
China may be interested in a deal to the extent that it prevents a bloody war breaking out
that they'll probably expend manpower to help clean up and it insures the security of a North
Korean buffer that keeps American troops off their border; After all, they've got to keep the
powder dry for "reunification" with Taiwan.
I also don't believe that the US would agree to concessions, such as removing American
troops from the peninsula. the pentagon wouldn't like it, the hawks around Trumps wouldn't
like it, and I believe the SK leadership would not be too crazy about the potential
ramifications for their security with such an agreement.
But, can Trump (by extension, the US), make an agreement that can be relied on over its
term?
For any hope of NK trusting any deal with the US he would have to stand by the Iranian
deal. Then there's Bolton and the Neocon Will To War, for deeply pathological reasons which
by nature cannot be debated.
In this case, the mere possibility of a "deal" is possible, but only if there is a third
party to hold both of them to it.
That's the crazy thing about this. What possible inducement could Kim Jong-Un have gotten
to attend his own funeral? Why would anyone trust the US an inch?
I suppose if he can keep his own people in a suspended state of extreme propaganda, then
he might be vulnerable to his own medicine, but that seems at odds with his behavior so far
(such as the assassination of his uncle). If anything, he would be especially leery of
anything coming out of the US.
And then can he really be that psyched out by Bolton, Pompeo and Torture Lady so
that good cop Trump can hand him is own death certificate with a space for his signature?
Whatever happened during this China trip, the overarching theme must have been how to
manage the US. Here's one rough scenario:
NK 'disarms' to some definition, under the auspices of China, acquiring in return an
explicit Chinese security umbrella for the buffer it presents between them and SK. Nobody
really wants a unified Korea in any case. In return, the US vacates SK militarily, ever so
discretely and over time.
Done correctly, and with the finesse necessary for Trump, China is in a position to
extract all sorts of concessions from the US on other fronts as well. Nothing positive is
going to happen here without China, and they hold most of the cards. If nothing positive
happens, we have to consider the pressure that'd build on Trump to do something, anything,
and that probably being something rash. (Better a big disaster over there than a mammoth one
over here thinking).
"he can't go willy nilly and set nukes a-flying just because it struck him as a good idea
that day."
I mean sure. His "button" isn't literally connected to a missile somewhere, but he sure as
hell can ask that nukes be fired whenever and wherever he wants. You could argue that someone
in the chain of command would prevent that from happening, but that's more of a hope than a
guarantee. For a really good read on how this all works and the history of the nuclear
program I highly recommend https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788
With Bolton on board and seemingly everyone with half a brain, a little logic and the
ability to hold their tongue for more than about 5 seconds out, I highly doubt anything will
come of these negotiations. In fact, I'm more worried that the US will get steamrolled by
China and NK.
That isn't true. See the link I provided, which you clearly did not bother to read.
Various people can refuse his order as illegal. Former Secretary of State Jim Baker, in a
Financial Times, before Trump was elected, said the same thing. Bolton is the National
Security Adviser. He may have a lot of informal power by having direct access to the
President, but he does not tie in to the formal chain of command, either at the DoD or
State.
Oh I read it and I've read many other articles and a lot of non-fiction on the issue.
Again, I would call your position and the position of this article hopeful at best. Trump has
the football, he has the codes in his jacket pocket and everyone responsible for carrying out
the order to launch has been raised up through a military system that ensures no one
questions an order from their superior. Relying on various people to refuse his order as
illegal in this system is not a fail-safe I feel comfortable with. I do find it interesting
that you just assume I didn't read the article as if this one article is the end all be all
on the subject.
The article seems a bit confused about what it's trying to say. Stopping nuclear
proliferation has been a major policy priority of the US and other western governments since
the 1960s, and if I recall correctly it was one of Bolton's priorities when he was in Bush
the Lesser's administration. It's something in which all of the declared nuclear powers have
an interest, because the smaller the number of nuclear powers in the world, the greater the
difference between them and the rest. This is much more important than wild fantasies about
rogue attacks: if N Korea becomes a de facto nuclear power like India, Israel and Pakistan,
then all sorts of other countries might be tempted to have a go, starting with S Korea (which
has the capacity and has been caught cheating before). Whilst this risk is objectively small,
an end to the NK programme would make it even smaller. I suspect the deal will be that NK
denuclearizes and China guarantees its security: a non-nuclear NK will be even more of a
client state than it is now.
Nuclear competition among the superpowers is quite different and involves a whole set of
different issues.
Less warfare = more wall
But remember the last time Trump said something in Syria's favor? A chemical attack happened
in small village for no logical reason and the hawks immediately took to framing Assad. Trump
then backed off and took harder line on Assad, launching missiles into Syria.
So I'm inclined to think he wants a deal. But look out for screaming hawks immediately
trying to scuttle anything.
Perhaps 30 years ago, Trump was an international defense luminary, but I see little
evidence of the boasted emotional control and cool Trump claimed. He is unarguably a
successful grifter. Is that what it takes to make peace? What happens when the other guy
realizes he has been lied to by a congenital liar? Back to square 1.
In my take, the recent meeting between the heads of China and N Korea just Trumped any
leverage the US might have had in peace talks. Trump will be there only if a scapegoat is
needed. Both S. Korea and Japan have expressed doubts about our reliability as a defense
shield against powerful China – Japan and the Koreans' neighbor. What Little Rocketman
has likely achieved is diplomatically checkmating the US. Now Trump's tariff threats serve
only to push US allies in the region closer to China. Should that turn out to be the case,
the economic repercussions are as dangerous and unpredictable as nukes in the air or as Trump
himself. I sure hope I got this all wrong.
"no enduring principles" is a feature of politicians everywhere today. Their concern is to
represent the rich and their qualification is to present those biased arguments in a way that
beguiles the electorate into supposing its a good idea for them as well. Step Two is the "who
would have thought it?" response after the country catches on.
In former times the candidate for public office would assert his principles on the
hustings and the voters would remember what they knew of him before voting. Sure, there were
ambitious unreliable people who were willing to exchange their reputations for office but
they were few. We should get back to those days.
We allowed our merchants and spooks to drive USSR to the precipice without any thoughts
about the nukes they had. It appeared then that warheads supposedly in Ukraine were missing.
We will likely discover what happened to them in due course. It is possible that surveillance
of communications is the main reason they are not a thread for the time being but that does
not mean they have dropped out of existence.
Thank you NC for introducing an issue that should concern economists as much as everyone
else.
North Korea's negotiating position has not really changed with the announcement. They have
repeatedly said for years they are willing to agree to denuclearization of the Peninsula in
return for security guarantees. I find the media trumpeting this as a new development rather
vexing. Anyways, China has been putting the screws on them since about September/October
(Apparently, they told Kim Jongun they know they can't overthrow the DPRK government, but
they can get rid of him personally), which is also why there have not been any new nuclear
tests.
Don't forget the United States has itself promised to denuclearize, under the NPT.
It would certainly bring me great pleasure if Trump of all people were to bring about some
great positive change in regards to the Forever War with North Korea. Imagine all the whining
liberals if Trump, unlike Obama, actually did something worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize.
I think Yves has got it right: USA threatens PRC with tariffs, so PRC pressures NK to make
concessions to the USA. i.e. Two big guys screwing the little guy.
PRC and NK leaders might think that all they have to do is get through a short patch of
bad weather until 2020. If so, they are badly kidding themselves.
In the USA, imperialist machtpolitik is a thoroughly bipartisan affair. It doesn't
matter how faithfully NK or PRC might fulfill obligations. Trump's successors, whoever they
may be, will simply apply more pressure and demand more concessions. They won't stop until
somebody else stops them.
Sebastian Rotella reports
on how many of the people that worked with Bolton remember his tendency to distort intelligence
and ignore facts that contradicted his assumptions:
"Anyone who is so cavalier not just with intelligence, but with facts, and so
ideologically driven, is unfit to be national security adviser," said Robert Hutchings, who
dealt extensively with Bolton as head of the National Intelligence Council, a high-level
agency that synthesizes analysis from across the intelligence community to produce strategic
assessments for policymakers. "He's impervious to information that goes against his
preconceived ideological views." [bold mine-DL]
That assessment lines up with what I understood about Bolton, and it points to one of the
biggest problems with his appointment. I wrote this shortly
before Trump announced that he was choosing Bolton:
The real danger is that he is such an ideologue that he would keep information from the
president that contradicts his views and prevent Trump from getting the best available
advice. Trump is poorly informed to begin with, and having Bolton as his main adviser on
matters of national security and foreign policy would make sure that he stays that way.
Trump is especially susceptible to being manipulated by his advisers into endorsing the
policies they want because he knows so little and responds so favorably to flattery, and he has
shown that he is already more than willing to select a more aggressive option when he is told
that it is the "presidential" thing to do. We should expect that Bolton will feed Trump bad or
incomplete information, present aggressive options in the most favorable light while dismissing
alternatives, and praise Trump's leadership to get him to go along with the hard-line policies
Bolton wants. Bolton will run a very distorted policy process and he will be the opposite of an
honest broker. That won't serve Trump well, and it will be terrible for our foreign policy.
"... It should also be noted that Bolton is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations , an organization whose members have influenced the state of geopolitics for the last few generations. Bolton was also a member of the neo-conservative, warhawk think tank, "Project for the New American Century," which was enthusiastically promoting the lie about Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction. ..."
"... In 2000, PNAC released a report titled Rebuilding America's Defenses which outlined a strategy of regime change in Iraq and beyond. Under a section titled "Creating Tomorrow's Dominant Force," the think tank wrote the following controversial line: ..."
"... "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor." ..."
This article was written by Derrick Broze and originally published at
Activist Post
The latest neo-conservative warmonger to join the Trump Administration does not bode well for the people of Iran.
On Thursday Donald Trump announced that John Bolton, a former official in George W. Bush's administration and former ambassador
to the UN, would be his new National Security Advisor. Bolton is a warhawk who called for the invasion of Iraq in search of non-existent
weapons of mass destruction and has for years called for the invasion of Iran.
Middle East Eye collected
a number of quotes from Bolton over the years that indicate his plans for Iran and other nations viewed as a threat to national
security of the U.S. government. And by that I mean the people who secretly wield control of corporate and state power.
In 2009, Bolton said that regime change is "ultimately, the only thing that will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons." As recent
as 2015 Bolton call for a U.S./Israel joint bombing campaign."Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran's
opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran."
Meanwhile, Senator Rand Paul questioned the appointment. "It concerns me that Trump would put someone in charge who is unhinged
as far as believing in absolute and total intervention,"
Paul stated. Bolton's appointment
was also criticized by Trita Parsi, leader of the National Iranian American Council.
Further, it seems that Bolton and former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani have already promised the regime change would be happening
within the next year. "Just eight months ago, at a Paris gathering, Bolton told members of the Iranian exile group, known as the
Mujahedeen Khalq, MEK, or People's Mujahedeen, that the Trump administration should embrace their goal of immediate regime change
in Iran and recognize their group as a 'viable' alternative,"
The Intercept
reports.
"The behavior and the objectives of the regime are not going to change and, therefore, the only solution is to change the regime
itself," newly appointed National Security Advisor John Bolton told the crowd. The Intercept also noted that Iranian expatriate
journalist Bahman Kalbasi reported that Bolton ended his talk by promising, "And that's why, before 2019, we here will celebrate
in Tehran!"
At a recent celebration of the Persian New Year, Rudy Giuliani promised the audience that "if anything, John Bolton has become
more determined that there needs to be regime change in Iran, that the nuclear agreement needs to be burned, and that you need to
be in charge of that country." Disturbingly, Giuliani reportedly led the crowd in a chant of "regime change!".
It should also be noted that Bolton is a member
of the Council on Foreign Relations , an organization whose members have influenced the state of geopolitics for the last few
generations. Bolton was also a member of the neo-conservative, warhawk think tank, "Project for the New American Century," which
was enthusiastically promoting the lie about Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction.
In 2000, PNAC released a report titled
Rebuilding America's Defenses which outlined a strategy of regime change in Iraq and beyond. Under a section titled "Creating
Tomorrow's Dominant Force," the think tank wrote the following controversial line:
"Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some
catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."
Less than a year later, 10 of the 18 men who signed the paper became members of the Bush administration. The attacks of 9/11 would
come soon after and the neocons had their "catastrophic and catalyzing event" and an excuse to invade Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria,
and soon possibly, Iran.
The men included Bush's Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of
State Richard Armitage, John Bolton, Zalmay Khalilzad, the White House liaison to the Iraqi opposition; William Kristol, editor of
the conservative Weekly Standard magazine, and Richard Perle, chairman of the advisory Defense Science Board.
In addition to the well-known Pearl Harbor quote, the paper goes on to describe the eventual outcome of the initial regime change.
"Thus, this report advocates a two-stage process of change – transition and transformation – over the coming decades." If the last
15 years of war, violence, and death in the Middle East have been the "transition" phase, John Bolton and Trump may be preparing
to shift gears and move into the "transformation" phase – beginning with the invasion of Iran. However, based on PNAC's track record,
they might be looking for a new catastrophic event to generate support for intervention in Iran.
Humans are primates. Thus, they are stupid, ignorant, malicious and fearful - mostly the
latter. Pretty much explains everything in human history.
I subscribe to the concept of survival at any cost. But in a rational society that would
entail being aware of the long-term consequences. This, however, is not a rational
society.
Off topic - or maybe not given the topic of human heartlessness - here we have John
Bolton:
Apparently he told the M.E.K. cult that the US would end Iran's leadership before the 40
year anniversary which is February 11, 2019.
That of course is absurd unless somehow the US manages to decapitate the Iranian
leadership with an airstrike or nuclear attack. What actually will happen if the US attacks
Iran is that Iran will fight for the next several decades until the US backs off. There is no
chance short of nuclear bombardment for the US to "defeat" Iran. The US couldn't even
"defeat" Iraq in less than five years and hasn't defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan in 17
years. Iran will be a far harder nut to crack than either of those.
John Bolton Tapped for NSA: What Does It Mean for US-Russia Relations?
John Bolton, a Yale-educated lawyer known as a
foreign policy hawk , has been appointed National Security Adviser (NSA), in a major
reshuffle of President Trump's administration. He officially takes office on April 9. No Senate
confirmation is required. Welcome back, Mr. Straight Talker!
Mr. Bolton has a long history of government service, including in the positions of
Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and ambassador to the UN, the organization he once
described as "no such thing" and wants to be defunded . John Bolton
scorns international institutions and
does not believe that engaging much with the world is in keeping with US interests.
This soon-to-be NSA is an experienced lawyer and "think tanker," as well as a foreign-policy
pundit who has written a multitude of books and articles. He's a deft and ready speaker whose
gift of gab can win over an audience at any time. The National Security Advisor-designate even
considered entering the presidential races in 2012 and 2016.
In his frequent television commentaries
, Mr. Bolton has
always advocated tough approaches and never missed an opportunity to support using force
rather than wasting time on fruitless diplomacy. For instance, he has advocated for a military
option to solve the problem with North Korea and for boosting cooperation with Taiwan in order
to irk China. He takes a very hard line on Iran. "
To stop Iran's bomb, bomb Iran ," sums up his position.
Mr. Bolton believes the JCPOA was a blunder. He
wants the US to push Iran out of Syria and topple President Assad's Tehran-friendly government.
With his appointment, the chances of the US certifying the Iran nuclear deal appear to be
somewhere between zero and zilch. Mr. Bolton has always been pro-Israel and backed the idea of
a unilateral Israeli strike against Iran to knock out the facilities there related to its
nuclear program.
The late Jesse Helms, a well-known hawk, once claimed Mr. Bolton would
be the right man "to stand with at Armageddon."
The newest appointee has championed the idea of raising tariffs to unleash trade wars.
With these two very hawkish Republicans -- John Bolton and
Mike Pompeo -- Donald Trump will be under strong pressure to adopt a get-tough approach to
all major issues. Gina Haspel, another hawk, will have frequent access to Donald Trump in her
role as the newly appointed CIA director. The spirit of Barry Goldwater lives on.
John Bolton has always been critical of Moscow and it is almost unanimously believed that
his appointment does not augur well for US-Russia relations.
In response to President Putin's speech in which he unveiled the existence of his new super
weapons, Bolton emphasized the need for "a strategic response ." He
has
called on NATO to offer a strong reaction to what is known as the Scripal case, expressing
his conviction that the POTUS was considering such a response. The latest choice for National
Security Advisor
endorses
the idea of providing Ukraine with lethal weapons and wants the West to take a much tougher
stance on Russia. John Bolton will certainly advocate for expediting Georgia's and Ukraine's
membership in the North Atlantic alliance, as well as granting those nations the status of
Major Non–NATO ally of the US.
He strongly criticized President Obama's "reset policy." Yet despite all that, he never
launched personal attacks against Vladimir Putin. He always seemed to genuinely enjoy his
visits to Russia, including press conferences and visits to think tanks. Despite his tough
talk, he has always been amicable and ready to communicate. He has a long list of personal
acquaintances, including many in senior government positions and academia. John Bolton worked
with Sergey Kiriyenko, Russia's First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration,
back when the latter headed Russia's State Commission on Chemical Disarmament.
Mr. Bolton is an experienced negotiator on strategic arms-control issues. John Bolton was a
strong advocate of the US withdrawal from the 1972 BM Treaty. He took part in the talks over
the 2002 Strategic Offensive
Reductions Treaty (SORT) that was in effect until the New START went into force. John
Bolton sees the New START as a unilateral
disarmament agreement that is at odds with US interests. President Trump
has also decried that treaty.
Being a hawk does not make him a hopeless prospect. He views the interests of his nation in
his own way, but he wants America to lead, not perish in a war it can't win. His experience in
strategic arms talks is invaluable. Mr. Bolton has a good understanding of security-related
issues.
In 1980, Ronald Reagan was a Russia hawk, a tough guy no one could make a deal with.
Remember his " joke "
about dropping bombs on the USSR in five minutes? Or his "Evil Empire" speech? During his
second term, the landmark INF Treaty was
signed and the friendly environment of the US-USSR summits were proof that that bilateral
relationship had clearly evolved beyond its Cold War roots.
The former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev believes that
"He has already entered history as a man who was instrumental in bringing about the end of the
Cold War." President Reagan ended the Cold War and made it possible to ease the nuclear
tensions in the 1990s.
Agreements will remain elusive on many issues and negotiations on some key matters may even
break down, but dialog on arms control will probably continue because it meets vital US
interests and Mr. Bolton knows that well.
In the end, the decisions are made by the president, and while advisers may have influence,
they only advise. President Trump has many people around him to help him see issues from
different viewpoints.
"... made a fairly desultory expulsion of a diplomat or two or three, but the United States' act is a kind of declaration of war, all the more surprising given that according to the deep state, and the liberal confluence in the United States, President Trump is Russia's man ..."
"... "precursor to a very sharp deterioration of relations" ..."
"... deep state opponents" ..."
"... "If it were me who was making the decision, I certainly wouldn't proceed on the assumption that being soft will in any way satiate the ravenous beasts that are baying for Russia's blood at this point in time," ..."
"... "As far as I can see there is no investigation, ..."
"... "The verdict was declared before the investigation began and I think there's no investigation because the results of any serious scientific analytical investigation would show that the allegations against Russia are baseless." ..."
"... "I don't believe that Russia is responsible for this act. And the good news is that most of the British public tend to agree," ..."
British politician, broadcaster, and writer George Galloway has slammed Donald Trump's decision to expel 60 Russian diplomats
and close the Russian consulate in Seattle. Galloway regards it as tantamount to a "declaration of war." Galloway contrasted the
US' actions with those of EU member states. Those EU countries who rushed to follow the lead of Britain and the US in response to
the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal are simply acting as "vassal states," doing what they are told.
European states have " made a fairly desultory expulsion of a diplomat or two or three, but the United States' act is a kind
of declaration of war, all the more surprising given that according to the deep state, and the liberal confluence in the United States,
President Trump is Russia's man ," Galloway told RT.
The former British MP said the decision to leave just 40 Russian diplomats to do their jobs in the US was either a "precursor
to a very sharp deterioration of relations" -- or alternatively a "charade " designed to make Trump's " deep state
opponents" lay off him over not being tough enough on Russia.
Galloway said Russia should not assume that being soft in response to Trump's action will have any desirable effect.
"If it were me who was making the decision, I certainly wouldn't proceed on the assumption that being soft will in any way
satiate the ravenous beasts that are baying for Russia's blood at this point in time," he said.
According to Galloway, the UK has not conducted a serious and unbiased investigation into the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter.
"As far as I can see there is no investigation, " he said. "The verdict was declared before the investigation began
and I think there's no investigation because the results of any serious scientific analytical investigation would show that the allegations
against Russia are baseless."
Galloway said there are still many questions which have been left unanswered in the Skripal case.
"I don't believe that Russia is responsible for this act. And the good news is that most of the British public tend to agree,"
he said.
Trump Expels 60 Russian Diplomats as World Slides Towards War Tyler Durden (
Zerohedge ) 9 hours ago | 4,602
314 President Trump has reportedly ordered the expulsion of 60 Russians from the United States on Monday, including 12 people
identified as Russian intelligence officers who have been stationed at the United Nations in New York, in response to Russia's alleged
poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain.
As The New
York Times reports, the expulsion order, announced by administration officials, also closes the Russian consulate in Seattle.
The Russians and their families have seven days to leave the United States, according to officials.
The expulsions are the toughest action taken against the Kremlin by President Trump, who has been criticized for not being
firm enough with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
In a call with reporters, senior White House officials said that the move was to root out Russians actively engaging in intelligence
operations against the country, and to show that the United States would stand with NATO allies.
The officials said that the closure of the consulate in Seattle was ordered because of its proximity to a U.S. naval base.
The expulsion of 60 diplomats is the most sweeping since the Reagan administration ordered 55 diplomats out of the country in
1986.
As The Washington Post reports, a senior administration official, who was only authorized to discuss the actions on the condition
of anonymity, commented:
"This was a reckless attempt by the government to murder a British citizens and his daughter on British soil with a nerve agent,"
"It cannot go unanswered."
Deep State 1 - 0 Trump.
"To the Russian government, we say, when you attack our friend you will face serious consequences," said a senior administration
official.
"As we have continually stressed to Moscow, the door to dialogue is open." But, this official continued, Russia must "cease
its recklessly aggressive behavior."
Last week EU leaders declared in a statement that it was "highly likely" there was "no plausible alternative explanation" other
than Russia being to blame. Today, EU Council President Tusk announces that 14 EU nations will expel Russian diplomats...
John Bolton is in all likelihood a Zionist asset due to the Israelis having some very
powerful kompromat on him.
Numerous sources allege that Bolton forced his wife (now ex-wife) into group sex at a
swinger's club. Did someone get it on film, tape, or some other recording media?
Given the extreme fervor of Bolton's Zionism, the answer seems obvious.
Bolton, to me, is worse than McMaster, is decidedly a neocon, and may well end up being the
intellectual impetus behind a shiny new war in the ME or the Korean peninsula.
Although Trump the candidate offered a sketch of his FP views, including his well known
declaration about the catastrophic Iraq war, today one can itemize where the US military is
currently robustly engaged.
If Bolton can dial back his hawkishness with respect to Russia, not mention--too
much--Iraq, he and POTUS may likely find alignment about which will be the first regime to be
targeted by our standoff capabilities. imao
I agree, people shouldn't imply, they should say straight out what they think.
So allow me.
It appears that the uber Israeli Sheldon Adelson who was the largest campaign donor to
Trump and Nikki Haley and also employs John Bolton is dictating US policy to Trump.
If it trots and barks like an Adelson, then its a Adelson poddle.
Don't forget that Bolton was the one who immediately blamed the Hariri assassination on
Syria.
Immediately assigning blame is one of the signs of a false-flag operation. If Mossad killed
Hariri, Bolton would know about it. He would also know if Mossad whacked the Skripals.
The political dividing line in America may not be Left vs. Right or Democrats vs. Republicans
or anti-war vs. pro-war but Russiagate believers vs. realist who know it is all a false-flag.
Thierry Meyssan believes that Rex Tillerson fell for the
Skripal hoax and that is why Trump fired him. I said something similar
here on MoA
This is about American Imperialism and MIC. Neocons are just well-laid MIC lobbyists. Some
like Bolton are pretty talented guys. Some like Max Boot are simply stupid.
Notable quotes:
"... What sort of political system allows someone with his views to serve in high office, where he helps talk the country into a disastrous war, never expresses a moment's regret for his errors, continues to advocate for more of the same for the next decade, and then gets a second chance to make the same mistakes again? [bold mine-DL] ..."
"... So by all means worry. But the real problem isn't Bolton -- it's a system that permits people like him to screw up and move up again and again. ..."
The conclusion of Stephen Walt's column on
John Bolton is exactly right:
Don't get me wrong: I'm not trying to "normalize" this appointment or suggest that it
shouldn't concern you. Rather, I'm suggesting that if you are worried about Bolton, you
should ask yourself the following question: What sort of political system allows someone
with his views to serve in high office, where he helps talk the country into a disastrous
war, never expresses a moment's regret for his errors, continues to advocate for more of the
same for the next decade, and then gets a second chance to make the same mistakes again?
[bold mine-DL]
So by all means worry. But the real problem isn't Bolton -- it's a system that permits
people like him to screw up and move up again and again.
There is a strong bias in our foreign policy debates in favor of "action," no matter how
stupid or destructive that action proves to be. That is one reason why reflexive supporters of
an activist foreign policy will never have to face the consequences of the policies they
support. Bolton has thrived as an advocate of hard-line policies precisely because he fills the
assigned role of the fanatical warmonger, and there is always a demand for someone to fill that
role. His fanaticism doesn't discredit him, because it is eminently useful to his somewhat less
fanatical colleagues. That is how he can hang around long enough until there is a president
ignorant enough to think that he is qualified to be a top adviser.
Bolton will also have reliable supporters in the conservative movement that will make
excuses for the inexcusable. National Review recently published an article by
David French in defense of Bolton whose conclusion was that we should "give a hawk a chance."
Besides being evasive and dishonest about just how fanatical Bolton is, the article was an
effort to pretend that Iraq war supporters should be given another chance to wreck U.S. foreign
policy again. It may be true that Bolton's views are "in the mainstream of conservative
foreign-policy thought," but that is an indictment of the so-called "mainstream" that is being
represented. Bolton has been wrong about every major foreign policy issue of the last twenty
years. If that doesn't disqualify you from holding a high-ranking government position, what
does?
Hawks have been given a chance to run our foreign policy every day for decades on end, and
they have failed numerous times at exorbitant cost. Generic hawks don't deserve a second chance
after the last sixteen-plus years of failure and disaster, and fanatical hard-liners like
Bolton never deserved a first chance.
French asserts that Bolton is "not extreme," but that raises the obvious question: compared
to what?Bolton has publicly, repeatedly urged the U.S. government to launch illegal preventive
wars against Iran and North Korea, and that just scratches the surface of his fanaticism. That
strikes me as rather extreme, and that is why so many people are disturbed by the Bolton
appointment. If he isn't "extreme" even by contemporary movement conservative standards, who
is? How psychopathic would one need to be to be considered extreme in French's eyes? If
movement conservatives can't see why Bolton is an unacceptable and outrageous choice for
National Security Advisor, they are so far gone that there is nothing to be done for them and
no point in listening to anything they have to say.
I have to laugh at the people trying to portray Bonkers Bolton as somehow less insane than he
is.
Yesterday in my Youtube recommended list was at least half a dozen channels with headlines
expressing horror at the appointment of Bolton as National Security Adviser. Clearly there
has been a backlash in quite a few quarters that this appointment is simply lunatic - of a
lunatic.
So naturally today we see people trying to play down the absolute stark insanity of Trump
appointing this clown.
The only thing we can hope for is that before Bolton does too much damage that Trump gets
tired of him, as he has everyone else in his administration, and fires him. But given Trump's
history, all we can expect then is that he appoints Nikki Haley to the same post.
Russia, ever patient, issued a statement saying they're ready to work with Bolton.
Privately they must be wondering why they didn't develop Novichok so they could use it on
him.
Meanwhile the Democrats are trotting out all the hot women they claim had affairs with
Trump. Hello, Democrats! Anyone remember Bill Clinton? At least Trump has a wife good-looking
enough to maybe keep him home at night.
The more I think about it the more convinced I am that the real danger from Bolton is that,
in Trumpian fashion, he will return to those good old days when the Cold War was ending and the
US went hog wild in Central America.
Like a bruised and beaten bully who's just had his come-uppance in the pub who, returning home,
angry and impotent beats up the wife and kids and threatens the neighbours, Uncle Sam is
returning, his tail between his legs, from the middle east to his home turf.
Look out Cuba! Look out Venezuela!
The Contras are back in business. Ecuador-sorry Julian- looks about to crumble. Honduras,
Paraguay, Haiti, Brazil and Argentina have all been rescued from their own people. Things are
beginning to look like the 80s again except that this time there are hardly any 'communists'
left to kill. Military dictatorships are back, death squads are bigger than ever.
And, best of all, from the Bolton/Trump viewpoint, the dangers of running into Russian or
Chinese backed resistance is negligible, the money to be made is infinite. One Continent from
north pole to south, run by a mafia based in Washington.
Its what Making America Great Again means-a return to the Monroe Doctrine and letting up on the
mad dream of global hegemony. There's plenty of poor suckers for everyone to exploit a billion
or so.
There's only one caveat-Israel. Israel undoubtedly wants a war with Iran, just as it wants to
smash up Syria (or get the US to do it for them) but I just can't see the many local interested
parties allowing it. Perhaps moving the Embassy to Jerusalem and getting the Guatemalans,
Hondurans and Solomon Islanders to do the same, is all that they are going to get from Trump- a
gesture without meaning. A con from the grifter himself.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may have become accustomed to taking flak from
Democratic (and even some G.O.P.) legislators when she testifies on Capitol Hill, but some of
the most ferocious criticism she has recently faced comes from an unlikely source: John Bolton,
the fiery conservative who served under Rice as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. In his
new memoir, Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and
Abroad, Bolton -- known to be close to Vice President Dick Cheney -- outlines some of the
internal foreign policy battles in the Administration of George W. Bush, and paints President
Bush himself as betraying his own gut instinct.
Bolton's book covers his childhood as the son of a Baltimore fireman, his days at Yale Law
School and his service in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. But it's
the brickbats he reserves for Rice and fellow diplomats and civil servants in the current
Administration that grab the most attention. First as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control
and then as U.N. ambassador, Bolton emerges as an outspoken unilateralist and an opponent of
treaties and international institutions ranging from the Kyoto climate convention to the
International Court of Criminal Justice. And he has been a vocal opponent, both inside and
outside the Administration, of negotiations with North Korea and Iran over their nuclear
programs.
Bolton's outspoken policy views have long been familiar, but what's most interesting about
his new book is the sheer enthusiasm with which he has adopted the mantle of the most vocal
neoconservative critic of the Bush Administration's foreign policy, only months after resigning
from the Bush team when the Senate for the second time refused to confirm his nomination to the
U.N. post.
Bolton accuses the Administration of laxity in dealing with a nuclear-armed North Korea and
an Iran intent on obtaining the bomb, not to mention its efforts to arrange a Middle East peace
conference. But implicit in Bolton's bomb-throwing is a startling admission: that his
never-ending battle against "pragmatists" and those less ideologically committed inside the
most conservative administration in decades has been lost. In an interview with TIME, Bolton
said: "Secretary Condoleezza Rice is the dominant voice on national security and there is no
one running even a close second; her ascendancy is undisputed."
So where does that leave Bolton allies like Cheney and his hard-line advisers, and the few
remaining neocons scattered through the national security bureaucracy? "You will never know
what the VP's exact interaction with the President is," says Bolton, "But the VP is still
closer to the President's basic instincts than anyone else." Bolton's explanation for the shift
in White House policy: "The President may be distracted by the Iraq war or other events... but
there's no doubt that the President has moved heartbreakingly away from his own deepest
impulses on the three principal issues of controversy (North Korea, Iran and Middle East
peace); what is happening now is contrary to his basic instincts."
On Iran, Bolton says former Secretary of State Colin Powell was too intent on mollifying
U.S. allies like France, Britain and Germany. This caused Powell to offer Iran too many
"carrots" -- trade and commercial inducements -- if Tehran would rein in its pursuit of atomic
materials. To a large degree Rice, in Bolton's view, perpetuated this strategy even though, he
believes, there is almost no chance that Iran will give up its nuclear ambitions. As a result,
he says, the U.S. has wasted time on "four and half years of failed diplomacy" indulging Iran
with unnecessarily accommodationist negotiations, a period Iran has used to advance its nuclear
acquisitions and research.
On North Korea, Bolton cites (unconfirmed) reports of the Hermit Kingdom's collaboration
with Syria on a secret nuclear facility as evidence that the denuclearization deal between the
U.S. and North Korea is not working. Talks with North Korea continue, he notes, and the U.S.
looks set to invite Syria to its Middle East peace conference later this month. Uncomfortable
issues are not being raised, Bolton charges, for fear of disrupting negotiations that he sees
as pointless to begin with.
So what are the prospects for a return to the muscular unilateralism that Bolton favors?
"There's a possibility that events in the external world will validate our position and give
the President a means to return to his gut," the former U.N. ambassador told TIME. "But until
and unless external events prove that current policies are on the wrong track, there is no
countervailing or obvious force inside this administration that is going to produce a course
correction. "
John Bolton, US President Donald Trump's incoming hawkish
national security adviser, is reportedly planning a massive dismissal of staff at the National
Security Council, aiming to remove dozens of White House officials.
Sources aware of the changes told Foreign Policy that Bolton is preparing to "clean house"
and remove nearly all of the political appointees brought in by his predecessor.
"Bolton can and will clean house," one former White House official told Foreign Policy. One
other source said, "He is going to remove almost all the political [appointees] McMaster
brought in."
Another former official said that any National Security Council officials appointed under
former President Obama "should start packing their shit."
Trump and Bolton see eye to eye on their hawkish foreign policy, especially when it comes to
North Korea and Iran, and are equally averse to multilateral diplomacy, whether that means the
UN or working with the European Union.
A history of bellicosity
Bolton, an outspoken advocate of military action who served in the administration of former
US president George W. Bush, has called for action against Iran and North Korea.
While serving under Secretary of State Colin Powell, Bolton was also both a cheerleader
and early architect of the Iraq war.
In a February
op-ed for The Wall Street Journal , Bolton made the "legal case for striking
North Korea first" to stop what he deems an "imminent threat" from the nation's nuclear
program.
Bolton is also strongly opposed to the Iran nuclear deal and has been obsessed for many
years with going to war against the Islamic Republic.
"He is unabashed about this," said Mark Groombridge, a former top adviser to Bolton at the
State Department and United Nations pointing to his views on preemptive warfare.
"He has no problems with the doctrine of preemption and feels the greatest threat that the
United States faces is the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction."
The Washington Post reports that at the White House, Bolton is likely to reinforce Trump's
"America First" view of the world. Both Trump and Bolton share a long-standing animosity toward
any treaties, international laws or alliances that limit America's freedom to act on the world
stage.
"... When the relevant analyst in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) refused to agree with Bolton's language, the undersecretary summoned the analyst and scolded him in a red-faced, finger-waving rage. ..."
"... The director of INR at the time, Carl Ford, told the congressional committee considering Bolton's nomination that he had never before seen such abuse of a subordinate ..."
> The most egregious recent instances of arm twisting arose in George W. Bush's
administration but did not involve Iraq. The twister was Undersecretary of State for Arms
Control and International Security John Bolton, who pressured intelligence officers to
endorse his views of other rogue states, especially Syria and Cuba. Bolton wrote his own
public statements on the issues and then tried to get intelligence officers to endorse
them.
According to what later came to light when Bolton was nominated to become ambassador to
the United Nations, the biggest altercation involved Bolton's statements about Cuba's
allegedly pursuing a biological weapons program. When the relevant analyst in the State
Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) refused to agree with Bolton's
language, the undersecretary summoned the analyst and scolded him in a red-faced,
finger-waving rage.
The director of INR at the time, Carl Ford, told the congressional committee
considering Bolton's nomination that he had never before seen such abuse of a
subordinate -- and this comment came from someone who described himself as a
conservative Republican who supported the Bush administration's policies -- an orientation I
can verify, having testified alongside him in later appearances on Capitol Hill.
> When Bolton's angry tirade failed to get the INR analyst to cave, the undersecretary
demanded that the analyst be removed. Ford refused. Bolton attempted similar pressure on the
national intelligence officer for Latin America, who also inconveniently did not endorse
Bolton's views on Cuba. Bolton came across the river one day to our National Intelligence
Council offices and demanded to the council's acting chairman that my Latin America colleague
be removed.
"... "With the appointments of Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, @realDonaldTrump is successfully lining up his war cabinet. Bolton played a key role in politicizing the intel that misled us into the Iraq War. We cannot let this extreme war hawk blunder us into another terrible conflict," ..."
"... "John Bolton supports proactively bombing Iran & striking North Korea with nuclear weapons first without provocation. Appointing him to be Nat Sec Advisor is a grave danger to the American people & a clear message from @realDonaldTrump that he is gearing up for military conflict," ..."
"... "If you're always wrong on security, you're the wrong person to be National Security Advisor," ..."
"... "drumbeats of war." ..."
"... "absolutely the wrong person to be national security advisor now," ..."
"... "John Bolton was part of the effort to mislead the US into the disastrous Iraq war and has supported military action against North Korea and Iran. He was too extreme to be confirmed as UN ambassador in 2005 and is absolutely the wrong person to be national security advisor now," ..."
"... "John Bolton is a dangerous radical. President Trump's decision to make Bolton his National Security Advisor is deeply disturbing," ..."
"... "John Bolton has spent his entire career pushing fringe conspiracy theories, espousing radical ideas about multilateralism, and undermining key alliances across the world." ..."
"... Like this story? Share it with a friend! ..."
Donald Trump's cabinet reshuffles have fueled concerns, not least after the latest
appointment of hawkish John Bolton as national security adviser, just days after installing a
former CIA chief as the new secretary of state. On Thursday afternoon Donald Trump decided to
sack Gen. HR McMaster from his national security adviser post, replacing him with John Bolton.
The former US envoy to the United Nations will assume office on April 9 – just days after
Mike Pompeo is set to replace Rex Tillerson as the new secretary of state.
The newly formed doublet has caused shockwaves among the Democrats, who have alleged that
Trump seems to be preparing for war. Democratic Senator from Massachusetts Ed Markey warned
that Trump is creating a "war cabinet," warning of "grave danger" following
Bolton's appointment.
John Bolton supports proactively bombing Iran and conducting a first strike on North Korea
without provocation. Appointing him to be Nat Sec Advisor is a grave danger to the American
people and a clear message from @realDonaldTrump that he is
gearing up for military conflict.
"With the appointments of Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, @realDonaldTrump is successfully
lining up his war cabinet. Bolton played a key role in politicizing the intel that misled us
into the Iraq War. We cannot let this extreme war hawk blunder us into another terrible
conflict," he tweeted.
"John Bolton supports proactively bombing Iran & striking North Korea with nuclear
weapons first without provocation. Appointing him to be Nat Sec Advisor is a grave danger to
the American people & a clear message from @realDonaldTrump that he is gearing up for
military conflict," Senator Markey added.
John Bolton:
Wanted war w Cuba, arguing wrongly that Cuba had WMD
Wanted war w Iraq, arguing – wrong again – that Iraq had WMD
Believes – wrongly – that Islamic law is taking over America
If you're always wrong on security, you're the wrong person to be National Security
Advisor
-- Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) March 22,
2018
The choice of Bolton as the national security adviser has also been questioned by Senator
Jeff Merkley from Oregon, who has pointed out many flaws with the new appointee's policies.
"If you're always wrong on security, you're the wrong person to be National Security
Advisor," Merkley tweeted.
This is dangerous news for the country and the world. John Bolton was easily one of the
most extreme, pro-war members of the Bush Administration.
Imagine what havoc he could wreak whispering in Donald Trump's ear...I hear the drumbeats
of war. https://t.co/A6ZIyORAM7
Rep. Barbara Jean Lee of California's 13th congressional district was also disappointed by
Trump's choice, claiming she is hearing the "drumbeats of war."
The President is surrounding himself with combative lawyers. He's replacing Tillerson and
McMaster with Pompeo and Bolton.
It's almost like the President is preparing to go to war in the legal and foreign
relations sense...
Fears expressed by some Capitol Hill members and the public seem justified. The notoriously
hawkish former United Nations ambassador was a chief architect of the George W. Bush
administration's justification for the war in Iraq in 2003, that was based on false accusations
that Baghdad possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Trump's choice of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Mike Pompeo as the new
secretary of state also made many in Washington uneasy. Unlike his predecessor, Rex Tillerson,
Pompeo seems better aligned with Trump's confrontational foreign policy, namely on the Iran
nuclear deal, on North Korea, and on the shift of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Besides politicians, the American public also expressed concern about the feasibility of a
looming armed conflict.
John Bolton was part of the effort to mislead the US into the disastrous Iraq war and has
supported military action against North Korea and Iran. He was too extreme to be confirmed as
UN ambassador in 2005 and is absolutely the wrong person to be national security advisor
now.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders called Bolton "absolutely the wrong person to be national
security advisor now," recalling how he deceived the public about the Iraq war.
"John Bolton was part of the effort to mislead the US into the disastrous Iraq war and
has supported military action against North Korea and Iran. He was too extreme to be confirmed
as UN ambassador in 2005 and is absolutely the wrong person to be national security advisor
now," Sanders tweeted.
"John Bolton is a dangerous radical. President Trump's decision to make Bolton his
National Security Advisor is deeply disturbing," Congressman Brendan F. Boyle (PA-13) said
in a written statement. "John Bolton has spent his entire career pushing fringe conspiracy
theories, espousing radical ideas about multilateralism, and undermining key alliances across
the world."
So on the 15th anniversary of the Iraq debacle, a neocon who cheered it on is rewarded
with a national security post where he can cue up the attack on Iran that was always the
ultimate prize for Israel's US stooges?
Guess we'll be out marching again, just like last time. Bolton's walrus mustache is the
21st century version of Adolph H's toothbrush mustache. Down with the Persian Untermenschen!
/sarc
Of course while working for Cheney Bolton was pretty confident about getting Dubya to
start a war with Iran and that didn't happen. Here's a backgrounder that suggests that Bolton
is tight with both Adelson and the Mossad so one way of looking at this has Russia fading as
a target and Iran falling under the bulls eye. Trump's recent friendly phone call with Putin
was contrary to instructions from his NSC and therefore presumably McMaster.
Looked at optimistically it could be out of the frying pan and into a smaller frying pan
(for us if not for Iran but that remains to be seen).
Of course looked at pessimistically it's terrible news but if the public and Congress are
afraid of Trump gratuitously starting a new war then perhaps they should take away his power
to do so. Seems the Constitution did have something to say about that.
Tol'ja so these miserable wretches simply cannot die resurrection a promise any time a
misfit administration takes power all that audition time on FoxNews paid off Trump stripping
the cable channels of right-wing bloviators "best people for the jawb", don't you know.
The worst thing about the appointment of anti-Iran hawk John Bolton is that the Clinton
wing of the Democratic Party 100% supports war with Iran. In fact Hillary was attacking Trump
from the war hawk right on this issue in 2016 (of course alienating key voters as she did
so). So, just like in 2002 with Iraq, the two-party mainstream and all the mainstream media
will be overwhelmed by pro-war voices, and the arguments in favor of peace and basic sanity
will be ostracized. Note in the RT piece below that the only Democrats expressing real,
concrete concern/revulsion are the usual, sheepdog leftie suspects.
'Trump lining up war cabinet'? Bolton's elevation to NSC adviser fuels alarm
@66 Say what you will about Bolton he is a shrewd political animal. Here it looks as though
he is trying to appear sane and reasonable....perhaps even likeable.
"... Kelly and, only later on Mattis will likely be the next to get fired. That will eliminate the last people with access to Trump who have some marginal sanity on war and peace issues. Trump will be completely isolated and easy to manipulate. ..."
"... Fortunately the media in the US has had it's credibility with just about everyone, including anti-Trump people, shredded and I don't think they'll be able to prepare people for a war like they did before the 2016 election, people are finally awake or have a sense of agency. ..."
"... If Mattis will be out at some point along with Kelly, thus destroying the tempering influence of these generals, who hated Iraq as much as Vietnam, the next question is how Trump's apparent judgment on Iraq as disastrous will play out with a Bolton crowd (Bolton one of the first signatories of PNAC in 1998) on what to do when the North Koreans say fuck you loudly and clearly. ..."
"... Trump has surrounded himself with real men who want to go to Tehran. Syria, not so much anymore. Besides, Ukraine 3.0 will be great until the Russians show up. The CIA's Dark Prince is already there. ..."
"... global oligarchy live in harmony while concocting massive Orwellian propaganda of great enemies that must be defeated at all cost, cost of your freedom and your purse. ..."
"... Face it b, Bolton is just a impotent loud barking dog to scare ordinary people for his temporary owner , a flaccid clown of global oligarchy. ..."
...He is also an exceptionally avid bureaucrat who knows how
to get the things he wants done. That quality is what makes him truly dangerous. Bolton is
known for sweet-talking to his superiors, being ruthless against competitors and for kicking
down on everyone below him.
Soon Netanyahoo will have the cabinet in place in DC he always dreamed of. A hawkish Pompeo
at State, a
real torturer as head of the CIA and now Bolton are already sufficient to protect Israel's
further expansion. Kelly and,
only later on Mattis will likely be the next to get fired. That will eliminate the last
people with access to Trump who have some marginal sanity on war and peace issues. Trump will
be completely isolated and easy to manipulate.
Bolton has a hammer and he will find lots of nails. Like
Hillary Clinton he will want to fight with Iran, North Korea, Russia, China and others in no
particular order. He will want to destroy Syria. He is cozy with the Kurds and the
Iranian terror cult MEK. He addressed (vid) their congress eight years in a row
and made lots of money for saying things like this :
"[B]efore 2019, we here will celebrate in Tehran."
Bolton has little concern for U.S. allies except, maybe, for Israel.
His first
priority will be to prevent the announced summit between Trump and Kim Jong-un. He will
want more sanctions on North Korea and may argue for a 'preventive' strike against it. He does
not care that such a strike will certainly kill tens of thousands of Koreans in the north and
south and several thousand U.S. soldiers and civilians.
New sanctions on North Korea are problematic as Trump has just
put additional tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. imports of Chinese goods. (The Chinese
response is smart: Tariffs on U.S. agricultural goods from states that Trump won.) Why should
China and Russia (and South Korea) help the U.S. to strangulate North Korea when they
themselves are under fire? To prevent a U.S. strike that may come anyway the very next day?
The Europeans who were part of the nuclear agreement with Iran have to answer
a similar question . Why offer Trump a 'compromise' over the JCPOA when the chances are now
high that he will destroy it anyway?
What will Bolton do on Syria? Will he try to find a new agreement with Erdogan and drag
Turkey away from endorsing Russia's polices in Syria? If he manages to do so, Syria's north
will become a shared Turkish-U.S. entity and will be lost for a long time. New attacks on the
Syrian government, from the north, south and east, where the U.S. re-trains ISIS into a new
'moderate rebel' army, would then open the next phase of the war.
So far the mean time of survival for Trump appointees is some six to eight months. Let us
hope that John Bolton's appointment will - in the end - lower that average.
Posted by b on March 23, 2018 at 11:50 AM | Permalink
These appointments are weird. Ultimately Trump doesn't seem to have an appetite for
large-scale war. What does seem like a dangerous possibility is if Bolton can et al can
provoke a situation that traps Trump in his responses, maybe with a tight timeframe to
respond and leads to a conflict starting that way.
Fortunately the media in the US has had it's credibility with just about everyone,
including anti-Trump people, shredded and I don't think they'll be able to prepare people for
a war like they did before the 2016 election, people are finally awake or have a sense of
agency.
Ultimately it doesn't seem like Trump's election has changed much in terms of foreign
policy among prospective successors. So it seems like eventually they will get their war with
Iran during Trump's term or afterwards. It's utterly incredible how implacable the neo-cons
are despite constant exposure over the last 15-20 years and with at least one President being
elected on the basis of disgust with them. (Obama, could maybe include Trump too)
Kim Jong-un has no good reason for a "summit" with Trump. Indeed, there is no reason for him
or his country to have anything to do with the USA or its catamites.
The best path for Korea is for North and South to plan reunification, as early as
possible. They might as well retain the North's nuclear weapons, just in case anyone cuts up
rough. If the Americans try to interfere, the nuclear weapons are there. Any American attempt
to escalate, right on China's and Russia's front door, would meet with an extremely frigid
response from them.
We must always remember that there was never any "North" or "South" Korea until President
Truman's bureaucrats conjured them up out of thin air - apparently with the aid of a school
atlas - to avoid the hideous tragedy of the whole of Korea "going communist". South Korea is
an occupied nation, and should take immediate steps to kick the American occupiers out. By
force if necessary.
Optimism on Bolton as relatively harmless in yesterday's thread is given an interesting
perspective by this piece (from today), adding to b's pessimism above:
It seems the apparently contradictory move by Trump to appoint Bolton after getting rid of
McMaster, who had a similar view to Bolton (North Korea had to be attacked because it is too
late for diplomacy, their rocket programs too advanced), could be part of a scheme for a "big
victory" effort by Trump who is, according to this view, amidst an artful deal-making moment
of allowing faux-optimism re South-North Korean negotiations.
Bolton calls this "diplomatic shock and awe":
Bolton said Trump had short-circuited North Korea's plan of obtaining the capability to
strike the United States with a nuclear weapon and then stretching out negotiations for
months that could distract the American government before making an official announcement
about achieving the capability. Bolton envisioned the meeting between Trump and Kim as an
opportunity to deliver a threat of military action:
"I think this session between the two leaders could well be a fairly brief session
where Trump says, 'Tell me you have begun total denuclearization, because we're not going to
have protracted negotiations, you can tell me right now or we'll start thinking of something
else.' "
Trump, who only a few weeks back condemned (again) the Iraq War as disastrous, may be
thinking Bolton is just the man to nail down a quivering retreat of the North Koreans into
denuclearizing or else, now that they've had a nice taste of how sweet it could be in talking
with Moon and the South.
If Mattis will be out at some point along with Kelly, thus destroying the tempering
influence of these generals, who hated Iraq as much as Vietnam, the next question is how
Trump's apparent judgment on Iraq as disastrous will play out with a Bolton crowd (Bolton one
of the first signatories of PNAC in 1998) on what to do when the North Koreans say fuck you
loudly and clearly.
This analysis also points out how disturbed Asia is over this appointment, and indicates
that despite his views McMaster had been working with South Korea on the problem, and now has
been jerked. This sounds like what happened in Iraq also, jerking out people who were
building relationships and replacing them with hardnose "bring 'em on" thinking from the
brilliant leadership in that war.
p has surrounded himself with real men who want to go to Tehran. Syria, not so
much anymore. Besides, Ukraine 3.0 will be great until the Russians show up. The CIA's Dark
Prince is already there.
Trump has surrounded himself with real men who want to go to Tehran. Syria, not so much
anymore. Besides, Ukraine 3.0 will be great until the Russians show up. The CIA's Dark Prince
is already there.
I understand that Syrian situation can drive people insane but unfortunately it was and is
interpreted wrongly as a preparation to nuke war, it is not. It is same old same old thing,
it is just more exposed by internet.
US military is in shambles what they showed in Iraq and Syria last year is all they got,
nothing more but a capability of a chicken hawk and D.C. is run by chicken hawks whose
business is intimidation not war about which they have no idea and they know that US military
can only take on shoeless peasants with dilapitated AK 47 and call it even like in
Afghanistan which was utter defeat no one even here want to talk about.
Like Roman Empire before US emporium is an empty shell, and its myth is maintained by US
INSTALLED ELITES to control their own populations.
Recent military posturing on all sides of a global country club dinner table is just
nothing but bail out of MIC and its wall street backers .
Open your even globalization has been accomplished and global oligarchy live in
harmony while concocting massive Orwellian propaganda of great enemies that must be defeated
at all cost, cost of your freedom and your purse.
Face it b, Bolton is just a impotent loud barking dog to scare ordinary people for his
temporary owner , a flaccid clown of global oligarchy.
Show must go on. 160 years after collapse of Roman Empire Roman circuses and theater
continued like Nothing happened.
"Bolton said Trump had short-circuited North Korea's plan of obtaining the capability to
strike the United States with a nuclear weapon and then stretching out negotiations for
months that could distract the American government before making an official announcement
about achieving the capability."
--as, Bolton believes the North Koreans are playing around with negotiations only to delay
toward capability, that Trump knows this, and all of it's a game toward resurrection of the
hostilities.
This attitude suggests a foregone conclusion that the Trump-Kim meeting will fail, which
could set up the next step at (from Bolton): "You see, it's hopeless, we just have to attack
and take out this country, as we did with Iraq and are trying to do with Syria."
Israel has the Epstein tapes which show Trump having sex with underage girls, Saudi Arabia
has billions of dollars to bribe Trump with arms deals, both of these immoral nations want
Iran eliminated as an threat to their agendas. Israel and Saudi Arabia demand that Trump try
and neutralize Iran before Trump is removed from office which will happen before his first
term is up if this nation has any sense of self preservation. Trump is replacing those
opposed to a war against Iran with those who support it. Trump is seriously compromised by
foreign agendas.
1. Iran nuclear deal is dead, EU poodles will fall in line (but not entirely) with
sanctions against Iran. I'm curious how Iran will respond, IMHO will restart all centrifuges
and raise enrichment level? I still think its unlikely Iran would go for the nukes as
ultimate deterrent.
2. US will be more involved in Syria. We can most definitely expect more false flag CW
attacks and "retaliation" missiles. The big question mark if Russia will live up to its
promise to retaliate on launch sites or US planes.
3. There will be no overt war against Iran, Pompeo/Bolton or not, US simply cannot win it.
Covert - most definitely. More sabotage, assassinations, sanctions, etc.
It will be hard to do Libya 3.0 as well, but USrael might try anyway. Arm kurds and
baluchis radicals, activate MEK network, it wont be anywhere as bad as in Syria, but some
damage would be done. Thats the most what they can do.
Bolton is a fruitcake. Imo Trump only hired him to expose his nuttiness and fire him. When he
does, the World will breathe a sigh of relief and Trump's popularity will improve.
Bolton's Achilles Heel is that he doesn't do low-profile and talks too much.
@9 sid.. thanks.. i get that... i am more inclined to view bolton like @8 kalen.. it really
does seem that way to me and if so, suggests trump is still in control and happy to have
these bozos talk the talk, while knowing they are not able to walk the walk.. trump would
throw a real monkey wrench in the spanner if he was to engage in the talks and come away with
a positive resolution.. it would be a a nightmare for the military industrial complex and neo
cons.. i still think he is capable of this...
@11 harry.. i hope you are wrong, but it is completely conceivable and tends to be the
usa/israels pattern when confronted with a loss..
@ 12 When you're powerless, give the opposition what they want and hope they choke on it.
Trump is being underestimated. Dunford, Mattis, Pompeo and Kelly lined up
behind Trump against Tillerson and the White Helmets in Ghouta.
"Trump will be completely isolated and easy to manipulate."
This is nonsense. And you know it B. But you still fancy your idea about a
non-interventionistic Trump, and now, by the time this belief is definitely shattered, you
try a reasoning dangerously near to 'wenn das der Führer wüsste'.
This discussion suggests why Mattis has been successful with a naïve blowhard
president, including the following interesting comment:
John Bolton's arrival in April as the president's new national security adviser will
give Mattis a more ardent and skillful adversary at the National Security Council. Mattis
outranked McMaster in military terms and always considered him his junior, even though Mattis
is retired. He likely won't view Bolton that way, and Bolton prizes his ability to corral the
bureaucracy for his purposes.
We're looking at an upcoming contest Mattis vs. Bolton on such matters as wars with Iran,
North Korea, and whoever.
Glad to see all the optimism here on how harmless Bolton is but would like a little more
substance versus the automatic dismissals.
I don't see the financial thread in all of this and I seriously believe that is #1 on Trumps
mind. He would love for his legacy to be the POTUS that turned around the global economic
collapse and opened the door big business everywhere.
That is his history wrt foreign relations and he could care less for the "blow shit up"
mentality. Not saying that he can't be talked into it, just saying he would prefer the
headline "Trump opens up the world for more US business". I honestly think that he believes
that a trade war (business by other means) leads to US becoming a Mfg powerhouse again. Those
around him might convince him that blowing shit up will have the same outcome.
Banking/finance learned a long time ago that you are better off keeping your customers
around to continue borrowing than imprisoning or kill them off. The world is a market place
and Trump wants to "make deals-not war" as long as America gets the better part of the
deal.
Only other thing that makes since is what CM @ 10 proposes, that Trump is compromised.
Kalen @8 you must have followed the Bolton divorce case.
Iran doesn't need nuclear weapons it just needs a treaty with Russia and China. It might be
of assistance to the dimwitted in Washington if the treaty specifically stated that Iran is
under a nuclear umbrella.
We ought to acknowledge that, as the camarilla of generals surrounding Trump turns into a
junta of bullshitters and blowhards, the dictatorship in DC has never been anything more than
an alliance between billionaires, bullshitters and the American Gestapo.
@20 Trump may be all about deals but he's having a terrible effect on the stock markets. If a
trade war with China wasn't bad enough now they have Bolton to worry about.
What you mean about Bolt-man is he'll be safe in his office, while YOUR father, mother, son,
uncle, brother, sister or other family member dies for HIS idea of how the world should be.
"We will fight fight "till the last drop of.....your blood!" The "inside the Beltway"
gangsters sicken me.
@ 10 Charles,
In New-York Trump's been known as The FRONT GOY even before the Atlantic city heist. Without
Kompromat tapes they can bury him six million different ways before sunday...
A day before Bolton got the job, still a very interesting read as usual, up to the end,
because Nothing can go wrigth in DC those days, in fact nothing can be done.
The Trump meeting with KJU, if it comes off, will give an indication of where Trump is
headed. Much showtime shock and awe and hyperbole leading up to his suddenly agreeing to the
meeting which caught all the US political animals on both sides of the fence by surprise.
Haley constantly yapping like an annoying little dog has achieved what? Haley seems be just
another prop in the shock and awe show.
At the same time, Trump could miscalculate and stumble into major war, or he may be actually
planning a war. Always room for both pessimism and optimism with Trump, depending on the day.
I rather agree with Kalen. Trump is genuinely a blowhard - loud mouth and little action.
Bolton is an unpleasant warmonger, though he didn't get much through before. He was never
confirmed by the Senate as ambassador to the UN. Since then he's had various sidelined
positions as thinktank fellow.
My impression of Trump is that he is too lazy to get the US into a major war. A major war
would be a lot of work, and, whatever the advice from the help, I don't think he'd go for it.
Especially he wouldn't like months or years in a nuclear bunker. He couldn't dandle young
thighs at Mar-a-Lago. That would be a major argument.
An important issue with Trump is that he is unable to keep staff. He must be running out
of potential candidates. That's why Bolton.
re: "libertarian hawk" is an oxymoron . .Bolton is not a libertarian
Libertarianism (from Latin: libertas, meaning "freedom") is a collection of political
philosophies and movements that uphold liberty as a core principle. There are various
interpretations of what libertarianism means to various people, such as the freedom to do as
one pleases.
Bolton is a libertarian in a national sense. His liberty is national liberty. He is
anti-globalist and unilateralist, believing that the country's values should never be
superseded by international agreements and treaties. This thinking coincides with Trump's
position declared during the campaign. "We will no longer surrender this country or its
people to the false song of globalism," Trump said in his defining foreign policy speech as a
candidate in the spring of 2016. "The nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness
and harmony. I am skeptical of international unions that tie us up and bring America
down."
Following from this concept of national libertarianism, Bolton goes further to the ready and
unilateral use of armed force to advance foreign policy, without bilateral or multilateral
agreement. He's a hawk, but that's not unusual for Americans in government.
The planet isn't going to survive much longer with Americans and the Tribe infesting it.
Fumigation is in order. Pack the Americans and the antisemite semites into an ICBM and send
them flying into the heart of the sun. A solution as good as any other.
@ 27 and 20: thanks Charles re link to the Alastair Crooke article which reflects Jef's
earlier comment: that is, Trump would likely say: me for war? hell no I'm a peace lover but
I'll drive the good bargain including war threat as needed in my "art of making a deal"(hence
tools to this end such as Pompeo and Bolton). Crooke makes a good point that Tillerson was
too much a conventional diplomat; Trump likes tough, unpredictable guys like Mattis to model
himself after.
But all this is in the fundamentals of the same megalomaniacal type thinking that
drove/drives PNAC and smart-ass know-it-all-ism of the Iraq Invasion and continuation of this
mindset (see Bremer) after "mission accomplished."
This mind-set at base is the problem. I call it megalomania, others might call it hubris
on steroids, or daydreams of the psychopath. For me it's difficult to pull Trump out of this
mindset, because he's essentially the same. At the same time HIS version of it clashes with
State Department Egomania--possibly toward doing some good at times (as with changing the
course of US action in Syria last year; as with low-key response to the Skripal nonsense at
this time) but nonetheless presenting the possibility of a new set of tripwires a la invasion
of Iraq 2003, in terms of North Korea-Iraq.
It seems apparent at this time that Trump is clueless that for North Korea to denuclearize
that would mean a quid pro quo of US forces leaving South Korea--which will never be
acceptable to the neocons or Trump.
I wonder if there are people in the military thinking about resigning before WW3? There is
isn't even a believable narrative put forward in bombing Damascus nor Tehran except for
murder, destruction and conquest, there is literally zero self defensive aspect. I wonder how
special forces troops in Syria who are about to attack the Syrian army and Syrian people on
the side if HTS, Al Qaeda, IS, Nouri al Zinki, FSA feel about their mission; many must know
they are basically committing treason.
Bolton may or may not be a blowhard but the malignant idiocy that billows forth from his
mouth is frightening in its combination of willful ignorance and unrestrained rage. He is the
new National Insecurity Advisor--that would be his more accurate title.
From Off Guardian:
"...as of today, it appears that long battle for Jobar and its neighboring suburbs is finally
over after an agreement was put in place with the primary militant groups there.
"According to a military report from Damascus, the Syrian Army and Faylaq Al-Rahman have
agreed to peace terms in four East Ghouta suburbs, with the latter agreeing to leave to
Idlib.
"Based on the agreement, Faylaq Al-Rahman will surrender all of their weapons, except for
their small arms; they will release all Syrian Army prisoners from their jails; they will
inform the government of all explosives they placed around the suburbs of Zamalka, Jobar,
'Ayn Tarma, and Arbin; and agree to exit these suburbs on Saturday.
"The militants are now scheduled to leave these four East Ghouta suburbs by noon
tomorrow..."
It is evident that US policy in Syria is failing. The original plan was to divide Syria into
weak independent cantons, much as the French wanted in the 1920s. The French didn't succeed.
It would be surprising of the US did.
The only parts which remain, are the jihadis in Idlib, and the Kurds in Jazira. Two
elements which are opposed to one another.
Supposing that the US wants to revive the war in Syria, as the Neocons do, what are they
going to do? Decapitation of the regime in Damascus was a way of getting the Jihadis into
power (you have to wonder about US support for jihadis). Unfortunately, the Russians put
troops into Damascus a few weeks ago to prevent that. Otherwise it's a bit of a nothing. The
Kurds can stay in Jazira, Nobody's going to stop them.
Great analysis - as usual. The thing missing is that this guy is a rabid zionist and the
White House is now a governorate of the AN orthodox American province of Israel.
One of the most discouraging aspects of the musical chairs being played among the members of
the White House inner circle is that every change reflects an inexorable move to the right in
foreign policy, which means that the interventionists are back without anyone at the White
House level remaining to say "no." President Donald Trump, for all his international experience
as a businessman, is a novice at the step-by-step process required in diplomacy and in the
development of a coherent foreign policy, so he is inevitably being directed by individuals who
have long American global leadership by force if necessary.
The resurgence of the hawks is facilitated by Donald Trump's own inclinations. He likes to
see himself as a man of action and a leader, which inclines him to be impulsive, some might
even say reckless. He is convinced that he can enter into negotiations with North Korean leader
Kim Jong-un with virtually no preparations and make a deal that will somehow end the crisis
over that nation's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, for example. In so doing, he
is being encouraged by his National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and his Pentagon chief James
Mattis, who believe that the United States can somehow prevail in a preemptive war with the
Koreans if that should become necessary. The enormous collateral damage to South Korea and even
Japan is something that Washington planners somehow seem to miss in their calculations.
The recent shifts in the cabinet have Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State. A leading hawk, he
was first in his class of 1986 at the United States Military Academy but found himself as a
junior officer with no real war to fight. He spent six years in uniform before resigning, never
having seen combat, making war an abstraction for him. He went to Harvard Law and then into
politics where he became a Tea Party congressman, eventually becoming a leader of that caucus
when it stopped being Libertarian and lurched rightwards. He has since marketed himself as a
fearless soldier in the war against terrorism and rogue states, in which category he includes
both Iran and Russia.
Pompeo was not popular at the CIA because he enforced a uniformity of thinking that was
anathema for intelligence professionals dedicated to collecting solid information and using it
to produce sound analysis of developments worldwide. Pompeo, an ardent supporter of Israel and
one of the government's leading Iran haters, has been regularly threatening Iran while at the
Agency and will no doubt find plenty of support at State from Assistant Secretary of State for
the Near East David Satterfield, a former
top adviser of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Pompeo has proven himself more than willing to manipulate intelligence produce the result he
desires. Last year, he declassified and then cherry picked
documents recovered from Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan that suggested that
al-Qaeda had ties with Iran. The move was coordinated with simultaneous White House steps to
prepare Congress and the public for a withdrawal from the Iran nuclear arms agreement. The
documents were initially released to a journal produced by the neocon Foundation for Defense of
Democracies, where Pompeo has a number of times spoken, to guarantee wide exposure in all the
right places.
Pompeo's arrival might only be the first of several other high-level moves by the White
House. Like the rumors that preceded the firing of Secretary of State Tillerson two weeks ago,
there have been recurrent suggestions that McMaster will be the next to go as he reportedly is
too moderate for the president and has also been accused of being
anti-Israeli , the kiss of death in Washington. Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton has been
a frequent visitor at the White House and it is believed that he is the preferred candidate to
fill the position. He is an extreme hawk, closely tied to the Israel Lobby, who would push hard
for war against Iran and also for a hardline position in Syria, one that could lead to direct
confrontation with the Syrian Armed Forces and possibly the Russians.
Bolton, who
has been described by a former George W. Bush official as "the most dangerous man we had
during the entire eight years," will undoubtedly have a problem in getting confirmed by
Congress. He was rejected as U.N. Ambassador, requiring Bush to make a recess appointment which did not need
Congressional approval.
"... President Trump was said to complain that Tillerson disagreed with him and McMaster talked too much. Bolton seems likely to combine both of those traits in one pugnacious, mustachioed package. ..."
"... Bolton may find that in this job, he's the midlevel munchkin. Remember, the national security adviser is supposed to be the coordinator, conciliator, and honest broker among Cabinet officials, managing a process by which all get a fair say and the president makes well-informed decisions. Outgoing National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster reportedly lost favor with Defense Secretary Mattis and Chief of Staff John Kelly for failing to defer to them, and for being too emotional . ..."
John Bolton has been one of liberals' top bogeymen on national security for more than a decade now. He seems to relish the
role, going out of his way to argue that the Iraq War wasn't really a failure, calling for U.S.-led regime change in Iran and
preventive war against North Korea, and writing the foreword for a
book
that proclaimed President Obama to be a secret Muslim. He is a profoundly partisan creature, having started a
super-PAC whose largest donor was leading Trump benefactor Rebekah Mercer and whose provider of analytics was Cambridge
Analytica, the firm alleged to have improperly used Facebook data to make voter profiles, which it sold to the Trump and
Brexit campaigns, among others.
Recently Bolton's statements have grown more extreme, alarming centrist and conservative national security professionals along
with his longtime liberal foes. He seemed to
say
that the United States could attack North Korea without the agreement of our South Korean allies, who would face the
highest risk of retaliation and casualties; just two months ago he
called for
a regime change effort in Iran that would allow the U.S. to open a new embassy there by 2019, the 40th
anniversary of the Iranian Revolution and the taking of Americans hostage in Tehran. His
hostility toward Islam
points toward a set of extreme policies that could easily have the effect of abridging American
Muslims' rights at home and alienating America's Muslim allies abroad.
As worrying as these policies are, it's worth taking a step back and thinking not about Bolton, but about his new boss, Donald
Trump. Trump reportedly considered Bolton for a Cabinet post early on, but then
soured
on him, finding his mustache unprofessional. His choice of Bolton to lead the National Security Council reinforces
several trends: right now, this administration is all about making Trump's opponents uncomfortable and angry. Internal
coherence and policy effectiveness are not a primary or even secondary consideration. And anyone would be a fool to imagine
that, because Bolton pleases Trump today, he will continue to do so tomorrow.
Yes, Bolton has taken strong stances against the policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin (though he has also been
quoted
praising Russian "democracy" as recently as 2013). That's nothing new: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, incoming
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and outgoing National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster have called for greater pushback on
Russia as well. But there's every reason to think that, rather than a well-oiled war machine, what we'll get from Bolton's
National Security Council is scheming and discord – which could be even more dangerous.
President Trump was said to complain that Tillerson disagreed with him and McMaster talked too much. Bolton seems likely
to combine both of those traits in one pugnacious, mustachioed package.
Their disagreements are real – Bolton has
famously pooh-poohed the kind of summit diplomacy with North Korea that Trump is now committed to. While Trump famously backed
away from his support for the 2002 invasion of Iraq, courting the GOP isolationist base, Bolton continues to argue that the
invasion worked, and seldom hears of a war he would not participate in. Trump
attempted
to block transgender people from serving in the military, but Bolton has declined to take part in the right's
LGBT-bashing, famously hiring gay staff and
calling for
the end of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
That's all substance. What really seems likely to take Bolton down is his style, which is legendary – and not in a good way.
His colleagues from the George W. Bush administration responded to Trump's
announcement
with
comments like
"the obvious question is whether John Bolton has the temperament and the judgment for the job" – not exactly
a ringing endorsement. One former co-worker
described
Bolton as a "kiss up, kick down kind of guy," and he was notorious in past administrations for conniving and
sneaking around officials who disagreed with him, both traits that Trump seems likely to enjoy until he doesn't. This is a
man who can't refrain from
telling Tucker Carlson
that his analysis is "simpleminded" – while he's a guest on Carlson's show. Turns out it's not true
that he threw a stapler at a contractor – it was a
tape dispenser.
When Bolton was caught attempting to cook intelligence to suggest that Cuba had a biological weapons
program, he bullied the analyst who had dared push back, calling him a "
midlevel
munchkin
." How long until Trump tires of the drama – or of being eclipsed?
Bolton may find that in this job, he's the midlevel munchkin. Remember, the national security adviser is supposed to be
the coordinator, conciliator, and honest broker among Cabinet officials, managing a process by which all get a fair say and
the president makes well-informed decisions. Outgoing National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster reportedly lost favor with
Defense Secretary Mattis and Chief of Staff John Kelly for failing to defer to them, and for being
too emotional
.
Love Bolton or hate him, no one imagines he will be a self-effacing figure, and no one hires him to run a no-drama process.
It's also hard to imagine that many of the high-quality professionals McMaster brought into the National Security Council
staff will choose to stay. McMaster repeatedly had to fight for his team within the Trump administration, but Bolton seems
unlikely to follow that pattern, or to inspire the kind of loyalty that drew well-regarded policy wonks to work for McMaster,
regardless their views of Trump.
So even if you like the policies Bolton espouses, it's hard to imagine a smooth process implementing them. That seems likely
to leave us with Muslim ban-level incompetence, extreme bellicosity, and several very loud, competing voices – with
Twitter feeds
– on the most sensitive issues of war and weapons of mass destruction.
WASHINGTON -- Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the battle-tested Army officer tapped
as President Trump's national security adviser last year to stabilize a turbulent foreign
policy operation, will resign and be replaced by John R. Bolton, a hard-line former United
States ambassador to the United Nations, White House officials said Thursday.
General McMaster will retire from the military, the officials said. He has been discussing
his departure with President Trump for several weeks, they said, but decided to speed up his
departure, in part because questions about his status were casting a shadow over his
conversations with foreign officials.
The officials also said that Mr. Trump wanted to fill out his national security team before
his meeting with North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un. He
replaced Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson with the C.I.A. director, Mike Pompeo, last
week.
Officials emphasized that General McMaster's departure was a mutual decision and amicable,
with none of the recrimination that marked Mr. Tillerson's exit. They said it was not related
to a leak on Tuesday of
briefing materials for Mr. Trump's phone call with President Vladimir V. Putin of
Russia.
In the materials, Mr. Trump was advised not to congratulate Mr. Putin on his re-election,
which the president went ahead and did during the call.
Mr. Bolton, who will take office April 9, has met regularly with Mr. Trump to discuss
foreign policy, and was on a list of candidates for national security adviser. He was in the
West Wing with Mr. Trump to discuss the job on Thursday.
Another chickenhawk in Trump administration. Sad...
Notable quotes:
"... Bolton's high-profile advocacy of war with Iran is well known. What is not at all well known is that, when he was under secretary of state for arms control and international security, he executed a complex and devious strategy aimed at creating the justification for a U.S. attack on Iran. Bolton sought to convict the Islamic Republic in the court of international public opinion of having a covert nuclear weapons program using a combination of diplomatic pressure, crude propaganda, and fabricated evidence. ..."
"... Despite the fact that Bolton was technically under the supervision of Secretary of State Colin Powell, his actual boss in devising and carrying out that strategy was Vice President Dick Cheney. Bolton was also the administration's main point of contact with the Israeli government, and with Cheney's backing, he was able to flout normal State Department rules by taking a series of trips to Israel in 2003 and 2004 without having the required clearance from the State Department's Bureau for Near Eastern Affairs. ..."
"... During multiple trips to Israel, Bolton had unannounced meetings, including with the head of Mossad, Meir Dagan, without the usual reporting cable to the secretary of state and other relevant offices. Judging from that report on an early Bolton visit, those meetings clearly dealt with a joint strategy on how to bring about political conditions for an eventual U.S. strike against Iran. ..."
"... Unfortunately, John Bolton is not just your typical neocon pathological liar and warmonger. Even by their abysmal standards he's pretty unhinged. He is one of the most dangerous people around these days. ..."
"... Bolton, Gen. Jack Keane, Lt. Col. Ralph Peters and the whole warmongering crowd that frequent the air waves at FOX will not rest until they have us at war with Iran and Russia. ..."
"... So Trump is thinking of hiring a loudmouthed incompetent who is a known conduit for botched Israeli spy service forgeries used to gin up war with Iran. What a sick farce. ..."
"... Bolton is a cancer for the US. As a warmonger, he thrives in hostile environnements so no wonder Bolton wants to create them with no regards for consequences. ..."
"... I doubt anyone will be surprised to learn that Bolton was duped by Israeli forgers (very droll story, by the way). You'd think that no serious person would consider giving him a National Security Council post, particularly given the current level of concern about "foreign meddling". ..."
"... I do not agree that Iran could prevent a conventional bombing/invasion of their country. But they could make it sooo expensive, the dollar ceases to be the world reserve currency, and if they do that, they will have done mankind a favor. ..."
"... But after the conquest, imagine the guerrilla war! The US basically had to fight an insurgency from amongst 5 million Sunni Arabs in Iraq. Iran is much more ethnically homogeneous. So even if you get some minorities to turncoat and work for the occupiers, you are still left with about 60 million ethnically Persian Shiites. That is a 12 times larger insurgency than what you had in Iraq. ..."
"... Bolton and Cheney must have been livid about Stuxnet, for all the wrong reasons ..."
"... Hiring a ghoul like Bolton will mark a new low even for the Trump administration. And that's saying something. These chickenhawk bastards should all be required to fight on the front lines of the wars they push. That was true, I'll guarantee you Bolton would shut up in a hurry. ..."
"... Gareth Porter is an investigative reporter and regular contributor to ..."
John Bolton (Gage Skidmore/Flikr)
In my reporting on U.S.-Israeli policy, I have tracked numerous episodes in which the
United States and/or Israel made moves that seemed to indicate preparations for war against Iran. Each time -- in
2007
,
in
2008,
and again in 2011
-- those moves, presented in corporate media as presaging
attacks on Tehran, were actually bluffs aimed at putting pressure on the Iranian government.
But the strong likelihood that Donald Trump will now choose John Bolton as his next
national security advisor creates a prospect of war with Iran that is very real. Bolton is no ordinary neoconservative
hawk. He has been obsessed for many years with going to war against the Islamic Republic, calling repeatedly for bombing
Iran in his regular appearances on Fox News, without the slightest indication that he understands the consequences of
such a policy.
His is not merely a rhetorical stance: Bolton actively conspired during his tenure as
the Bush administration's policymaker on Iran from 2002 through 2004 to establish the political conditions necessary for
the administration to carry out military action.
More than anyone else inside or outside the Trump administration, Bolton has already
influenced Trump to tear up the Iran nuclear deal. Bolton parlayed his connection with the primary financier behind both
Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump himself -- the militantly Zionist casino magnate Sheldon Adelson -- to get Trump's ear
last October, just as the president was preparing to announce his policy on the Iran nuclear agreement, the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). He spoke with Trump by phone from Las Vegas after
meeting
with Adelson
.
It was Bolton who
persuaded
Trump
to commit to specific language pledging to pull out of the JCPOA if
Congress and America's European allies did not go along with demands for major changes that were clearly calculated to
ensure the deal would fall apart.
Although Bolton was passed over for the job of secretary of state, he now appears to
have had the inside track for national security advisor.
Trump
met with Bolton on March 6
and told him, "We need you here, John," according
to a Bolton associate. Bolton said he would only take secretary of state or national security advisor, whereupon Trump
promised, "I'll call you really soon." Trump then replaced Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with former CIA director
Mike Pompeo, after which White House sources
leaked
to the media
Trump's intention to replace H.R. McMaster within a matter of
weeks.
The only other possible candidate for the position
mentioned
in media accounts
is Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general who was
acting national security advisor after General Michael Flynn was ousted in February 2017.
Bolton's high-profile advocacy of war with Iran is well known. What is not at all well
known is that, when he was under secretary of state for arms control and international security, he executed a complex
and devious strategy aimed at creating the justification for a U.S. attack on Iran. Bolton sought to convict the Islamic
Republic in the court of international public opinion of having a covert nuclear weapons program using a combination of
diplomatic pressure, crude propaganda, and fabricated evidence.
Despite the fact that Bolton was technically under the supervision of Secretary of
State Colin Powell, his actual boss in devising and carrying out that strategy was Vice President Dick Cheney. Bolton
was also the administration's main point of contact with the Israeli government, and with Cheney's backing, he was able
to
flout
normal State Department rules
by taking a series of trips to Israel in 2003
and 2004 without having the required clearance from the State Department's Bureau for Near Eastern Affairs.
Thus, at the very moment that Powell was saying administration policy was not to
attack Iran, Bolton was working with the Israelis to lay the groundwork for just such a war. During a February 2003
visit, Bolton
assured Israeli
officials in private meetings
that he had no doubt the United States would
attack Iraq, and that after taking down Saddam, it would deal with Iran, too, as well as Syria.
During multiple trips to Israel, Bolton had
unannounced
meetings, including with the head of Mossad,
Meir Dagan, without the usual
reporting cable to the secretary of state and other relevant offices. Judging from that report on an early Bolton visit,
those meetings clearly dealt with a joint strategy on how to bring about political conditions for an eventual U.S.
strike against Iran.
Mossad played a very aggressive role in influencing world opinion on the Iranian
nuclear program. In the summer of 2003, according to journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins in their book
The
Nuclear Jihadist
, Meir Dagan created a new Mossad office tasked with
briefing the world's press on alleged Iranian efforts to achieve a nuclear weapons capability. The new unit's
responsibilities included circulating documents from inside Iran as well from outside, according to Frantz and Collins.
Bolton's role in a joint U.S.-Israeli strategy, as he
outlines
in his own 2007 memoir
, was to ensure that the Iran nuclear issue would be
moved out of the International Atomic Energy Agency and into the United Nations Security Council.
He
was determined to prevent IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei from reaching an agreement with Iran that would make
it more difficult for the Bush administration to demonize Tehran as posing a nuclear weapons threat.
Bolton began accusing Iran of having a covert nuclear weapons program in mid-2003, but
encountered resistance not only from ElBaradei and non-aligned states, but from Britain, France, and Germany as well.
Bolton's strategy was based on the claim that Iran was hiding its military nuclear
program from the IAEA, and in early 2004, he came up with a dramatic propaganda ploy: he sent a set of satellite images
to the IAEA showing sites at the Iranian military reservation at Parchin that he claimed were being used for tests to
simulate nuclear weapons. Bolton demanded that the IAEA request access to inspect those sites and leaked his demand to
the Associated Press in September 2004. In fact, the satellite images showed nothing more than bunkers and buildings for
conventional explosives testing.
Bolton was apparently hoping the Iranian military would not agree to any IAEA
inspections based on such bogus claims, thus playing into his propaganda theme of Iran's "intransigence" in refusing to
answer questions about its nuclear program. But in 2005 Iran allowed the inspectors into those sites and even let them
choose several more sites to inspect. The inspectors found no evidence of any nuclear-related activities.
The U.S.-Israeli strategy would later hit the jackpot, however, when a large cache of
documents supposedly from a covert source within Iran's nuclear weapons program surfaced in autumn 2004. The documents,
allegedly found on the laptop computer of one of the participants, included technical drawings of a series of efforts to
redesign Iran's Shahab-3 missile to carry what appeared to be a nuclear weapon.
But the whole story of the so-called "laptop documents" was a fabrication. In 2013, a
former senior German official
revealed
the true story
to this writer: the documents had been given to German
intelligence by the Mujahedin E Khalq, the anti-Iran armed group that was well known to have been used by Mossad to
"launder" information the Israelis did not want attributed to themselves. Furthermore, the drawings showing the redesign
that were cited as proof of a nuclear weapons program were clearly done by someone who didn't know that Iran
had
already abandoned the Shahab-3's nose cone
for an entirely different design.
Mossad had clearly been working on those documents in 2003 and 2004 when Bolton was
meeting with Meir Dagan. Whether Bolton knew the Israelis were preparing fake documents or not, it was the Israeli
contribution towards establishing the political basis for an American attack on Iran for which he was the point man.
Bolton reveals in his memoirs that this Cheney-directed strategy took its cues from the Israelis, who told Bolton that
the Iranians were getting close to "the point of no return." That was point, Bolton wrote, at which "we could not stop
their progress without using force."
Cheney and Bolton based their war strategy on the premise that the U.S. military would
be able to consolidate control over Iraq quickly. Instead the U.S. occupation bogged down and never fully recovered.
Cheney proposed taking advantage of a high-casualty event in Iraq that could be blamed on Iran to
attack
an IRGC base in Iran in the summer of 2007.
But the risk that pro-Iranian
Shiite militias in Iraq would retaliate against U.S. troops was a key argument against the proposal.
The Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were also well aware that Iran had the
capability to retaliate directly against U.S. forces in the region, including against warships in the Strait of Hormuz.
They had no patience for Cheney's wild ideas about more war.
That Pentagon caution remains unchanged. But two minds in the White House unhinged
from reality could challenge that wariness -- and push the United States closer towards a dangerous war with Iran.
I believe "War With Iran" is on the agenda.
I wrote the article below some time ago.
"Will There Be War With Iran"?
Is it now Iran's turn to be subjected to the planned and hellish wars that have already engulfed Iraq, Libya,
Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan and other countries? Will, the gates of hell be further opened to include an attack
on Iran?
Unfortunately, John Bolton is not just your typical neocon pathological liar and warmonger. Even by their abysmal
standards he's pretty unhinged. He is one of the most dangerous people around these days.
The re-emergence of Bolton is the result of Trump's electoral victory, a phenomenon that resembles the upheavals
that followed when an unhinged hereditary ruler would take the reins of power in bygone empires.
There's a big difference between the wars with Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and Somalia, and a war with Iran. The
difference is, this is a war the United States could lose. And lose very, very badly. As Pompeo remarked, it would
take "only" 2000 airstrikes to eliminate the Iranian nuclear facilities. But what will it take to land 20,000
marines on the northern coast of the Persian Gulf to secure the straits, and there fend off 1.7 million Iranian
regulars and militia on the ground? How will the navy cope with hundreds and hundreds of supersonic cruise
missiles fired in volleys? What about the S-300 missiles that are by now fully operational in Iran?
A look at
the map shows that this is a war that the US simply cannot win.
Unless it uses nuclear weapons and simply sets out to kill every last man, woman, and child in Iran, all 80
million of them.
Which I suppose is not out of the question. As all options are sure to be on the table.
"Everyone worshipped the dragon because he had given his authority to the beast. They worshipped the beast also,
saying, 'Who is like the beast? Who can fight against it?'" Revelation 13:4
Who can fight against the U.S/NATO?
Bolton, Gen. Jack Keane, Lt. Col. Ralph Peters and the whole warmongering crowd that frequent the air waves at
FOX will not rest until they have us at war with Iran and Russia.
So Trump is thinking of hiring a loudmouthed incompetent who is a known conduit for botched Israeli spy service
forgeries used to gin up war with Iran. What a sick farce.
Bolton is a cancer for the US. As a warmonger, he thrives in hostile environnements so no wonder Bolton wants to
create them with no regards for consequences.
Well, we need the John Bolton's of this world for times in which a uncompromising use of force is required.
But I don't need background to know that advocating for wars that serve little in the way of US interests
because we simply are not in any "clear and present danger".
Odd that so many "old schoolers" have abandoned some general cliche's that serve as sound guide.
Just when you think you've heard the last of the various catastrophes, blunders, and odd capering about involving
Bolton, you hear that voice from the old late night gadget commercials barking "wait,
there's more
!!"
I
doubt anyone will be surprised to learn that Bolton was duped by Israeli forgers (very droll story, by the way). You'd think that no serious person would consider giving him a National Security Council post, particularly
given the current level of concern about "foreign meddling".
"The Boltons, Frums, and Boots of the world never have to fight the wars they start."
Hey now, Bolton's service
in the Maryland National Guard made sure the North Vietnamese never landed in Baltimore. Can you imagine the
horror if the Russians had captured our supply of soft shell crab?
John Bolton a 75 year old loser, a has Never-been, which is the mouth piece of the Zionists who keep him on the
pay roll. He likes to hear his own voice and to feel important because he wants war with Iran or all the Middle
East. He's actions and speeches are all emotional and lack logic and reasoning.
So, what is he good for?!
Re: "Well, we need the John Bolton's of this world for times in which a uncompromising use of force is required."
Not sure about that. We definitely need Roosevelts and Lincolns, Grants and Shermans and Eisenhowers and Pattons.
I'm not clear on what function the likes of Bolton serve.
I do not agree that Iran could prevent a conventional bombing/invasion of their country. But they could make it
sooo expensive, the dollar ceases to be the world reserve currency, and if they do that, they will have done
mankind a favor.
But after the conquest, imagine the guerrilla war! The US basically had to fight an insurgency
from amongst 5 million Sunni Arabs in Iraq. Iran is much more ethnically homogeneous. So even if you get some
minorities to turncoat and work for the occupiers, you are still left with about 60 million ethnically Persian
Shiites. That is a 12 times larger insurgency than what you had in Iraq.
And if the Iranians had any sense RIGHT NOW, they would make sure every family had a stock of 10 powerful
anti-vehicle mines, REALLY powerful mines. Make sure all are safely buried with locations memorized. And make sure
everyone had the training to use them, even older children (who will be the front-line guerrillas in 5 years).
So if that devil Bolton gets his way, his own country will pay a price too, and deservedly too. I want my
country to be peaceful and friendly to the world like the Germans are now. But it may take the same type of "WWII
treatment" to get my hateful war-loving countrymen to walk away from their sin.
The guerrilla war in Iraq was fought against only 5 million Sunni Arabs, the US occupiers having successfully
pealed away the Kurds and Shia to be collaborators, or at least stay uninvolved with the insurgency.
But Iran is
not just bigger than Iraq, but much more ethnically and religiously homogeneous. Imagine what kind of insurgency
you might get from 60 million ethnically Persian Shiites?
My advice to the Iranians RIGHT NOW is to mass-produce the most lethal anti-vehicle mines possible and
distribute them to the entire civilian population. Train everyone how to use them, then once trained, bury maybe
20 mines per family, all in known but hidden locations.
THAT will stop the Bolton/Zionist plan dead in its tracks.
Maybe it was a career-enhancing move. It is a legitimate question, along
with "follow the money"? Regardless of why sociopaths like Keith Payne or John Bolton become obsessed with
"winning nuclear war" or "bombing Iran" . How do they make a living? Who would bankroll somebody – over many decades – to not just consider or plan, but actively provoke illegal
acts of aggressive war, against declared policy of the government and the demands of the Constitution they have
sworn an oath to uphold?
It is also educational to see that the fabrications and other "war-program related activities" in regards to
Iran resemble the same stovepipelines that provide the Iraq 2003 pretexts – with Powell reprising his role as
useful idiot – which clashes badly with the "blunder" narrative that anybody in the US government actually
believed Iraq had WMD – was beyond "the point of no return".
This also bodes ill for a Bolton-formulated policy on Korea, and any "National Security Advice" he would see
fit to fabricate and feed to the Bomber In Chief.
Furthermore, we learn just how unhinged Cheney et.al. really were – expecting Iraq to be a mere stepping stone
along their adventures on the "Axis of Evil" trail. If these are our gamblers, nobody would suspect them of
counting cards.
We must look into our very national soul and ask why are we entertaining a war with Iran? The answer is clear. It
is to further the goals of a fanatical, right-wing, group of Zionists. When a truthful history is written about
this era of endless wars, the errant and disgraceful behavior of this group will be clearly identified and they
will not have anywhere to hide. You may fool some of the folks, some of the time, but not all the folks, all of
the time.
Hiring a ghoul like Bolton will mark a new low even for the Trump administration. And that's saying something.
These chickenhawk bastards should all be required to fight on the front lines of the wars they push. That was
true, I'll guarantee you Bolton would shut up in a hurry.
Israel and the Zionists are exactly the "foreign entanglements" that George Washington warned us about. Bolton is
a neocon-Zionist who wants the United States blood and taxes to ensure Israel's dominance of the Middle East.
So Gareth Porter cites his own Truthout article as authority for the assertion that the "laptop documents" are
fabrications. Most of the cited article seems to be devoted to "Curveball", the impeached source of Iraqi
intelligence, in order to prop up the bona fides of the German who claims the Iranian intelligence is a forgery.
Any other sourcing for this allegation available?
Judging from a quick look at what else Truthout has on offer,
I'm not sure about the credibility of Mr. Porter.
Thank you Mr. Porter for your insightful and intelligent articles, being that I am from Iran Originally brings
tears to my eyes to even imagine such tragedy, I pray this will never happen. Having lived in America more than
half of my life and having children that are Americans makes these thoughts even more horrifying . I am however
thankful to read all the comments from so many intelligent , decent and true Americans and that gives me hope that
such disaster will not take place. The people of Iran are decent and kind and cultured , I am hopeful that they
will find their way and bring about a true democracy soon and again become a positive force to the humanity.
In my opinion there is method to Trump's apparent madness. We must first remember he came
into office faced with foes from the Deep State apparatus which has infiltrated every aspect
of American government. Every government entity has been (sometime openly) hostile to
anything he has wanted to do so he has been swimming against the stream all the way along. He
inherited several disastrous situations and most without hope of ending.
The Korean War (it is still active declared war and only in an unsigned armistice) is
hopeless. The PRNK has carefully observed that the US acts as a rogue nation, reneges on all
treaties and promises, and kills anyone who opposes them. Faced with that the development of
nuclear weapons was necessary to survival. What can Trump do to end that after the horse has
left the stable?
He can scare the piss out of the South Koreans and show that we are more than willing to
sacrifice their entire Peninsula for our own bizarre needs. Trump, by acting out the Deep
State's wildest fantasy is actually bringing both Koreas together and likely we will be
invited to leave the Peninsula.
The same thing is happening with Turkey. It will take a miracle to avoid the deaths of
Americans who have illegally invaded Syria and are attempting to create a separate Kurdistan.
Once this gets out of control, and that is a certainty, the Turkes will throw us out of
Turkey entirely. The alternative is to leave Syria completely.
Ukraine is being ramped up for yet another confrontation and a complete break from the
Minsk II agreement. Again, Trump is fulfilling the Deep State's orgasmic fantasy to challenge
Russia at her doorstep. As we have seen now repeatedly the US fails to back up these gambits
and walks away in disgrace. No one is taking American threats seriously. For example Trump
very clearly said he doesn't like the EU. Was there any reaction at all? The European and
American markets were up yet again. This is clear evidence none of this is seriously being
considered.
Afghanistan is America's new tar baby and Trump is pissing off the entire Muslim world and
especially Pakistan. Only a madman would do that unless there is a different motive.
We cannot exist in Afghanistan without a land route in and out of the country. Russia has
cut the US off from all other countries (Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan) with road
access and now we have pissed off the Pakistani's so they will close the roads to us.
That leaves Trump with no option except to pull out. Again, he does this by acting on Deep
State fantasies which they are at first dazzled by and then when they realize the
repercussions are horrified. He has them all running for cover now.
The release of the memo today will be a game changer and the dominoes will start to fall
exposing the Deep State actors for who they really are and name will be revealed.
Maybe The other 95% of Snowden's material plus whatever Assange is holding back on. Maybe
we will finally see Hillary's deleted emails?
All bets are off now and it looks to me like Trump is going to close out all this insane
business in Korea, Afghanistan, Syria, and Ukraine through his efforts. Then maybe we can
finally focus on our enormous problems at home.
In theory, the USA could anihilate any single country it wishes to.
But that's not the problem. The problem is that you don't bomb other countries just for
the sake of bombing them. You bomb them to achieve a goal.
And America's goal is to maintain its status as the sole global superpower. You can't
achieve it by bombing and invading Syria only. You have to anihilate Russia and China first,
and them proceed to the Middle East in order to control the Heartland -- the core of human
civilization. Adolf Hitler knew that -- that's why he didn't stop in France and North Africa,
instead proceeding to conquer and enslave the Soviet Union.
With due respect; I think you see today's realities accurately.
But I disagree with your conclusions/assumptions.
The U.S. will not give up Afghanistan easily because of China's BRI; Afghanistan is a key
element of that.
If BRI is successful, it spells the end of western economic hegemon. The U.S. will go down
fighting to stop it; and go down it will; one way or the other.
If I may suggest; expand your horizons; geo-politics are changing rapidly, mostly against
U.S. interests; and it's only the beginning...
Such a war effort would be a vast improvement over fixing pot holes at home; unless, of
course, one could put up a privately owned but publicly subsidized toll booth at every pot
hole and then, rather than fix them, force people to sign a waiver or somehow get off the
road then and there.
A good all round nuclear war would take care of everything at once.
"... GDP growth, which is way ahead of schedule under my administration, will be one of America's truly greatest weapons. ..."
"... We also face rival powers, Russia and China, that seek to challenge American influence, values, and wealth. We will attempt to build a great partnership with those and other countries, but in a manner that always protects our national interest. ..."
"... It calls for a total modernization of our military, and reversing previous decisions to shrink our armed forces -- even as threats to national security grew. It calls for streamlining acquisition, eliminating bloated bureaucracy, and massively building up our military, which has the fundamental side benefit of creating millions and millions of jobs. ..."
"... Fourth and finally, our strategy is to advance American influence in the world, but this begins with building up our wealth and power at home. ..."
At home, we are keeping our promises and liberating the American economy. We have created
more than 2 million jobs since the election. Unemployment is at a 17-year-low. The stock market
is at an all-time high and, just a little while ago, hit yet another all-time high -- the 85th
time since my election. (Applause.)
We have cut 22 regulations for every one new regulation, the most in the history of our
country. We have unlocked America's vast energy resources.
As the world watches -- and the world is indeed watching -- we are days away from passing
historic tax cuts for American families and businesses. It will be the biggest tax cut and tax
reform in the history of our country. (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
And we are seeing the response we fully expected. Economic growth has topped 3 percent for
two quarters in a row. GDP growth, which is way ahead of schedule under my administration,
will be one of America's truly greatest weapons.
Optimism has surged. Confidence has returned. With this new confidence, we are also bringing
back clarity to our thinking. We are reasserting these fundamental truths:
A nation without borders is not a nation. (Applause.)
A nation that does not protect prosperity at home cannot protect its interests
abroad.
A nation that is not prepared to win a war is a nation not capable of preventing a
war.
A nation that is not proud of its history cannot be confident in its future.
And a nation that is not certain of its values cannot summon the will to defend
them.
Today, grounded in these truths, we are presenting to the world our new National Security
Strategy. Based on my direction, this document has been in development for over a year. It has
the endorsement of my entire Cabinet.
Our new strategy is based on a principled realism, guided by our vital national interests,
and rooted in our timeless values.
This strategy recognizes that, whether we like it or not, we are engaged in a new era of
competition. We accept that vigorous military, economic, and political contests are now playing
out all around the world. We face rogue regimes that threaten the United States and our allies.
We face terrorist organizations, transnational criminal networks, and others who spread
violence and evil around the globe.
We also face rival powers, Russia and China, that seek to challenge American influence,
values, and wealth. We will attempt to build a great partnership with those and other
countries, but in a manner that always protects our national interest.
As an example, yesterday I received a call from President Putin of Russia thanking our
country for the intelligence that our CIA was able to provide them concerning a major terrorist
attack planned in St. Petersburg, where many people, perhaps in the thousands, could have been
killed. They were able to apprehend these terrorists before the event, with no loss of life.
And that's a great thing, and the way it's supposed to work. That is the way it's supposed to
work.
But while we seek such opportunities of cooperation, we will stand up for ourselves, and we
will stand up for our country like we have never stood up before. (Applause.) Thank you. Thank
you. Thank you.
We know that American success is not a forgone conclusion. It must be earned and it must be
won. Our rivals are tough, they're tenacious, and committed to the long term. But so are
we.
To succeed, we must integrate every dimension of our national strength, and we must compete
with every instrument of our national power.
Under the Trump administration, America is gaining wealth, leading to enhanced power --
faster than anyone thought -- with $6 trillion more in the stock market alone since the
election -- $6 trillion.
With the strategy I am announcing today, we are declaring that America is in the game and
America is going to win. (Applause.) Thank you.
Our strategy advances four vital national interests. First, we must protect the American
people, the homeland, and our great American way of life. This strategy recognizes that we
cannot secure our nation if we do not secure our borders. So for the first time ever, American
strategy now includes a serious plan to defend our homeland. It calls for the construction of a
wall on our southern border; ending chain migration and the horrible visa and lottery programs;
closing loopholes that undermine enforcement; and strongly supporting our Border Patrol agents,
ICE officers, and Homeland Security personnel. (Applause.)
In addition, our strategy calls for us to confront, discredit, and defeat radical Islamic
terrorism and ideology and to prevent it from spreading into the United States. And we will
develop new ways to counter those who use new domains, such as cyber and social media, to
attack our nation or threaten our society.
The second pillar of our strategy is to promote American prosperity. For the first time,
American strategy recognizes that economic security is national security. Economic vitality,
growth, and prosperity at home is absolutely necessary for American power and influence abroad.
Any nation that trades away its prosperity for security will end up losing both.
That is why this National Security Strategy emphasizes, more than any before, the critical
steps we must take to ensure the prosperity of our nation for a long, long time to come.
It calls for cutting taxes and rolling back unnecessary regulations. It calls for trade
based on the principles of fairness and reciprocity. It calls for firm action against unfair
trade practices and intellectual property theft. And it calls for new steps to protect our
national security industrial and innovation base.
The strategy proposes a complete rebuilding of American infrastructure -- our roads,
bridges, airports, waterways, and communications infrastructure. And it embraces a future of
American energy dominance and self-sufficiency.
The third pillar of our strategy is to preserve peace through strength. (Applause.) We
recognize that weakness is the surest path to conflict, and unrivaled power is the most certain
means of defense. For this reason, our strategy breaks from the damaging defense sequester.
We're going to get rid of that. (Applause.)
It calls for a total modernization of our military, and reversing previous decisions to
shrink our armed forces -- even as threats to national security grew. It calls for streamlining
acquisition, eliminating bloated bureaucracy, and massively building up our military, which has
the fundamental side benefit of creating millions and millions of jobs.
This strategy includes plans to counter modern threats, such as cyber and electromagnetic
attacks. It recognizes space as a competitive domain and calls for multi-layered missile
defense. (Applause.) This strategy outlines important steps to address new forms of conflict
such as economic and political aggression.
And our strategy emphasizes strengthening alliances to cope with these threats. It
recognizes that our strength is magnified by allies who share principles -- and our principles
-- and shoulder their fair share of responsibility for our common security.
Fourth and finally, our strategy is to advance American influence in the world, but this
begins with building up our wealth and power at home.
America will lead again. We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but we will
champion the values without apology. We want strong alliances and partnerships based on
cooperation and reciprocity. We will make new partnerships with those who share our goals, and
make common interests into a common cause. We will not allow inflexible ideology to become an
obsolete and obstacle to peace.
We will pursue the vision we have carried around the world over this past year -- a vision
of strong, sovereign, and independent nations that respect their citizens and respect their
neighbors; nations that thrive in commerce and cooperation, rooted in their histories and
branching out toward their destinies.
That is the future we wish for this world, and that is the future we seek in America.
(Applause.)
With this strategy, we are calling for a great reawakening of America, a resurgence of
confidence, and a rebirth of patriotism, prosperity, and pride.
And we are returning to the wisdom of our founders. In America, the people govern, the
people rule, and the people are sovereign. What we have built here in America is precious and
unique. In all of history, never before has freedom reigned, the rule of law prevailed, and the
people thrived as we have here for nearly 250 years.
We must love and defend it. We must guard it with vigilance and spirit, and, if necessary,
like so many before us, with our very lives. And we declare that our will is renewed, our
future is regained, and our dreams are restored.
Every American has a role to play in this grand national effort. And today, I invite every
citizen to take their part in our vital mission. Together, our task is to strengthen our
families, to build up our communities, to serve our citizens, and to celebrate American
greatness as a shining example to the world.
As long as we are proud -- and very proud -- of who we are, how we got here, and what we are
fighting for to preserve, we will not fail.
If we do all of this, if we rediscover our resolve and commit ourselves to compete and win
again, then together we will leave our children and our grandchildren a nation that is
stronger, better, freer, prouder, and, yes, an America that is greater than ever before.
God Bless You. Thank you very much. Thank you. (Applause.)
"... The first year of the Trump administration saw much more than the continuity in U.S. foreign policy that many of us expected. Trump's candidacy and then his election were greeted with alarm by almost everyone in the foreign policy establishment, with an overwhelming consensus that he stood for a so-called "isolationist" withdrawal from international affairs. This interpretation was a serious misreading of Trump's rhetoric and led to the usual knee-jerk reflex to define anything that differed from post-Cold War foreign policy as an outright rejection of all international engagement. ..."
"... Trump is not interested in disentangling the United States from foreign conflicts. Instead, he continues and expands them, as well as stoking new crises that could erupt into conflict. Trump is easily persuaded to accept conventional foreign policy positions so long as they are the more aggressive alternatives available. When he does break from consensus views, he does so in a unilateral and nationalist fashion that repudiates diplomatic compromises, rejects the legacy of his predecessor, and panders to some of his core constituencies at home. ..."
"... As 2018 begins, America is now even more deeply involved in the multiple wars that Trump inherited from Obama. There are a growing number of U.S. forces in Syria, more American soldiers have been sent to Afghanistan to continue our longest war, and U.S. backing for the Saudi-led war on Yemen has ratcheted up as well. In each case, Trump has signed off on increased U.S. involvement. ..."
"... Tensions with Iran and North Korea have both increased over the last year, and in both cases the Trump administration is to blame. Between the travel ban, the decertification of the nuclear deal, bombing Syrian government forces in the spring, belligerent speeches at the U.N. and elsewhere, and an overall regional policy defined by unremitting hostility towards Iran, Trump has mishandled relations with Tehran about as badly as a new president can. ..."
"... Considering how poorly Trump has managed issues related to Iran, it is remarkable that his handling of a much more sensitive and potentially explosive situation in the Korean Peninsula has been even worse. ..."
The first year of the Trump administration saw much more than the continuity in U.S.
foreign policy that many of us expected. Trump's candidacy and then his election were greeted
with alarm by almost everyone in the foreign policy establishment, with an overwhelming
consensus that he stood for a so-called "isolationist" withdrawal from international affairs.
This interpretation was a serious misreading of Trump's rhetoric and led to the usual knee-jerk
reflex to define anything that differed from post-Cold War foreign policy as an outright
rejection of all international engagement. As Trump's policies have shown, he is open to a
kind of international engagement, but it is one that is heavily militarized and defined by
zero-sum contests with adversaries and allies alike.
Trump is not interested in disentangling the United States from foreign conflicts.
Instead, he continues and expands them, as well as stoking new crises that could erupt into
conflict. Trump is easily persuaded to accept conventional foreign policy positions so long as
they are the more aggressive alternatives available. When he does break from consensus views,
he does so in a unilateral and nationalist fashion that repudiates diplomatic compromises,
rejects the legacy of his predecessor, and panders to some of his core constituencies at
home.
As 2018 begins, America is now even more deeply involved in the multiple wars that Trump
inherited from Obama. There are a growing number of U.S. forces in Syria, more American
soldiers have been sent to Afghanistan to continue our longest war, and U.S. backing for the
Saudi-led war on Yemen has ratcheted up as well. In each case, Trump has signed off on
increased U.S. involvement. There is evidence that the number of Americans fighting in
Afghanistan will increase in the coming year, and U.S. forces operating in Syria are set to
remain there indefinitely. U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition is even greater than it was
under Obama, and there is no sign that it will be reduced anytime soon. Unfortunately, the one
thing Trump refuses to abandon are the wars that Obama bequeathed to him.
Tensions with Iran and North Korea have both increased over the last year, and in both
cases the Trump administration is to blame. Between the travel ban, the decertification of the
nuclear deal, bombing Syrian government forces in the spring, belligerent speeches at the U.N.
and elsewhere, and an overall regional policy defined by unremitting hostility towards Iran,
Trump has mishandled relations with Tehran about as badly as a new president can. If he
next reneges on U.S. commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Trump
will risk creating a new crisis over Iran's nuclear program. If the nuclear deal does fall
apart, the risk of war with Iran would significantly increase.
Considering how poorly Trump has managed issues related to Iran, it is remarkable that
his handling of a much more sensitive and potentially explosive situation in the Korean
Peninsula has been even worse. For most of the last year, Trump has answered North Korean
provocations with bellicose rhetoric and reckless threats, and repeatedly dismissed the
possibility of entering into talks with Pyongyang to reduce tensions. He and his national
security advisor, H.R. McMaster, have been talking down the possibility of deterring North
Korea and instead insisting on an impossible goal of denuclearization. Senior members of the
Trump administration bizarrely seem to believe they can take military action against North
Korea without it escalating into a major war. On this issue, the one where Trump most needs to
be reined in by his advisors, it appears he's instead being egged on by them. There is a much
greater chance of war with North Korea today than there has been in decades. The current
administration has helped bring this about, and alarmingly it doesn't seem to have sunk in with
members of Congress or the public.
As we look ahead to 2018, the picture is not at all encouraging for those interested in
peace and restraint. The danger that the U.S. may foolishly plunge into at least one new
avoidable war is greater than it has been perhaps since the period leading up to the Iraq
invasion in 2002. It will be up to members of Congress and the public to keep the
administration from committing such a monumental blunder.
Daniel Larison is a senior writer at The American Conservative. Follow his blog and at
Twitter @DanielLarison
.
None of us who voted for him did so because we wanted him to start new wars.
We didn't want any new wars for Israel or Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, and we didn't
want new wars against Russia, China, or North Korea.
We wanted him to crush ISIS and then bring our troops home to protect our own borders.
Instead he's digging in to the Middle East and letting illegal and legal immigrants flood
into America.
The way he's going, he could be worse than Clinton, Bush II, and Obama COMBINED. And I
think we may have made a terrible mistake.
Trump is now 100% pure neocon. What a metamorphose is less a year from inauguration...
Notable quotes:
"... It says, with extreme hyperbole, that "China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity. They are determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence. At the same time, the dictatorships of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran are determined to destabilize regions, threaten Americans and our allies, and brutalize their own people." ..."
"... A somewhat more detailed account of what Moscow is up to is also contained in the written report, stating that "Russia is using subversive measures to weaken the credibility of America's commitment to Europe, undermine transatlantic unity, and weaken European institutions and governments. With its invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, Russia demonstrated its willingness to violate the sovereignty of states in the region. Russia continues to intimidate its neighbors with threatening behavior, such as nuclear posturing and the forward deployment of offensive capabilities." ..."
"... Nearly every detail in the indictment of Russia can be challenged. Most notably, if anyone is forward deploying offensive capabilities in Eastern Europe or invading other countries it is the United States, a trend that continues under Donald Trump. Just this past week, Trump approved the sale of offensive weapons to Ukraine, which has already drawn a warning from Moscow and will make any dialogue with Russia unlikely. ..."
"... And, of course, there is the usual softball for Israel claiming that "For generations the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has been understood as the prime irritant preventing peace and prosperity in the region. Today, the threats from jihadist terrorist organizations and the threat from Iran are creating the realization that Israel is not the cause of the region's problems." It is a conclusion that must make the unspeakable Benjamin Netanyahu smile. One might observe that as Israel has attacked all of its neighbors since it was founded, holding its governments blameless is a formulation that others in the region might well dispute. ..."
"... So the Donald Trump National Security Strategy will be more of the same, a combination of the worst ideas to emerge from his two predecessors with little in the way of mitigation. Trump might balk at going toe-to-toe with North Korea because they have the actual capability to strike back and might think they have nothing to lose if they are about to be incinerated, something no bully likes to see, but Iran is certainly in the cross hairs and you best believe they have taken notice and will be preparing. Vladimir Putin too can sit back and wonder how Trump could possibly have gotten everything so ass-backwards when he had so much latitude to get at least some things right. The National Security Strategy will deliver little in the way of security but it will provide an answer to why most of the world has come to hate the United States. ..."
If one takes Trump at his word, the U.S. will use force worldwide to make sure that only
Washington can dominate regionally, a frightening thought as it goes beyond even the wildest
pretensions of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. And equally ridiculous are the potential
consequences of such bullying – the White House clearly believes that it will make other
nations respect us and follow our leadership whereas quite the reverse is likely to be
true.
On the very limited bright side, Trump did have good things to say about the benefits
derived from intelligence sharing with Russia and he also spoke about both Moscow and Beijing
as "rivals" and "adversaries" instead of enemies. That was very refreshing to hear but
unfortunately the printed document did not say the same thing.
The NSS report provided considerably more detail than did the speech but it also was full of
generalizations and all too often relied on Washington group think to frame its options. The
beginning is somewhat terrifying for one of my inclinations on foreign policy:
"An America that is safe, prosperous, and free at home is an America with the strength,
confidence, and will to lead abroad. It is an America that can preserve peace, uphold liberty,
and create enduring advantages for the American people. Putting America first is the duty of
our government and the foundation for U.S. leadership in the world. A strong America is in the
vital interests of not only the American people, but also those around the world who want to
partner with the United States in pursuit of shared interests, values, and aspirations."
One has to ask what this "lead" and "leadership" and "partner" nonsense actually represents,
particularly in light of the fact that damn near the entire world just repudiated Trump's
decision to move the American Embassy in Israel as well as the nearly global rejection of his
response to climate change? And Washington's alleged need to lead has brought nothing but grief
to the American people starting in Korea and continuing with Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and
numerous lesser stops along the way in places like Somalia, Panama and Syria. The false
narrative of the threat coming from "foreigners" has actually done nothing to make Americans
safer while also diminishing constitutional liberties and doing serious damage to the
economy.
The printed report is much more brutal than was Trump about the dangers facing America and
it is also much more carefree in the "facts" that it chooses to present. It says, with extreme
hyperbole, that "China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests,
attempting to erode American security and prosperity. They are determined to make economies
less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to
repress their societies and expand their influence. At the same time, the dictatorships of the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran are determined to
destabilize regions, threaten Americans and our allies, and brutalize their own people."
A somewhat more detailed account of what Moscow is up to is also contained in the written
report, stating that "Russia is using subversive measures to weaken the credibility of
America's commitment to Europe, undermine transatlantic unity, and weaken European institutions
and governments. With its invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, Russia demonstrated its willingness
to violate the sovereignty of states in the region. Russia continues to intimidate its
neighbors with threatening behavior, such as nuclear posturing and the forward deployment of
offensive capabilities."
Nearly every detail in the indictment of Russia can be challenged. Most notably, if anyone
is forward deploying offensive capabilities in Eastern Europe or invading other countries it is
the United States, a trend that continues under Donald Trump. Just this past week, Trump
approved the sale of offensive weapons to Ukraine, which has already drawn a warning from
Moscow and will make any dialogue with Russia unlikely.
And, of course, there is the usual softball for Israel claiming that "For generations the
conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has been understood as the prime irritant
preventing peace and prosperity in the region. Today, the threats from jihadist terrorist
organizations and the threat from Iran are creating the realization that Israel is not the
cause of the region's problems." It is a conclusion that must make the unspeakable Benjamin
Netanyahu smile. One might observe that as Israel has attacked all of its neighbors since it
was founded, holding its governments blameless is a formulation that others in the region might
well dispute.
So the Donald Trump National Security Strategy will be more of the same, a combination of
the worst ideas to emerge from his two predecessors with little in the way of mitigation. Trump
might balk at going toe-to-toe with North Korea because they have the actual capability to
strike back and might think they have nothing to lose if they are about to be incinerated,
something no bully likes to see, but Iran is certainly in the cross hairs and you best believe
they have taken notice and will be preparing. Vladimir Putin too can sit back and wonder how
Trump could possibly have gotten everything so ass-backwards when he had so much latitude to
get at least some things right. The National Security Strategy will deliver little in the way
of security but it will provide an answer to why most of the world has come to hate the United
States.
"... Contrast that with our situation today. Donald Trump came to office almost entirely ignorant of statecraft. Rather than a considered worldview, he offers slogans and sound bites. As Trump approaches the first anniversary of his inauguration, we can say this about U.S. foreign policy: It has ceased to exist. ..."
"... Any policy worthy of the name requires principles. Trump has none. So U.S. behavior on the world stage today consists of little more than random and often contradictory impulses. For recent examples, consider the inflammatory rhetoric directed at North Korea, stealth increases in U.S. troop contingents in Syria and Afghanistan, the inauguration of a U.S. bombing campaign in Somalia and recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. In each instance, the president acted without making the slightest pretense of consulting anyone outside a small circle of White House advisors. None of these decisions, to put it mildly, will Make America Great Again. ..."
"... Given the chance, any president will treat statecraft as his personal fiefdom. History shows that even a small number of senators with sufficient gumption and wit can frustrate such ambitions. This is what La Follette and Norris, Borah and Wheeler, and Fulbright did in their time. That among their successors today there appear to be none willing or able to take up their mantle is a sad testament to the state of American politics. ..."
"... is the author of America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History ..."
"... which has just been published by Random House. ..."
"... He is also editor of the book, The Short American Century ..."
"... Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country (American Empire Project) ; Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War , The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War , The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (American Empire Project) , ..."
"... The Long War: A New History of U.S. National Security Policy Since World War II . ..."
The USA foreign policy remain unchanged. It is a neocon foreign policy. Trump just does not
matter. He just added a spicy flavor of reckless adventurism to it.
How senators of both parties have made themselves complicit in the unfolding folly of Trump's
foreign policy by Andrew Bacevich Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., center, smiles as he takes an elevator after meeting with
President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans on Nov. 28 in Washington, DC. (Photo: Jacquelyn
Martin / Associated Press) Where is J. William Fulbright when we need him? Or if not
Fulbright, perhaps Robert M. La Follette or George W. Norris. Personally, I'd even settle for
William Borah or Burton K. Wheeler.
During the 20th century, each of these now largely forgotten barons of the U.S. Senate
served the nation with distinction. Their chief contribution? On matters related to war and
peace, they declined to kowtow to whoever happened to occupy the office of commander in
chief. On issues involving the safety and security of the American people, they challenged
presidents, insisting that the Congress should play a central role in formulating basic
policy. With the floor of the Senate as their bully pulpit, they questioned, provoked and
thereby captured public attention.
"The Senate's duty is clear -- to spell out the implications of Trump's mishandling of
U.S. foreign policy before the damage becomes irreversible."
A century ago, La Follette of Wisconsin and Norris of Nebraska, both progressive
Republicans, spoke eloquently and at length in opposition to President Woodrow Wilson's
insistence that the United States should go to war with Germany. Following the World War I
armistice, Borah, a Republican from Idaho, emerged as an uncompromising critic of the
Versailles Treaty that Wilson negotiated in Paris. During the late 1930s, having concluded
that U.S. participation in that earlier European war had been a huge error, Borah and
Wheeler, a Democrat from Montana, sought to prevent President Franklin D. Roosevelt from
repeating Wilson's mistakes. Three decades later, Fulbright, a Democrat from Arkansas and the
influential chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, became a thorn in Lyndon B.
Johnson's side as a sharp critic of the Vietnam War.
In opposing presidents whom they saw as too eager to wage war or too certain that they
alone understood the prerequisites of peace, these senators were not necessarily correct in
their judgments. Yet by drawing widespread public attention to foreign policy issues of
first-order importance, they obliged their adversaries in the White House to make their case
to the American people.
Whatever the issue -- sending Americans to fight on the Western Front, joining the League
of Nations, rescuing Great Britain from Hitler or defending South Vietnam -- the back and
forth between presidents and prominent Senate critics provided a means of vetting
assumptions, assessing potential risks and debating possible consequences. In each instance,
American citizens gained a clearer picture of what their president was intent on doing and
why. The president became accountable.
Contrast that with our situation today. Donald Trump came to office almost entirely
ignorant of statecraft. Rather than a considered worldview, he offers slogans and sound
bites. As Trump approaches the first anniversary of his inauguration, we can say this about
U.S. foreign policy: It has ceased to exist.
Any policy worthy of the name requires principles. Trump has none. So U.S. behavior on
the world stage today consists of little more than random and often contradictory impulses.
For recent examples, consider the inflammatory rhetoric directed at North Korea, stealth
increases in U.S. troop contingents in Syria and Afghanistan, the inauguration of a U.S.
bombing campaign in Somalia and recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. In each
instance, the president acted without making the slightest pretense of consulting anyone
outside a small circle of White House advisors. None of these decisions, to put it mildly,
will Make America Great Again.
As American statecraft succumbs to incoherence, where is the Senate? Somewhere between
missing in action and too preoccupied with partisan and parochial considerations to take
notice. As a body, the Senate has done nothing to restrain Trump or to enlighten the American
people regarding the erratic course on which the president has embarked. Occasional
complaints registered by a handful of senators, such as the ailing John McCain, amount to
little more than catcalls from the bleachers. In effect, senators of both parties have made
themselves complicit in the unfolding folly.
The duty of the Senate is clear -- to spell out the implications of Trump's mishandling of
U.S. foreign policy before the damage that he is inflicting becomes irreversible.
The overall direction of the empire was never going to change with or without Trump and we are seeing it play out now.
Notable quotes:
"... Ok, he has been called the most pro Israel President by Netanyahu himself, his administration just recognized Jerusalem as
the capital of Israel, something even most ardent analysts in here did not predict. His son-in-law who he listens to is a pure Zionist
and the neo-con lap dog Hailey is quite clearly gearing the audience up for a confrontation with Iran. One way or another....watch out
2018. ..."
"... But no he is not controlled enough by the Zionists? The overall direction of the empire was never going to change with or without
Trump and we are seeing it play out now. ..."
"... America is a particularly vivid example of indoctrinated groupthink and I just cannot see anyone/movement espousing alternative
ways of operating getting traction. ..."
"... Simply pay attention to what those monsters actually do. The Trump Administration has continued and expanded US domestic and
foreign policy precisely as has his predecessors. NATO is bigger, better funded, and more heavily deployed along Russia's "near abroad"
than at any time in history. The Pentagon now admits we have 2,000 to 5,000 active "boots on the ground" in Syria, and they have no
intention of ever leaving. Goldman Sachs is embedded in every Executive Branch office. Taxes on the wealthy and corporations are being
slashed soon to be followed in social services, as neo-liberal economics remains the god worshipped by all. ..."
"I won't be optimistic about AmeriKKKa until Russia and/or China announce a Zero Tolerance policy toward US military adventurism
in countries on the borders of Russia/China - by promising to bomb the continental USA if it attacks a Russia/China neighbor.
Imo it's absolutely essential to light a big bonfire under AmeriKKKa's Impunity. And it would be delightful, sobering,
and a big boost for Peace and Diplomacy to hear the Yankees whingeing about being threatened by entities quite capable of following
through on their threats."
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Dec 19, 2017 11:10:32 AM | 14
Hell yes, I'd love that scenario, but never happen. Too much $to be made by kissing up to the empire.
Sad Canuck @ 31: Abso fukken 'lutely!!
b, you better change what you're smoken' if you believe the empire is going isolationist.
@48 They did not want him lol? So many comments in here make me chuckle.
Ok, he has been called the most pro Israel President by Netanyahu himself, his administration just recognized Jerusalem
as the capital of Israel, something even most ardent analysts in here did not predict. His son-in-law who he listens to is a pure
Zionist and the neo-con lap dog Hailey is quite clearly gearing the audience up for a confrontation with Iran. One way or another....watch
out 2018.
But no he is not controlled enough by the Zionists? The overall direction of the empire was never going to change with
or without Trump and we are seeing it play out now.
@26 "I think you would find that the vast majority of Americans would be quite happy to disengage militarily from the rest of
the world, and put resources at work on domestic problems."
Disengage militarily? I would like to think so sleepy but why do they keep getting so involved internationally? Instead of
concentrating on domestic issues putting 'America first' seems to mean bullying any country that doesn't do what it's told.
@ Debsisdead with the end of his comment
" America is a particularly vivid example of indoctrinated groupthink and I just cannot see anyone/movement espousing alternative
ways of operating getting traction.
"
There are those that say the same (vivid example of indoctrinated groupthink) about China, so there might be some competition
in our world yet.
I , for one, want to end private finance and maybe give the China way a go. Anyone else? I did future studies in college and
am intrigued by planning processes at the scale that China has done 13 of....their 5-year plans.
May we live to see structural change in the way our species comports itself......soon, I hope
NemesisCalling, I suggest paying little to know attention to Trump's (or any other politician/oligarch) platitudes.
Simply pay attention to what those monsters actually do. The Trump Administration has continued and expanded US domestic
and foreign policy precisely as has his predecessors. NATO is bigger, better funded, and more heavily deployed along Russia's
"near abroad" than at any time in history. The Pentagon now admits we have 2,000 to 5,000 active "boots on the ground" in Syria,
and they have no intention of ever leaving. Goldman Sachs is embedded in every Executive Branch office. Taxes on the wealthy and
corporations are being slashed soon to be followed in social services, as neo-liberal economics remains the god worshipped by
all.
I remain amazed that people who KNOW that the MSM lies to us constantly, about things big and small, still believe with all
their hearts the MSM narrative that Trump is an "outsider" whom the Establishment hates and has fought against ever since they
gave him $5 billion in free advertising.
Disengage? In 2017, U.S. Special Operations forces, including Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets, deployed to 149 countries around
the world, according to figures provided to TomDispatch by U.S. Special Operations Command. That's around 75 percent of the nations
on the planet.
What the vast majority of Americans might want has been cast aside by this president after he got their votes. There go hope
and change again, damn.
Trump just announced that the US now recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Now why
the feck does he have to go do that for? Is there not enough chaos in the Mideast? Why did he
have to go stir up shite like this? Netanyahu is an evil Zionist and he's got his best agent
in the WH in the form of the president's son-in-law.
The best thing that could come out of the Mueller investigation is if he ends up sending
Jared Kushner to jail.
Breitbart is going bonkers cheering him on. All those Trump fanboys and fangirls from
Appalachia are being used like fools by that Zionist rag.
I really do hope the Muslim world comes to at least a settlement on this fundamental issue
and that the Jordanians do not budge if they know the Muslim world has their backs. My guess
is that it will simply be a declaration, that won't mean much on the ground in real terms.
Politics as usual. Kind of like if I declare myself the King of Denmark – makes my kids
happy that they are princes and princesses, but nobody else cares.
Again Turkish "I didn't come to Israel, I came to Palestine."
Jewish groups in the U.S. expressed dismay following Tuesday evening's announcement from
U.S. President Donald Trump that he intends to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of
Israel
The Jewish Reform movement in the U.S. expressed its concern over Trump's expected
change in U.S. policy on Jerusalem's Old City. Rabbi Rick Jacobs, President of the Union
for Reform Judaism, said on Wednesday that "President Trump's ill-timed, but expected,
announcement affirms what the Reform Jewish Movement has long held: that Jerusalem is the
eternal capital of the Jewish people and the State of Israel."
Jacobs contested that Reform Jews "cannot support his decision to begin preparing that
move now, absent a comprehensive plan for a peace process."
"While the president took the right step in announcing that he would sign the waiver, as
have his Republican and Democratic predecessors, the White House should not undermine these
efforts by making unilateral decisions that are all but certain to exacerbate the
conflict," he noted.
J Street, the U.S.-based, liberal advocacy group also opposed the move. President Jeremy
Ben-Ami stated that "the effect of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem
prior to a negotiated agreement will be to anger key Arab allies, foment regional
instability and undermine nascent U.S. diplomatic efforts to resolve the larger
conflict."
"The administration should also note that only a small minority of Jewish Americans
– just 20 percent – support unilaterally moving the embassy," he added. "Moving
the embassy or recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital could have destructive
consequences for American allies in the region- in particular the kingdoms of Jordan and
Saudi Arabia," he warned.
Left-wing activist organization Jewish Voice for Peace blasted Trump's reported decision
as "an endorsement of Israel's annexation."
Rebecca Vilkomerson, the executive director of JVP, stated that "for 70 years, the US
has given Israel tacit approval to steal Palestinian land, build illegal Jewish
settlements, and deny Palestinians in East Jerusalem and elsewhere their rights."
"Trump's decision," she charged, "takes these ongoing policies to the next level and is
reckless, irresponsible and endangers the lives of Palestinians and Israelis."
The American-based New Israel Fund also raised qualms over the potential dangers such
moves could pose to Israelis and Jews in the Diaspora. CEO Daniel Sokatch stated that
"President Trump many not understand what's at stake here, but we do. Moving the embassy
risks igniting the tinderbox of anger, frustration and hopelessness that already exists in
Jerusalem."
"Throwing.. balance off with this unilateral gesture could have grave consequences," he
speculated.
Young Americans of European Christian ancestry will be the ones who sever all ties between
the United States and Israel. The American Empire can never go back to being a republic ever
again; but the young White Core Americans will force the American Empire to behave more like
a representative republic that strictly puts the interests of the United States ahead of all
other nations.
NO MORE WAR FOR ISRAEL IN THE MIDDLE EAST!
Israel will be cut off from all support from the United States. The American Empire will
keep US military forces in the Middle East solely to have some control over the natural
resources in the region.
The Jewish moment in American history is over. Going forward, the Sam Huntington questions
-- Who are we? and What are we fighting for? -- will be answered by young White Americans.
The answers are that the United States is a British Protestant-derived European Christian
nation and the United States will only fight to advance the interests of the United States.
No more wars for Israel such as the Iraq War debacle.
The Jews who put the interests of Israel ahead of the United States, such as Jared
Kushner, Paul Singer and Sheldon Adelson, will be disregarded by the young White Core
Americans who refuse to allow the US military to be badly used as muscle for Israel in Middle
East wars.
President Trump will find that even young evangelicals in the Southern states are highly
suspicious and skeptical of any more wars for Israel in the Middle East.
The next one takes care of many of the lies which are constantly repeated about
Hezbollah Hezbollah is Not a Threat to America – 'Trumped' up charges to get at Iran won't
work
The Lebanese journalist I mentioned before, Sharmine Narwani, wrote about that one thing that
has the zionists in panic mode they fear "delegitimization".
In an article titled 'Excuse Me, But Israel Has No Right To Exist' , she
writes:
The United States and Israel have created the global discourse on this issue, setting
stringent parameters that grow increasingly narrow regarding the content and direction of
this debate. Anything discussed outside the set parameters has, until recently, widely been
viewed as unrealistic, unproductive and even subversive.
Participation in the debate is limited only to those who prescribe to its main tenets:
the acceptance of Israel, its regional hegemony and its qualitative military edge;
acceptance of the shaky logic upon which the Jewish state's claim to Palestine is based;
and acceptance of the inclusion and exclusion of certain regional parties, movements and
governments in any solution to the conflict.[...]
But this group-think has led us nowhere. It has obfuscated, distracted, deflected,
ducked, and diminished, and we are no closer to a satisfactory conclusion because the
premise is wrong.
There is no fixing this problem. This is the kind of crisis in which you cut your
losses, realize the error of your ways and reverse course. Israel is the problem. It is the
last modern-day colonial-settler experiment, conducted at a time when these projects were
being unraveled globally.
There is no "Palestinian-Israeli conflict" – that suggests some sort of equality
in power, suffering, and negotiable tangibles, and there is no symmetry whatsoever in this
equation. Israel is the Occupier and Oppressor; Palestinians are the Occupied and
Oppressed. What is there to negotiate? Israel holds all the chips.[...]
Let me correct myself. Palestinians do hold one chip that Israel salivates over –
the one big demand at the negotiating table that seems to hold up everything else. Israel
craves recognition of its "right to exist."
But you do exist – don't you, Israel?
Israel fears "delegitimization" more than anything else. Behind the velvet curtain lies
a state built on myths and narratives, protected only by a military behemoth, billions of
dollars in US assistance and a lone UN Security Council veto. Nothing else stands between
the state and its dismantlement. Without these three things, Israelis would not live in an
entity that has come to be known as the "least safe place for Jews in the world."
Strip away the spin and the gloss, and you quickly realize that Israel doesn't even have
the basics of a normal state. After 64 years, it doesn't have borders. After six decades,
it has never been more isolated. Over half a century later, and it needs a gargantuan
military just to stop Palestinians from walking home.
Israel is a failed experiment. It is on life-support – pull those three plugs and
it is a cadaver, living only in the minds of some seriously deluded foreigners who thought
they could pull off the heist of the century.[...]
It is not. And the reason that was not mentioned by Daniel Larison is neo-McCarthyism which is
in full swing supported by both parties. It really poisoned the well for a long, long time. actually on both sides as the
level of anti-Americanism in Russian is also on the upswing. Which make work of US diplomats and businessmen more difficult.
The fear that at one point Russia will show the US companies the door are quite widespread. Especially with unpredictability about
who will become President Putin successor: a neoliberal like Medvedev or a nationalist like Ragozin. .
Notable quotes:
"... Trump can't make a move without being seen as a bag man for Putin. ..."
"... If our government officials fail to recognize the U.S. role in creating bad relations between Washington and Moscow, they are bound to keep repeating the mistakes that their predecessors made. ..."
"... Given how US can and has undermined countries with its ability to control the flow of US dollars, China, Russia, etc are creating the mechanisms to move away from that. With the recent announcements by Trump, concerning Jerusalem and Yemen, Saudi Arabia might be persuaded to use other currencies when selling its oil, beside US dollar. ..."
Trump can't make a move without being seen as a bag man for Putin.
Thanks to the many questionable contacts between some members of the Trump campaign and
Russian officials, the administration has been unable to pursue any constructive engagement
with Moscow without triggering accusations of doing Russia's bidding. The administration's
response to this predicament has usually been to echo the most conventional hawkish views on
disputed issues and make no concerted effort to repair frayed ties with the Russian
government.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently delivered a speech at the Wilson Center in which
he described Russia primarily in terms of the threat that it posed to Europe. Even as he stated
that the U.S. desires a "productive new relationship" with Moscow, he framed previous
breakdowns in relations as being purely the result of Russian "aggression." In Tillerson's
oversimplified telling, "both attempts by the prior administration to reset the Russia and
U.S.-Europe relationships have been followed by Russia invading its neighbor." But that is not
quite how things unfolded.
The 2008 war to which Tillerson refers was a product of the Georgian government's
recklessness, its overconfidence in Western promises, and the profoundly misguided allied
pledge at the Bucharest NATO summit that Ukraine and Georgia would one day become members of
the alliance. Whatever "reset" George W. Bush attempted early in his first term had long since
given way to repeatedly antagonizing Moscow by withdrawing from the ABM Treaty, launching the
Iraq war, promoting missile defense in central Europe, NATO expansion in eastern Europe, and
U.S. support for the so-called "color" revolutions in the former Soviet Union.
The Obama-era "reset" achieved some initial successes, but this soon stalled out and was
replaced by resentment over the passage of the Magnitsky Act and the bait-and-switch
intervention for regime change in Libya that Russia had been persuaded not to oppose.
Confrontation over the civil war in Syria also contributed significantly to the souring of
U.S.-Russian relations. By the time the political crisis in Ukraine erupted in 2014, the
hopeful atmosphere created by the "reset" was long gone, and the U.S. and allied response to
that crisis contributed to further deterioration. If our government officials fail to recognize
the U.S. role in creating bad relations between Washington and Moscow, they are bound to keep
repeating the mistakes that their predecessors made.
... ... ...
cornel lencar says: December 6, 2017 at 11:18 pm
Daniel,
I am a close follower of your blog and admire your analyses, but I always found that there is an important component that
you never address that is core to the strategic interests of the U.S. and that for Russia, or other major powers, have lately
recognized explicitly and acting against, explicitly. This is the issue of U.S. dollar, or how some people call it, the
petrodollar.
Given how US can and has undermined countries with its ability to control the flow of US dollars, China, Russia, etc
are creating the mechanisms to move away from that. With the recent announcements by Trump, concerning Jerusalem and Yemen,
Saudi Arabia might be persuaded to use other currencies when selling its oil, beside US dollar.
Such issues are of extreme strategic significance, and you never seem to touch on them.
Likbez, December 7, 2017 at 02:58 pm
Another factor worth mentioning is neo-McCarthyism which is now in full swing. That "poisoned the well"
probably for a long, long time.
And it did nothing or very little to unite the country against this new official enemy.
Russiagate mostly serves internal political kitchen, specifically a color revolution against Trump
administration launched by globalists (for some unknown to me reasons, as Trump manage to betray a good part of his election
promises in the first three months of his presidency).
Daniel Larison is senior editor at The American Conservative.
Donald Trump's announcement that the U.S. now recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,
and will eventually move its embassy there, might well be the most predictable decision of an
otherwise unpredictable presidency. Trump made his Jerusalem promise back in March of 2016,
during an address he gave to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). It was an
obvious attempt to convince skeptical Jewish leaders of his uncompromising support for
Israel.
But it's not only that Trump was intent to fulfill a campaign promise: The Jerusalem
initiative has been in the works since the day he took office, was coordinated with Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and is supported by influential voices in the administration
-- including Vice President Mike Pence, son-in-law Jared Kushner, Middle East envoy (and former
Trump Organization lawyer) Jason Greenblatt, and CIA Director Mike Pompeo. The decision was all
but finalized, The American Conservative has learned, during a late November meeting of
Trump's foreign policy advisors at the White House.
... ... ...
In fact, it seems unlikely that this unseemly sleight-of-hand (of making dubious claims),
will allay Arab fears that the U.S. continues to be "Israel's lawyer" (to use a term coined by
former U.S. Middle East negotiator Aaron David Miller). Now it has also become Israel's
realtor. This seems not to bother the president, who is becoming known for playing a poor hand
by throwing in more chips. The strategy is almost perverse in its beauty, and was on full
display among administration officials intent on selling the president's Jerusalem initiative
in the wake of his address. The Trump announcement, as one of them argued, doesn't undermine
the peace process -- not because there isn't one (as everyone suspects), but because there is,
and it's going swimmingly. Trump, this official added, was actually anxious to make Wednesday's
announcement because he was so encouraged by the progress made on the Israeli-Palestinian peace
process by Jared Kushner and his team. "I know a lot of that progress isn't visible," as this
official was overheard saying to a prominent television reporter, "[but] it's partly because
that progress is not visible that they've been able to make so much progress."
... ... ...
Mark Perry is a foreign policy analyst, a regular contributor to The American
Conservative and the author of The Pentagon's Wars, which was released in October. He tweets
@markperrydc
"... Destabilisation of Jordan is in prospect, as there is a lot of religious anti-regime feeling already. ..."
"... If Jerusalem is now supposed to be the "only" capital; At this point it might be that the best course of action would be for the Palestinians to demand equal rights, votes, civil law (not military), and the absence of discrimination, apartheid, arbitrary detention, and with recourse against biaised trials, and punitive imprisonment (particularly for the 500+ minors actually held) ..."
"... The proper minimum response from the Muslim world would be to recall their ambassadors from the US, and deliver diplomatic notes to US embassies in their own countries to start. This should unite Muslims Shia and Sunni, but it will not, of course. Instead, there will be meaningless protests in cities in the Muslim world that will peter out in a few weeks, if that long. Erdoğan may cut ties with Israel in a superficial way, but business will continue as usual in the economic realm. Same deal as with the Mavi Marmara incident. ..."
"... Muslims, particularly takfiris, will continue killing Muslims, while US, UK, EU oligarchs supply them with the means to do so. This has been done ad nauseum ..."
"... STATEMENT OF THE POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES. --(1) Jerusalem should remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected; (2) Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel; and (3) the United States Embassy in Israel should be established in Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999. . . here ..."
"... driving a new wedge between the Neolib and Neocon fractions could also prove valuable. ..."
"... The blatant hypocrisy of the two-state solution has been exposed for the lie it has always been, so as others note, demanding equal rights - land ownership and immigration and voting in national elections - is the only plausible way forward for the Palestinians. Given that there's about a 50-50 split between Jews and Arabs in the entire region of Israel/Palestine, this will be quite unlike the resolution of the apartheid system in South Africa. Let's see how many people are willing to take off their blinders and call for a one-state solution with equal rights for all. ..."
"... Evene worse, Palestinians themselves have been party to this sectarian bs in the region - talk about misplaced priorities!!! I've seen Palestinians waving unfree Syrian army flags in Gaza simply because Assad is "Alawite" and is killing "sunnis" - yes, the same FSA who collaborate openly with Israel. ..."
"... And then we have the impotent Arab leaders who all pretty much take their marching orders from the US. How are they supposed to go against their masters in Washington? ..."
"... To top it up, as a token gesture, Trump has ordered his pet dog in Saudi Arabia to stop his criminal siege on Yemen. As if that's going to calm down the Arab street. ..."
"... "The Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt and the highest authority of Sunni Islam, Al Azhar, warned on Wednesday about the negative consequences of the implementation by the United States of a change to Jerusalem from its embassy in Israel. ..."
"... Perhaps the fuckwit should STFU about a "regular relationship with a terrorist organisation" given how much support the Israeli Occupation Force gives to Al Qaeda, a global terrorist forces. I hope Americans remember 9/11/2001 but I suspect their memories are too short. ..."
"... One state solution with equal rights as some are suggesting here - it wont EVER happen. Jews would become minority, with Palestinians ruling the country. If anyone thinks Jews would ever agree to that, then I have bridges to sell. Sad truth is, Israel will continue to be an Apartheid state, ever expanding its territory, and oppressing or outright killing everyone who stands in their way. ..."
"... What worries me about many of those tweets on that hashtag is that they claim Jerusalem as Muslim when it's the capital of Palestine which has never been and never should be an exclusively Muslim state. Palestine should be a state for all its inhabitants, current or displaced, whether they be Christian, Muslim or Jewish. ..."
"... "The President's decision is an important step towards peace. For there is no peace that doesn't include Jerusalem as the capitol of the State of Israel." "This has been our goal since Israel's first day." ~ Benjamin Netanyahu ..."
"... The comments are interesting, as usual, but most of them neglect the central point b makes, that two-state is a dead duck, a fairy tale. Why believe in it? Some public responses were amusing-- CNN: President Donald Trump's fragile political standing among American voters may be about to cause dangerous reverberations in the Middle East, even provoking the Pope to express concern. ..."
"... Is it a nothingburger? news report: Hours after recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital Wednesday, and saying he had instructed the State Department to begin preparation to relocate the US embassy there, US President Donald Trump signed the waiver putting off any such move by another six months. ..."
"... This is a major sticking point because the Israeli government is actively pursuing a demographic shift in its favour by way of building up Jewish settlements illegally in contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and evicting Palestinians around Jerusalem and the West Bank. Many see this as a way of Judaizing parts of Palestinian territories. The IDF is well known to do nothing against illegal settlers harassing Palestinians. The expansion of settlements is Israeli opportunism in the face of a disunited Palestinian Authority. ..."
"... and finally it turns out Trump was wrong it was not arabs dancing on van roof tops on 9 and 11 but Mossad arts students ..."
"... Meanwhile the UN had a vote last Thursday which somehow seems to have escaped the notice of the ever diligent MSM. 151 UN states vote to disavow Israeli ties to Jerusalem http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/UN-disavows-Israeli-ties-to-Jerusalem-515730 ..."
"... Canada loves Israel even though does not have its budget filled by US Treasury like Marshall Islands and Micronesia. By the way, why the coalition of Angels lost Palau? My guess, nefarious influence of Tuvalu, yet another reason why invasion of Tuvalu is imperative. Imagine: Palau, Niue, Tuvalu, and even Kiribati joining Sons of Righteousness. Who knows, perhaps Tonga, Samoa and New Zealand will be cowed too! Anyway, Canada is there, next to Marshalls and Micronesia. I hope that the heart of everyone Up There is filled with pride. ..."
This move to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by Trump is meaningless. So what?
Who cares?
The fact is that no one in the Middle East believes the US can be an honest broker. They
know that the US is Israel's doberman. In any case the Israelis don't want to negotiate a
peace deal when they hold all the cards with respect to the Palestinians who are now already
walled in bantustans.
Jerusalem is already pretty much annexed and hosts much of Israel's government as well as
their legislature, the Knesset.
The Palestinians are weak and divided and have no ability to take on the Israeli
government. Neither the Arabs nor the Persians have the ability to force Israel into any kind
of deal nor the ability to threaten and execute military attacks on Israel. Israel will do
whatever it wants to do with Jerusalem as it has been doing for several decades already. This
is the current reality. Howling outrage may make folks feel better but that's not gonna
change the situation on the ground.
The issue will be: how strong the Muslim reaction.
In principle, with Arab autocratic regimes going in with Israel, it should be muted. But
autocratic regimes don't represent their people. The Angry Arab has been highlighting much
more angry reactions, as you say. Saudi public certainly doesn't agree with Saudi regime.
Quite how far it is going to go, I'm not sure. But Jerusalem is very important in Muslim
feeling, it's a religious thing. Third most holy shrine. What with today's populism, it could
provoke a bigger movement than Netanyahu anticipates. Destabilisation of Jordan is in
prospect, as there is a lot of religious anti-regime feeling already.
Jordan destabilised, there could be jihadis throwing themselves over the Jordan, to
certain death. religious feeling can be very strong. It should be recalled that the
anti-Crusader movement of the 12th century was built on the recovery of Jerusalem.
If Jerusalem is now supposed to be the "only" capital; At this point it might be that the
best course of action would be for the Palestinians to demand equal rights, votes, civil law
(not military), and the absence of discrimination, apartheid, arbitrary detention, and with
recourse against biaised trials, and punitive imprisonment (particularly for the 500+ minors
actually held)
Since the place has been changed from a bi-ethnic state as under the original UN idea, to
one where only a certain religious group is now responsible - let them be held responsible -
instead of the rest of the world (mainly it's leadership) shirking all their own ethic
obligations.
Start by tearing down all those walls. Let the Palestinians build at the same rate as
settlers. No "Jewish" only roads. No Palestinian "Ghettos", subject to daily harrassement and
bullying.
One country, That is what the Israeli's have been wanting - or is it?
The proper minimum response from the Muslim world would be to recall their ambassadors from
the US, and deliver diplomatic notes to US embassies in their own countries to start.
This should unite Muslims Shia and Sunni, but it will not, of course. Instead, there will
be meaningless protests in cities in the Muslim world that will peter out in a few weeks, if
that long. Erdoğan may cut ties with Israel in a superficial way, but business will continue as
usual in the economic realm. Same deal as with the Mavi Marmara incident.
Muslims, particularly takfiris, will continue killing Muslims, while US, UK, EU oligarchs
supply them with the means to do so. This has been done ad nauseum
But that [two state] idea had been dead all along.
Palestinians are relegated to a couple dozen walled communities and there is no possibility
of a Palestine state. So it's about time that the US ended its hypocrisy and obeyed the
law.
PUBLIC LAW 104–45 -- NOV. 8, 1995 (extracts)
JERUSALEM EMBASSY ACT OF 1995
The Congress makes the following findings:
(1) Each sovereign nation, under international law and custom, may designate its own
capital.
(2) Since 1950, the city of Jerusalem has been the capital of the State of Israel. STATEMENT OF THE POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES. --(1) Jerusalem should remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and
religious group are protected; (2) Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State
of Israel; and (3) the United States Embassy in Israel should be established in Jerusalem no
later than May 31, 1999. . . here
Perhaps now there can be a common-sense dialog on what to do to help Palestinians
involving the practical realities of the situation, and not some pipe-dream.
Indeed, Trump should have stated that Jerusalem is the capital of both Israel and Palestine -
or the future true state of Palestine, since it's not exactly a state yet, with that bloody
occupation. That would've been the "master deal-maker" move.
I'm truly amazed at how great 2017 has been for Iran - except for Trump trying to tear
apart the nuclear deal, obviously. Apart from wiping out ISIS and securing the bulk of Iraq
and Syria, they managed to turn Qatar, they're in way friendlier terms with Turkey, their
position in Lebanon was strengthened by Saudis shenanigans, and now this wonderful Christmas
/ Hanukkah gift which confirms to the Arab and Muslim streets who always backed Quds and the
Palestinians and who threw them under the bus.
This move could help expose the Arab autocrats as the humble and compliant house negros of
Zion that they are. As such, it is very likely to help forment an Arab Autumn, when several
new Arab Islamic Republics may pop up. Lets face it... there might have been some premeditation to this effect and indirect
shitstirring in this direction, not by the limited mind of Trump but, quite possibly, by
Chessmaster Volodya V P. And driving a new wedge between the Neolib and Neocon fractions could also prove
valuable.
The blatant hypocrisy of the two-state solution has been exposed for the lie it has always
been, so as others note, demanding equal rights - land ownership and immigration and voting
in national elections - is the only plausible way forward for the Palestinians. Given that
there's about a 50-50 split between Jews and Arabs in the entire region of Israel/Palestine,
this will be quite unlike the resolution of the apartheid system in South Africa. Let's see
how many people are willing to take off their blinders and call for a one-state solution with
equal rights for all.
So, Trump walks into a bar and tosses a grenade on the bar table and hopes it brings peace.
WOW!!! How this guys became a very rich and the president of the US at the same time is
beyond me.
This was bound to happen anyways. The muslim world have been deliberately divided over the
last decade and they've been fithging a bloody sectarian war from Iraq to Libya. ISIS was
created for this. Meanwhile, the Zionists occupiers just keep stealing land and cementing
their grip on whatever's left of Palestine.
Evene worse, Palestinians themselves have been party to this sectarian bs in the region -
talk about misplaced priorities!!! I've seen Palestinians waving unfree Syrian army flags in
Gaza simply because Assad is "Alawite" and is killing "sunnis" - yes, the same FSA who
collaborate openly with Israel.
And then we have the impotent Arab leaders who all pretty much take their marching orders
from the US. How are they supposed to go against their masters in Washington?
To top it up, as a token gesture, Trump has ordered his pet dog in Saudi Arabia to stop
his criminal siege on Yemen. As if that's going to calm down the Arab street.
Palestine will be eventually liberated, but not by the current crop of sold out leaders.
One good outcome of this bombshell is the soon to be irrelevant Palestinian Authority led by
Abu(the Shah of Palestine, aka best double agent) Abbas. He can stop faking it now and do the
honorable thing by tossing himself over the nearest dividing wall.
Yrump is a Christian Zionist. This should be no surprise.
Have you ever noticed how much Kushner looks like the reincarnation of Machiavelli? He has
been huddled with Kissinger for months. Something evil obviously in the works. I believe that it has been decided to deport the Palestinians to Sinai. It will become the
new Palestine, a district of Egypt as Southern Palestine often was in times past. I think the recent mass murder of Sufis at worship in Sinai was the opening move. There
will be false flags, provocations. Egypt will be made to pay dearly for welcoming the Russian
military, a bitter price well known to them.
Israel has never met the UN formal standards for a country. No defined borders, no
Constitution, flagrant human rights violations, flouting of UN censure hundreds of times.
Based on the vision of Hertzl, who hated most Jews with a passion. I think Trump has cast the
die that will wipe Israel off the map. Suleiman was Egyptian. He will come forward again and
Egypt will have a fine hour.
Check a map. The Sinai border is long. Horns of Hattin.
"... Perhaps now there can be a common-sense dialog on what to do to help Palestinians
involving the practical realities of the situation, and not some pipe-dream."
Indeed - if you live in the US, would your neighbourhood be prepared to host a large
number of Palestinian immigrants or refugees if the practical realities of the new situation
in Jerusalem mean that Palestinians can no longer live there and that the city, contrary to
what the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 also says about Jerusalem remaining an undivided city
respecting the rights of every ethnic and religious group, is to become exclusively
Jewish?
"The Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt and the highest authority of Sunni Islam, Al Azhar,
warned on Wednesday about the negative consequences of the implementation by the United
States of a change to Jerusalem from its embassy in Israel.
In a statement, the Egyptian Coptic Church warned of 'dangerous consequences' of the
proposed change, which 'contradicts international legitimacy and resolutions on
Jerusalem'.
He also called for maintaining the legal status of Jerusalem within the framework of
international law and the relevant UN resolutions.
In the text, that religious authority also reaffirmed its support for the peace process
between Palestinians and Israelis and called for negotiations to achieve a just resolution
that preserves the historic state of Jerusalem.
The Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Church administers seven Coptic churches in Jerusalem,
which host more than 10,000 Palestinian Coptic Orthodox Christians, according to figures
from the Palestinian Information Center.
For its part, Al Azhar of Egypt, the most important Sunni Islamic learning institution
in the world, also warned against the negative consequences of the plan proposed by the
United States.
Al Azhar said in his statement that the planned transfer of the US diplomatic mission to
Jerusalem would be a "threat to world peace and fuel anger among Muslims around the
world."
Among other holy places for the three great monotheistic religions, the Old City of
Jerusalem houses the third holiest site of Islam, the Al Aqsa mosque and the sanctuary of
the Dome of the Rock.
The day before, the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah El Sisi, emphasized in a telephone
call to his US counterpart, Donald Trump, the firm position of Egypt that "Jerusalem should
maintain its current legal status".
Sisi urged Trump to "not complicate the situation in the region by introducing measures
that would undermine the chances of peace in the Middle East," according to a statement
from the presidential office."
"Hashtag "Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine" #1 trending right now"
Trending hashtag on a US platform which is known for its manipulation. I call that
stillborn protest. The kind of outrage that in contrast to 30 years ago is now neatly
funneled into a digital pressure vessel.
"In violating Int'l law & legitimizing Israel's apartheid rule in Jerusalem, Int'l law
will no longer serve as a framework"
International law is US whim. When the US sets up it's base in Al Tanf, occupied eastern
Syria, supported Daesh in Syria, let KSA bomb Yemen and granted a seat to KSA at UN human
rights, "no fly zoned" Libya, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"Trump's move will increase the internal instability of those countries U.S. imperialism
in the Middle East depends on."
I really really hope so but I wouldn't even bet 1 cent on it.
It also reveals that Trump has very recently had a stroke of some sort.
The British government will say something but that will be it - according to the
Conservative Friends of Isreal website 80% of Tory MPs are members of Conservative Friends of
Israel including most of the present government and the DUP are, I suspect, anti-Semitic
Zionists. Meanwhile, Gilad Erdan, security minister tipped to be Israel's next PM launched a
preemptive strike against Labour by suggesting (in The Guardian of course,
link ) that they're anti-Semitic rather than anti-Zionist
We recognise and we see that there are antisemitic views in many of the leadership of the
current Labour party," Erdan said. "We hope it will be changed. The views.
"That they will come to the right decisions about people in their party who don't
understand that Hamas is a recognised terror organisation, that you cannot have a regular
relationship with a terror organisation."
Perhaps the fuckwit should STFU about a "regular relationship with a terrorist
organisation" given how much support the Israeli Occupation Force gives to Al Qaeda, a global
terrorist forces. I hope Americans remember 9/11/2001 but I suspect their memories are too
short.
Boys, give the Arabs 24 hours they forget about it.
"When the accursed Golda Meir was asked what the hardest days of her life were, she
answered, 'The day the Al-Aqsa Mosque was burned.' And when asked for the happiest day of her
life, she answered, 'The day the Al-Aqsa Mosque was burned.' They asked her, 'How can this
be?' She said, 'The day the Al-Aqsa Mosque was burnt I thought that [we faced the] last day
of the State of Israel, but when I saw the Muslim responses, I understood that Israel is safe
in the region of the Arab world."
Nero Trump's decision reflects the hubris on display by the Zionist entity entrenched within
US and its realpolitik belief that it no longer conceals, and instead flaunts openly with
circumspection tossed into the winds to be carried off into the distance.
How has it come to pass that a foreign entity's interests supersede that own its own
interests, that of the people? Through the subtle and innocuous injections, over long periods
of time, of a pathogen, one that renders the natural sense of preservation, foresight,
critical thinking impotent. Why does a populace of a nation not ask itself: "This thing, what
is it in itself, in its own constitution? What is its substance and material?" --- Marcus
Aurelius
How pervasive is the problem? Certainly worse than one would tend to believe. An information article written by a former
CIA counter intelligence agent Philip Giraldi has some good insight.
One state solution with equal rights as some are suggesting here - it wont EVER happen. Jews
would become minority, with Palestinians ruling the country. If anyone thinks Jews would ever
agree to that, then I have bridges to sell.
Sad truth is, Israel will continue to be an Apartheid state, ever expanding its territory,
and oppressing or outright killing everyone who stands in their way.
Good news - it wont last forever:
1) Israel initially (around WW2) could do whatever it wanted because of extreme military
supremacy compared to simple Palestinian farmers and weak Arab states. This edge is almost
erased now.
2) Israel enjoyed US protection and could completely ignore UN resolutions or rely on US
veto. This also coming to the end. After few more decades, we will have de facto multipolar
World. US influence will be significantly reduced and wont be able to shelter
Israel anymore.
My humble prediction - there will be a two state solution after 20-30 years, and
Palestinians will finally have (part) of their country.
What worries me about many of those tweets on that hashtag is that they claim Jerusalem as
Muslim when it's the capital of Palestine which has never been and never should be an
exclusively Muslim state. Palestine should be a state for all its inhabitants, current or
displaced, whether they be Christian, Muslim or Jewish.
"The President's decision is an important step towards peace. For there is no peace that
doesn't include Jerusalem as the capitol of the State of Israel." "This has been our goal since Israel's first day." ~ Benjamin Netanyahu
"Peace" to the Zionists has always meant the quiet acquiescence: of the world to their
demands. And just as President Trump® has ripped off the mask of US good intentions,
Nutty Yahoo is openly admitting the actual goals of Zionism about which they have long
deluded the goyim.
The comments are interesting, as usual, but most of them neglect the central point b makes,
that two-state is a dead duck, a fairy tale. Why believe in it?
Some public responses were amusing-- CNN: President Donald Trump's fragile political standing among American voters may be
about to cause dangerous reverberations in the Middle East, even provoking the Pope to
express concern.
Fox: Senator Feinstein: Dear Mr. President, I write to you today to urge you to reject
calls to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. . . .But Feinstein was among those who
voted for a 1995 law passed by Congress that required "the relocation of the United States
embassy in Israel to Jerusalem." The measure also required the U.S. recognize the city as the
capital of Israel. That law, the Jerusalem Embassy Act, passed the Senate by a 93-5
margin.
Is it a nothingburger?
news report:
Hours after recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital Wednesday, and saying he had instructed
the State Department to begin preparation to relocate the US embassy there, US President
Donald Trump signed the waiver putting off any such move by another six months.
This is a major sticking point because the Israeli government is actively pursuing a
demographic shift in its favour by way of building up Jewish settlements illegally in
contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and evicting Palestinians around Jerusalem and
the West Bank. Many see this as a way of Judaizing parts of Palestinian territories. The IDF
is well known to do nothing against illegal settlers harassing Palestinians. The expansion of
settlements is Israeli opportunism in the face of a disunited Palestinian Authority.
The construction of the "security barrier" has also resulted in Israel absorbing about 10%
of Palestinian land in the West Bank. As such, the PA is demanding pre-67 borders, which
remains a hotly contentious issue.
...
The fact that this was timed right before Christmas shows that the move was done with
Evangelical-Zionist intent.
other news today: First Israeli Female Combat Tank Operators Are Ready For Deployment
the SAA and Iranian-backed forces just officially established a major land route between
Lebanon and Iran.
Russia Announces The Complete Destruction Of ISIS In Syria
"All terrorist units of ISIS on Syrian soil have been destroyed, and the territory is
liberated," Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Valery Gerasimov.
and finally it turns out Trump was wrong it was not arabs dancing on van roof tops on 9 and
11 but Mossad arts students.
"The UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to disavow Israeli ties to Jerusalem as part
of six anti-Israel resolutions it approved on Thursday in New York. The vote was 151 in favor
and six against, with nine abstentions.
snip
In New York, only six countries out of 193 UN member states fully supported Israel's ties
Jerusalem: Canada, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, the United States and Israel
itself.
snip
The resolution stated that "any actions taken by Israel, the occupying Power, to impose
its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the Holy City of Jerusalem are illegal and
therefore null and void and have no validity whatsoever."
snip
The UNSG on Thursday also approved a second resolution that condemned Israeli settlement
activity and called upon it to withdraw to the pre-1967 line. This included leaving the Golan
Heights, which Israel seized from Syria during the Six-Day War.
Some 157 nations voted in favor of the text, seven opposed it and eight abstained"
When will people start to face the stark reality that, amongst other things, US foreign
policy is commandered by Israeli firsters at the expense of its own people? When will it be a
time for a candid discussion on the subject?
There are those who try to stand up and blow (even those in our IC) the wistle, yet most
citizens seem to be oblivious and nonchalant to this growing foreign subversion. There are
even brave Jews who stand up to this Zionist Goliath, but like others are labeled
anti-Semites (imagine the unadulterated irony in this) or holocaust-deniers. When will this
veneer be wiped off so that Zionist interest groups are made naked for all to see? But no,
continue to gloss over the Elephant-in-the-room ... but then do not ask about the downfall of
your country in the aftermath!!!
Do yourself a favor and at least listen to experts, like Philip Giraldi, a former CIA
intelligence agent, amongst others explain the current trajectory of US foreign policy:
Canada loves Israel even though does not have its budget filled by US Treasury like Marshall
Islands and Micronesia. By the way, why the coalition of Angels lost Palau? My guess,
nefarious influence of Tuvalu, yet another reason why invasion of Tuvalu is imperative.
Imagine: Palau, Niue, Tuvalu, and even Kiribati joining Sons of Righteousness. Who knows,
perhaps Tonga, Samoa and New Zealand will be cowed too! Anyway, Canada is there, next to
Marshalls and Micronesia. I hope that the heart of everyone Up There is filled with pride.
Strangely enough, just a day earlier there were rumors, duly reported in NYT and other MSM
of note, that MbS told Abbas about his still unfinished peace proposal. Israeli concession
would presumably be a recognition that Palestinians are actually people, and Palestinian
concessions would be everything else, no independence, no Jerusalem. Perhaps area B would get
privileges of area A (being raided by IDF somewhat less often)? Abbas was quite unhappy and
kvetching to everybody who would listen -- like reporters of NYT.
It pretty much sounded like pre-approval of the Trumpian (Kushnerian?) decision, hence the
CoC (coalition of clowns) is doing fine. This bodes well for KSA, presumably the end of the
carrier of the Crown Prince just got a bit closer (recall late Anwar Sadat).
Trump's speech (excerpts)
>We cannot solve our problems by making the same failed assumptions and repeating the same
failed strategies of the past. All challenges demand new approaches.
> In 1995, Congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Act urging the federal government to
relocate the American Embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize that that city, and so
importantly, is Israel's capital. This act passed congress by an overwhelming bipartisan
majority. And was reaffirmed by unanimous vote of the Senate only six months ago.
> After more than two decades of waivers, we are no closer to a lasting peace agreement
between Israel and the Palestinians.
> It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a
different or better result.
> Today, I am delivering. I've judged this course of action to be in the best interests of
the United States of America and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
This is a long overdue step to advance the peace process. And to work towards a lasting
agreement.
> Israel is a sovereign nation with the right, like every other sovereign nation, to
determine its own capital. Acknowledging this is a fact is a necessary condition for
achieving peace. It was 70 years ago that the United States under President Truman recognized
the state of Israel.
> Ever since then, Israel has made its capital in the city of Jerusalem, the capital the
Jewish people established in ancient times.
> Today, Jerusalem is the seat of the modern Israeli government. It is the home of the
Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, as well as the Israeli Supreme Court. It is the location of
the official residence of the prime minister and the president. It is the headquarters of
many government ministries.
> For decades, visiting American presidents, secretaries of State and military leaders
have met their Israeli counterparts in Jerusalem, as I did on my trip to Israel earlier this
year.
> That is why consistent with the Jerusalem embassy act, I am also directing the State
Department to begin preparation to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This
will immediately begin the process of hiring architects, engineers and planners so that a new
embassy, when completed, will be a magnificent tribute to peace. . . here
I believe this to be merely a provocation, an attempt to prod the opponents of Israel, Saudi
Arabia, and the Western Elite, into taking some form of action, which can then be responded
to, whilst claiming victim status. Of all their recent tactics, this is the one so far that
is most likely to succeed, but hopefully still will not. The probable best response from such
opponents is to carry on as they were, developing missiles and air defense systems apace,
moving them into position, and waiting for the Axis of Stupidity to act according to their
nature. They eventually won't be able to help themselves, and will bring upon themselves the
culmination of their actions for the last 70 or so years in the area.
What's there to talk about? It's well known here, and in other forums, that Western
governments, not just their foreign policies, have been taken over by Israeli firsters. The
US is on the top of the list because of their military might. On top of that, there's the
social-culture-media centers that have been hijacked. It's all about controlling the
narrative. IIRC, there was a movie director (or executive) several years ago, who later
admitted that he worked for Israeli Intelligence.
When will it be a time for a candid discussion on the subject?
You'll never get any widespread discussion going until those that control MSM, and their
supporters, are removed.
An interesting article on John McCain. I disagree with the contention that McCain hid knowledge that many American POWs were left
behind (undoubtedly some voluntarily choose to remain behind but not hundreds ). However, the article touched on some ideas that
rang true:
Today when we consider the major countries of the world we see that in many cases the official leaders are also the leaders
in actuality: Vladimir Putin calls the shots in Russia, Xi Jinping and his top Politburo colleagues do the same in China, and
so forth. However, in America and in some other Western countries, this seems to be less and less the case, with top national
figures merely being attractive front-men selected for their popular appeal and their political malleability, a development that
may eventually have dire consequences for the nations they lead. As an extreme example, a drunken Boris Yeltsin freely allowed
the looting of Russia's entire national wealth by the handful of oligarchs who pulled his strings, and the result was the total
impoverishment of the Russian people and a demographic collapse almost unprecedented in modern peacetime history.
An obvious problem with installing puppet rulers is the risk that they will attempt to cut their strings, much like Putin
soon outmaneuvered and exiled his oligarch patron Boris Berezovsky.
One means of minimizing such risk is to select puppets who
are so deeply compromised that they can never break free, knowing that the political self-destruct charges buried deep within
their pasts could easily be triggered if they sought independence. I have sometimes joked with my friends that perhaps the best
career move for an ambitious young politician would be to secretly commit some monstrous crime and then make sure that the hard
evidence of his guilt ended up in the hands of certain powerful people, thereby assuring his rapid political rise.
The gist is that elite need a kill switch on their front men (and women).
Seems to be a series of pieces dealing with Vietnam POWs: the following linked item was interesting and provided a plausible explanation:
that the US failed to pay up agreed on reparations…
Remarkable and shocking. Wheels within wheels – this is the first time I have ever seen McCain's father connected with the infamous
Board of Inquiry which cleared Israel in that state's attack on USS LIBERTY during Israel's seizure of the Golan Heights.
Another stunning article in which the author makes reference to his recent acquisition of what he considers to be a reliably authentic
audio file of POW McCain's broadcasts from captivity. Dynamite stuff. The conclusion regarding aspiring untenured historians is
quite downbeat:
Also remarkable; fantastic. It's hard to believe, and a testament to the boldness of Washington dog-and-pony shows, because this
must have been well-known in insider circles in Washington – anything so damning which was not ruthlessly and professionally suppressed
and simply never allowed to become part of a national discussion would surely have been stumbled upon before now. Land of the
Cover-Up.
"... bin Salman is still so new it is impossible to get much of a read on him. Mind you, when you are the consequence-free press, you can just go off and rewrite history to your liking. ..."
President Trump and his son-in-law bet that the young Saudi crown prince could execute a plan to reshape the Mideast, but the
scheme quickly unraveled revealing a dangerous amateur hour, writes ex-British diplomat Alastair Crooke.
By Alastair Crooke
Aaron Miller and Richard Sokolsky, writing in Foreign Policy, suggest "that Mohammed bin Salman's most notable success abroad
may well be the wooing and capture of President Donald Trump, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner." Indeed, it is possible that
this "success" may prove to be MbS' only success.
"It didn't take much convincing", Miller and Sokolski wrote: "Above all, the new bromance reflected a timely coincidence
of strategic imperatives."
Trump, as ever, was eager to distance himself from President Obama and all his works; the Saudis, meanwhile, were determined
to exploit Trump's visceral antipathy for Iran – in order to reverse the string of recent defeats suffered by the kingdom .
####
President Obama and all his works .what might those be? The American establishment so loathes Trump that it cannot wait to get
its digs in, resulting in the retroactive canonization of the mostly-useless Obama, and ignoring his waste of his entire first
term trying to achieve 'bipartisanship'.
Meanwhile, because Trump has not whipped the new Saudi front end into shape in five minutes,
he's an idiot.
Well, he is; no use disputing that, but bin Salman is still so new it is impossible to get much of a read on him.
Mind you, when you are the consequence-free press, you can just go off and rewrite history to your liking.
The obsession with the USA "leadership" (a.k.a., hegemony) is widely shared between two
parties...
Notable quotes:
"... Obviously, I agree with Merry on this, but it is worth spelling out in a little more detail what this means and why this is the case. Trump's speechwriters like to insert the phrase "principled realism" into some of the president's statements, but as I've said more than a few times the administration's so-called "principled realism" is neither principled nor realist. The administration's foreign policy does not seem to follow any guiding principles (unless maximizing arms sales counts as a principle). ..."
"... Since taking office, Trump has escalated multiple wars and ended none. He has deepened U.S. involvement in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen, and that has just been in the first nine months of his presidency. ..."
"... One of the more worrisome aspects of Trump's foreign policy to date has been his tendency to encourage what Barry Posen calls "reckless driving" by U.S. clients. Trump is hardly the first president to do this, but he has made a point of doing it fairly often since taking office. Increasing U.S. support for the Saudi-led war on Yemen is one obvious example of this. Then there was Trump's Riyadh speech in which he effectively told U.S. Gulf clients that they had Washington's blessing to do whatever they wanted. In a matter of weeks, the Saudi-led bloc launched their campaign against Qatar. Since then, the White House has backed every Saudi move without hesitation, which has just encouraged the Saudis to engage in more destabilizing behavior. ..."
"... Foreign policy restraint was never likely under a Trump administration for a few reasons. First, the president's preferences for a bigger military and his preoccupation with shows of "strength" and "greatness" mean that his instincts are to reject some of restraint's core features. Second, there are very few people in the Republican Party, whether "establishment" or populist, who think that the U.S. needs to be significantly less activist abroad. They may disagree among themselves about where and why to interfere around the world, but the obsession with "leadership" (a.k.a., hegemony) is widely shared. ..."
"... "Being White House chief of staff is not something John Kelly has been trained for. Being Secretary of Defense is not something that James Mattis has been trained for. Providing international and foreign policy assessments is not something H. R. McMaster has been trained for. They're out of their lane. And it shows." ..."
"... "We have civilian government for a reason. We have politicians doing political jobs for a reason. I'm not sure where this leads . . . But I think we've seen . . . that the 'adults in the room' . . . are more like the president than we might imagine. . . . They might, in fact, reflect the military that they're from, which is, expeditionary" -- prone to interest in conflict abroad. ..."
"... Their intense hostility to Iran has also reinforced Trump's own. Because Trump has no relevant experience or knowledge to draw that would cause him to overrule their judgment, these Cabinet members and advisers will keep talking him into deeper entanglements in many different countries. The result is a foreign policy that is consistently the opposite of restraint. ..."
"... They are not going to be able to make up the failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or elsewhere by instigating more of the same. If they didn't question the need to invade Ira strategically and press for an incisive , and limited incursion into Afghanistan to deal with the culprits of 9/11, I think its fair to challenge their decision making on other strategic goals as well. ..."
"... There have been some moral ground – responsibility for making a mess of their house (Iraq) -- but I suspect that the window is closed for correcting that mistake. Iran is going to be a force in the region, by our hand and sadly, for the time being -- that's the way it is. ..."
"... At the moment I think one has to conclude that Mr. Bannon was correct, whatever the campaign agenda it is losing to the opposing advocacy. Pres. Trump has it appears chosen not to be a trans-formative Pres. I don't have a beef with the generals, they are doing what generals (dogs of war do). It is the civilian leadership in and out of congress that have failed. ..."
Curt Mills reports
on TAC 's realism and restraint conference that was held last week at George
Washington University:
TAC editor Robert Merry, a staunch realist and prolific author, went further
than many: "There is no realism and restraint in American foreign policy in the Trump
era."
Obviously, I agree with Merry on this, but it is worth spelling out in a little more
detail what this means and why this is the case. Trump's speechwriters like to insert the
phrase "principled realism" into some of the president's statements, but as I've said more than
a few times the administration's so-called "principled realism" is neither principled nor
realist. The administration's foreign policy does not seem to follow any guiding principles
(unless maximizing arms sales counts as a principle). In practice, the administration
neglects managing relations with other great powers, it encourages "cheap-" and "free-riding"
by allies and clients, and it treats threats that can be managed with deterrence as intolerable
menaces that must be eliminated. If Trump has not yet launched a preventive war, it is not
because he thinks there is anything wrong in doing so.
Since taking office, Trump has escalated multiple wars and ended none. He has deepened
U.S. involvement in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen, and that has just been in the first
nine months of his presidency. He has simultaneously sought to blow up a non-proliferation
agreement with Iran while stoking tensions with a nuclear-armed North Korea. He wants a larger
military budget than the already bloated one that we have, and he has been even more inclined
than his predecessors to give U.S. clients a blank check. A strategy of restraint would reject
all of this.
One of the more worrisome aspects of Trump's foreign policy to date has been his
tendency to encourage what Barry Posen calls "reckless driving" by U.S. clients. Trump is
hardly the first president to do this, but he has made a point of doing it fairly often since
taking office. Increasing U.S. support for the Saudi-led war on Yemen is one obvious example of
this. Then there was Trump's Riyadh speech in which he effectively told U.S. Gulf clients that
they had Washington's blessing to do whatever they wanted. In a matter of weeks, the Saudi-led
bloc launched their campaign against Qatar. Since then, the White House has backed every Saudi
move without hesitation, which has just encouraged the Saudis to engage in more destabilizing
behavior.
A foreign policy of restraint would be one that keeps the U.S. out of local and regional
conflicts that pose no threat to our security. The U.S. would not be stuck policing foreign
battlefields in the Near East or Central Asia in perpetuity, and it wouldn't be entangled in
foreign civil wars where we have nothing at stake. The U.S. wouldn't be taking sides in
regional rivalries for the sake of "reassuring" our clients, and our government wouldn't be
rewarding clients that destabilize their regions through ill-conceived and unnecessary wars.
There would be no place for preventive war in such a foreign policy, and in general the U.S.
would seek to avoid land wars whenever possible.
Foreign policy restraint was never likely under a Trump administration for a few
reasons. First, the president's preferences for a bigger military and his preoccupation with
shows of "strength" and "greatness" mean that his instincts are to reject some of restraint's
core features. Second, there are very few people in the Republican Party, whether
"establishment" or populist, who think that the U.S. needs to be significantly less activist
abroad. They may disagree among themselves about where and why to interfere around the world,
but the obsession with "leadership" (a.k.a., hegemony) is widely shared. Finally, Trump's
fascination with current and former generals has meant that he has filled his administration
with Cabinet members and advisers that have been very involved in the expeditionary wars of the
last decade and a half, and as a result his views of these wars and of U.S. foreign policy more
broadly have been heavily influenced by men that have no problem with continuing these wars
more or less indefinitely. This is connected to a point Mark Perry made on one of the panels
last Friday, which Mills quotes in his article:
"Being White House chief of staff is not something John Kelly has been trained for.
Being Secretary of Defense is not something that James Mattis has been trained for. Providing
international and foreign policy assessments is not something H. R. McMaster has been trained
for. They're out of their lane. And it shows."
He continued: "We have civilian government for a reason. We have politicians doing
political jobs for a reason. I'm not sure where this leads . . . But I think we've seen . . .
that the 'adults in the room' . . . are more like the president than we might imagine. . . .
They might, in fact, reflect the military that they're from, which is, expeditionary" --
prone to interest in conflict abroad.
Their intense hostility to Iran has also reinforced Trump's own. Because Trump has no
relevant experience or knowledge to draw that would cause him to overrule their judgment, these
Cabinet members and advisers will keep talking him into deeper entanglements in many different
countries. The result is a foreign policy that is consistently the opposite of
restraint.
"Their intense hostility to Iran has also reinforced Trump's own. Because Trump has no
relevant experience or knowledge to draw that would cause him to overrule their judgment,
these Cabinet members and advisers will keep talking him into deeper entanglements in many
different countries."
I'll be honest here. I think it is the other way around. I don't think these are the
executives instincts. I think it reflects those of the men around him.
I was hoping he would govern them, but he doesn't seem to have much a back to tell them
no.
They are not going to be able to make up the failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or
elsewhere by instigating more of the same. If they didn't question the need to invade Ira
strategically and press for an incisive , and limited incursion into Afghanistan to deal with
the culprits of 9/11, I think its fair to challenge their decision making on other strategic
goals as well.
There have been some moral ground – responsibility for making a mess of their
house (Iraq) -- but I suspect that the window is closed for correcting that mistake. Iran is
going to be a force in the region, by our hand and sadly, for the time being -- that's the
way it is.
At the moment I think one has to conclude that Mr. Bannon was correct, whatever the
campaign agenda it is losing to the opposing advocacy. Pres. Trump has it appears chosen not
to be a trans-formative Pres. I don't have a beef with the generals, they are doing what
generals (dogs of war do). It is the civilian leadership in and out of congress that have
failed.
But as always, I am not inclined to abandon this President yet -- the commentaries, including my own are speculative.
When you have a Global Cop War Machine hammer and surround yourself with a Pentagon/Security
State steering committee advising you to use it, everything else is a nail. I have to admit,
Trump is even a much smaller man than I imagined him to be at his worst.
Belligerent global power projection is currently unaffordable and quickly becoming
obsolete. While China is eating America's lunch with it's productive foreign aid and
investments that do not involve killing, destroying and intimidation.
Neither of which Trump comprehends. And of his in-house Neocon minions ("my generals"), it
goes without saying
Every time a diplomat works to reduce tensions, build relationships, avoid conflict, this is
literally taking money and opportunity out of the pockets of the Military/Industrial complex.
Trump, being ironically a terrible negotiator and, as @SDS notes above, has never had the
temperament, intelligence, or empathy to be much more than a bully, is the perfect tool for
the military/industrial complex.
"... Talbot focusses extensively on James Jesus Angleton, the shadowy counterintelligence figure at the heart of the domestic assassinations of the 1960s, and examines the inner-workings of Dulles' ambitious (and dastardly) plot to consolidate and control global political power. ..."
"... The other shortcoming here is that Talbot never covered one of the most important documents ever revealed by the CIA That document ( https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=6515#relPageId=2&tab=page ), signed by my own father who chaired the meeting that took place at the highest levels in the CIA on September 20, 1967, reveals unequivocally the CIA's involvement in the JFK assassination. ..."
"... Present at this meeting was the CIA's Executive Director, General Counsel, Inspector General, and others, including Raymond Rocca who was James Jesus Angleton's chief lieutenant in the office of Counterintelligence. Rocca was quoted as stating in the meeting that he felt that "Garrison would indeed obtain a conviction of [Clay] Shaw for conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy." ..."
"... That statement was nothing less than prima facie evidence of the CIA's involvement in the assassination of a sitting U.S. President, which amounted to an open, documented admission by a high level CIA officer – during an internal CIA meeting – that Clay Shaw (as well as the CIA itself) was "indeed" part of the conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy. Since its release in 1998, few JFK assassination researchers have even mentioned this document, much less understood its true significance. This event, among others, will be thoroughly addressed in a new, forthcoming third edition of "Mary's Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace" in September 2016. ..."
A Groundbreaking Resource, Second Only to "JFK and the Unspeakable"
A tremendous resource of breathtaking depth and clarity. Talbot builds on the now
decades-old body of research -- initiated by investigative reporters Tom Mangold ("Cold
Warrior") and David Wise ("Molehunt"), and largely developed by assassination researchers
James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease ("The Assassinations") -- and adds groundbreaking new
information.
Talbot focusses extensively on James Jesus Angleton, the shadowy counterintelligence
figure at the heart of the domestic assassinations of the 1960s, and examines the
inner-workings of Dulles' ambitious (and dastardly) plot to consolidate and control global
political power. "The Devil's Chessboard" is a startling and revelatory masterwork. In
terms of easy-to-access assassination research, this book is second only to James Douglass'
"JFK and the Unspeakable." In terms of biographies of Dulles and Angleton, two of history's
most infamous figures, this work is second to none.
Note: Be wary of one-star reviews for this book. Some trace back to commissioned-review
services, the same services that give five-star reviews to shady/suspicious health and beauty
products. Go figure.
A Breathtaking Volume guaranteed to change your perception!
As the author of "Mary's Mosaic," I believe Talbot's book will become a defining "must
read" journey for the true understanding of the Cold War era in American History. As others
have point out, this book, coupled with James Douglas's "JFK & The Unspeakable," should
be "required reading" for every American citizen. This is as close to the "truth" as we are
likely to ever get.
It took me several weeks to finish this book, only because I found myself agitated and
enraged to the point of having to put the book down in order to regain my composure. Having a
CIA father who was seduced by Allen Dulles (or should I say allowed himself to be seduced by
Allen Dulles), my own past demons again rose from the dead for one last dance. Talbot's
interviews with Allen Dulles's daughter Joan were also deeply poignant. There are so many
things Talbot brings to light in this book for the greater good of all.
If I have any criticism, it would be that Talbot's footnotes are too superficial and
structured badly. A book like this needs to be THOROUGHLY documented, sometimes with great
detail. A fine example of this would be how Jim Douglas handled his footnotes for "JFK &
The Unspeakable." Douglas left no ambiguity when it came to documenting critical details he
presented.
The other shortcoming here is that Talbot never covered one of the most important
documents ever revealed by the CIA That document
( https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=6515#relPageId=2&tab=page ), signed by my
own father who chaired the meeting that took place at the highest levels in the CIA on
September 20, 1967, reveals unequivocally the CIA's involvement in the JFK assassination. As
Jim Garrison's challenge to the Warren Commission emerged into the national foreground in
1967, the public was unaware of what was taking place at CIA headquarters. Present at this
meeting was the CIA's Executive Director, General Counsel, Inspector General, and others,
including Raymond Rocca who was James Jesus Angleton's chief lieutenant in the office of
Counterintelligence. Rocca was quoted as stating in the meeting that he felt that "Garrison
would indeed obtain a conviction of [Clay] Shaw for conspiring to assassinate President
Kennedy."
That statement was nothing less than prima facie evidence of the CIA's involvement in the
assassination of a sitting U.S. President, which amounted to an open, documented admission by
a high level CIA officer – during an internal CIA meeting – that Clay Shaw (as
well as the CIA itself) was "indeed" part of the conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy.
Since its release in 1998, few JFK assassination researchers have even mentioned this
document, much less understood its true significance. This event, among others, will be
thoroughly addressed in a new, forthcoming third edition of "Mary's Mosaic: The CIA
Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace"
in September 2016.
Thank you David Talbot for the true understanding of who Allen Dulles really was and the
destruction of the republic that he brought about !
The Seminal Work of Kennedy Assassination Research.
The sheer breadth and scope of Kennedy assassination research can be daunting. It's a
subgenre of nonfiction rife with inaccurate, poorly-sourced, and hard-to-access drivel. Even
the most touted works (e.g., "Reasonable Doubt," "Crossfire," and "Reclaiming History") are
saturated with poor scholarship and misinformation. Yet there is one thread of research --
built upon by authors like John Newman ("Oswald and the CIA"), James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease
("The Assassinations"), Jefferson Morley ("Our Man in Mexico"), David Talbot ("Brothers" and
"The Devil's Chessboard"), and Gaeton Fonzi ("The Last Investigation") -- that commands both
clarity and credibility. This line of research -- which probes Lee Harvey Oswald's
involvement with American counterintelligence -- builds upon the work of the 1978 House
Select Committee on Assassinations and offers the clearest and most level-headed perspective
on the domestic assassinations of the 1960s. Within this body of work, there is no single
book that paints a clearer, deeper, and more moving account of the history surrounding the
Kennedy assassination than that of James Douglass' "JFK and the Unspeakable." It is, bar
none, the single most readable, most concise, and most compelling depiction of that dark
chapter in history. That's why most, if not all, of the aforementioned authors regard
"Unspeakable" as the seminal Kennedy research book. It's easy-to-access (even for beginners)
and impossible to put down.
A recent op-ed in the Mexican paper La Jornada does a fantastic job of comparing James
Douglass' conclusions about JFK's death with a speech Fidel Castro gave shortly after Nov.
22, 1963. It essentially argues that Douglass spent years doing research and conducting
interviews to come up with the same answer Fidel did, which is that the assassination was
basically a coup d'état orchestrated by the CIA and supported by "the vested interests
of big business, the obsessions of the military and the ideological phobias of
extremists."
Here's the full article (translated into English): [...]
Col. L. Fletcher Prouty Explains the Bay of Pigs and Viet Nam
[...]
McGeorge Bundy called 9:30 PM 04-16-61 to delay the Sunday destruction by
covert CIA operations of the remaining 3 Cuban fighter jets
guaranteeing Castro a win during the Bay of Pigs.
Those 3 jets destroyed the Cuban invasion of Cuba.
This covert operation to destroy those 3 jets was authorized by JFK
since air cover was not permitted under 5412:
National Security Council Directive 5412 signed by IKE in March 1954 prohibiting
use of uniformed services in covert operations; precluded air cover in Bay of Pigs.
JFK National Security Memorandum 55 assigns covert operations
to the Joint Chiefs of Staff thus violating 5412 on June 28 of 1961.
"The Unspeakable" - A metaphoric cop-out for Satan
This book, presents the theory that the "CIA" assassinated JFK, and uses "The Unspeakable"
in the title. The title bothers me. "The Unspeakable" in particular--its vagueness and lack
of courage makes the content of the book suspect. John McAdams reviewed "JFK and the
Unspeakable" very critically, writing "As bad as Douglass's account of Kennedy's foreign
policy is, his depiction of a plot to murder JFK is worse... To paraphrase Thomas Merton,
Douglass's muse and inspiration, the bunk and nonsense Douglass recycles goes beyond the
capacity of words to describe. [Douglass] is utterly uncritical of any theory, any
witness...as long as it implies conspiracy."
The Unspeakable is a phrase coined by a Catholic monk, Thomas Merton, "One of the awful
facts of our age," Merton wrote "is the evidence that [the world] is stricken to the vary
core of its being by the presence of the Unspeakable...It is the void that contradicts
everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the void that gets into the
language of public and official declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced, and
makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss...
This may be literature, even poetry, but "The Unspeakable" is a metaphor, and hiding
behind this metaphor is the truth that the Earth is ruled by Satan. Yes, "The Unspeakable" is
Satan. It is not the CIA, although some CIA employees are children of Satan. Satan is the
source of evil that led to the murder of JFK and also the source of the millions of other
murders committed by the children of Satan who rule the Earth. Jesus told (some of the the
Pharisees) "For you are the children of your father the devil, and you love to do the evil
things he does. He was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth, because
there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar
and the father of lies." John 8:44 Faith in Jesus Christ and obedience to His commands is
mankind's only hope. Read the greatest book of all, the Holy Bible, and this truth will be
revealed to you.
More of a Catholic Perspective than New Objective Insight.
I bought this book based on some positive comments on the radio. I felt I needed to warn
readers that there are assumptions being made by the author that create a theoretical moral
framework, and then the information about JFK and his assassination seem to be forced into
this framework created based on letters by a monk in Kentucky. Had I know this, I probably
would not have purchased the book.
I gave it three stars for the helpful new information and interviews, but I disagree with
some of the author's assumptions regarding JFK. I believe that President Kennedy was
brilliant, had common sense, cared about the USA and its citizens, was making great efforts
to reestablish a Constitutional citizen focused government instead of a plutocracy or
Corporatocracy even though it irritated some large campaign contributors. I do not believe
that JFK needed a "turning" point to realize that a nuclear war was a last resort, and his
non-proliferation stand, as well as, RFK's investigations may have been a larger factor in
his death than reported.
I believe JFK ran for the Presidency with the belief that he could, with the backing of
the American people, restore the US into a more democratic and positive nation, and a force
for improving living standards, health, productivity, and peaceful innovation around the
world. He already wanted to break free from the imperial world leadership that profited from
deceptive banking and multi-national corporate piracy, and restore accountability and liberty
to achieve and innovate on a more level playing field without sacrificing security.
I have studied the JFK/RFK/JFK Jr. assassinations, and just find it very arrogant that a
Catholic monk in Kentucky is presumed by the author to have a god-like view of the world
situation and proposes peace at any price as the answer to USA foreign policy, or that this
is even Biblical. I take exception to many of his assumptions made regarding nuclear weapon
supremacy, the Japanese, and how far we should go to trade weapons for peace. There were
already huge betrayals of the American people with secret technology transfers in previous
adminstrations, so "under the table" deals are not discussed which should alter the this
book's point of view.
The monk is far more naive that he accuses JFK of being by believing that his letters have
some sort of spiritual authority to effect the world by some back channel method, and that
JFK and Khrushchev are the ultimate decision makers. He seems to hold himself up as an
ambassador of peace with near zero standing, and this downgrades the overall value of the
book knowing that there are a lot of assumptions being promoted by some self righteous monk
who only reads an occassional newpaper, but wants to promote the ideal foreign policy.
I came away with feeling that this could have been a far better book, if the information
was presented without the monk's point of view slanting or filtering the information and
creating this somewhat rigid framework. There is just too much to this story to get limited
by a subjective theory. If Russia had 50+ nuclear missles in Cuba ready to fire at the US in
1962, then Castro was crazier than I thought and our defenses were not adequate even in the
Eisenhower administration. The US should have invaded Cuba when it was still a limited
conventional threat. Now, I would expect Russia to have nuclear subs sitting in the Cuban
waters regardless of what is on land.
JFK inherited the short end of the stick, from fools who have created one quagmire after
another, and he should have been praised for negotiating a peaceful way out. He was murdered
for greed, power, and continued lack of accountabilty by people who had already been doing
the same thing around the world to control other governments. They just degraded the USA into
another Bananna Republic with puppet leadership.
The value in the book is finding some new, documented support information that the reader
may not be aware of, not the theological theory. I don't think there are any major new
revelations. "Assassination Science" and "File on Files" are far more eye opening books, for
those wanting to continue down the assassination "rabit hole", and the "JFK Assassination
Encylopedia" is a very good objective resource for those looking for most assassination
details.
The only thing naive about JFK was assuming to get at least minimum standard protection
from the Secret Service, and the Army. Instead, like all the convenient safeguard failures on
9/11/2001; none of the Secret Service procedures were enforced in Dealey Plaza, and the
Army's protective and counter sniper units were prevented from coming to Dallas. Only
complete idiots continue to blame Oswald for the JFK assassination when there is more
evidence that he was an FBI/CIA informant warning about the assassination, and no evidence he
even touched any rifle on Nov. 22, 1963. Lesson learned: Stop believing in insane number of
coincidences just to perpetuate the government fairy tales.
JFK was not perfect, but he valued human lives, and deserved far better than he got from
the naive American public, and even his family. We have all been too naive.
"... On either the night of Meyer's murder or the following morning, the CIA's counterintelligence chief, James Jesus Angleton, burglarized Meyer's home and art studio and stole her personal diary, which very likely contained detailed descriptions about her affair with President Kennedy. It also might have contained her suspicions that Kennedy had been the victim of a high-level assassination plot orchestrated by the CIA Angleton took the diary with the aim of destroying it, but it's still not certain what exactly he did with it. ..."
"... Angleton later claimed that his actions were done at the request of Meyer's close friend, Anne Truitt, whom Meyer had supposedly entrusted with the diary in the event anything happened to her. ..."
"... Angleton also arguably committed obstruction of justice by failing to turn Mary Meyer's diary over to the police, the prosecutor, and the defense in Ray Crump's case. ..."
"... From the gifted elite real people, the upper class ball room society prep schoolers, to a rare peek behind the CIA upper echelon. "Three Musketeers" of Angleton, Crowley and Corson and their unbridled lawlessness leaves little doubt what went down in Dallas,11/22/1963. ..."
In early 1976 the National Enquirer published a story that shocked the elite political
class in Washington, D.C. The story disclosed that a woman named Mary Pinchot Meyer, who was
a divorced spouse of a high CIA official named Cord Meyer, had been engaged in a two-year
sexual affair with President John F. Kennedy. By the time the article was published, JFK had
been assassinated, and Mary Pinchot Meyer herself was dead, a victim of a murder that took
place in Washington on October 12, 1964.
The murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer is the subject of a fascinating and gripping new book by
Peter Janney, who was childhood friends with Mary Meyer's three sons and whose father himself
was a high CIA official. Janney's father and mother socialized in the 1950s with the Meyers
and other high-level CIA officials.
Janney's book, Mary's Mosaic, is one of those books that you just can't put down once you
start reading it. It has everything a reader could ever want in a work of nonfiction --
politics, love, sex, war, intrigue, history, culture, murder, spies, racism, and perhaps the
biggest criminal trial in the history of our nation's capital.
Just past noon on the day of the murder, Mary Meyer was on her daily walk on the C&O
Canal Trail near the Key Bridge in Washington, D.C. Someone grabbed her and shot a
.38-caliber bullet into the left side of her head. Meyer continued struggling despite the
almost certainly fatal wound, so the murderer shot her again, this time downward through her
right shoulder. The second bullet struck directly into her heart, killing her instantly.
A 21-year-old black man named Raymond Crump Jr., who lived in one of the poorest sections
of D.C., was arrested near the site of the crime and charged with the murder. Crump denied
committing the crime.
There were two eyewitnesses. One witness, Henry Wiggins Jr., said that he saw a black man
standing over the body wearing a beige jacket, a dark cap, dark pants, and dark shoes, and
then he identified Crump as the man he had seen. Another witness, William L. Mitchell, said
that prior to the murder, he had been jogging on the trail when he saw a black man dressed in
the same manner following Meyer a short time before she was killed.
When Crump was arrested, he was wearing dark pants and dark shoes. Police later found his
beige jacket and dark cap in the water near the trail.
It certainly did not look good for Ray Crump, as he himself said to the police.
Nonetheless, he steadfastly denied having anything to do with the murder.
Crump's family retained one of D.C.'s most renowned and respected attorneys, an African
American woman named Dovey Johnson Roundtree, who was around 50 years old at the time. (See
Justice Older than the Law: The Life of Dovey Johnson Roundtree, an autobiography co-authored
by Katie McCabe.) Roundtree met with Crump and became absolutely convinced of his innocence.
She agreed to take the case for a fee of one dollar.
When the case came to trial, the prosecution, which was led by one of the Justice
Department's top prosecutors, called 27 witnesses and introduced more than 50 exhibits. Dovey
Roundtree presented 3 character witnesses and then rested her case, without calling Ray Crump
to the stand.
The jury returned a verdict of not guilty.
As Janney documents slowly and meticulously, the case against Ray Crump had all the
makings of a good frame, but not a perfect one. For example, the two eyewitnesses had stated
that the black man they saw was about 5 inches taller than Ray Crump and about 40 pounds
heavier. Moreover, there wasn't a drop of blood on Ray Crump's clothing. Furthermore, there
wasn't a bit of Crump's hair, blood, or bodily fluids on the clothing or body of Mary Meyer.
Despite an extensive search of the area, including a draining of the nearby canal and a
search of the Potomac, the police never found a gun.
After 35 years of researching and investigating the case, Janney pins the murder of Mary
Pinchot Meyer on the Central Intelligence Agency. What would have been the CIA's motive? To
silence an independent-minded woman who apparently did not accept the official lone-nut
explanation for the assassination of John F. Kennedy -- and who had apparently concluded
instead that Kennedy was the victim of a high-level conspiracy involving officials of the
CIA
Immediately after Kennedy's assassination, Meyer telephoned famed LSD guru Timothy Leary,
with whom she had consulted regarding the use of LSD, not only for herself but also for
unidentified important men in Washington to whom she wanted to expose the drug. Highly
emotional, she exclaimed to Leary, "They couldn't control him anymore. He was changing too
fast. They've covered everything up. I gotta come see you. I'm afraid. Be careful."
Meyer was referring to the dramatic shift that took place within President Kennedy after
the Cuban Missile Crisis, the seminal event that had brought the United States and the Soviet
Union to the brink of nuclear war. As James W. Douglass carefully documents in his book JFK
and the Unspeakable, a book that Janney mentions with favor, Kennedy was seared by that
experience, especially given that his own children might well have been killed in the nuclear
holocaust.
After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy began moving America in a dramatically different
direction; he intended to end the Cold War through personal negotiations with Soviet premier
Nikita Khrushchev, who desired to do the same thing. The idea was that the United States and
the Soviet Union would peacefully coexist, much as communist China and the United States do
today. Kennedy's dramatic shift was exemplified by his "Peace Speech" at American University,
a speech that Soviet officials permitted to be broadcast all across the Soviet Union. That
was followed by the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which in turn was followed by an executive order
signed by Kennedy that began the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam.
Perhaps most significant, however, were Kennedy's secret personal communications with
Khrushchev and Kennedy's secret personal outreach to Cuban president Fidel Castro, with the
aim of ending the Cold War and normalizing relations with Cuba. Those personal communications
were kept secret from the American people, but, more significantly, Kennedy also tried to
keep them secret from the U.S. military and the CIA
Why would the president do that?
Because by that time, Kennedy had lost confidence in both the Pentagon and the CIA He
didn't trust them, and he had no confidence in their counsel or judgment. He believed that
they would do whatever was necessary to obstruct his attempts to end the Cold War and
normalize relations with Cuba -- which of course could have spelled the end of the U.S.
national-security state, including both the enormous military-industrial complex and the CIA
Don't forget, after all, that after the disaster at the Bay of Pigs and after Kennedy had
fired CIA director Alan Dulles and two other high CIA officials, he had also promised to
"splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds."
Janney's book places Meyer's murder within the context of the Kennedy murder, which had
taken place 11 months before, in November 1963. The book brilliantly weaves the two cases
into an easily readable, easily understandable analysis.
In Janney's book, there are two revelations about Mary Meyer's murder that I found
especially disturbing:
1. The eyewitness who claimed to be jogging on the trail when he saw a black man following
Mary Meyer does not seem to be who he claimed to be.
The man told the police that his name was William L. Mitchell and that he was a U.S. Army
2nd lieutenant who was stationed at the Pentagon.
Janney relates that according to a contemporaneous "news clip" in the Washington Star, by
the time the trial began, Mitchell was no longer in the military and instead was now serving
as a math instructor at Georgetown University.
Janney's investigation revealed, however, that Georgetown had no record of Mitchell's
having taught there. His investigation also revealed that the CIA oftentimes used Georgetown
University as a cover for its agents.
Janney investigated the personal address that Mitchell gave both to the police and at
trial. It turns out that the building served as a CIA "safe house." What was Mitchell, who
supposedly was a U.S. Army lieutenant and then a Georgetown math instructor, doing living in
a CIA "safe house"?
Janney was never able to locate Mitchell. You would think that a man who had testified in
one of the most important murder cases in D.C. history would have surfaced, from time to
time, to talk about his role in the case. Or that friends or relatives of his would have
popped up and said that he had told them about his role in the trial.
Nope. It's as if William L. Mitchell just disappeared off the face of the earth -- well,
except for some circumstantial evidence that Janney uncovered indicating that Mitchell was
actually an agent of the CIA
For example, in 1993 an author named Leo Damore, who had written a book entitled
Senatorial Privilege about the Ted Kennedy/Chappaquiddick episode, was conducting his own
investigation into Mary Pinchot Meyer's murder, with the aim of writing a book on the case.
Damore ended up committing suicide before finishing his book. But in the process of his
investigation, he telephoned his lawyer, a former federal judge named Jimmy Smith, telling
Smith that after a long, unsuccessful attempt to locate Mitchell, Damore had finally received
a telephone call from a man identifying himself as Mitchell. According to Smith's written
notes of the conversation, a copy of which are at the back of Janney's book, the man
purporting to be Mitchell admitted to having murdered Mary Pinchot Meyer as part of a CIA
plot to silence her.
In 1998, an author named Nina Burleigh wrote her own book about Meyer's murder, entitled A
Very Private Woman, in which she concluded that Crump really had committed the murder despite
his acquittal.
Just recently, Burleigh published a critical review of Janney's book at The Daily Beast,
in which she acknowledges the likelihood that given the large amount of evidence that has
been uncovered over the past decade, the CIA did, in fact, play a role in the assassination
of President Kennedy.
In her review, however, Burleigh ridiculed the notion that the CIA would use its assassin
in the Meyer case to also serve as a witness to the murder. It's a fair enough critique,
especially given that the information is hearsay on hearsay and Damore isn't alive to relate
the details of his purported telephone conversation with Mitchell or to provide a tape
recording of the exchange.
But what I found fascinating is that Burleigh failed to confront the other half of the
problem: even if Mitchell wasn't the assassin, there is still the problem of his possibly
having been a fake witness who provided manufactured and perjured testimony in a federal
criminal proceeding.
I couldn't understand how Burleigh could fail to see how important that point is. I
figured I'd go take a look at her book. Imagine my surprise when a search for "Mitchell" in
the Kindle edition turned up no results. I asked myself, How is that possible? How could this
author totally fail to mention the name of one of the two eyewitnesses in the case?
So, I decided to read through her book to see if I could come up with an answer. It turns
out that she describes Mitchell simply as a "jogger" (without mentioning his name) who said
that he had seen a black man following Meyer and described the clothing the man was wearing.
What is bizarre is that while she did point out, repeatedly, the name of the other eyewitness
-- Henry Wiggins Jr. -- not once does she mention the name of the "jogger." The omission is
conspicuous and almost comical, given sentences such as this: "Wiggins and the jogger both
guessed the presumed killer's height at five foot eight" and "The shoes gave Crump the extra
inches of height to make him the size described by Wiggins and the jogger."
Why this strange treatment of one of the two important eye witnesses in the case? Only
Burleigh can answer that one. But given her extensive investigation of the case, I wish she
would have included in her critique of Janney's book a detailed account of the efforts, if
any, she made to locate "the jogger" and the fruits, if any, of those efforts. Perhaps The
Daily Beast would be willing to commission Burleigh to write a supplemental article to that
effect.
We should keep in mind that a criminal-justice system depends on the integrity of the
process. If one side or the other feels free to use fake witnesses and perjured testimony
with impunity, knowing that no one within the government will ever investigate or prosecute
it, then the entire criminal-justice system becomes worthless or, even worse, tyrannical.
Prior to the publication of his book at the beginning of April, Janney issued a press
release in which he stated that he planned to mail a request to U.S. Attorney General Eric
Holder to reopen the investigation into the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer based on the
evidence that Janney uncovered as part of his research for the book.
He need not bother. In 1973, nine years after the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer,
31-year-old American journalist Charles Horman was murdered in Chile during the
U.S.-supported coup that brought military strongman Augusto Pinochet into power. Twenty-six
years later -- 1999 -- U.S. officials released a State Department memorandum confessing the
CIA's participation in Horman's murder. The CIA's motive? Apparently to silence Horman, who
intended to publicly disclose the role of the U.S. military and the CIA in the Chilean coup.
Despite the official acknowledgment by the State Department of CIA complicity in the murder
of this young American, not one single subpoena has ever been issued by the Justice
Department or Congress seeking to find out who the CIA agents who murdered Horman were, why
they murdered him, and whether they did so on orders from above.
How much trouble would it be for the Justice Department to issue subpoenas to the Pentagon
and the CIA for all records relating to William L. Mitchell, including military and CIA
service records and last known addresses? Or a subpoena for records relating to the CIA "safe
house" in which Mitchell resided? Or a subpoena for records pertaining to the CIA's use of
Georgetown University as a cover for CIA agents? Or a subpoena to Georgetown University for
records relating to William L. Mitchell and records relating to the CIA's use of Georgetown
University as a cover for CIA agents?
No trouble at all. But the chances of it occurring are nil.
2. The second especially disturbing part of Janney's book relates to Mary Pinchot Meyer's
diary. On either the night of Meyer's murder or the following morning, the CIA's
counterintelligence chief, James Jesus Angleton, burglarized Meyer's home and art studio and
stole her personal diary, which very likely contained detailed descriptions about her affair
with President Kennedy. It also might have contained her suspicions that Kennedy had been the
victim of a high-level assassination plot orchestrated by the CIA Angleton took the diary
with the aim of destroying it, but it's still not certain what exactly he did with it.
Angleton later claimed that his actions were done at the request of Meyer's close friend,
Anne Truitt, whom Meyer had supposedly entrusted with the diary in the event anything
happened to her. But Truitt had no legal authority to authorize Angleton or anyone else to
break into Meyer's house or studio and take possession of any of her personal belongings.
Unless the diary ever shows up, no one will ever know whether Kennedy and Meyer discussed
the transformation that Kennedy was undergoing after the Cuban Missile Crisis. But one thing
is for sure: given Meyer's deep devotion to peace, which stretched all the way back to her
college days, she and Kennedy were certainly on the same wavelength after the crisis.
Moreover, given Meyer's fearful statement to Timothy Leary immediately after the
assassination, as detailed above, there is little doubt as to what Meyer was thinking with
respect to who had killed JFK and why.
Angleton also arguably committed obstruction of justice by failing to turn Mary Meyer's
diary over to the police, the prosecutor, and the defense in Ray Crump's case. After all,
even if the diary didn't point in the direction of the CIA as having orchestrated the
assassination of John Kennedy, at the very least it had to have described the sexual affair
between Meyer and the president. The police and the defense were both entitled to that
information, if for no other reason than to investigate whether Meyer had been killed by
someone who didn't want the affair to be disclosed to the public. The fact that Angleton
failed to disclose the diary's existence to the judge, the prosecutor, and the defendant in a
criminal proceeding in which a man was being prosecuted for a death-penalty offense speaks
volumes.
One of the eerie aspects of this case is that prior to her murder, Meyer told friends that
there was evidence that someone had been breaking into and entering her house. Now, one might
say that the CIA is too competent to leave that type of evidence when it breaks into
someone's home. I agree. But the evidence might well have been meant to serve as a CIA
calling card containing the following message to Mary Pinchot Meyer: "We are watching you,
and we know what you are doing. If you know what's good for you, cease and desist and keep
your mouth shut."
But Mary Pinchot Meyer wasn't that kind of woman. She was independent minded, strong
willed, and outspoken. In fact, when she attended CIA parties with her husband, Cord Meyer,
she was known to make negative wisecracks about the agency. One of the other CIA wives
commented that Mary just didn't know when to keep her mouth shut.
If the CIA did, in fact, orchestrate the assassination of John F. Kennedy -- and, as Nina
Burleigh observes, the overwhelming weight of the circumstantial evidence certainly points in
that direction -- Mary Pinchot Meyer, given her relationship to the CIA, her close contacts
within the Kennedy administration, and her penchant for being outspoken, could have proven to
be a very dangerous adversary.
In his introduction to Mary's Mosaic, Janney places the murders of John Kennedy and Mary
Pinchot Meyer in a larger context:
The tapestry of President Kennedy's killing is enormous; the tapestry of Mary Meyer's,
much smaller. And yet they are connected, one to another, in ways that became increasingly
apparent to me as I dug ever more deeply into her relationship with Jack Kennedy and the
circumstances surrounding her demise. To understand the complex weave of elements that led to
her death is to understand, in a deeper way, one of the most abominable, despicable events of
our country's history.
Therein lies the cancerous tumor upon the soul of America. The CIA's inception and
entrance into the American landscape fundamentally altered not only the functioning of our
government, but the entire character of American life. The CIA's reign during the Cold War
era has contaminated the pursuit of historical truth. While the dismantling of America's
republic didn't begin in Dallas in 1963, that day surely marked an unprecedented acceleration
of the erosion of constitutional democracy. America has never recovered. Today in 2012, the
ongoing disintegration of our country is ultimately about the corruption of our government, a
government that has consistently and intentionally misrepresented and lied about what really
took place in Dallas in 1963, as it did about the escalation of the Vietnam War that
followed, and which it presently continues to do about so many things.
Once revered as a refuge from tyranny, America has become a sponsor and patron of tyrants.
Like Rome before it, America is -- in its own way -- burning. Indeed, the Roman goddess
Libertas, her embodiment the Statue of Liberty, still stands at the entrance of New York
harbor to welcome all newcomers. Her iconic torch of freedom ablaze, her tabula ansata
specifically memorializing the rule of law and the American Declaration of Independence, the
chains of tyranny are broken at her feet. She wears `peace' sandals -- not war boots. While
her presence should be an inescapable reminder that we are all "immigrants," her torch
reminds us that the core principles for which she stands require truth telling by each and
every one of us. As long as any vestige of our democracy remains, each of us has a solemn
duty to defend it, putting our personal and family loyalties aside. "Patriotism" -- real
patriotism -- has a most important venue, and it's not always about putting on a uniform to
fight some senseless, insane war in order to sustain the meaningless myths about "freedom" or
"America's greatness." There is a higher loyalty that real patriotism demands and
encompasses, and that loyalty is to the pursuit of truth, no matter how painful or
uncomfortable the journey.
Buy Peter Janney's book Mary's Mosaic. But be sure to set aside a couple of days for
reading it, because once you start, you won't be able to put the book down.
--Jacob G. Hornberger, President, The Future of Freedom Foundation [...].
A Masterpiece of Biography and a Mesmerizing Detective Story
Written by Douglas P. Horne, author of "Inside the Assassination Records Review Board"
"Mary's Mosaic" is several things at once: an insightful and sensitive biography of both
Mary Meyer and her one-time husband, CIA propaganda specialist Cord Meyer; a murder mystery;
a trial drama; an expose of secret knowledge and cover-ups inside the Washington D.C. Beltway
during the 1950s and 1960s; and of course, a love story about the late-developing
relationship between President John F. Kennedy and Mary Pinchot Meyer, whom he had first met
at an Ivy League prep school dance when she was only 15 years old. Their paths had crossed
briefly once again in the Spring of 1945, at the founding conference for the United Nations
in San Francisco. (Mary, her new husband Cord Meyer, and John F. Kennedy all attended the
conference as journalists reporting on the events there, at the birth of the United
Nations.)
One of the fascinating aspects of this well-researched book is how it traces the evolution
and personal development of Mary Pinchot Meyer, Cord Meyer, and John F. Kennedy. As Cord
Meyer---a scarred war hero who was once an idealist and a pacifist, and who aggressively
lobbied for a united world government following World War II---became a disillusioned cynic
and was subverted to the "dark side" by Allen Dulles of the CIA, his all-consuming commitment
to the Cold War (and his abandonment of his former idealism) slowly killed his marriage to
Mary Pinchot. Mary remained an idealist and an independent thinker, and it was this very
independent and unconventional woman whose orbit finally intersected with that of President
John F. Kennedy again late in 1961, about two years before his assassination.
Janney convincingly documents how their relationship became much more than a series of
mere sexual trysts---it became a personal and political alliance of two people who had become
thoroughly convinced of the insanity of war between nation states in the Nuclear Age, and who
were both determined to do something about it. Jack Kennedy, already sickened by war and
skeptical about the wisdom of senior military officers because of his World War II
experiences, had become even more skeptical about the desire of many to seek simplistic,
military solutions to complex international problems following the bad advice he received
from the Joint Chiefs of Staff about the Bay of Pigs and Laos in 1961. After the searing
crucible of the Cuban Missile Crisis in the fall of 1962, JFK embarked upon a program of
moral action not only in civil rights, but undertook bold efforts to begin to end the Cold
War; to commence a withdrawal from Vietnam which would have been completed by the end of
1965; and behind the backs of the Pentagon and the CIA, embarked upon what he thought was a
clandestine rapprochment with Fidel Castro's Cuba. Mary Pinchot Meyer, who had ever been
critical and distrustful of the CIA, became a natural ally of President Kennedy's throughout
1963 as he moved to curb the unbridled power of the Agency and defuse the Cold War. (She was
present at the "Peace Speech" at American University on June 10, 1963, and Jackie Kennedy was
not.) One of Janney's most convincing sources about the nature of the relationship between
Mary Meyer and Jack Kennedy was an extremely well-placed official with intimate knowledge of
JFK's daily activities and thinking: Kennedy's Presidential Appointments Secretary, Kenneth
O'Donnell. Janney used O'Donnell's oral history interview with the late author Leo Damore,
recorded years ago shortly before O'Donnell's death, as one of the foundations for his
book.
For those who revel in study of the Cold War culture in Washington in this era, the book
is full of well-documented revelations about Phil and Katherine Graham of the Washington
Post; James Jesus Angleton (the Head of CIA Counterintelligence), who was godfather to the
children of Cord and Mary Meyer; and Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post during the
Watergate era (who is exposed in the book as one of the CIA's major media assets). In my
view, knowing that Bradlee was in the CIA's pocket helps explain why the Washington Post was
so successful in taking down Richard Nixon following the Watergate break-in. Nixon had used
his Chief of Staff, Haldemann, to attempt to get the CIA to "warn off" the FBI in its
investigation of the Watergate break-in and the "plumbers." Nixon instructed Haldemann to
threaten the CIA (Richard Helms) with exposure of its involvement in the JFK assassination,
as an incentive for the Agency to cooperate with him. This "hardball" leverage failed, and
Bradlee was allowed (and perhaps encouraged) to take down Nixon. He acted as the CIA wished
in the Watergate matter. Unaccountably, Bradlee never employed the considerable investigative
resources of the Post to look into the Kennedy assassination...well, perhaps that is not so
"unaccountable" after all, now that we know he had been a CIA asset since the early 1950s, a
part of the Agency's remarkably successful penetration and control of foreign and domestic
media. As Janney reveals, Cord Meyer (Mary's husband from 1945 until the late 1950s) was in
charge of that CIA program of media penetration and propaganda, and Ben Bradlee was married
to Mary Pinchot's sister, Toni. The proximity of these relationships---between Cord Meyer,
James Angleton, and Bradlee---make it easy to believe that Bradlee's links with the CIA, that
began in the early 1950s, continued into the 1960s and early 1970s, when he was in powerful
positions at Newsweek and the Washington Post.
Peter Janney's own father, a World War II Naval aviator and a recipient of the Navy Cross,
was also a CIA man, and Peter grew up amidst the CIA culture in Washington. Mary Meyer's son
Michael was his best childhood friend. He knew Mary Meyer as his best friend's mother. He was
therefore perfectly placed to write this book, for his own family had frequent social
contacts with Cord and Mary Meyer, James Angleton, Richard Helms, Tracy Barnes, Desmond
FitzGerald, and William Colby. Janney's knowledge of the CIA Cold War culture in our nation's
capital in the 1950s and 1960s is very well-informed, on a personal level.
Janney compellingly relates how the D.C. metropolitan police and the U.S. Justice
Department attempted to railroad an innocent black man, Ray Crump, for the mysterious murder
of Mary Meyer in October of 1964, just three weeks after the Warren Report was issued. Due to
the heroic efforts of African American female attorney Dovey Roundtree, Janney explains how
against all odds, Crump was acquitted. Peter Janney reveals the likely motive for her
murder---she was about to publicly oppose the sham conclusions of the Warren Report as a
fraud. Furthermore, she had kept a private diary which presumably recorded details of her
relationship with President Kennedy (and perhaps even of affairs of state). In October of
1964, she was literally "the woman who knew too much." This book reveals the numerous lies
and falsehoods told about her diary (and its disposition) by Ben Bradlee, James Jesus
Angleton, and others, in a way not adequately covered by previous articles and books. The
media in this country, misled by the CIA and by former acquaintances of Meyer's who had much
to hide, has consistently distorted the true story of what likely happened to her diary, and
Peter Janney lays all of this out in a way that anyone can understand.
Peter Janney also solves the mystery of her murder 48 years ago, in as convincing a
fashion as one can, so many years later. Many have asked, "If Ray Crump did not kill Mary
Meyer, then who did?" This book answers that question. (I will not provide any spoilers
here.)
So purchase a copy of this book today. Extensively footnoted and persuasively written, it
is the best account in print about the life and death of Mary Meyer, easily eclipsing the
sole biography previously written about her by Nina Burleigh. Peter Janney has courageously
finished the investigative journey into her life and death begun by the late Leo Damore, and
briefly resumed (and then abandoned) by John H. Davis. "Mary's Mosaic" is part film noir
thriller, part biography, and also provides a remarkably frank view of the Cold War culture
in Washington, and the dark side of the national security state. It belongs on the bookshelf
of every Cold War historian, and everyone who is interested in President Kennedy's
assassination.
If anything JFK assassination captures you, you've GOT to read this lifes work of Peter
Janney. One of the best painstakingly detailed books I've read regarding the subject. From
the gifted elite real people, the upper class ball room society prep schoolers, to a rare
peek behind the CIA upper echelon. "Three Musketeers" of Angleton, Crowley and Corson and
their unbridled lawlessness leaves little doubt what went down in Dallas,11/22/1963. Mary
Pinchot Meyer was an intellectual free spirited woman, born into wealth, who had all the
young boys mesmerized. Also being in the same social circles of a young Jack Kennedy, they
were familiar with each other long before JFK was to become President. Mary was all about
self-examination, self-exploration and a driving force for peace. Not only was she a friend
and eventual lover to JFK, and he respected her. She was a frequent visitor to the White
House and her influence no doubt helped assuage JFK to seek world peace with the Soviets.
Fascinating look from a different perspective into a story the readers all know very well.
Mary's Mosaic will take you right to the brink of solving the closely guarded CIA secret. And
it's right there, inside a safety deposit box, that you can have after I pass away. It's
right there...
Passionately, undauntingly researched and well-written. In bringing us his insider's
perspective on the beautiful, tragically ended life of Mary Pinchot Meyer, Peter Janney also
takes us with him on a lifelong journey to understand one of the most traumatic events of his
childhood, and through that prism the dark workings of the deep state. This book complements
another indispensable work, "The Devil's Chessboard" by David Talbot. For those who were
moved by aspects of the motion picture fictionalization of Mary Pinchot in "An American
Affair," this book will be a most welcome and factual expansion on her life, circle of
acquaintances, and murder trial. It brought to my attention the remarkable career of
African-American civil rights attorney Dovey Roundtree, who successfully defended the patsy
charged with Mary's death.
The Physics of Information - A Nightmare for Democracy's Traitors
As one who read of Mary Meyer's murder in the Washington Post during my high school days
in 1964, this book called up memories from a very deep well. Peter Janney's account of how
personal his questions about her murder were made this a riveting book for me. Further, his
connection to the CIA and Mary Meyer certainly gave the book a gut feeling of a search for
truth, no matter the consequences. The relatively complete picture of her murder that he
paints begins to fill out a decent outline of how our secret government actually works. That
outline, added to the emerging outlines of other treasonous political crimes committed in the
last 50 years, is inexorably exposing that "secret" government bit by bit.
Physicists' hypothesize that information, like energy and matter, cannot be destroyed. The
example given is a book thrown into a black hole that turns to heat, ash, and gas as it falls
into the maw of the universe's ultimate shredder. According to this hypothesis, the
indestructibility of information means that the words and data in that book are not actually
destroyed; it's just that we don't know how to reconstruct it, yet. A good example of what
that practically means is the discovery in the opening days of this century of the wreck of
the Luisitania on a seafloor littered with munitions that the British government (and to some
extent the Americans' as well) have long denied were being carried on the ship. The sinking
of the "innocent" passenger ship became a "cause celebre" helping to sell the war to citizens
on both sides of the Atlantic. But, times have changed and we can now reconstruct the
Lusitania's "book" and the truth is out.
The exposure of the truth of a false flag at the beginning of World War I, this story's
success in piecing together--from many seemingly disparate pieces--the facts of Mary Meyer's
murder, and the realization that the information about a crime can (probably) never be
successfully covered up forever should be a nightmare for anyone aiding political
machinations and a hope for all the rest of us. Peter's book demonstrates that with the
arrival of the information society the timeline for successfully hiding truth is growing
shorter. As one already awake to this century's devastating false flag on 9/11, the truth
about Mary Meyer and her death has not arrived a moment too soon. Thank you, Peter!
This history is masterfully researched and written. I fully agree with detailed reviews
posted about it. From a personal perspective, what went on during the Kennedy-Johnson era is
profoundly disturbing to me. My now deceased husband was in the Air Force and assigned to
Operation SkySpot in Vietnam. Johnson's escalation of this war caused the illnesses and
deaths of so many of our best and brightest. The gift of this book is the gift that truth
can, and was, unearthed. It does hold that truth can set us free.
We must stay vigilant.
America is still an amazing and a great country and it is up to all its citizens to uphold
this.
Puppets like Obama won't work twice and things with Hillary in power would be even worse
because, as she is definitely a pure product of the establishment, no one would believe any
cheap excuses that would come out of her mouth in order to persuade the US public opinion for
the necessity of another war.
But now, the ruthless neocon/neoliberal establishment has the right man in the right
position to put the blame for that: Donald Trump.
Despite that Trump was promoted as an 'anti-establishment' candidate, using intensively
anti-interventionist rhetoric, he has already done the exact opposite. He has already bombed
Syria, constantly provokes China and North Korea and, lately, does everything he can to destroy
the Iran nuclear deal. It's more than obvious that he seeks to go after Iran, as the seventh
target of the US empire, revealed by Wesley Clark.
Bob Corker followed up on his initial response to Trump's attack on him with some
scathing criticism in an interview with The New York Times :
Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, charged
in an interview on Sunday that President Trump was treating his office like "a reality show,"
with reckless threats toward other countries that could set the nation "on the path to World War
III."
In an extraordinary rebuke of a president of his own party, Mr. Corker said he was alarmed
about a president who acts "like he's doing 'The Apprentice' or something."
"He concerns me," Mr. Corker added. "He would have to concern anyone who cares about our nation."
Corker isn't saying anything that many others haven't already said, but it is significant that
it is coming from such a high-profile elected Republican. The senator was among a very few in the
Senate inclined to give Trump the benefit of the doubt in the past, and he sometimes went out of
his way to say positive things about Trump's foreign policy. During the election, he was
saying that Trump was bringing a "degree of realism" and "maturity" to foreign policy. That was
always wishful thinking, and Corker's criticism now is a belated admission that he was wrong about
all of that. It is fair to fault Corker for not realizing or saying any of these things sooner, but
that doesn't make it any less extraordinary that he is saying it on the record. Thanks to Trump's
foolish attack on him yesterday, he evidently no longer feels obliged to keep quiet about the problems
he has with the president.
One of the more interesting things that Corker confirmed concerned Trump's repeated undermining
of Tillerson:
The senator, who is close to Mr. Tillerson, invoked comments that the president made on Twitter
last weekend in which he appeared to undercut Mr. Tillerson's negotiations with North Korea.
"A lot of people think that there is some kind of 'good cop, bad cop' act underway, but that's
just not true," Mr. Corker said.
Without offering specifics, he said Mr. Trump had repeatedly undermined diplomacy with his
Twitter fingers. "I know he has hurt, in several instances, he's hurt us as it relates to negotiations
that were underway by tweeting things out," Mr. Corker said.
We already knew this, but it is important that someone in Corker's position is acknowledging that
the administration's foreign policy is every bit as dysfunctional as it appears to be. It remains
to be seen whether Corker's break with Trump will translate into meaningful opposition to any part
of Trump's foreign policy, but his remarks in this interview suggest that it might.
Not all of the damage can be blamed on the con man who is nominally in charge, on his
outlandish appointments, or on the congressional forces he has unleashed. Some of the most
dangerous developments under Trump trace back to Obama initiatives -- initiatives passed, to be
sure, under pressure from the Republican Congress.
The most dangerous of these has barely been reported. A very important study in the
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists , published in March 2017, reveals that the Obama
nuclear weapons modernization program has
increased "the overall killing power of existing US ballistic missile forces by a factor of
roughly three -- and it creates exactly what one would expect to see, if a nuclear-armed state
were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a
surprise first strike."
As the analysts point out, this new capacity undermines the strategic stability on which
human survival depends. And the chilling record of near disaster and reckless behavior of
leaders in past years only shows how fragile our survival is. Now this program is being carried
forward under Trump. These developments, along with the threat of environmental disaster, cast
a dark shadow over everything else -- and are barely discussed, while attention is claimed by
the performances of the showman at center stage.
Whether Trump has any idea what he and his henchmen are up to is not clear. Perhaps he is
completely authentic: an ignorant, thin-skinned megalomaniac whose only ideology is
himself.
President Trump's speech yesterday at the United Nations got rave reviews from neocons like
John Bolton and Elliot Abrams. The US president threatened North Korea, Venezuela, Syria,
Yemen, and Iran. At the same time he claimed that the US is the one country to lead by example
rather than by violating the sovereignty of others. Are the neocons on a roll as they push for
more war? Have they "won" Trump?
The message to the global community has been clear: it's Trump's way or the highway.
Notable quotes:
"... Paired with his confrontational rhetoric directed towards North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, and Syria, Trump's choice to cast these states as the "wicked few" portends more aggressive and meddlesome policies and gives the leaders of all of these governments reason to assume the worst about our intentions. It was similar to Bush's foolish "axis of evil" remarks in 2002. ..."
"... All of this belligerent and confrontational rhetoric just raises tensions in several different parts of the world, and it appears to commit the U.S. to more meddling around the world and potentially risks getting the U.S. into more avoidable wars. ..."
"... None of that has anything to do with putting American interests first. Much of Trump's speech was an assertion of a desire to dictate terms to other states, and as such it is likely to be poorly received by most of the governments of the world. ..."
Trump's
speech at the U.N. General Assembly this morning
contained a lot of ill-advised and dangerous remarks, but this one stood out:
If the righteous many don't confront the wicked few, then evil will triumph.
U.S. foreign policy already suffers from far too much self-congratulation and excessive confidence
in our own righteousness, so it was alarming to hear Trump speak in such stark, fanatical terms about
international affairs. Paired with his confrontational rhetoric directed towards North Korea, Iran,
Venezuela, and Syria, Trump's choice to cast these states as the "wicked few" portends more aggressive
and meddlesome policies and gives the leaders of all of these governments reason to assume the worst
about our intentions. It was similar to Bush's foolish "axis of evil" remarks in 2002.
The statement
itself is also rather odd in that it talks about the many being righteous, when religious texts normally
present the righteous as being the relatively few and embattled against the wicked multitude.
If
the "wicked" are so few, they must be badly outnumbered and don't pose as much of a threat as Trump
claims elsewhere. It also strains credulity that Trump speaks on behalf of righteousness when he
embraces so many abusive despots and enables Saudi-led coalition crimes in Yemen.
Trump declared the nuclear deal an "embarrassment," which strongly suggests that he won't agree
to recertify the deal when the next deadline comes up in mid-October. He emphasized the importance
of sovereignty for the U.S., but in everything else he had to say he showed that he was happy to
trample on the sovereignty of other states when it suited him. While his threat to "destroy" North
Korea was framed as a defense of the U.S. and allies, it will only make the North Korean government
more determined than ever to develop its nuclear arsenal and missiles. He hinted that the U.S. would
interfere more
in Venezuela , which will almost certainly be used by Maduro and his allies to their advantage.
All of this belligerent and confrontational rhetoric just raises tensions in several different
parts of the world, and it appears to commit the U.S. to more meddling around the world and potentially
risks getting the U.S. into more avoidable wars.
None of that has anything to do with putting American
interests first. Much of Trump's speech was an assertion of a desire to dictate terms to other states,
and as such it is likely to be poorly received by most of the governments of the world.
harmful and
dangerous things in this
U.N. speech today, but it is also worth noting the things that he chose to leave out. Many observers
have already pointed out how the worsening crisis in Myanmar and the military's large-scale
ethnic cleansing campaign against the Rohingya didn't rate a mention in the speech, but then
I suppose Trump wouldn't have anything constructive to say about the violent mass expulsion of a
Muslim population in any case. The most obvious omission in the speech was also the most predictable:
Trump said nothing about the Saudi-led war on Yemen or its role in causing the world's worst humanitarian
crisis, and when he did mention Yemen at one point it was perversely to claim credit for providing
humanitarian aid for the catastrophe that our government has helped create.
There was no attempt to justify ongoing U.S. support for the war, and there wasn't even any acknowledgment
that the Saudi-led war effort was happening. Trump's enthusiasm for the Saudi relationship means
that he isn't going to call attention to the disaster the Saudis and their allies have created with
our help, and the only other time he referred to Yemen was to use it to criticize Iran. Iran is faulted
for supposedly fueling "Yemen's civil war," which exaggerates their involvement, but there is no
mention of the Saudi-led coalition's role in escalating the conflict and wrecking the country for
over two years. It is a given that the Saudis and Iranians are judged by two very different standards
by this administration, but emphasizing the minimal Iranian role in Yemen while completely ignoring
the massive, devastating role that the Saudis and their allies (and the U.S.) have had is as bad
as it gets. As usual, those most responsible for the suffering of the people of Yemen weren't held
responsible, the war on Yemen was ignored, and Trump's Iran obsession won out.
"... Dr. Samuel Johnson said that "the road to hell is good intentions". Donald Trump's good intentions in respect of Russia have led not to a new kind of hell but to the status quo becoming more entrenched. ..."
"... When Donald Trump took office, he bravely embarked on what could rightly be called 'mission difficult'. Now, the American deep state/military industrial complex has revealed that in reality, it was always going to be mission impossible due to geo-strategic realities, uniquely American arrogance which is embedded into the thinking of even many Washington moderates and finally, because we have learnt beyond a reasonable doubt, that the President of the United States is only as powerful as those around him, allow him to be. ..."
"I hope that we do have good relations with Russia. I say it loud and clear, I've been saying
it for years: I think it's a good thing if we have great relationships, or at least good relationships
with Russia.
It's a big country, it's a nuclear country, it's a country that we should get along with, and
I think we will eventually get along with Russia".
In spite of Trump's stated wishes, the policies of his administration, irrespective of who is
actually authoring them, are in total opposition to Russia's stated geo-political goals and Russia's
geo-strategic interests.
The Trump administration's approach to Venezuela, Afghanistan (and South Asia as a whole) and
North Korea (and East Asia as a whole) and beyond is totally antithetical to the interests and stated
desires of Russia and Russia's closest partners.
Here are the key places where US policy under Trump and Russia's geo-political positions are in
total opposition
1. Venezuela
In Venezuela Trump has threatened war and implemented sanctions against the government of Nicolas
Maduro. Russia by contrast vehemently opposes sanctions and war.
2. Afghanistan
Trump's flagship policy of a troop surge in Afghanistan is opposed by Russia as is his policy
to effectively bomb the Taliban to the peace table.
Russia favours a process which would see moderate rebel elements of the Taliban invited to a peace
table in conjunction with a cease-fire in order to develop a lasting peace based on reconciliation
between the Taliban and the government in Kabul, something which in reality means a reconciliation
between Pashtun Afghans and the ethnic minorities who are in the current government.
Russia also takes exception to Trump's threats and criticisms against Pakistan, a country which
is rapidly becoming an important Russian partner in South Asia.
3. North Korea
Just this morning, Donald Trump once again threatened war on North Korea. By contrast, Russia
has said multiple times that war can never be considered an option on the Korean peninsula and has
called for the US to cease its delivery of THADD missile systems to South Korea and has also called
for a cessation of US-South Korea military drills. In each of these cases, the US has totally ignored
Russia and China's requests, in spite of the fact that both states border the Korean peninsula.
Russia like China also calls for direct talks between Washington and Pyongyang, something the
Trump administration is apparently not considering seriously at this time.
4. South China Sea
While Russia is not directly involved with the South China Sea dispute, America's provocative
stance on the region has infuriated Russia's most important partner, China. America's imperial actions
in the region, confusingly called 'freedom of navigation' by Washington, do not bode well for Moscow
which wants to see cooperation rather than confrontation in Asia.
The US has blatantly disregarded Turkish concerns about America's arming and funding of Kurdish
militants in Syria while Russia continues to show courtesy and countenance for Turkey's position
which is shared by Iran.
6. Europe
Russia has constantly called for NATO to de-escalate its presence in Europe, but under the Trump
administration, Obama's own European 'troop surge' has continued with no signs of stopping. Donald
Trump's recent speech
in Poland where he
quoted deeply Russophobic propaganda does not bode well for reconciliation between America's
EU allies and Russia.
7. Palestine/Israel
While the US approach to the conflict in the Levant is completely one-sided, Russia maintains
uniquely good relations with both Palestinian leaders and Israeli leaders in Tel Aviv. While Russia's
approach is clearly a conflict aversion tactic, if the US supported Israel in any aggression against
Syria, this would clearly end any attempts at fledgling cooperation between the US and Russia in
a Syrian conflict which is in any case, drawing to a close. Russia is carefully balancing the interests
of its Syrian partner with trying to contain the aggressive military posturing of the Israeli regime
with which Russia continues to do business.
Any US support of an Israeli strike against any Middle Eastern country would throw theSyrian de-escalation
zone which is jointly policed by America, Russia and Jordan, into disarray. To this end, the south
western Syrian de-escalation zone is thus far the only area where the Trump administration has made
any progress in respect of improving relations with Russia. Currently, it hangs by a thread for more
reasons than one.
8. Iran and the Persian Gulf
While Donald Trump's Tweets indicate a policy that is fully pro-Saudi, even as his own state department
emphases a US position of neutrality, as Qatar works to re-normalise relations with Iran, the US
could find itself increasingly at odds with its technical ally in Doha.
In respect of Iran itself, Donald Trump continues to advocate hostile policies against Tehran
which include threats to tear up the so-called Iran Nuclear Deal as well as false accusations of
Iran sponsoring terrorism.
Russia by contrast is an economic partner of Iran and is working with Iran to combat Salafist
terrorists in Syria. In the Persian Gulf, Russia has won respect from Qatar for adopting a genuine
andunambiguous position of neutrality. This has also allowed Russia to maintain healthy
relations with Saudi through out the conflict.
9. Libya
The US and the west more broadly seems to have no coherent strategy to deal with the Libyan failed
state, beyond propping up the fledgling Government of National Accord, which is competing with the
National Salvation Government as well as assorted militant groups for control of Tripoli.
By contrast, Russia continues to engage with Khalifa Haftar, the leader of Libya's only successful
and well organised military, the Libyan National Army. The LNA is also the only force in Libya that
has successfully liberated important cities from terrorist control, namely the eastern city of Benghazi.
Egypt continues to support Haftar and the Libyan House of Representatives from which he derives
political legitimacy. As Russia becomes ever closer to the government in Cairo, it would appear that
Russia's plan to help reconcile Haftar's forces with what's left of the UN backed government in Tripoli,
is the closest thing any non-Arab power has to a plan for Libya.
The US appears to have no plans at all, but one can count on the US opposing Russian involvement
in Libya, even though there is now little the US could conceivably do to stop Moscow and Cairo from
cooperating in a country the US first destroyed and later abandoned.
CONCLUSION
As I warned prior to Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin's first meeting,
"With all the fuss over Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump meeting later this week
at the G20 summit, many have conspicuously failed to grasp that the monumental task ahead of both
leaders has little to do with their own period in government and even less to do with their personalities.
These things of course do matter, but their importance is dwarfed by larger historical and present
economic and geo-strategic concerns.
With that in mind, here are the giant obstacles that both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will
be faced with when they meet".
In the month and three quarters since the Trump-Putin meeting, this situation has merely intensified.
Differences in American and Russian geo-political interests have become ever more pronounced and
the Trump administration shows no signs of even attempting to meet Russia half way, let alone approach
the situation in a pragmatic manner. The ideological dogmas of the US continue as if Donald Trump
is the mere figurehead in foreign affairs that many believe him to literally be.
Donald Trump's personal respect for Russia seems genuine beyond any lingering doubts. He has no
reason to say he wants warm relations with Russia any longer but he still says he does.
The policies of his administration however, belie the supreme difficulty of implementing such
policies or even attempting to do so.
Dr. Samuel Johnson said that "the road to hell is good intentions". Donald Trump's good intentions
in respect of Russia have led not to a new kind of hell but to the status quo becoming more entrenched.
When Donald Trump took office, he bravely embarked on what could rightly be called 'mission
difficult'. Now, the American deep state/military industrial complex has revealed that in reality,
it was always going to be mission impossible due to geo-strategic realities, uniquely American arrogance
which is embedded into the thinking of even many Washington moderates and finally, because we have
learnt beyond a reasonable doubt, that the President of the United States is only as powerful as
those around him, allow him to be.
The U.S. trained and financed opposition has tried to create violent chaos
in the streets but failed to gain traction with the majority of the people.
The only support it has inside the country is from the richer bourgeois in the
major cities which despises the government's social justice program. Workers
and farmers are better off under the social-democratic policies of first Hugo
Chavez and now Nicolas Maduro. The coup attempt as step one of a U.S. takeover
of Venezuela has failed.
Last month a new constitutional assembly was voted in and it is ready to
defend the state. The opposition
boycotted the election to the assembly but is now complaining that it has
no seats in it. One of the assemblies first moves was to fire the renegade General
Prosecutor Luisa Ortega Diaz. She had condemned the government for its resistance
to the coup attempts. She now has fled the country together with her husband.
The Miami Herald
admits that she is on the U.S. payroll:
Ortega, a longtime government insider who became chief prosecutor in 2007,
is likely safeguarding some of the administration's most damning legal secrets.
And she's thought to be working with U.S. law enforcement at a time when
Washington is ratcheting up sanctions on Caracas.
Word is that Ortega's husband was blackmailed by the U.S. after he was involved
in large illegal transactions.
U.S. President Trump
threatened to use military force should the dully elected President Maduro
not give up his position. The CIA head Pompeo recently
visited countries neighboring Venezuela "trying to help them understand
the things they might do". Did he suggest weapon supplies to some proxy forces
or an outright invasion?
Today the Trump administration
imposed severe sanctions on Venezuela:
The sanctions Trump signed by executive order prohibit financial institutions
from providing new money to the government or state oil company PDVSA. It
would also restrict PDVSA's U.S. subsidiary, Citgo, from sending dividends
back to Venezuela as well as ban trading in two bonds the government recently
issued to circumvent its increasing isolation from western financial markets.
Venezuela was prepared for at least some of these sanctions. A few moth ago
the Russian oil giant Rosneft acquired a share of PDVSA and at least some oil
sales
are routed through that company:
Russian oil firm Rosneft has struck deals with several buyers for almost
its entire quota of Venezuelan crude for the remainder of the year, traders
told Reuters on Wednesday, the first time it has conducted such a large
sale of the OPEC member's oil.
...
Venezuela's oil deliveries to the United States have declined in recent
years amid falling production, commercial issues, and sanctions on Venezuelan
officials.
The White House statement calls Maduro a "dictator" and his Presidency "illegitimate".
Both descriptions are laughable. Maduro was elected in free and fair elections.
The former U.S. president Jimmy Carter called the election system in Venezuela
the best in the world . The new sanctions will likely increase the support
for the current government.
The White House
hinted at further economic measures:
In a call to brief reporters on the measures, the [senior Trump] official
said the United States has significant influence over Venezuela's economy
but does not want to wield it in an irresponsible manner that could further
burden the already-struggling Venezuelan people.
Venezuela will now have some troubling times. But unless the U.S. launches
an outright military attack on the country -by proxy of its neighbors, through
mercenaries or by itself- the country will easily survive the unjust onslaught.
With 300 billion barrels the proven oil-reserves of Venezuela are the largest
of the world. They are the reason why the U.S. wants to subjugate the country.
But neither Russia nor China nor anyone else wants to see those reserves under
U.S. control.
Posted by b on August 25, 2017 at 02:21 PM |
Permalink
Treacherous, slimy Uncle Sam in its relentless mission for world domination
.. the unfortunate price that Chavez and Maduro have had to pay for telling
Uncle to F*ck Off.
Tronald probably thinks, a Venezuela war could be a better possibility for
a decisive turning point in his presidency than one in North Corea or Syria
or Ukraine. Not as risky. For that reason it is tremendously important that
China and Russia react swiftly in favor of Venenzuala making clear the costs
would be high and the outcome uncertain.
I know that elections can be boring, but calling someone "dully elected"
is a bit too much.
BTW, once I asked in Germany if I could get a savings account with interest,
and the young clerk could not understand why I am bored with my account
with zero "zinsen".
Inflation in Venezuala has reached Weimar Germany levels. US policies undoubtedly
a key reason. But whatever the cause no government can last long unless
hyperinflation bought under control.
As much as I want the US intervention to fail, it will be tough going for
Venezuela given Maduro's heavy-handed and incompetent governance. His finger-pointing
at the merchant class is a sure sign of a demagogue. Pure command economies
don't work, that's why both Russia and China reformed theirs. The best thing
that could happen would be a coup from the center left to reboot the currency,
free up the economy and make peace with the upper classes. And yes, ally
with Russia.
Thank you for keeping this part of the whirling dervish of late empire in
focus b.
I agree that Venezuela needs to buddy up to the China/Russia alliance
and continue to follow their anti-oligarch direction.
Any here who have not read The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein should do
so as background to the R2P that the US continues to do to South America....and
the rest of the 3rd world.
thanks b... the usa will do anything for exxon... they have the full backing
of all the important industries - financial and military.. same story everywhere..
Poor Venezuela. US machiavelism is at work to undermine it.
Will the Venezuelians realize that the USA policy in South America is dictated
by greed and only greed.
It is only idiots who think that this is about America caring for the freedom,
democracy,and well-being of Venezuelans. Such idiots should update themselves
on the history of American foreign policy in Latin America. As b correctly
points out: pay attention to the Grand Chessboard.
It would seem that with the collapse of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, combined
with the prospect of ISIS takfirists returning to their countries of origin,
that the US and the EU would opt to use these people as mercenaries and
fly them to Colombia, Brazil and Guyana to form a base of terrorists to
undermine Venezuela. These people could be trained to attack or hold hostage
indigenous groups or rural communities in Venezuela. These would be some
of the most vulnerable groups in that country and their treatment would
certainly attract the attention of the Western MSM news propaganda networks.
It is tragic to see so many idiots fall for the American and western canards
about promoting "freedom", "democracy" and "human rights". My fellow barflies,
please I recommend you go to medium.com and read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's
blockbuster essay "Intellectual-Yet-Idiot" to understand the stupidity of
the American neo-imperialists who are blinded by imperial hubris to even
understand their long term objective interests.
The recent election of the Constituent Assembly tends to confuse people--particularly
Outlaw US Empire Neoliberalcons plus Trump, who just falsely accused Maduro
of being a dictator--and what it's designed to accomplish. This article
explains it all very clearly--it's potential power is potent and has the
US-backed opposition backed into a deep hole since it boycotted the election
and has no delegates, which is why Trump just upped the sanctions and aggressive
rhetoric,
https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13313
In counterpoise to that explanatory article, we have an analysis of the
Outlaw US Empire's Propaganda System's coverage of what is in fact a very
small d democratic act that's mandated by the current constitution,
https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13329
As you'll see, the rhetoric hasn't changed one iota since Bu$hCo and Obomber.
The article's parent site--TelesurEnglish--and republication site--Venezuelanalysis--IMO,
are the two best English language sources for following events there. Yes,
there are others, but they tend to be slower in reporting current events.
The point of the war is to do to Spanish South America what was done to
the Middle East, that is to plunge the region into perpetual chaos and make
it impossible for any government to emerge that is able to resist the will
of the Empire.
b-thank you, very timely!
I found an excellent and relatively short video on ZeroHedge(in the comments)
just done onsite in Venezula re truth/hype on food shortages, political
activism, food shortages, black market. It is really good, recommend to
all:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHc7yegaCmc
And another hands in his resignation to Trump – over foreign policy -
Sebastian Gorka is resigning his post as Deputy Assistant to President
Trump, multiple sources familiar with the situation have told The Federalist.
In a blunt resignation letter, the national security and counterterrorism
expert expressed dissatisfaction with the current state of the Trump
administration. "[G]iven recent events, it is clear to me that forces
that do not support the MAGA promise are – for now – ascendant within
the White House," Gorka wrote. "As a result, the best and most effective
way I can support you, Mr. President, is from outside the People's House."
Gorka's letter expressed unhappiness with the direction the Trump
administration's foreign policy has taken, as signaled by the president's
recent speech on Afghanistan: [.]
"Just as worrying, when discussing our future actions in the region,
the speech listed operational objectives without ever defining the strategic
victory conditions we are fighting for. This omission should seriously
disturb any national security professional, and any American who is
unsatisfied with the last 16 years of disastrous policy decisions which
have led to thousands of Americans killed and trillions of taxpayer
dollars spent in ways that have not brought security or victory."[.]
The loss of Sebastian Gorka and Steve Bannon are making Trump's position
very weak. If Trump continues to be the puppet of the neo-cons and the zionists
then they will keep him on, otherwise they will kick him out.
Gorka and Bannon will fight against these forces outside the WH, it is yet
to see if they will succeed.
It's beginning to look like Chinese for sure and hopefully Russian assets
on the ground in a real big way ASAP might be the only way to put a stop
to this nonsense.
If this Yankee plot were to be boiled down to its basics it could be articulated
as...
AmeriKKKa's Greedy Idle Rich bought and own the US Govt. Venezuela's
Greedy Idle Rich, being too cheap and unimaginative to buy Venezuela's Govt,
have now accepted a US Govt offer to help them to steal it; at gun point
if necessary.
Sorry Moon of Alabama but this article is full of lies and propaganda.
Maduro is a murderer, tyrant, corrupt and totally inept. The National
Constituent Assembly is fraudulent and illegitimate, as only one million
people (out of 16 million) voted for it. 90% of Venezuela people hate Maduro,
the only reason he is still in power is that the regime corrupted the Army
and most of the patriotic officers are in prison or in exile. The role of
cuban agents/spies is also well known as they are the ones controlling the
upper level of the Army. I welcome anything that helps defeat the thugs
that control Venezuela government, they only brought misery to my people.
During the (s)election process Trump said multiple times that to the
victor go the spoils. How will the rest of the world react if the US takes
over Venezuela like Hawaii and says the oil now belongs to the US?
Venezuela's Greedy Idle Rich will be the caretakers.
Well, well; as the worm turns, we here in LOS live under a military junta,
just like you, there in the U.S..
And both soft coups; little blood shed, mostly in the U.S..
Interesting, this article (link) says SAA is on the verge of winning
Deir Ezzor.
Jon Hellevig is the writer at Russia Insider; http://tinyurl.com/ydxx7w8j
SAA will take Deir Ezzor city, but the US are going for the Omar oilfiels
east of the Euphrates in Deir Ezzor province. The US need this to finance
their Kurdish state, and Syria needs it for their own needs plus some export
income. The Omar fields are the main developed oilfields in Syria.
This link to wikimap should show it.
http://wikimapia.org/#lang=en&lat=35.005253&lon=40.806656&z=11&m=b
@24 Miguel
Sorry my friend you are delusional, maybe you should migrate to South Carolina
and get a job as a cleaner and live the American dream, isn't that what
most uninformed Venezuelans do when they are against their own country.
Posted by: Peter AU 1 | Aug 26, 2017 2:23:26 AM | 28
Yeah, well if you think the US and the Kurds are going for the Omari
oil-fields (as indeed b himself recently said on Sic Semper Tyrannis), there's
a small wrinkle which you and he may not have noticed (and almost certainly
not the US commanders). The report says that it is 7 Arab tribal units of
the SDF who are doing the job. Of course, because the area is inhabited
by their relatives. But they are a numerically weak element of the SDF.
Rather more significantly, I remember a videoed interview with one of their
leaders a year or two back, in which he said quite clearly that the reason
they were joining the SDF was to end up reuniting Syria under Bashshar al-Asad!
They may have conveniently forgotten to mention this to the Yanks; I know
I would have done, had it been me. So the real issue may be, if they do
succeed in taking the oil-fields before the Syrians get there (not certain),
will they hand them over to the Kurds or the Syrians?
Sanctions and their increases are economic warfare, and war is war. The
government of Venezuela needs to declare a national emergency of overt economic
warfare against the nation and its people. Once on a war footing the state
can move to clamp down on sedition while ensuring that at the least the
minimum needs of the people are met. Medicines, food, clothing shelter and
that normal life carries on as much as possible, schooling, law and order
and that any hoarding, the warehousing of goods, by the oligarchs and black
marketing of essential and vital goods is stamped out as much as possible.
Venezuela must also reach out to any allies it has in seeking assistance
under some mutual defense treaty such as NATO's clause 5 as together they
are stronger and not as liable to be picked off separately. Russia has her
hands full so China needs to step up to the plate, but will she?
Venezuela is a repeat of the same US playbook, especially in the CIA era.
Too many examples to list.
1) Fund an opposition or exploit an existing fault line
2) Find some civilian shock-troops (contras, neoNazis in Ukraine, street
gangs in Venezuela)
3) Count on the US media to promote your faked events.
4) Make neighboring countries knuckle under or bribe them.
5) Provoke government over-reaction
6) Intervene forcefully or trigger a prepared military coup
7) Walk away
8) Rinse and repeat
Suddenly the guarimbas (violent protest) stopped. because the money payments
stopped? So much for ¨popular protests¨. Also Trump´s threats had the opposite
effect; the opposition now cannot hide their real intentions.
These numbers explain so much.. about wars, sanctions and regime changes. Leadership exploitation [LE] model Where a nation forces[taxes] its
hard working citizens (taxpayers) to finance corporate access, control,
and possession of resources-natural[AC_PORN] [oil, gas, precious metals,
etc. ], the leadership directs needed TAX PAYER funds from personal and
homeland needs to subsidize corporation activities . These subsidies
lower cost of obtaining, producing and marketing resources-natural (COPM]
and such subsidies make the task of establishing competition-free, corporate-owed
monopolies EASY. Hence, corporations have come to expect national leaders
to use the wealth of the people of the nations they lead, to guarantee corporate
owners "monopoly powers" and subsidized flows of capital. LE subsidies are
usually well hidden in war, regime change, and sanction activities, but
subsidy form does not change the corruption. It allows the leadership
of a nation to fund and license corporations to be stronger than the host
nation itself/>.
I believe it is time to stop being surprised by what it was said actually
happened, and instead, to devise a model that allows to detect and predict
wrongful government subsidy and government leadership self-serving support
of corporate monopoly power.
A method needs to be developed to allow the public to uncouple its
leadership from corporate subsidy activity and corporate monopoly support.
It will take a lot of people from all over the world to evolve that model
but in this era of false flag propaganda, fake news, denial of speech, and
information hiding, nothing else seems to have a chance to restore citizen
level democracy.
"...Maduro is a murderer, tyrant, corrupt and totally inept..."
I agree 100! But he's an amateur compared to our Bushes and Obama. Trump?
Give him time... Ridding your country of Maduro will change NOTHING. Explain
to me how you're going to prevent the next power-seeking psychopaths (and
their relatives) from exploiting Venezuela?
"...The National Constituent Assembly is fraudulent and illegitimate,
as only one million people (out of 16 million) voted for it..."
So you're arguing illigitimacy and fraud based on what? Broken voting
process? Check. No state will to enforce the law when breaking it benefits
them? Check. Violating the terms or spirit of your consitution? Check. So
the next psychopaths running Venezuela are going to magically obey the constitution,
hold the powerful to the same laws as the little people and not exploit
'voting' to legitimize the people they select anyway? You sound just like
an American now!
"...90% of Venezuela people hate Maduro..."
Just think of what a paradise your country will be when that bastard
Maduro is gone! Ask any Ukrainian about the euphoria they are experiencing
after booting that rat, Yanukovyych. What Libyan would still want to live
under the cruel dictatorship of that nutjob Ghadaffi rather than the blissful
utopia Lybia has become after 'freedomization'? Iraq was an oil-rich country
like yours run by the corrupt, murdering despot Saddam Hussein - it is now
the shining jewel of stability in Middle Eastern liberty and democracy.
Iraqis are thrilled! The US is still working on Assad, but don't all Syrians
deserve the nirvana that the US will create by getting rid of him? Or are
you suggesting an indigenous Venezuelan do-it-yourselfer project without
foreign backers? You know it never works like that!
If nothing else, any opposition that appears to be "US-backed" should
be a red flag that you're not ever getting anything close to what they're
selling and there will always be strings attached.
"...the only reason he is still in power is that the regime corrupted
the Army and most of the patriotic officers are in prison or in exile..."
a) See above
b) This will be the exact same situation under any new Venezuelan leader
that replaces him, and the next on that replaces the replacement, and on
and on and on.
c) Armies are meant to protect the interests of the leadership and ruling
elite. It's just a happy coincidence that - at times - those interests occasionally
seem to involve protecting the little people.
"...The role of cuban agents/spies is also well known as they are
the ones controlling the upper level of the Army..."
Just the Army? Let me tell you about how the real pros do it: Israeli/Saudi
influence on the US Congress, the Department of Defense, US Intelligence
Community, Department of Homeland Security,...
"...I welcome anything that helps defeat the thugs that control Venezuela
government, they only brought misery to my people..."
Same here! We call the fronts for the biggest ones 'Democrats' and 'Republicans'.
Tell me how you're going to prevent a new flavor of psychopaths from replacing
the current ones besides worshipping the magical (but non-existent) powers
of your intentionally broken tools of democracy - 'voting' and 'the law'?
We repeatedly try this in the US and it doesn't seem to fix anything. Us
little people seem delighted with the
little red steering wheel , but it only seems to take us in the direction
we turn it some of the time - and that seems pretty random at best.
The old one we had with the blue steering wheel worked the same way - what
the hell is up with these things?
"... Given his bellicose type and bullying behaviors, I never held any hope that Trump would be less than hawkish. He made clear his desire to inflate the defense budget, his desire to negate the Iran treaty, and his desire to take over Iraq's oil fields ..."
"... With Trump, it always safest to assume that there is no there there–no abiding principles, no intellectual curiosity, and no character. His supporters have projected their own desires onto an empty canvas. ..."
"... Umm – How about the U.S. conflict with Russia? Or am I only imagining that he promoted normalizing that relationship. He has been prevented from doing anything of the kind by both Democrats and Republicans in congress. ..."
"... I think the decisive FP issue that led me and many others to vote for him was his very clear pledge to work with Russia. Other issues like the Middle East are insignificant when compared to Killary's stated intention to heighten the level of conflict with Russia generally speaking and in particular over Ukraine, which she wanted to admit into NATO. The consequences of that would be very serious indeed. At this point it is not at all clear whether Trump will be able to fix things with Moscow, but the relationship is undeniably at a low point, though that is largely due to the media and congress. ..."
"... A gaggle of Mises Institute associates, such as Lew Rockwell and Walter Block pushed for Trump election in no small part because they imagined him to be less militaristic. As Larison shows, that required a strong capacity for self-delusion. What else might one expect from anarchists for Trump? ..."
"... Was Trump really serious about working with Russia? Or was it another of his lies because it pleased the base? From January until the meeting in July he did nothing to further better relations. He employed a cabal of anti Russian hawks. ..."
If
there is one useful thing to come from Trump's bad decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan,
it is that it has once and for all killed off the idea that Trump was ever inclined to end
America's open-ended wars. I hope it also has put to rest the false assumption that Trump's use
of the phrase "America first" meant anything beyond a statement of generic aggressive
nationalism. As a candidate, Trump was quick to denounce previous wars as disasters, but his
complaint about these wars was that the U.S. wasn't "getting" anything tangible from them. He
didn't see anything wrong in attacking other countries, but lamented that the U.S. didn't
"take" their resources. That is not what I would call an antiwar argument.
During the campaign he never called for an end to the wars that were still ongoing, but
talked only about "winning" them. He explicitly campaigned on escalating the war on ISIS (and
he has done that), and he never committed to ending U.S. involvement in any other conflict (and
there is no danger he will ever do that). He picked up the phrase "America first" after he
heard the phrase in an
interview
with two
New York Times
reporters. He
clearly didn't
know
where it came from or what it meant, but it sounded good and he ran with it. Trump was
never the candidate of
restraint
or peace or non-intervention, but if we judge him on substance rather than slogans he never
pretended he was. He had the good fortune to run against a Democratic candidate with a
consistently hawkish and poor foreign policy record, and if he was mistaken for something other
than a hawk it was because his opponent would have made almost anyone seem dovish by
comparison.
If his first instinct on Afghanistan was to withdraw, as he claimed in his speech, it must
not have been a very strong instinct. It is one of the few times that Trump has managed to
refrain from following his instincts as president, and it was the one time that he shouldn't
have. So much for the argument that Trump's
instincts
can make up for his lack of foreign policy experience and knowledge.
Just before the election, I
gave
some of the
reasons why I couldn't possibly vote for Trump, and they seem worth revisiting this week:
He can't be trusted and changes his positions to whatever suits him at the time, but his
stated foreign policy views are mostly awful or incoherent anyway. Trump takes a number of
positions that make him just as unacceptable as any previous Republican nominee from this
century. He isn't really antiwar, and he's definitely not antiwar when it matters (i.e.,
before the war starts). He routinely denounces the results of diplomatic engagement, wants to
bring back torture, rejects the nuclear deal, takes a shamelessly pro-settler view of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and seeks to have an even more bloated military budget than we
already do.
Trump's hawkish positions weren't a secret before the election, and he made no effort to
conceal them. His hawkish policies as president shouldn't come as a shock, especially when he
had none of the relevant experience or knowledge he would have needed to push back effectively
against the hawks that he surrounded himself with. As I
noted
earlier this year, a president as ignorant and inexperienced as Trump is much more susceptible
to being pressured and influenced by his advisers. He is the least likely to be able to
challenge Washington's prevailing assumptions about the U.S. role in the world. Even if Trump
were interested in challenging those assumptions (and for the most part he really isn't), he
doesn't have the knowledge or
preparation
to do it.
"He is the least likely to be able to challenge Washington's prevailing assumptions about the
U.S. role in the world."
Here I agree. And i is not that he is being situational. He doesn't appear to have the
courage to say no to bad ideas or adhere to his campaign rhetoric and stated principles
concerning the use of force.
However, I am not close to abandoning the Pres just yet. There is still plenty of rope to
be had.
'
Correct on all counts. I would modify slightly the criticism of Clinton. She was terrible and
favored every Mideast war that came along and was all set to increase tensions with Russia.
Michael Morell, her ex CIA booster and possible member of her Administration if she had won
said on the Charlie Rose show that we should " covertly" kill Russians in Syria.
But all that said, I can't see Clinton being as wildly irresponsible as Trump has been in
his statements on North Korea. For me that's when the 25th Amendment should have been
invoked.
"He doesn't appear to have the courage to say no to bad ideas or adhere to his campaign
rhetoric and stated principles concerning the use of force."
I don't remember Trump having any particularly consistent campaign rhetoric, much less
principles (other than a racist bent). It's always curious what people project onto this
man.
I've been reading you for a while now. You haven't been wrong about too much. And you weren't
wrong about this. And you were equally clear-eyed about Clinton.
That said, I'd leave open the possibility of a major change before his presidency is over,
if for no other reason than the very unreliability or mercurial quality you note.
Given his bellicose type and bullying behaviors, I never held any hope that Trump would
be less than hawkish. He made clear his desire to inflate the defense budget, his desire to
negate the Iran treaty, and his desire to take over Iraq's oil fields
.
He wondered why we couldn't use nuclear weapons. Granted, he was often inconsistent about
his foreign policy positions, in part because of his vast ignorant, but anyone who'd mistake
this blustering I'd of a man for a peacemaker was always mistaken.
With Trump, it always safest to assume that there is no there there–no abiding
principles, no intellectual curiosity, and no character. His supporters have projected their
own desires onto an empty canvas.
Umm – How about the U.S. conflict with Russia? Or am I only imagining that he
promoted normalizing that relationship. He has been prevented from doing anything of the kind
by both Democrats and Republicans in congress.
I think the decisive FP issue that led me and many others to vote for him was his very
clear pledge to work with Russia. Other issues like the Middle East are insignificant when
compared to Killary's stated intention to heighten the level of conflict with Russia
generally speaking and in particular over Ukraine, which she wanted to admit into NATO. The
consequences of that would be very serious indeed. At this point it is not at all clear
whether Trump will be able to fix things with Moscow, but the relationship is undeniably at a
low point, though that is largely due to the media and congress.
A gaggle of Mises Institute associates, such as Lew Rockwell and Walter Block pushed for
Trump election in no small part because they imagined him to be less militaristic. As Larison
shows, that required a strong capacity for self-delusion. What else might one expect from
anarchists for Trump?
Was Trump really serious about working with Russia? Or was it another of his lies because
it pleased the base? From January until the meeting in July he did nothing to further better
relations. He employed a cabal of anti Russian hawks.
The fact congress voted on escalating sanctions was the result of his inactions and
weakness on carrying forward this issue
"I don't remember Trump having any particularly consistent campaign rhetoric, much less
principles (other than a racist bent). It's always curious what people project onto this
man."
He actually did. However, many people then read deeper into the words to then read what
they 'wanted' out of him instead. The matter of Trump being anti-war is a big example since I
also noticed early on that he didn't actually make any such statements.
The trick is to not sync what he doesn't like into what you think he does like. His
negative statements are less about trying to bring an opposing agenda and more about being
aggressive against an opponent. He bashed the Middle eastern wars not because he hated war
but because he wanted to bash Obama. He bashed Healthcare to attack Democrats, not to
advocate for a conservative alternative.
When you ignore his negative statements and focus more on what he positively says, his
"here's what I want." rhetoric, you get a more stable political platform, for example:
He is for aggressive actions when it comes to war to defeat your enemies. He is for a
strong, heavily funded army. He is pro-Israel. He sees government managed healthcare as a
positive, including focusing on making sure everyone is covered though he has no real focus
on what exactly that'll look like. He sees regulations as a burden and is very much
pro-business.
These are statements he has made clear during the campaign days and, honestly, has been
pretty stable on them when he took office. When you get past the contradictory negative
bashing he does and ignore what everyone 'thinks' he's for, he's been about as stable as
other presidents as far as his platform goes.
Now his voice is being muddled by the competing voices in the white house (especially when
either someone else says it or when Trump is reading from a script) and Trump is about as
strong willed about fighting for his causes as a wet noodle (IIRC, he handled opposition to
his business matters less with fighting and more with just yelling at folks and letting his
rep do the heavy lifting or making use of the fact that as CEO his rule is law so he doesn't
have to FIGHT and instead just say what we'll be doing.).
But at the core, he's not as unstable as it seems. Now whether you like what that core is
is another matter.
Dakarian-you seem to think that what he says matters. It doesn't. Look at his big campaign
issues:
Build the Wall; what has he done to fight for building the wall? Nothing Investigate
Hillary; Nope Ban All Muslims; He hasn't even tried to ban all Muslims Bring Jobs Back from
China; Anything? Bueller? Repeal Obamacare; He couldn't even be bothered to strongly pitch
his own Party.
He may not be "unstable". But he certainly has shown no inclination to follow up on his
promises.
Dakarian: everything else you would say ( and I'd add a strong preference for "deals" over
institutions and rules as instruments of foreign policy as another core value) but where did
you get the idea that he was fighting for government managed healthcare?
Bannon supported Blackwater founder Erik Prince's plan to use military contractors in the war
in Afghanistan and was against National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster's plan to deploy tens of thousands
of more troops to the Afghan conflict, according to a source with knowledge of the deliberations.
While saying he would "bomb the s**t" out of ISIS, Trump ran on a largely non-interventionist
campaign. He attacked President Bush for invading Iraq and cautioned against toppling the Assad regime
in Syria.
His White House, however, is not populated with like-minded thinkers. Even the most Trump-like
senior adviser left, Stephen Miller,
was a strong supporter of the Iraq War and primarily focuses on domestic policy issues.
Trump does have the habit of speaking to outside advisers on the phone and calls with Bannon and
Roger Stone might be the only times Trump hears war-weary voices.
Trump's power grows. And, his people don't speak first. (Trump speaks what The People are thinking.
Offend Trump and you have offended almost everybody.)
Bye, by)e Democrats. You can't win WITHOUT a Revolution...and not very many of the real People
are really interested in efforts to get one going.
Remember the CENTER of it all (ISIS, RIOTS) is London/Wall Street.
Everything since last Summer, has been coming out of MI5/6 to our FBI, CIA, NSA Business Intelligence
Empire.
The People are not going to go against Lincoln and they aren't
going to stand for anyone to take down the "States Rights" statues.
People are for a Strong Central Government and for a Strong State Government. It isn't "either/or".
It's BOTH. For Mob Rule...uh, not so much... Trump's power is growing steadily.
The People are sometimes for Left, sometimes for Right. It isn't "either/or". It's BOTH.
If you don't know this, you don't know anything about Americans.
These killings and riots are highly organized by both assets and AGENTS of the Anti forces of
Deep State, Deep Business. None of this is "from" WE, The People.
Bannon is now in a better position to expose the deep state. McMaster is probably soiling
his diapers.
Jesse4 > Hillary Clintub • 2 days ago
The deep state just kicked Bannon's incredibly huge butt.
lorsarah > Jesse4 • 2 days ago
The Deep State oligarchs and hacks may have won a small battle but their days are numbered.
The movement that Bannon is part of is growing.
oknow • 2 days ago
This whole intervention crap is for the birds and a waste of money as the years have shown.
If the Germans and Japanese were Islamic or international religious armies it would have never
ended. Maybe it is time that the great oil powers man up and fight.
Trump not backing down from the NK is what strength is. Not this crap of 15 years in foreign
nations.
T100C1970 > oknow • 2 days ago
This bravo sierra warfare did not start with Muzzies. It started with Commies. The Korean
war was the first war the US did not win. We got a tie with the pathetic Norks. Then in the
era in which I served as an Army Officer we managed to LOSE to the Cong + NVA.. The wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan are so far more like "ties" ... assuming you can call it a tie to spend
billions and lose thousands of troops to preserve a sort of status quo.
lorsarah > oknow • 2 days ago
"Not backing down from North Korea" IS foreign intervention, as everyone with a brain knows
that NK, which can't even keep its lights on, is not a threat.
11B30L • 2 days ago
President Trump is allowing his "little tiny ego" to get in the way of White House staffing
decisions, according to conservative commentator Ann Coulter.
Burrito Jackson • 2 days ago
Trump just sent his generals proposal back to the drawing board to keep us in Afghanistan.
Trump hasn't changed. Tired of hearing everyone controls Trump like he is a puppet.
lorsarah > Burrito Jackson • 2 days ago
Why are we there AT ALL? To protect our freedom? Of course not. Self-defense? Of course
not. It's lunacy, just as Vietnam was. But the military-industrial complex makes big money on
lunacy such as Afghanistan.
wars r u.s. • a day ago
Trump is a dove? He bombed Syria with no evidence that Assad did the chemical attack. He
dropped the MOAB on Afghanistan and his only real problem with that war is that we're not
winning. We continue to back the Saudi's in their onslaught of Yemen. Trump wants to decertify
Iran's compliance to the nuke deal even though Iran is in compliance which could lead to the
war the neocons and liberal hawks(Israeli firsters) have been salivating over for decades. He
threatens NK with "fire ad fury" and even recently threatened Venezuela...
"... Rather than repair the foul attempt to sabotage the US-Russian relationship in preparation for his presidency, Trump simply abided and thus became an accomplice. ..."
"... His comments, both during the electoral campaign and even early into his presidency, about wanting good relations with Russia, have been replaced by Trump's admissions that US relations with Russia are at a low point ..."
"... Rather than use the power of his office to calm fears, to build better ties with Russia, and to make meeting with Vladimir Putin a top priority, Trump has again done nothing ..."
"... The only explanation that makes any sense is that the US leadership grew concerned that Russia was no longer teetering on the edge of total socio-economic breakdown, as it was under the neoliberal Boris Yeltsin, but has instead resurfaced as a major actor in international affairs, and one that champions anti-neoliberal objectives of enhanced state sovereignty and self-determination. ..."
Yet when it came to Russia , Trump could have instantly removed sanctions that were imposed
by Obama in his last weeks in office -- an irresponsible and dangerous act by Obama, where
foreign policy was used as a partisan tool in the service of shoring up a crummy conspiracy
theory about "Russian hacking" in order to deny the Democrats any culpability in their much
deserved defeat. Instead, Trump continued the sanctions, as if out of meek deference to Obama's
policy, one founded on lies and antagonism toward Trump himself.
Rather than repair the foul
attempt to sabotage the US-Russian relationship in preparation for his presidency, Trump simply
abided and thus became an accomplice.
To be clear,
Trump has done precisely
nothing
to dampen the near mass hysteria that has been manufactured in the US
about alleged -- indeed imaginary -- "Russian intervention".
His comments, both during the electoral campaign and even early into his presidency, about
wanting good relations with Russia, have been replaced by Trump's admissions that US relations
with Russia are at a low point
(Putin agreed: "I would say the level of trust [between Russia
and the US] is at a workable level, especially in the military dimension, but it hasn't
improved. On the contrary, it has
degraded
" and his spokesman
called the relations "
deplorable
".)
Rather than use the power of his office to calm fears, to build better ties with Russia, and
to make meeting with Vladimir Putin a top priority, Trump has again done
nothing
,
except escalating tensions. The entire conflict with Russia that has developed in recent years,
on the US side, was totally unnecessary, illogical, and quite preventable. Russia had actively
facilitated the US' war in Afghanistan for over a decade, and was a consistent collaborator on
numerous levels. It is up to thinking American officials to honestly explain what motivated
them to tilt relations with Russia, because it is certainly not Russia's doing.
The only explanation that makes any sense is that the US leadership grew concerned that
Russia was no longer teetering on the edge of total socio-economic breakdown, as it was under
the neoliberal Boris Yeltsin, but has instead resurfaced as a major actor in international
affairs, and one that champions anti-neoliberal objectives of enhanced state sovereignty and
self-determination.
McGovern thinks that it was Brennan boys who hacked into DNC as a part of conspiracy to implicate Russia and to secure Hillary win.
One of the resons was probably that DNC servers were not well protected and there were other hacks, about whihc NSA know. So the sad
state of DNC internet security needed to be swiped under the carpet and that's why CrowdStike was hired.
NSA created 7 million lines of code for penetration and that includes those that were pablished by Wikileaks and designed to imitate
that attackers are coming (and using the language) from: China, North Korea, Iran and Russia.
Also NSA probably intercepts and keeps all Internet communications for a month or two so if it was a hack NSA knows who did it and
what was stolen
But the most unexplainable part was that fact that FBI was denied accessing the evidence. I always think that thye can dictate that
they need to see in such cases, but obviously this was not the case.
Notable quotes:
"... She couldn't pack a school gymnasium while Trumps rallies were packed with 10's of thousands. ..."
Love the rest of the talk, but no way did Hillary win. No way did she get the popular vote.
The woman was calling for war and reinstating the draft on men and women. She couldn't pack a school gymnasium while Trumps
rallies were packed with 10's of thousands.
At the moment, the talk is about DNC scuttling Bernie. But if it gets going, how long before they get to DNC/Crowdstrike/Ukraine
.? [And then there's DWS and the Awan bros.]
If Trump wants to survive he should FIGHT! He call out the Deep State explicitly, using the words "Deep State." and explaining machinations
to the public. This creates a risk for his life, but still this is the only way he can avoid slow strangulation by Muller.
Notable quotes:
"... In explicit terms Trump should call out the Deep State – he should use the words "Deep State." ..."
"... Mueller is Deep Sate - he is an elite - if he comes up with things that have nothing to do with Russia and the election - Trump
should pardon whoever - case closed. ..."
"... Murmurs have started about a 2nd Special Prosecuter – to investigate the DNC. At the moment, the talk is about DNC scuttling
Bernie. But if it gets going, how long before they get to DNC/Crowdstrike/Ukraine .? [And then there's DWS and the Awan bros.] ..."
"... Lee Stranahan names names [Clinton, McCain, CIA, the Media, Soros....] ..."
In explicit terms Trump should call out the Deep State – he should use the words "Deep State."
Mueller is Deep Sate - he is an elite - if he comes up with things that have nothing to do with Russia and the election
- Trump should pardon whoever - case closed.
Trump should say that right now - put the onus on Mueller to do the right thing and not take down the election over small
nothings.
Peace --- Art
... ... ...
Murmurs have started about a 2nd Special Prosecuter – to investigate the DNC. At the moment, the talk is about DNC scuttling
Bernie. But if it gets going, how long before they get to DNC/Crowdstrike/Ukraine .? [And then there's DWS and the Awan bros.]
Lee Stranahan names names [Clinton, McCain, CIA, the Media, Soros....]
The administration of US President Donald Trump is run by Zionists and Qatar was singled out by the
White House in retaliation for refusing to engage in pro-Israeli policies, an investigative journalist
in Washington says.
"I certainly hope Secretary of State Rex Tillerson acts as an honest broker in trying to get the
Saudis and their Wahhabist friends in Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and their military dictator
friend in Egypt, general el-Sisi, to cease and desist with this economic blockade that they have
created for Qatar," said Wayne Madsen, an author and columnist specializing in intelligence and international
affairs.
The top US diplomat traveled to Qatar on Tuesday as part of his Persian Gulf tour to break the
five-week rift between Doha and several Arab states.
Tillerson will visit Saudi Arabia before leaving the Persian Gulf region on Thursday. He will
hold a meeting with the foreign ministers of the four countries involved in the dispute on Wednesday
in Riyadh.
Ahead of his Doha visit, Tillerson made a stop in Kuwait, which is still trying to mediate the
dispute.
The split among the Arab states erupted in May after Trump visited Saudi Arabia and then pointing
out that numerous Arab leaders had complained to him that Qatar is supporting terrorism.
"The issue is that President Trump, when he was visiting [Saudi Arabia] Trump went on to back
the Saudis in this unusual tirade that the Saudis are pushing that Qatar is financing terrorists,
when in fact there were no Qataris among the 9/11 hijackers, but there were Saudis among these hijackers,"
Madsen said during a phone interview with Press TV on Tuesday.
"So, I think what this boils down to is the fact that we now know that Trump's son in law, Jared
Kushner, tried to basically extort $500 million from Qatar to invest in his failed building in Manhattan,"
he added. "The Qataris turned him down and Jared Kushner, who is some sort of svengali over Trump,
this sort of vampire that shadows Trump at every move, was likely responsible for Trump siding with
the Saudis against Qatar because Qatar didn't fork over a half a billion dollars on Kushner's failed
real estate venture in Manhattan."
"This goes to show that with the Trump administration, with his ambassador to Israel [David] Friedman
and special envoy [Jason] Greenblatt and his other special envoy Jared Kushner, that this administration
is run by Zionists, for Zionists, for the interest of Israel and against the interest of any country
that refuses to engage in the criminal gangstarism of the Trump administration, and Qatar is actually
no different than many countries that have now been singled out for this type of retribution and
retaliation by the criminal gang that runs the White House. "
Trump means America first, after Israel , his money, his family, his lenders, and the evil eye
in London.
Howard Lewis 5 hours ago
I have found Wayne Madsen to be 1,000 times as cognizant of reality as Donald Trump and 10,000
times as cognizant as Killary Clinton or any other Bush criminal cabalist.
goldmorgs 22 hours ago
More exactly; talmudic pharisee, who obey the ruling bunch of talmudic finance pharisee goldmorgs
in New Yorkrael.
In the usa, uk, nl, since recent ukraine and france absolutely and to high extent also in germany
etc. the majority of the cabinet members, parliament members and CEO of the central banks, the
press, the tv-channels, the big computer and internet companies and the other large institutions
and companies are pharisee. Those pharisee obey and serve the goldmorgs instead of the people.
Two millenia ago Jesus has warned us with the temple cleansing and his death that the
finance pharisee must be removed and kept out of (finance) power and finance business.
Therefore the finance pharisee have instigated his execution.
J.J.'s_Zionist_Free_World > jsinton 20 hours ago
No, Alex Jones is a Joke, part of what they called the
"Controlled Opposition" in the Book "1984" by George Orwell. Where do you
live in Israel? Just Curious.
Ray at 17:49 the day before yesterday
Interesting article it's a shame that people continue in their brainwashed state and dispute
when it comes to support for Israel.
Chamberlain > john at 18:03 the day before yesterday
Of course, because lobbies being legal corruption flows through them with no judicial
problem.. And Zionist lobbies are the most economically powerful in US. This is how the so
called "capitalist democracy" works in its fullness. That is why many capitalist countries
that have not legalized lobbies, such as Brazil, for example, are at a dead-lock in their
political and electoral system.
"... Trump may have talked about getting along with Russia during the campaign, but he has since surrounded himself with people who a.) think he is a muppet and b.) rather like the new cold war. ..."
"... The hawk they want at the meeting is none other than Fiona Hill. The Putin biographer that Trump appointed to his National Security Council. Considering the content of her book on Putin (taglined: "a multidimensional portrait of the man at war with the West") the intent may even be to slight the Russian leader. ..."
"... According to two White House aides, senior Trump administration officials have pressed for Hill the National Security Council's senior director for Europe and Russia and the author of critical psychological biography of Putin to be in the room during the president's highly anticipated meeting with Putin. ..."
"... Hill, who came to the White House from the Brookings Institution, previously served as the National Intelligence Council's top intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia. Her 2013 biography, Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin, portrayed a corrupt and Machiavellian leader attempting to balance his various public personas in an effort to hang on to power. ..."
"... More recently, Hill has downplayed expectations that Trump's public praise for Putin and his criticism of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization might engender closer relations between the two countries. ..."
"... "I think it will come down to what it's always been," she told The Atlantic in November, "where the Russians will get all giddy with expectations, and then they'll be dashed, like, five minutes into the relationship because the U.S. and Russia just have a very hard time being on the same page." ..."
What better way to nip any chances of a Russia reset in the bud
Trump may have talked about getting along with Russia during the campaign, but he has since
surrounded himself with people who a.) think he is a muppet and b.) rather like the new cold
war.
So when he meets the Russian president this weekend in Germany
The Daily Beast
reports his own aides want the biggest anti-Russia hawk among them to be in the
room, ostensibly to help with "optics", but in reality to "help nudge Trump in the right
direction". I.e. to make sure any prospect of Russia reset is nipped in the bud.
The hawk they want at the meeting is none other than Fiona Hill. The Putin biographer that
Trump appointed to his National Security Council. Considering the content of her book on Putin
(taglined: "a multidimensional portrait of the man at war with the West") the intent may even
be to slight the Russian leader.
The Daily Beast:
According to two White House aides, senior Trump administration officials have pressed for
Hill
the National Security Council's senior director for Europe and Russia and the author of
critical psychological biography of Putin to be in the room during the president's highly
anticipated meeting with Putin.
If Hill is there, these officials believe, it will help the
White House
avoid the perception that the
president is too eager to cozy up to the Kremlin. The hope is to avoid a repeat of Trump's
last meeting with top Russian officials, during which he disclosed classified intelligence to
two of the country's top diplomats!and was pictured by Russian state media looking
particularly friendly with them.
"If she [Hill] wasn't there it would be pretty bad, this is the most momentous thing in
her portfolio," said former
Pentagon
Russia policy chief Evelyn Farkas,
who added that the only valid reason not to include Hill would be to make room for McMaster
in a room with limited space.
A National Security Council official confirmed to The Daily Beast that Hill is already in
Hamburg, awaiting the president's Thursday arrival. Her early presence, and ongoing efforts
to include Hill in the president's meeting with Putin, signal that the administration is
attempting to head off any sense that the Trump is treating the Kremlin with kid gloves
during his first meeting with America's chief geopolitical antagonist.
"We've clearly had an optics problem [on this issue]," one White House official said.
"This would be one small corrective."
Officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on
these matters. The White House press office did not respond to requests for comment on this
story.
Hill, who came to the White House from the Brookings Institution, previously served as
the National Intelligence Council's top intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia. Her 2013
biography, Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin, portrayed a corrupt and Machiavellian leader
attempting to balance his various public personas in an effort to hang on to power.
Putin, has turned his skills as a former KGB officer into a unique brand of kleptocratic
statecraft ,
wrote Hill
and her co-author
, Brookings' Clifford Gaddy. The Kremlin leader installed friendly
officials in high-level posts with influence over key levers of the Russian economy!and
ensured they remain friendly through financial inducements and more sinister, if mostly
unspoken, threats.
More recently, Hill has downplayed expectations that Trump's
public praise
for
Putin and his criticism of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization might engender closer
relations between the two countries.
But while Trump has
repeatedly
hailed
the "strong" and "brilliant" Russian leader, Hill said she expected little change
in longstanding U.S.-Russia tensions.
"I think it will come down to what it's always been," she
told
The Atlantic
in November, "where the Russians will get all giddy with expectations, and
then they'll be dashed, like, five minutes into the relationship because the U.S. and Russia
just have a very hard time being on the same page."
"... One wonders what were the U.S. President's diplomatic goals for that little venue, if indeed he had any. ..."
"... I usually agree with Buchanan, but not on this one. The US President is not a pundit, to be " right" about his foreign policy is hardly enough. He has to be able to push it through. This requires clarity in his vision and the ability to find common ground, to influence his international partners (as Putin expresses it). He should not just go be provoking in Central Europe. If Trump is standing alone among world leaders, it is not because of righteousness, but because of incompetence. ..."
"... Trump lacks both intellectual integrity and intellectual honesty. Or any philosophically-sound ethos, for that matter. ..."
"... They've been as global as their means allowed. In the interwar and post-Cold War eras their global role has been to align with world hegemons to gain advantages over neighboring states, with results that have turned quite bad. Somehow, the lesson that it's better to have a good policy towards neighboring states rather than alignment with your neighboring states' sworn enemies seems to escape them. They don't like EU's immigration policy but with all of the Atlanticists' other imperial bullshit is just fine and dandy with them. ..."
"... Regardless of Poland's contributions to civilisation of the past, it remains a fact that today's Poland is one of the chief instigators of the "Russia is all evil, all the time" chorus. Its a great cheerleader for pushing NATO up to Russia's borders etc etc. These actions, to say the least, are fraught with danger: for Poland & what for passes for our civilisation. ..."
"... Economics & culture are of one large KNOT. It should be clear that Neo-liberalism cares nothing for families: the destruction of small business, of living wages & the general gross bias of Elites against people/families to corporations demonstrate just how elites care about families. Neoliberalism's willingness to dispense with morality in such things as advertising, movies etc if it will secure good profits has been clear for years (Of course, we as consumers, of such degenerate products are not innocent either) ..."
"... Nor does christianity fare too well in hyper-capitalist society: Jesus was pretty clear on this element: there's the problem of rich persons & the eye of needles, & that you can't follow two leaders: its Christ OR Mammon, I believe. ..."
Well, I read the speech, in a version which included the chants of the crowd. It seems to
me it was two speeches badly welded into one. The first, the foreign policy one, could easily
be construed as anti-Rusia (pro expansive NATO). The second was a cheerleading effort, along
the lines referenced by Buchanan. It spoke glowingly about Poland's nationalism (and thus was
correctly read by some German friends as "anti Merkel") and more diffusely about "The West's"
achievements and will to survive. The Poles present received it enthusiastically, which must
have been very flattering.
Overall, a badly crafted speech, that can irritate both Russians and Germans by reminding
them of past crimes and present policies where there is confrontation with the U.S. (role of
NATO and refugees).
One wonders what were the U.S. President's diplomatic goals for that
little venue, if indeed he had any.
I usually agree with Buchanan, but not on this one. The US President is not a pundit, to
be " right" about his foreign policy is hardly enough. He has to be able to push it through.
This requires clarity in his vision and the ability to find common ground, to influence his
international partners (as Putin expresses it). He should not just go be provoking in Central
Europe. If Trump is standing alone among world leaders, it is not because of righteousness,
but because of incompetence.
Anonymous,
July 12, 2017 at 3:18 am GMT
Trump lacks both intellectual integrity and intellectual honesty. Or any
philosophically-sound ethos, for that matter.
If Russia has a lick of good sense, they'll keep their nuclear deterrent operational, and
ignore the collapsing decadent monster, the USA. They might also benefit from making it known
that, say, 10% of their kick-ass nukes have "Destination Jerusalem" inscribed on the MIRV
capsule.
Russia has adequate resources to be a strong economy and a businesslike, but somewhat
insular, nation of dedicated Russians. You know, kinda like the USA used to be for Americans.
They might greatly benefit from pursuing that route.
Sic transit, dammit, sic transit gloria mundi.
Thirdeye,
July 12, 2017 at 1:33 am GMT
The Enlightenment is what made the west great. The backwards Roman Catholicism so loved by
Buchanan and so many Poles undermines it. Poland never fired a shot in defense of western
civilization. They waged war for hegemony of backwardness. Copernicus was a swell guy, but
Poland's contribution to the ascent of the west since then has been pretty much zip. Funny
how Buchanan's cogent criticism of Poland's role in starting the Second World War is
forgotten in his fauning over Trump's sophomoric speech.
Families in the west are declining because of economic, more than cultural, assault. Don't
worry when dysfunctional weenies voluntarily take themselves out of the gene pool.
Thirdeye,
July 12, 2017 at 4:24 am GMT • 100 Words
@Anonymous
Poland never fired a shot in defense of western civilization. They waged war for
hegemony of backwardness.
Essplainame, Lucy, how that's a "bad thing"?
I see you don't mind wars for hegemony of backwardness.
.Poland and their global role which they choose NOT to be a global role?
They've been as global as their means allowed. In the interwar and post-Cold War eras
their global role has been to align with world hegemons to gain advantages over neighboring
states, with results that have turned quite bad. Somehow, the lesson that it's better to have
a good policy towards neighboring states rather than alignment with your neighboring states'
sworn enemies seems to escape them. They don't like EU's immigration policy but with all of
the Atlanticists' other imperial bullshit is just fine and dandy with them.
animalogic,
July 12, 2017 at 7:10 am GMT
@Thirdeye
All this talk of "western civilisation"reminds me of a quote attributed to Gandhi:
"What do you think of western civilisation, Mr Gandhi ?"
"I think it would be a good idea" he replied.
Regardless of Poland's contributions to civilisation of the past, it remains a fact
that today's Poland is one of the chief instigators of the "Russia is all evil, all the time"
chorus. Its a great cheerleader for pushing NATO up to Russia's borders etc etc. These
actions, to say the least, are fraught with danger: for Poland & what for passes for our
civilisation.
As for: "Families in the west are declining because of economic, more than cultural,
assault."
Economics & culture are of one large KNOT. It should be clear that Neo-liberalism
cares nothing for families: the destruction of small business, of living wages & the general
gross bias of Elites against people/families to corporations demonstrate just how elites care
about families. Neoliberalism's willingness to dispense with morality in such things as
advertising, movies etc if it will secure good profits has been clear for years (Of course,
we as consumers, of such degenerate products are not innocent either)
Nor does christianity fare too well in hyper-capitalist society: Jesus was pretty
clear on this element: there's the problem of rich persons & the eye of needles, & that you
can't follow two leaders: its Christ OR Mammon, I believe.
Renoman,
July 12, 2017 at 8:24 am GMT
Looking to Germany for leadership? Remember the Wars folks. Putin is the leader of the
free World, Trump is just the tantrum throwing child of the deep state [Israel].
"... Less than 24 hours later, Trump decided against it, tweeting : "The fact that President Putin and I discussed a Cyber Security unit doesn't mean I think it can happen. It can't -- but a ceasefire can, & did!" ..."
In a
series of tweets
yesterday,
President Trump
proposed "an impenetrable Cyber Security unit
" with Putin "so that election hacking, &
many other negative things, will be guarded and safe." The news came as a shock to just about
everyone who got word of it, including congressional members of his own GOP party.
Less than 24
hours later, Trump decided against it,
tweeting
: "The fact that
President Putin and I discussed a Cyber Security unit doesn't mean I think it can happen. It
can't -- but a ceasefire can, & did!"
Ars Technica reports:
"It's not the dumbest idea I have ever heard, but it's pretty close," Senator Lindsey
Graham, a Republican of South Carolina,
said
of the plan.
Senate Republican Marco Rubio of Florida
tweeted
that "partnering with
Putin on a 'Cyber Security Unit' is akin to partnering with [Syrian President Bashar] Assad on
a 'Chemical Weapons Unit."'
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that Trump and the Russian president
decided
at a
meeting during a Group of 20 nations summit in Hamburg, Germany, to embark on a joint "cyber
unit to make sure that there was absolutely no interference whatsoever, that they would work on
cyber security together." But on Sunday, after it was clear that the plan was going nowhere,
Trump took to Twitter and said no deal.
That didn't stop Rep. Don Beyer, a Democrat from Virginia, from introducing on Monday an
amendment to the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act that would bar a US-Russian cyber
accord.
He said: "Donald Trump's proposal to form a 'cyber security unit' with Putin is a
terrible idea that would immediately jeopardize American cybersecurity... Trump must
acknowledge that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and take strong, meaningful action to
prevent it from happening again in future elections."
"... In early 2016, Trump (correctly) summed up George W. Bush's legacy this way: "We've been in the Middle East for 15 years, and we haven't won anything." ..."
"... He ridiculed Hillary Clinton for being " trigger happy " -- no standard-issue gibe from a guy who also promised to bring torture back -- even while echoing progressive complaints that the $5 trillion pricetag from Bush's wars would've been better spent at home. ..."
"... And though Trump's relationship with the Russians has since acquired an unseemly cast, he once offered quite sensibly that " it's better to get along " with the world's other nuclear-armed superpower than not to. ..."
"... Since taking office, Trump's turned virtually all use of force decisions over to his generals. With the president's backing, they've ordered 4,000 new American troops back into Afghanistan, sent thousands more to Iraq and Syria, and nearly quadrupled the rate of drone strikes from the Obama administration, which was already quite prolific. ..."
"... Everywhere they go, they're escalating the brutality -- and we still ..."
"... They cratered Afghanistan with the largest non-nuclear bomb ever dropped. They've stepped up support for the brutal Saudi-led bombing of Yemen, where 11,000 have died and thousands more are at risk of dying of hunger and cholera . Meanwhile they've brought civilian casualties from our bombings in Iraq and Syria to record levels , inflicting what the UN calls a " staggering loss of civilian life ." ..."
"... Under Trump, U.S. troops have repeatedly attacked pro-Syrian forces , a line Obama never crossed, in a misguided effort to bolster Washington's favorite rebels, many of whom are fighting each other . That's ratcheting up tensions with Syria's allies, Iran and Russia, endangering Obama's hard-won diplomatic gains with Iran and even leading Russia to threaten to shoot down American planes. ..."
"... For Trump, a president lampooned as a puppet of Putin, blundering into conflict with Russia over an empty corner of eastern Syria should be an embarrassing prospect. But Trump seems blithely unaware of the whole thing. ..."
"... While Trump may be uniquely prone to careless belligerence, the problem is plainly bipartisan: He's mostly just adding ghastly additions to a war scaffolding the Obama and Bush administrations built before him. ..."
"... Trump has failed to bring any sense or strategy to America's wanton post-9/11 war-making. But precisely by putting such a sinister face on it, he might've finally inspired bipartisan action to rein in the war machine. ..."
One of the few things I recall fondly about the Trump campaign -- a short list, I'll admit -- was the
candidate's apparent glee in ridiculing the war-mongering of his rivals and predecessors.
In early 2016, Trump (correctly) summed up George W. Bush's legacy this way: "We've been in the
Middle East for 15 years, and we haven't won anything."
He ridiculed Hillary Clinton for being "
trigger
happy " -- no standard-issue gibe from a guy who also promised to
bring torture back -- even while echoing progressive complaints that the $5 trillion pricetag
from Bush's wars would've been better spent at home.
And though Trump's relationship with the Russians has since acquired an unseemly cast, he once
offered quite sensibly that "
it's better to get along " with the world's other nuclear-armed superpower than not to.
Compared to his rivals, Politico magazine once mused, Trump was "
going Code Pink " on foreign policy. But what a rose-colored lie that turned out to be.
Since taking office, Trump's turned virtually all use of force decisions over to his generals.
With the president's backing, they've ordered
4,000 new American troops back into Afghanistan, sent thousands more to Iraq and Syria, and
nearly quadrupled the rate of drone strikes from the Obama administration, which was already
quite prolific.
Everywhere they go, they're escalating the brutality -- and we still haven't won anything.
They cratered Afghanistan with the largest non-nuclear bomb ever dropped. They've stepped
up support for the brutal Saudi-led bombing of Yemen, where 11,000 have died and thousands more are
at risk of dying of
hunger and
cholera . Meanwhile they've brought civilian casualties from our bombings in Iraq and Syria to
record levels , inflicting what the UN calls a "
staggering loss of civilian life ."
Things are about to get even more dangerous in Syria, as the Islamic State falters and armed factions
turn on each other to claim the remains of its caliphate.
Under Trump, U.S. troops have
repeatedly attacked pro-Syrian forces , a line Obama never crossed, in a misguided effort to
bolster Washington's favorite rebels, many of whom are
fighting each other . That's ratcheting up tensions with Syria's allies, Iran and Russia, endangering
Obama's hard-won diplomatic gains with Iran and even leading Russia to threaten to
shoot
down American planes.
For Trump, a president lampooned as a puppet of Putin, blundering into conflict with Russia
over an empty corner of eastern Syria should be an embarrassing prospect. But Trump seems blithely
unaware of the whole thing.
While Trump may be uniquely prone to careless belligerence, the problem is plainly bipartisan:
He's mostly just adding ghastly additions to a war scaffolding the Obama and Bush administrations
built before him.
One possible solution? Revoke the congressional war authorization passed after 9/11, which gave
the president authority to track down the perpetrators of those attacks. There were 19 hijackers
that day, but that law's been abused to justify military action
37 times in 14 countries , the Congressional Research Service calculates.
Stunningly, on June 29, the House Appropriations Committee overwhelmingly approved an amendment
from Rep. Barbara Lee to revoke that authority -- and then
broke into applause . It's not law yet, but Democrat Tim Kaine and Republicans Jeff Flake and
Rand Paul have voiced support for doing something similar on the Senate side.
Trump has failed to bring any sense or strategy to America's wanton post-9/11 war-making.
But precisely by putting such a sinister face on it, he might've finally inspired bipartisan action
to rein in the war machine.
Peter Certo is the editorial manager of the Institute for Policy Studies and the editor
of Foreign Policy In Focus.
"... It could also be that he is just being "smart" -- saying what needs to be said ad hoc to appease -- with the intention of eventually, when the time is right, carrying out his strategic vision. We'll see. ..."
"... what about the 59 missiles its all kiss and make up? What a load of bollocks. ..."
It's likely that Trump is mind controlled since his seemingly core opinions and attitudes can
reverse 180 degrees in mere hours. Thus worrying about his getting violently demised is probably
unfounded. He will consistently perform for his Zionist handlers and dance for his Deep State
controllers.
I don't know about that. His expressing contrary opinions could be interpreted as his having
some independence--a hopeful thing. It could also be that he is just being "smart" -- saying
what needs to be said ad hoc to appease -- with the intention of eventually, when the time is
right, carrying out his strategic vision. We'll see.
A case can be made that the so called deep state is committing treason on a daily basis. Unfortunately
its constituent parts are stronger than the President and his allies.
what about the 59 missiles its all kiss and make up? What a load of bollocks. They
both love israel. if you look carefully you can see the strings
ARG Asia
I did know "Deep State" was powerful, but I had no idea they could do whatever they wanted and
interfere in nearly every of President Trump staff members with the exemption of the former Goldman
Sachs appointees. Is the US really a democracy?
Here in Asia we see the US bullying and revolver diplomacy has insulted many countries, not
only the Philippines. If the US want to have a future in Asia they have to be more respectful,
stop interfering in domestic issues, and stop all these regimes change attempts.
"... The truth about this "17 intel agencies" claim matters, not so much because of what it says about the intelligence community's
conclusion on Russian meddling, but because of what it says about the establishment media's conclusion on Russian meddling. ..."
"... The fact is many of these narratives bear all the same hallmarks as the "17 intelligence agencies" mess. ..."
"... Based on the word of one anonymous source, The Washington Post reported that Russia had hacked the U.S. electrical grid. That
was quickly proven false when the electric company, which the reporter had not bothered to contact before publishing, said in a statement
the grid definitely was not hacked , and the "Russian hacker" may have been no hacker at all, but an employee who mistakenly visited
an infected site on a work computer. ..."
"... The media is bent on supporting already foregone conclusions about Trump and Russian meddling, no matter what they have to
scoop up or parrot or claim (or ignore) to do so. ..."
"... for the media, it's also just a "basic fact" that Trump likely colluded with Russia, and that he should be impeached, and that
his White House is on the verge of literally disappearing into a sinkhole. ..."
When Hillary Clinton claimed "17 intelligence agencies" agree on Russian meddling in the third presidential debate, a host of media
outlets including The New York Times rated the claim as 100 percent true. Nine months later, those same outlets say the stat is obviously
false, and there's been a "simple" explanation as to why all along.
A closer look at how the claim survived and thrived over those nine months reveals a startling lack of skepticism in the press
when it comes to the Russia narrative. The truth is the great majority of the 17 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community
had nothing to do with the investigation and made no judgments about the matter.
"The reason the views of only those four intelligence agencies, not all 17, were included in the assessment is simple: They were
the ones tracking and analyzing the Russian campaign," The New York Times now
reports
. "The rest were doing other work."
Strange admission for the paper, since its star political reporter recently
reiterated the false claim as she was in the middle of writing an article characterizing President Trump as stubbornly foolish.
"The latest presidential tweets were proof to dismayed members of Mr. Trump's party that he still refuses to acknowledge a basic
fact agreed upon by 17 American intelligence agencies that he now oversees: Russia orchestrated the attacks, and did it to help him
get elected," Maggie Haberman wrote. Her story was later corrected to reflect the -- basic fact -- that only three agencies working
under the Director of National Intelligence contributed to the intelligence community's conclusion.
A few days later, the Associated Press
echoed that correction in a "clarification" bulletin acknowledging there's no truth to the claim the wire service had repeatedly
blasted out for publication to news outlets all over the world.
The bizarrely timed corrections put the media in a bit of a truth pickle, especially after Trump drew attention to the corrections
at a high-profile press conference in Poland. "They had to apologize, and they had to correct," he noted.
The New York Times, CNN and others quickly spun up articles and tweets aimed at steering the conversation away from this uncomfortable
truth about their proliferation of an outright false claim, and back to the more comfortable "isn't Trump an idiot?" narrative.
"17 intel agencies or four? Either way, Russia conclusion still valid," Politifact
wrote in a Thursday headline . "Trump still doesn't seem to believe his intelligence agencies,"
CNN blared .
The New York Times
took
it a step further , dismissing the truth of the claim as a "technicality" and then accusing Trump of spreading a "misleading"
narrative by correcting the record. Their headline on a story about Trump calling them out for pushing a bogus claim: "Trump Misleads
on Russian Meddling: Why 17 Intelligence Agencies Don't Need to Agree."
But that uncomfortable truth remains. The "17 intelligence agencies" embellishment is frighteningly easy to catch. A cursory glance
of the DNI website would show the truth. More importantly, the sheer length of time the falsehood stood in public record at the highest
echelons of media betrays an astounding lack of scrutiny on other points in the Russia narrative, which are often sourced to political
operatives and anonymous "officials."
Let's look at how this happened, and what it says about the media's overall credibility in the Russia collusion narrative, from
the top.
The claim can be traced straight back to candidate Clinton in the third presidential debate, remarking on Russian meddling a few
weeks after the DNI released a statement on the investigation. The press didn't demonstrate any interest in the number of agencies
that signed off on the Oct. 7 statement, until Clinton unleashed the "17" number in the debate (other than a CNN report
incorrectly claiming there are
19 intelligence agencies).
She was clearly trying to add some umpf to the DNI assessment and pour cold water on Trump's skepticism about Russia's attempt
to influence the election. She even repeated the number twice, firmly planting it in the record.
"I think that this is such an unprecedented situation," Clinton said. "We've never had a foreign government trying to interfere
in our election. We have 17, 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military who have all concluded that these espionage attacks,
these cyber attacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin. And they are designed to influence our election. I find that deeply
disturbing."
Trump took the bait.
"She has no idea whether it is Russia, China or anybody else," he replied, setting off a back and forth that would be reiterated
over and over in the press as evidence
he was in denial about Russian meddling. "I am quoting 17, 17 -- do you doubt?" Clinton said, and Trump responded definitively: "Our
country has no idea. Yeah, I doubt it. I doubt it."
With that, Hillary's claim was up and off.
Journalists highlighted the talking point on Twitter as they covered the debate. And
the fact checks came rolling in.
The New York Times
,
Politico ,
ABC News ,
Politifact and PBS
all rated the claim as totally true the night of the debate. Before the night ended The New York Times was using Clinton's number
with authority in its reporting, saying
in a debate wrap up that Trump had "refused" to acknowledge "the unanimous conclusion of America's 17 intelligence agencies."
The following day the number popped up in reports from Politico and Defense One, quickly divorced from its context as a debate
talking point and transformed into an indisputable fact attached to Trump-Russia stories.
"The Office of the Director of National Intelligence collects and coordinates for the President the information and analysis from
the 17 agencies that make up U.S. national intelligence collection," a line
in the Defense One report on "Trump's Denial" stated.
Politico hadn't previously used the 17 figure in reporting on Russian meddling, but now
framed it as common
knowledge that Clinton had to "explain" to Trump: "As Clinton tried to explain that the Russian role is the finding of 17 military
and civilian intelligence agencies, Trump cut her off: 'I doubt it.'"
The fact checks continued to roll in. USA Today wrote a
particularly aggressive check on the claim headlined "Yes, 17 intelligence agencies really did say Russia was behind hacking."
The article confidently asserted, "Clinton is correct."
All of these "fact checks" and reports were wrong, of course, as has since been made ultra clear. As The New York Times now concedes,
the truth about her claim was obviously false from the start. Any reporter capable of operating Google could have looked up a list
of the intelligence agencies in question, and ruled out almost half in just minutes.
The Department of Energy, Treasury and Drug Enforcement agencies can be dismissed out of hand. The military service intelligence
organizations can't legally operate on U.S. soil. Add the Coast Guard and we're tentatively at eight remaining intel agencies under
DNI. The Defense Intelligence Agency is also unlikely. Geospatial intelligence? Definitely not. National recon office? Not unless
a political influence campaign has something to do with a missile launch or natural disaster.
That leaves us with State Department intelligence, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, CIA and NSA. Five tops, narrowed down
at the speed of common sense and Google.
Sure, the October DNI report was presented as the conclusion of the intelligence community, which does consist of 16 separate
agencies headed up by the DNI. At first glance, her claim might seem perfectly reasonable to someone unfamiliar with the makeup of
the intelligence community. But it's journalistic malpractice to do a fact-check level review of her claim that each agency separately
reviewed and judged the campaign, without so much as hinting at the obvious likelihood that most of them weren't involved.
Nevertheless, the claim persisted.
"All 17 U.S. Intelligence agencies believe the Russians are behind that leak," ABC host George Stephanopoulos told Trump
in
an October interview . "Why don't you believe it?"
"[Trump] has consistently denied any link between the hackers and the Kremlin, despite 17 intelligence agencies' claims to the
contrary," the Daily Beast
reported
that same day .
NBC News dropped Hillary's number nugget
in
a December report on the Obama White House asking the intelligence community for a dossier on the hacking assessment. The resulting
report would be shared with the public, White House counterterrorism advisor Lisa Monaco said at the time.
"Monaco used careful language, calling it a 'full review of what happened during the 2016 election process,'" NBC reported. "But
since the U.S. government has already said that all 17 intelligence agencies agree Russia was behind the hacks, Monaco's meaning
was clear."
Reuters, too, touted the number
in a December report that characterizes the DNI as a "17-agency strong" operation.
The declassified DNI report that followed in January
provided new details on the assessment that dumped ice-cold water on the "17 intelligence agencies agree" claim. The conclusion
was drawn only from the NSA, CIA and FBI, the report said. (The New York Times
conceded this in a break down of the report, although the claim would later make its way back into the paper's pages.)
A few months later former national intelligence director James Clapper reiterated the truth in a high-profile congressional hearing
about Russian interference, opting to correct the record without any partisan prompting.
"As you know, the I.C. was a coordinated product from three agencies; CIA, NSA, and the FBI -- not all 17 components of the intelligence
community," he said in his opening remarks. "Those three under the aegis of my former office."
And when Democrat Sen. Al Franken reiterated the false claim later in the hearing, Clapper once again made a point of correcting
the record.
"The intelligence communities have concluded -- all 17 of them -- that Russia interfered with this election," Franken said. "And
we all know how that's right."
Clapper interjected: "Senator, as I pointed out in my statement, Senator Franken, it was, there were only three agencies directly
involved in this assessment, plus my office."
"But all 17 signed on to that?" Franken pressed.
"Well, we didn't go through that, that process," Clapper replied, again shooting down the claim as utterly false. "This was a
special situation because of the time limits we decided to restrict it to those three."
So not only was the assessment only made by three of the 16 agencies working under the DNI, but also Clapper indicated here that
none of the other agencies even signed off on the report before it was released. Yes, none of them dissented. But why would they,
since they didn't have independent evidence to suggest otherwise?
At this point in the life of Hillary's debate talking point, there's just no credible way to rate the claim as true. The DNI report
made the truth explicit, and Clapper had now reiterated that truth in a very public setting.
Yet just a few weeks later Clinton unabashedly reiterated the "17 agencies agree" claim
in an interview
with the tech outlet recode, and as if on cue the media once more began spreading it around.
"Read the declassified report by the intelligence community that came out in early January," Clinton said. "17 agencies, all in
agreement – which I know from my experience as a senator and secretary of state is hard to get – they concluded with 'high confidence'
that the Russians ran an extensive information war against my campaign to influence voters in the election."
A little while later the bogus claim
showed up in an AP report , after The Daily Caller News Foundation
fact checked Clinton's claim in the interview and found it false. And then
twice
more in June before the "clarification" memo was published. Stephanopolous was back at it as well
in a June
11 interview with Republican Sen. Mike Lee. And then that Haberman report in The New York Times on the 25th echoing the claim,
which was rather strangely corrected four days later.
After all this, CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta
actually accused Trump on Thursday of pushing "fake news" by saying the conclusion only came from "three or four" agencies. "Where
does that number come from?" Acosta asked.
The timing of the AP and NYT corrections are a bit of a mystery, but for whatever reason the press is now collectively saying
Trump is correct in his push back on the "17 agencies" claim. And that's got the narrative a bit tangled. After initially
doubling down on the "true" rating of Clinton's debate claim, Politifact is now bizarrely also rating the claim
mostly false in a separate fact check.
So we're left with that uncomfortable truth. The establishment press uncritically "vetted" and embraced a Clinton campaign talking
point designed to make Trump look foolish, divorced it of its political context and reiterated it word-of-God style for more than
six months -- all the time either ignoring or missing entirely easily obtainable information proving it false -- and then suddenly
reversed course on the claim weeks after it was unambiguously and authoritatively debunked.
We live in a world where r/the_donald -- a Reddit thread teeming with Trump supporters --
proved
more shrewd than The New York Times and the Associated Press when vetting an important claim about the Russia
investigation.
The truth about this "17 intel agencies" claim matters, not so much because of what it says about the intelligence community's
conclusion on Russian meddling, but because of what it says about the establishment media's conclusion on Russian meddling.
Haberman and her ilk seem intent on casting Trump as a loner bordering on a nervous breakdown, maniacally watching the
news at all hours, hollering at staff and generally acting like a buffoon. And there's the almost daily implication that Trump personally
coordinated a hacking campaign with Russia, an implication grounded in no hard evidence despite a lengthy investigation.
The fact is many of these narratives bear all the same hallmarks as the "17 intelligence agencies" mess.
Sources often appear to be politically motivated, like Clinton. They show up in bizarre numbers, like "dozens" or "more than 30."
Anecdotes seem almost questionable at face value. An astonishing number of hastily reported or vaguely sourced "scoops" turn out
to be totally wrong when the subject of the story corrects the record.
In a report casting
the White House as fraught and bordering on collapse, Haberman wrote that Trump likes to stew over cable news in a bathrobe.
The White House refuted the anecdote
in no uncertain terms
the following day.
Based on the word of one anonymous source, The Washington Post reported that Russia had hacked the U.S. electrical grid. That
was quickly proven false when the electric company, which the reporter had not bothered to contact before publishing, said in a statement
the grid
definitely was not hacked , and the "Russian hacker" may have been no hacker at all, but an employee who mistakenly visited an
infected site on a work computer.
CNN reported that Former FBI Director James Comey
would
refute Trump's claim the director told him three separate times he was not personally under investigation. Comey did no such
thing. In fact he
corroborated Trump's account .
Just weeks after retracting a story
on a wealthy Trump associate and Russia, CNN insisted for days Trump would not ask Putin about Russian meddling during their
first meeting. Of course, the report depended on an anonymous source. Of course,
it was wrong
. One of the first things Trump did when he sat down with Putin was "press" him on the subject multiple times, according to Secretary
of State Rex Tillerson, who was in the room.
We could go on, but the point remains. The media is bent on supporting already foregone conclusions about Trump and Russian
meddling, no matter what they have to scoop up or parrot or claim (or ignore) to do so. Sure, it's a "basic fact" Russia meddled
in the election. But for the media, it's also just a "basic fact" that Trump likely colluded with Russia, and that he should
be impeached, and that his White House is on the verge of literally disappearing into a sinkhole.
The facts they use to support these conclusions might as well be irrelevant.
Trump deflated and sold all his election promises. He is essentially a neocon now. why he will be
different on immigration?
Notable quotes:
"... Trump Interrupted 6 Times in Poland With a Chant You Might Have Thought Would Only Be Heard in the USA ..."
"... Independent Journal Review, ..."
"... Critically, the president identified border security as one of the most important issues during his speech, declaring that the will to enforce immigration laws is synonymous with the will to defend Western Civilization. ..."
"... Trump's speech in Poland sounded like an alt-right manifesto ..."
"... 'Kate's Law' battle shifts to the Senate, testing Dems ..."
"... As Trump's Coach, Senator Cotton Provides Policy to Match Rhetoric ..."
"... 'These deaths were preventable': Trump urges Senate to pass 'Kate's Law,' ..."
"... Immigration bills face Senate hurdle ..."
"... San Antonio Express-News, ..."
"... Trump's 'face-lift' tweet overshadows week to push immigration, energy policies ..."
"... Washington Examiner, ..."
"... How The Democrats Lost Their Way On Immigration ..."
"... What's the point of an anti-immigrant left ..."
"... Trump is winning the immigration debate ..."
"... In my opinion, even more important than to attack the hostile, mostly liberal media is for Trump to distance himself not just form the Neocon wing of the Republican party, but also to keep a healthy distance from and even attack Ayn Rand fanboys like Paul Ryan and other lackeys of the Koch Brothers ..."
"... No, Donald Trump hasn't really read "Atlas Shrugged." Sad! But he's surrounding himself with Ayn Rand superfans ..."
"... IMO, Trump's deeds rarely match the words written for him by his speechwriter(s). There's been little progress on our Southern border wall and his administration only marginally decreased refugees to 50K for 2018. I want zero or only white refugees from S. Africa – not racial, cultural and religious aliens from the third world. ..."
"... That remains to be seen as Trump has drifted towards the center on immigration since his inauguration. He kept DACA in place and hasn't uttered one negative word on the presumption of birthright citizenship or implored Congress to pass legislation clarifying that the 14th amendment only applied to descendants of blacks slaves and not every person who sneaks across the border and drops an anchor baby or two or eight. The same applies to visa holders and "maternity tourists". ..."
"... Poland and the CIA – what memories, what a work over! Lech Walesa and Solidarność. No wonder they cheer Trump, but they might as well be cheering any US President and that's the point. ..."
"... There is no real opposition to Trump. He's a walking clown, pay attention if you must. But the mainstream media includes Kirkpatrick as much as it does The Atlantic and Vox and Fox and CNN. Super national corporations delivering control over your lives. When they tell you who, what and when you should foam at mouth you'll obey – 'those damn other guys!' ..."
Critically, the president identified border security as one of the most important issues during
his speech, declaring that the will to enforce immigration laws is synonymous with the will to defend
Western Civilization. Not surprisingly, the hysterically and openly anti-white, anti-Trump Main
Stream Media screamed that the president had delivered an "Alt Right manifesto". [
Trump's speech in Poland sounded like an alt-right manifesto, by Sarah Wildman,
Vox, July 6, 2017]
Nothing of the sort of course: Trump
merely delivered the kinds
of patriotic platitudes which every other generation in history would have taken for granted. However,
with many Western nations
under de facto occupation by a hostile elite, such common sense comments are revolutionary. More
importantly, President Trump
finally seems to be going on the attack in the last week , championing the kinds of populist
policies which put him in office.
The House Republicans finally seem to be taking some action on the immigration issue, recently
passing both
Kate's Law and the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act . The former increases penalties on criminal
aliens who attempt to reenter our country and latter cuts funding to cities which refuse to imply
with federal immigration laws. Two dozen House Democrats voted for "Kate's Law" and Senate Democrats
in red states, a number of whom are facing re-election in 2018, will be under pressure to support
the legislation in the Senate. [
'Kate's Law' battle shifts to the Senate, testing Dems, by Jordain Carney
and Rafael Bernal, The Hill, July 3, 2017]
The increasing willingness of the President's team to seek the advice of Senator Tom Cotton, who
seems to have succeeded Jeff Sessions as the greatest immigration patriot in the upper chamber, is
also an encouraging sign [
As Trump's Coach, Senator Cotton Provides Policy to Match Rhetoric, by Maggie
Haberman and Matt Flegenheimer, New York Times, June 8, 2017]. Most importantly, Trump himself
is taking the strategic offensive, championing his success on these issues. [
'These deaths were preventable': Trump urges Senate to pass 'Kate's Law,'Fox Insider,
July 1, 2017]
Of course, the real question is what the Republican Senate Leadership will do. Everything depends
on whether Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is willing to put the bills up for a vote and pressure
the caucus to vote for them. [
Immigration bills face Senate hurdle, by Bill Lambrecht, San Antonio Express-News,
July 5, 2017]
And here, again, it's really not even about McConnell but about Trump's own will. While Trump's
fight with the MSM is amusing and important, ultimately, he needs to put pressure on the leaders
of his own party. The battles with CNN and Mika Brzezinski risks distracting from the real policy
accomplishments the president poised to secure in the coming weeks [
Trump's 'face-lift' tweet overshadows week to push immigration, energy policies
, by Alex Pappas, Washington Examiner, June 30, 2017]. As leader of the party, he can
set the priority and challenge McConnell to put his weight behind the immigration bills.
If Trump indeed has the "will" to go through with it, there are the faint outlines how to achieve
the political realignment necessary for the United States of America to survive in any meaningful
sense. For the first time in many years, there are real splits on the intellectual Left on immigration.
Peter Beinart recently admitted in The Atlantic, "A decade ago, liberals publicly questioned
immigration in ways that would shock many progressives today,"
citing the legacy of Barbara Jordan among others . While Beinart is far from a born-again immigration
patriot, he admitted restrictionists have valid concerns that progressives should heed:
Liberals must take seriously Americans' yearning for social cohesion. To promote both mass
immigration and greater economic redistribution, they must convince more native-born white Americans
that immigrants will not weaken the bonds of national identity. This means dusting off a concept
many on the left currently hate: assimilation.
Of course, Leftist Enforcer
Dylan Matthews , [ Email him
] whose entire oeuvre can be summarized as a
hysterical insistence on the moral necessity of
white genocide , blasted Beinart on the grounds that Open Borders is what defines the
West. "Beinart doesn't actually seem to care about promoting mass immigration," Matthews sneers.
"And that's the one answer to this dilemma that's completely unacceptable". [
What's the point of an anti-immigrant left, Vox, July 2, 2017]
To whom? Matthews decrees:
[A]ny center-left party worth its salt has to be deeply committed to egalitarianism, not just
for people born in the US but for everyone it means treating people born outside the US as equals.
But of course, this renders American
citizenship essentially pointless. Indeed being an "American" (which would simply mean owning
a certain kind of passport) would be an active disadvantage, as you would simply exist to be tax-farmed
for the benefit of
an ever growing number of hostile and hapless Third Worlders .
Few Americans would sign up for this. So, as even
Rich Lowry [
Email him
] now admits, Donald Trump is "winning" on immigration simply by mentioning the issue and breaking
apart the Democratic coalition.
Trump probably wouldn't have won without running so directly into the teeth of the elite consensus.
According to a
study published by Public Religion Research Institute and the
Atlantic of white working-class voters, it was anxiety about culture change and support for
deporting undocumented immigrants that correlated with voting for Trump, not loss of economic
or social standing. Likewise, a Democracy Fund Voter Study Group
report found Hillary Clinton cratered among populist voters who had supported Barack Obama,
with the issue of immigration looming large.[Links added by VDARE.com]
• 100 Words When Bush jr was in Vilnius he was also cheered, by 30.000 carefully selected Lithuanians.
If Warschau did the same, I do not know.
However, Poles still seem afraid of Russia, and they resist the Muslim immigration Brussels tries
to force on them.
The crash of the Polish aircraft with nearly the whole Polish establishment on board on its way
to Katyn still is blamed on Russia, while it was Polish stupidity, and too much liquor.
So maybe this was a spontaneous crowd.
This paper by Dutton and van der Linden (2014) might be interesting to you:
Who are the "Clever Sillies"? The intelligence, personality, and motives of clever
silly originators and those who follow them
[...] European Romantic nationalism could be seen as problematic from a Jewish perspective.
Both thinkers may have been motivated by the good of their group.
[...]
neo-liberal "Chicago School"-style economics, also known as "Freshwater" economics, promoted
by Milton Friedman
[...]
Western mind seducer and manipulator, "Objectivist" Ayn Rand
[...] The Refutation of Libertarianism
[...] But the competition for global domination is rarely honest. Thus when Western individualist
societies conquered and absorbed collectivist ones, it was only a matter of time before
the more intelligent tribes learned how to cheat.
In my opinion, even more important than to attack the hostile, mostly liberal media is
for Trump to distance himself not just form the Neocon wing of the Republican party, but
also to keep a healthy distance from and even attack Ayn Rand fanboys like Paul Ryan and other
lackeys of the Koch Brothers :
Fountainhead of bad ideas: Ayn Rand's fanboys take the reins of power
No, Donald Trump hasn't really read "Atlas Shrugged." Sad! But he's surrounding himself
with Ayn Rand superfans
"Libyans enjoyed the highest quality of life in all of Africa. Libyan citizens enjoyed free
universal health care from prenatal to geriatric, free education from elementary school to post-graduate
studies and free or subsidized housing. We were told that Gaddafi ripped off the nation's oil
wealth for himself when in reality Libya's oil wealth was used to improve the quality of life
for all Libyans.
We were told that Libya had to be rebuilt from scratch because Gaddafi had not
allowed the development of national institutions. If we knew that infant mortality had been seriously
reduced, life expectancy increased and health care and education made available to everyone, we
might have asked, "How could all that be accomplished without the existence of national institutions?"
Knowledge is the antidote to propaganda and brainwashing which is exactly why it is being increasingly
controlled and restricted."
Critically, the president identified border security as one of the most important issues
during his speech, declaring that the will to enforce immigration laws is synonymous with the
will to defend Western Civilization.
IMO, Trump's deeds rarely match the words written for him by his speechwriter(s). There's
been little progress on our Southern border wall and his administration only marginally decreased
refugees to 50K for 2018. I want zero or only white refugees from S. Africa – not racial, cultural
and religious aliens from the third world.
The increasing willingness of the President's team to seek the advice of Senator Tom Cotton,
who seems to have succeeded Jeff Sessions as the greatest immigration patriot in the upper
chamber,
Cotton has a proposed immigration bill that reduces legal immigration from 1.1 million to 700K.
It also takes aim at some chain migration mechanisms which is a positive step, but overall immigration
still overwhelmingly favors the third world. Some "immigration patriot".
Even if this miraculously passes this does nothing to arrest the pro-third world demographic
trends that ensures white go from majority to plurality by 2040 and America is still on a path
to become Brazil Norte.
The House Republicans have proven they will go along with a Trump immigration agenda, provided
the president leads the way.
That remains to be seen as Trump has drifted towards the center on immigration since his
inauguration. He kept DACA in place and hasn't uttered one negative word on the presumption of
birthright citizenship or implored Congress to pass legislation clarifying that the 14th amendment
only applied to descendants of blacks slaves and not every person who sneaks across the border
and drops an anchor baby or two or eight. The same applies to visa holders and "maternity tourists".
• 200 Words Poland and the CIA – what memories, what a work over! Lech Walesa and Solidarność.
No wonder they cheer Trump, but they might as well be cheering any US President and that's the
point.
Americans are long worked over – they are led to believe in some fictional mass of opposition
"that hates white people so they oppose Trump" and the standard false equivalence of a "main stream
media" that isn't themselves to begin with! The so-called left are the dancing partners who play
their part in this fraud – put up targets so the other team can shoot at them, that isn't left,
and that isn't right.
There is no real opposition to Trump. He's a walking clown, pay attention if you must.
But the mainstream media includes Kirkpatrick as much as it does The Atlantic and Vox and Fox
and CNN. Super national corporations delivering control over your lives. When they tell you who,
what and when you should foam at mouth you'll obey – 'those damn other guys!'
The unelected mob with their clowns on podiums doesn't concern themselves with borders, security
and punishment the way their controlled minions are programmed to. These are there weapons – they'll
publish every op-ed online if need be for you to cheer on the use of these weapons. Wear your
weblinks like Solidarnosc buttons. You love Lockheed and you hate the others.
The European trip to Poland and Germany has centered around the exchange with Putin, Trump's first
in-person meeting as president. But both sides offered differing explanations of what took place.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Trump and Putin had a "robust and lengthy" discussion
about the election interference but Putin denied any involvement. His Russian counterpart, Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov, said Trump had accepted Putin's assurances that Russia didn't meddle in the
U.S. election - a characterization that the U.S. disputed.
"I think the president is rightly focused on how do we move forward from something that may be
an intractable disagreement at this point," said Tillerson, who took part in the meeting along with
Lavrov.
Democrats seized upon Tillerson's remarks, saying that it was wrong to suggest the issue of Russia's
role in the election meddling was unresolved. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York
said it was "disgraceful" and said it was a "grave dereliction of duty" to give "equal credence to
the findings of the American Intelligence Community and the assertion by Mr. Putin."
U.S. officials have said Russia tried to hack election systems in 21 states and sway the election
for Trump, representing a level of interference in the U.S. political system that security experts
said represents a top-level threat.
Trump's meeting with Putin, which was originally scheduled for 35 minutes, wrapped up after more
than 2 hours, and focused heavily on a just-announced ceasefire deal for southwestern Syria that
was reached by Russia and the United States.
While the U.S. and Russia have held conflicting views on Syria in the past, Tillerson said Russia
had an interest in seeing the Mideast nation become a stable place.
Tillerson said details about the ceasefire still need to be worked out, but Lavrov told reporters
that Russian military police will monitor the ceasefire, with a monitoring center set up in Jordan
- another party to the deal.
Both the Russians and the Americans took pains to describe the meeting as "constructive," cordial
and wide-ranging, covering key topics including cyber security and North Korea.
"The two leaders connected very quickly," Tillerson said. "There was a very clear positive chemistry."
"... The Age of Aspiration: Power, Wealth, and Conflict in Globalizing India ..."
"... Trump has never exactly been an admirer of Iran. His growing hostility toward Tehran (and that of the Iranophobic generals he's appointed to key posts) has already led the U.S. military to shoot down two Iranian-made armed drones as well as a Syrian jet in 12 days. This led Moscow to switch off the hotline between its operational center at the Khmeimim Air Base in Syria and al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the major American military facility in the region. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, at the time the Syrian warplane was hit by the U.S. fighter, Russia's Aerospace Forces were carrying out missions in Syria's airspace. "However," it added, "the coalition command did not use the existing communication line to prevent incidents in Syria's airspace." ..."
"... the State Department and the Pentagon would explore ways to break Moscow's military and diplomatic alliance with Tehran in a bid to end the Syrian conflict and bolster the fight against ISIS. ..."
"... Though Flynn was soon pushed out of the White House, President Trump mirrored his views in a speech at an anti-terrorism summit of 50 leaders from Arab and other Muslim countries during his May visit to Riyadh. In it he went on to lump Iran and the Sunni jihadis together as part of the same "evil" of terrorism. ..."
"... On this issue, Iran's record speaks for itself. With cash and weapons, it has aided the Palestinian group Hamas, which is purely Sunni since there are no Shiites in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank. It has maintained cordial relations with the transnational Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic movement that originated in 1928 in overwhelmingly Sunni Egypt. The Saudis, once its prime financial and ideological backer, fell out with the Brotherhood's leadership in 1991 when they opposed the stationing of U.S. troops on Saudi soil on the eve of the First Gulf War. ..."
"... Since then, the Brotherhood has renounced violence. In June 2012, its candidate, Mohamed Morsi, won the first free and fair presidential election in Egyptian history. His overthrow by Egypt's generals a year later was applauded by Riyadh, which promptly announced a $12 billion rescue package for the military regime. By contrast, Tehran condemned the military coup against the popularly elected president. ..."
"... Tellingly, Riyadh failed to persuade even the neighboring smaller monarchies of Kuwait and Oman, members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, to follow its lead in boycotting Qatar. In addition, no matter what Trump tweets, Riyadh has a problem increasing its pressure on Doha because of the massive American military presence in that country, a crucial element in the Pentagon's campaign against ISIS, among other things. ..."
"... In retrospect, it's clear that the four members of the anti-Qatar axis rushed into their drastic action without assessing that tiny country's strengths, including the soft power exercised by its pan-Arab al-Jazeera satellite TV network. Unsurprisingly, their governments banned al-Jazeera broadcasts and websites and closed down its bureaus. Elsewhere in the Arab world, however, that popular outlet remains easily accessible. ..."
"... So far nothing has turned out as the Saudis (or Trump) anticipated. Qatar is resisting and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has flatly refused to withdraw his troops from the emirate, increasing the Turkish military presence there instead. ..."
"... From all this, an overarching picture emerges: that the impulsive Donald Trump has met his younger counterpart, Prince Muhammad bin Salman, equally impulsive and blind to even the medium-term consequences of his aggressive initiatives. ..."
"... The shared obsession of the prince and the president with Iran, which neither of them is able to comprehend in its complexity, has the potential for creating a true global crisis. If anything, the pressure on Trump in his imagined new world order is only increasing to do the Saudis one better and push a regime-change agenda in a big way when it comes to Iran. It's a formula for disaster on a breathtaking scale. ..."
Every now and then something lodges in your memory and seems to haunt you forever. In my case,
it was a commentNewsweek attributed to an unnamed senior British official "close to the Bush team" before
the invasion of Iraq in 2003. "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad," he said. "Real men want to go to
Tehran." At the time, it seemed to distill a mood of geopolitical elation sweeping Washington and
its crew of neocons. They had, of course, been beating the drums for war with Iraq, but also
dreaming of a Middle Eastern and then a global Pax Americana that would last generations.
Less pithy versions of such sentiments were the coin of the realm of that moment. New York Times
columnist Paul Krugman, for instance,
reported
in March of that year that, "in February 2003, according to Ha'aretz , an Israeli newspaper,
Under Secretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq the United
States would 'deal with' Iran, Syria, and North Korea."
Fourteen years later, the U.S. has yet to make its way out of its multiple Iraqi wars, is embroiled
in a Syrian conflict, and as for North Korea, well, I could tweet you a thing or two about how Washington
has "
dealt " with that still-nuclearizing land. And yet, it seems that, on one issue at least, those
old neocon dreams may finally be coming to fruition. We may at last have a "real man" in the White
House, someone truly readying himself to "go to Tehran." At least the pressures from his
political backers , his Iranophobic
generals , and his CIA director are on the rise, and President Trump recently aligned himself
very publicly with the Saudi royals in their anti-Iranian campaign, which seems about to kick into
high gear.
If we had time machines and someone could head back to March 2003 to tell those neocons and the
top officials of George W. Bush's administration who that future "real man" might turn out to be,
they would, of course, have laughed such a messenger out of the room in disbelief. And yet here we
are in comb-over heaven, in a land whose foreign policy is increasingly done by tweet, in a country
whose leaders evidently can't imagine a place in the Greater Middle East that the U.S. military shouldn't
be sent into (but never out of). Meanwhile, the pressure, as
TomDispatch regular Dilip Hiro, author most recently of
The Age of Aspiration: Power, Wealth, and Conflict in Globalizing India , suggests in
vivid detail, is only growing for a full-scale campaign for regime change in Iran, not to speak of
a possible
proxy war against that country in Syria. And honestly, tell me – to
steal a line from another TomDispatch author – what could possibly go wrong? ~ Tom
The Enemy of My Enemy Is My ? The Saudi-American-Iranian-Russian-Qatari-Syrian Conundrum
By Dilip Hiro
The Middle East. Could there be a more perilous place on Earth, including North Korea? Not likely.
The planet's two leading nuclear armed powers backing battling proxies amply supplied with conventional
weapons; terror groups splitting and spreading; religious-sectarian wars threatening amid a plethora
of ongoing armed hostilities stretching from Syria to Iraq to Yemen. And that was before Donald Trump
and his team arrived on this chaotic scene. If there is one region where a single spark might start
the fire that could engulf the globe, then welcome to the Middle East.
As for sparks, they are now in ample supply. At this moment, President Trump's foreign policy
agenda is a package of contradictions threatening to reach a boiling point in the region. He has
allied himself firmly with Saudi Arabia even when his secretaries of state and defense seem
equivocal on the subject. In the process, he's come to view a region he clearly knows little
about through the Saudi royal family's paranoid eyes, believing staunchly that Shia Iran is hell-bent
on controlling an Islamic world that is 85% Sunni.
Trump has
never exactly been an admirer of Iran. His growing hostility toward Tehran (and that of the
Iranophobic generals he's appointed
to key posts) has already led the U.S. military to
shoot down two Iranian-made armed drones as well as a Syrian jet in 12 days. This led Moscow
to switch off the hotline between its operational center at the Khmeimim Air Base in Syria and al-Udeid
Air Base in Qatar, the major American military facility in the region.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry,
at the time the Syrian warplane was hit by the U.S. fighter, Russia's Aerospace Forces were carrying
out missions in Syria's airspace. "However," it added, "the coalition command did not use the existing
communication line to prevent incidents in Syria's airspace."
At the same time, the incorrigibly contradictory Trump has not abandoned his wish to cultivate
friendly relations with Russia whose close economic and military ties with Iran date back to 1992.
The danger inherent in the rich crop of contradictions in this muddle, and Trump's fervent backing
of the Saudis in their recent threats against neighboring Qatar, should be obvious to all except
the narcissistic American president.
No one should be surprised by any of this once Trump inserted himself, tweets first, in the violent
and crisis-ridden Middle East. After all, he possesses an extraordinary capacity to create his own
reality. He seems to instinctively block out his failures, and rushes headlong to embrace anything
that puts him in a positive light. Always a winner, never a loser. Such an approach seems to come
easily to him, since he's a man of tactics with a notoriously short attention span, which means he's
incapable of conceiving of an overarching strategy of a sort that would require concentration and
the ability to hold diverse factors in mind simultaneously.
Given this, he has no problem contradicting himself or undermining aides working to find a more
rational basis for his ever changing stances and desires on matters of import. These problems are
compounded by his inability to connect the dots in the very complex, volatile Middle East where wars
are raging in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq, or to assess how a move on one diplomatic or military front
will impact a host of inter-connected issues.
The Iran Factor
Let's examine how complicated and potentially treacherous all of this is. In the early days of
the Trump administration, an outline of its Middle Eastern strategy might have appeared something
like this: the White House will pressure the Sunni Arab states to commit their cash and troops in
a coordinated way to fighting the Islamic State (ISIS) under the leadership of the Pentagon. Along
with this, the State Department and the Pentagon would explore
ways to break Moscow's military and diplomatic alliance with Tehran in a bid to end the Syrian
conflict and bolster the fight against ISIS.
This reflected a lamentable ignorance of the growing strength of the ties between Russia and Iran,
which share borders on the Caspian Sea. This relationship dates back to August 1992 when Russian
President Boris Yeltsin's government signed a contract to construct and operate two nuclear reactors
near the Iranian city of Bushehr. The two countries then inked an agreement to build two new reactors
at the Bushehr
site , with an option for constructing six more at other locations later. These were part of
a partnership
agreement signed in November 2014 and overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Military cooperation between the Kremlin and Tehran can be traced back to 2007 when Iran inked
a $900 million contract for five Russian S-300 long-range missile batteries. Because of United Nations
Security Council sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program in 2010, those missile deliveries were
suspended. However, three months before Tehran signed its landmark nuclear deal with six world powers,
including Russia and the U.S., in July 2015, Moscow
started shipping
an upgraded version of the S-300 missiles to Iran.
In September 2015, the Kremlin intervened militarily in Syria on the side of President Bashar
al-Assad. By then, Iran had long been aiding the Syrian government with weapons and armed volunteers
in its five-year-old civil war. This led Moscow and Tehran to
begin sharing military planning over Syria.
Two months later, Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Tehran for a summit of the Gas Exporting
Countries Forum and
met with Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who praised him for "neutralizing Washington's
plots." Khamenei also suggested that economic relations between the two countries could "expand beyond
the current level." To the delight of Iranian leaders, Putin
relaxed an export ban on nuclear equipment and technology to their country.
In August 2016, Tehran let the Kremlin use Hamadan Air Base in western Iran to launch air strikes
on a wide range of targets in Syria, thereby
enabling the Russian air force to cut flying time and increase payloads for its bombers and fighter
jets. Just as Donald Trump entered the Oval Office, Moscow-based Sputnik News
reported that Tehran was considering buying Russian fighter jets, while the two countries were
discussing a joint venture that would allow Iran to manufacture Russian helicopters under license.
Next, let's turn to Donald Trump. In his 2016 campaign run, Trump's animus toward Iran sharpened
only after he imbibed the
apocalyptic and Islamophobic views of retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn who would become
his first national security adviser. In Flynn's fixation on the threat of "radical Islam," with Iran
as his linchpin nation in plots against the West, he conflated Iranian-backed Shia radicalism with
Sunni jihadism. In the process, to fit his rabid thinking he ignored the theological and other differences
between them.
Though Flynn was soon pushed out of the White House, President Trump mirrored his views in
a speech at an anti-terrorism summit of 50 leaders from Arab and other Muslim countries during his
May visit to Riyadh. In it he went on to
lump Iran and the Sunni jihadis together as part of the same "evil" of terrorism.
On June 7th, Trump's claim visibly shattered. On that day, six ISIS gunmen and suicide bombers,
dressed as veiled women, attacked the Iranian Parliament complex and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, killing at least 17 people and injuring more
than 50. These attacks were in line with a
video ISIS operatives in eastern Iraq had posted in Persian on their social media networks three
months earlier, containing the threat: "We will invade Iran and return it to Sunni control."
Less than two weeks later, Iran
fired six Zolfaghar ballistic missiles from its western provinces over Iraqi airspace at an ISIS
command center and suicide car-bomb making facility near Syria's eastern city of Deir el-Zour, 370
miles away. It coordinated the attack with Iraq, Syria, and Russia.
ISIS Targets Shias, Whether Iranian or Saudi
Within months of declaring its caliphate in Mosul, Iraq, in June 2014, ISIS sent operatives into
Iran after gaining recruits among the predominantly Sunni ethnic Kurds of that country. And well
before the Obama administration geared up to help the government in Baghdad fight ISIS, Iran had
trained, funded, and armed Iraqi Shia militias to push back that group.
When it came to selecting targets in the Saudi kingdom, the ISIS branch there chose mosques of
the Shia minority. The first of these suicide bombings occurred in May 2015 in al-Qadeeh village
in Eastern Province during Friday prayers, and left at least 21 people dead and more than 80 injured.
In an online statement, ISIS took credit,
claiming that
"the soldiers of the Caliphate" were responsible and forecasting "dark days ahead" for the Shias.
Recently, Shias in Saudi Arabia have been alarmed by the incendiary speeches of the preachers
of the Wahhabi version of Islam, the official faith of the kingdom. This sub-sect is named after
Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab (1703-1792), who vehemently opposed the Shia practice of praying at the
shrines of their saints and calling on such holy spirits to intercede on their behalf with Allah.
He was convinced that there should be no intermediaries between the believer and Allah, and praying
to a human being, dead or alive, however holy, was tantamount to polytheism, and therefore un-Islamic.
He and his followers began demolishing Shia shrines. Today's ISIS ideologues agree with Wahhab's
views on this and denounce Shias as apostates or heretics who deserve to be killed.
Within Shia Islam, there are four sub-sects, depending on how many of the 12 Imams – or religious
leaders of the highest rank – a Shiite recognizes as such. Those who recognize only the first Imam
Ali are called Alawis or Alevis (and live mainly in Syria and Turkey); those who do so for the first
five Imams are known as Zaidis (and live mostly in Yemen). The ones who recognize seven Imams are
called Seveners or Ismailis and are scattered across the Muslim world; and those who recognize all
12 Imams, labeled Twelvers, inhabit Iran, Iraq, Bahrain, and Lebanon. Twelver Shias also believe
that the last Imam, the infant Muhammad al-Qassim, who disappeared around 868 AD, will return someday
as al-Mahdi, or the Messiah, to bring justice to the world.
It was this aspect of Iranian Shiism that the 29-year-old Saudi Defense Minister Prince Mohammad
bin Salman,
recently anointed Crown Prince and successor to his 81-year-old father King Salman, focused on
in an interview with Dubai-based, Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV. When asked if he saw a possibility for
direct talks with Iran, which he regards as the puppet-master of the Zaidi Houthi rebels in Yemen
against whom he launched an American-backed war two years ago, he
replied , "How can I come to an understanding with someone, or a regime, that has an anchoring
belief built on an extremist ideology?"
Only a clueless person would bet on President Trump parsing Shia Islam or grasping the basic doctrine
of Wahhabism. By contrast, nobody would lose a bet on him instantly tweeting the latest thought that
crosses his restless mind on any Middle Eastern subject.
The Saudis Target Qatar
To complicate regional matters further, the first crisis of the post-Trump visit involved not
Iran or Shias but Qatar, a tiny Sunni emirate adjoining Saudi Arabia. Its transgression in Saudi
eyes? It has had the temerity to maintain normal relations with Iran across the Persian Gulf. It
is worth recalling that during his trip to Riyadh, President Trump had met with Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani,
the emir of Qatar. And before that meeting, he had even
proudly bragged : "One of the things that we will discuss is the purchase of lots of beautiful
military equipment because nobody makes it like the US," adding, "for us, that means jobs and it
also means, frankly, great security back here, which we want."
A couple of weeks later, the Saudis suddenly severed Qatari diplomatic and economic ties, with
the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt following suit. Saudi royals were clearly hoping to
engineer
a regime change in that country as a step toward the destabilization of Iran. In response, Trump
promptly rushed to tweet: "During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer
be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar – Look!"
Soon after he accused Qatar of being a "funder of terror at a very high level" and, backing the
Saudis to the hilt, demanded that the emirate should cut off that supposed cash flow. A rejoinder
came from none other than the American ambassador to Qatar, Dana Shell Smith, when she
retweeted a U.S. Treasury Department statement praising Qatar for cracking down on extremist
financing.
In the ensuing welter of statements and rebuttals, as the Trump administration fell into disarray
over policy on Qatar, one thing remained solid: the sale of "beautiful military equipment" – up to
72 Boeing F-15 fighter jets to that emirate for $21.1 billion, a deal approved by the Obama administration
in November 2016. On June 15th, Defense Secretary James Mattis
signed off on a $12 billion deal for the sale of up to 36 of those fighter jets. "Our militaries
are like brothers,"
declared
a senior Qatari official in response. "America's support for Qatar is deep-rooted and not easily
influenced by political changes."
In fact, military cooperation between Doha and Washington began in early 1992 in the wake of the
First Gulf War. A decade later the Qatari-American military relationship received a dramatic upgrade
when the Bush administration started preparing for its invasion of Iraq. Saudi Arabia's de facto
ruler at the time, Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, refused to let the Pentagon use the state-of-the-art
operations facility at al-Kharj Air Base it had built up for air strikes against Iraq.
That was when Qatar's emir came to Washington's rescue. He allowed the Pentagon to transfer all
its equipment from al-Kharj to
al-Udeid Air
Base , 25 miles southwest of Doha, the Qatari capital. It would become the U.S. military's key
facility in the region. At the time of the latest crisis, al-Udeid held no less than 10,000 American
troops and 100 Royal Air Force service personnel from Great Britain, equipped with
100 warplanes and drones . Air strikes on ISIS targets in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq are launched
from this base.
In his rashness, Trump has imperiled all this, despite
mediation efforts by Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
His enthusiastic backing of the Saudis in their perilous quest to take on Iran, which may end up
destabilizing Saudi Arabia itself, also holds the possibility of armed conflict between the planet's
two leading nuclear powers.
The Saudis' Big Problem With a Tiny Neighbor
Worse yet, policymakers in Washington failed to notice a fundamental flaw in the sectarian terms
in which Saudi Arabia has framed its rivalry with Iran: a stark Sunni versus Shia clash. Tehran refuses
to accept such a playbook. Unlike the Saudis, its leaders constantly emphasize the common faith of
all Muslims. Every year, for instance, Iran observes Islamic Unity week, a holiday meant to bridge
the gap between the two birthdays of Prophet Muhammad, one accepted by Sunni scholars and the other
by Shia ones.
On this issue, Iran's record speaks for itself. With cash and weapons, it has aided the Palestinian
group Hamas, which is purely Sunni since there are no Shiites in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank.
It has maintained cordial relations with the transnational Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic movement
that originated in 1928 in overwhelmingly Sunni Egypt. The Saudis, once its prime financial and ideological
backer, fell out with the Brotherhood's leadership in 1991 when they opposed the stationing of U.S.
troops on Saudi soil on the eve of the First Gulf War.
Since then, the Brotherhood has renounced violence. In June 2012, its candidate, Mohamed Morsi,
won the first free and fair presidential election in Egyptian history. His overthrow by Egypt's generals
a year later was
applauded by Riyadh, which promptly announced a $12 billion rescue package for the military regime.
By contrast, Tehran condemned the military coup against the popularly elected president.
In March 2014, Saudi Arabia declared the Brotherhood a terrorist organization, something the U.S.
has
not yet done (though the Trump administration is engaged in a debate on the subject). Riyadh's
hostility toward the Brotherhood stems largely from the fact that its followers are anti-monarchical,
believing that ultimate power lies with the people, not a dynasty. As a result, the Sunni Brotherhood
has cordial relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which held parliamentary and presidential
elections even during its eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s. In the latest presidential election,
conducted on the eve of Trump's arrival in Riyadh, the incumbent moderate Iranian President Hassan
Rouhani won,
decisively beating his conservative rival.
Riyadh has recently issued an aggressive
list of demands on Qatar, including the closing of the influential Doha-based al-Jazeera media
network, the limiting of its ties to Iran to trade alone, and the withdrawal of Turkish troops from
a base on its territory. This ultimatum is set to fail on economic grounds alone. Qatar shares the
North Dome-South Pars natural gas field with Iran. It is the largest field of its kind in the world.
Its South Pars section, about a third of the total, lies in Iran's territorial waters. The aggregate
recoverable gas reserves of this field are the equivalent of 230 billion barrels of oil, second only
to Saudi Arabia's reserves of conventional oil. Income from gas and oil provides Qatar with more
than three-fifths of its gross domestic product (GDP) and most of its export income. With a
population of 2.4 million,
Qatar has a per capita GDP of $74,667, the highest in the world. Given all this, Doha cannot afford
to be adversarial towards Tehran.
Qatar's 12-year-old sovereign wealth fund, operating as the Qatar Investment Authority, has assets
worth $335 billion. A third of these are invested in the emirate, but the bulk is scattered
around the globe . It owns the Santa Monica-based film production company Miramax. It's the fourth
largest investor in U.S. office space, mainly in New York and Los Angeles. It also owns London's
tallest building, the famed Harrods stores, and a quarter of the properties in the upscale Mayfair
neighborhood of London. Its Paris Saint-Germain Football Club has won four French soccer league titles
and it's the largest shareholder in Germany's Volkswagen AG. Little wonder that, in response to the
Saudi-led blockade of Qatar, no Western leader, aside from Trump, has sided with Riyadh, which has
been stunned by this diplomatic setback.
Tellingly, Riyadh failed to persuade even the neighboring smaller monarchies of Kuwait and
Oman, members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, to follow its lead in boycotting Qatar. In addition,
no matter what Trump tweets, Riyadh has a problem increasing its pressure on Doha because of the
massive American military presence in that country, a crucial element in the Pentagon's campaign
against ISIS, among other things.
A Formula for Disaster
In retrospect, it's clear that the four members of the anti-Qatar axis rushed into their drastic
action without assessing that tiny country's strengths, including the soft power exercised by its
pan-Arab al-Jazeera satellite TV network. Unsurprisingly, their governments banned al-Jazeera broadcasts
and websites and closed down its bureaus. Elsewhere in the Arab world, however, that popular outlet
remains easily accessible.
As a littoral state, Qatar has a large port on the Persian Gulf. Within a week of the Riyadh-led
boycott of Qatar, three ships, carrying 350 tons of fruit and vegetables, were set to leave the Iranian
port of Dayyer for Doha, while five cargo planes from Iran, loaded with 450 tons of vegetables, had
already landed in the Qatari capital.
So far nothing has turned out as the Saudis (or Trump) anticipated. Qatar is resisting and
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has
flatly refused to withdraw his troops from the emirate, increasing the Turkish military presence
there instead.
From all this, an overarching picture emerges: that the impulsive Donald Trump has met his
younger counterpart, Prince Muhammad bin Salman, equally impulsive and blind to even the medium-term
consequences of his aggressive initiatives. In addition, in an autocratic monarchy without free
speech, elections, or representative government (and with an abominable record on human rights violations),
he lacks all checks and balances. The shared obsession of the prince and the president with Iran,
which neither of them is able to comprehend in its complexity, has the potential for creating a true
global crisis. If anything, the
pressure on Trump in his imagined new world order is only increasing to do the Saudis one better
and push a regime-change agenda in a big way when it comes to Iran. It's a formula for disaster on
a breathtaking scale.
Neoliberalism like Bolshevism sacrifices nations on the altar of globalism.
Notable quotes:
"... You have divided into two parts all men throughout your empire everywhere giving citizenship to all those who are more accomplished, noble, and powerful, even as they retain their native-born identities, while the rest you have made subjects and the governed. ..."
"... Ultimately, the American identity has not been lost within the past 60 years, it just has transformed, similar to when the Thirteen Colonies began as primarily British, but subsumed other European groups who were historic rivals, and eventually non-Europeans. The Welsh, the Cornish, Bavarians, the Catalans–they were distinct sub-Europeans groups, but over generations they intermingled and dispersed in our great land. Americans are a mixture of European and non-European ethnostates who, like any and all groups, self-identify. ..."
"... This identification is the direct result of indoctrination from our Founding Fathers. ..."
"... The idea that "diversity is strength", in the context of a society, is the kind of barefaced falsehood that only a man made foolish or dishonest by political dogma could believe or assert. ..."
"... Americans eat like pigs. US has become the premier imperialist power in the world, even aiding Al-Qaida in Syria and aiding neo-nazis in Ukriane. We are told we must support Israel or Sodomia because it has the biggest homo 'pride' parade. ..."
"... America is a culture in decay, it is a huge piece of land with lots of resources and ruled by outside forces from within. ..."
"... Pat seems to imply that if the original ancestry had been maintained, America would not have the problems it now faces. He singlehandedly lays out the blame for the decline of American Republic/democracy at the feet of non-white foreigners. Let us follow this line of reasoning and see where it leads us. ..."
In the first line of the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, Thomas Jefferson speaks
of "one people." The Constitution, agreed upon by the Founding Fathers in Philadelphia in 1789, begins,
"We the people "
And who were these "people"?
In Federalist No. 2, John Jay writes of them as "one united people descended from the same ancestors,
speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government,
very similar in their manners and customs "
If such are the elements of nationhood and peoplehood, can we still speak of Americans as one
nation and one people?
We no longer have the same ancestors. They are of every color and from every country. We do not
speak one language, but rather English, Spanish and a host of others. We long ago ceased to profess
the same religion. We are Evangelical Christians, mainstream Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Mormons,
Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists, agnostics and atheists.
Federalist No. 2 celebrated our unity. Today's elites proclaim that our diversity is our strength.
But is this true or a tenet of trendy ideology?
After the attempted massacre of Republican Congressmen at that ball field in Alexandria, Fareed
Zakaria wrote: "The political polarization that is ripping this country apart" is about "identity
gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation (and) social class." He might have added - religion,
morality, culture and history.
Zakaria seems to be tracing the disintegration of our society to that very diversity that its
elites proclaim to be its greatest attribute: "If the core issues are about identity, culture and
religion then compromise seems immoral. American politics is becoming more like Middle Eastern
politics, where there is no middle ground between being Sunni or Shiite."
Among the issues on which we Americans are at war with one another - abortion, homosexuality,
same-sex marriage, white cops, black crime, Confederate monuments, LGBT rights, affirmative action.
Was the discovery of America and conquest of this continent from 1492 to the 20th century among
the most glorious chapters in the history of man? Or was it a half-millennium marked by mankind's
most scarlet of sins: the genocide of native peoples, the enslavement of Africans, the annihilation
of indigenous cultures, the spoliation of a virgin land?
Is America really "God's Country"? Or was Barack Obama's pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, justified
when, after 9/11, he denounced calls of "God Bless America!" with the curse "God Damn America!"?
With its silence, the congregation seemed to assent.
In 1954, the Pledge of Allegiance many of us recited daily at the end of noon recess in the schoolyard
was amended to read, "one nation, under God, indivisible."
Are we still one nation under God? At the Democratic Convention in Charlotte to renominate Barack
Obama, a motion to put "God" back into the platform was hooted and booed by half the assembly.
With this July 4 long weekend, many writers have bewailed the animus Americans exhibit toward
one another and urged new efforts to reunite us. Yet, recall again those first words of Jefferson
in 1776:
"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political
bands which have connected them "
Are we approaching such a point? Could the Constitution, as currently interpreted, win the approval
of two-thirds of our citizens and three-fourth of our states, if it were not already the supreme
law of the land? How would a national referendum on the Constitution turn out, when many Americans
are already seeking a new constitutional convention?
All of which invites the question: Are we still a nation? And what is a nation? French writer
Ernest Renan gave us the answer in the 19th century:
"A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things constitute this soul, this spiritual
principle. One is the past, the other is the present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy
of memories; the other is present consent, the desire to live together, the desire to continue to
invest in the heritage that we have jointly received.
"Of all cults, that of the ancestors is the most legitimate: our ancestors have made us what we
are. A heroic past with great men and glory is the social capital upon which the national idea
rests. These are the essential conditions of being a people: having common glories in the past and
a will to continue them in the present; having made great things together and wishing to make them
again."
"In the first line of the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, Thomas Jefferson speaks
of "one people." The Constitution, agreed upon by the Founding Fathers in Philadelphia in 1789,
begins, "We the people " And who were these "people"? In Federalist No. 2, John Jay writes of
them as "one united people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing
the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners
and customs " ** If such are the elements of nationhood and peoplehood, can we still speak of
Americans as one nation and one people? **
** YES
It would appear that Mr. Buchanan is making an argument our Founding Fathers established a
British enthnostate, but IF (and I say IF) he is taking this position, similar to Vox Day, then
he is totally wrong. Preserving rights "for one's posterity" was legal repudiation of feudalism,
which stated liberties were a grant from a monarch and the State, and reverted upon his/her death.
That is, fundamental freedoms were NOT passed to future generations. The Declaration and the Federalist
Papers in particular destroys that feudalist notion. More importantly, Article I, Section 8, Clause
4, as a component of our Constitution and reflects original intent, granted Congress and NOT the
States the authority to establish uniform rules of naturalization. By definition, naturalization
extends citizenship, and the liberties related to it, to an "outsider".
So, the drafters of our Constitution and the adopting state s fully comprehended the new Congress
would have to power to receive immigrants and set forth the standards under which they are naturalized.
Citizenship therefore is NOT exclusively confined to the British. This means this argument that
the franchise of citizenship is meant to be confined solely to the British children of rebel British
subjects is not reflected in the clear meaning of the document. Since immigration was allowed
to the United States, at first to Europeans but later extended to non-Europeans, the "posterity"
includes more than the actual descendants of residents of our great nation at that time.
But, but, but "[the Constitution] did allow for the possibility of change. But change, by definition,
is not the previous state. And the original purpose of the Constitution cannot change, obviously."
Well, a contract, which essentially is what is our Constitution, that has an amendment process
is NOT meant to remain constant. It has no original purpose but to establish exactly what the
Preamble states. Posterity does not refer to the progeny of the founders but of the People as
a whole. While this population was primarily of British descent, the Dutch, Germans, Irish, Scots,
French, Africans, and Native Americans ALL fought to remove the shackles of tyranny from Great
Britain.
Posterity is synonymous with "legacy"–what we leave behind. Indeed, few, if any, had imagined
when the Constitution was created that anyone BUT a white European had the intellectual capacity
to embrace Republican principles of government YET the criterion of commitment to those ideas
is NOT itself racial or ethnic specific. Of course, that does NOT mean foreigners have the right
to enter our shores, and it is legitimate, although in my opinion unreasonable, to doubt that
non-white groups are equal to the task to embrace such principles. Of course, in the past foreigners
have ben excluded on racial and religious grounds.
Interestingly enough, Vox Day makes these arguments
"As you probably know, my argument is that the Posterity for whom the Constitution is intended
to defend the Blessings of Liberty consists solely of the genetic descendants of the People of
the several and United States. Posterity does not include immigrants, descendants of immigrants,
invaders, conquerers, tourists, students, Americans born in Portugal, or anyone else who happens
to subsequently reside in the same geographic location, or share the same civic ideals, as the
original We the People.
"Many, if not most, descendants of immigrants are not the Posterity of the then-People of the
United States. Neither are people living in Mexico, Germany, Israel, or even Great Britain. The
U.S. Constitution was not written for them, nor was it ever intended to secure the Blessings of
Liberty for them. The idea that the Constitution was intended to do anything at all for immigrants,
resident aliens, or foreigners is as absurd as the idea that its emanations and penumbras provide
them with an unalienable right to an abortion. The fact that courts have declared otherwise is
totally irrelevant.
"The proposition nation is a lie. There is no such thing, there never was any such thing, and
there never will be any such thing."
So, everyone on this fine blog, if you are unable to trace directly your ancestors to British
settlers, YOU MUST GO BACK. Like, immediately.
Happy 4th Of July!
Tom Kratman, a science fiction writer, took Vox Day to task on this matter.
"All of which invites the question: Are we still a nation? And what is a nation?"
Aelius Aristides, a Greek who received Roman citizenship in 123 A.D. stated
You have divided into two parts all men throughout your empire everywhere giving citizenship
to all those who are more accomplished, noble, and powerful, even as they retain their native-born
identities, while the rest you have made subjects and the governed. Neither the sea nor the
great expanse of intervening land keeps one from being a citizen, and there is no distinction
between Europe and Asia No one is a foreigner who deserves to hold an office or is worthy of trust.
Rather, there is here a common "world democracy" under the rule of one man, the best ruler and
director You have divided humanity into Romans and non-Romans and because you have divided people
in this manner, in every city throughout the empire there are many who share citizenship with
you, no less than the share citizenship with their fellow natives. And some of these Roman citizens
have not even seen this city [Rome]! There is no need for troops to garrison the strategic high
points of these cities, because the most important and powerful people in each region guard their
native lands for you yet there is not a residue of resentment among those excluded [from Roman
citizenship and a share in the governance of the provinces]. Because your government is both universal
and like that of a single city-state, its governors rightly rule not as foreigners but, as it
were, their own people Additionally, all of the masses of subjects under this government have
protection against the more powerful of their native countrymen, by virtue of your anger and vengeance,
which would fall upon the more powerful without delay should they dare to break the law. Thus,
the present government serves rich and poor alike, and your constitution has developed a single,
harmonious, all-embracing union. What in former days seemed impossible has in your time come to
pass: You control a vast empire with a rule that is firm but not unkind "
Ultimately, the American identity has not been lost within the past 60 years, it just has
transformed, similar to when the Thirteen Colonies began as primarily British, but subsumed other
European groups who were historic rivals, and eventually non-Europeans. The Welsh, the Cornish,
Bavarians, the Catalans–they were distinct sub-Europeans groups, but over generations they intermingled
and dispersed in our great land. Americans are a mixture of European and non-European ethnostates
who, like any and all groups, self-identify. They know who they are and where they come from,
and create groups who share their self-identities. Furthermore, the default for American is American
and not a particular race, regardless of one's willingness to admit it this decided fact. When
you call yourself a black American or a Chinese American, you are still an American, as in residing
in the nation referred as the United States. And while Yankees and Southerners and Midwesterners
are clearly different, they are not separate "tribes" or "nations", just locations with groups
of people who self-identify geographically, socially, and culturally.
This identification is the direct result of indoctrination from our Founding Fathers.
Yeah, and someone named Khizr Khan, a Pakistani Islamist-supremacist who, as a lawyer, has
written articles defending Sharia law, was _invited_ by the Clinton campaign to speak at the Democratic
convention, where the Islamist proceeded to lecture Trump on the U.S. Constitution, and wagging
his finger declared .."Mr. Trump, this is not your America .." (or words that effect), to a wild
applause of brainwashed 1,000s in the audience.
@The Anti-Gnostic "Isn't the Church doubling down on modernity, social democracy, and multiculturalism?"
So are you and your family, with you being a lawyer and your wife a school teacher. Now are
you ready to get rid of all of your technological gadgets and live strictly in accord with the
beliefs AND lifestyle of Orthodoxy?
I think Pat already answered this question a few years ago when he observed that half the country
hates the other half and one half of the nation reveres our history and traditions while the other
half reviles them. Nothing has changed since then and if fact we're starting to see things slowly
escalate to threats, fisticuffs and even a few shootings.
Was the discovery of America and conquest of this continent from 1492 to the 20th century
among the most glorious chapters in the history of man? Or was it a half-millennium marked
by mankind's most scarlet of sins: the genocide of native peoples, the enslavement of Africans,
the annihilation of indigenous cultures, the spoliation of a virgin land?
Today's elites proclaim that our diversity is our strength. But is this true or a tenet
of trendy ideology?
The idea that "diversity is strength", in the context of a society, is the kind of barefaced
falsehood that only a man made foolish or dishonest by political dogma could believe or assert.
Common sense says that only societies that are at least reasonably homogeneous on most major
issues – race, culture, religion – can be held together other than by brute force, and that the
more homogeneous a society is the stronger it will be, in the sense of withstanding hard times
an external shocks. Any diversity is a fault line, along which a society can crack under pressure,
even if that pressure is merely the kind of opportunist identity lobby charlatans who have done
so much harm in modern American and European societies.
But common sense has little chance in the face of ideology.
Pat like most Amurikans in the Fourth Reich have forgotten what ideals animated the American
and French revolutions: liberty from tyrannical big guvmints, liberty to strike out on one's own
to build a business and a homestead, and a declaration of universal human rights (life liberty
pursuit of happiness privacy) all of which the current and past empires have trampled upon in
the name of greed for money and power the glue that defines America is precisely the willingness
to risk life and property for these ideals if we studied our two greatest wars 1770-87 and 1859-1965
(civil rights and states rights) we might educate ourselves to the light and dark in our culture
he(Wright) denounced calls of "God Bless America!" with the curse "God Damn America!"?
Happy Fourth. And God bless the USA.
ROTFL. Is Buchanan still in defensive mode about America?
Why would God bless the current America? Just think about it.
This is a degenerate nation whose new faith is homomania. People have tattoos and piercings
for identity. Even in elite colleges. Mainstream culture has been pornified. Just turn on the
TV. Some primetime shows are downright lurid.
We have white families falling apart too and opoid addiction going thru the roof. Gambling
is of the main industries and GOP's main sugar daddy is cretin Sheldon Adelson. Fathers raise
their boys to be pansies and their girls to be skanky sluts.
Catholic church is home of pederasty and homo agenda. Women's idea of protest is wearing 'pussy
hats' and spewing vulgar filth from their lips.
Media are 100x nuttier than Joe McCarthy in their hysteria and paranoia. These are the very
Libs who'd once made McCarthy the most sinister person in US history.
Blacks routinely beat up & wussify white boys and colonize white wombs, but white 'Muricans worship
black thugs in sports and rappers.
Blacks do most violence but we are supposed to believe BLM.
Americans eat like pigs. US has become the premier imperialist power in the world, even
aiding Al-Qaida in Syria and aiding neo-nazis in Ukriane. We are told we must support Israel or
Sodomia because it has the biggest homo 'pride' parade.
And 'pride' is now synonymous with homo fecal penetration.
Why would God bless this kind of degenerate nation?
Despite the gibberish of the lunatic left most people recognize this and quite rightly reject
the attempt to destroy their society in pursuit of a crazed political fantasy.
Not enough of them vociferously enough to make the ruling elites pay attention, clearly.
Despite this rejection the fantasy continues to be foisted upon the people.
As I noted, ideology trumps common sense, for those who make policy and for those who wish
to be seen as good guys by their supposed betters and peers.
America is a culture in decay, it is a huge piece of land with lots of resources and ruled
by outside forces from within. It is pimped to the max!!! Our cuckold "experts and politicians
" imaginations run wild whenever the pimps (from outside) and their representatives (within) give
the orders to further push this land into an increasingly decadent society .. look how happy we
are when we kill defenseless people, clearing their (pimps) garbage, work hard to collect wealth
for them, it is soooo sad just thinking about it. Carrying the pimp's flag is considered one of
the most patriotic thing to do, ask Tom Cotton, Bolton, Rumsfeld .
We no longer have the same ancestors. They are of every color and from every country.
We do not speak one language, but rather English, Spanish and a host of others. We long ago
ceased to profess the same religion. We are Evangelical Christians, mainstream Protestants,
Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists, agnostics and atheists.
Pat seems to imply that if the original ancestry had been maintained, America would not
have the problems it now faces. He singlehandedly lays out the blame for the decline of American
Republic/democracy at the feet of non-white foreigners. Let us follow this line of reasoning and
see where it leads us.
First, unless the original white immigrants to this country had wiped out every non-white resident
(the American Indians) of this country, there would still be non-white people living in America.
However, leaving that little detail aside, let us examine who caused the decline of America.
The laws of the land are enacted by the congress of the United States. The US congress has the
sole power of imposing taxation, allowing immigration, and the conduct of wars. Up until recently
the congress of the United States consisted of mostly white citizens. Out of the 45 presidents
that the country has seen, all but one have been white Americans. The one black president was
more white than black. Just check with black citizens and they will tell you that they were better
off before him.
The British taxes, without representation, that the colonist rebelled against were much lower
than what they are now. These taxes have been imposed by the white congressmen and signed by white
presidents.
The immigration laws and quotas were passed by the white congress and signed by white presidents.
The wars, both declared and undeclared, have been waged by the white presidents.
While I sympathize with Mr Buchanan lamenting upon the good old days, no one but his own white
folks have destroyed those good old days. America took pride in been called the nation of immigrants
but only when the going was good. As long as, the immigrant scientist, engineers, and architects
made this country great they were welcome but as soon as things got rough America blamed the immigrants.
Mr. Buchanan, don't blame all immigrants. Most of them are still productive and faithful to
their adopted country. If you want to blame someone, follow the money, since money is the root
of all evil. I don't have to tell you who controls the money. You should know very well who. I
have followed your career for a long time. I even voted for you in 1992 presidential primary.
You were very outspoken then but your wings have been clipped. There is no zing left in your writing.
You have toned down criticism of the very group of people that have destroyed this country.
"Societies succeed because they've built up, usually over centuries, a widely accepted and
practiced set of behaviors; social capital built up of predictable actions and attitudes and beliefs.
The core of the culture."
Which America has. "Immigrants; who do not have that ingrained culture are likely to be destructive
of social capital and destructive to the host society." According to Vox Day, only the English
immigrants were able to understand the Rights Of Englishmen. Non-English immigrants perverted
its meaning. Are you non-English? If yes, you have to go back.
Jacques Sheete "We should be mourning our lost liberties on the Fourth, not wishing one another
happiness over the fraud."
Thank you for your virtue signaling. "Can a cesspool be a nation? If so, who would want it?"
Except America is not a cesspool, nor resembles anything like it.
The Jester
"In a historic turnabout, we have now given the feminists and sexual deviants hiding behind
Cultural Marxist ideology a legally protected status and (under the Marxist aphorism that personal
choice defines one's culture, gender, and sex) are inviting massive immigration from the hell-holes
populating the Third and Fourth Worlds."
The scope of Cultural Marxism is Fake News.
Randal
"Common sense says that only societies that are at least reasonably homogeneous on most major
issues – race, culture, religion – can be held together other than by brute force "
Except America does not fit that description.
"and that the more homogeneous a society is the stronger it will be, in the sense of withstanding
hard times an external shocks."
America's people are bound by a common set of values.
"... After all, MbS has risen in influence in Saudi Arabia largely because of his pet foreign policy project, the war in Yemen, which, according to the latest reports, hasn't been going particularly well (unless his original idea was to completely destroy the Arab world's poorest country). He now finds himself in a very difficult spot. ..."
"... Moreover, the Saudi king just elevated the hyper-ambitious MbS to crown prince overnight, placing him next in line in the royal succession. Like Trump, the 31-year-old is falling upward more through sheer audacity than palpable successes. Unless in his new exalted position he can somehow still impose his will on Qatar - an increasingly doubtful prospect in the absence of U.S. and Western diplomatic support - MbS looks ever more like a two-time loser (in Trumpspeak), and an extremely reckless one at that. And that perception makes him even more dangerous under the circumstances. ..."
"... Tehran was also deeply offended by Trump's shocking reaction to the June 7 terrorist attack and further taken aback by Tillerson's statement of support for a "peaceful transition" of government in Iran one week later. These statements no doubt served to strengthen hardliners in Tehran who already believe the worst about U.S. intentions as well as those of its regional allies. ..."
"... At a moment of crisis a half a world away, Trump may actually welcome some serious fireworks as a useful diversion from his deepening political and legal problems at home. After all, those missiles strikes in Syria back in April gave him something of a reprieve, at least for a few days. ..."
"... Given the latest head-spinning twist in Washington's reaction to the KSA/UAE-led Qatar quarantine, it seems quite reasonable to ask how key Iranian policymakers will know who's running policy in the White House when it's faced with an incident that escalates quickly, and the Saudis, Emiratis, and Sheldon Adelson are on the phone insisting that Trump's manhood is on the line? The likelihood of miscalculation by one or more of the major players is virtually certain. ..."
Almost as shocked as Secretaries Mattis and Tillerson and National Security Adviser McMaster must
have been when they first heard about Trump's tweets. Here's what the State Department spokesperson
- to the extent you believe she speaks for the "administration" - said about Riyadh's and Abu Dhabi's
action:
Now that it has been more than two weeks since the embargo started, we are mystified that the
Gulf States have not released to the public, nor to the Qataris, the details about the claims
that they are making toward Qatar. The more that time goes by the more doubt is raised about the
actions taken by Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
At this point we are left with one simple question: were the actions really about their
concerns regarding Qatar's alleged support for terrorism or were they about the long, simmering
grievances between and among the GCC countries?
(Oh, snap.)
Assuming the State Department really speaks for the US government, this rather stunning statement
begs a host of rather critical questions. How exactly did the Saudis and their allies come to think
that Washington would support them? Who exactly gave them that impression and under what circumstances?
Or are Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) and UAE Crown Prince (and apparent MbS mentor)
Mohammed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahyan (MbZ) so deluded or hubristic that they just assumed that
Washington, including the Pentagon, was on board with this?
And, if so, how prone to miscalculation are they in this moment of sky-high regional tensions?
After all, MbS has risen in influence in Saudi Arabia largely because of his pet foreign policy
project, the war in Yemen, which, according to the latest reports, hasn't been going particularly
well (unless his original idea was to completely destroy the Arab world's poorest country). He now
finds himself in a very difficult spot.
Moreover, the Saudi king just elevated the hyper-ambitious MbS to crown prince overnight, placing
him next in line in the royal succession. Like Trump, the 31-year-old is falling upward more through
sheer audacity than palpable successes. Unless in his new exalted position he can somehow still impose
his will on Qatar - an increasingly doubtful prospect in the absence of U.S. and Western diplomatic
support - MbS looks ever more like a two-time loser (in Trumpspeak), and an extremely reckless one
at that. And that perception makes him even more dangerous under the circumstances.
Meanwhile in Iran
How is all this perceived in Tehran, where various competing factions may also be prone to miscalculation?
What do they think U.S. policy is?
They know the Trump "administration" is united in its conviction that the Islamic Republic is
irredeemably hostile to the U.S., but they also know there are degrees of difference among senior
officials.
Some White House officials reportedly favor "regime change" via covert action, and it was just
a few days before the ISIS attack in Iran that
it was disclosed that the CIA had picked Michael D'Andrea (aka The Dark Prince or Ayatollah Mike),
a particularly aggressive covert operator, to run the agency's Iran program.
Tehran was also deeply offended by
Trump's shocking reaction to the June 7 terrorist attack and further taken aback by
Tillerson's statement of support for a "peaceful transition" of government in Iran one week later.
These statements no doubt served to strengthen hardliners in Tehran who already believe the worst
about U.S. intentions as well as those of its regional allies.
At the same time, Tehran knows that top officials - notably Mattis (who appears to have been
granted virtually
unprecedented discretion in military decision-making) and McMaster - are
keenly aware of the risks of getting dragged into a war with Iran (or becoming bogged down in
Syria) even as they believe Washington should "push back" against Tehran's "malign" behavior in the
region.
And then there's the commander-in-chief's own impulsiveness, ignorance, and macho pose.
At a moment
of crisis a half a world away, Trump may actually welcome some serious fireworks as a useful diversion
from his deepening political and legal problems at home. After all, those missiles strikes in Syria
back in April gave him something of a reprieve, at least for a few days.
Given the latest head-spinning twist in Washington's reaction to the KSA/UAE-led Qatar quarantine,
it seems quite reasonable to ask how key Iranian policymakers will know who's running policy in the
White House when it's faced with an incident that escalates quickly, and the Saudis, Emiratis, and
Sheldon Adelson
are on the phone insisting that Trump's manhood is on the line? The likelihood of miscalculation
by one or more of the major players is virtually certain.
It's a very scary - but increasingly imaginable - prospect.
Jim Lobe served for some 30 years as the Washington, D.C. bureau chief for Inter Press Service
and is best known for his coverage of U.S. foreign policy and the influence of the neoconservative
movement.
Blonde hair blue eyed Waffen SS soldiers .I assume
baptized Christian .being wasted by beautiful blonde haired Conservative Orthodox Christian Women
Russian Snipers. This is what you will always get when you fall for the lies of the worshippers
of Franco.
Hitler and Franco .enablers of the Mohammadan Gang Rape Army .Hitler's Waffen SS-Werhrmacht
gang rape Army
Short tiny Andrew Anglin doesn't realize how much he has in common with the Jewish Antifas on
a fundamental Level ..
History offers up important lessons for the Alt Right
There is a historic
precedent for the Alt Right in US History:look no further than the late
19th-early 2oth Century US Labor Movement it was racially
xenophobic .isolationist and economically progressive .The late 19th-early 2oth
century Labor Movement gave us such wonderfull things such as The Chinese Legal
Immigrant Exclusion Act and the Sihk Legal Immigrant Exclusion Act .not bad!!!
And let's honest The Alt Right kiddie brigade that worships
Hitler Franco Pinochet .also swims in the sewage of JFK and Ronnie Reagan
worship two scoundrels who unleashed race-replacement immigration policy on The
Historic Native Born White American Working Class..
"... My point here is that Trump has pressed ahead with uncritical support for the Saudis because that has been the conventional hawkish position in Washington for years before he got there. He is catering to the existing warped desire to provide even more support to Riyadh than Obama did. It was conventional wisdom among many foreign policy pundits and analysts that Obama had not been "pro-Saudi" enough, and Trump apparently bought into that view. Trump's enthusiastic embrace of the Saudis is the result of endlessly berating Obama for not giving the Saudis absolutely everything they wanted. ..."
"... Until that changes and until Trump's excessive fondness for the Saudi leadership starts to become a major political problem for him, pleading with the arsonist's enabler to put out fires will have little effect. ..."
But one thing is already stunningly clear when it comes to his handling of foreign policy:
In two short years, as the deputy crown prince and defense minister, MBS has driven the Kingdom
into a series of royal blunders in Yemen, Qatar and Iran, and he has likely over promised what
Saudi Arabia is able and willing to do on the Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking front. Far from
demonstrating judgment and experience, he's proven to be reckless and impulsive, with little sense
of how to link tactics and strategy. And sadly, he's managed to implicate and drag the new Trump
administration into some of these misadventures, too.
Miller and Sokolsky are right about MBS' shoddy record, but their warning to the Trump administration
is very likely too late. They urge the administration to rethink its position before "its Middle
East policy becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of Saudi Arabia," but I fear that that already happened
at the Riyadh summit. Unfortunately, some top U.S. officials are only
just now realizing it and don't know how to stop it. There could be some belated efforts to undo
this, but Trump isn't interested. He doesn't seem to see anything wrong with identifying the U.S.
so closely with the Saudis, and he doesn't see their recklessness and destructive behavior for what
they are. Since he is impulsive, careless, and has poor judgment, it isn't surprising that he has
such an affinity for the aging Saudi despot and his favorite incompetent son. On top of all that,
MBS is a short-sighted, foolish hard-liner on Iran, and as far as we can tell Trump is much the same,
so we should expect them to be on the same page.
There's no question that every foreign policy initiative associated with MBS has "turned into
a hot mess," but this has been obvious in Yemen for the last two years. If no one in the Trump administration
noticed that before, what is going to make them realize it now? The authors are also right that Trump's
decision "to side with Saudi Arabia in its conflict with Qatar and in Yemen is akin to pouring gasoline
on a fire," but until very recently uncritical backing of the Saudis in their regional adventurism
enjoyed broad bipartisan support that helped make it possible for things to get this bad. There were
very few in Washington who thought that pouring gasoline on the fire was the wrong thing to do, and
for more than two years the U.S. poured a lot of gas on the fire in Yemen that has been consuming
thousands of lives and putting millions at risk of starvation.
My point here is that Trump has pressed ahead with uncritical support for the Saudis because that
has been the conventional hawkish position in Washington for years before he got there. He is catering
to the existing warped desire to provide even more support to Riyadh than Obama did. It was conventional
wisdom among many foreign policy pundits and analysts that Obama had not been "pro-Saudi" enough,
and Trump apparently bought into that view. Trump's enthusiastic embrace of the Saudis is the result
of endlessly berating Obama for not giving the Saudis absolutely everything they wanted.
There is now more open opposition to at least some aspects of U.S. policy in Yemen, as we saw
with the recent close vote on a Saudi arms sale. The Qatar crisis has prompted more criticism of
the Saudis from our government than two years of destroying and starving an entire country. Yet there
is still remarkably little scrutiny of the underlying U.S.-Saudi relationship despite growing evidence
that the kingdom has become a regional menace and a major liability to the U.S. Until that changes
and until Trump's excessive fondness for the Saudi leadership starts to become a major political
problem for him, pleading with the arsonist's enabler to put out fires will have little effect.
"... ...While administration officials said Mr. Trump had grown increasingly frustrated with China for putting more pressure on North Korea over its nuclear and missile programs, the response showed that officials here, too, were frustrated by Mr. Trump's lurching strategy and cavalier style of tweeting new policy. ..."
"... Although an outright breach in relations remains unthinkable, given the depth of economic ties, the outward warmth Mr. Trump once showed Mr. Xi seems to have worn out its welcome in China. And it happened much sooner than officials here expected. ..."
"... Mr. Trump's actions returned the relationship to normal: strained, with deep issues dividing the two countries. ..."
"... "The latest situation has also illustrated that Trump is a leader without patience," Mr. Shi said. ..."
...While administration officials said Mr. Trump had grown increasingly frustrated with China
for putting more pressure on North Korea over its nuclear and missile programs, the response showed
that officials here, too, were frustrated by Mr. Trump's lurching strategy and cavalier style of
tweeting new policy.
The latest steps, analysts said, felt retaliatory, and thus could prove counterproductive.
"The United States has stabbed us in the back," said Wang Dong, an assistant professor at the
School of International Studies at Peking University. He said the sanctions - the first against a
Chinese company for trading with North Korea since 2006 - would undermine China's willingness to
help resolve the nuclear issue.
China has repeatedly said it shares the goal of halting North Korea's nuclear program, or more
broadly ensuring the entire Korean Peninsula is without nuclear weapons. It has also repeatedly maintained
that it complies with trade sanctions that the United Nations Security Council imposed in an effort
to isolate the North from resources to finance its nuclear and missile programs.
The extent of its cooperation, however, is disputed in Washington, even within the new administration.
"The Chinese tried to gauge what were the minimal steps they could take to comply with the resolutions
and show they were serious about North Korea's program," said Bonnie S. Glaser, a senior adviser
for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "And they miscalculated."
Officials in Beijing, however, have puzzled over what they view as conflicting signals from Mr.
Trump, like his harsh words on the campaign trail and the personal bonhomie toward Mr. Xi to persuade
him to apply a new round of pressure. Analysts have pointed to a widespread confusion over the United
States' approach to North Korea, among other issues.
Those include Mr. Trump's disavowal of the
Paris agreement on climate change, now a priority of Mr. Xi's and one that is expected to be
contentious when Mr. Trump attends the Group of 20 meetings in Germany next week.
The sanctions against the two Chinese companies were announced in Washington by Mr. Trump's treasury
secretary, Steven T. Mnuchin, only hours before the agriculture secretary, Sonny Perdue, arrived
in Beijing to promote "tasty, wholesome, healthy, safe U.S. beef." The ban, ostensibly imposed because
of concern over mad cow disease, was officially lifted in May and the first shipments have begun
to arrive in Chinese supermarkets and restaurants.
... ... ...
The new sanctions targeted two companies, the Bank of Dandong and Dalian Global Unity Shipping
- as well as two Chinese businessmen - accused of supporting North Korea through money laundering
or illicit trade.
The bank, which could find itself cut off from the international banking system, is not among
China's biggest, raising the prospect that the administration could single out larger ones. A woman
who answered the phone at the bank's headquarters refused to respond to a request for comment.
Although an outright breach in relations remains unthinkable, given the depth of economic
ties, the outward warmth Mr. Trump once showed Mr. Xi seems to have worn out its welcome in China.
And it happened much sooner than officials here expected.
Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University of China, said that
Mr. Trump's actions returned the relationship to normal: strained, with deep issues dividing
the two countries.
Under Mr. Trump, he said, there was even less room for cooperation than under his predecessor,
Barack Obama, who sought to work with China on climate change, for example.
"The latest situation has also illustrated that Trump is a leader without patience," Mr. Shi
said.
"... "Rex put two-and-two together," his close associate says, "and concluded that this absolutely vacuous kid was running a second foreign policy out of the White House family quarters. Otaiba weighed in with Jared and Jared weighed in with Trump. What a mess." The Trump statement was nearly the last straw for Tillerson, this close associate explains: "Rex is just exhausted. He can't get any of his appointments approved and is running around the world cleaning up after a president whose primary foreign policy adviser is a 31-year-old amateur." ..."
"... So the adults in the room are those who want to continue the stupid and disastrous ME policies of the past? They may be adults, but they are stupid adults, or criminals, or both. ..."
"... The Trump White House is at war with reality. This morning one reads about threats of harsh action directed against Syria if there is another chemical weapons attack, setting up a perfect scenario for the "rebels" to stage one. ..."
"... I guess the word " adult" here means mature intelligent people obsessed with building a coalition and possibly starting a war with Iran for no good reason at all. Kushner and Trump are morons, but sometimes ( often) in politics you have a situation with two factions that are both wrong. ..."
"... Perhaps shattering the Anti-Iran coalition is a good thing . Having all these Sunni ISIS supporter/U.S. "allies" in a cat fight may be just what we need . to get our heads out of our backsides and realize who the real enemies are . " would be a launching point for U.S. aircraft against Iran were Israel to be attacked by the Islamic Republic." ..Yeah; like THAT'S gonna' happen . ..."
"... Good point, couldn't we make the same argument regarding Hezbollah, our obsession with Hezbollah risks destabilizing Lebanon for that exact same reason or is that part of operation chaos? The Shiites make up 30% of the population of Lebanon and have been able to form a coalition with the Christians, are we gunning for total disenfranchisement to make the Sunnis / Saudis happy. ..."
"... The "adults in the room" are the people that want to go to war with Iran? That's hilarious. ..."
"... A sign of good faith all around who believe the neocons have encircled and now captured the White House would be to fire Mr and Mrs Kushner, NOW!!!! ..."
"... Dan - It is both. The adults in the room and the children playing with matches all want a war with Iran. ..."
"... It was my understanding that invading sovereignty territory of another state of no threat was bad manners, not to mention, a violation of international law. I am convinced that the problem here is the Pres not having though through his agenda juxtaposed against those he brought on board, because he respected them for whatever reason. ..."
"... I suspect that having demonstrated our vulnerabilities with Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, the Ukraine, etc. Those days when our foot print mattered has shrunk significantly. And the more we allow ourselves to get played via multiple payers at odds with one another, the more that will remain the case. ..."
"... The problem with Saudi Arabia is that whatever the Government says or does, there are thousands ( at least 5000) members of the family and other wealthy Saudis of which a minority probably support Muslim terrorism. Pakistan since 1973 has steadily become more fundamentalist and has taken money from the USA while supporting the Taliban killing American troops. ..."
"... A good piece, Mr. Perry, especially in pointing out (sadly, have to add "yet again") the incredible amateurism/incompetence of the Trump Administration's foreign policy "efforts" in the Middle East, but (as has been pointed out here) conflating "forming a common front against Iran" with the position of "the adults in the room" is a dubious proposition. ..."
"... No way Tillerson stays around. This is a guy who lead one of the world's most powerful and complex companies. He is way too smart to let these folks tarnish his reputation. ..."
On March 25, 2011, a Qatar Air Force Mirage 2000-5, took
off from Souda Air Base, in Crete, to help enforce a no-fly zone protecting rebels being
attacked by Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi. Qatar was the first Persian Gulf nation to
help the U.S. in the conflict.
Qatari operations
were more than symbolic. The Qatari military trained rebel units, shipped them weapons,
accompanied their fighting units into battle, served as a link between rebel commanders
and NATO, tutored their military commanders, integrated disparate rebel units into a
unified force and led them i
n
the final assault on Qaddafi's compound in Tripoli
."We
never had to hold their hand," a retired senior U.S. military officer says. "They knew
what they were doing." Put simply, while the U.S. was leading from behind in Libya, the
Qataris were walking point.
The Qatar intervention has not been forgotten at the
Pentagon and is one of the reasons why Defense Secretary James Mattis has worked so
diligently to patch up the falling out between them and the coalition of Saudi-led
countries (including the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt), that have isolated and blockaded the
nation. In fact, Mattis was stunned by the Saudi move. "His first reaction was shock,
but his second was disbelief," a senior military officer says. "He thought the Saudis
had picked an unnecessary fight, and just when the administration thought they'd gotten
everyone in the Gulf on the same page in forming a common front against Iran."
At the time of the Saudi announcement, Mattis was in
Sydney with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to dampen concerns about the Trump
administration's withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris climate
accords. The two glad-handed Australian officials and issued a reassuring pronouncement
on U.S. intentions during a
June 5 press briefing
with that nation's foreign and defense ministers. When the burgeoning split between the
Saudis and Qataris was mentioned, Tillerson described it as no more than one of "a
growing list or irritants in the region" that would not impair "the unified fight
against terrorism "
But while Tillerson's answer was meant to soothe
concerns over the crisis, behind the scenes he and Mattis were scrambling to undo the
damage caused by Saudi action. The two huddled in Sydney and decided that Tillerson
would take the lead in trying to resolve the falling out. Which is why, three days after
the Sydney press conference, Tillerson called on Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and
Egypt to ease their anti-Qatar blockade and announced that the U.S.
supported a Kuwaiti-led mediation effort
. The
problem for Tillerson was that his statement was contradicted by Donald Trump who,
during a Rose Garden appearance on the same day,
castigated Qatar,
saying the emirate "has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level."
A close associate of the secretary of state says that
Tillerson was not only "blind-sided by the Trump statement," but "absolutely enraged
that the White House and State Department weren't on the same page." Tillerson's aides,
I was told, were convinced that the true author of Trump's statement was U.A.E.
ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba, a close friend of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.
"Rex
put two-and-two together," his close associate says, "and concluded that this absolutely
vacuous kid was running a second foreign policy out of the White House family quarters.
Otaiba weighed in with Jared and Jared weighed in with Trump. What a mess." The Trump
statement was nearly the last straw for Tillerson, this close associate explains: "Rex
is just exhausted. He can't get any of his appointments approved and is running around
the world cleaning up after a president whose primary foreign policy adviser is a
31-year-old amateur."
Worse yet, at least from Tillerson's point of view, a
White House official explained the difference between the two statements by telling the
press to ignore the secretary of state. "Tillerson may initially have had a view," a
White House official told the
Washington Post
,
"then the president has his view, and obviously the president's view prevails."
Or maybe not. While Trump's June 9 statement signaled
that the U.S. was tilting towards the Saudis and the UAE, Tillerson and Mattis have been
tilting towards Qatar. And for good reason. "Every time we've asked the Qataris for
something they've said 'yes,' which isn't true for the Saudis," the retired senior U.S.
military officer with whom I spoke says. "It really started with the help the Qataris
gave us in Libya, but it goes well beyond that. They've been absolutely first rate on
ISIS. The Saudis, on the other hand, have been nothing but trouble – in Yemen,
especially. Yemen has been a disaster, a stain. And now there's this."
That view has been reflected by both Mattis and
Tillerson. Six days after Trump's statement, Mattis met with Qatari Defense Minister
Khalid al-Attiyah to sign an agreement shipping 36 F-15 fighters to the Gulf nation.
The $12 billion sale
had been in the works for years, so Pentagon officials
were able to claim that it had not been fast-tracked by Tillerson, whose department
oversees arms transactions. But the Mattis announcement seemed suspiciously well-timed
to signal Mattis' and Tillerson's views.
On the same day that Mattis was announcing the Qatar
arms agreement, Tillerson told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that it would be a
mistake to classify the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group, one of the primary
reasons that the anti-Qatar coalition gave for isolating their Gulf neighbor. "There are
elements of the Muslim Brotherhood that have become parts of government," Tillerson
said, naming Turkey and Bahrain as having brotherhood members in their parliaments.
Those "elements," Tillerson added, have renounced violence and terrorism. "So, in
designating the Brotherhood in its totality as a terrorist organization . . . I think
you can appreciate the complexities this enters into our relations with [governments in
the region]."
But the single most important reason for the Qatar
tilt is obvious to anyone who knows how to read a map. The U.S. leases the al-Udeid Air
Base, southwest of Doha, which is home to the Air Force's 379th Air Expeditionary Wing.
The U.S. (and the Qataris), not only mount fighter-bombers from al-Udeid against ISIS
units in Iraq and Syria, the base serves as the first line of defense against Iranian
encroachments in the region. Even more crucially, al-Udeid not only protects America's
Persian Gulf allies, it protects Israel – and would be a launching point for U.S.
aircraft against Iran were Israel to be attacked by the Islamic Republic.
More crucially, particularly from Mattis's
point-of-view, the Saudi-Qatar feud not only shattered the anti-Iran coalition the
administration cobbled together during the president's trip to Riyadh, it redrew the
geopolitical map of the Middle East. In the wake of the Saudi-Qatar falling out, Turkey
pledged its support for Qatar (and deployed troops to a Qatari military base to guard
Qatar's sovereignty), while Iran took steps to help ease the Saudi-imposed blockade.
"The Saudis and Emiratis have told us repeatedly that
they want to weaken Iran, but they've actually empowered them," a senior Pentagon
consultant who works on the Middle East told me. The Saudi actions, this official went
on to explain, have backfired. Instead of intimidating the Qataris, the Saudis have
"thrown them into the arms of the Iranians." The result is an uneasy, but emerging
Turkish-Qatari-Iranian alliance backed by Russia. "This isn't just some kind of Gulfie
dust-up, where we can go out and hold everyone's hands," this Pentagon consultant says.
"The Saudis have handed the Iranians a gift and we're on the outside looking in."
The official then shook his head. "Listen, I can
certainly understand where Mattis and Tillerson are coming from. I mean, with friends
like these, who needs enemies."
Mark Perry is a foreign policy analyst and the
author of
The Most Dangerous Man in America:
The Making of Douglas MacArthur.
His next book,
The Pentagon's Wars,
will
be released in October. He tweets
@markperrydc
Sure that explains the what they did. but it begs the larger question, as to
why they did something so incredibly worthless to US interests as support the
removal of Pres Col Qaddafi in the first place.
So in short the previous admin., apparently with aide of Gen Mattis
orchestrated a regime change , further destabilizing a region we need to be
stable.
The fact that they are shocked should tell us something about just what they
understand to the regional issues and players. Excuse me, but if they represent
the adults, I am unsure what your comprehension of adult is.
Ohhh because we are launching attacks against ISIS/ISIL. Excuse me but I am
unsure what ISIS?ISIL contingent you are talking about. The one's we support in
Syria, and Yemen or the ones we aided in overthrowing the Libyan government.
And let's see, Israel supports the coalition that includes Saudis and we
support Israel.
Let's get something straight. The election of Mr. trump has not made issues
worse. Nor has his policy. What it has done is revealed just how completely
askewed things are. You may want to portray the gentleman photo'd as fence
menders. but what it reveals is complicity in having shattered the fence in the
first place.
Shifting fault onto Mr Kushner is almost unforgivable. Whatever
disagreements, I had with his positions regarding Israel, Syria and Iran - he
is not responsible for the dynamic in play before he arrived. Even if that
dynamic betraying fault lines since his arrival.
Why the current Pres chose people, regardless of how fine they are who
opposed his stated agenda is beyond me.
Really, there is nothing left to say. The primary source of extremism is Saudi
Arabia, from which came Al Qaeda and ISIS. It is not Islam and Mohammad that is
the root of the problem, it is Wahhabism and al-Wahhab that is the root of the
problem.
So the adults in the room are those who want to continue the stupid and
disastrous ME policies of the past? They may be adults, but they are stupid
adults, or criminals, or both.
Great article! The Trump White House is at war with reality. This morning one
reads about threats of harsh action directed against Syria if there is another
chemical weapons attack, setting up a perfect scenario for the "rebels" to
stage one.
And what is the evidence that such a thing is being planned? It is
not clear and might be coming from any one of the usual partisan sources.
Apparently the State and Defense Departments were not in the loop on the White
House warning but our UN Ambassador was. She elaborated, warning that Russia
and Iran would also be held to blame if Syria does anything. Incredible!
I guess the word " adult" here means mature intelligent people obsessed with
building a coalition and possibly starting a war with Iran for no good reason
at all. Kushner and Trump are morons, but sometimes ( often) in politics you
have a situation with two factions that are both wrong.
Perhaps shattering the Anti-Iran coalition is a good thing .
Having all these
Sunni ISIS supporter/U.S. "allies" in a cat fight may be just what we need . to
get our heads out of our backsides and realize who the real enemies are . " would be a launching point for U.S. aircraft against Iran were Israel to
be attacked by the Islamic Republic."
..Yeah; like THAT'S gonna' happen .
Not a fan of toppling Gaddafi but yeah, Qatar is a pragmatic country.
Tillerson told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that it would be a
mistake to classify the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group, "There
are elements of the Muslim Brotherhood that have become parts of
government," Tillerson said, naming Turkey and Bahrain as having brotherhood
members in their parliaments.
Good point, couldn't we make the same argument regarding Hezbollah, our
obsession with Hezbollah risks destabilizing Lebanon for that exact same reason
or is that part of operation chaos? The Shiites make up 30% of the population
of Lebanon and have been able to form a coalition with the Christians, are we
gunning for total disenfranchisement to make the Sunnis / Saudis happy.
So yes, the Iranians are the villains, yet again, just for acting like
adults. Maybe they are more adult like then we give them credit for.
Because inviting Russia to get closer to the Persian Gulf and Arabia Sea has
been the Holy Grail of all other world powers for two centuries.
Oh, wait.
Not.
Trump's Qatar thing was no mere gaffe, but a thunderbolt that would leave
non-Russian leaders from Eurasian powers of the past two centuries gob-smacked.
Just imagine Truman and Eisenhower having bourbon together over this one .
@Dan : "The "adults in the room" are the people that want to go to war with
Iran?"
You have a point, but it applies to Mattis far more than Tillerson.
Tillerson never advised Trump to do anything so stupid as to send US troops
back into to Afghanistan.
"Trump's Qatar thing was no mere gaffe, but a thunderbolt that would leave
non-Russian leaders from Eurasian powers of the past two centuries
gob-smacked."
Ohh boy,
It was my understanding that invading sovereignty territory of another state
of no threat was bad manners, not to mention, a violation of international law.
I am convinced that the problem here is the Pres not having though through his
agenda juxtaposed against those he brought on board, because he respected them
for whatever reason.
And having respect for them is no doubt deserved, but whether that means
they could mesh agendas - given the differences, doubtful. And as for the Saudi
coalition, it might do well to remember that other states and other alliances
have their own agendas. We have been stomping around this region for quite some
time as though what we wanted was all that mattered.
I suspect that having demonstrated our vulnerabilities with Iraq,
Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, the Ukraine, etc. Those days when our foot print
mattered has shrunk significantly. And the more we allow ourselves to get
played via multiple payers at odds with one another, the more that will remain
the case.
The present ruler of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim has become far more supportive of
muslim terrorist groups which include Muslim Brotherhood than the previous
ruler. Qatar has taken in Qaradari who supports the Muslim Brotherhood In
Egypt. The MB are growing in strength in Arab countries. I would not trust any
MB member
I think western governments are naïve over the MB. It is quite possible for
some members to preach peace and other undertake violence in order to create
confusion. For the USA Government to say Qatar is fine because it supported us
over Libya is naïve
The problem with Saudi Arabia is that whatever the Government says or does,
there are thousands ( at least 5000) members of the family and other wealthy
Saudis of which a minority probably support Muslim terrorism. Pakistan since
1973 has steadily become more fundamentalist and has taken money from the USA
while supporting the Taliban killing American troops.
The reality is that the Foreign Service does not know what is happening in
these countries and doubt the governments actually do either. Americans are far
too trusting and take things at face value . In The Middle East people are
quite capable of receiving money from you and stabbing you at the same time,
all the while smiling.
Saudi is concerned by the Houthis( Shia ) in Yemen because the southern border
is almost impossible to guard due to the Empty Quarter Yemeni raiding parties
could easily raid into Saudi and then disappear- read Wilfred Thessiger's
Arabian Sands account of crossing the empty quarter in the 1940s.
Saudi did try to conquer Qatar in the 1930s. The questions which are not asked
Why has Qatar/Sheik Tamim started to support Muslim terrorism when Saudi is
reigning back support?
Are historical conflicts between Qatar and Saud Arabia part of the problem ?
Is Iran a threat to Qatar which has to be appeased at all cost?
A good piece, Mr. Perry, especially in pointing out (sadly, have to add "yet
again") the incredible amateurism/incompetence of the Trump Administration's
foreign policy "efforts" in the Middle East, but (as has been pointed out here)
conflating "forming a common front against Iran" with the position of "the
adults in the room" is a dubious proposition.
It's curious but I have yet to
see any FP analysis pieces (from either Left or Right) laying out any good
reasons why seeking
better
, rather than seriously-more-antagonistic,
relations with Iran would be a bad thing for the world in general (not just
Saudi ambitions).
No way Tillerson stays around. This is a guy who lead one of the world's most
powerful and complex companies. He is way too smart to let these folks tarnish
his reputation.
"... That said, I'm wondering if it couldn't be the other way around. A few people in intelligence agencies and US administration got wind that some rebels/group was considering a false-flag chemical attack in the near future. Having US going so public just before would make it kind of hard to convince the world, even US people, that it was really Assad who was suicidal enough to do such an attack right after getting warned. Basically, a way to tell that group to rethink its plan because it would be a far harder sell and many people would begin to doubt SAA's guilt. ..."
So just "coincidentally" all these "coincidences" are playing out a week after the US military
was forced to admit humiliating defeat in Syria AND Seymour Hersh's piece detailing the appalling
thuggish buffoonery and incompetence of the Trump administration was published for all to read? No
way. The USG is in damage control mode and as usual many innocent people are going to die violent
deaths in the name of upholding western delusions.
As you say Paveway, looks like something not good brewing. Makes me wonder why the white house
took it upon themselves to announce it, catching the other players with their pants down.
Well, more or less asking the rebels to do some false-flag soon enough is the most obvious and
probable explanation.
That said, I'm wondering if it couldn't be the other way around. A few people in intelligence
agencies and US administration got wind that some rebels/group was considering a false-flag chemical
attack in the near future. Having US going so public just before would make it kind of hard to
convince the world, even US people, that it was really Assad who was suicidal enough to do such
an attack right after getting warned. Basically, a way to tell that group to rethink its plan
because it would be a far harder sell and many people would begin to doubt SAA's guilt.
That's a bit far-fetched and based on the possible presence of sane agents in US administration.
So I give this hypothesis still a low probability.
About the US recon flights, could they be mostly monitoring that incoming Russian navy exercise?
Or could they be related to the growing Turkish pressure on Afrin?
One desperate move the US and allies could try to make vis a vis the alleged chemical attack is
to kill Assad, as they couldn't stop the SAA's advance on DAYR EL-ZOR.
"... (By the way, Trump reportedly told Israeli leaders during his trip Israel that he was "just back from the Middle East." What did Netanyahu think about that, but: Oh god this guy's ignorant how do we use this ignorance? ) ..."
"... And on June 21 State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert declared that the more time passes, "the more doubt is raised about the actions taken by Saudi Arabia and the UAE At this point, we are left with one simple question: Were the actions really about their concerns regarding Qatar's alleged support for terrorism or were they about the long-simmering grievances between and among the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries?" ??? ..."
"... Some people speculate that Trump in his sly wisdom is sending out contrasting messages to obtain his mysterious ends to make America great again. This gives the man too much credit. His problem is that he blabbers whatever-he thinks for the moment-makes him look tough. He projects confidence, without knowing what the hell he's talking about. He's a dangerous buffoon. ..."
"... George W. Bush by his invasion of Iraq (to better his dad) produced a mess that his successor in some respects exacerbated. While Obama withdrew from Iraq in accordance with Bush's agreement, and limited the "mission" in Afghanistan, he (or Hillary) led in the destruction of Libya, and began the grotesque involvement in the Syrian conflict. Trump does not understand the causes and effects. He's just proud that his generals dropped a GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb an ISIL camp in Afghanistan. ..."
"... Or Trump glories (echoed by Brian Williams) in that April 7 missile strike on the Syrian airfield, when supposedly 56 Tomahawk missiles destroyed a material storage depot, a training facility, a canteen, six MiG-23 aircraft in repair hangars and a radar station. "Congratulations," he tweeted, "to our great military men and women for representing the United States, and the world, so well in the Syria attack." Interviewed on TV he intimately associated the order to attack with the quality of this chocolate cake he was sharing with a very appreciative President Xi from China at the time. ..."
"... There have been more Syria attacks since, including one that shot down a Syrian warplane over Syria, and the one that shot down an Iranian-made drone. Trump was likely not informed in advance. Not that it would have made any difference, maybe. ..."
"... Of course the main issue remains U.S. imperialism, rooted in capitalism. The global dynamics of that can be rationally analyzed, and the president's role within the system assessed. Obama was fairly predicable. Hillary Clinton was predictable because she always articulated her hawkishness, like John McCain. Their relationships to capital and their intellectual positions (neoconservatism, "realism") were known. Trump is a new phenomenon, as someone combining Lyndon Johnson's crudity, Nixon's vindictiveness, Reagan's vapid populism, and Dubya's ignorance (but he was surrounded by Cheney's hand-picked neocons, virtually announcing plans for region-wide regime change). I'm not sure what he has in common with Bill Clinton other than promiscuity (but Clinton had no John Miller.) He's new in that he's at odds half the time with his own aides and puzzling world leaders ..."
"... British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher after meeting Ronald Reagan told her foreign secretary, Lord Carrington, as she tapped the side of her skull, "Peter, there's nothing there." ..."
The isolation of Qatar appears to be a major step in the Saudi plan, directed by the newly pronounced crown prince, Mohammed bin
Salman (the 31-year-old in charge of the Saudi war in Yemen), to provoke a general confrontation between the Sunni world (led by
itself) and Shiite world (led by Iran). What has has Qatar done to offend the Saudis, the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt and Yemen? Its state-owned
al-Jazeera network has been critical of their governments, especially during the "Arab Spring." But its real sin is its diplomatic
and considerable trade relationship with Iran, with which it shares an oil field.
After the announcement by the five Arab nations on June 5 that they would break ties with Qatar, Donald Trump praised the move.
"During my recent trip to the Middle East," he tweeted on June 6. "I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology.
Leaders pointed to Qatar – look!"
And later that day: "So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would
take a hard line on funding extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to
the horror of terrorism!"
In other words, his visit to Riyadh (with that sword dance and all) immediately paid off in everyone taking a harder line on terrorist
funding from Qatar.
(By the way, Trump reportedly told Israeli leaders during his trip Israel that he was "just back from the Middle East." What
did Netanyahu think about that, but: Oh god this guy's ignorant how do we use this ignorance? )
"The nation of Qatar unfortunately has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level," Trump told reporters at
the White House June 9. "So we had a decision to make, do we take the easy road or do we finally take a hard but necessary action.
We have to stop the funding of terrorism. I decided the time had come to call on Qatar to end its funding. They have to end that
funding. And their terrorist ideology." He appears to allude to conversations during his May 20-21 trip to Riyadh and taking responsibility
for the decision.
But then on June 14 Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Roger Cabiness told CNN: "Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis met today with Qatari
Minister of State for Defense Affairs Dr. Khalid al-Attiyah to discuss concluding steps in finalizing the Foreign Military Sales
purchase of US-manufactured F-15 fighter aircraft by the State of Qatar. The $12 billion sale will give Qatar a state of the art
capability and increase security cooperation and interoperability between the United States and Qatar."
And on June 21 State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert declared that the more time passes, "the more doubt is raised about
the actions taken by Saudi Arabia and the UAE At this point, we are left with one simple question: Were the actions really about
their concerns regarding Qatar's alleged support for terrorism or were they about the long-simmering grievances between and among
the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries?" ???
* * * *
Some people speculate that Trump in his sly wisdom is sending out contrasting messages to obtain his mysterious ends to make
America great again. This gives the man too much credit. His problem is that he blabbers whatever-he thinks for the moment-makes
him look tough. He projects confidence, without knowing what the hell he's talking about. He's a dangerous buffoon.
But he's not responsible for the fact that George W. Bush's war on Iraq in 2003 provoked a wave of massive catastrophes in the
Middle East, and ignited a period of fierce contention among Iran, Sunni Arab countries in particular Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, while
encouraging Kurdish nationalism from Iraq to Syria and Turkey. And that this conflict has acquired somewhat the character of a religious
struggle of the Sunni world versus Iran-backed Shiites (the Alawite-led regime in Syria, Lebanon's Hizbollah, the Houthis in Yemen,
Shiite human rights activists in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia). Surely the most ardent foes of Iran want to depict all these forces as
pawns of the mullahs in Tehran, and (therefore) "terrorists" as such. And the Saudi king is doing a good job convincing the president
of his view that Iran is the source of all evil in the region.
Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington (1983-2005), once told M16 head Sir Richard Dearlove: "The time is
not far off in the Middle East, Richard, when it will literally be 'God help the Shia.' More than a billion Sunni have simply had
enough of them." This is the kind of specifically religious sectarianism Trump is embracing, no doubt having no idea what the difference
is between Sunnis and Shiites. He just knows that "Radical Ideology" he oddly refers to is funded by Qatar at a very high level and
Qatar also buys billions in arms from the U.S.
Or maybe he didn't know about the arms deal. Maybe he left that to his fine generals, the detail guys.
George W. Bush by his invasion of Iraq (to better his dad) produced a mess that his successor in some respects exacerbated.
While Obama withdrew from Iraq in accordance with Bush's agreement, and limited the "mission" in Afghanistan, he (or Hillary) led
in the destruction of Libya, and began the grotesque involvement in the Syrian conflict. Trump does not understand the causes and
effects. He's just proud that his generals dropped a GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb an ISIL camp in Afghanistan.
(Think of that. The U.S. drops the biggest non-nuclear bomb ever used in the history of the world, on militants who've just recently
established a presence in the country who belong to a movement that started with al-Zarqawi in Afghanistan, relocated to Iraq, spread
to Syria and elsewhere, and is now again in Afghanistan. Maybe 3000 jihadis. The war against the Taliban is not going well; they
gain territory year to year. The Afghan army after 16 years of training remains riddled with high desertion rates, unable to make
headway against the resurgent Taliban. U.S. trains and their charges view one another with mutual contempt. Green on blue explosions
occur so often all U.S. troops are on their guard against their allies. In this hopeless situation-as if to merely express the outrage
of frustration-that bomb was dropped on a remote area with undetermined results, condemned strongly by former president Hamid Karzai:
"I vehemently and in strongest words condemn the dropping of the latest weapon " But Trump is proud of it.)
Or Trump glories (echoed by Brian Williams) in that April 7 missile strike on the Syrian airfield, when supposedly 56 Tomahawk
missiles destroyed a material storage depot, a training facility, a canteen, six MiG-23 aircraft in repair hangars and a radar station.
"Congratulations," he tweeted, "to our great military men and women for representing the United States, and the world, so well in
the Syria attack." Interviewed on TV he intimately associated the order to attack with the quality of this chocolate cake he was
sharing with a very appreciative President Xi from China at the time.
There have been more Syria attacks since, including one that shot down a Syrian warplane over Syria, and the one that shot
down an Iranian-made drone. Trump was likely not informed in advance. Not that it would have made any difference, maybe.
But once upon a time, Trump talked about cooperation with Russia against ISIL, and seemed to strongly oppose regime change as
policy. He is, in the sense of destructive power, the most powerful person on earth. That he is unreadable and unpredictable, predicting
"we'll solve" this or that massively complex problem (North Korea), manifestly ignorant and not interested in history, inheriting
the Bush/Cheney neocon-spawned mess and now taking advice from King Salman on matters like Qatar is frightening.
* * * *
Of course the main issue remains U.S. imperialism, rooted in capitalism. The global dynamics of that can be rationally analyzed,
and the president's role within the system assessed. Obama was fairly predicable. Hillary Clinton was predictable because she always
articulated her hawkishness, like John McCain. Their relationships to capital and their intellectual positions (neoconservatism,
"realism") were known. Trump is a new phenomenon, as someone combining Lyndon Johnson's crudity, Nixon's vindictiveness, Reagan's
vapid populism, and Dubya's ignorance (but he was surrounded by Cheney's hand-picked neocons, virtually announcing plans for region-wide
regime change). I'm not sure what he has in common with Bill Clinton other than promiscuity (but Clinton had no John Miller.) He's
new in that he's at odds half the time with his own aides and puzzling world leaders .
I can just imagine Xi and Putin exchanging their analyses of his mind, perhaps chuckling occasionally as we do in this country
when we analyze his mind. It's necessary, after all.
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher after meeting Ronald Reagan told her foreign secretary, Lord Carrington, as she tapped
the side of her skull, "Peter, there's nothing there." (She has also been quoted as saying, "Poor dear, there's nothing between
his ears.") Lady Thatcher of course gave a well-received eulogy at Reagan's funeral pretending to believe otherwise. The point being
that world leaders can like other world leaders, as the Saudi king likes Trump, even if they have nothing between their ears, especially
if they think they can exploit the mental vacuum to get them to do something stupid.
Such as, join with people who "have had enough of the Shia" and are showing (in that vicious war in Yemen especially) how they
want to get rid of them. Join the debate
on Facebook More articles by: Gary Leupp
"Tillerson called on China to make greater efforts to halt "illicit" revenue streams to North
Korea that allegedly help fund Pyongyang's military programs. Just last week, he told a congressional
committee the Trump administration was "at a stage" where "we are going to have to start taking
secondary sanctions"-that is, penalise countries and corporations that engage in economic activities
with North Korea.
Unilateral "secondary sanctions" imposed by the US would, above all, fall on Chinese companies.
China is, by far, North Korea's largest trading partner. US officials and the media have repeatedly
accused Beijing of failing to do enough to choke off trade and finance with the Pyongyang regime.
Any penalties against Chinese individuals or entities would quickly sour relations between the
US and China."
I will be extremely surprised if Washington takes any steps which result in sanctions against
China. For one thing, a staggering number of American brands and corporations
have
factories and manufacturing assets in China , and pissing off the Chinese risks hurting the
bottom line. For another, China is one of the few countries with
money to lend which can match the American appetite for borrowing.
It seems patently obvious to me that countries which find themselves the target of American
sanctions should immediately react by kicking out American businesses in their country and embargoing
American goods for import. The United States does not make very much which is so unique and rare
that you could not find it anywhere else. American businesses and corporations will react with
fury to trade actions taken against them because of posturing by the government. Do I have to
think of everything?
"... Read Starikov... All these recent weapons deals, and many before is nothing more than what's called Reparations and Contributions. ..."
"... It's an old deal http://defense-update.com/20141222_qatari_patriots.html ..."
"... You know I am not a fan of the military industrial complex but you have to be in awe of these people. Trump sells 350 billion to SA which includes the best automatic self destruct fighter every engineered by the U.S. and then sells F15s to their obvious rivals in Quatar lol. ..."
Pentagon Agrees To Sell $12 Billion In F-15s To Qatar Tyler Durden Jun 14, 2017
4:35 PM 0 SHARES Remember when Trump called on
Qatar to stop funding terrorism, claiming credit for and endorsing the decision of Gulf nations to
isolate their small neighbor (where the most important US airbase in the middle east is located),even
as US Cabinet officials said their blockade is hurting the campaign against ISIS. You should: it
took place just 5 days ago.
"We had a decision to make," Trump said, describing conversations with Saudi Arabia and other
Gulf countries. "Do we take the easy road or do we finally take a hard but necessary action? We have
to stop the funding of terrorism." Also last week, Trump triumphantly announced on twitter that "during
my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology.
Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!"
Well, Qatar funding terrorism apparently is not a problem when it comes to Qatar funding the US
military industrial complex , because just two weeks after Trump signed a record, $110 billion weapons
deal with Saudi Arabia, moments ago
Bloomberg reported that Qatar will also buy up to 36 F-15 jets from the Pentagon for $12 billion
.... even as a political crisis in the Gulf leaves the Middle East nation isolated by its neighbors
and criticized by President Donald Trump for supporting terrorism, according to three people with
knowledge of the accord.
According to the Pentagon, the sale will give Qatar a "state of the art" capability, not to mention
the illusion that it can defend itself in a war with Saudi Arabia.
If nothing else, Uncle Sam sure is an equal-opportunity arms dealer, and best of all, with the
new fighter planes, Qatar will be able to at least put on a token fight when Saudi Arabia invades
in hopes of sending the price of oil surging now that every other "strategy" has failed.
To be sure, the sale comes at an opportune time: just days after Qatar put its military on the
highest state of alert,
and scrambled its tanks . All 16 of them. Maybe the world's wealthiest nation realized it's time
beef up its defensive capabilities?
Qatar's defense minister will meet with Pentagon chief Jim Mattis on Wednesday to seal the agreement,
Bloomberg reported citing people who spoke on condition of anonymity because the sale hasn't been
announced. Last year, congress approved the sale of up to 72 F-15s in an agreement valued at as much
as $21 billion but that deal took place before the recent political crisis in the region.
Oh c'mon y'all. This is nothing new. These are the same synchophants that (somehow, oops!)
created ISIS and then go in and bomb them. WTF did you expect? That they'd actually do what they
say?
A big shout out to Boeing Military. Hookers and blow tonight in the exec suite. BTW these planes
aren't sitting in inventory ready to be delivered. So any conflict in the next few years won't
have to worry about these planes.
That is unless the US or some other buyer agrees to step aside and allow Qatar to take their
place at the end of the assembly line.
That should about wrap it up on who is in charge of the Deep state. Backing both sides of a
potential conflict and making sure everyone has enough arms to blow each to smitherines. Sounds
like the old Red Shield tricks are still the best ones. Long live central bankers, after they
have been thrown into a burning pit of sulfer.
Absolutely. But, oh, these damned Iranians. They simply resisted the USA's boy Saddam and fought
back.
That failure to comply with OUR orders sealed his faith.
Weapons of mass destruction. Well, we delivered them to him. chemical weapons to kill all the
Iranians. So we KNEW they must have been there. We just didn't expect that he really used them
all up against Iran and later on (the remaining few) against the curds. What a bastard. After
all that WE did for Saddam, he didn't deliver. Fuck him.
Speaking of non-delivery, why has our newest boy, Poroshenko, not yet taken Moscow? So, fuck
him, too! And fuck the EU.
And speaking of that, where is Monica, when one needs her? And let's have some Pizza...
That could happen and did on many F-18 sales where we in the US in effect packed the parts
into glorified Heath kits and sent them to the buying countries who did their own labor. Also
sent them the testing equipment and every other thing they needed so all we got were a few spare
piece parts at a slightly lower price. The labor went to the purchasing country.
That right there is some wizard-level salesmanship. And I can assure you that these weapons
systems have "ALL" of the capabilities of the ones in our US arsenal, hahaha. And furthermore,
they cannot be messed with by remote control by the boys at the Pentagon, just in case things
get a little messy or embarassing. Nosiree. What you see is what you get. Yes, Lord.
Looks like Trump is just selling to whoever want to buy. What the hell, why not, he's shown
himself to be a sell out. Might as well be the best damn arms dealer you can buy.
You know I am not a fan of the military industrial complex but you have to be in awe of
these people. Trump sells 350 billion to SA which includes the best automatic self destruct fighter
every engineered by the U.S. and then sells F15s to their obvious rivals in Quatar lol.
I personally think the F15s will utterly destroy the f35s because all they have to do to down
an f35 is keep it flying, it will eventual blow up on its own.
Well like I said before, let the body count be super high... and let all the fucking crazy
suicide bombers head back home to kill themselves.
As Bernie, the man behind the man that shot up a bunch of congressmen said... Its going to
be HUUUUUGE... the war thats coming that is... I wonder how many oil tankers will be sunk?
Almost all the world's economic and political problems revolve around the hegemony of a global
corporate cartel, which is headquartered in the US because this is where their dominant military
force resides. The US Constitution is therefore the "kingpin" of an all-inclusive global financial
empire. These fictitious entities now own the USA and command its military infrastructure by virtue
of the Federal Reserve Corporation, regulatory capture, MSM propaganda, and congressional lobbying.
The Founders had to fight a bloody Revolutionary War to win our right to incorporate as a nation
– the USA. But then, for whatever reason, our Founders granted the greediest businessmen among
them unrestricted corporate charters with enough potential capital & power to compete with the
individual states, smaller sovereign nations, and eventually to buy out the USA itself. The only
way The People can regain our sovereignty as a constitutional republic now is to severely curtail
the privileges of any corporation doing business here. To remain sovereign we have to stop granting
corporate charters to just any "suit" that comes along without fulfilling a defined social value
in return. The "Divine Right Of Kings" should not apply to fictitious entities just because they
are "Too Big To Fail". We can't afford to privatize our Treasury to transnational banks anymore.
Government must be held responsible only to the electorate, not fictitious entities; and banks
must be held responsible to the government if we are ever to restore sanity, much less prosperity,
to the world.
It was a loophole in our Constitution that allowed corporate charters to be so easily obtained
that a swamp of corruption inevitably flooded our entire economic system. It is a swamp that can't
be drained at this point because the Constitution doesn't provide a drain. This 28 th
amendment is intended to install that drain so Congress can pull the plug ASAP. As a matter
of political practicality we must rely on the Article 5 option to do this, for which the electorate
will need overwhelming consensus beforehand. Seriously; an Article 5 Constitutional Convention
is rapidly becoming our only sensible option.
This is what I think it will take to save the world; and nobody gets hurt: 28 th
Amendment
28 th Amendment:
Corporations are not persons in any sense of the word and shall be granted only those rights
and privileges that Congress deems necessary for the well-being of the People. Congress shall
provide legislation defining the terms and conditions of corporate charters according to their
purpose; which shall include, but are not limited to:
1, prohibitions against any corporation; a, owning another corporation; b, becoming economically
indispensable or monopolistic; or c, otherwise distorting the general economy;
2, prohibitions against any form of interference in the affairs of; a, government, b, education,
c, news media; or d, healthcare, and
3, provisions for; a, the auditing of standardized, current, and transparent account books;
b, the establishment of state and municipal banking; and c, civil and criminal penalties to be
suffered by corporate executives for violation of the terms of a corporate charter.
Trump's Blunders Fuel Mideast Conflicts
President Trump's simplistic siding with Saudi Arabia and
Israel – and his callous reaction to a terror attack on
Iran – are fueling new tensions in the Middle East,
including the Qatar crisis.
By Alastair Crooke
Have "MbS" and "MbZ" overreached themselves? It is
still early in the Saudi-led blockade of Qatar, but yes,
it seems so. And in so doing, the hubris of Mohammad bin
Salman (MbS), the Saudi defense minister and the powerful
son of Saudi King Salman, and Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ),
the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and supreme commander of the
UAE Armed Forces, will change the region's geopolitical
architecture.
President's Trump's (flawed) base strategic premises
(and narratives) that Iran is the ultimate source of all
instability in the region, and that the smacking down of
Qatar, a major patron of Palestinian Hamas, per se, was a
good thing, and should be applauded, bear direct
responsibility for the direction in which regional
geopolitics will now flow.
President Trump returned from his first overseas trip
convinced that he had unified the United States' historic
Arab allies, and dealt a strong blow against terrorism. He
did neither. He has been badly informed.
The fissure between Qatar and Saudi Arabia is an old,
storied affair, which harks back to longstanding al-Saud
angst at the original British decision to empower the al-Thani
family in their Qatar foothold in an otherwise all-Saudi
fiefdom. But if we lay aside, for a moment, the airing of
the long list of Saudi and UAE contemporary complaints
against Qatar, which for most part, simply serve as
justification for recent action, we should return to the
two principles that fundamentally shape the al-Saud
mindset and strategy – and which lie at the heart of this
current spat with Qatar.
The Reactionary Saudis ....
[ What appears to be a reasonable explanation of the
dispute between Saudi Arabia and Qatar that President
Trump has encouraged and applauded. ]
US policy toward Iran has no strategic perspective outside
what is dictated by the House of Saud. That is it has no
moral foundation.
Iran is a source of instability only
in areas where Shiite majorities have no self
determination and are suppressed by Wahhabi interests.
Iran is not the source of instability in Yemen, where
the Saudi intrigued with the old colonizers since the 50's
to blunt Pan Arabism only recently abandoned the
'Imamate'.
Arabian peninsula instability has to do with self
determination and/or a different preference in Imam. The
kind of instability Jefferson would have supported.
The Houston Riyadh axis has no moral claim to
protection by the US republic.
While Qatar is a short flight from Iran, with near sea
lanes as well.
"... Hillary is a wild-eyed interventionist. She gave us the Libyan fiasco, and had Obama been fool enough to listen to her again, we would now be at war on the ground in Syria. ..."
"... The establishment refuses to see the limits of American power, and it also refuses to compel our military to focus on war against non-state opponents, or Fourth Generation war. The Pentagon pretends its future is war against other states. ..."
"... The political and foreign-policy establishments pretend the Pentagon knows how to win. They waltz together happily, unaware theirs is a Totentanz." ..."
"In the case of Hillary Clinton, not only does that mean more wasted money, it means more
wars, wars we will lose.
Hillary is a wild-eyed interventionist. She gave us the Libyan fiasco, and had Obama been
fool enough to listen to her again, we would now be at war on the ground in Syria.
The establishment refuses to see the limits of American power, and it also refuses to compel
our military to focus on war against non-state opponents, or Fourth Generation war. The Pentagon
pretends its future is war against other states.
The political and foreign-policy establishments pretend the Pentagon knows how to win. They
waltz together happily, unaware theirs is a Totentanz."
"... Still peddling the 4GW snake oil . . . Would there even be an ISIS without the support of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Turkey, Israel . . . or without the Bush administration having destroyed the Iraqi state? ..."
"... 4GW is a mantra used rather ineffectively to obscure the obvious reality of our own strategic dysfunctions . . . replacing the establishment leadership only takes care of part of the problem, and perhaps not even the worst part, which imo is conceptual . . . connected with having followed Mr. Lind and Martin van Creveld down the rabbit hole notion of the "Transformation of War" . . . ..."
"... I understand you have to generate content on a regular basis, and a conservative publication should at least try to find the silver linings in a Trump presidency, but you have provided me with very little foundation for why all of these (ostensibly good) things would come to pass because of President Donald J. Trump. ..."
"... Enjoy the dream while it lasts, Mr. Lind. But be prepared for a rude awakening. Anyone who thinks that Trump will have a positive influence on any aspect of American governance needs to have his head examined, and probably to have it replaced. ..."
"... Most Trump supporters hope for negative accomplishments, catharsis: firings and prosecutions of elite miscreants, ending immigration and deporting illegals, getting out of the Middle East, beating down the GOP establishment and, with it, great swathes of Leviathan. ..."
"... Both sides aren't seeing their candidate as being great. They just see the other side as an absolute disaster. ..."
Still peddling the 4GW snake oil . . . Would there even be an ISIS without the support of
Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Turkey, Israel . . . or without the Bush administration having
destroyed the Iraqi state?
4GW is a mantra used rather ineffectively to obscure the obvious reality of our own strategic
dysfunctions . . . replacing the establishment leadership only takes care of part of the problem,
and perhaps not even the worst part, which imo is conceptual . . . connected with having followed
Mr. Lind and Martin van Creveld down the rabbit hole notion of the "Transformation of War" . .
.
It's tempting to project your preferences onto Trump because there's so much blank space there
in terms of policy, but Trump has in no way committed to firing half of our general officers,
or a "housecleaning" that takes away enough money from the Pentagon to fund a major infrastructure
program in its own right, or cancelling any weapons system currently under development.
This is all wishful thinking, even without considering what Congress would do. I understand
you have to generate content on a regular basis, and a conservative publication should at least
try to find the silver linings in a Trump presidency, but you have provided me with very little
foundation for why all of these (ostensibly good) things would come to pass because of President
Donald J. Trump.
I wish it were as simple as waltzing about the Pentagon saying "You're Fired!" There's good reasoning
in the essay with which I agree; Trump seems to have the better instincts to deal with Pentagon
Inc, particularly when Option 2 is Hillary.
But. How does one reform an inherently unreformable institution? How to overcome a system
rigged with flag officers and SES bureaucrats that were groomed for their true-belief in the military-industrial
complex? Maybe I'm just the eternal pessimist, but knowing the Pentagon culture firsthand, I see
zero chance at a "businessman-led housecleaning of the U.S. military.
"4GW does not justify big-ticket programs such as the F-35 fighter/bomber and its trillion-dollar
price tag."
I would go further and say nothing justifies the F-35. Because of its expense, it is not mass
producible, and therefore not suitable for a conventional war either. The cost/aircraft would
come down with mass production, but it would still be too expensive and slow to mass produce in
an all-out conventional war. It would be kind of like an aerial tiger tank.
Enjoy the dream while it lasts, Mr. Lind. But be prepared for a rude awakening. Anyone who
thinks that Trump will have a positive influence on any aspect of American governance needs to
have his head examined, and probably to have it replaced.
William S. Lind contrasts Trump and Clinton with respect to Pentagon reform:
Trump: "Because Trump is anti-establishment, military reform would at least be a possibility
.Trump is a businessman. Businessmen do not like wasting money. They want efficiency. They cut
bloated staffs, fire incompetent executives, and get rid of unnecessary contractors."
Clinton: On the other hand, "So long as the establishment is in power, it [reform ] is not
[possible]. In defense as in everything else, establishment leadership means more of the same.
In the case of Hillary Clinton that mean[s] more wasted money."
Lind also contrasts Trump and Clinton with respect to American interventionism:
Trump: "He has repeatedly questioned American interventionism. He roundly condemned the idiotic
and disastrous Iraq War, which suggests he would rather not repeat the experience. Of equal importance,
he has called for repairing our relationship with Russia."
Clinton: A Hillary Clinton presidency "means more wars, wars we will lose. Hillary is a wild-eyed
interventionist. She gave us the Libyan fiasco, and had Obama been fool enough to listen to her
again, we would now be at war on the ground in Syria."
However – on reading further in the Lind article – it becomes apparent that Lind's argument
is not so much with endless American military interventionism as it is with the targets of endless
American interventionism:
"The Pentagon pretends its future is war against other states The establishment refuses to
compel our military to focus on war against non-state opponents, or Fourth Generation war Might
a Trump administration see the need for an alliance of all states against non-state forces?"
In other words, Lind proposes to merely redirect the current endless American military interventions
away from existing nation states and towards non-state forces. Lind doesn't simply want to work
with other states on a case-by-case basis when it is in the US national interest to do so - rather
he wants a new "grand strategy" of an open-ended world-wide alliance with other states against
non-state forces. Lind doesn't want to put a stop to endless American military interventionism,
but instead to concentrate on a new kind of endless American interventionism.
An additional point of concern in the Lind article: In asking "Might a Trump administration
see the need for an alliance of all states against non-state forces?" Lind writes: "Here we have
a clue: Trump has chosen as a defense advisor-the rumor mill says shadow secretary of defense-retired
Army general Michael Flynn. It was an excellent choice."
Two reference articles show why Michael Flynn would not be an "excellent choice"at all: First,
in Flynn's own words on July 9th op-ed in The New York Post:
Wishful thinking, Mr. Lind even if Trump could with the election and try to make the changes you
envision. Truth be told, America is now govern by the "Deep State" of which the MIC is major part
of. Also, the MIC is not the least interested in ending any of these interventions wars as that
would negatively impact their "gravy train".
I agree that we may be projecting our wishful thinking on Trump, but what is the alternative?
Faced with a choice between a known bad apple and an apple that gives some vague hope, it is rational
to bet on the second. Especially given that it is hard to imagine an apple more rotten than HRC,
so our downside risk is limited too.
PS I was always willing to give pres. Obama a bit of a free pass because of his refusal to
implicate us any deeper in the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine. I figured the atrocity of Yemen
and blunders elsewhere (Iraq, Afghanistan, relationship with SA and Turkey, the lack of resolve
to draw an even clearer line in the sand on Syria, Libya, and Ukraine) were the norm given the
neocon-infested foreign policy apparatus, and at least he was putting up SOME resistance. Sadly,
that resounding endorsement of HRC blew it all up, he has fallen in line and we are in for some
more GW-Cheney-style insanity should she prevail. Whatever respect I had for him is now gone.
I was hoping he'd try to setup things so that the resistance to the neocon insanity and jingoism
would grow further, not fall back, as the choice of HRC clearly indicates.
"Anyone who thinks that Trump will have a positive influence on any aspect of American governance
needs to have his head examined, and probably to have it replaced."
"Positive influence" is all well and good, but we're in slow motion collapse, and it's beside
the point.
Most Trump supporters hope for negative accomplishments, catharsis: firings and prosecutions
of elite miscreants, ending immigration and deporting illegals, getting out of the Middle East,
beating down the GOP establishment and, with it, great swathes of Leviathan.
I have no idea what the Clinton supporters hope for. More abortions? More government jobs?
More immigrants? More gay weddings and transwhatever toilets? More dead Americans and Middle Easterners?
More Wall Street bailouts? More foreign dictators and more taxpayer money to put them on the US
payroll? They probably aren't thinking "more money and power for the Clintons", "more recklessness
and irresponsibility", or "more scandal and embarrassment", even though that's about all they'll
get.
While it's true this is wishful thinking, one just needs to remember the alternative. It is as
certain as anything can be in this life that with Clinton we will rush full speed ahead into more
of the same disasters. Trump is bad, but worse than the status quo? That's hard to imagine. Flynn,
though, seems to be another neocon nut, though I'm open to any contrary evidence.
I wish it were otherwise, but I don't even think that Trump is a serious candidate. He's done
nothing to encourage his supporters, taken little to no advantage of Clinton's obvious shortcomings,
and everything to provide ammunition to Clinton's legions of delusional 'liberal' fascists. This
is not a Donald who wants to win.
"Trump is a businessman. Businessmen do not like wasting money. They want efficiency. They cut
bloated staffs, fire incompetent executives, and get rid of unnecessary contractors."
Nah.
Here's how Trump runs his businesses, he incurs enormous debts by grossly overpaying for whatever
new toy he wants. Then he incurs more debt to pay himself and his family large salaries or to
pay off his personal debts. He also wastes money on the gaudy, unnecessary and tasteless "improvements"
to his purchases(small e.g., gold plated fixtures in the Trump Shuttle bathrooms). Then, he doesn't
pay contractors for the work they performed. And, when it all goes belly-up he leaves his foolish
investors or the banks holding the bag (i.e., the enormous debt).
More simply, going by his business record Trump actually loves debt, incompetence, overspending
and obscene waste.
Trump dug his grave when he delved into xenophobia and ethnic chauvinism.His ranting about Mexicans
and Muslims and now his new Nixonian slogan of being a tough law and order president has given
enough ammunition to the Democrats to trounce him coming next election.
I think Lind is proof of the triumph of hope over reality here; either that or that there is a
sucker born every minute. I think some important facts about Flynn are missed here. Here is a
statement he made to Hugh Hewitt:
"Last, I'm going to just touch on Russia and Iran briefly. Both of these countries, I deal
with in my book, because these are allies of radical Islamism, and most people don't know how
they are interacting with each other. So I just wanted to touch on that."
Today, July 12th, his book with Michael Ledeen as co-author, Field of Fight, was released.
In Flynn's own words:
"Yet, the alliance exists, and we've already dithered for many years.
The war is on. We face a working coalition that extends from North Korea and China to Russia,
Iran, Syria, Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. We are under attack, not only from nation
states, but also from al Qaeda, Hezbollah, ISIS, and countless other terrorist groups. Suffice
to say, the same sort of cooperation binds together jihadis, Communists, and garden-variety
tyrants.
Flynn isn't an antidote to Hilary Clinton; they're equals in madness.
I wouldn't even now bet on Trump being the Republican nominee - the Republican establishment may
well prefer to be trounced rather than elect Trump. Look for them to give Trump the kind of "support"
a rope gives a hanged man, or to change the rules so they can select another nominee, or a combination
of both. Paul Ryan has been making noises about allowing delegates to vote their conscience on
the 1st ballot, allowing nervous Trump delegates to jump ship. All it would take is a meeting
of GOP Rules Committee, which happens just before the convention. And this is a senator who has
"endorsed" Trump, even if he has also called him a "racist."
from sglover:
"Maintaining a wobbly status quo. You'll see no grand visions of anything from HRC"
Sadly I think that IS what's expected. Similar to how Trump voters don't see him so much as
doing great things as much as "80% chance of failure is better than 100%", Hillary voters see
it as more "keeping the plane slightly tilted down being better than blowing the plane up with
dynamite."
Both sides aren't seeing their candidate as being great. They just see the other side as
an absolute disaster.
I'll be honest, given what the GOP was giving up as alternatives and assuming that Sanders
didn't have a chance in hades, Trump/Hillary was, to me, the best outcome out of the primaries.
I don't support Trump but I'd take him over Rubio or Bush.
Though note that at this point 8 years ago, I was saying "oh, Obama vs McCain. Either way,
I'm happy." Then the general election campaign kicked in and I stopped being happy over the latter
:/
Sort of worried I'll see the same here, and if the rumors about Trump's shift are true, then
I think that's exactly what I'll be seeing.
Dec 18, 2015 Donald Trump Is The Establishment Candidate
While his rise in the polls is attributed to his challenging the establishment and the political
status quo, let's look at the many ways Donald Trump, when it comes to his political positions,
represents that very same status quo. From the Fed, to war, to civil liberties, the "anti-establishment"?
Trump takes no positions not already endorsed by the establishment.
"... This would have been a perfect opportunity for the United States to step into the breach and offer a helping hand towards conflict resolution, which is exactly what Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered on Monday during a press conference. Regrettably, President Donald Trump's tweets congratulating the Gulf Arabs for isolating their Qatari neighbor-while taking credit for it-has likely closed the door on any leading mediation role for Washington. ..."
"... Trump failed to recognize that Washington had an opening to show its Arab partners that the United States-under a Trump administration-values diplomacy just as much military force. ..."
The measures that the Saudis and company are taking today are much more significant. In addition
to calling their diplomats home, the anti-Qatar reprisals include an order for Saudis, Bahraini and
Emirati citizens to leave Qatar in fourteen days, and for Qatari citizens to go back to their own
country over the same time period. Air, sea and land routes into the Qatari peninsula are blocked,
which means that the food imports that Doha relies on to feed its population will need to rely on
other seaports to unload their product. Qatar Airways, one of the region's major carriers,
is banned from using Gulf Arab airspace, causing multiple delays and forcing the airline to fly
more circuitous paths.
This would have been a perfect opportunity for the United States to step into the breach and offer
a helping hand towards conflict resolution, which is exactly what Secretary of State Rex Tillerson
offered on Monday during a press conference. Regrettably, President Donald Trump's
tweets
congratulating the Gulf Arabs for isolating their Qatari neighbor-while taking credit for it-has
likely closed the door on any leading mediation role for Washington. It's tough to act as a mediating
party between two sides when the mediator is seen as taking sides. With a single tweet, Trump managed
to yet again undercut his own Secretary of State.
We could do the easy thing and bash Trump incessantly over yet one more unwise Twitter outburst.
And it would be justified: Trump failed to recognize that Washington had an opening to show its Arab
partners that the United States-under a Trump administration-values diplomacy just as much military
force. It would also reassure European governments that have been skittish over the last four months.
(Agree, when it comes to foreign policy Trump is an amateur and therefore can easily misled by people
like Netanjahu & the Saudi government)
Notable quotes:
"... Yes, the iconic salesman (Trump), was himself sold a proverbial "bridge" (by his son-in-law, fueled by the conceit that having known Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for many years, Kushner was "ideal" for bringing peace to Israel). Trump in Riyadh thus paid full homage to the Sunni narrative that they – the Sunnis – are the innocent victims, and the Shi'a, the dark, nefarious, revolutionary, fifth-columnists, who must be driven back into their "pen." ..."
"... Trump has thus declared himself an explicit partisan in the geo-strategic power plays between the region's northern-tier states and the Gulf states. Instead of remaining distant and "above" these Middle East conflicts, he has allowed himself to be persuaded to do the opposite: to dive in, on the Sunni side (perhaps partly to counterpoint with President Obama's engagement of Iran). ..."
"... As then-Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban noted at the time: "[The Americans'] feeling is yes to Jerusalem, but no to the territories. They are stressing that it would be very bad if the world gets the impression that we really intend to hold onto the entire territory." ..."
"... But Israel has not conceded a Palestinian State - despite many opportunities over the last 25 years - and does not seem any more disposed to "give" a Palestinian state now. Seldom is it asked why, if the logic is indeed so compelling, have two states not emerged? ..."
"... Perhaps it is because both the original "Israel surely wants a Palestinian state" premise, and the linked premise that building security trust with Israel is the necessary sine qua non ..."
"... The evidence of Israeli actions on the ground, too, plainly does not support the contention that Israel has been preparing the transition to a two-state solution of fixed borders, and a sovereign Palestinian state. On the contrary, the evidence points in the opposite direction: that Israel has been intent on frustrating the two-state solution within fixed borders ..."
"... This – the Sunni-Israeli regional Alliance; the renewed peace process – is a trap into which Trump has been persuaded to enter. It is a trap, because once entered into, the peace process becomes formaldehyde to all other political processes.How often have we been told "you can't do this; you can't do that" because it might endanger the (vacuous) "peace process." ..."
"... A peace process gives Israel huge anesthetic leverage in the region – as always it has so done.It is a trap – because it ties Trump into trying to assuage the Irano-phobia of Saudi Arabia, which will prove to be just as insatiable as are Israel's "security needs." ..."
"... These liabilities will undercut Trump's possibilities for defeating ISIS and for détente with Russia. Russia has been trying to bring the Shi'a and the Turks tothe negotiating table on Syria.Trump's role was to be to help bring the Sunni side to the table – in order to forge a wider regional settlement. That will be less likely now, as Saudi Arabia levers Trump's visit towards weakening Iran. ..."
"... The Americans did warn the Israeli cabinet that it would become progressively harder and harder for America to defend Israel's hold over the disempowered, disenfranchised and dispossessed (and enlarging), Palestinian people – if Israel insisted on its "winner takes all" end of war policy. ..."
"... as White House adviser Steve Bannon noted in his film Generation Zero ..."
President Trump has fallen into a Saudi-Israeli trap that won't solve the Mideast regional conflicts
and won't lead to a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, explains ex-British
diplomat Alastair Crooke.
Jared Kushner did his father-in-law few favors when he enticed President Trump into the endless
Israeli-Palestinian "peace process." To this end, as one Israeli journalist
put it , Trump's
advisers set up the Saudis to "embrace [him], and do the sword dance around [him], add a huge check
for the arms deals – and [in return is expected to] create an anti-Shiite, anti-Iranian axis [around
them]."
Yes, the iconic salesman (Trump), was himself sold a proverbial "bridge" (by his son-in-law, fueled
by the conceit that having known Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for many years, Kushner
was "ideal" for bringing peace to Israel). Trump in Riyadh thus paid full homage to the Sunni narrative
that they – the Sunnis – are the innocent victims, and the Shi'a, the dark, nefarious, revolutionary,
fifth-columnists, who must be driven back into their "pen."
Trump has thus declared himself an explicit partisan in the geo-strategic power plays between
the region's northern-tier states and the Gulf states. Instead of remaining distant and "above" these
Middle East conflicts, he has allowed himself to be persuaded to do the opposite: to dive in, on
the Sunni side (perhaps partly to counterpoint with President Obama's engagement of Iran).
Why? Well, the dollars (
should they
materialize), will be
useful . But essentially, because Kushner persuaded his-father-in-law that flattering the Saudis
and demonizing the Iranians, represented the entry price into the peacemaking process between Israel
and the Palestinians, which if achieved, would constitute the Trump foreign policy "legacy" for history.
A Long-term Failure
According to the well-regarded Israeli journalist, Ben Caspit, in Maariv , "Someone in
Washington studied the map and did their homework. The assessment is that this was a joint effort
by Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt [Trump's Special Representative for International Negotiations].
They heard from Obama's people, and also from a few Israelis who spent all their time, energy, and
health on the peace process in the last eight years, who explained to them how the smoking and explosive
powder keg of the Middle East conflict needed to be approached."
Yes, they probably spoke precisely with those "peace process" experts who have been in denial
– for the last 25 years – to its manifest failure. And therefore, have been unwilling to acknowledge
the four basic flaws to the Oslo principles. Instead, we repeat the same flawed approach, over and
over, hoping always for a different outcome.
Europe and America have shared a settled conviction
over the last decades : It is that Israel, out of its own necessity, must seek to conserve a
Jewish majority within Israel. And that with time, and a growing Palestinian population, Israel will
at some point have to acquiesce to a Palestinian "state," in order to maintain that Jewish majority:
that is, only by giving Palestinians their own state or somehow dispensing with a part of the Palestinian
people that it controls, can Israel's Jewish majority be preserved. This is the first principle.
This notion seems intuitively so self-evident, that most Americans and Europeans decline to question
it.But the recent release of
transcripts
from the Israeli cabinet discussions in the wake of the Israeli victory in the 1967 Six Day War
show clearly that even then, Israel leaders understood this basic dilemma: they heard the contemporary
U.S. warnings about having to absorb one million captive Palestinians, but remained defiant, insisting
to keep all the land that had occupied in the war.
As then-Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban
noted at
the time: "[The Americans'] feeling is yes to Jerusalem, but no to the territories. They are stressing
that it would be very bad if the world gets the impression that we really intend to hold onto the
entire territory."
Assuaging the Israelis
This first proposition bequeathed to us the second principle: that of the "security-first doctrine":
that Europe and America, in insisting (to the Palestinians) that they must meet and assuage Israel's
own self-assertion of its security needs, would enable Israel to transition, with confidence, to
a two-state solution.
This security-first narrative is persuasive – so persuasive that European and American policy
has been skewed almost wholly towards the goal of security trust-building with Israel. This latter
goal has been pursued à outrance - beyond even, the point at which any sovereignty residual
that might remain after Israel's assertion of its security requirements, would amount to little more
than a continued occupation masquerading as a Palestinian "state."
Yet, to the frustration of Western leaders, and despite whatever additional security was provided
by the Palestinian security forces, it was never enough. Western leaders have found no solution,
but to press on, insisting on yet more security co-operation and trust-building with Israel.Indeed,
President Trump seems to have pursued this same line: apparently
shouting and berating Palestinian leader Abu Mazen for inciting against Israel (and for giving
financial support to families whose members, now prisoners, had resisted the Occupation).
But Israel has not conceded a Palestinian State - despite many opportunities over the last 25
years - and does not seem any more disposed to "give" a Palestinian state now. Seldom is it asked
why, if the logic is indeed so compelling, have two states not emerged?
Perhaps it is because both the original "Israel surely wants a Palestinian state" premise, and
the linked premise that building security trust with Israel is the necessary sine qua non
to Israel's transition into the two-state solution, quite simply, are flawed. Perhaps Israel
has always hankered after some alternative way to retain the land, and somehow to contain its population
(the recently released records of the post-war cabinet certainly suggest so).
The Two-State Mirage
The evidence of Israeli actions on the ground, too, plainly does not support the contention
that Israel has been preparing the transition to a two-state solution of fixed borders, and a sovereign
Palestinian state. On the contrary, the
evidence points in the opposite direction: that Israel has been intent on frustrating the two-state
solution within fixed borders .
But there are two further "givens" to the "process" with Israel that also deserve more critical
scrutiny: One, (most favored by the Europeans), is that America can "impose" a solution on Israel.On
the basis of my experience as a staff member of Sen. George Mitchell's peacemaking process, this
also is a flawed premise.To appropriate the phrase used in a different context, Israel always "has
six ways from Sunday" to circumvent American pressures (which in any case are limited by domestic
political considerations).
Finally, does the Arab leadership – as opposed to the street – really want a Palestinian state?
I am not so sure. I think they are quite comfortable with things just as they are. The presumption
of a strong desire to establish a Palestinian State may be flawed too.
So what is Trump's (or Kushner's) "new" plan? Daniel Serioti of Israel Hayom reports
on May 24: "A senior official in Ramallah told Israel Hayom that during President Trump's one-on-one
meeting with Palestinian Authority Chairman Abu Mazen that [Trump] intends to lead a peace process
based primarily on the Saudi-Arab peace initiative
"President Trump told the PA chairman that the peace plan that he was consolidating would be based
on promoting a comprehensive regional plan first, as part of the Arab peace initiative.The Palestinian
official said that President Trump emphatically told Abu Mazen that this did not mean renouncing
the two-state vision as the basis for a future agreement between Israel and the PA, under which a
Palestinian state would be established alongside Israel, although the American president would like
to consider additional possibilities 'outside the box.'
"The main possibility is promoting the Saudi-Arab peace initiative first, and only afterwards
an interim agreement, in the framework of which the parties would discuss ways to reach a permanent
status arrangement that would enable the creation of an independent Palestinian state and both sides
declaring an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"The Palestinian official said that President Trump described the fundamentals of the plan that
he is drafting in a very general way and did not go into the particulars, althoughaccording to him,
the Americans would like to promote the Arab peace initiative so that the beginning will involve
an act of normalizing Israel's relations with the moderate Sunni Arab states.
"Additionally the Americans will take action to promote direct intensive negotiations between
Israel and the Palestinians, which will be outlined in a preset timetable, and under which the parties
will take action to resolve core issues, primarily delineating the borders of the future Palestinian
state, the status of Jerusalem and the holy places, the fate of the settlements outside the large
blocs, the right of return and more."
Not Much 'New'
The "new" twist here is a
"regional (Sunni-Israeli) alliance" that would initially normalize with Israel, but which then
could evolve into a"regional defense alliance," "under American patronage and with full military
and diplomatic American support" and which would be targeted explicitly at Iran and its allies.
But there is nothing truly new here.We have had "inside-out" and "outside-in" initiatives before.
But what is different about the Trump/Kushner version is that the late Saudi King Abdullah's initiative
was predicated on Israel establishing a Palestinian State first and normalization
with Israel occurring secondly.Trump seems to be inverting the order: Arab normalization first
and then an interim agreement with the Palestinians second.
In fact, it all sounds rather like a re-make of the "security-first doctrine": i.e. that Arab
States, by assuaging Israel's own self-assertion of its security anxieties, would serve, through
normalization, to enable Israel to transition with greater confidence to an "interim" Palestinian
solution – and maybe even to a permanent solution.
We have here the eternal problem that the Arab leaders cannot afford to normalize without an Israeli
concession to the Palestinians, and the Palestinians in turn will not make a gesture, until and unless,
Israel halts settlement building, which the latter will not do.
Another reason to think that this plan will come to nothing (after being spun out as long as possible
by Prime Minister Netanyahu) is that, while it is true that the Palestinians presently are weak and
divided – paradoxically Netanyahu
is even weaker.
Any concessions to Abu Mazen, however banal, could bring down his government.Netanyahu's right-wing
sees no reason to make any – even symbolic – concessions to the Palestinians.Why should they?They
are on the cusp of having it all.
The Trap Closes
This – the Sunni-Israeli regional Alliance; the renewed peace process – is a trap into which
Trump has been persuaded to enter. It is a trap, because once entered into, the peace process becomes
formaldehyde to all other political processes.How often have we been told "you can't do this; you
can't do that" because it might endanger the (vacuous) "peace process."
A peace process gives Israel huge anesthetic leverage in the region – as always it has so
done.It is a trap – because it ties Trump into trying to assuage the Irano-phobia of Saudi Arabia,
which will prove to be just as insatiable as are Israel's "security needs."
These liabilities will undercut Trump's possibilities for defeating ISIS and for détente with
Russia. Russia has been trying
to bring the Shi'a and the Turks tothe negotiating table on Syria.Trump's role was to be to help
bring the Sunni side to the table – in order to forge a wider regional settlement. That will be less
likely now, as Saudi Arabia levers Trump's visit towards weakening Iran.
With Trump's homage to the Sunni cause, it is more likely that the Sunni-Shi'a fissure will deepen,
rather than its sore edges be reconciled.And, viewed from a pure realpolitik perspective, does Trump
really believe that Saudi Arabia and its allies will succeed in weakening the Russia, Iran, Syria,
Iraq and Hizbullah alliance?
And Israel? The writing was plainly on the wall, as we now know, at those post-Six Day War Israeli
cabinet meetings. The Americans did warn the Israeli cabinet that it would become progressively
harder and harder for America to defend Israel's hold over the disempowered, disenfranchised and
dispossessed (and enlarging), Palestinian people – if Israel insisted on its "winner takes all" end
of war policy.
This is something that still has to play out in its own way.But as White House adviser Steve
Bannon
noted in his film Generation Zero , "the essence of Greek tragedy is that it is not
like a traffic accident, where somebody dies. The Greek sense is that tragedy is where something
happens because it has to happen Because the people involved make it happen. And they have no choice,
but to make it happen."
Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat who was a senior figure in British intelligence
and in European Union diplomacy. He is the founder and director of the Conflicts Forum.
All this complicated diplomacy really means nothing. The truth is that the Israeli's stole
the Palestinian's land from the very beginning, abetted by the Western powers, and they are continuing
to steal it and to destroy the Palestinian people, because they have the power to do that. Why
should they make any kind of deal, when they have the power to get what they want without making
deals? They just play at making deals to cover their naked power grabs, and pretend to be civilized
and concerned about the Palestinians rights, which of course they are not. Trying to talk the
Israeli's into making peace is a fool's errand, that only diplomats trying to keep their jobs
would involve themselves in.
T. Mellman , June 3, 2017 at 12:00 pm
My response to the "the Israeli's stole the Palestinians' land from the very beginning" argument
is that nobody's going to be giving America back to the Indians.
My suspicion is that the Palestinians would have eventually come to terms with the new order,
but that the conflict has been used for one proxy war or another, and as fuel for stoking Muslim
resurgence, since the birth of Israel.
If America could get over its "exceptionalism" delusion and the world could jettison the fancy
that religion is something that needs to be protected, the conflict would resolve.
Chet Roman , June 3, 2017 at 1:12 pm
Of course you would claim equivalence with the U.S. colonization American. There are some similarities;
both the English colonists of America and the European colonists of Palestine were foreigners
with no ties to the land.
BUT we are in the 21st century and yet the Zionist colonization continues to expand. They continue
to slaughter the indigenous population and steal even more land. It is not U.S. exceptionalism
that causes chaos in the Middle East, it's the Zionist control of the U.S. foreign policy that
supported the invasion of Iraq to eliminate an enemy of Israel, the effort to break up Syria into
warring factions so Israel can steal more land adjacent to the Golan Heights were oil has been
discovered and to stop the Iranian military support of Hezbollah so Israel can try again to capture
the Litani River.
Yes, please ask the moderator to delete your vacuous comment.
evelync , June 3, 2017 at 4:38 pm
I have a different take, T Mellman, on what you wrote:
"If America could get over its "exceptionalism" delusion and the world could jettison the fancy
that religion is something that needs to be protected, the conflict would resolve."
I heartily agree. And others here seem to have overlooked this key comment. You were making
excuses for no one and even dare to point out that if Israelis would consider embracing Palestinians
into Israel, accepting that "horrors!", one day the Israeli State might be multicultural, and
multi- religious, so what? Maybe that would be a good thing! Better for all concerned in some
unexpected way?
Thank you!
Anon , June 3, 2017 at 6:20 pm
You are trying to deceive with zionist propaganda:
1. You are rationalizing theft by a past theft. The US case is also long ago and entirely immaterial.
2. You know that it is the zionists not the Palestinians who are primarily promoting a religion,
but you try to blame the Palestinians by claiming that they could simply change their religion;
3. You know that it vacuous that "the conflict would resolve" if both sides dropped religious
preference;
4. You know that "one proxy war or another" in the Mideast consist entirely of zionist wars for
theft.
So tell your thief friends to "come to terms with the new order" or be expelled on rubber rafts
where they belong, a promised land in the middle of the Mediterranean.
Peter Loeb , June 3, 2017 at 3:06 pm
I AGREE WITH MIKE K .
If A Crooke were more knowledgeable and less "diplomatic" he
would have read Thomas Suarez' landmark book THE TERROR STATE
. Perhaps he might comprehend that Palestinians NEVER
wanted a Zionist and exclusive home for "the Jews" (who???).
The "War of Independence" was a terrorist war in the first place
against the UK and then against the Palestinians (Muslim and
non-Muslim) who already lived in that area to which they considered
they considered themselves divinely entitled.
This commenter is not sufficiently eloquent to paraphrase Mr.
Suarez's work.
This administration may make things worrse but
many, many others have certainly played their parts.
"The only good Arab (Israeli term) may be a dead Arab" or
at least a dying one. The Israeli's have produced both with
American assistance over many decades and with
British stupidity as well.
There is one thing about the Jews that has remained constant over the last thousands of years.
They are takers. They take and take until they force the Gentiles into a corner and then the Gentiles
turn on them. After hundreds of pograms against these particular people you would think that the
Jews would take a serious review of why they are generally so hated by the rest of the world and
try and mitigate this hatred by changing some of the ways they generate it. But no. It replayes
itself over and over. When they get a leg up they push it to the limit. Where ever they are people
soon wind up in usurious debt to them,. They seem to believe the old testament story that God
will always defend them and slaughter their adversaries. over and over again the exact opposite
happens and they once again push people to the point of striking back at them. Will they ever
learn? Not much hope there, as they keep as a central point of their culture that they are the
master race and that the rest of mankind is only there to be their slaves. To them the Goyim are
just beasts in the field even just excrement. With an attitude like that is there any wonder that
another pogram will take place. They will drive the Goyim to it. Sad to say but they are the architechs
of their own destruction.
Bill Bodden , June 3, 2017 at 12:38 pm
Dan: I essentially agree with the thrust of your argument, but your phrasing is unfortunate
in putting all Jews in the same category. They are similar to almost all groupings of people.
They include the best and worst of people with most somewhere in between. The tragedy for many
people of Jewish heritage is that they pay the price of the sins of the authoritarians among them
and their accomplices among the Gentiles.
Mondoweiss.net, Consortium News, CounterPunch and similar websites feature examples of admirable
and courageous authors of Jewish heritage.
Dan possibly there are some good Jewish still left in Israel. I often look at our own American
citizen dilemma, whereas we Americans are poorly represented by our leadership. Very complex,
when trying to sort this mess all out, indeed. Take care Dan Joe
Anon , June 3, 2017 at 11:50 am
An excellent expose of zionist capture of a fooled administration. No one is fooled by the
Trump plan. The utterly racist zionists have already "spun out as long as possible" the totally
fake "peace process" and will never consent to justice except at the point of a gun.
That gun should be ISIS and Alqaeda, brought to Jordan, KSA, and Egypt to take over Israel.
Then give them seventy years (as in 1947-2017) to "discuss" a two-state solution with enslaved
Israelis. Then send the bastards overseas in rubber rafts to whomever is foolish enough to accept
them.
The tragedy is that the zionist Jews are just as fascist as the Nazi Germans. But there is
no more reason for mercy. End the fake negotiations and enslave the bastards. History will consider
the destruction of Israel as inevitable due to their extreme racist imperialist conduct, and the
sooner the better.
Bill Bodden , June 3, 2017 at 1:04 pm
em>The evidence of Israeli actions on the ground, too, plainly does not support the contention
that Israel has been preparing the transition to a two-state solution of fixed borders, and a
sovereign Palestinian state. On the contrary, the evidence points in the opposite direction: that
Israel has been intent on frustrating the two-state solution within fixed borders.
This evidence has been obvious for many years to people who have not sold their souls to lobbyists
for Israel – and probably to some that have made their Faustian bargains for political or other
gains.
Given the turmoil throughout the Middle East the inheritors of Zionist ambitions have probably
put expansion beyond the Palestine Territories on the back burner for the time being.
"... No mention of the 63 millions who voted for him. Trumps enemies will make sure there is no peace until Trump is driven from office. Blowback will insure there is no peace after the coup. ..."
"... Hilllary is of course also widely detested. In many ways, the last election was a contest about who the American people hate more, and Hillary got the award for Most Hated. Both candidates got a large percent of their votes from people who were voting against their opponent. Outside of CA, NY, and MA, more people hated Hillary, ..."
"... So, it turns out that Hillary is detested by the 'wrong' people. Hillary won the vote for most hated. But she's never investigated, the Clinton's are never charged. Bill openly violated election campaigning laws in MA, but no investigation, no charges. The Clintons have become filthy rich during a life of public service, but no investigations, no charges. And if you even want to hear about it, you have to turn off the corporate press and find independent reporters. ..."
"Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble."
The witches in Macbeth.
President Trump's administration is now at a high boil as he faces intense heat from all sides.
The Republican Party has backed away from their embattled president. US intelligence agencies are
baying for his blood. The US media plays the role of the witches in 'Macbeth' as it plots against
Trump.
One increasingly hears whispers about impeachment or the wonderful 1964 film about a military
coup in Washington, 'Seven Days in May.'
As in Shakespeare's King Lear, Trump stands almost alone on a blasted heath, howling that he has
been betrayed. The world watches on in dismay and shock.
One thing is clear: the US presidency has become too powerful when far-fetched talk of possibly
Russian involvement in Trump's campaign could send world financial markets into a crash dive. And
when Trump's ill informed, off the cuff remarks can endanger the fragile global balance of power.
Trump has made this huge mess and must now live with it. Yes, he is being treated unfairly by
appointment of a special prosecutor when the titanic sleaze of the Clintons was never investigated.
But that's what happens when you are widely detested. No mercy for Trump, a man without any mercy
for others.
Trump is not a Manchurian candidate put into office by Moscow though his bungling aides and iffy
financial deals often made it appear so. His choice of the fanatical Islamophobe Gen. Michael Flynn
was an awful blunder. Flynn was revealed to have taken money from Turkey to alter US Mideast policy.
Who else paid off Flynn? Disgraceful.
But what about all the politicians and officials who took and take money from the Saudis and Gulf
emirates, or Sheldon Adelson, the ardent advocate of Greater Israel? What about political payoffs
to the flat-earth Republicans who now act as Israel's amen chorus in Washington?
The growing scandals that are engulfing Trump's presidency seem likely to delay if not defeat
the president's laudatory proposals to lower taxes, prune the bureaucracy, clean up intelligence,
end America's foreign wars, and impose some sort of peace in the Mideast.
By recklessly proposing these reforms at the same time, Trump earned the hatred of the media,
federal government, all intelligence agencies, and the Israel lobby, not to mention ecologists, free-thinkers,
cultured people, academia and just about everyone else who does not raise cotton or abuse animals
for a living.
No wonder Trump stands almost alone, like Rome's Horatio at the Bridge. One increasingly hears
in Washington 'what Trump needs is a little war.'
That would quickly wrong-foot his critics and force the neocon media – Washington Post, Wall Street
Journal, New York Times, and CNN – to back him. We already saw this happen when Trump fired salvos
of cruise missiles at Syria. It would also provide welcome distraction from the investigations of
Trump that are beginning.
Trump has appeared to be pawing the ground in a desire to attack naughty North Korea or Syria,
and maybe even Yemen, Somalia or Sudan. A war against any of these small nations would allow the
president to don military gear and beat his chest – as did the dunce George W. Bush. Bomb the usual
Arabs!
' As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents. more and more closely, the
inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach
their hart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
Shee-it! I thought Dubya accomplished this . Apparently the M'urkan public is being defiant
and really wants to flaunt it's ignorance. Well, howdee! we got us a real contest goin' on now.
Trump is obviously the proverbial monkey with a machine-gun. My inner survival instincts are starting
to kick in. Does anyone see this this presidency as leveling out and trying to conduct business
like you know as it has been in the last 200 years?
This is too insane. I honestly think that some kind of the fix is in. How? Don't know.
By recklessly proposing these reforms at the same time, Trump earned the hatred of the media,
federal government, all intelligence agencies, and the Israel lobby, not to mention ecologists,
free-thinkers, cultured people, academia and just about everyone else who does not raise cotton
or abuse animals for a living.
No mention of the 63 millions who voted for him. Trumps enemies will make sure there is
no peace until Trump is driven from office. Blowback will insure there is no peace after the coup.
Eric wrote: His choice of the fanatical Islamophobe Gen. Michael Flynn was an awful blunder.
Flynn was revealed to have taken money from Turkey to alter US Mideast policy.
Hunsdon said: The notorious Islamophobe, in pay of the Next Sultan? Too delicious.
Hilllary is of course also widely detested. In many ways, the last election was a contest
about who the American people hate more, and Hillary got the award for Most Hated. Both candidates
got a large percent of their votes from people who were voting against their opponent. Outside
of CA, NY, and MA, more people hated Hillary, and the Electoral College was put into place
precisely to keep a big state or a couple of big states from dominating the election of a President.
Even in the 1780′s, many Americans didn't want NY to have the power to pick a President on their
own.
So, it turns out that Hillary is detested by the 'wrong' people. Hillary won the vote for
most hated. But she's never investigated, the Clinton's are never charged. Bill openly violated
election campaigning laws in MA, but no investigation, no charges. The Clintons have become filthy
rich during a life of public service, but no investigations, no charges. And if you even want
to hear about it, you have to turn off the corporate press and find independent reporters.
Thus, its not that Trust is simply the most detested. He's not. At worst, the last election
said he's the second most detested person in the country. But, the "right" people all detest him.
So, a small minority of government insiders and the members of the media want to run him out of
town.
There's things he's done since he's been elected that I don't like. I don't like the way that
saying he was against regime change and more wars in the middle east has turned out to be a massive
lie. But still, this is rapidly getting to the point where the American people are going to need
to speak up and tell their representatives and senators, especially the Republicans, that Trump
was elected President and they don't want to see a coup remove him.
If not, then CA and NY and the Deep State and the Media millionaires will run this country
and everyone will know that elections don't matter.
But still, this is rapidly getting to the point where the American people are going to need
to speak up and tell their representatives and senators, especially the Republicans, that Trump
was elected President and they don't want to see a coup remove him.
This is exactly right, and as others have said, the place to do this is a state level by reestablishing
a close contact between the public and their representatives and senators on a detailed issue
by issue basis.
If their representative is part of the chorus supporting a "Russian Hacking " investigation,
or is an advocate of further wars then they have to understand that they are in real political
trouble.
"Political Trouble" is a large scale, local, well organized and continuous public attack on
their electability.
If the public are to lazy to do this then they'll deserve what they get.
By recklessly proposing these reforms at the same time, Trump earned the hatred of the media,
federal government, all intelligence agencies, and the Israel lobby, not to mention ecologists,
free-thinkers, cultured people, academia and just about everyone else who does not raise cotton
or abuse animals for a living.
No mention of the 63 millions who voted for him. Trumps enemies will make sure there is no peace
until Trump is driven from office. Blowback will insure there is no peace after the coup.
Few ruling classes had an opportunity to build an idyllical structure of society and governance
over the last four centuries as the two ruling US classes had.
Instead, they created numerous cliquish cliques and with political powers of each clique diminishing
from the two top classes down to the last class: prisoners, indigenes, white and black trash.
But still, this is rapidly getting to the point where the American people are going to need
to speak up and tell their representatives and senators, especially the Republicans, that Trump
was elected President and they don't want to see a coup remove him.
This is exactly right, and as others have said, the place to do this is a state level by reestablishing
a close contact between the public and their representatives and senators on a detailed issue
by issue basis.
If their representative is part of the chorus supporting a "Russian Hacking " investigation,
or is an advocate of further wars then they have to understand that they are in real political
trouble.
"Political Trouble" is a large scale, local, well organized and continuous public attack on
their electability.
If the public are to lazy to do this then they'll deserve what they get.
"... It began when big money was employed by political operatives such as Roger Stone, a close Trump adviser, to create negative political advertisements and false narratives to deceive the public, turning political debate into burlesque. On all these fronts we have lost. We are trapped like rats in a cage. A narcissist and imbecile may be turning the electric shocks on and off, but the problem is the corporate state, and unless we dismantle that, we are doomed. ..."
"... "What's necessary for the state is the illusion of normality, of regularity," America's best-known political prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, told me last week by phone from the prison where he is incarcerated in Frackville, Pa. " In Rome, what the emperors needed was bread and circuses. In America, what we need is 'Housewives of Atlanta.' We need sports. The moral stories of good cops and evil people. Because you have that . there is no critical thinking in America during this period... ..."
"... Trump, an acute embarrassment to the corporate state and the organs of internal security, may be removed from the presidency, but such a palace coup would only further consolidate the power of the deep state and intensify internal measures of repression. ..."
Forget the firing of James Comey. Forget the paralysis in Congress. Forget
the idiocy of a press that covers our descent into tyranny as if it were a sports contest between
corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats or a reality show starring our maniacal president and
the idiots that surround him. Forget the noise.
The crisis we face is not embodied in the public
images of the politicians that run our dysfunctional government. The crisis we face is the result
of a four-decade-long, slow-motion corporate coup that has rendered the citizen impotent, left us
without any authentic democratic institutions and allowed corporate and military power to become
omnipotent. This crisis has spawned a corrupt electoral system of legalized bribery and empowered
those public figures that master the arts of entertainment and artifice. And if we do not overthrow
the neoliberal ,
corporate forces that have destroyed our democracy we will continue to vomit up more monstrosities
as dangerous as Donald Trump.
Trump is the symptom, not the disease.
Our descent into despotism began with the
pardoning of Richard Nixon , all of whose impeachable crimes are now legal, and the extrajudicial
assault, including targeted assassinations and imprisonment, carried out on dissidents and radicals,
especially black radicals.
It began with the creation of corporate-funded foundations and organizations
that took control of the press, the courts, the universities, scientific research and the two major
political parties. It began with empowering militarized police to kill unarmed citizens and the spread
of our horrendous system of mass incarceration and the death penalty. It began with the stripping
away of our most basic constitutional rights-privacy, due process, habeas corpus, fair elections
and dissent.
It began when big money was employed by political operatives such as Roger Stone, a
close Trump adviser, to create negative political advertisements and false narratives to deceive
the public, turning political debate into burlesque. On all these fronts we have lost. We are trapped
like rats in a cage. A narcissist and imbecile may be turning the electric shocks on and off, but
the problem is the corporate state, and unless we dismantle that, we are doomed.
"What's necessary for the state is the illusion of normality, of regularity," America's best-known
political prisoner,
Mumia Abu-Jamal, told me last week by phone from the prison where he is incarcerated in Frackville,
Pa. " In Rome, what the emperors needed was bread and circuses. In America, what we need is 'Housewives
of Atlanta.' We need sports. The moral stories of good cops and evil people. Because you have that
. there is no critical thinking in America during this period...
... ... ...
Trump, an acute embarrassment to the corporate state and the organs of internal security, may
be removed from the presidency, but such a palace coup would only further consolidate the power of
the deep state and intensify
internal measures of repression.
"... the recent news as for Rich Seth murder might take Trump probe in a somewhat different direction and put additional pressure of neoliberal, Pelosi-Clinton part of the party leadership. If half of what was recently reported is true, Clapper-Brennan "Intelligence assessment" looks more and more like Warren Commission report. ..."
"... ... Then, Newt Gingrich, on Fox News, says: " (Rich) was assassinated at 4 in the morning after having giving Wikileaks something like 53,000 emails and 17,000 attachments. Nobody's investigating that. And what does that tell you about what is going on?" ..."
Pence is worse than Trump. And he is more likely to get two terms.
In the meantime, nothing gets fixed.
Anyone who wants single-payer, better jobs, etc. should focus on the 2018 elections and work for
people who can oust people like Nancy Pelosi in the primaries and Republicans in the general.
"Pence is worse than Trump. And he is more likely to get two terms.In the meantime, nothing gets
fixed."
True. Also the recent news as for Rich Seth murder might take Trump probe in a somewhat different
direction and put additional pressure of neoliberal, Pelosi-Clinton part of the party leadership. If half of what was recently reported is true, Clapper-Brennan "Intelligence assessment" looks
more and more like Warren Commission report.
... Then, Newt Gingrich, on Fox News, says: " (Rich) was assassinated at 4 in the morning after
having giving Wikileaks something like 53,000 emails and 17,000 attachments. Nobody's investigating
that. And what does that tell you about what is going on?"
Well, we know that Kim's chances of attracting Congressional interest was just about nil, but
then Sean Hannity invited Dotcom to discuss his evidence in the Seth Rich case on his shows.
Stay tuned. Public invitation Kim Dotcom to be a guest on radio and TV. #GameChanger Buckle up
destroy Trump media. Sheep that u all are!!! https://t.co/3qLwXCGl6z
- Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) May 20, 2017
Most recently, he tweeted:
Complete panic has set in at the highest levels of the Democratic Party. Any bets when the
kitchen sink is dumped on my head?? https://t.co/Zt2gIX4zyq
- Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) May 22, 2017
They can dig this dirt to years. Trump is now a hostage.
Notable quotes:
"... A spokesman for Manafort, Jason Maloni, confirmed that Manafort turned over documents, adding that Manafort remains interested in cooperating with the Senate investigation. ..."
"... NBC adds that it was too early to tell whether the documents from Manafort and Stone "suggested they had fully complied with the request." In a parallel process, as part of the FBI's Russia collusion investigation, federal grand juries have issued subpoenas for records relating to both Flynn and Manafort. ..."
While Michael Flynn may refusing to comply with the Senate Intel Committee's probe of Russian interference, two other former associates
of Donald Trump complied on Monday afternoon, and
according to NBC , Paul Manafort and Roger Stone have turned over documents to the Senate Intelligence Committee in its Russia
investigation, providing "all documents consistent with their specific request." As reported previously, the committee sent document
requests to Manafort and Stone, as well as Carter Page and Mike Flynn, seeking information related to dealings with Russia. So far
Page has not yet complied, while Flynn it was confirmed today, planned to plead the Fifth as a reason not to comply with a committee
subpoena, citing "escalating public frenzy" as part of the ongoing probe.
According to NBC, the committee's letter to Page asked him "to list any Russian official or business executive he met with between
June 16, 2015 and Jan. 20, 2017. It also asked him to provide information about Russia-related real estate transactions during that
period. And it seeks all his email or other communications during that period with Russians, or with the Trump campaign about Russia
or Russians."
While the precise contents is unknown, similar letters were sent to Manafort and Stone, who then sent the requested information
to investigators by last Friday's deadline.
"I gave them all documents that were consistent with their specific request," Stone said in an email to NBC News.
A spokesman for Manafort, Jason Maloni, confirmed that Manafort turned over documents, adding that Manafort remains interested
in cooperating with the Senate investigation.
NBC adds that it was too early to tell whether the documents from Manafort and Stone "suggested they had fully complied with
the request." In a parallel process, as part of the FBI's Russia collusion investigation, federal grand juries have issued subpoenas
for records relating to both Flynn and Manafort.
Meanwhile, Flynn's assertion of the Fifth Amendment would make it difficult for the Senate to enforce its subpoena, NBC News reported
citing Senate sources: "The Senate could go to court, or go ask the Justice Department to go to court to enforce it, but either actin
would require the Republicans who control the chamber to agree." Trump fired Flynn as his national security advisor in February after
misleading Vice President Mike Pence and other administration officials about conversations he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey
Kislyak about U.S. sanctions on Russia.
This is hilarious. Is there supposed to be some connection between meeting with Russians and rigging an election?
I am thinking that if there is to be an investigation then Congress needs to cast a wider net to include all of the past three
administrations, All international banks and their legal representatives, all of Congress and everyone who has ever contributed
to the DNC or RNC.
If they are going to hunt for witches, why not make it open season on ALL witches.
My personal preference is to be on friendly terms with both Russia and China ... not to mentioned Iran, people of all religions
and the other countries that do not have BIS tied central banks. Why do we tolerate people telling us that we have to hate someone?
Guardian defends Hillary. Again. They also are afraid to open the comment section on this article.
Notable quotes:
"... A prominent ally of Donald Trump suggested on Sunday that the - - special counsel appointed to investigate alleged links between
the president's aides and - - Russia should instead focus on the murder last year of a young Democratic staffer, Seth Rich, which has
become the focus of conspiracy theorists . ..."
"... This week, the Russian embassy in the UK shared the conspiracy on Twitter, CNN reported , calling Rich a murdered "WikiLeaks
informer" and claiming that the British mainstream media was "so busy accusing Russian hackers to take notice". ..."
"... "He's been killed, and apparently nothing serious has been done to investigate his murder. So, I'd like to see how [former
FBI director Robert] Mueller is going to define what his assignment is, and if it's only narrowly Trump, the country will not learn
what it needs to learn about foreign involvement in American politics." ..."
"... The Rich family has sent Wheeler a cease-and-desist letter, threatening legal action if he continues to discuss the case, the
Washington Post reported . ..."
Trump confidante and husband of ambassadorial nominee repeats WikiLeaks theory denounced as 'fake news' by family of murdered DNC
staffer Sunday 21 May 2017, 16.48 EDT Last modified on Monday 22 May 2017
A prominent ally of Donald Trump suggested on Sunday that the - -
special counsel appointed to investigate alleged links between the president's aides and - -
Russia
should instead focus on the murder last year of a young Democratic staffer, Seth Rich, which has become
the focus of
conspiracy theorists .
In an appearance on Fox and Friends less than two days after his wife was - -
proposed as ambassador to the Holy See , Newt Gingrich – former speaker of the House, 2012 presidential candidate and a Trump
confidante – publicly endorsed the conspiracy theory that Rich was "assassinated" after giving Democratic National Committee emails
to WikiLeaks.
Rich, 27, was shot dead in the early hours of 10 July 2016, as he walked home in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington.
In August, the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, - -
insinuated that Rich had been a source. Police initially explored whether Rich's murder might be connected to robberies in the
area, according
to a local news report , and officials in the capital have publicly debunked other claims.
"This is a robbery that ended tragically," Kevin Donahue, Washington's deputy mayor for public safety,
told NBC News this week. "That's bad enough for our city, and I think it is irresponsible to conflate this into something that
doesn't connect to anything that the detectives have found. No WikiLeaks connection."
On Sunday, the Washington DC police public affairs office did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.
In January, American intelligence agencies concluded with "
high confidence " in a public
report that Russian military intelligence was responsible for hacking the DNC and obtaining and relaying private messages to WikiLeaks,
which made a series of embarrassing public disclosures. The goal, the agencies concluded, was to undermine the candidacy of Hillary
Clinton and boost Trump, as well as hurt Americans' trust in their own democracy.
This week, the Russian embassy in the UK
shared the conspiracy on Twitter,
CNN reported
, calling Rich a murdered "WikiLeaks informer" and claiming that the British mainstream media was "so busy accusing Russian hackers
to take notice".
The Rich family has repeatedly denied that there is any evidence behind the conspiracy theories and called on Fox News to retract
its coverage of their son's murder. Earlier this week, a spokesman for the family
said
in a statement that "anyone who continues to push this fake news story after it was so thoroughly debunked is proving to the
world they have a transparent political agenda or are a sociopath".
On Fox and Friends, Gingrich said: "We have this very strange story here of this young man who worked for the DNC who was apparently
assassinated at four in the morning having given WikiLeaks
something like 23,000 – I'm sorry, 53,000 – emails and 17,000 attachments.
"Nobody's investigating that, and what does that tell you about what was going on? Because it turns out it wasn't the Russians,
it was this young guy who, I suspect, who was disgusted by the corruption of the Democratic National Committee.
"He's been killed, and apparently nothing serious has been done to investigate his murder. So, I'd like to see how [former
FBI director Robert] Mueller is going to define what his assignment is, and if it's only narrowly Trump, the country will not learn
what it needs to learn about foreign involvement in American politics."
Last week, the private investigator and Fox News commentator Rod Wheeler claimed that evidence existed that Rich had been in contact
with WikiLeaks. Questioned by CNN, however, he said: "I only got that [information] from the reporter at Fox News" and added that
he did not have any evidence himself.
"Using the legacy of a murder victim in such an overtly political way is morally reprehensible," a Rich family spokesman told
CNN.
The Rich family has sent Wheeler a cease-and-desist letter, threatening legal action if he continues to discuss the case,
the
Washington Post reported .
"... When Trump becomes president by running against the nation's neoliberal elite of both parties, it was a strong, undeniable signal that the neoliberal elite has a problem -- it lost the trust of the majority American people and is viewed now, especially Wall Street financial sharks, as an "occupying force". ..."
"... That means that we have the crisis of the elite governance or, as Marxists used to call it "a revolutionary situation" -- the situation in which the elite can't govern "as usual" and common people (let's say the bottom 80% of the USA population) do not want to live "as usual". Political Zugzwang. The anger is boiling and has became a material force in the most recent elections. ..."
"... The elites also ran American foreign policy, as they have throughout U.S. history. Over the past 25 years they got their country bogged down in persistent wars with hardly any stated purpose and in many instances no end in sight-Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya. Many elites want further U.S. military action in Ukraine, against Iran, and to thwart China's rise in Asia. Aside from the risk of growing geopolitical blowback against America, the price tag is immense, contributing to the country's ongoing economic woes. ..."
"... Thus did this economic turn of events reflect the financialization of the U.S. economy-more and more rewards for moving money around and taking a cut and fewer and fewer rewards for building a business and creating jobs. ..."
"... ...Now comes the counterrevolution. The elites figure that if they can just get rid of Trump, the country can return to what they consider normalcy -- the status quo ante, before the Trumpian challenge to their status as rulers of America. That's why there is so much talk about impeachment even in the absence of any evidence thus far of "high crimes and misdemeanors." That's why the firing of James Comey as FBI director raises the analogy of Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre." ..."
"... That's why the demonization of Russia has reached a fevered pitch, in hopes that even minor infractions on the part of the president can be raised to levels of menace and threat. ..."
"... There is no way out for America at this point. Steady as she goes could prove highly problematic. A push to remove him could prove worse. Perhaps a solution will present itself. But, even if it does, it will rectify, with great societal disquiet and animosity, merely the Trump crisis. The crisis of the elites will continue, all the more intractable and ominous. ..."
Trump is just a one acute symptom of the underling crisis of the neoliberal social system, that
we experience. So his removal will not solve the crisis.
And unless some kind of New Deal Capitalism is restored there is no alternative to the neoliberalism
on the horizon.
But the question is: Can the New Deal Capitalism with its "worker aristocracy" strata and the
role of organized labor as a weak but still countervailing force to corporate power be restored
? I think not.
With the level of financialization achieved, the water is under the bridge. The financial toothpaste
can't be squeezed back into the tube. That's what makes the current crisis more acute: none of
the parties has any viable solution to the crisis, not the will to attempt to implement some radical
changes.
When Trump becomes president by running against the nation's neoliberal elite of both parties,
it was a strong, undeniable signal that the neoliberal elite has a problem -- it lost the trust
of the majority American people and is viewed now, especially Wall Street financial sharks, as
an "occupying force".
That means that we have the crisis of the elite governance or, as Marxists used to call
it "a revolutionary situation" -- the situation in which the elite can't govern "as usual" and
common people (let's say the bottom 80% of the USA population) do not want to live "as usual".
Political Zugzwang. The anger is boiling and has became a material force in the most recent elections.
At least Republican elites resisted the emergence of Trump for as long as they could. Some
even attacked him vociferously. But, unlike in the Democratic Party, the Republican candidate
who most effectively captured the underlying sentiment of GOP voters ended up with the nomination.
The Republican elites had to give way. Why? Because Republican voters fundamentally favor vulgar,
ill-mannered, tawdry politicians? No, because the elite-generated society of America had become
so bad in their view that they turned to the man who most clamorously rebelled against it.
... ... ...
The elites also ran American foreign policy, as they have throughout U.S. history. Over
the past 25 years they got their country bogged down in persistent wars with hardly any stated
purpose and in many instances no end in sight-Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya. Many
elites want further U.S. military action in Ukraine, against Iran, and to thwart China's rise
in Asia. Aside from the risk of growing geopolitical blowback against America, the price tag
is immense, contributing to the country's ongoing economic woes.
... ... ...
Then there is the spectacle of the country's financial elites goosing liquidity massively
after the Great Recession to benefit themselves while slamming ordinary Americans with a resulting
decline in Main Street capitalism. The unprecedented low interest rates over many years, accompanied
by massive bond buying called "quantitative easing," proved a boon for Wall Street banks and
corporate America while working families lost income from their money market funds and savings
accounts. The result, says economic consultant David M. Smick, author of The Great Equalizer
, was "the greatest transfer of middle-class and elderly wealth to elite financial interests
in the history of mankind." Notice that these post-recession transactions were mostly financial
transactions, divorced from the traditional American passion for building things, innovating,
and taking risks-the kinds of activities that spur entrepreneurial zest, generate new enterprises,
and create jobs. Thus did this economic turn of events reflect the financialization of
the U.S. economy-more and more rewards for moving money around and taking a cut and fewer and
fewer rewards for building a business and creating jobs.
...Now comes the counterrevolution. The elites figure that if they can just get rid
of Trump, the country can return to what they consider normalcy -- the status quo ante, before
the Trumpian challenge to their status as rulers of America. That's why there is so much talk
about impeachment even in the absence of any evidence thus far of "high crimes and misdemeanors."
That's why the firing of James Comey as FBI director raises the analogy of Nixon's "Saturday
Night Massacre."
That's why the demonization of Russia has reached a fevered pitch, in hopes that even
minor infractions on the part of the president can be raised to levels of menace and threat.
... ... ...
There is no way out for America at this point. Steady as she goes could prove highly
problematic. A push to remove him could prove worse. Perhaps a solution will present itself.
But, even if it does, it will rectify, with great societal disquiet and animosity, merely the
Trump crisis. The crisis of the elites will continue, all the more intractable and ominous.
IMHO Trump betrayal of his voters under the pressure from DemoRats ("the dominant neoliberal
wing of Democratic Party", aka "Clinton's wing") makes the situation even worse. a real Gordian
knot. Or, in chess terminology, a Zugzwang.
"... America is in crisis. It is a crisis of greater magnitude than any the country has faced in its history, with the exception of the Civil War. It is a crisis long in the making-and likely to be with us long into the future. It is a crisis so thoroughly rooted in the American polity that it's difficult to see how it can be resolved in any kind of smooth or even peaceful way. Looking to the future from this particular point in time, just about every possible course of action appears certain to deepen the crisis. ..."
"... Some believe it stems specifically from the election of Donald Trump, a man supremely unfit for the presidency, and will abate when he can be removed from office. These people are right about one thing: Trump is supremely unfit for his White House job. But that isn't the central crisis; it is merely a symptom of it, though it seems increasingly to be reaching crisis proportions of its own. ..."
"... The elites also ran American foreign policy, as they have throughout U.S. history. Over the past 25 years they got their country bogged down in persistent wars with hardly any stated purpose and in many instances no end in sight-Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya. Many elites want further U.S. military action in Ukraine, against Iran, and to thwart China's rise in Asia. Aside from the risk of growing geopolitical blowback against America, the price tag is immense, contributing to the country's ongoing economic woes. ..."
"... "Elites" are not necessarily truly unique, "brights" are not necessarily truly bright, "gnostics" do not necessarily have true knowledge, "puritans" are not necessarily truly pure, etc. What is being labeled is not what they truly are, but what they would have us believe they are; the reality is often very much the contrary. ..."
"... What characterizes "elites" is not really position or power, very much less intelligence or nobility of heart. The defining characteristic of an "elite" is arrogance. ..."
America is in crisis. It is a crisis of greater magnitude than any the country has faced in its history, with the exception of
the Civil War. It is a crisis long in the making-and likely to be with us long into the future. It is a crisis so thoroughly rooted
in the American polity that it's difficult to see how it can be resolved in any kind of smooth or even peaceful way. Looking to the
future from this particular point in time, just about every possible course of action appears certain to deepen the crisis.
What is it? Some believe it stems specifically from the election of Donald Trump, a man supremely unfit for the presidency,
and will abate when he can be removed from office. These people are right about one thing: Trump is supremely unfit for his
White House job. But that isn't the central crisis; it is merely a symptom of it, though it seems increasingly to be reaching crisis
proportions of its own.
When a man as uncouth and reckless as Trump becomes president by running against the nation's elites, it's a strong signal that
the elites are the problem. We're talking here about the elites of both parties. Think of those who gave the country Hillary Clinton
as the Democratic presidential nominee-a woman who sought to avoid accountability as secretary of state by employing a private email
server, contrary to propriety and good sense; who attached herself to a vast nonprofit "good works" institution that actually was
a corrupt political machine designed to get the Clintons back into the White House while making them rich; who ran for president,
and almost won, without addressing the fundamental problems of the nation and while denigrating large numbers of frustrated and beleaguered
Americans as "deplorables." The unseemliness in all this was out in plain sight for everyone to see, and yet Democratic elites blithely
went about the task of awarding her the nomination, even to the point of employing underhanded techniques to thwart an upstart challenger
who was connecting more effectively with Democratic voters.
At least Republican elites resisted the emergence of Trump for as long as they could. Some even attacked him vociferously. But,
unlike in the Democratic Party, the Republican candidate who most effectively captured the underlying sentiment of GOP voters ended
up with the nomination. The Republican elites had to give way. Why? Because Republican voters fundamentally favor vulgar, ill-mannered,
tawdry politicians? No, because the elite-generated society of America had become so bad in their view that they turned to the man
who most clamorously rebelled against it.
The crisis of the elites could be seen everywhere. Take immigration policy. Leave aside for purposes of discussion the debate
on the merits of the issue-whether mass immigration is good for America or whether it reaches a point of economic diminishing returns
and threatens to erode America's underlying culture. Whatever the merits on either side of that debate, mass immigration, accepted
and even fostered by the nation's elites, has driven a powerful wedge through America. Couldn't those elites see that this would
happen? Did they care so little about the polity over which they held stewardship that their petty political prejudices were more
important than the civic health of their nation?
So now we have some 11 million illegal immigrants in America, a rebuke to territorial sovereignty and to the rule of law upon
which our nation was founded, with no reasonable solution-and generating an abundance of political tension. Beyond that, we have
fostered an immigration policy that now has foreign-born people in America approaching 14 percent-a proportion unprecedented in American
history except for the 1920s, the last time a backlash against mass immigration resulted in curtailment legislation.
And yet the elites never considered the importance to the country's civic health of questions related to assimilation-what's an
appropriate inflow for smooth absorption. Some even equated those who raised such questions to racists and xenophobes. Meanwhile,
we have "sanctuary cities" throughout Blue State America that are refusing to cooperate with federal officials seeking to enforce
the immigration laws-the closest we have come as a nation to "nullification" since the actual nullification crisis of the 1830s,
when South Carolina declared its right to ignore federal legislation it didn't like. (Andrew Jackson scotched the movement by threatening
to hang from the nearest tree anyone involved in violence stemming from the crisis.)
Then there is the spectacle of the country's financial elites goosing liquidity massively after the Great Recession to benefit
themselves while slamming ordinary Americans with a resulting decline in Main Street capitalism. The unprecedented low interest rates
over many years, accompanied by massive bond buying called "quantitative easing," proved a boon for Wall Street banks and corporate
America while working families lost income from their money market funds and savings accounts. The result, says economic consultant
David M. Smick, author of The Great Equalizer , was "the greatest transfer of middle-class and elderly wealth to elite financial
interests in the history of mankind." Notice that these post-recession transactions were mostly financial transactions, divorced
from the traditional American passion for building things, innovating, and taking risks-the kinds of activities that spur entrepreneurial
zest, generate new enterprises, and create jobs. Thus did this economic turn of events reflect the financialization of the U.S. economy-more
and more rewards for moving money around and taking a cut and fewer and fewer rewards for building a business and creating jobs.
And, though these policies were designed to boost economic growth, they have failed to do so, as America suffered through one
of the longest periods of mediocre growth in its history.
All this contributed significantly to the hollowing out of the American working class-once the central foundation of the country's
economic muscle and political stability. Now these are the forgotten Americans, deplorable to Hillary Clinton and her elite followers,
left without jobs and increasingly bereft of purpose and hope.
And if they complain they find themselves confronting the forces of political correctness, bent on shutting them up and marginalizing
them in the political arena. For all the conservative and mainstream complaints against political correctness over the years, it
was never clear just how much civic frustration and anger it was generating across the country until Donald Trump unfurled his attack
on the phenomenon in his campaign. Again, it was ordinary Americans against the elites.
The elites also ran American foreign policy, as they have throughout U.S. history. Over the past 25 years they got their country
bogged down in persistent wars with hardly any stated purpose and in many instances no end in sight-Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen,
Libya. Many elites want further U.S. military action in Ukraine, against Iran, and to thwart China's rise in Asia. Aside from the
risk of growing geopolitical blowback against America, the price tag is immense, contributing to the country's ongoing economic woes.
When Trump, marshaling this anti-elite resentment into a powerful political wave, won the presidential election last November,
it was noted that he would be a minority president in the popular vote. But then so was Nixon; so was Clinton; so was Wilson; indeed,
so was Lincoln. The Trump victory constituted a political revolution.
Now comes the counterrevolution. The elites figure that if they can just get rid of Trump, the country can return to what they
consider normalcy-the status quo ante, before the Trumpian challenge to their status as rulers of America. That's why there is so
much talk about impeachment even in the absence of any evidence thus far of "high crimes and misdemeanors." That's why the firing
of James Comey as FBI director raises the analogy of Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre." That's why the demonization of Russia has
reached a fevered pitch, in hopes that even minor infractions on the part of the president can be raised to levels of menace and
threat.
Ross Douthat, the conservative New York Times columnist, even suggests the elites of Washington should get rid of Trump
through the use of the Constitution's 25th Amendment, which allows for the removal of the president if a majority of the cabinet
informs the Congress that he is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office" and if a two-thirds vote of Congress confirms
that judgment in the face of a presidential challenge. This was written of course for such circumstances of presidential incapacity
as ill health or injury, but Douthat's commitment to the counterrevolution is such that he would advocate its use for mere presidential
incompetence.
Consider the story of Trump's revelation of classified information to Russia's foreign minister and ambassador to the United States.
No one disputes the president's right to declassify governmental information at will, but was it wise in this instance? Certainly,
it was reckless if he exposed sources and methods of intelligence gathering. But did he?
The president and his top foreign policy advisers, who were present during the conversation, say he didn't. The media and Trump's
political adversaries insist that he did, at least implicitly. We don't know. But we do know that when this story reached the pages
of The Washington Post , as a result of leaks from people around Trump who want to see him crushed, it led to a feeding frenzy
that probably harmed American interests far more than whatever Trump may have said to those Russians. Instead of Trump's indiscretion
being confined to a single conversation with foreign officials, it now is broadcast throughout the world. Instead of, at worst, a
hint of where the intelligence came from, everyone now knows it came from the Israelis. Instead of being able to at least pursue
a more cooperative relationship with Russia on matters of mutual interest, Trump is once again forced back on his heels on Russian
policy by government officials and their media allies-who, unlike Trump, were never elected to anything.
Thus is the Trump crisis now superimposed upon the much broader and deeper crisis of the elites, which spawned the Trump crisis
in the first place. Yes, Trump is a disaster as president. He lacks nearly all the qualities and attributes a president should have,
and three and a half more years of him raises the specter of more and more unnecessary tumult and deepening civic rancor. It could
even prove to be untenable governmentally. But trying to get rid of him before his term expires, absent a clear constitutional justification
and a clear assent from the collective electorate, will simply deepen the crisis, driving the wedge further into the raw American
heartland and generating growing feelings that the American system has lost its legitimacy.
There is no way out for America at this point. Steady as she goes could prove highly problematic. A push to remove him could prove
worse. Perhaps a solution will present itself. But, even if it does, it will rectify, with great societal disquiet and animosity,
merely the Trump crisis. The crisis of the elites will continue, all the more intractable and ominous.
Robert W. Merry, longtime Washington, D.C., journalist and publishing executive, is editor of The American Conservative
. His next book, President McKinley: Architect of the American Century
, is due out from Simon & Schuster in September.
If you want to know why things are as bad as they are and why Americans are so ignorant and dumbed down, get the video "Agenda"
by Curtis Bower. It explains it all.
I agree with your diagnosis, even if the term "elite" is nebulous (aren't you, Mr. Merry, by virtue of your position as a D.C.-based
journalist, an "elite"?). Anyway, Gilens and Page found as much.
Yeah this whole "elite" thing is kind of frustrating to hash out in good faith sometimes of course we want "elite" people in charge,
in the sense that they're not illiterate imbeciles. The funny thing is how much "democracy" often fails those who are most wont
to sing its praises. Those who identify as liberal tend to romanticize the idea of "the people" and their right to have a voice
in our government, but then are sorely disappointed when those actual people exercise that voice in the real world. It's why most
of the liberal social agenda of the past 50 years has been achieved through the courts, the least democratic institutions in our
polity. "The people" wouldn't have voted for most of this stuff.
Since a lot of people are obviously having trouble with this concept: "Elites" are not necessarily truly unique, "brights"
are not necessarily truly bright, "gnostics" do not necessarily have true knowledge, "puritans" are not necessarily truly pure,
etc. What is being labeled is not what they truly are, but what they would have us believe they are; the reality is often very
much the contrary.
What characterizes "elites" is not really position or power, very much less intelligence or nobility of heart. The defining
characteristic of an "elite" is arrogance.
Saying "elites are the problem" is NOT to say "let us eliminate all elites" (duh). It is instead to say "let us get ourselves
different elites".
A good elite is one which uses its talents and power to pursue the common good. A bad elite is one which uses its talents and
power to pursue the good of elites alone. After deindustrialization and financialization and the Iraq War and the financial crisis
and the Great Recession and the White Death combined with the ever growing wealth and power of what Richard Reeves calls the "
dream hoarders ", it's pretty clear that we have
bad elites.
This is not to say that the masses are completely off the hook. A republic requires a virtuous elite AND virtuous masses. As
Rod Dreher notes endlessly, the American masses aren't too virtuous nowadays, either.
Cheap, imported labor lowers wages and improves profits. Moving manufacturing to China lowers wages and improves profits. Reducing
income from savings forces people into the labor force, lowering wages and increasing profits. Labor's share of national income
is at a low-point not seen since the 1920's. Corporate profitability is at an historical high point.
I don't understand what "crisis" is being spoken of here. Isn't this exactly the scenario we have been attempting to create
since Reagan? There is no crisis. This is the fruition of our conservative economic agenda. Isn't this site called "The American
Conservative"?
"Couldn't those elites see that this would happen? Did they care so little about the polity over which they held stewardship that
their petty political prejudices were more important than the civic health of their nation?"
"Over the past 25 years they got their country bogged down in persistent wars with hardly any stated purpose and in many instances
no end in sight-Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya."
Good points. Now you may apprehend why we simple people are not so eager to react with panic to the hysteria being drummed
up by the same "elite" people and institutions that melt down every time Trump walks out of his office.
Who are these "elites"? This is the central question.
They seem to be: [1] highly educated [2] in private colleges and universities [3] mainly in the Northeast [4] and as adults
[5] employed primarily in professional occupations [6] geographically concentrated in the Boston-Washington corridor, especially
in NYC and DC.
The unparalleled expansion of the (mostly white) educated professional class in the DC area over the past generation should
occupy center stage in any conservative critique of the American elite.
if President Donald J Trump IS supremely unfit to hold the office, does that not logically (in the eyes of the author)not
make the xx million American people who voted for him supremely unfit to vote?
Not at all. It makes them supremely desperate. The most important part of the election takes place before the first primary,
when PACs and party officials determine what choices will be put before voters. Their candidates (from both parties) were likewise
supremely unfit. I don't care much for either the Libertarians or Abe Lincoln, but
Dead Abe Lincoln got one thing right: "Oh, hey America
you just got screwed." Frankly, this has been going on for decades, but it is now reaching levels of abject absurdity.
What Bruce said. In addition: who could possibly be so simple-minded as to believe that the removal of Trump will magically fix
government? Bottom line is, Trump is dangerously incompetent. There are no doubt some in gov't who would get rid of Trump for
the wrong reasons, but there are many (too many) right reasons for doing so. Some of the so-called Deep Staters will be Republicans
who understand that Trump's promise to "drain the swamp" was nothing more than an empty talking point - and more importantly,
that he's a threat to national security. Getting rid of Trump would be just one step toward fixing gov't, but would be significant
nonetheless.
Actually, Bruce, some of us lefties agree with much, though not all of what Merry says. The elites in both parties have failed
and if you want names one can go down a long list. On foreign policy, for instance, leaders in both parties like Clinton and McCain
have consistently favored more intervention and more war. The only time Trump has been popular with the elites is when he bombed
Syria.
This post was already pretty long– if Merry had gone into detail on the financial crisis and foreign policy it would have been
ten times longer.
I despise Trump too. The problem is that many of his critics are cynical opportunists.
"So tell me, if the down trodden Working class is so distraught by the elites putting them down, why do they celebrate when the
GOP House voted to take away their healthcare by removing rules on pre-existing conditions."
How you view the policies on pre-existing conditions depends on whether you are looking at premiums or benefits. If you are
looking at premiums then removing rules on pre-existing conditions will benefit you. If you are looking at benefits no so much.
You can't say that lowering premiums doesn't help working class families. There is also a fairness issue. The pre-existing exclusion
only kicks in if there has been a lapse in coverage which encourages some people to not pay into the insurance pool until they
get sick. How is that fair to all the folks who paid their premiums even when they didn't avail themselves of healthcare services?
The proposed plan only asks those who haven't been paying into the system to pay more to make the system more fair to those who
paid all along. It doesn't deny people coverage for pre-existing conditions. They can also avoid the higher payments by making
sure their coverage doesn't lapse. Yes there are those who let their coverage lapse due to a financial crisis and we do need to
have programs to assist those who truly can't pay.
Bruce's comment is nonsense. The elites are not in the least vague and unnamed, plainly referring to the mainstream "news" media
and professoriate and GOP and corporate chiefs eager for cheap labor and GOP renegades (most of them warmongers) displeased by
being upstaged. He purports to want "real" solutions but is quick to condemn real limits on immigration and trade deficits and
racism in the guise of affirmative action and comparable ornaments of "social justice." Then, those who resent the liberal status
quo and don't share Bruce's values are child-like and paranoid.
Such arrogant and abusive views as his scarcely deserve refutation.
"The elites" aren't the problem, using the phrase "the elites" in political debate is the problem. What elites, exactly, do NOT
include Trump, the nepotistic New York billionaire whose father donated a building to get him into Wharton? "Elites" is the code
word used by right wing propagandists when they're trying to induce gullible or resentful citizens into acting against their own
interests. Anyone using the term is dishonest.
John D. King contends: " corporate chiefs eager for cheap labor " are among the elites voters shunned when voting for Pres. Trump.
Um corporate chief? Donald Trump. Eager for cheap labor? Donald Trump. Elite? Donald Trump? Sending his son to an elite school
that costs as much as the school that Obama sent his daughters to? Donald Trump. The only thing about Donald Trump that isn't
elite is his drunken boor (even though he doesn't drink) rhetoric and social skills which he uses to mask his elitism. If you
want no more than symbolic anti-elitism, Donald Trump is your man, and that's what Donald Trump supporters seem to want: the feeling
that they are superior to those whom they feel have put them down for years, instead of the skills enabling them to compete with
and perhaps surpass the people they deride as elite. Meanwhile the substance of Donald Trump's life has been elitism since he
was in business school about a half century ago. No reason to believe that will change, is there?
Bob Halvorsen wrote: "Nixon, Clinton, Wilson,Lincoln all won the popular vote. Why does this article suggest otherwise? The only
presidents with a minority of the popular vote are JQ Adams, Hayes, Harrison and Bush."
The author wrote "minority in the popular vote". To me that means LESS than 50% of the irrelevant national popular vote total.
The author is NOT saying that the presidents listed did not get the most votes in the irrelevant national popular vote, just that
they received less than 50% of the total.
Nixon 1968 – 43.4%
Clinton 1992 – 43%
Clinton 1996 – 49.2%
Wilson 1912 – 41.8%
Lincoln 1860 – 39.8%
Mueller's appointment sounds promising, all powerful politicians should be investigated if there's smoke, if not fire.
But this discussion of elites conjures up a counter-factual President Hillary, elected President with a Democratically-controlled
House, Senate, and solid 5-vote majority on the Supreme Court:
Given her campaign's numerous contacts with the Russian ambassador last year, along with an ongoing FBI investigation into
the Clinton Foundation, including but not limited to the Russian uranium agreement, State Dept. pressuring Kazakhstan to sign
off, after which donations were made, and Bill's speaking fees going up, other pay-to-play allegations involving some very nasty
governments in Africa and the Middle East
There would be no DOJ investigation, and no Special Counsel appointed. Even had she fired Comey herself on Day One. Impossible
to prove, but none of this would be happening. And I doubt the press at large would be clamoring for investigations, because there
wouldn't be any leaking going on.
If elites are good at anything, it's circumventing the rule of law by stonewalling, or burying, all investigations into wrongdoing.
The Obama DOJ excelled greatly at that sort of thing
For those of us who elected Donald Trump our President, Mr. Merry, your type of analysis is the most dangerous!
On the one hand, you point to the root of the problems: "The elites are the problem."
You correctly identify some of the main reasons why we elected Donald Trump: "[1] The hollowing out of the American working
class '[2] the greatest transfer of middle-class and elderly wealth to elite financial interests in the history of mankind' [3]
persistent wars with hardly any stated purpose and in many instances no end in sight-Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya [4]
11 million illegal immigrants in America, a rebuke to territorial sovereignty and to the rule of law upon which our nation was
founded."
But then – having admitted that "Removing Trump Won't Solve America's Crisis" – you spout the elites' main talking point in
their war to overturn the election results and to get rid of Donald Trump. You trumpet the elites' biggest lie. You say: "These
people [the elites] are right about one thing: Trump is supremely unfit for his White House job."
You are wrong, Mr. Merry. Totally wrong! President Trump is supremely qualified, and for these reasons:
• He was the only presidential candidate with the courage to stand up and identify the real problems that have been destroying
America and
• He was the only candidate with the courage to stand up to the elites and not to back down.
You say, Mr. Merry, that "three and a half more years of [Trump] raises the specter of more and more unnecessary tumult."
You're wrong again. The tumult is entirely necessary. In fact the tumult is inevitable because we Americans have finally elected
a President who is not afraid to speak to America's real problems. We have finally elected a President who has the guts to stand
up to the powerful elites who created these problems. We have finally elected a President who will fight for us – fight for us
and not back down!
The elites don't like what they see. They don't like Trump and they don't like us, because we put Trump in the White House.
Those of us who elected Donald Trump President because he fights for us are willing and able to fight for him!
"The elites figure that if they can just get rid of Trump, the country can return to what they consider normalcy-the status quo
ante, before the Trumpian challenge to their status as rulers of America."
I don't agree at all with this assessment of what the "elites" want or expect.
I believe that the strong following Bernie Sanders had–and still has– is indicative of the large numbers of Americans who find
the the "status quo" a questionable way to proceed.
This is not an endorsement of Bernie Sanders or a lamentation that he didn't get the nomination, it is just a clarification of
terms of "what the elite want" i.e. you're barking up the wrong tree.
Also not sure who you consider an elite; the whole article seems based on flimsy assumptions.
I am thinking more and more that our only hope is partition. If California wants to let half of Mexico in, go for it. Just
don't ask Idaho or Montana to send you water when you run out. If New England and New York want to be run by Wall Street capitalists
with SJW social views, go for it. Encourage your working class and middle class people to move to the South or the Midwest and
you can be just like Brazil! A nice place to vacation run by very rich people, but inhabited by mostly poor people. Another benefit
of partition would be that the Ununited States would not have the size or resources to be the world's policeman. Sounds like a
win for almost everybody but the neo-cons and the liberal interventionists.
To be honest, I don't really agree with the thesis of this article. The idea of elite as pejoratives seems out of place with the
usage in other contexts and suggests we need a clearer articulation of what exactly it is we are angry about. This being said,
regardless of where the problem lies, these so called "elites" have done an amazing job of turning the political machine to their
advantage. We elected them – we elected Trump. I guess the thing I come back to is we need to stop seeking evidence of why we
are right and start seeking evidence of why we are wrong – especially when it comes to candidates. I honestly don't know what
this would look like or if it would be possible – but I feel like we need to change the way we know and evaluate candidates. It
feels clear to me that the things we use as yardsticks fail us and warrants a re-imaging of how we determine fitness for public
positions.
The term "elite" might well mean nothing more than "educated and knowledgeable and experienced." We can see what happens when
a rich person seems uneducated in world history, uneducated in our form or government and shows no leadership qualities for running
a government. He is not an elite. He is a bozo. Michael Jordan was an "elite" basketball player. Do you want anything less in
the top ranks of government?
The term "elite" has a negative tone for those who do not understand how difficult issues are. As was said "I never knew how
complicated health care was." And this bozo was elected.
You can only blame the elites so much in a democracy. We elect presidents who appoint judges that say corporations have a constitutional
right to give unlimited campaign contributions to politicians who work for them. We often confuse supporting our troops for supporting
whatever war they're sent to. We want to cut taxes but we also want more warplanes. We spend more than any other country on healthcare
and complain about costs but we reject systems other countries use that are proven more efficient. We spend much time complaining
about elites but, with few exceptions, we keep electing them.
Kurt Gayle: "You correctly identify some of the main reasons why we elected Donald Trump: "
Perfectly valid reasons. Unfortunately, a perfectly wrong candidate and a perfectly wrong party to support. For most of the
issues cited (excepting immigration), you'd really want a Progressive. Trump and the GOP were never going to 'clean out the swamp'
(he opened the gates to the swamp), never going to try reversing the flow of wealth away from the poor & middle classes, never
de-escalate military conflict, and never going to wrest control from "financialists".
For that work, Trump is unqualified, slow to learn and has demonstrated a disquieting disinterest in actual details.
I agree with most of the objectives you mention, but Trump was never even close to being right person for the job. Better to
wash your hands of this Administration and move on.
" The term "The Deep State" being latest iteration, allowing anybody to speculate and project their own predjudices and paranoias
as to these dark and unnamed forces as well comfortably allowing us each to excuse our own failures as being secretly the fault
of some vague and unnamed "them"."
Deep State theory originated in the New Left as a response to the Kennedy assassination, for instance with the works of Carl
Oglesby and Peter Dale Scott, who was using the phrase "deep politics" decades ago not the only way in which the modern GOP base
has started to sound like left-wingers from the old days, but one of the more surprising.
I could pretty readily contradict some of the article's details, but I will skip that in order to agree with the basic premise.
Yes, the Trump and Bernie Sanders phenomena signify a dissatisfaction with elitism. However, solutions not only exist, but abound.
One in particular presents itself as not only advisable, but as a necessary condition: I will present only that one possibility
here.
As long as big money can buy elections, elitists will rule and the masses will get shafted. The only way to keep that from
happening in perpetuity is to establish a system of public funding for elections.
Absent that change, there really is no hope. We might not like it, and we might be forced to revisit principles we thought
inviolate, but it is a necessary condition of restoring government of, by, and for the people.
The problem with our elites is they do well when the rest of the country is going down the drain.
Most of the blame attaches to Republican elites but the Dems are not immune.
Since Reagan's election and the start of the libertarian takeover of the Republican party, America has shredded the social
contract we have with one another. No more we're-in-this-together. No more we-are-our-brother's-keeper.
Instead of decent middle class jobs with all the benefits, we've moved toward a gig economy where everyone is always hustling
for the next job/client. Which the New Yorker recently called the work-until-you-die economy.
Yes, if you're talented and lucky - the Yankees bringing you up from the minors, Paramount pictures distributing the movie
you financed with credit cards, your start-up getting acquired by Microsoft - it is easier than before to become successful.
But if you're a temporary receptionist at a law firm or driving for Uber . . .
We've wrecked all the countervailing powers that inhibited capital from overwhelming labor. The share of US income going to
capital (dividends, interest, capital gains) versus labor (paychecks) has soared.
Unions are dead. Infrastructure and other public spending is gone. NAFTA was supposed to come with support for workers whose
jobs went to Mexico but Bob Dole didn't believe in coddling losers.
For-profit education and soaring tuition with bankruptcy law no longer permitting discharge of student load debt. How are those
kids ever going to afford to buy the houses older people are counting on to finance their retirements?
Years without increases in the minimum wage. (Minimum wage is the reference wage for most other wages. Up the minimum wage
and everyone earning a paycheck will soon get a raise too.)
That's what libertarians did to the Republican party and then to America. We stopped caring about the well-being of our fellow
citizens because everything is a business deal between two self-interested parties. That's how you think on Wall Street and Silicon
Valley. (And in 2008-09, when Wall Street drove the economy off a cliff, ordinary Americans bailed out the bankers.)
But if you're an out-of-work steelworker addicted to opiates? Your bad choices are not my problem.
The poster child for elites who no longer care about ordinary Americans is Pete Peterson of Blackstone. Remember his dog and
pony show about federal govt's looming fiscal crisis? His solution was to gut entitlement spending that's probably keeping a lot
of people alive.
And here's the kicker: nothing about this fiscal crisis was so severe that a solution would require billionaires like Peterson
to tighten their belts.
Trump and Sanders picked up on the rage and despair that ordinary citizens feel for our elites and what they're doing to our
country. Hillary and the rest of the Republican candidates misread the mood.
Trump is now proposing the same old Republican agenda. Tax cuts for the rich to be financed by gutting Obamacare. More deregulation
and less public spending.
Yes, America is in crisis. Support for democratic norms is razor-thin and declining.
This country needs to recommit to a social contract. And a social safety net. We're all in this together. The rich can't do
well at the expense of everyone else if this country is to live up to our ideals.
Back in the 1950s, the head of General Motors told a congressional hearing that he always thought that what was good for GM
was good for America and what was good for America was good for GM. He got laughed at. But he was right. If he's selling cars,
it means people are feeling good about their prospects.
I'm waiting for a presidential candidate who promises that the rich are going to bear the biggest share of the burden when
Americans roll up our sleeves to fix our country. He'll win in a landslide.
If wealth equals power then the only way you are going to limit the power of the elites is by massive campaign reform that would
curtail the influence the wealth of the elites currently has over the political process. Neither Republicans or Democrats have
shown the slightest interest in meaningful campaign reform for the simple reason that it is easier fund a campaign with millions
from the elites who donate directly to a campaign and indirectly through a PAC. Without meaningful campaign reform the US will
slowly but surely slip from being a democracy to an oligarchy run by the elites for the benefit of the elites. The crisis in the
US is that it seems most citizens seem willing to accept that because of their wealth the elites are more likely to know how to
govern. Sadly these citizens are having to learn that being a wealthy elite like Trump does not automatically mean that he knows
how to govern.
As a moderate lifelong Republican, I was a NeverTrumper through the primaries where my guy (Rubio) did well in my state, winning
the contest. Only after Trump prevailed did I go off for a few hours on a long walk to contemplate what this meant for me, my
party and my nation. I concluded that Trump was a necessary evil if we were serious about giving the 100,000,000 working men and
women in this country a fair shake at the American Dream. Someone had to be ballsy enough to reconstruct the Federal Bureacracy
and anyone less than a guy like Trump would wilt in the heat generated by the left leaning media and left leaning Federal Bureaucracy.
Let's face it. Had HRC won absolutely nothing would have changed except our acceptance of corruption in our body politic. I
still have hope that the Federal Government can be right-sized and the power redistributed to the United States of America not
DC.
Therein lies the fight of our time. We can either concede the fight and let DC make all the decisions (including whether to
fix the pot holes on my local streets)to we can ask what each citizen can do for his or her country. It's a binary choice really.
You either believe that all the power should reside with the Feds and the dictates and mandates that go with power being held
1000 miles away .or you're in favor of 95% of the decisions that impact you locally and in your state.
If you need to find out where someone sits on this issue, ask them 2 simple questions.
1) Who is Joe Biden?
2) Name just 2 people from all of the following: Who's your Mayor? City Council? County Commission? School Board? State Senator?
State Rep? Lt. Governor? School Board?
The Trump era will be cathartic or emetic. Government operations will be so confused and erratic that people will start to think
that maybe elite rule wasn't so bad and will look forward to "the grown-ups" taking over again. Of course, every new administration
now claims to be "the grown-ups" reasserting themselves - that's come to be a given - but those pretensions will be taken more
seriously when the next administration takes over.
So are the elites to blame? Well, in a way. They have their agenda, and it's not always shared by ordinary Americans. But ordinary
Americans don't agree with each other all that often, and depending on what the issue is, some parts of the general public are
closer to the governing elites than they are to other parts of the public. It could be that elites manage to get enough support
from non-elite voters to stay in office.
But also, competence is a factor. There are a lot of conspiracy theories about elites, but much of the energy of governing
elites may go into being just well-informed enough to do a half-way credible job of staying on top of events, rather than into
deep-laid plans to thwart popular wishes.
"All this contributed significantly to the hollowing out of the American working class-once the central foundation of the country's
economic muscle and political stability. Now these are the forgotten Americans, deplorable to Hillary Clinton and her elite followers,
left without jobs and increasingly bereft of purpose and hope."
Nice try.
Three things led to the "hollowing out" of the American working class, and they have nothing to do with ephemeral vaporings
about "divorced from the traditional American passion for building things, innovating, and taking risks."
1. Automation – and there's just no way around that – the semi-skilled and some skilled jobs giving lower-educated workers
a strong middle class life are gone.
2. "Reagan Democrats" who've been voting staunchly Republican and stood by watching and nodding while conservatives have eviscerated
and vilified union jobs that also supported a middle class lifestyle (see, e.g., "right-to-work" states).
3. Globalization (abetted by both parties) that shipped these jobs overseas – although there's no clear solution to this in
an emergent 21st-century global economy.
Look, I grew up outside of Detroit and knew families and friends who didn't go to college, but went to work on the line and
could afford a middle class life. For the reasons listed above, those days are gone forever.
Who are these "elites"? This is the central question.
They seem to be: [1] highly educated [2] in private colleges and universities [3] mainly in the Northeast [4] and as adults
[5] employed primarily in professional occupations [6] geographically concentrated in the Boston-Washington corridor, especially
in NYC and DC.
Using that definition, the author of this post is an elite. But I bet he claims he is not.
The thing is, Mr. Merry is a journalist. I'm hearing a lot about how dastardly THEY are from Trump supporters.
As long as big money can buy elections, elitists will rule and the masses will get shafted. The only way to keep that from
happening in perpetuity is to establish a system of public funding for elections.
I agree wholeheartedly. Does anyone who is not rich think that money = speech? What other democracy has an election funding
system as bizarre as ours?
Trump's "populism" is based on the same old demagogue's standbys: xenophobia, scapegoating, racism, anti-intellectualism, economic
anxiety, nationalism, and a yearning for an idealized past that never existed. The idea of Trump as some shirt-sleeved populist
warrior who is going to correct the inequities of wealth distribution in the U.S. is too laughable to bother with. I would refer
anyone to the two health care bills he has championed so far, which were poorly disguised attempts to enrich the wealthy even
further, while robbing tens of millions of their ability to afford health insurance.
Sorry, but the problem is not the "elite" but the "elitists": them that's curried favor-always monetary-w/ other elitists in exchange
for donations at election time. With Clinton & Trump, we had two elitists that thought they deserved the pres'y & were propelled
by the elitists running the campaigns & parties that hoped to gain from either of those two in the W.H.
Meanwhile, the press worked feverishly to turn Clinton & Trump into viable candidates-w/ ancient, useless labels like "liberal,"
progressive"; "anti-establishment," "populist"-& convinced voters that they were the "best men" for the job.
So I ended up voting for our state's Repo. gov.; who in turn voted for his own father, an 88-yr-old former congressman. That
was effect elitists had on some of us.
April 25, 2017 Ex-spy admits anti-Trump dossier unverified, blames Buzzfeed for publishing
In a court filing, Mr. Steele also says his accusations against the president and his aides about a supposed Russian hacking
conspiracy were never supposed to be made public, much less posted in full on a website for the world to see on Jan. 10. He defends
himself by saying he was betrayed by his client and that he followed proper internal channels by giving the dossier to Sen. John
McCain, Arizona Republican, to alert the U.S. government.
"Nixon, Clinton, Wilson,Lincoln all won the popular vote. Why does this article suggest otherwise?"
Because the author is letting his partisanship relive him of his good sense. Or he is as numerically challenged as his president,
who knows?
These people won PLURALITIES of the popular vote. So did Hillary Clinton. They all received the most votes in an election with
three or more candidates but received less votes than the total that voted for some one else. Everyone on the planet besides third-world
dictators and Republicans generally describe this phenomenon as "winning an election".
A plurality is very different from getting a minority of the vote like Trump did. I am sure that Merry knows this. If you don't
believe me, go ask the folks who voted Green and Libertarian who they would have voted for as a second choice if they were forced
to
And BTW, a lot of those immigrants (to whom I do not object) are here because of America's fascination with foreign wars and
intrusions. Think "boat people," for example, or Iranian refugees or Cuban, etc., etc. Our stupidity produces moral obligations.
Contra the demos-fueled hissy-fit over "Elites", I have no problem with Elites running the world. For one thing, they (Elites)
always have run the world, and that isn't going to change, except cosmetically.
Nor do I have a problem with them reasonably rewarding themselves for their efforts.
Experiments with direct participatory democracy have usually ended in the sort of lynch-mobbing which murdered Socrates.
I have neither time nor interest in attending to every pettyfrogging detail of running a village government, let alone one
of 300 million souls. Even with the Internet, "direct democracy" ends up being run by a few (reference Athens, if any doubt).
The current outrage-aholic fixation over "elites" is not because they are Elites, but because they are INCOMPETENT Elites.
It is said the Brits lost the Empire because they forgot how to govern, and now, it is our turn.
Eric Hoffer told us how Elites fall back in 1950 (The True Believer), but we were so fat and happy we ignored what he said.
Besides, he was a longshoreman, with no credentials. What did he know?
My preference is for Them to fix Their problem, and to get back running affairs properly.
Then I can focus on playing with my grandkids, flirting with my wife, and drinking beer in late afternoon with Old Blue at
my feet.
Well, he talks and tweets a lot. But NAFTA is still in force (he learned of downsides of ash canning it), Iran sanctions have
not been increased (maybe he thought of jobs related to jet sales important), he is talking with Russia (as opposed to talking
about it), and has let all know about his aversion to gassing civilians.
Let us continue to observe what he does, not what he tweets. I plan to come back in late July and take a look, 100 days just
is too short to come to a decision.
So true. Another of the few sane voices, with intellectual heft to match that sobriety. Wish Rod Dreher would read and be convinced
by your salient analysis, even if against his will. I think too many conservatives genuflect to established hierarchy, whatever
its faults, out of a character that is disposed to distrust change, even needed change. I myself do not buy into the reasoning,
"better the devil we know." I really think only the relatively well off can sustain such a view, whether in Manhattan or connected
to it via the internet in Baton Rouge. The rest of us are too desperate.
The elites truly are the problem. Just like those who blame Russia, they won't take ownership. They will need one heckuva Homeland
Security and clampdown on the population they view as intolerable, once they have their coup against democracy. It is certain
to be a pyrrhic victory though, as no elites in history ever gave up their power willingly or peacefully, yet in every case they
were forcibly removed in paroxysms of violence by angry mobs of citizens who lost faith in a rigged system that would not allow
needed peaceful change.
So Trump lacks all the qualities and attributes of a proper President. What exactly are those qualities beyond getting elected?
Who are the great examples Trump should imitate? Let's see, the community organizer? The son of a Bush? The man from Hope? Poppy
Bush? I am one who admired Reagan but he did run up the debt. The quality these people share is a ludicrous vanity. Can't understand
the notion that Trump is far below the rest of these flawed human beings. He seems to be just another one. What the heck, he might
turn out to be effective. It is way too early to know.
Very true. The elites want to turf Trump because he is jeopardising a model that sustains their salaries and prestige, yet of
course they can still not offer an alternative to what was there before.
The elites can't look outside the system, to something beyond the system, because that is, by definition, something they can't
control or make false promises about. The deeper problem is they are unwilling to even have this conversation, for fear it would
lead to a logical conclusion about the inadequacies of power.
What a bore and a canard; Trump_vs_deep_state has shown itself in capable of competent and capable public policy; quick on the trigger to
tear everything down but in coherent and undisciplined to build anything of consequence to replace it. I'll take the elites any
day over nihilism and petulance. Trump is the mirror image of his voters and it gives me great satisfaction to see their political
fortunes grind to dust Over their own incompetence.
Meh. People keep screaming about a "crisis" but aren't able to actually point to one. The economy is doing well. Crime is at historic
lows. There are so few actual problems that people are taking to manufacturing them (e.g. opioids).
I think the real issue here is that the politically-powerful Baby Boom is approaching the final years of its narcissistic,
navel-gazing existence, and assumes the entire world disappears when they do.
This article does a good job stitching together much of the Elites' sins. It is apparent to me that the American government can't
be reformed from within by electing reform candidates. If reform is possible, it can't come from the Northeast and West Coast.
It will never come from a Harvard, or any other Ivy League school, graduate. It won't come from a Boston Catholic person or New
York Jewish-American. It won't come from a Baby Boomer who wishes to continue to prop up the social changes they ushered in the
60s and 70s. I would expect actual reform to come from a young person in the American Heartland, which the bi-coastal elites deride
as "Flyover Country." Wasn't it the "Rust Belt" who showed us the way in the 2016 election? And if and when reform (i.e. the non-violent
neutering of the Elites' power abuses) comes, the reformers had better be prepared with a total package and not just one candidate.
It may be a one-time opportunity, and must be executed with the utmost strategy and determination.
But We Trump supporters are quite happy with his actions so far. We know the press is rigged against him. It is distressing to
see the elitist Republicans attack him too though. You are right about the divide, but this may be our last best hope of taking
the government back
if President Donald J Trump IS supremely unfit to hold the office, does that not logically (in the eyes of the author)not make
the xx million American people who voted for him supremely unfit to vote? Startling hubris if you ask me.
Basically agree with the author;s position but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, stop calling elitists, elites. They are not "superior to
the rest in terms of ability or qualities" in fact, they are frequently inferior.
When Sen. Schumer announced, on MSNBC, that a president going against the CIA is 'stupid' because 'they have six ways from Sunday
of getting back at you,' doesn't that scream 'crisis' from the rooftops? Since when does America, allegedly a democratic republic,
assume elected presidents are the subordinates of the CIA? Well, de facto, probably for many years, but to actually openly approve
of it?
But there was no even discussion of his statement! It set off no alarm bells, no demands for reigning in the CIA ('the intelligence
"community"'). Why not? Presumably because the short-term interests of too many elites aligned in this case with that of the deep
state. The habit of 'whatever works for me, for the moment' won out, once again, further degrading the political culture right
at its institutional heart.
And also because Schumer is right. It isn't smart to criticize the CIA It wouldn't be good for your career, you know what
I mean? ('What are ya, a Russian commie or something?').
Merry is absolutely right. Removing Trump does nothing. It does less than nothing. It drives the disease even further into
the body politic. The only solution is honesty and courage. Can we muster it?
So tell me, if the down trodden Working class is so distraught by the elites putting them down, why do they celebrate when the
GOP House voted to take away their healthcare by removing rules on pre-existing conditions.
Say what you will about Obama and his
looking down on the people", but take him on his actions and he has done more to help the lower class through legislation and
executive orders than any other president in the past 30 years.
But wait, he didn't do anything about immigration. So therefore ignore all the laws, ignore the rules changed, just focus on
the revamped Know Nothings afraid of 3% of the population.
Principled opposition to President Trump's character is limited to this magazine and a tiny handful of like minded pundits and
politicians.
If Trump had run on Hillary Clinton's platform, and if he were ruling in accordance with that platform, waging a war for regime
change in Syria, signing TPP or some equivalent, refusing to enforce the immigration laws, granting amnesty to illegal immigrants,
and greatly increasing the number of legal immigrants, the Democrats and neocons would be praising him to the skies and supporting
him to the hilt.
If, on the other hand, someone other than Trump, Pat Buchanan for instance, had been elected on Trump's platform, the Democrats
and neocons would be attacking him with all the hysterical venom they are now hurling at Trump (remember the brief deranged hysteria
that followed Buchanan's 1996 primary win in New Hampshire?) – and I suspect some of those who pass for principled critics of
Trump's character would be caught up in this hypothetical anti-Buchanan hysteria, because of their sheer weak-willed yearning
for social acceptance.
If you want to really be serious about "fitness to lead", it has been a very long time since the USA has had a president who was
fit to lead.
The fact is, though, that the first rumblings of "impeachment" started before the Electoral College even met, back while Democrats
were still hoping to nullify what happened on election night through the Electoral College.
The whole Russian angle is simply a pretext. No one is saying that Russia hacked into the voting machines and added or subtracted
votes; at most they are accused of having done the kind of thing investigative journalists are praised for having done. When,
in the midst of the American election, British parliamentarians discussed banning Trump from the UK, **THAT** was much more serious
and overt tampering with our election, yet no one cares about that, because the UK is the land of Peter Pan and Mary Poppins,
whereas Russia is the bogeyman. Thus we see headlines about Russian jets "buzzing" the coast of Alaska, only to read further down
that by "buzzing" we mean they were 20+ miles into international airspace. Apparently it's an outrage that they should come within
a thousand miles of American airspace. American spy planes in the Black Sea are a different story: after all, they remained in
international air space the whole time!
It is dangerous to cast Russia unnecessarily in the role of villain, but it is even more dangerous to engineer even the softest
of coups. Once that is done, there is no going back. Very likely there would be widespread protests, many of them violent, and
a large portion of the public would see the de facto government as not merely corrupt and foolish, but completely invalid. The
"authorities" would probably be able to crush dissent, but only by going full-on Stalin. What happens after that, who knows, but
this story would not have any happy ending.
As usual, Merry's insights are useful and informed.However, Clinton, warts and all, would have more likely eased the pain of many
Americans. Her campaign focused too much on aggrieved minorities and not enough on the pain shared by all but her policies would
have more likely checked the manic redistribution of wealth from middle class to elite, ended the health care impasse that cruelly
toys with people, made education more accessible and enhanced investments in science and technology that could create jobs in
the coming years. With regard to immigration, it is true that adding so many immigrants to the population at a time when decent-paying
jobs were being eliminated through technology created a bad optic but the ban or removal of millions of immigrants would not really
restore middle class stability. Elites in both parties have made mistakes and been entirely too attentive to those who give the
most money but let's not legitimize Trump's mixture of exploiting anger with false promises and pushing policies that will make
the plight of working people even more desperate. Clinton might not have shaken up an elitist system she helped create but she
would not have shaken our democratic institutions and attacked an already fragile polity the way Trump has and will continue to
do for another 3 and half years. Like it or not, elites and disenfranchised will eventually have to work together and Trump has
set back this inevitable and urgent collaboration years, if not forever.
Nixon, Clinton, Wilson,Lincoln all won the popular vote. Why does this article suggest otherwise? The only presidents with a minority
of the popular vote are JQ Adams, Hayes, Harrison and Bush.
A self-described "publishing executive" who writes magazine/blog articles for a living is a member of the "elite"! Condemned
out of his own mouth. By his own vanity, perhaps.
And the case is hardly made by deliberately misstating facts.
65 million people voted for Hillary Clinton for President. Is that 65 million "elites," or 65 million "dupes" too stupid to
"see through her"? 65 million irresponsible citizens? Are these 65 million the real "deplorables"?
I don't expect to see any mea culpa statements from the numerous conservative writers and talking heads who made excuses
for Trump's selection as candidate prior to the election. Many of those excuses were promulgated through TAC. But a look in the
mirror, and a conversation with that "still, small voice" could be therapeutic for many of you.
Not Hillary Clinton, not the Democratic Party, not the 65 million "deplorables," were responsible for conservatives' decision
to go with a manifestly unsuitable candidate. Once again, those declaiming most loudly about "personal responsibility" - lack
it.
Good piece. Clearly the many leakers aren't concerned about national security consequences. This is only about bringing down Trump.
After all, the journalist establishment extolled Snowden for leaking tons of classified information. Trump might help himself
by being a little more "political," and learning to fight the right battles.
I hope your article gains a large readership that includes the nevertrump cadre. It is probably a pipe dream to hope they would
wake up and become aware of how they and their preference for Hillary look to many of the 63 million people who voted for Trump.
They knew he was inexperienced, coarse, and a mixed bag. They also know he's only been in office for 4 months and the obstruction,
malicious leaks, and malignant hatred of Trump began long before he took office.
Too many in the nevertrump cadre come off as self-righteous, smug Pharisees for whom conservatism has become a religion. For
some reason, they think their own character, knowledge, and judgement is impeccable with no room for correction by 63 million
voters. The vox populi needs the elites to override them. Such hubris. We are well aware that they would rather have had a Hillary
presidency. Are they any more mature than the Left in dealing with defeat? Apparently not.
Glenn Reynolds (professor of law) sums up the situation this way: "The childish response of Democrats - and 'NeverTrump' Republicans
- to the 2016 election has done more damage to American politics and institutions than any foreign meddling could do." It would
behoove the nevertrumpers to consider what they are sowing and reaping. Has their hatred of Trump and smug self-righteousness
made them deaf, dumb, and blind?
I think Victor Davis Hanson's article (see link below) has articulated the situation best and is best read as a whole instead
of excerpted. The National Review's readership fell greatly prior to the election because of the nevertrumpers pomposity, but
not the readership of VDH's articles at the NRO. Perhaps instead of silently disagreeing, the vox populi need to intervene and
impeach the nevertrumpers.
You elected a chump over all the obvious reasons not to, and he iS going to go before the end of the summer, either for the reasons
already in.front of us or for the new ones he will give us in.the next 60 days. Get your stupid saves out of the way now and allow
the republic to recover.
Btw the "you elected" phrase above is predicated on.the idea that the chump really won.the election, Cuz it's quite clear he
may not have.
The problem is not the elite, but a POTUS who is ignorant and arrogant,who is unqualified and inept and who is a man-child trying
to be a leader. He makes his own issues by opening his mouth and saying stupid things and insisting they are true, and doing stupid
things and insisting they are good. It is obvious he has no plan for anything and doesn't understand much of what is going on
around him. He never talks about anything of substance; on health care, Price had to deal with details, and with the tax plan,
it was Cohn who revealed that amazing one page initiative. When he does talk, he stupidly gives intel to our enemies. Trump is
an idiot with a pen and that is the problem and it is a problem for this country.
Excellent article. Can it be possible that the meritocratic oligarchy which runs this country still doesn't "get it?" Do they
really believe that getting rid of Trump solves the problem? Can it be possible that they still can't see that absent proof of
actual malfeasance, driving Trump out of office could make things even worse, as if things aren't bad already.
As the days and weeks go by it is becoming increasingly clear that the answer is–yes.
This is, far and away, the best summary of our current situation I have read anywhere. Outstanding!
One area around immigration could, however, be improved to truly capture why there is so much anger at the elites. On immigration,
the article states: "Leave aside for purposes of discussion the debate on the merits of the issue-whether mass immigration is
good for America or whether it reaches a point of economic diminishing returns and threatens to erode America's underlying culture.
Whatever the merits on either side of that debate, mass immigration, accepted and even fostered by the nation's elites, has driven
a powerful wedge through America. "
While true, this still misses the main point. The point is that the nation has existing laws to control immigration. Because
the elites could not change the law through the democratic process, they opted instead to just ignore the laws, with absolutely
no consequences except for those who live in the communities impacted.
In this context, the significance of the Clinton email scandal was magnified as it represented, again, the elites clearly violating
the law with no consequences.
The lawlessness aspect is a critical point that needs to be emphasized. The elite backlash is not just about policy disagreements,
its about a class of people (elites) violating/ignoring the law for their own benefit and at the expense of others. The very fact
that this could happen exposes how broken the system really is.
And btw.. Tho the author here is a smart and good writer, this whole "elites" thing is a stupid argument.I agree that we democrats
were too cowardly to nominate Bernie, whose whole message and absolute unlikelihood was most aligned with the spirit of the times.
As a party we thought small and thus became small. But Hillary was so vastly superior to any of the republican candidates that
the problem has nothing to do with right wing elites and everything to do with that large swath of the right wing which simply
is deplorable. They are deplorable and they deserve to know that the nation as a whole knows them to.be such. There wzz a time
when they knew their place– way down a hole with the boot of the nation s conscience firmly on.the top of their head. The right
let them emerge from.that hole during the advent of the tea party Cuz it liked the fact that those losers were giving their movement
breadth and energy.
But don't think for a minute that those millions of prejudiced, disgusting people have been redeemed by the chumps supposed
victory, they haven't. Maybe Hillary shouldn't have called them.such, idk, but the fact of their existence being a cancer in.the
republic is as correct today as it was 400 years ago and in.every generation.to.follow.
With the absolute control the elites have upon the military industrial complex, the traditional media outlets, the bureaucratic
"three-letter" departments of governance, as well as the powerful influence over both the judicial and legislative branches of
the governmnet, it seems impossible to me that such a group could be thrown off by its citizenry by violent uprising or otherwise.
Just watch some of the video of Chaffets lead intelligence committee trying to access information regarding the Clinton servers
and you will begin to see the incredible scope of the problem we face in America and the world today. Just as it was God that
delivered a rag-tag band of America patriots from the hands of elite-based tyranny at the founding of our country, it will take
an act of God to remove the chains and shackles of the Deep State from off the necks of the American people. Unfortunately a growing
number of Americans are turning their back on the only real chance of deliverance we have – He who delivered the Hebrews from
the Egyptian elites can delver us also.
In the day when we received our news of national and international goings on via newspapers, there was a space for reflection
and contemplation, and even some semblance of reasoned debate.
That ship has sailed, never to return and we are in the day of "Amusing Ourselves to Death"
It used to take some time and effort to form a proper mob.
What defines this shadowy type – "elite?" Educated? Financially well off? Aren't you an elite? Or does it only apply to liberals
and Democrats? How would you define yourself?
Apologies for a poorly written comment. The vox populi is a reference to a Douthat tweet: "7. But what, in the end, are elites
for? What justifies their existence? Some sort of wisdom that the vox populi can lack." Douthat's article, his tweet storm, and
the lack of strong repudiation from the nevertrump cadre pretty much ended my patience with all of them. It has become almost
impossible to tell the difference between the hysterical Left and the outraged nevertrump cadre. This last week has been such
a delightful display of how the media, establishment elites, and nevertrumpers feel about those 63 million unredeemable deplorable
Americans who voted for Trump. Thank you for allowing me to comment.
I agree with this. I voted for Trump and told my wife several times before voting, "I don't think Trump will be a good president.
I'm voting for him to send a "f- you" to the elites who run this country.
When I say elites, I don't mean only the high and mighty. In my hometown, where I have lived all my life, our city council
has handed millions of tax dollars to the region's largest car dealer to expand yet again. They pledged $1 million to lure a Hobby
Lobby even though it is in direct competition with a Michael's store that has been here for years. They bought property for $1
million, knocked down the building on it, prepared the site for development, then "sold" it to a developer for $10.
That kind of favoritism has been running wild in my little town - a little town controlled entirely by people who call themselves
Republicans.
"When a man as uncouth and reckless as Trump becomes president by running against the nation's elites, it's a strong signal that
the elites are the problem."
The problem is the industrialized disinformation machine that continues to spew hatred and lies. One side thinks it's the liberal
media, and the other side thinks it's RW talk radio and Fox News. It's easy to figure out which one is the real problem. There
are facts and there are internet rumors that are passed off as facts. Both can't be true. And even in the face of clear evidence,
primarily one side continues to believe the rumors and lies. Can't argue with delusion.
This article makes some good points. Trump was elected fair and square and the case against him is straight out of fantasy land.
BUT then there is the snotty rhetoric that Trump is "uncouth," the same sort of rhetoric employed by the elite New York Times.
Frankly I do not care about Trump's table manners. I do care that he has sought detente 2.0 with Russia and has killed off the
TPP, not only a lousy trade deal but also the economic limb of Hillary's military/economic assault (aka pivot) to China.
So I dismiss charges that Trump is "unfit" or "lacks nearly all the characteristics or attributes that a president should have.".
And I have little confidence in a writer who looks at things in such an arrogant way. That he is the new editor of The American
Conservative is enough to make me reconsider the contributions I make to this journal. Pat Buchanan and Bill Kauffman, yes. Merry?
I wonder.
I don't think the abundance of evidence that members of the Trump team met with Russian officials during the campaign can be called
"minor infractions against the president". These are certainly serious allegations. It was clear early in the Trump presidency
that he was not surrounding himself with people capable of carrying out the vision he articulated in his campaign for restoring
America's middle class. He made many picks from the ranks of the elites including his Vice President and Attorney General. His
selection seemed to favor loyalty rather than building a team that could make the changes he campaigned on. His Treasury pick
is straight from Wall Street and his foreign policy team is praised by the elites. Donald Trump is not the agent for change. You
can't differentiate him from the elites because he surrounded himself with them.
What the elites don't understand is that there are lot more of us than of them. If they try to take the election away from the
people who support President Trump. They will have a war on their hands and not a war of words.
Written by a Never-Trump, this article is absolute BS concerning the fact that President Trump is "unfit" for the office of the
presidency. The article is, however, absolutely correct about the elites who have thrown their middle finger in the face of WE
THE PEOPLE of the CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC of the USA, but WE THE PEOPLE elected President Trump to drain the swamp and he will.
The true enemy of the USA is the elected class in D.C. and their cronies like Buffet, Steyer, Gates and the Soros Democrat Marxist
Party and the utter traitorous actions by Obama. President Trump has to rid us of all Obamaites and has to slam the RINO traitors
to the ground. President Trump is perfectly fit to be president and certainly more so than some community organizer who hates
the USA and works to destroy her. Merry's hatred of President trump is boundless and shows him to be among the elites of the "media,"
a terrible curse on the USA. Thank God for President Trump and for FLOTUS Melanie Trump who has returned dignity, grace, class,
and beauty to the White House after eight years of hate-filled, resentful, nasty, and cloddish behavior by Michelle Obama who
disrespected the American people, spending millions of American posterity hard-earned money on herself and her family. Where was
your article about the corruption of Obama and his breaking of our laws and his utter and disgusting spitting on his oath to our
Constitution, Merry?
I am still confused how a billionaire was NOT considered 'elite' to the working class.. Does this not baffle anyone? OK, I get
that America on both sides, left and right, is sick of getting screwed over by the elites. But Trump is no friend to the working
man. He is only helping all his billionaire elite friends and creating practices that will hurt the working class who elected
him, whether via healthcare reform or promising coal miners they can have their jobs back, when everyone knows that sector is
dying. The rest of the world is getting ahead of us, in technology, infrastructure, renewable energy sources, etc. The divide
between conservatives and liberals has become so ridiculous that no one cares about making the US a better place. Trump's laughable
campaign slogan worked miracles in convincing voters, but I think everyone has sobered up to the dangers that Trump poses in so
many ways. We might be tired of politicians in Washington, but if most of us are honest, this 'shake-up' is going to do a lot
of damage. Maybe it's what we need in the long run to be able to change things, but all the laws and deregulation have only made
the elite stronger. It makes companies bigger, and the working man poorly treated and expendable.
Please help me understand. What remedies are you recommending? The reason I ask is because these accusations against a class of
people, the elites, rather than against specific wrongful acts smack of Mao and the Cultural Revolution to me. I sense that some
wish to see professors and newspaper editors working in fields with hand tools. I may have misread this posting, but Fran Macadam's
comments sound like a call for at least a sharp turn to me.
I'm not buying the "it's the elites" problem. An 'elite', more often than not, is someone who is using power in a way we don't
like, along with that person's clique. This is akin to using the term, 'activist judges'.
Ultimately, a democracy always gets the leaders it deserves. Once in a great while, it gets better leaders than it deserves.
There will always be facilitators of our worst instincts but ultimately, people have a choice. If a democracy is dysfunctional,
it's not because some 'elites' or 'deep state' have taken over everything. It's because the voters kept electing idiots and representatives
that didn't truly represent their interests.
Regarding the history of immigration in the United States, the Census Bureau says that the post-1850 peak was in 1890 when 14.8%
of residents were foreign born, followed closely by 1910 when 14.7% were foreign born.
Pew estimates that the US will break these records around 2025. Soon we'll have to go back to the mid-1700s to find a period
in American history with a level of immigration we will be experiencing in the near future.
-Vince Hill said: "What the elites don't understand is that there are lot more of us than of them. If they try to take the election
away from the people who support President Trump. They will have a war on their hands and not a war of words."
Those masses are not relevant to those "Elites" and are cannon fodder. The term "Deplorables" says it all. The masses are not
worthy of any consideration. Those "Deplorables" are an obstacle to be eliminated for the greater good. You don't need shadow
govt conspiracies to see this kind of stuff anymore. The blatant lies and manipulations from DC and the media originating from
Dems and Repubs is there for all to see. The 2016 election cycle was a wake-up call. Neither candidate was fit to be a President.
Both are crooked. Yet, the majority of sheep on both sides continue toward their slaughter. Trump may yet get us blown to bits,
but I no longer care about saving the status quo. The majority of people have spoken in this this country and we have been broken
for many Presidencies. The future of this nation, as is, is ugly, if one exists at all.
Mr. Trump is not the issue. And from what I have come to understand about Washington language from top to bottom, his language
isn't the issue either, in my view.
Whether he is unfit cannot even be addressed though I suspect he is, if one examines the long history of the office. I don't
have any doubt that Mr Trump is an effective admin as head of state. As a non-politician, there may be some issues. And his policy
and social positions may not square with my own. But that alone would not make him unfit. His temperament would not take unfit
either. But having to sift through the emotional tantrums of so many in leadership, influence and power to make that assessment
is a very tough slog.
Now we have a secret source that indicates a Mr. Trump did something or other in pressing for an end of needless investigations,
as any CEO might, if said investigations were hindering the effectiveness of his tenure. And clearly its a disruptive fire. The
seed of which were laid immediately as it became clear that Mr Trump, now Pres Trump was a contender. There was talk of impeachment
before the election, and while I appreciated the "heads up", it was disappointing that the agenda for the net four years was to
impeachment a man even before he took office.
I once said that Mr Trump was be given the royal "black treatment" and I stand by those comments. Everything he does, says,
is a minefield. There are no mines, but there are explosions from multiple corners. I have to say, even some of the authors on
TAC are are straining credulity, credibility with their "end of the world", "doom and gloom" commentary. The minefield, once again
has not evidence, but rather, so and so said thus. There's nothing documented that Pres Trump has done anything to hinder anything
about Russia or Gen Flynn. This type of scrutiny makes it impossible to do one's job.
I have been in communication for a long long time. And while my life is but a wreck at the moment. I have had some successes
in competitive speech, and coaching. When I did my master's degree, I was unfit for teaching as a grad assistant. Not because
of a lack of skill, knowledge or expertise, but because by every measure I had. What made the post a total disaster was the scrutiny
as if I I had never done anything of the kind. If you have been teaching a while, there are things you know that a grad just have
a clue about. My adviser attempted to fit my roundness into a nonexistent square peg. The entire graduate program was a disaster
and a disaster in every way. They simply had no clue how to manage someone who had long past graduate level knowledge or experience.
And much to failure, I did, wouldn't, couldn't communicate that fact, though given the internal politics of the place, I doubt
it would have mattered. The behaviors were at best dysfunctional at worst criminal. If I wasn't already highly suspicious, by
the time I left, I was certainly distrustful. I was asked if I wanted to pursue legal redress - the idea of that mess has always
been a route to be avoided, save for defense. "People are people, and sometimes they just do dumb stuff," was my attitude. I was
probably incorrect, dumb, innocent or malicious it was deeply beyond the pail.
Pres. Trump has entered an arena in which he has no respite from the attack or question of every aspect of his being and on
every matter. While, a Pres should expect scrutiny, what he has been subjected is over Everest unreasonable and reasoned. The
constant hyperbolic crisis mongering from people who supposedly have a better temperament, judiciousness, and higher moral code
is a tad bit "funny".
No. Humorous.
What is in play and of deep concern are the repeated manufactured crisis to disrupt his tenure Crisis mongering that began
shortly after 9/11 and has progressed with increasing speed, oddly enough when actual crisis have subsided. Aside form the economy,
the country faces no "real" threat beyond securing the border.
Given our rather carelessness action in the region of the middle east, we had better obey the security protocols prior to 9/11
any of which would have prevented the attack or severely diminished its success. Checking expired passports would have been helpful
– devastating to the attackers.
In Compton, Detroit, NYC, Tallahassee, Birmingham, there are hard working folks trying to figure out how they are going to
compete against the immigrant who's labor is cheaper, who doesn't contribute to the community as much as they draw. They are trying
to figure out how to be fair to their issues, without starving their own. They are doing everything possible to avoid being "deplorable"
and always have. And yet the representatives of their locals are about dealing with muckraking needlessly.
-----
"Sad!"
Boy. it's not a good sign when you are sad. Stay fiesty!
Those in opposition made it clear where they stood before the election. And Mr. Trump has just started to climb this long hill.
There's no reason for the war to turn violent, we are some distance from that turn and even the suggestion is hard to hear.
It suggests a state of threat that need not be aired. In many ways, this situation is airing out the problem, for those brave
enough to acknowledge it.
Though avoiding confrontation of any kind hasn't aided me much, I admit.
"... what astonished me was how quickly the media interpreted its use in the hearings to mean that the conversations and emails that apparently were recorded or intercepted involving Trump associates and assorted Russians as "sensitive contacts" meant that they were necessarily inappropriate, dangerous, or even illegal. ..."
"... The Post is unfortunately also providing ISIS with more information than it "needs to know" to make its story more dramatic, further compromising the source. ..."
"... McMaster described the report as "false" and informed the Post that "The president and the foreign minister reviewed common threats from terrorist organizations to include threats to aviation. At no time were any intelligence sources or methods discussed and no military operations were disclosed that were not already known publicly." Tillerson commented that "the nature of specific threats were (sic) discussed, but they did not discuss sources, methods, or military operations." ..."
"... The media will no doubt be seeking to magnify the potential damage done while the White House goes into damage control mode. ..."
"... In this case, the intelligence shared with Lavrov appears to be related to specific ISIS threats, which may include planned operations against civilian aircraft, judging from Trump's characteristically after-hours tweets defending his behavior, as well as other reporting. ..."
"... The New York Times , in its own reporting of the story, initially stated that the information on ISIS did not come from an NSA or CIA operation, and later reported that the source was Israel. ..."
"... And President Trump has one more thing to think about. No matter what damage comes out of the Lavrov discussion, he has a bigger problem. There are apparently multiple leakers on his National Security Council. ..."
"... You have McMaster himself who categorically denies any exposure of sources and methods – he was there in person and witness to the talks – and a cloud of unknown witnesses not present speculating, without reference to McMaster or Tillerson's testimony, about what might have happened. This is the American Media in a nutshell, the Infinite Circle Jerk. ..."
"... I am more disturbed how this story got into the press. While, not an ally, I think we should in cooperation with other states. Because the Pres is not familiar with the protocols and language and I doubt any executive has been upon entering office, I have no doubt he may be reacting or overreacting to the overreaction of others. ..."
"... Here's a word. We have no business engaging n the overthrow of another government that is no threat to the US or her allies, and that includes Israel. Syria is not. And we should cease and desist getting further entangled in the messes of the previous executive, his Sec of State and those organizations who seem to e playing with the life blood of the US by engaging if unnecessary risks. ..."
"... And if I understand the crumbs given the data provided by the Post, the Times and this article, if one had ill will for the source of said information, they have pretty good idea where to start. ..."
"... In general I agree with you, but the media was NEVER concerned about the treatment of sensitive material from HRC! ..."
"... I think he needs to cut back on intelligence sharing with Israel. They do just what the hell they want to do with anything. ..."
Intelligence agencies and senior government officials tend to use a lot of jargon. Laced with acronyms, this language sometimes does
not translate very well into journalese when it hits the media.
For example, I experienced a sense of disorientation two weeks ago over the word "sensitive" as used by several senators, Sally
Yates, and James Clapper during committee testimony into Russiagate. "Sensitive" has, of course, a number of meanings. But what
astonished me was how quickly the media
interpreted its use in the hearings to mean that the conversations and emails that apparently were recorded or intercepted involving
Trump associates and assorted Russians as "sensitive contacts" meant that they were necessarily inappropriate, dangerous, or even
illegal.
When Yates and Clapper were using "sensitive" thirteen times in the
86 page transcript of the Senate hearings, they were referring to the medium rather than the message. They were both acknowledging
that the sources of the information were intelligence related, sometimes referred to as "sensitive" by intelligence professionals
and government insiders as a shorthand way to describe that they are "need to know" material derived from either classified "methods"
or foreign-liaison partners. That does not mean that the information contained is either good or bad or even true or false, but merely
a way of expressing that the information must be protected because of where it came from or how it was developed, hence the "sensitivity."
The word also popped up this week in a Washington Post
exclusive report alleging that the president had, in his recent meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, gone too
far while also suggesting that the source of a highly classified government program might be inferred from the context of what was
actually revealed. The Post describes how
The information Trump relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so
sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.
The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said that Trump's decision
to do so risks cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State.
The Post is unfortunately also providing ISIS with more information than it "needs to know" to make its story more
dramatic, further compromising the source. Furthermore, it should be understood that the paper is extremely hostile to Trump,
the story is as always based on anonymous sources, and the revelation comes on top of another unverifiable Post article claiming
that the Russians might have sought to sneak
a recording device into the White House during the visit.
No one is denying that the president discussed ISIS in some detail with Lavrov, but National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, both of whom were present at the meeting,
have denied that any sources or methods were revealed while reviewing with the Russians available intelligence. McMaster
described the report as "false" and
informed the Post that "The president and the foreign minister reviewed common threats from terrorist organizations to include threats to aviation.
At no time were any intelligence sources or methods discussed and no military operations were disclosed that were not already known
publicly." Tillerson commented that "the nature of specific threats were (sic) discussed, but they did not discuss sources, methods,
or military operations."
So the question becomes to what extent can an intelligence mechanism be identified from the information that it produces. That
is, to a certain extent, a judgment call. The president is able
on his own authority to declassify anything, so the legality of his sharing information with Russia cannot be challenged. What
is at question is the decision-making by an inexperienced president who may have been showing off to an important foreign visitor
by revealing details of intelligence that should have remained secret. The media will no doubt be seeking to magnify the potential
damage done while the White House goes into damage control mode.
The media is claiming that the specific discussion with Lavrov that is causing particular concern is related to a so-called
Special Access Program
, or SAP, sometimes referred to as "code word information." An SAP is an operation that generates intelligence that requires special
protection because of where or how it is produced. In this case, the intelligence shared with Lavrov appears to be related to
specific ISIS threats, which may include planned operations against civilian aircraft, judging from Trump's characteristically after-hours
tweets defending his behavior, as well as other reporting.
There have also been reports that the White House followed up on its Lavrov meeting with a routine review of what had taken place.
Several National Security Council members observed that some of the information shared with the Russians was far too sensitive to
disseminate within the U.S. intelligence community. This led to the placing of
urgent calls to NSA and CIA to brief them on what had been said.
Based on the recipients of the calls alone, one might surmise that the source of the information would appear to be either a foreign-intelligence
service or a technical collection operation, or even both combined. The Post claims that the originator of the intelligence
did not clear its sharing with the Russians and raises the possibility that no more information of that type will be provided at
all in light of the White House's apparent carelessness in its use. The New York Times , in its own reporting of the story,
initially
stated that the information on ISIS did not come from an NSA or CIA operation, and later reported that the source was Israel.
The Times is also reporting that Trump provided to Lavrov "granular" information on the city in Syria where the information
was collected that will possibly enable the Russians or ISIS to identify the actual source, with devastating consequences. That projection
may be overreach, but the fact is that the latest gaffe from the White House could well damage an important intelligence liaison
relationship in the Middle East while reinforcing the widely held impression that Washington does not know how to keep a secret.
It will also create the impression that Donald Trump, out of ignorance or hubris, exhibits a certain recklessness in his dealing
with classified information, a failing that he once attributed to his presidential opponent Hillary Clinton.
And President Trump has one more thing to think about. No matter what damage comes out of the Lavrov discussion, he has a
bigger problem. There are apparently multiple leakers on his National Security Council.
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.
This article has been updated to reflect news developments.
" The latest gaffe from the White House could well damage an important intelligence liaison relationship in the Middle East
"
On the other hand, it also represents closer collaboration with Russia–even if unintended–which is an improvement on the status
quo ante and, not to mention, key to ending the conflict in Syria.
You have McMaster himself who categorically denies any exposure of sources and methods – he was there in person and witness
to the talks – and a cloud of unknown witnesses not present speculating, without reference to McMaster or Tillerson's testimony,
about what might have happened. This is the American Media in a nutshell, the Infinite Circle Jerk.
Out of my depth, but was Trump working within the framework, maybe a bit outside if the story is true, of the Joint Implementation
Group the Obama administration created last year with Russia?
Also, I recall reading that the prior administration promised Russia ISIS intel. Not sure if that ever happened, but I doubt
they'd have made it public or leak anything to the press.
I think it should go without saying that intelligence is a sensitive business and protecting those who operate in its murky
waters is important to having an effective agency.
Of course the Pres of the US has a duty to do so.
I have not yet read the post article. But I am doubtful that the executive had any intention of putting anyone in harms way.
I am equally doubtful that this incident will. If the executive made an error in judgement, I am sure it will be dealt wit in
an appropriate manner.
I do wish he'd stop tweeting, though I get why its useful to him.
I am more disturbed how this story got into the press. While, not an ally, I think we should in cooperation with other
states. Because the Pres is not familiar with the protocols and language and I doubt any executive has been upon entering office,
I have no doubt he may be reacting or overreacting to the overreaction of others.
Here's a word. We have no business engaging n the overthrow of another government that is no threat to the US or her allies,
and that includes Israel. Syria is not. And we should cease and desist getting further entangled in the messes of the previous
executive, his Sec of State and those organizations who seem to e playing with the life blood of the US by engaging if unnecessary
risks.
Just another brier brushfire of a single tumble weed to add to the others in the hope that setting fires in trashcans will
make the current exec go away or at least engage in a mea culpa and sign more checks in the mess that is the middle east policy
objective that remains a dead end.
__________
And if I understand the crumbs given the data provided by the Post, the Times and this article, if one had ill will for
the source of said information, they have pretty good idea where to start.
Politics is now directly endangering innocent civilians. Because of the leaks and its publication, ISIS for sure now knows that
there is an information leak out of their organization. They will now re-compartmentalize and may be successful in breaking that
information leak. Innocent airline passenger civilians, American, Russian, or whoever may die as a result. Russia and the US are
both fighting ISIS. We are de facto allies in that fight whether some people like it or not. Time to get over it.
Having read the article, uhhh, excuse me, but unlike personal secrets. The purpose of intel is to use to or keep on hand for some-other
date. But of that information is related to the security of our interests and certainly a cooperative relationship with Russia
is in our interest. Because in the convoluted fight with ISIS/ISIL, Russia is an ally.
What this belies is the mess of the intelligence community. If in fact, the Russians intend to take a source who provided information
that was helpful to them, it would be a peculiar twist of strategic action. The response does tell us that we are in some manner
in league with ISIS/ISIL or their supporters so deep that there is a need to protect them, from what is anybody's guess. Because
if the information is accurate, I doubt the Russians are going to about killing the source, but rather improving their airline
security.
But if we are in fact attempting to remove Pres Assad, and are in league with ISIS/ISIL in doing so - I get why the advocates
of such nonsense might be in a huff. So ISIS/ISISL our one time foe and now our sometimes friend . . .
Good greif . . .
Pres Trump is the least of muy concerns when it coes to security.
Philip, back on July 23, 2014, you explained in "How ISIS Evades the CIA" "the inability of the United States government to anticipate
the ISIS offensive that has succeeded in taking control of a large part of Iraq." You explained why the CIA had to date had no
success in infiltrating ISIS.
You continued: "Given U.S. intelligence's probable limited physical access to any actual terrorist groups operating in Syria
or Iraq any direct attempt to penetrate the organization through placing a source inside would be difficult in the extreme. Such
efforts would most likely be dependent on the assistance of friendly intelligence services in Turkey or Jordan. Both Turkey and
Jordan have reported that terrorists have entered their countries by concealing themselves in the large numbers of refugees that
the conflict in Syria has produced, and both are concerned as they understand full well that groups like ISIS will be targeting
them next. Some of the infiltrating adherents to radical groups have certainly been identified and detained by the respective
intelligence services of those two countries, and undoubtedly efforts have been made to 'turn' some of those in custody to send
them back into Syria (and more recently Iraq) to report on what is taking place. Depending on what arrangements might have been
made to coordinate the operations, the 'take' might well be shared with the United States and other friendly governments."
You then describe the difficulties faced by a Turkish or Jordanian agent trying to infiltrate ISIS: "But seeding is very much
hit or miss, as someone who has been out of the loop of his organization might have difficulty working his way back in. He will
almost certainly be regarded with some suspicion by his peers and would be searched and watched after his return, meaning that
he could not take back with him any sophisticated communications devices no matter how cleverly they are concealed. This would
make communicating any information obtained back to one's case officers in Jordan or Turkey difficult or even impossible."
Notwithstanding how "difficult or even impossible" such an operation would be - and using the New York Times as your only source
for a lot of otherwise completely unsubstantiated information – and admitting that "this is sheer speculation on my part" – you
say that "it is logical to assume that the countries that have provided numerous recruits for ISIS [Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia]
would have used that fact as cover to carry out a seeding operation to introduce some of their own agents into the ISIS organization."
Back to the New York Times as your only source, you say that "the Times is also reporting that Trump provided to Lavrov 'granular'
information on the city in Syria where the information was collected that will possibly enable the Russians or ISIS to identify
the actual source, with devastating consequences."
But having ventured into the far reaches of that line of speculation, you do admit that "that projection may be overreach."
Indeed!
You go on to characterize the events of the White House meeting with the Russians as "the latest gaffe from the White House"
– even though there is absolutely no evidence (outside of the unsubstantiated reports of the Washington Post and the New York
Times) that anything to do with the meeting was a "gaffe" – and you further speculate that "it could well damage an important
intelligence liaison relationship in the Middle East."
That is, again, pure speculation on your part.
One valuable lesson that you've taught TAC readers over the years, Philip: That we need to carefully examine the sources of
information – and the sources of dis-information.
Yet again from Giraldi: the problem isn't that the POTUS is ignorant and incompetent; we should all be more concerned that the
Deep State is leaking the proof.
Trump has now essentially confirmed the story from the Post and contradicted the denials from McMaster – he shared specific intelligence
to demonstrate his willingness to work with the Russians. Moreover, it seems that Israel was the ally that provided this intelligence.
The author and others will defend this, but I can only see this as a reckless and impulsive decision that only causes Russia and
our allies to trust the US less.
"... The Trump show is becoming interesting. A short time ago it looked like Trump was about to start wars everywhere. US establishment seemed to all agree that made him very presidential. A distraction for the establishment politicians and media while Tillerson and Trump get a few things done? ..."
i can never understand why politics has to be so complex, but it is.. it could be a lot more
simple.. so for those who want to understand why things happen, they have to go beyond the
surface..
this comey guy was dishonest.. why have someone like that around?
mccain - he has been a warmonger for forever.. why is he and so many others still around?
they sure aren't serving the public's need.. unfortunately trump isn't serving the publics
needs either..
i agree with @4 ftb.. now, just cause someone says trump is done, doesn't mean he stops
doing the crazy shit he is going continue to do.. but so far, none of it amounts to a hill of
beans.. i can't see him doing anything relevant at this point other then bringing more
trouble to the usa.. if he would step down prematurely, it wouldn't surprise me. he is out of
his league and needs to stick to twitter..
The Trump show is becoming interesting. A short time ago it looked like Trump was about
to start wars everywhere. US establishment seemed to all agree that made him very
presidential. A distraction for the establishment politicians and media while Tillerson and
Trump get a few things done?
In the last weeks there has been a meeting between Tillerson and Putin, Lavrov and Trump
will be meeting soon. Comey in charge of the Trump/Russia investigation has now been sacked.
In Syria, US has hardly moved towards Raqqa, agreed to the Russian de-escalation zones which
free up Syrian forces for a drive on Deir Ezzor and possibly Raqqa. The other thing that has
appeared in the news in the last couple of weeks is that the Trump white house has not
approved any pentagon requests to run their so called freedom of navigation exercises against
China.
Nice observation. Personally, I still hold off any judgment on who Trump is - there simply
isn't enough roller-coaster motion yet to judge where the trend lines belong.
A lot of the things I see him get blamed for are actually only theater, including Korea -
or else relatively minor actions that satisfy subordinate departments (such as the US Navy),
and that appear to make waves but that don't actually capsize the big picture. It's an
uncomfortable brinkmanship to watch if you believe it's real, but I'm not sure that Trump
believes it's anything more than pre-negotiation sand in the eyes.
And a lot of other things that actually do happen domestically are part of the Republican
and classical conservative agenda anyway. No organized force in the US exists anymore to
combat these things, certainly not the sold-out Democrats and their long co-opted unions.
Meanwhile, as you note, the realities on the geopolitical ground globally proceed in a
direction favorable to peace.
Tillerson may be the one to watch to see where the Trump roller coaster is heading? Trump
distracts attention allowing Tillerson to get on with what they want to do?
very said day indeed
indeed
for usa usa and when israel is mighty oded yinon.
comey was the last man standing a modern day kevin costner elliot ness in a sea of nazi and
evil doing al capones and ali akhbar oceans 11ish
we champions of anti semitismus and lgbt plus minus barbera lerner spector multiculralism
frankfurt school must fight for are man
and woman and all the gender fluids in between.
so what if comey has a 5 million dollar home in the hamptons.
so what if he has a dossier for safe keeping and insurance .
so what if hsbc invested in him and andrew mcabe making them future proof.
we in the upper golan israeli oil and gas have too support and protect are assets if they be
in the fbi or in the al nusra syriana.
mcabe will do a great job smashing more phones hammer tongs and bleachbit. stabilising this
situation be assured mcabae will not rest until the ratlines drugs,arms slave and live organ
trades are back up to peak bush obarmee levels.
The article , written by Farhad Manjoo, is titled "Can Facebook Fix Its Own Worst Bug?" and poses the question: "Mark Zuckerberg
now acknowledges the dangerous side of the social revolution he helped start. But is the most powerful tool for connection in human
history capable of adapting to the world it created?"
The article discusses the mood in Silicon Valley days before Donald Trump's inauguration, describing the general mood as "grim."
But Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was reportedly quite positive about the future, describing 2016 as an "interesting year for
us [Facebook]."
The article later describes Silicon Valley's detachment from real world events, saying, "In Silicon Valley, current events tend
to fade into the background. The Sept. 11 attacks, the Iraq war, the financial crisis and every recent presidential election occurred,
for the tech industry, on some parallel but distant timeline divorced from the everyday business of digitizing the world."
But the election of Donald Trump caused many in Silicon Valley to suddenly take notice of the political world, "Then Donald Trump
won. In the 17 years I've spent covering Silicon Valley, I've never seen anything shake the place like his victory," Manjoo writes.
"In the span of a few months, the Valley has been transformed from a politically disengaged company town into a center of anti-Trump
resistance and fear."
"A week after the election, one start-up founder sent me a private message on Twitter: 'I think it's worse than I thought,' he
wrote. 'Originally I thought 18 months. I've cut that in half,'" Manjoo recalls. "Until what? 'Apocalypse. End of the world.'"
The description of Silicon Valley as the "center of anti-Trump resistance" is unsurprising, Google employees and executives
previously held rallies at Google offices across the United States in protest of President Trump's temporary travel halt from
nations associated with terrorism.
"... Trump is another vassal/tool of the power elite. as all Presidents have been for decades. Some unhappily, but all completely. ..."
"... Anyone who thought Trump could wipe clean 50 years of accumulated government grime in 100 days has excrement for brains. He's got entrenched interests in D.C. that will not just give up their incomes and influence. He's got a hostile media eager to bring the 'homeless' back to front page status after they miraculously vanished during Obama's terms. Sob stories without end. A Congress that is full of RINOs and 48 Democrat Senators. ..."
"... He is thinning out the herd of visa issuing State Department apparatchiks. ..."
"... "EXPANDING" H2B visas ? The mere EXISTENCE of such a visa leaves me mindboggled. A visa to import landscapers, waiters & retail workers ?? In a country of over 320 million & a "real" unemployment rate over 8% ? Oh, give me a break -- ..."
"... Trump's plan was to build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it. Not to hit Congress for the money. If Trump doesn't get Mexico to pay it, he doesn't get his wall. Period. For the rest of the agenda other than the wall – I agree, but Trump was elected as the lesser evil of two. Not because his agenda is supported by a majority. ..."
"... The other 10% that gave Trump an electoral college victory voted because they wanted to keep Hillary away from the levers of power. Not because they care for Trump's agenda. ..."
"... Mission accomplished on dodging the danger of a Hillary presidency. Now Trump is evaluated on his own dangerousness and needs to be reigned in. ..."
"... Nobody here ever thought that. We fully expected the Trump presidency to be even more difficult than the campaign, not less. We are angry because Trump has reversed himself and sold out to the swamp. He is putting zero or negative effort into the core issues that got him elected. ..."
The Trumpocalypse is already building a wall in the minds of the
prospective immigrant.
Amid immigration setbacks, one Trump strategy seems to be working:
Fear
Most notably, Trump signed an executive order during his
first week in office that, among other things, vastly expanded the
pool of the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants who are deemed
priorities for deportation. [...] The most vivid evidence that Trump's
tactics have had an effect has come at the southern border with
Mexico, where the number of apprehensions made by Customs and Border
Patrol agents plummeted from more than 40,000 per month at the end of
2016 to just 12,193 in March, according to federal data.
Had a similar story, mutatis mutandis, been written by somone French in
France about French immigration, he or she would have been labeled
extreme right, or even fascist.
Anyone who thought Trump could wipe clean 50 years of accumulated
government grime in 100 days has excrement for brains. He's got
entrenched interests in D.C. that will not just give up their incomes and
influence. He's got a hostile media eager to bring the 'homeless' back to
front page status after they miraculously vanished during Obama's terms.
Sob stories without end. A Congress that is full of RINOs and 48 Democrat
Senators.
But progress is being made if you look. He is thinning
out the herd of visa issuing State Department apparatchiks. If the US
embassy in Yemen is closed there can be no Yemenis showing up in Dulles
airport. Cubans can no longer gain permanent residency in the US by
stepping on US soil. Making health care a matter for the states to
determine will erode Medicaid outlays as the states simply cannot afford
to hand out free medical care to their 'needy'.
It will take time to drain the swamp and it will be incremental but
with every judge he appoints to the Federal courts, with every Federal
bureaucrat retiring and with Republican Governors and legislatures doing
their thing it will start to dry up.
"EXPANDING" H2B visas ? The mere EXISTENCE of such a visa leaves me
mindboggled. A visa to import landscapers, waiters & retail workers ?? In
a country of over 320 million & a "real" unemployment rate over 8% ? Oh,
give me a break --
H2B is a clear example that those researchers from Stanford (?) where
right: that the views/interests etc of 80-90% of Americans has exactly
ZERO influence over government/s policy.
Sounds exactly like all the previous "conservative" parties in US or UK
government over the past few decades, then. It's a double sided ratchet
process.
Trump's plan was to build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it. Not to hit
Congress for the money. If Trump doesn't get Mexico to pay it, he doesn't
get his wall. Period.
For the rest of the agenda other than the wall –
I agree, but Trump was elected as the lesser evil of two. Not because
his agenda is supported by a majority. The 40% approval rating Trump
enjoys – that's how many support his agenda. It's not a majority.
The
other 10% that gave Trump an electoral college victory voted because they
wanted to keep Hillary away from the levers of power. Not because they
care for Trump's agenda.
Mission accomplished on dodging the danger of a
Hillary presidency. Now Trump is evaluated on his own dangerousness and
needs to be reigned in. His agenda is not particulary popular among
people that voted against Hillary, not for Trump. Support for it is soft,
and as Trump continues a divisive agenda push that creates too much
opposition – soft support withers away.
he is going to be the same in office as all previous Republican
administrations
. Worse: Hard to see how the following story can be
interpreted as anything up Trump-Kushner selling visas for personal
enrichment. This is FILLING the swamp with corrupt Chinese .
There's been all kinds of cucking from Trump. I knew it would happen
eventually, but never dreamed it would happen within the first 100 days.
His latest cuck is leaving DACA in place and agreeing to accept the
1250 Muslim refugees who Australia did not want after blustering that
Obama made a "stupid deal" and we would not take them. You can't take
anything Trump says to the bank as it could change tomorrow or next week
and he acts like it's nothing.
@unit472
Anyone who thought Trump could wipe clean 50 years of accumulated
government grime in 100 days has excrement for brains. He's got
entrenched interests in D.C. that will not just give up their incomes and
influence. He's got a hostile media eager to bring the 'homeless' back to
front page status after they miraculously vanished during Obama's terms.
Sob stories without end. A Congress that is full of RINOs and 48 Democrat
Senators.
But progress is being made if you look. He is thinning out
the herd of visa issuing State Department apparatchiks. If the US embassy
in Yemen is closed there can be no Yemenis showing up in Dulles airport.
Cubans can no longer gain permanent residency in the US by stepping on US
soil. Making health care a matter for the states to determine will erode
Medicaid outlays as the states simply cannot afford to hand out free
medical care to their 'needy'.
It will take time to drain the swamp and it will be incremental but
with every judge he appoints to the Federal courts, with every Federal
bureaucrat retiring and with Republican Governors and legislatures doing
their thing it will start to dry up.
Please, someone come up with a better word than "cuck" for describing
cowardly or fake conservatives. (Or two words - one for cowards and one
for fakes.)
Where I live, in Montana, young white guys still work construction and
landscaping jobs. It's an amazing oasis, really.
What scares me is that
immigration decisions are being made by people who just
can't imagine
themselves or their family ever working these kinds of jobs or
anything close. They're out of touch. They have no right to capitulate
like this.
@unit472
Anyone who thought Trump could wipe clean 50 years of accumulated
government grime in 100 days has excrement for brains. He's got
entrenched interests in D.C. that will not just give up their incomes and
influence. He's got a hostile media eager to bring the 'homeless' back to
front page status after they miraculously vanished during Obama's terms.
Sob stories without end. A Congress that is full of RINOs and 48 Democrat
Senators.
But progress is being made if you look. He is thinning out
the herd of visa issuing State Department apparatchiks. If the US embassy
in Yemen is closed there can be no Yemenis showing up in Dulles airport.
Cubans can no longer gain permanent residency in the US by stepping on US
soil. Making health care a matter for the states to determine will erode
Medicaid outlays as the states simply cannot afford to hand out free
medical care to their 'needy'.
It will take time to drain the swamp and it will be incremental but
with every judge he appoints to the Federal courts, with every Federal
bureaucrat retiring and with Republican Governors and legislatures doing
their thing it will start to dry up.
@unit472
Anyone who thought Trump could wipe clean 50 years of accumulated
government grime in 100 days has excrement for brains. He's got
entrenched interests in D.C. that will not just give up their incomes and
influence. He's got a hostile media eager to bring the 'homeless' back to
front page status after they miraculously vanished during Obama's terms.
Sob stories without end. A Congress that is full of RINOs and 48 Democrat
Senators.
But progress is being made if you look. He is thinning out
the herd of visa issuing State Department apparatchiks. If the US embassy
in Yemen is closed there can be no Yemenis showing up in Dulles airport.
Cubans can no longer gain permanent residency in the US by stepping on US
soil. Making health care a matter for the states to determine will erode
Medicaid outlays as the states simply cannot afford to hand out free
medical care to their 'needy'.
It will take time to drain the swamp and it will be incremental but
with every judge he appoints to the Federal courts, with every Federal
bureaucrat retiring and with Republican Governors and legislatures doing
their thing it will start to dry up.
Sounds exactly like all the previous "conservative" parties in US or UK
government over the past few decades, then. It's a double sided ratchet
process.
@unit472
Anyone who thought Trump could wipe clean 50 years of accumulated
government grime in 100 days has excrement for brains. He's got
entrenched interests in D.C. that will not just give up their incomes and
influence. He's got a hostile media eager to bring the 'homeless' back to
front page status after they miraculously vanished during Obama's terms.
Sob stories without end. A Congress that is full of RINOs and 48 Democrat
Senators.
But progress is being made if you look. He is thinning out
the herd of visa issuing State Department apparatchiks. If the US embassy
in Yemen is closed there can be no Yemenis showing up in Dulles airport.
Cubans can no longer gain permanent residency in the US by stepping on US
soil. Making health care a matter for the states to determine will erode
Medicaid outlays as the states simply cannot afford to hand out free
medical care to their 'needy'.
It will take time to drain the swamp and it will be incremental but
with every judge he appoints to the Federal courts, with every Federal
bureaucrat retiring and with Republican Governors and legislatures doing
their thing it will start to dry up.
Trump evolved in the cut throat world of real estate and mega deals big
business over decades of time. It took dozens of years of deal making to
become powerful, wealthy, and President of the United States. He is in
this for the long game. He has to make deals with the worst sort of
political, military, and business psychopaths, to play the long game. He
has to trade the best outcomes for the people in exchange for not letting
the very worst outcomes prevail. His (and our) insane and ruthless
opponents still have great power and influence. Attacking them directly
in a frontal attack would be political suicide. Always the pretend
retreat then flank attack when the enemy loses cohesion and unity.
@ThreeCranes
A former psychology professor of mine who also worked as a counselor at a
crisis center told our class that he could tell the real suiciders from
the wannabes by whether, after the "bang" of the supposed gunshot to the
head, he could actually hear the phone dropping onto the floor. If he
didn't, then presumably the caller was clinging to some hope, which it
was his job to nurture.
Mr. Derbyshire, like you I chuckle whenever Pres. Trump's makes the PC
crowd clamor for a safe space. But if you are concerned with the
vilification and death of traditional America then snark doesn't cut it.
If you voted for Trump, then sorry, the joke' on you, bloke.
We probably both miss the Scranton PA or Binghamton NY of 1955, but
Trump or any pol is powerless to bring them back. The best we rubes stuck
in the heartland can hope for is that the transfer payments from the
costal elites keep coming, and that the dollar remains a reserve currency
so that the government can borrow to support us. As I see it, Trumps
policies , gutting healthcare, tax cuts for the investor class, will hurt
us "badwhites". That is a bad bargain for seing Rosie ODonnell cry, no
matter how sweet.
@Clark Westwood
Please, someone come up with a better word than "cuck" for describing
cowardly or fake conservatives. (Or two words -- one for cowards and one
for fakes.)
" How were these reptiles able to get their way on a major issue in the
Trump electoral agenda"
Very simple : Because they, the Democrats, own
and wield the "Racism" bludgeon, and there is nothing which terrifies a
meek, mild-mannered "Fair" Republican politico more than being labeled as
a :
RACIST
( not forgetting : " Enemy of women" , Homophobe, etc)
period.
And until these cowards learn to do their duty and persue that which
they were elected for, and ignore the tauntings of racism, and until they
begin to just throw it back, the racist label, at the crazy democrats,
they will be in the losers seat, period.
Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified
US Army vet, and pro jazz artist.
Nobody here thinks that, you sanctimonious jerk-store.
Nobody here ever thought that. We fully expected the Trump presidency to
be even more difficult than the campaign, not less. We are angry because
Trump has reversed himself and sold out to the swamp. He is putting zero
or negative effort into the core issues that got him elected.
Worry not! The vice grip has been tightened , and now it's welded. You
think a con man from New York will betray his cabal buddies for a down on
his luck, beer chugging, and his world possession of a lifted 4×4, when
he has resorts to build and secure his little Zionist grand children that
one day will inherit the earth .Keep dreaming!
@Joe Hide
Trump evolved in the cut throat world of real estate and mega deals big
business over decades of time. It took dozens of years of deal making to
become powerful, wealthy, and President of the United States. He is in
this for the long game. He has to make deals with the worst sort of
political, military, and business psychopaths, to play the long game. He
has to trade the best outcomes for the people in exchange for not letting
the very worst outcomes prevail. His (and our) insane and ruthless
opponents still have great power and influence. Attacking them directly
in a frontal attack would be political suicide. Always the pretend
retreat then flank attack when the enemy loses cohesion and unity.
In First 2 Months in Office – Trump
Reduces Debt by $100 Billion – Obama Increased Debt by $400 Billion –
Half a Trillion Dollar Difference!
The increased debt incurred under Obama equals approximately $76,000 for
every person in the United States who had a full-time job in December,
2016. That debt is far more debt than was accumulated by any previous
president. It equals nearly twice as much as the $4,889,100,310,609.44 in
additional debt that piled up during the eight years George W. Bush
served as president.
Trump's 100 Days a Success
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/28/making-america-great-again-donald-trumps-100-day-success/
Illegal Immigration Down by Unprecedented 73%
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/29/trump-illegal-immigration-down-by-unprecedented-73/
20 Ways Trump Unraveled the Administrative State
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/11/20-ways-trump-unraveled-administrative-state/
Bit by bit, Trump methodically undoing Obama policies
http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2017-04-03-US--Trump-Undoing%20Obama/id-c4fa9fa659394514aa645a7cfd3c31ed
Illegal Entrance into U.S. Lowest in 17 Years, Mexicans Too Afraid of
Trump
https://www.prisonplanet.com/illegal-entrance-into-u-s-lowest-in-17-years-mexicans-too-afraid-of-trump.html
2010 Dems lost the House
The Democrats lost more than 1,000 seats at the federal and state
level during Obama's presidency, including 9 Senate seats, 62 House
seats, 12 governorships, and a startling 958 state legislative seats.
Congress is the problem – not the president. Congress is dysfunctional.
Getting reelected is everything to those people. First and foremost,
congress people represent themselves – not their voters. Taking campaign
money from lobbyists to stop challengers in jerrymandered districts and
blue or red states, is paramount.
The last time congress really accomplished something was in the
Clinton administration. Newt Gingrich did good things (balancing the
budget and changed welfare). Other than open ended war, Bush congresses
did nothing. Obama's congress got a disastrously bad healthcare bill
passed and nothing else.
For sixteen years, the Bush and Obama congresses just spent more and
more money driving up the debt.
Trump is going to show his colors, when in a couple of months – a new
long-term spending bill is coming up for a monumental vote.
Will Trump veto the trillion-dollar deficit that congress will send to
him or not?
In First 2 Months in Office – Trump
Reduces Debt by $100 Billion – Obama Increased Debt by $400 Billion –
Half a Trillion Dollar Difference!
The increased debt incurred under Obama equals approximately $76,000 for
every person in the United States who had a full-time job in December,
2016. That debt is far more debt than was accumulated by any previous
president. It equals nearly twice as much as the $4,889,100,310,609.44 in
additional debt that piled up during the eight years George W. Bush
served as president.
Trump's 100 Days a Success
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/28/making-america-great-again-donald-trumps-100-day-success/
Illegal Immigration Down by Unprecedented 73%
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/29/trump-illegal-immigration-down-by-unprecedented-73/
20 Ways Trump Unraveled the Administrative State
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/11/20-ways-trump-unraveled-administrative-state/
Bit by bit, Trump methodically undoing Obama policies
http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2017-04-03-US--Trump-Undoing%20Obama/id-c4fa9fa659394514aa645a7cfd3c31ed
Illegal Entrance into U.S. Lowest in 17 Years, Mexicans Too Afraid of
Trump
https://www.prisonplanet.com/illegal-entrance-into-u-s-lowest-in-17-years-mexicans-too-afraid-of-trump.html
2010 Dems lost the House
The Democrats lost more than 1,000 seats at the federal and state
level during Obama's presidency, including 9 Senate seats, 62 House
seats, 12 governorships, and a startling 958 state legislative seats.
"... Prescott Bush and the Smedley Butler " Business Plot " Bush's Grandfather Planned Fascist Coup In America Nazis, he has praised
Hitler, he talked last night in ... ..."
I wonder why this is never mentioned in history classes in the US.
And I wonder why the US media has not frankly discussed what
happened. Is it because it would embarrass powerful figures still on the scene today?
I wonder why there is no frank discussion of the Wall Street interests who helped to finance the fascists in Europe, including
the National Socialists in Germany, even during the 1940's?
When the going gets tough, the moneyed interests seem to invariably reach for fascism to maintain the status quo.
We keep too many things hidden 'for the sake of the system.' This obsession with secrecy is all too often the cover to hide misdeeds,
incompetency, abuses of the system, and outright crimes.
If some things cannot bear the light of day, the chances are pretty good that they can remain a festering sore and a moral hazard
for the future.
Here is a BBC documentary about what had happened.
Mirrored from TheRapeOfJustice (exceptional channel for large library of relevant historical broadcasts and documentaries)
http://www.youtube.com/user ...
Prescott
Bush and the Smedley Butler "Business Plot" Bush's Grandfather Planned Fascist
Coup In America Nazis, he has praised Hitler, he talked last night in ...
"... Robert Fisk writes for the Independent , where this column originally appeared. ..."
"... And my hope still is that Trump will prevent NATO and EU war on Russia, the war that indeed will end al wars, as already Wilson wanted, because this war will end all human life. ..."
"... How it then ends is well described in the novel On the Beach, Neville Shute, 1953, the New Zealand government distributing suicide pills when the radio active dust reaches the island. ..."
"... Trump got elected by declaring himself the enemy of international Zionist globalist bankers. Once in the White House he folded to their demands. He is now Clinton/Obama Mk 3. ..."
It's one thing to have a lunatic in the White House who watches late night television and tweets
all day. But when the same lunatic goes to war, it now emerges, he's a safer bet for democracy, a
strong President who stands up to tyrants (unless they happen to be Saudis, Turks or Egyptians) and
who acts out of human emotion rather than cynicism.
How else can one account for the extraordinary report in The New York Times which recorded
how Trump's "anguish" at the film of dying Syrian babies had led him to abandon "isolationism"?
Americans like action, but have typically confused Trump's infantile trigger finger with mature
decision-making. What else is there to think when a normally sane US columnist like David Ignatius
suddenly compares Trump to Harry Truman and praises his demented President for his "flexibility"
and "pragmatism"?
This is preposterous. A madman who goofs off at something he doesn't like on CNN is just plain
wacky. A man of unsound mind who attacks three Muslim countries – two of which were included in his
seven Muslim nation refugee ban – is a danger to the world. Yet the moment he fires 59 missiles at
Syria after more than 60 civilians die in an apparent chemical attack which he blames on Assad –
but none after far more are massacred by a Syrian suicide bomber – even Angela Merkel takes leave
of her senses and praises Trump, along with the Matron of Downing Street, Signora Mogherini and sundry
other potentates. Hasn't someone cottoned on to the fact that Trump is now taking America into a
shooting war?
Handing more power to the Pentagon – about the most perilous act of any US President – means that
Defence Secretary James "Mad Dog" Mattis is now encouraging the head-chopping Saudis to bomb Yemen
– adding even more American intelligence "assets" to this criminal enterprise - and encouraging the
Gulf Arabs' delusional idea that Iran wants to conquer the Arab world. "Everywhere you look," Mattis
told his Saudi hosts this month, "if there's trouble in the region, you find Iran."
Is that the case with Egypt, then, now under Isis attack as its President "disappears" thousands
of his own people? Is that the case in Turkey whose even more crazed President has now locked up
tens of thousands of his own people while turning himself into a dictator-by-law?
Let's just briefly take a look at Trump's reaction to Recep Tayyip Erdogan's dodgy referendum,
which has given him a Caliph's power over Turkey. A round-up of the latest figures from Turkey by
the French newspaper Liberation show that there have been 47,000 arrests since last year's attempted
coup, 140,000 passports revoked, 120,000 men and women fired from their jobs (including 8,000 military
officers, 5,000 academics, 4,000 judges and lawyers, 65 mayors and 2,000 journalists). One thousand
two hundred schools and 15 universities have been closed down, 170 newspapers, television and radio
stations shut.
And after the referendum which gave Erdogan a narrow (if very dubious) majority to legitimise
these outrages, Trump called the Turkish President to congratulate him on his victory. Just as he
continues to congratulate Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi in his "battle" against "terror",
a war which al-Sisi – whose coup d'etat against Egypt's first elected president originally brought
him to power – appears to be losing. Al-Sisi, Trump enthused, would be someone "very close to him".
We know that the US Special Forces raid on Yemen, in which Navy Seal William Owens died, killed
more civilians than al-Qaeda members. We don't know (or, I suspect, care) very much what the "mother
of all bombs" did in the Nangahar province of Afghanistan. First it killed 60 Isis fighters. Then
it killed 100 Isis fighters and not a single civilian – surely a first in US military history? But
then, weirdly, nobody has been allowed to go to the site of this monster bomb's explosion. Because
civilians were indeed killed? Or because – and this is a fact – Isis survivors went on fighting American
ground troops after the bombing?
Now Trump is sending a naval battle group to threaten North Korea, a past master at childish threats
itself. Ye gods! And this is a man who is now "flexible" and "pragmatic"? It's instructive to note
that after its first edition, The New York Times changed its headline about Trump's Syrian "anguish"
to "Trump Upends His Own Foreign Policy", still gifting him with a "foreign policy" (which doesn't
exist) while cutting out the "anguish". I am told the first original edition headline read: "On Syria
Attack, Trump's Heart Came First". Intriguing. If that is correct, you can see how The New York Times
slowly – far too slowly – realised it had itself started to fall in love with its shooting-from-the-hip
President.
Now we await the battle for Korea, forgetting that earlier war which drowned the peninsula in
blood, American and British as well as Korean and Chinese. Maybe Trump, in his vague, frightening
way, has decided that Southeast Asia will be his real war. And there, of course, the comparison with
Truman gets rather too close to home. For Truman only came in at the end of the Second World War,
after Roosevelt's death, and his crowning wartime achievement was also in Southeast Asia: the atom-bombing
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Heaven spare us the next 100 days.
Robert Fisk writes for the Independent
, where this column originally appeared.
jilles dykstra, April 27, 2017 at 6:29 am GMT
I still do not see Trump as a crackpot.
Though I'm not sure about his ideas I still hope that he will end USA militarism, not because
out of moral ideas, but because he sees, and his rich friends, that pursuing the goal of USA world
hegemony will, or has already, ruined the USA.
The attack on Syria, and his warlike talk about N Korea, hogwash to confuse Deep State, and
to satisfy his voters. The Dutch professor Laslo Maracs, university of Amsterdam, explains all
this eloquently, alas only in Dutch, as far as I know.
And my hope still is that Trump will prevent NATO and EU war on Russia, the war that indeed
will end al wars, as already Wilson wanted, because this war will end all human life.
How it then ends is well described in the novel On the Beach, Neville Shute, 1953, the
New Zealand government distributing suicide pills when the radio active dust reaches the island.
Trump got elected by declaring himself the enemy of international Zionist globalist bankers.
Once in the White House he folded to their demands. He is now Clinton/Obama Mk 3.
Ignatius (not "normally sensible" but normally a blood-sucking Zionist warmonger) applauds
Trump for his betrayal of those who elected him, for his submission to the usual suspects . by
the way this guy (see below) explains what the power is that obedience-monkeys like Trump (and,
more importantly, the rest of us) actually serve:
Trump underestimated the problems he was going to have in government. It is true – he is a
good business negotiator – he has proven himself at making business deals. The goal of the participants
in a business deal is to create an ongoing business. The all-encompassing goal of government is
to maintain power – second is getting things done. Trump must learn a new game – he must learn
the game power. The first rule of power is you need to instill fear – you need to take someone
out!
Trump must use government power to crush someone (not twitter). Trump must take one of those
jerk judges immediately to the supreme court. Trump needs to stick something that Schumer really
wants, right where the sun don't shine. Using government power, Trump needs to make an example
of some media person.
Trump dropped some bombs and the world now has respect – that's power politics.
100 Words
@ThereisaGod Trump got elected by declaring himself the enemy of international Zionist globalist
bankers.
Once in the White House he folded to their demands.
He is now Clinton/Obama Mk 3.
Ignatius (not "normally sensible" but normally a blood-sucking Zionist warmonger) applauds Trump
for his betrayal of those who elected him, for his submission to the usual suspects .... by the
way ... this guy (see below) explains what the power is that obedience-monkeys like Trump (and,
more importantly, the rest of us) actually serve:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEpcY5JU120&t=543s It is not easy, if that is what Trump wants,
to turn around the policy of a country, that has been followed since Pearl Harbour.
The one and only period that the USA was not imperialistic was from 1919, when the American people
discovered why their sons had died in Europe, until 1933, when Roosevelt got power.
Read More
100 Words Donald Trump evokes in us the same distortion of reality as a funhouse mirror at
an amusement park.
Apparently no one is immune to the phenomenon. Maybe it's black magic. Maybe it's Jungian.
Whatever it is; it's pretty dark. In fact, the Trump effect on us has become a Litmus Test
of more
@Wizard of Oz Just sometimes Robert Fisk says something interesting and convincing, or at
least, believable. But what is one to make of his expert knowledge if he thinks Hiroshima and
Nagasaki are in SE Asia? "what is one to make of his expert knowledge if he thinks Hiroshima and
Nagasaki are in SE Asia?"
Robert Fisk the Iranian shill, and secret Shiia convert, doesn't even know that Hiroshima
and Nagasaki are NOT in Southeast Asia. Thank God that Trump and Israel are a lot smarter than
this turd. Read More Sean
,
April 27, 2017 at 11:29 am GMT
@jilles dykstra It is not easy, if that is what Trump wants, to turn around the policy of
a country, that has been followed since Pearl Harbour.
The one and only period that the USA was not imperialistic was from 1919, when the American people
discovered why their sons had died in Europe, until 1933, when Roosevelt got power. The last American
occupation troops did not leave Germany until the 1930′s.
Read More Logan
,
April 27, 2017 at 11:34 am GMT
@Wizard of Oz Just sometimes Robert Fisk says something interesting and convincing, or at
least, believable. But what is one to make of his expert knowledge if he thinks Hiroshima and
Nagasaki are in SE Asia? SE, NE, at this point in time what difference does it make?
Read More jacques
sheete ,
April 27, 2017 at 11:46 am GMT
200 Words Trump, the malleable Chimp, is just the latest iteration of Cleopatra's monkeys,
and the mask is off.
It's now reported that Trump just did a NAFTA flip-flop.
But at least the boob isn't Hillary, and maybe his simian antics will awaken a few more people
to the reality of the futility of our political systems.
All the dreamers ought to wake up to the fact that the Amerika of their fantasies has been
dead for some time, and will never be resurrected.
Somewhat different circumstances, but the idea is the same:
22 1 Scipio, when he looked upon the city as it was utterly perishing and in the last throes
of its complete destruction, is said to have shed tears and wept openly for his enemies. 2
After being wrapped in thought for long, and realizing that all cities, nations, and authorities
must, like men, meet their doom; that this happened to Ilium, once a prosperous city, to
the empires of Assyria, Media, and Persia, the greatest of their time, and to Macedonia itself,
the brilliance of which was so recent, either deliberately or the verses escaping him, he said:
A day will come when sacred Troy shall perish,
And Priam and his people shall be slain.1
1 Iliad VI.448 9.
-POLYBIUS , THE HISTORIES,Fragments of Book XXXVIII, p389
100 Words
@Abdul Alhazred Actually its the British!....well they are bloody insane!
Anyone who says they reserve the right to make a thermonuclear "First Strike" is totally mad.
https://larouchepac.com/20170426/brits-nuclear-first-strike-jolly-good Anyone who wants to
stage a preemptive nuclear attack wouldn't say so beforehand. No-one can come up with a scenario
in which Britain would ever first use nukes, so refusing to rule it out is simply the practice
of confronting potential aggression with uncertain consequences though being slow to say what
you will do, and never saying what you won't.
Lets be clear: the British nukes are out in subs and if they got the coded order to fire off
a first use strike (for some reason we cannot yet imagine) the Trident captain and crew would
obey the command. Any statement to the contrary made by some politician on BBC radio years before
is going to be bloody irrelevant. Read More
100 Words Fisk writes as if the current US president's puny actions are the cause of wars
and despotism all around the globe, although many like the Yemen have seen the same sides fighting
for five decades, wich an altered cast of outside help. They are are rooted in local conditions,
all these things Fisk is complaining about. He sometime talks as if the Middle east would settle
down in a trice without the US. But America is just a country, big and strong, but still in need
of allies.Even if America decided to withdraw from all involvement, It cannot halt others' interventions
in local conflicts by washing US hands clean. Fisk implies otherwise.
Read More quercusalba
,
April 27, 2017 at 12:16 pm GMT
200 Words I must disagree with Fisk on a number of his statements and to my surprise and chagrin
he sounds almost unhinged in his article. Excuse me, but the misogynist claim is just too juvenile
and so terribly, terribly boring. And those admittedly predominately Muslim countries from whom
Trump wishes to ban immigration - they are also countries (with the exception of Iran, and we
all know why it is on the list) which have no effective governments (thanks in good measure to
policies of these United States), as a result there is very little background information available
to our immigration officials for anyone wishing to come here from one of those countries. Wanting
to find an improved 'vetting' process for such an individuals is prudent.
I found Trump's rhetoric about the 'alleged' chemical weapons use in Syria troubling to say
the least. His authorization to bomb that airport though seemed like a pinprick action (to my
delight) and appeared to be an action to shut up his critics. I'm unsure if that is so, of course.
Trump's tweeting is not 'crazed'. It is his only means to get out his own message as an extremely
hostile and biased news media is not going to do it.
It is very hard to know what is true and what is not true anymore. I don't think Fisk in this
possesses the truth anymore than the rest of us. Read
More
@Art Trump underestimated the problems he was going to have in government.
It is true – he is a good business negotiator – he has proven himself at making business deals.
The goal of the participants in a business deal is to create an ongoing business.
The all-encompassing goal of government is to maintain power – second is getting things done.
Trump must learn a new game – he must learn the game power.
The first rule of power is you need to instill fear – you need to take someone out!
Trump must use government power to crush someone (not twitter). Trump must take one of those
jerk judges immediately to the supreme court. Trump needs to stick something that Schumer really
wants, right where the sun don't shine. Using government power, Trump needs to make an example
of some media person.
Trump dropped some bombs and the world now has respect – that's power politics.
Yet the moment he fires 59 missiles at Syria after more than 60 civilians die in an apparent
chemical attack which he blames on Assad – but none after far more are massacred by a Syrian
suicide bomber – even Angela Merkel takes leave of her senses and praises Trump, along with
the Matron of Downing Street, Signora Mogherini and sundry other potentates. Hasn't someone
cottoned on to the fact that Trump is now taking America into a shooting war?
Well Fisk, having been pontificating about Middle Eastern issues for quite a long time, haven't
you cottoned to the fact that Merkel and the "Matron of Downing Street" and all the rest of these
whores of the Zio-West are nothing more than quislings for the international PTB (Rothschild/Soros,
et al)?
I mean how ******** dumb can you be not to know that it's Israel that wants Assad out,
and that just like with Saddam and Gadhafi and all the rest, it is Israel's bidding that is getting
done here with all these serial and myriad atrocities and war crimes. Duh fucking duh!
And if Merkel and May and the entire length and breath of the CIA controlled msm are finally
happy about something Trump did, then it's only because what he did pleases the Likudicks in Israel.
Duh.
For a man of Fisk's stature in the realm of journalism to pretend that Merkel and May are acting
the way they are independent of nefarious banking/war mongering/Zio-forces in the Western world
is what is truly preposterous. Note to Fisk, Merkel and May are controlled, just like that
other little bitch of Zion, Toady Blair.
What would Mr. Fisk make of this video I wonder. A remarkable coincidence?!
When Fisk pretends that there's no comprehensible reason for why the NYT all in the sudden
gushes over Trump once he starts bombing Israel's foes, then you know it's all just dishonest
blather.
Perhaps Mr. Fisk is simply 'smart' enough to understand the score, and like all intellectual
whores, use his pen to obscure the truth, and please the PTB, rather than tempt them like Dr.
Udo Ulfkotte did. Eh Robert?
As for N. Korea, whenever you want to understand the id of the Zio-Fiend, just look to this
guy
"The North Koreans - this very erratic, unstable regime - may soon have the capability to
harm us directly," Bolton said in an interview with John Catsimatidis that aired Sunday on
New York's AM 970
200 Words
@quercusalba I must disagree with Fisk on a number of his statements and to my surprise and
chagrin he sounds almost unhinged in his article. Excuse me, but the misogynist claim is just
too juvenile and so terribly, terribly boring. And those admittedly predominately Muslim countries
from whom Trump wishes to ban immigration -- they are also countries (with the exception of Iran,
and we all know why it is on the list) which have no effective governments (thanks in good measure
to policies of these United States), as a result there is very little background information available
to our immigration officials for anyone wishing to come here from one of those countries. Wanting
to find an improved 'vetting' process for such an individuals is prudent.
I found Trump's rhetoric about the 'alleged' chemical weapons use in Syria troubling to say the
least. His authorization to bomb that airport though seemed like a pinprick action (to my delight)
and appeared to be an action to shut up his critics. I'm unsure if that is so, of course.
Trump's tweeting is not 'crazed'. It is his only means to get out his own message as an extremely
hostile and biased news media is not going to do it.
It is very hard to know what is true and what is not true anymore. I don't think Fisk in this
possesses the truth anymore than the rest of us. I speak four languages, it is amazingly simple
in these internet times, by comparing 'news', to find out, not always dead sure, what the truth
is.
On MH370 I still do not have more than suspicion, the USA again, the plane carried two groups
of Chinese technicians experts in making planes invisible for radar.
The control of the plane was taken from the crew, from the outside, this is nowadays possible
with any modern plane, on sept 11 there was a problem.
I suppose this failure led to some improvements.
MH17, someone leaked a secret Australian report, Ukraine used passenger jet flights as human
shields for their bombers.
A BUK was nevertheless fired, dit not hit an Ukrainian bomber, but a passenger flight.
Dutch prime minister the afternoon of the carnage made a very secret phone call to his vice prime
minister, the call had to be over a land line, the vice was so stupid to state in public, 'because
the Russians should not be able to listen to the call'.
At that moment officially Rutte, prime minister, knew nothing about the cause.
The only conclusion possible for me is that he did know, and told Asscher, vice, that the Russians
should be blamed.
100 Words
@Sean Fisk writes as if the current US president's puny actions are the cause of wars and
despotism all around the globe, although many like the Yemen have seen the same sides fighting
for five decades, wich an altered cast of outside help. They are are rooted in local conditions,
all these things Fisk is complaining about. He sometime talks as if the Middle east would settle
down in a trice without the US. But America is just a country, big and strong, but still in need
of allies.Even if America decided to withdraw from all involvement, It cannot halt others' interventions
in local conflicts by washing US hands clean. Fisk implies otherwise.
Even if America decided to withdraw from all involvement, It cannot halt others' interventions
in local conflicts by washing US hands clean. Fisk implies otherwise.
as an American, I'm worried about our hands (souls) being clean
if you want to go suit up for the IDF and get involved with interventions, then be my guest,
but America needs to come home (like Trump promised)
battle for Korea Trump, in his vague, frightening way, has decided that Southeast Asia
will be his real
[Truman's] crowning wartime achievement was also in Southeast Asia: the atom-bombing of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I never knew that Japan and the Koreas were in south-east Asia.
Are the winters a collective delusion? Does it mean that parts of Russia and China are the
only places in north-east Asia or even that there *is* no north-east Asia?
600 Words Fisk should have mentioned Trump's special affection for Israel and his unconditional
support of Israeli militarism and Israeli brutality. This is key.
Zio-Washington's double-standards vis-a-vis Israel are at the root of ongoing US lawlessness.
No bilateral arrangement in our nation's history epitomizes this moral/political fraud better.
Washington's 'unshakable' alliance with the Zionist entity is artificial. Americans do not benefit
by this arrangement. In fact, the opposite is true. Yet no one says a word. It's taboo.
Fragile, dubious myths involving US (and Israeli) exceptionalism endure and in plain view;
this despite the fact that America (the 'proposition nation') is wedded to the ideas of 'Equality'
and 'Freedom'.
Sure we are–except when it doesn't suit us; except when it doesn't suit Israel.
Thus, enforced inequality is just peachy in Israel. And American supremacism is how Washington
implements its foreign policies. Zio-Washington decides.
Thus, when it comes to defending the rights and interests of Palestine or Iran or Syria, principles
involving freedom, equality and sovereignty are sidelined. And any references to 'existential
threats' are reserved for you-know-who. It's a one-way street.
Lesser peoples and 'bad' countries are not entitled to invoke their own interests and entitlements.
Israel on the other hand, always is.
Indeed, Trump's preemptive missile attack on Syria is a great example of Zio-American privilege
and Zio-American lawlessness. Legal restraints are for other nations. Not Zio-America. When Zio-Washington
gets upset, Zio-Washington gets to invade and bomb sovereign states, even though these same states
have not attacked us.
Washington has not only become 'the world's policeman', but the world's judge and jury.
Both the UN Charter and the Geneva Convention however identify aggressive war (including a
'first strike') as the supreme international crime. Shouldn't this matter?
Double-standard are nevertheless used routinely by Israel and Washington. This allows them
to initiate serial warfare that lacks a clear legal foundation. It's all ad hoc. It subverts the
rule of law.
And our pro-Zionist MSM sanitizes this conduct and worldview.
Special counties (and we know who they are) are therefore not bound by cumbersome restrictions
that were designed to prevent war, expansion and aggression. Feelings and 'outrage' now matter
more. This is part and parcel of Zio-American exceptionalism. Laws and ethics have been downgraded
to accommodate political objectives and feelings.
This is why Trump's anti-Assad 'outrage' (and subsequent missile attack) did not focus on aggressive
war or the unjustified killing of civilians. Because if it did, Zio-Washington would be caught
with its own pants down.
Instead, Trump got weepy over the type of weapons used to kill civilians–not the slaughter
itself.
After all, we 'good guys' kill civilians all the time. And in massive quantities.
The flimsy moral principle underlying Trump's strike on Syria strike is this:
Gas is uncool. But missiles are perfectly fine.
Gas, remember, is reminiscent of the Holocaust. And that's a no-no!
Hidden within this fake moral paradigm is the message to always respect Jewish taboos (!) when
initiating violence. Kill properly.
These ethical distinctions however are politicized and empty. Murder is still murder. Aggression
is still aggression. When will Zio-Washington take a look in the mirror?
This declining level of moral thinking undermines real legal principles. Possessing nuclear
weapons (and threatening to use them) has become 'OK' for exceptional nations but 'evil' when
bad (anti-Israel) nations follow suit. And it's Zio-Washington alone that gets to decide which
is which and who is who.
This chicanery confers unique privilege. Our Zionized media gives cover to this fraud.
Fisk does correctly note that Trump is being steered into a pattern of malevolent neoconservatism.
This means war. Ironically, as Trump reverses the stated policies and goals that got him elected
(and in the direction of neocon aggression) the MSM has done a similar about-face (supporting
Trump).
Trump is finally 'acting presidential'!
These deceptions and grotesque fairy tales benefit global militarists, government careerists,
and of course, Zionists. Read More Agree:
anarchyst
Yet the moment he fires 59 missiles at Syria after more than 60 civilians die in an apparent
chemical attack which he blames on Assad – but none after far more are massacred by a Syrian
suicide bomber – even Angela Merkel takes leave of her senses and praises Trump, along with
the Matron of Downing Street, Signora Mogherini and sundry other potentates. Hasn't someone
cottoned on to the fact that Trump is now taking America into a shooting war?
Well Fisk, having been pontificating about Middle Eastern issues for quite a long time, haven't
you cottoned to the fact that Merkel and the "Matron of Downing Street" and all the rest of these
whores of the Zio-West are nothing more than quislings for the international PTB (Rothschild/Soros,
et al)?
I mean how ******** dumb can you be not to know that it's Israel that wants Assad out,
and that just like with Saddam and Gadhafi and all the rest, it is Israel's bidding that is getting
done here with all these serial and myriad atrocities and war crimes. Duh fucking duh!
And if Merkel and May and the entire length and breath of the CIA controlled msm are finally
happy about something Trump did, then it's only because what he did pleases the Likudicks in Israel.
Duh.
For a man of Fisk's stature in the realm of journalism to pretend that Merkel and May are acting
the way they are independent of nefarious banking/war mongering/Zio-forces in the Western world
is what is truly preposterous. Note to Fisk, Merkel and May are controlled, just like that
other little bitch of Zion, Toady Blair.
What would Mr. Fisk make of this video I wonder. A remarkable coincidence?!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFEudf8NOuY
When Fisk pretends that there's no comprehensible reason for why the NYT all in the sudden
gushes over Trump once he starts bombing Israel's foes, then you know it's all just dishonest
blather.
Perhaps Mr. Fisk is simply 'smart' enough to understand the score, and like all intellectual
whores, use his pen to obscure the truth, and please the PTB, rather than tempt them like Dr.
Udo Ulfkotte did. Eh Robert?
As for N. Korea, whenever you want to understand the id of the Zio-Fiend, just look to this
guy
"The North Koreans - this very erratic, unstable regime - may soon have the capability to harm
us directly," Bolton said in an interview with John Catsimatidis that aired Sunday on New York's
AM 970
I was just going to press 'Agree', but your last sentence mystifies me.
Bolton was, as usual, talking out of his arse, but assuming sincerity on his part (with great
strain), which *us* do you think he meant?
which *us* do you think he meant?
Hey Che,
when someone like Bolton says 'they directly threaten us'
you can take it to the bank that the "us" he's referring to is Israel
us, the Jews
he purports to mean the American people, but anyone on the planet who knows the first thing
about Ziocons like Bolton, know damn well he'd see virtually every single American goyim ground
up into the dirt rather that see one fingernail on one Jewish hand suffer harm.
N. Korea does not threaten America or our interests. If anything, it threatens its neighbors.
And if so, then our trading partner China could effectively deal with it.
the only reason N. Korea is in the crosshairs is because somehow Israel considers it a threat
Read More
100 Words Syria and Hizbollah represent resistance to Israel and its client state, the USA.
So when Trump attacked Syria he was immediately praised by the ziocohen controlled American media
and Congress who have consistently placed Israeli interests ahead of American interests. This
is by no means a new development in world affairs and I am surprised that Fisk is surprised. I'm
guessing that the only folks who were really shocked were the people who believed what Trump said
during his campaign about the uselessness of US intervention in the Middle East and how he was
going to change US policy . Read More
Reply
Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This
Commenter Display
All Comments Sam Shama
,
April 27, 2017 at 3:29 pm GMT
200 Words
@Mark Green Fisk should have mentioned Trump's special affection for Israel and his unconditional
support of Israeli militarism and Israeli brutality. This is key.
Zio-Washington's double-standards vis-a-vis Israel are at the root of ongoing US lawlessness.
No bilateral arrangement in our nation's history epitomizes this moral/political fraud better.
Washington's 'unshakable' alliance with the Zionist entity is artificial. Americans do not benefit
by this arrangement. In fact, the opposite is true. Yet no one says a word. It's taboo.
Fragile, dubious myths involving US (and Israeli) exceptionalism endure and in plain view;
this despite the fact that America (the 'proposition nation') is wedded to the ideas of 'Equality'
and 'Freedom'.
Sure we are--except when it doesn't suit us; except when it doesn't suit Israel.
Thus, enforced inequality is just peachy in Israel. And American supremacism is how Washington
implements its foreign policies. Zio-Washington decides.
Thus, when it comes to defending the rights and interests of Palestine or Iran or Syria, principles
involving freedom, equality and sovereignty are sidelined. And any references to 'existential
threats' are reserved for you-know-who. It's a one-way street.
Lesser peoples and 'bad' countries are not entitled to invoke their own interests and entitlements.
Israel on the other hand, always is.
Indeed, Trump's preemptive missile attack on Syria is a great example of Zio-American privilege
and Zio-American lawlessness. Legal restraints are for other nations. Not Zio-America. When Zio-Washington
gets upset, Zio-Washington gets to invade and bomb sovereign states, even though these same states
have not attacked us.
Washington has not only become 'the world's policeman', but the world's judge and jury.
Both the UN Charter and the Geneva Convention however identify aggressive war (including a
'first strike') as the supreme international crime. Shouldn't this matter?
Double-standard are nevertheless used routinely by Israel and Washington. This allows them to
initiate serial warfare that lacks a clear legal foundation. It's all ad hoc. It subverts the
rule of law.
And our pro-Zionist MSM sanitizes this conduct and worldview.
Special counties (and we know who they are) are therefore not bound by cumbersome restrictions
that were designed to prevent war, expansion and aggression. Feelings and 'outrage' now matter
more. This is part and parcel of Zio-American exceptionalism. Laws and ethics have been downgraded
to accommodate political objectives and feelings.
This is why Trump's anti-Assad 'outrage' (and subsequent missile attack) did not focus on aggressive
war or the unjustified killing of civilians. Because if it did, Zio-Washington would be caught
with its own pants down.
Instead, Trump got weepy over the type of weapons used to kill civilians--not the slaughter
itself.
After all, we 'good guys' kill civilians all the time. And in massive quantities.
The flimsy moral principle underlying Trump's strike on Syria strike is this:
Gas is uncool. But missiles are perfectly fine.
Gas, remember, is reminiscent of the Holocaust. And that's a no-no!
Hidden within this fake moral paradigm is the message to always respect Jewish taboos (!) when
initiating violence. Kill properly.
These ethical distinctions however are politicized and empty. Murder is still murder. Aggression
is still aggression. When will Zio-Washington take a look in the mirror?
This declining level of moral thinking undermines real legal principles. Possessing nuclear
weapons (and threatening to use them) has become 'OK' for exceptional nations but 'evil' when
bad (anti-Israel) nations follow suit. And it's Zio-Washington alone that gets to decide which
is which and who is who.
This chicanery confers unique privilege. Our Zionized media gives cover to this fraud.
Fisk does correctly note that Trump is being steered into a pattern of malevolent neoconservatism.
This means war. Ironically, as Trump reverses the stated policies and goals that got him elected
(and in the direction of neocon aggression) the MSM has done a similar about-face (supporting
Trump).
Trump is finally 'acting presidential'!
These deceptions and grotesque fairy tales benefit global militarists, government careerists,
and of course, Zionists.
Fisk should have mentioned Trump's special affection for Israel and his unconditional support
of Israeli militarism and Israeli brutality. This is key.
it isn't only 'key' Mark. It's the frothing, slathering gorilla in the living room tossing
hand grenades and breaking bones.
And yet Fisk, whose very identity is undistinguishable from Western (British) based, Middle
Eastern journalism ~ can not mention it.
How the f are people supposed to get a glimmer of the things you (heroically) write about when
the very people who are trusted to keep the West informed- would rather use their skills and position
to specifically and methodically mislead and dissemble and obscure- by design?
You're too kind to these intellectual whores Mark, imho.
When Fisk writes about Trump's, (and Merkel's and May's) murderous treachery and folly in the
Middle East by not mentioning *why* any of it is happening, he reminds me of Walter Duranty writing
about the Soviet Union, and the ornery resistance to the agricultural reforms by certain classes
of well-to-do peasants, who were just too greedy to understand the greatness of Stalin and his
vision.
100 Words
@Sam Shama Why spew the common nonsense?
Why spew the common nonsense?
you mean how the whole nightmarish holocaust of Eternal War and strife and horrors writ large
in the Middle East today are mostly a consequence of Zionist $ubversion of our governments and
media?
and that destroying Iraq and Libya and Syria (eventually Iran, Lebanon, etc..) are all part
of a transparent agenda to remake the greater Levant into a giant concentration camp a la Palestine?
100 Words I really doubt whether seeing pictures of dead Syrian children had anything to do
with the decision to bomb the Syrian airfield.
Fake news is at its best when it seems almost plausible. In reality no candidate for leader
of the free world since the time of King Herod would lose a moment of sleep over killing a few
Syrian children. Remember Trump even succeeded in killing an American child in Yemen.
100 Words Not a peep out of turncoat traitor Trump regarding "9/11 truth." The deafening silence
on this matter as-well-as other harsh issues facing rank-and-file Americans and the western world,
speaks volumes.
Now we've got masked gangs of ANTIFA punks running roughshod like spoiled brats and being handled
with kid gloves, as law enforcement is ordered by owned politicians, to stand down.
The self-serving globalist "elite" (~0.01%) and their Zionist trust fund baby financiers continue
to engineer civil war, as revolutionary war would be their worst nightmare.
Read More
you mean how the whole nightmarish holocaust of Eternal War and strife and horrors writ large
in the Middle East today are mostly a consequence of Zionist $ubversion of our governments and
media?
and that destroying Iraq and Libya and Syria (eventually Iran, Lebanon, etc..) are all part
of a transparent agenda to remake the greater Levant into a giant concentration camp a la Palestine?
that 'common nonsense'?
or is it common knowledge? Not a concentration camp, just a gigantic destabilised region.
There access to oil and gas is simple and cheap.
And as anyone leaves they try to go to Europe, destroy the cultures of the European countries,
so that Europe becomes a USA clone, where money reigns.
One just has to be enough cynical to see it all.
With me this cynicism began three years after sept 11, when I could no longer fool myself.
Then the question came 'how became our saviour of WWII become a rogue state ?'.
The answer was simple but shocking, Roosevelt was brought into politics in 1932 to wage war for
USA world supremacy.
Charles A Beard published his book on Roosevelt politics in 1946, also the year where the Pearl
Harbour investigation took place.
According to the democrats there had been no Roosevelt conspiracy, the republicans had other ideas.
Roosevelt needed an attack, he had promised his voters in 1940 'that USA boys would nog be
sent overseas, unless the USA was attacked'.
His oil boycott succeeded, Japan attacked when it had oil left for three months.
The republican ideas have many times been confirmed since then.
Read More
100 Words
@wayfarer Not a peep out of turncoat traitor Trump regarding "9/11 truth." The deafening silence
on this matter as-well-as other harsh issues facing rank-and-file Americans and the western world,
speaks volumes.
Now we've got masked gangs of ANTIFA punks running roughshod like spoiled brats and being handled
with kid gloves, as law enforcement is ordered by owned politicians, to stand down.
The self-serving globalist "elite" (~0.01%) and their Zionist trust fund baby financiers continue
to engineer civil war, as revolutionary war would be their worst nightmare.
https://kenfm.de/untergang-der-humanitaet/
Warren Buffett, eine der reichsten Personen auf dieser Welt, war es, der den Begriff ?„Finanzielle
Massenvernichtungswaffen" prägte. ??In einem Interview mit der New York Times am 26. November
2006 erklärte er zudem freimütig:
„Es herrscht Krieg Reich gegen Arm. Es ist meine Klasse, die Klasse der Reichen, ?die den Krieg
begonnen hat ?und wir werden diesen Klassenkampf gewinnen"
Warren Bufett in 2006 'there is war between the rich and the poor, we, the rich, will win'.
Finanzielle Massenvernichtungswaffen: financial WMD's.
English is great in short expressions.
200 Words The litmus test for a Trump foreign policy is not disengagement and isolation from
the rest of the world.
It is whether or not such foreign policy is calibrated to undermine the United States from
within. Policies like rules of engagement and "war crimes" legal action designed to demoralize
and kill US soldiers needlessly or refugee resettlement programs designed to give non-white enemies
a fighting chance to kill Americans on their own soil.
The US projecting power around the world is something that it has always done since WWII. The
difference of late, starting under Bill Clinton, was utilizing foreign interventions in a way
that deliberately blow back on the United States and are designed to hurt it or the West in general
from within.
So far, we have seen a pivot away from the anti-American foreign interventions of the recent
past. Trump has pivoted to Asia which all but guarantees there won't be any boots-on-the-ground
in North Korea. He has attempted to stem the flow of immigrants and refugees, so far, unsuccessfully,
but it is still early in the game. Syria has not amounted to anything of note, but at least Trump
is not propping up ISIS the way the Obama administration did.
Even if America decided to withdraw from all involvement, It cannot halt others' interventions
in local conflicts by washing US hands clean. Fisk implies otherwise.
as an American, I'm worried about our hands (souls) being clean
if you want to go suit up for the IDF and get involved with interventions, then be my guest, but
America needs to come home (like Trump promised)
no more wars for Israel
wouldn't you agree Sean? If you want to have clean hands then spend the money you don't need to
live on global famine relief, like Peter Singer the philosopher does and talks about. Individually
few do that and I suspect even Singer doesn't to the extent his ethics would suggest. people die
of famine and poverty and we live in luxury in the West : deal with that before droning on a bout
some careful military operations. Dropping a few bombs on the airdrome facilities of Assad's baby
killer pilots is hardly dirty war.
Assad is 100% responsible for this rebellion which started basically because his family had
ran the country into the ground,and failing to see that his people really don't like him very
much, he put up the price of basic necessities like fuel. Then he ignored the warnings of Obama's
abortive bombing attempt, and brought in Russia (the Russians only came in after the US seemed
impotent) to blast his unmotivated minority army to victory.
The idea of Israel / US subversion of Syria is a joke. If Israel wanted to oust Assad it could
have done it with a mere maneuver within territory Israel already controls: a build up on the
Golan , which Assad would have had to match by transferring his army away from fighting the rebels.
The US could have overthrown Assad with one air raid on a manufactured pretext at any time.
Killing killers who hide among the innocent always involves collateral damage so American hands
may be less than white, but America hands are clean by comparison with Assad's hands, which are
dripping with the blood of Syrians. Read More
@Fuzzy My hopes for détente under Trump were obviously a pipe dream. He folded like a cheap
lawn chair. A lawn chair cannot collapse like that, obviously it was the result of a controlled
demolition Read More Rurik
,
April 27, 2017 at 6:10 pm GMT
500 Words
@jilles dykstra Not a concentration camp, just a gigantic destabilised region.
There access to oil and gas is simple and cheap.
And as anyone leaves they try to go to Europe, destroy the cultures of the European countries,
so that Europe becomes a USA clone, where money reigns.
One just has to be enough cynical to see it all.
With me this cynicism began three years after sept 11, when I could no longer fool myself.
Then the question came 'how became our saviour of WWII become a rogue state ?'.
The answer was simple but shocking, Roosevelt was brought into politics in 1932 to wage war for
USA world supremacy.
Charles A Beard published his book on Roosevelt politics in 1946, also the year where the Pearl
Harbour investigation took place.
According to the democrats there had been no Roosevelt conspiracy, the republicans had other ideas.
Roosevelt needed an attack, he had promised his voters in 1940 'that USA boys would nog be sent
overseas, unless the USA was attacked'.
His oil boycott succeeded, Japan attacked when it had oil left for three months.
The republican ideas have many times been confirmed since then. Hallo Jilles,
what a treat it is to see people from Europe here at the inimitable Unz Review!
Not a concentration camp, just a gigantic destabilised region.
well, I guess it's just a matter of perspective. What Libya or Iraq (or the Palestinian occupied
territories) seem like to me are one big open air prison of hopelessness and despair. Wrought
with daily horrors and death. At least in a concentration camp the young women might be able to
walk the streets without being raped by savages unleashed upon the people, as it seems is the
case in Libya. Or blown to bits by CIA/Mossad car bombs like Iraq. Or subjected to random torture,
white phosphorous or having their organs harvested like in Gaza.
But then I guess it depends on the "concentration camp", since the ones Eisenhower ran for
teenage German boys after the war was over are probably as bad as it gets. So perspective in all
things, I suppose.
And as anyone leaves they try to go to Europe, destroy the cultures of the European countries,
so that Europe becomes a USA clone,
that's what you call a twofer for the Zionists. Such a deal!
'how became our saviour of WWII become a rogue state ?'.
savior?!
the US was never your savior Jilles. That's just the propaganda speaking that all German (and
American) children were/are marinated in following that evil war.
when a nation like America does to a people what American bombers did to cities like Dresden,
it's hardly fitting to refer to such people as saviors. I read accounts where fighter pilots said
that after the bombing, when the survivors were fleeing the holocaust, that they'd strafe anything
with blonde hair, men women or children. That's not the talk of a savior, but of a race-hate crazed
murderous demon. Remember, at the time Dresden was bombed, the war was effectively already over.
They were unleashing genocidal hatred on the German people, not saving them.
The answer was simple but shocking, Roosevelt was brought into politics in 1932 to wage
war for USA world supremacy.
it goes back farther than that, to W oodrow W ilson's I.
and the point was always to secure the founding of the state of Israel.
he had promised his voters in 1940 'that USA boys would nog be sent overseas, unless the
USA was attacked'.
His oil boycott succeeded, Japan attacked when it had oil left for three months.
you really do have an excellent handle on things Jilles. But you're not cynical enough yet.
the fount of treachery starts with the charter of the Federal Reserve Bank, the original treason
and betrayal of biblical enormity that has set in motion all of these wars and assorted horrors
and atrocities. And threatens to make this century just as bloody and Satanic as the last one,
unless we can somehow collectively manage to waylay these Fiends.
100 Words
@Sean If you want to have clean hands then spend the money you don't need to live on global
famine relief, like Peter Singer the philosopher does and talks about. Individually few do that
and I suspect even Singer doesn't to the extent his ethics would suggest. people die of famine
and poverty and we live in luxury in the West : deal with that before droning on a bout some careful
military operations. Dropping a few bombs on the airdrome facilities of Assad's baby killer pilots
is hardly dirty war.
Assad is 100% responsible for this rebellion which started basically because his family had
ran the country into the ground,and failing to see that his people really don't like him very
much, he put up the price of basic necessities like fuel. Then he ignored the warnings of Obama's
abortive bombing attempt, and brought in Russia (the Russians only came in after the US seemed
impotent) to blast his unmotivated minority army to victory.
The idea of Israel / US subversion of Syria is a joke. If Israel wanted to oust Assad it could
have done it with a mere maneuver within territory Israel already controls: a build up on the
Golan , which Assad would have had to match by transferring his army away from fighting the rebels.
The US could have overthrown Assad with one air raid on a manufactured pretext at any time.
Killing killers who hide among the innocent always involves collateral damage so American hands
may be less than white, but America hands are clean by comparison with Assad's hands, which are
dripping with the blood of Syrians. Hmm Assad has a looong way to go to catch up with us, Nam
Cambodia Thailand Philippines South America Iran Iraq Libya Syria and all other points on the
compass, my your an ass for you don't even know your own history as you always try to blame others,
the mark I presume of a real troll. Read More
200 Words
@Sean If you want to have clean hands then spend the money you don't need to live on global
famine relief, like Peter Singer the philosopher does and talks about. Individually few do that
and I suspect even Singer doesn't to the extent his ethics would suggest. people die of famine
and poverty and we live in luxury in the West : deal with that before droning on a bout some careful
military operations. Dropping a few bombs on the airdrome facilities of Assad's baby killer pilots
is hardly dirty war.
Assad is 100% responsible for this rebellion which started basically because his family had
ran the country into the ground,and failing to see that his people really don't like him very
much, he put up the price of basic necessities like fuel. Then he ignored the warnings of Obama's
abortive bombing attempt, and brought in Russia (the Russians only came in after the US seemed
impotent) to blast his unmotivated minority army to victory.
The idea of Israel / US subversion of Syria is a joke. If Israel wanted to oust Assad it could
have done it with a mere maneuver within territory Israel already controls: a build up on the
Golan , which Assad would have had to match by transferring his army away from fighting the rebels.
The US could have overthrown Assad with one air raid on a manufactured pretext at any time.
Killing killers who hide among the innocent always involves collateral damage so American hands
may be less than white, but America hands are clean by comparison with Assad's hands, which are
dripping with the blood of Syrians.
The idea of Israel / US subversion of Syria is a joke.
golly Sean
you could use that same argument with so many conflicts eh?
The idea of Israel / US subversion of Iraq is a joke.
The idea of Israel / US subversion of Libya is a joke.
it works just the same with them all, huh?
but then the notorious cowards in the IDF never like to get in harms way now do they, so just
like with your hero general Ariel Sharon, they always prefer to stay in safety and get other goons
to do their fighting for them, huh?
Killing killers who hide among the innocent always involves collateral damage so American
hands may be less than white
isn't that pretty much what Sharon said about the Sabra and Shatila massacre?
funny how that's always your modus operendi.. to use false flags to get others to do your fighting
for you?
like the Syrian false flag chemical attacks
or 9/11
or getting Druze Phalangist militia to slaughter women and children, lest one of them have
a sharp object to fight back with, and pose a threat to a brave IDF soldier, huh?
I suspect Robert Fisk may even know a little about that proud episode in chronicles of Zio-brave
warrior-history. Read More
what a treat it is to see people from Europe here at the inimitable Unz Review!
Not a concentration camp, just a gigantic destabilised region.
well, I guess it's just a matter of perspective. What Libya or Iraq (or the Palestinian occupied
territories) seem like to me are one big open air prison of hopelessness and despair. Wrought
with daily horrors and death. At least in a concentration camp the young women might be able to
walk the streets without being raped by savages unleashed upon the people, as it seems is the
case in Libya. Or blown to bits by CIA/Mossad car bombs like Iraq. Or subjected to random torture,
white phosphorous or having their organs harvested like in Gaza.
But then I guess it depends on the "concentration camp", since the ones Eisenhower ran for
teenage German boys after the war was over are probably as bad as it gets. So perspective in all
things, I suppose.
And as anyone leaves they try to go to Europe, destroy the cultures of the European countries,
so that Europe becomes a USA clone,
that's what you call a twofer for the Zionists. Such a deal!
'how became our saviour of WWII become a rogue state ?'.
savior?!
the US was never your savior Jilles. That's just the propaganda speaking that all German (and
American) children were/are marinated in following that evil war.
when a nation like America does to a people what American bombers did to cities like Dresden,
it's hardly fitting to refer to such people as saviors. I read accounts where fighter pilots said
that after the bombing, when the survivors were fleeing the holocaust, that they'd strafe anything
with blonde hair, men women or children. That's not the talk of a savior, but of a race-hate crazed
murderous demon. Remember, at the time Dresden was bombed, the war was effectively already over.
They were unleashing genocidal hatred on the German people, not saving them.
The answer was simple but shocking, Roosevelt was brought into politics in 1932 to wage war
for USA world supremacy.
it goes back farther than that, to W oodrow W ilson's I.
and the point was always to secure the founding of the state of Israel.
he had promised his voters in 1940 'that USA boys would nog be sent overseas, unless the USA
was attacked'.
His oil boycott succeeded, Japan attacked when it had oil left for three months.
you really do have an excellent handle on things Jilles. But you're not cynical enough yet. ;)
the fount of treachery starts with the charter of the Federal Reserve Bank, the original treason
and betrayal of biblical enormity that has set in motion all of these wars and assorted horrors
and atrocities. And threatens to make this century just as bloody and Satanic as the last one,
unless we can somehow collectively manage to waylay these Fiends.
Prost -- Had you read earlier posts by me then you would have known that the Balfour declaration
was the price Britain had to pay in 1917 in order to avoid capitulation in november 1917.
You then also would have known that I know that
Henry Morgenthau, 'Ambassador Morgenthau's Story', New York, 1918
was just war propaganda.
Morgenthau's hatred of Germany I attribute to the German antisemitism that began after the unification
in 1870.
An anti semitism about which one Rothschildt wrote to another 'the only enemy of jews is jews'.
'From prejudice to destruction', Jacob Katz, 1980, Cambridge MA says about the same in softer
words.
The Federal Reserve just is an institution.
What matters is who runs it with what purpose.
This brings us back to the root of all evil in the USA, the country is still in the second half
of the 19th century, it never became democratic, money still rules the USA.
That this was and is possible I attribute to the lack of any culture in the USA, except hamburgers
and oversized cars.
The USA is not a melting pot, it is stew, all the ingredients still are there.
Read More
100 Words
@jilles dykstra I still do not see Trump as a crackpot.
Though I'm not sure about his ideas I still hope that he will end USA militarism, not because
out of moral ideas, but because he sees, and his rich friends, that pursuing the goal of USA world
hegemony will, or has already, ruined the USA.
The attack on Syria, and his warlike talk about N Korea, hogwash to confuse Deep State, and to
satisfy his voters.
The Dutch professor Laslo Maracs, university of Amsterdam, explains all this eloquently, alas
only in Dutch, as far as I know.
And my hope still is that Trump will prevent NATO and EU war on Russia, the war that indeed will
end al wars, as already Wilson wanted, because this war will end all human life.
How it then ends is well described in the novel On the Beach, Neville Shute, 1953, the New Zealand
government distributing suicide pills when the radio active dust reaches the island. Don't be
too sure that Trump voters favor this kind of mindless and dangerous violence abroad. On the contrary,
for me, my family, and many Trump voters of our acquaintance.
Many of us voted for trump in part because he was proposing a less belligerent, less unreasonable
attitude towards Russia, if not towards Iran. We voted for him because he continually lambasted
the US invasions of Iraq and said that the US should stop invading and trying to dictate how other
peoples should operate in their countries.
I don't think a majority of people who voted Trump OR a majority of people who voted Clinton
favors attacking Syria or Iran or Russia. Yet here we are threatening each of them, attacking
Assad's regime to the benefit of Islamists, and encircling& sanctioning & trying to humiliate
and impoverish Russia.
@jilles dykstra I still do not see Trump as a crackpot.
Though I'm not sure about his ideas I still hope that he will end USA militarism, not because
out of moral ideas, but because he sees, and his rich friends, that pursuing the goal of USA world
hegemony will, or has already, ruined the USA.
The attack on Syria, and his warlike talk about N Korea, hogwash to confuse Deep State, and to
satisfy his voters.
The Dutch professor Laslo Maracs, university of Amsterdam, explains all this eloquently, alas
only in Dutch, as far as I know.
200 Words
@The White Muslim Traditionalist I find it interesting that people from America think that
Merkel is some sort of crazed loon.
She's an incredibly astute, conservative, pious Lutheran politician. Sure, because she's such
a pious woman, Kohl today got one million euro's in damages, because the ghost writer of his memoirs
published volume four without his permission, with his statements about Merkel like 'she put the
dagger in my back and turned it'.
In 2001 or so there was a financial scandal in Kohl's party, Merkel made it public knowledge.
The other remark was 'she just has lust for power', or something like that.
I suppose now millions of copies of volume four will be sold.
I also like to recall Merkel's statement about the huge numbers of immigrants 'wird Deutschland
für immer ändern', 'will change Germany forever'.
As if any German asked for this change, change for which Sarrazin already warned in 2010:
Thilo Sarrazin, 'Deutschland schafft sich ab, Wie wir unser Land aufs Spiel setzen', München 2010
Sarrazin warned that Germany is destroying itself through the immigration of large numbers
of immigrants with low IQ.
Merkel fired him immediately. Read More Agree:
Dan Hayes
100 Words
@bluedog Hmm Assad has a looong way to go to catch up with us, Nam Cambodia Thailand Philippines
South America Iran Iraq Libya Syria and all other points on the compass, my your an ass for you
don't even know your own history as you always try to blame others, the mark I presume of a real
troll. The US isn't as moral as it claim but who is? There is a thing called cognitive dissonance
.Sounds like you believe the US should stay at home for ever after, because it was solely responsible
for all deaths those conflicts, though many had started before US involvement. The lesson of US
failure in Vietnam was that military strength was not enough against a opponent that was politically
strong, Assad is not strong politically, the majority in Syria opposed him and dispute his inherited
police state and even more ruthless army facing a rag tag piecemeal rebellion he would have lost
by now without the Russians . The US is supposed to stay out and look on as Russia turns the rebels
the US tried to protect into mincemeat and Assad sprays entire villages with poison gas like they
were bugs, is it? Read More
The White Muslim Traditionalist ,
April 27, 2017 at 8:12 pm GMT
@jilles dykstra Sure, because she's such a pious woman, Kohl today got one million euro's
in damages, because the ghost writer of his memoirs published volume four without his permission,
with his statements about Merkel like 'she put the dagger in my back and turned it'.
In 2001 or so there was a financial scandal in Kohl's party, Merkel made it public knowledge.
The other remark was 'she just has lust for power', or something like that.
I suppose now millions of copies of volume four will be sold.
I also like to recall Merkel's statement about the huge numbers of immigrants 'wird Deutschland
für immer ändern', 'will change Germany forever'.
As if any German asked for this change, change for which Sarrazin already warned in 2010:
Thilo Sarrazin, 'Deutschland schafft sich ab, Wie wir unser Land aufs Spiel setzen', München 2010
Sarrazin warned that Germany is destroying itself through the immigration of large numbers
of immigrants with low IQ.
Merkel fired him immediately. Bro, how did that contradict anything that I just said?
All the Christian churches advocate taking in migrants, it's literally in the Bible. In the
Qur'an and Hadith we have similar obligations, but they're more measured.
Read More
The more dangerous America's crackpot President becomes, the saner the world believes him
to be.
What does this mean? That the world is insane and that as Trump spins into greater insanity
he becomes more in sync with the prevailing insanity? Prior to the election he seemed to be the
peace candidate which is a major reason why he won. Therefore not everyone out there is insane,
least of all "the world". The war hounds are a minority of people who are in a position to publicly
lobby for war through their mass media and spread fear and hysteria. The leaders of various countries
have more in common with each other than with their own citizens and trade notes on how to keep
their rabble in line. This sudden turn towards belligerence and war has taken people by surprise
and everyone is puzzled as to what's really going on.
The author's book "Pity the Nation" was a good read.
Read More
Reply
Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This
Commenter Display
All Comments
300 Words
@jilles dykstra Had you read earlier posts by me then you would have known that the Balfour
declaration was the price Britain had to pay in 1917 in order to avoid capitulation in november
1917.
You then also would have known that I know that
Henry Morgenthau, 'Ambassador Morgenthau's Story', New York, 1918
was just war propaganda.
Morgenthau's hatred of Germany I attribute to the German antisemitism that began after the unification
in 1870.
An anti semitism about which one Rothschildt wrote to another 'the only enemy of jews is jews'.
'From prejudice to destruction', Jacob Katz, 1980, Cambridge MA says about the same in softer
words.
The Federal Reserve just is an institution.
What matters is who runs it with what purpose.
This brings us back to the root of all evil in the USA, the country is still in the second half
of the 19th century, it never became democratic, money still rules the USA.
That this was and is possible I attribute to the lack of any culture in the USA, except hamburgers
and oversized cars.
The USA is not a melting pot, it is stew, all the ingredients still are there.
The Federal Reserve just is an institution.
What matters is who runs it with what purpose.
This brings us back to the root of all evil in the USA, the country is still in the second
half of the 19th century, it never became democratic, money still rules the USA.
all too true
That this was and is possible I attribute to the lack of any culture in the USA, except
hamburgers and oversized cars.
I can't argue with that too much, and I fully understand the hostility of so many people towards
the US of A.
what's good about it? Not too much, but there are a few things that are worth mentioning. We
still have the First Amendment and free speech. Something most of Euopre are sadly lacking, as
you can be tossed in jail for saying 5,999,999 Jews died in gas chambers during the Holocaust,
and not the holy number of six million. Here in the states we're allowed to say it's 5,999,999
Jews.
Also we still have the Second Amendment, that is the protector and guarantor of the First.
Sure, our culture is a open pipe of spiritual sewage gushing out into the rest of the world,
but that's all being done by Hollywood types. Not traditional Americans, who simply want to be
left alone.
most egregious however is the war mongering, and as you mentioned with FDR, (and Wilson and
Obama and Trump, etc ) we always vote against the wars, but then always have it foisted upon us
by the tribe. (as you mentioned, it's who owns the Fed).
Anyways God bless and please keep commenting..
Read More
All the Christian churches advocate taking in migrants, it's literally in the Bible. In the Qur'an
and Hadith we have similar obligations, but they're more measured. Salaam Bro,
Welcome to UNZ! Are you in the US or Germany? It sounded like you might be German.
The idea of Israel / US subversion of Syria is a joke.
golly Sean
you could use that same argument with so many conflicts eh?
The idea of Israel / US subversion of Iraq is a joke.
The idea of Israel / US subversion of Libya is a joke.
it works just the same with them all, huh?
but then the notorious cowards in the IDF never like to get in harms way now do they, so just
like with your hero general Ariel Sharon, they always prefer to stay in safety and get other
goons to do their fighting for them, huh?
Killing killers who hide among the innocent always involves collateral damage so American
hands may be less than white
isn't that pretty much what Sharon said about the Sabra and Shatila massacre?
funny how that's always your modus operendi.. to use false flags to get others to do your fighting
for you?
like the Syrian false flag chemical attacks
or 9/11
or getting Druze Phalangist militia to slaughter women and children, lest one of them have
a sharp object to fight back with, and pose a threat to a brave IDF soldier, huh?
I suspect Robert Fisk may even know a little about that proud episode in chronicles of Zio-brave
warrior-history. Israel would hardly put effort into overthrowing Libyan or Egyptian governments
without believing their replacement would be an improvement from Israel's point of view. It
wouldn't because everyone in those counties hates Israel. I don't think there is any evidence
at all that Israel wants Assad to be overthrown. No Syrian government is going to be anything
but hostile to Israel and Syria has nothing Israel wants. Yes Israel would use a wedge on Arabs
fighting one another to keep them at it, but it cannot create divisions within a country of
between countries out of nothing. For example Iran and Iraq were at war in the 80s and Israel
supplied both with arms to keep the war going, but it didn't create the conflict, which was
a Persian versus Arab one with very ancient hational roots- just like the Iranian-Saudi proxy
war playing out in Syria.
As for false flags, as I said it does seem insane for Assad to gas kids right now but Assad
and his tiny leadership are very isolated from good advice and they have a proven ability to
make incredibly bad decisions. One thing that weighs heavily against a false flag is that the
US intelligence could have very professionally faked an attack last year and got a major US
airstrike to break the back of Assad before the rebels had been virtually annihilated in the
cities. So why a why would Assad use nerve gas now argument cuts both ways.
Read More
100 Words
@Abdul Alhazred Actually its the British!....well they are bloody insane!
Anyone who says they reserve the right to make a thermonuclear "First Strike" is totally mad.
https://larouchepac.com/20170426/brits-nuclear-first-strike-jolly-good Actually its the
British! .well they are bloody insane!
"Muhammed really is most popular baby name in the UK – as is Mohammed, Muhammad "
(Reported in The Independent, Monday 1 December 2014).
So do me a favour, Abdul, old chap: do stop blaming "the British" for what some of their
politicians say. You wouldn't like them to make sweeping generalisations about British people
called Mohammed being "bloody insane", now would you!
Read More
200 Words
@jilles dykstra Had you read earlier posts by me then you would have known that the Balfour
declaration was the price Britain had to pay in 1917 in order to avoid capitulation in november
1917.
You then also would have known that I know that
Henry Morgenthau, 'Ambassador Morgenthau's Story', New York, 1918
was just war propaganda.
Morgenthau's hatred of Germany I attribute to the German antisemitism that began after the
unification in 1870.
An anti semitism about which one Rothschildt wrote to another 'the only enemy of jews is jews'.
'From prejudice to destruction', Jacob Katz, 1980, Cambridge MA says about the same in softer
words.
The Federal Reserve just is an institution.
What matters is who runs it with what purpose.
This brings us back to the root of all evil in the USA, the country is still in the second
half of the 19th century, it never became democratic, money still rules the USA.
That this was and is possible I attribute to the lack of any culture in the USA, except hamburgers
and oversized cars.
The USA is not a melting pot, it is stew, all the ingredients still are there.
An anti semitism about which one Rothschildt wrote to another 'the only enemy of jews
is jews'.
'From prejudice to destruction', Jacob Katz, 1980, Cambridge MA says about the same in softer
words.
I'd appreciate a source for that quote.
This brings us back to the root of all evil in the USA, the country is still in the second
half of the 19th century,
Depends.
Politically that's probably close to true except for the fact that back then we had at least
a few politicians with spines and gonads. Now we just have slithering grubs and the intestinal
parasites of swine, e.g. the Swine Large Roundworm, Ascaris suum.
Morally, it hasn't even left the Stone Age.
it never became democratic,
True and you obviously know more than most Americans do about that. Democracy, in this country,
is nothing more than a deeply ingrained fetish. As you probably know, democracy only works
in small, homogeneous, MORAL groups otherwise it's simply mob rule.
money still rules the USA.
More precisely, money is the main idol that's worshipped. The rulers are vicious, sociopathic,
corrupt, insatiable, moneyed hyenas and jackals. And they are completely incorrigible.
Read More Agree:
bluedog
@Sean The last American occupation troops did not leave Germany until the 1930's. The last
American troops left Germany in 1923. The French stayed until 1935 when Hitler forced them
out. Read More Alden
,
April 28, 2017 at 12:38 am GMT
The Federal Reserve just is an institution.
What matters is who runs it with what purpose.
This brings us back to the root of all evil in the USA, the country is still in the second
half of the 19th century, it never became democratic, money still rules the USA.
all too true
That this was and is possible I attribute to the lack of any culture in the USA, except
hamburgers and oversized cars.
I can't argue with that too much, and I fully understand the hostility of so many people towards
the US of A.
what's good about it? Not too much, but there are a few things that are worth mentioning. We
still have the First Amendment and free speech. Something most of Euopre are sadly lacking,
as you can be tossed in jail for saying 5,999,999 Jews died in gas chambers during the Holocaust,
and not the holy number of six million. Here in the states we're allowed to say it's 5,999,999
Jews.
Also we still have the Second Amendment, that is the protector and guarantor of the First.
Sure, our culture is a open pipe of spiritual sewage gushing out into the rest of the world,
but that's all being done by Hollywood types. Not traditional Americans, who simply want to
be left alone.
most egregious however is the war mongering, and as you mentioned with FDR, (and Wilson and
Obama and Trump, etc...) we always vote against the wars, but then always have it foisted upon
us by the tribe. (as you mentioned, it's who owns the Fed).
The Federal Reserve just is an institution.
What matters is who runs it with what purpose.
This brings us back to the root of all evil in the USA, the country is still in the second
half of the 19th century, it never became democratic, money still rules the USA.
all too true
That this was and is possible I attribute to the lack of any culture in the USA, except
hamburgers and oversized cars.
I can't argue with that too much, and I fully understand the hostility of so many people towards
the US of A.
what's good about it? Not too much, but there are a few things that are worth mentioning. We
still have the First Amendment and free speech. Something most of Euopre are sadly lacking,
as you can be tossed in jail for saying 5,999,999 Jews died in gas chambers during the Holocaust,
and not the holy number of six million. Here in the states we're allowed to say it's 5,999,999
Jews.
Also we still have the Second Amendment, that is the protector and guarantor of the First.
Sure, our culture is a open pipe of spiritual sewage gushing out into the rest of the world,
but that's all being done by Hollywood types. Not traditional Americans, who simply want to
be left alone.
most egregious however is the war mongering, and as you mentioned with FDR, (and Wilson and
Obama and Trump, etc...) we always vote against the wars, but then always have it foisted upon
us by the tribe. (as you mentioned, it's who owns the Fed).
Anyways God bless and please keep commenting.. I have no hostility whatsoever against the USA
people in general.
Several offered me hospitality in their homes.
What struck me each time was the igorance, the lack of information.
Local tv is just stupid advertising.
None of my hosts watched serious tv news, nowhere did I see a serious paper, just something
local about engagements, weddings and funerals.
One of my hosts I presented with the book of Anne Applebaum From West to East, I think the
title was, she travelled from the Baltic sea to the Black see.
He read it, had never realised about so many peoples.
Even a well traveled more or less well known American I found very ignorant, who reads Readers
Digest ?
A Berkeley assistant professor asked me what I knew about the Civil War, at the time, end
of the seventies, very little, but when I explained to him that Europe had been wars galore,
so why would I know much about an American war, he was shocked.
My strong objections are against USA society as a system, that allows a tiny minority to
run foreign policy at their pleasure, at the cost, expense and blood of others, USA citizens
and far more foreign citizens.
The death rate American soldiers against foreign casualties was calculated by Anatol Lieven
as one to fifty.
On Okinawa is was 7000 USA soldiers against 100.000 Japanese soldiers and 40.000 civilians.
Being a social democrat it abhors me that the USA always has abundant money for death and
destruction but seems incapable of providing decent affordable health care for all its citizens;
Read More Agree:
jacques
sheete
An anti semitism about which one Rothschildt wrote to another 'the only enemy of jews is
jews'.
'From prejudice to destruction', Jacob Katz, 1980, Cambridge MA says about the same in softer
words.
I'd appreciate a source for that quote.
This brings us back to the root of all evil in the USA, the country is still in the second
half of the 19th century,
Depends.
Politically that's probably close to true except for the fact that back then we had at least
a few politicians with spines and gonads. Now we just have slithering grubs and the intestinal
parasites of swine, e.g. the Swine Large Roundworm, Ascaris suum.
Morally, it hasn't even left the Stone Age.
it never became democratic,
True and you obviously know more than most Americans do about that. Democracy, in this country,
is nothing more than a deeply ingrained fetish. As you probably know, democracy only works
in small, homogeneous, MORAL groups otherwise it's simply mob rule.
money still rules the USA.
More precisely, money is the main idol that's worshipped. The rulers are vicious, sociopathic,
corrupt, insatiable, moneyed hyenas and jackals. And they are completely incorrigible. The
Rothschildt letter,
in one of the two following books.
Both books now are not where I am right now.
In about three weeks time I could check.
Ismar Schorsch, 'Jewish Reactions to German Anti-Semitism, 1870 – 1914′, New York 1972
Fritz Stern, 'Gold and Iron, Bismarck, Bleichröder, and the Building of the German Empire',
New York, 1977.
Both are written by jews, you should read both in order to understand the emergence of anti
semitism in Germany after 1870.
Who morally is to blame, one can debate for a very long time.
In any case my idea is that jews behaved stupidly, the Schorsch book explains abundantly
how jews in articles, books and creating organisations tried to show they were not to blame.
That agreement among jews, even that was not realised, about the blame, would change nothing
about the feelings of 'real' Germans, never seems to have occurred to them.
One sees the same attitude now when Israel is critisized.
Read More
100 Words
@jilles dykstra The Rothschildt letter,
in one of the two following books.
Both books now are not where I am right now.
In about three weeks time I could check.
Ismar Schorsch, 'Jewish Reactions to German Anti-Semitism, 1870 - 1914', New York 1972
Fritz Stern, 'Gold and Iron, Bismarck, Bleichröder, and the Building of the German Empire',
New York, 1977.
Both are written by jews, you should read both in order to understand the emergence of anti
semitism in Germany after 1870.
Who morally is to blame, one can debate for a very long time.
In any case my idea is that jews behaved stupidly, the Schorsch book explains abundantly how
jews in articles, books and creating organisations tried to show they were not to blame.
That agreement among jews, even that was not realised, about the blame, would change nothing
about the feelings of 'real' Germans, never seems to have occurred to them.
One sees the same attitude now when Israel is critisized. Many thanks to you, fine sir!
You appear to be one of the few who seems to have a grip on reality and I find your comments
and insights informative and refreshing.
100 Words
@jilles dykstra I have no hostility whatsoever against the USA people in general.
Several offered me hospitality in their homes.
What struck me each time was the igorance, the lack of information.
Local tv is just stupid advertising.
None of my hosts watched serious tv news, nowhere did I see a serious paper, just something
local about engagements, weddings and funerals.
One of my hosts I presented with the book of Anne Applebaum From West to East, I think the
title was, she travelled from the Baltic sea to the Black see.
He read it, had never realised about so many peoples.
Even a well traveled more or less well known American I found very ignorant, who reads Readers
Digest ?
A Berkeley assistant professor asked me what I knew about the Civil War, at the time, end of
the seventies, very little, but when I explained to him that Europe had been wars galore, so
why would I know much about an American war, he was shocked.
My strong objections are against USA society as a system, that allows a tiny minority to run
foreign policy at their pleasure, at the cost, expense and blood of others, USA citizens and
far more foreign citizens.
The death rate American soldiers against foreign casualties was calculated by Anatol Lieven
as one to fifty.
On Okinawa is was 7000 USA soldiers against 100.000 Japanese soldiers and 40.000 civilians.
Being a social democrat it abhors me that the USA always has abundant money for death and destruction
but seems incapable of providing decent affordable health care for all its citizens;
What struck me each time was the igorance, the lack of information.
I'm a native, and agree with that. What's even more shocking is the smug, even hostile resistance
to learning anything beyond the National Anthem and such.
It's a continuous struggle especially when you're dealing with people such as you describe
such as "professors."
There is a locally well known personality, a "professor" of history, who is in great demand
here for his presentation of the American Civil War ( poor label that), who disgorges"patriotic"
nonsense as nauseating as it is mythical. Listening to one of his talks is as much an exercise
of extreme self flagellation on my part as it is mental masturbation on his part yet people
practically worship the sappy stuff he spews. There is no point in even attempting to counter
what he sez.
His audiences are completely deaf to anything but self (national) praise. It's as if nearly
the whole nation positively delights in wallowing in prideful ignorance and they turn to the
tube for their daily doses of it. Read More
@jilles dykstra The Rothschildt letter,
in one of the two following books.
Both books now are not where I am right now.
In about three weeks time I could check.
Ismar Schorsch, 'Jewish Reactions to German Anti-Semitism, 1870 - 1914', New York 1972
Fritz Stern, 'Gold and Iron, Bismarck, Bleichröder, and the Building of the German Empire',
New York, 1977.
Both are written by jews, you should read both in order to understand the emergence of anti
semitism in Germany after 1870.
Who morally is to blame, one can debate for a very long time.
In any case my idea is that jews behaved stupidly, the Schorsch book explains abundantly how
jews in articles, books and creating organisations tried to show they were not to blame.
That agreement among jews, even that was not realised, about the blame, would change nothing
about the feelings of 'real' Germans, never seems to have occurred to them.
One sees the same attitude now when Israel is critisized.
@Sean Fisk writes as if the current US president's puny actions are the cause of wars and
despotism all around the globe, although many like the Yemen have seen the same sides fighting
for five decades, wich an altered cast of outside help. They are are rooted in local conditions,
all these things Fisk is complaining about. He sometime talks as if the Middle east would settle
down in a trice without the US. But America is just a country, big and strong, but still in
need of allies.Even if America decided to withdraw from all involvement, It cannot halt others'
interventions in local conflicts by washing US hands clean. Fisk implies otherwise. Indeed.
Nobody ever does anything wrong. How could they?
Read More
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,
April 28, 2017 at 3:28 pm GMT
@Sean Israel would hardly put effort into overthrowing Libyan or Egyptian governments without
believing their replacement would be an improvement from Israel's point of view. It wouldn't
because everyone in those counties hates Israel. I don't think there is any evidence at all
that Israel wants Assad to be overthrown. No Syrian government is going to be anything but
hostile to Israel and Syria has nothing Israel wants. Yes Israel would use a wedge on Arabs
fighting one another to keep them at it, but it cannot create divisions within a country of
between countries out of nothing. For example Iran and Iraq were at war in the 80s and Israel
supplied both with arms to keep the war going, but it didn't create the conflict, which was
a Persian versus Arab one with very ancient hational roots- just like the Iranian-Saudi proxy
war playing out in Syria.
As for false flags, as I said it does seem insane for Assad to gas kids right now but Assad
and his tiny leadership are very isolated from good advice and they have a proven ability to
make incredibly bad decisions. One thing that weighs heavily against a false flag is that the
US intelligence could have very professionally faked an attack last year and got a major US
airstrike to break the back of Assad before the rebels had been virtually annihilated in the
cities. So why a why would Assad use nerve gas now argument cuts both ways.
I don't think there is any evidence at all that Israel wants Assad to be overthrown.
200 Words
@naro Robert Fisk the Iranian shill, and secret Shiia convert, doesn't even know that Hiroshima
and Nagasaki are NOT in Southeast Asia. Thank God that Trump and Israel are a lot smarter than
this turd. Why don't you simply praise Trump for being obedient to Israel? "Never again," naro?
You should have already noticed that the ordinary Americans are getting to realize that the
US has been used as a living host by the paraziotid Israel that needs the US to implement the
Oded Yinon plan for Eretz Israel. It also obvious that the implementation could end up with
a glassy Middle East, where Israel would become a heap of ashes. Or you are ready to cry antisemitism,
Holocaust, and special victimhood, despite your bloody subhuman ziocons that have arranged
the slaughter of millions of human beings in the Middle East?
Your people are collaborating with ISIS in the struggling Syria and with neo-Nazis in the deteriorating
Ukraine. The Israel-firsters have "convinced" the US government to channel the country' resources
towards the wars of aggression in the Middle East – all in the name of Eretz Israel (and war
profits). Very moral. Read More
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All Comments jilles
dykstra ,
April 28, 2017 at 4:00 pm GMT
Thanks! First time in maybe ten years that anyone really wants to read books.
The wonderful thing about old books is that they're cheap, easy to get these days, and, most
important 'often history books tell more about the time they're written than about the time
they describe'.
In other words, they carry the old bias, not the bias of today.
If you're interested in Islam
Reuben Levy, 'The social structure of Islam', London, New York, 1931, 1932, 1957, 1971
Richard Fletcher, 'Moorish Spain', Berkeley 1992
100 Words
@Sean Fisk writes as if the current US president's puny actions are the cause of wars and
despotism all around the globe, although many like the Yemen have seen the same sides fighting
for five decades, wich an altered cast of outside help. They are are rooted in local conditions,
all these things Fisk is complaining about. He sometime talks as if the Middle east would settle
down in a trice without the US. But America is just a country, big and strong, but still in
need of allies.Even if America decided to withdraw from all involvement, It cannot halt others'
interventions in local conflicts by washing US hands clean. Fisk implies otherwise. Lets be
precise: the ongoing wars in the Middle East have been planned and pushed by the US/UK ziocons
to protect and enlarge the territory of Israel. Both Libya and Syria were doing quite well
(particularly Libya) until the ziocon "ameliorators" came to fix the situation in the Middle
East. The "big and strong" America and her resources have been used by the tribe to protect
their supremacist home of shameless colonizers. Instead of developing trade and cooperation,
the US came to the Midde East with weapons of mass destruction. The Israel-firsters cooked
the plan for the interventions. Millions died as a result.
Read More annamaria
,
April 28, 2017 at 4:14 pm GMT
@Sam Shama Why spew the common nonsense? Well, why don't you explain the UNZ readers the
rationale for Israelis' collaboration with ISIS? This collaboration is well-documented and
it has been discussed in Israeli press.
So, why does Israel help to and protect ISIS? Read
More annamaria
,
April 28, 2017 at 4:21 pm GMT
100 Words
@Sean The US isn't as moral as it claim but who is? There is a thing called cognitive dissonance
.Sounds like you believe the US should stay at home for ever after, because it was solely responsible
for all deaths those conflicts, though many had started before US involvement. The lesson of
US failure in Vietnam was that military strength was not enough against a opponent that was
politically strong, Assad is not strong politically, the majority in Syria opposed him and
dispute his inherited police state and even more ruthless army facing a rag tag piecemeal rebellion
he would have lost by now without the Russians . The US is supposed to stay out and look on
as Russia turns the rebels the US tried to protect into mincemeat and Assad sprays entire villages
with poison gas like they were bugs, is it? China and Russia:
" regardless of the circumstances, we will not change our policy of deepening and developing
our strategic partnership and cooperation; our policy, based on joint development and prosperity,
will not change; and our joint efforts to defend peace and justice and promote cooperation
in the world will not change. These were the words of President Xi Jinping."
Imagine: crazy US brass wielding various weapons of mass destruction over Europe, Middle
East, and Asia. Versus the Silk Road – a net of trade connections between Asia and Europe.
Read More
600 Words
@jilles dykstra I have no hostility whatsoever against the USA people in general.
Several offered me hospitality in their homes.
What struck me each time was the igorance, the lack of information.
Local tv is just stupid advertising.
None of my hosts watched serious tv news, nowhere did I see a serious paper, just something
local about engagements, weddings and funerals.
One of my hosts I presented with the book of Anne Applebaum From West to East, I think the
title was, she travelled from the Baltic sea to the Black see.
He read it, had never realised about so many peoples.
Even a well traveled more or less well known American I found very ignorant, who reads Readers
Digest ?
A Berkeley assistant professor asked me what I knew about the Civil War, at the time, end of
the seventies, very little, but when I explained to him that Europe had been wars galore, so
why would I know much about an American war, he was shocked.
My strong objections are against USA society as a system, that allows a tiny minority to run
foreign policy at their pleasure, at the cost, expense and blood of others, USA citizens and
far more foreign citizens.
The death rate American soldiers against foreign casualties was calculated by Anatol Lieven
as one to fifty.
On Okinawa is was 7000 USA soldiers against 100.000 Japanese soldiers and 40.000 civilians.
Being a social democrat it abhors me that the USA always has abundant money for death and destruction
but seems incapable of providing decent affordable health care for all its citizens;
My strong objections are against USA society as a system, that allows a tiny minority
to run foreign policy at their pleasure, at the cost, expense and blood of others, USA citizens
and far more foreign citizens.
I can't argue with that Jilles
and you're right about the general ignorance and bovine stupidity of most Americans, but
that has been very carefully created by the PTB, who don't want an educated, thinking populace.
what was it papa Bush said?
"if the American people knew what we have done, they would string us up from the lamp posts"
if the American people could think, the results would be the same. If the American
people could think and were in possession of a moral soul, then they'd know that wars based
on lies should be repudiated and the war criminals brought to justice. But the American sheople
have been systematically dumbed down to the point of zombies, infatuated with Kim Kardashian's
ass. Today Idiocracy is a reality. It's true.
But, let me just say on behalf of Americans, that I don't really see it any better across
the pond. Sure, the Europeans are better educated, and generally speak at least two languages,
and have heard of Yalta and Copernicus, but with all that education, they just don't seem to
me to be any more principled or moral than the zombified Americans.
Sure, it is the US military that is the biggest bully on the block, but does that
excuse the other little bullies that stand behind him and give him moral support? There were
French jets bombing Libya just as ferociously as any American ones. The Brits have never seen
an act of aggression from the US military that they don't reverently applaud. And the Germans,
whose government goes along with every war crime America commits in principle, are today complicit
in a racial supremacist, genocidal holocaust against a completely innocent victim whose only
crime is that they existed – in Palestine, on land that some Jewish supremacist coveted for
themselves.
The irony? That these very same Germans feel excruciating and debilitating guilt for a crime
that they had nothing to do with, while at the same time facilitating the same crime of genocide
today, in their names, by funding and arming and providing "moral" cover for the Zionists.
So sure, Europeans are far more educated, but seem to fall very short when it comes to using
that education to augment a moral foundation for their actions and the actions of their respective
governments. There seems to me to be a sort of all-pervasive cowardice in Western Europe, and
a Pavlovian, knee-jerk propensity to wallow in prostrate abasement and self-flagellate as soon
as anyone says "Holocaust". Sort of what they used to be able to bludgeon Americans with by
the pejorative "racist", until it became a joke.
Anyways, yes, we're ignorant, and bovine and dangerous, but morally, I just don't see too
many paragons of virtue or honor to hold up as examples today. Uruguay perhaps, and I would
include Putin's Russia insofar as he's trying to put out the fires the Zio-Western-fiend is
lighting all over the place, but then he too bolsters their agenda by antagonizing the former
Soviet satellite states with ultra-nationalistic chest thumping over the "great war", (that
the Bolsheviks in Russia were mainly responsible for). Note to Putin, let it rest! The great
victory that you celebrate in May was a catastrophe for Eastern Europe (and millions of Russians
too)
What struck me each time was the igorance, the lack of information.
I'm a native, and agree with that. What's even more shocking is the smug, even hostile resistance
to learning anything beyond the National Anthem and such.
It's a continuous struggle especially when you're dealing with people such as you describe
such as "professors."
There is a locally well known personality, a "professor" of history, who is in great demand
here for his presentation of the American Civil War ( poor label that), who disgorges"patriotic"
nonsense as nauseating as it is mythical. Listening to one of his talks is as much an exercise
of extreme self flagellation on my part as it is mental masturbation on his part yet people
practically worship the sappy stuff he spews. There is no point in even attempting to counter
what he sez.
His audiences are completely deaf to anything but self (national) praise. It's as if nearly
the whole nation positively delights in wallowing in prideful ignorance and they turn to the
tube for their daily doses of it. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, 'Die Grundlagen des Neunzehnten
Jahrhunderts', 1898- 1907, München
If you can read German, I can recommend it.
He was the brother of the 1938 Chamberlain, had a strange youth, attended gymnasia in different
European countries.
He was flabbergasted how the same history was taught differently in different countries.
I long ago wrote a USA correspondent how European countries considered waging war over the
Monroe Doctrine.
The reply was 'it is still taught here in glowing terms', well, in Europe it was seen as colonialism,
as many in S America feel they're still under the USA colonial yoke.
Eduardo Galeano, 'Open Veins of Latin America', Five centuries of the pillage of a continent',
1971, 2009, Londen.
Your Civil War, for the liberation of slaves.
My knowledge is from different books, and of course there were people concerned with slavery.
But the real reasons were quite different, destroying a cosmopolitan culture in the south,
quite different from the NE, for NE hegemony over the whole USA, and demand for industrial
labour, slavery does not work in factories.
The liberated slaves soon found out that they often were worse off, especially in old age,
at the plantations they could stay until their deaths.
Read More
@annamaria China and Russia:
"...regardless of the circumstances, we will not change our policy of deepening and developing
our strategic partnership and cooperation; our policy, based on joint development and prosperity,
will not change; and our joint efforts to defend peace and justice and promote cooperation
in the world will not change. These were the words of President Xi Jinping."
http://thesaker.is/breaking-personal-message-from-xi-jinping-to-vladimir-putin-our-friendship-is-unbreakable/
Imagine: crazy US brass wielding various weapons of mass destruction over Europe, Middle East,
and Asia. Versus the Silk Road - a net of trade connections between Asia and Europe. There
were allegations that Hillary was prepared to wage an atomic war in Europe.
Read More jilles
dykstra ,
April 28, 2017 at 4:43 pm GMT
100 Words
@annamaria Lets be precise: the ongoing wars in the Middle East have been planned and pushed
by the US/UK ziocons to protect and enlarge the territory of Israel. Both Libya and Syria were
doing quite well (particularly Libya) until the ziocon "ameliorators" came to fix the situation
in the Middle East. The "big and strong" America and her resources have been used by the tribe
to protect their supremacist home of shameless colonizers. Instead of developing trade and
cooperation, the US came to the Midde East with weapons of mass destruction. The Israel-firsters
cooked the plan for the interventions. Millions died as a result. I was in Syria, 1987 or so.
Of course it was dictatorial, secret services galore, five it was said.
But the country was peaceful, not rich, but also not as poor as I experienced India some ten
years before.
Aleppo was the most cosmopolitan city I ever visited, anything accepted, from miniskirts to
burka's.
The sukh, now destroyed, was wonderful, medieval, happy looking people.
Read More
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dykstra ,
April 28, 2017 at 4:46 pm GMT
100 Words
@jilles dykstra Houston Stewart Chamberlain, 'Die Grundlagen des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts',
1898- 1907, München
If you can read German, I can recommend it.
He was the brother of the 1938 Chamberlain, had a strange youth, attended gymnasia in
different European countries.
He was flabbergasted how the same history was taught differently in different countries.
I long ago wrote a USA correspondent how European countries considered waging war over
the Monroe Doctrine.
The reply was 'it is still taught here in glowing terms', well, in Europe it was seen
as colonialism, as many in S America feel they're still under the USA colonial yoke.
Eduardo Galeano, 'Open Veins of Latin America', Five centuries of the pillage of a continent',
1971, 2009, Londen.
Your Civil War, for the liberation of slaves.
My knowledge is from different books, and of course there were people concerned with
slavery.
But the real reasons were quite different, destroying a cosmopolitan culture in the south,
quite different from the NE, for NE hegemony over the whole USA, and demand for industrial
labour, slavery does not work in factories.
The liberated slaves soon found out that they often were worse off, especially in old
age, at the plantations they could stay until their deaths. Rereading, I do not want
to defend slavery, not even in the USA, where it seems to have been far better for slaves
than in Brazil
Herbert Aptheker, 'Negro Slave Revolts in the United States 1526 – 1860 ', New York
1939
@Sean Israel would hardly put effort into overthrowing Libyan or Egyptian governments
without believing their replacement would be an improvement from Israel's point of view.
It wouldn't because everyone in those counties hates Israel. I don't think there is any
evidence at all that Israel wants Assad to be overthrown. No Syrian government is going
to be anything but hostile to Israel and Syria has nothing Israel wants. Yes Israel would
use a wedge on Arabs fighting one another to keep them at it, but it cannot create divisions
within a country of between countries out of nothing. For example Iran and Iraq were
at war in the 80s and Israel supplied both with arms to keep the war going, but it didn't
create the conflict, which was a Persian versus Arab one with very ancient hational roots-
just like the Iranian-Saudi proxy war playing out in Syria.
As for false flags, as I said it does seem insane for Assad to gas kids right now
but Assad and his tiny leadership are very isolated from good advice and they have a
proven ability to make incredibly bad decisions. One thing that weighs heavily against
a false flag is that the US intelligence could have very professionally faked an attack
last year and got a major US airstrike to break the back of Assad before the rebels had
been virtually annihilated in the cities. So why a why would Assad use nerve gas now
argument cuts both ways. Very good comment, Sean
Read More LOL:
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100 Words
@jilles dykstra There were allegations that Hillary was prepared to wage an atomic
war in Europe. The US has contingency plans for nuking in almost every scenario without
ever intending to do it. Very different from intending to carry out a nuclear first strike.
I would not be surprised if the US has the targeting dating for a nuclear strike on Britain,
just in case there was a need someday. But no way would the US ever dream of actually
using nuclear weapons in Europe, because no ally country would agree to be a nuclear
battlefield and hitting the enemy homeland would mean a nuclear strike on the US mainland
in response. Read More
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Shama ,
April 28, 2017 at 5:28 pm GMT
100 Words
@annamaria Well, why don't you explain the UNZ readers the rationale for Israelis'
collaboration with ISIS? This collaboration is well-documented and it has been discussed
in Israeli press.
So, why does Israel help to and protect ISIS? Israel has a free press in which a great
deal of speculation is tolerated, even welcomed. I haven't seen any articles in any of
the major journals, or even in the smaller ones, where Daesh is described as a collaborator.
To Israeli society's credit, humour is a normal and common enjoyment, in which spirit,
some skits produced – Eretz Nehderet being the most prominent one – portray a
darkly humourous relationship between Israeli doctors [and IDF medical corps] and Daesh
operating in the Golan.
So, Israeli med corps will, as modern protocol demands, aid any and all injured.
Read More
1,400 Words
@jilles dykstra Houston Stewart Chamberlain, 'Die Grundlagen des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts',
1898- 1907, München
If you can read German, I can recommend it.
He was the brother of the 1938 Chamberlain, had a strange youth, attended gymnasia in
different European countries.
He was flabbergasted how the same history was taught differently in different countries.
I long ago wrote a USA correspondent how European countries considered waging war over
the Monroe Doctrine.
The reply was 'it is still taught here in glowing terms', well, in Europe it was seen
as colonialism, as many in S America feel they're still under the USA colonial yoke.
Eduardo Galeano, 'Open Veins of Latin America', Five centuries of the pillage of a continent',
1971, 2009, Londen.
Your Civil War, for the liberation of slaves.
My knowledge is from different books, and of course there were people concerned with
slavery.
But the real reasons were quite different, destroying a cosmopolitan culture in the south,
quite different from the NE, for NE hegemony over the whole USA, and demand for industrial
labour, slavery does not work in factories.
The liberated slaves soon found out that they often were worse off, especially in old
age, at the plantations they could stay until their deaths. Egad! Houston Stewart Chamberlain
was a neurotic character. I haven't read his Grundlagen , but Shirer's description
of it is sufficient. Chamberlain wrote in spurts, gripped by a demonic fervour; he says
so in his autobiography, Lebenswege , that he was often unable to recognise them
as his own work because they surpassed his expectations!
French scholar of Germanism Edmond Vermeil said Chamberlain's ideas were essentially
"shoddy."
This son of an English admiral, nephew of a British field marshal, Sir Neville
Chamberlain, and of two British generals, and eventually son-in-law of Richard Wagner,
was born at Portsmouth in 1855. He was destined for the British Army or Navy, but
his delicate health made such a calling out of the question and he was educated in
France and Geneva, where French became his first language.
Between the ages of fifteen and nineteen fate brought him into touch with two Germans
and thereafter he was drawn irresistibly toward Germany, of which he ultimately became
a citizen and one of the foremost thinkers and in whose language he wrote all of his
many books, several of which had an almost blinding influence on Wilhelm II, Adolf
Hitler and countless lesser Germans.
In 1870, when he was fifteen, Chamberlain landed in the hands of a remarkable tutor,
Otto Kuntze, a Prussian of the Prussians, who for four years imprinted on his receptive
mind and sensitive soul the glories of militant, conquering Prussia and also – apparently
unmindful of the contrasts – of such artists and poets as Beethoven, Goethe, Schiller
andWagner. At nineteen Chamberlain fell madly in love with Anna Horst, also a Prussian,
ten years his senior and, like him, highly neurotic. In 1882, at the age of twenty-seven,
he journeyed from Geneva, where he had beer, immersed for three years in studies of
philosophy, natural history, physics, chemistry and medicine, to Bayreuth. There he
met Wagner who, as he says, became the sun of his life, and Cosima, the composer's
wife, to whom he would remain passionately and slavishly devoted all the rest of his
days. From 1885, when he went with Anna Horst, who had become his wife, to live for
four years in Dresden, he became a German in thought and in language, moving on to
Vienna in 1889 for a decade and finally in 1909 to Bayreuth, where he dwelt until
his death in 1927.
He divorced his idolized Prussian wife in 1905, when she was sixty and even more
mentally and physically ill than he (the separation was so painful that he said it
almost drove him mad) and three years later he married Eva Wagner and settled down
near Wahnfried, where he could be near his wife's mother, the revered, strong-willed
Cosima.
Hypersensitive and neurotic and subject to frequent nervous breakdowns, Chamberlain
was given to seeing demons who, by his own account, drove him on relentlessly to seek
new fields of study and get on with his prodigious writings. One vision after another
forced him to change from biology to botany to the fine arts, to music, to philosophy,
to biography to history. Once, in 1896, when he was returning from Italy, the presence
of a demon became so forceful that he got off the train at Gardone, shut himself up
in a hotel room for eight days and, abandoning some work on music that he had contemplated,
wrote feverishly on a biological thesis until he had the germ of the theme that would
dominate all of his later works: race and history.
Whatever its blemishes, his mind had a vast sweep ranging over the fields of literature,
music, biology, botany, religion, history and politics. There was, as Jean Real has
pointed out, a profound unity of inspiration in all his published works and they had
a remarkable coherence. Since he felt himself goaded on by demons, his books (on Wagner,
Goethe, Kant, Christianity and race) were written in the grip of a terrible fever,
a veritable trance, a state of self-induced intoxication, so that, as he says in his
autobiography, Lebenswege, he was often unable to recognize them as his own work,
because they surpassed his expectations.
Minds more balanced than his have subsequently demolished his theories of race
and much of his history, and to such a French scholar of Germanism as Edmond Vermeil
Chamberlain's ideas were essentially "shoddy." Yet to the anti-Nazi German biographer
of Hitler, Konrad Heiden, who deplored the influence of his racial teachings, Chamberlain
"was one of the most astonishing talents in the history of the German mind, a mine
of knowledge and profound
ideas."
The book which most profoundly influenced that mind, which sent Wilhelm II into
ecstasies and provided the Nazis with their racial aberrations, was Foundations of
the Nineteenth Century (Grundlagen des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts) a work of some twelve
hundred pages which Chamberlain, again possessed of one of his "demons," wrote in
nineteen months between April 1, 1897, and October 31, 1898, in Vienna, and which
was published in 1899.
As with Gobineau, whom he admired, Chamberlain found the key to history, indeed
the basis of civilization, to be race. To explain the nineteenth century, that is,
the contemporary world, one had to consider first what it had been bequeathed from
ancient times. Three things, said Chamberlain: Greek philosophy and art, Roman law
and the personality of Christ. There were also three legatees: the Jews and the Germans,
the "two pure races," and the half-breed Latins of the Mediterranean – "a chaos of
peoples," he called them. The Germans alone deserved such a splendid heritage. They
had, it is true, come into history late, not until the thirteenth century. But even
before that, in destroying the Roman Empire, they had proved their worth, "It is not
true," he says, " that the Teutonic barbarian conjured up the so-called 'Night of
the Middle Ages'; this night followed rather upon the intellectual and moral bankruptcy
of the raceless chaos of humanity which the dying Roman Empire had nurtured; but for
the Teuton, everlasting night would have settled upon the world." At the time he was
writing he saw in the Teuton the only hope of the world. Chamberlain included among
the "Teutons" the Celts and the Slavs, though the Teutons were the most important
element. However, he is quite woolly in his definitions and at one point declares
that "whoever behaves as a Teuton is a Teuton whatever his racial origin." Perhaps
here he was thinking of his own non-German origin. Whatever he was, the Teuton, according
to Chamberlain, was "the soul of our culture. The importance of each nation as a living
power today is dependent upon the proportion of genuinely Teutonic blood in its population.
. . True history begins at the moment when the Teuton, with his masterful hand, lays
his grip upon the legacy of antiquity."
And the Jews? The longest chapter in Foundations is devoted to them. As we have
seen, Chamberlain claimed that the Jews and the Teutons were the only pure races left
in the West. And in this chapter he condemns "stupid and revolting anti-Semitism."
The Jews, he says, are not "inferior" to the Teuton, merely "different." They have
their own grandeur; they realize the "sacred duty" of man to guard the purity of race.
And yet as he proceeds to analyze the Jews, Chamberlain slips into the very vulgar
anti-Semitism which he condemns in others and which leads, in the end, to the obscenities
of Julius Streicher's caricatures of the Jews in Der Stuermer in Hitler's time. Indeed
a good deal of the "philosophical" basis of Nazi anti-Semitism stems from this chapter.
The preposterousness of Chamberlain's views is quickly evident. He has declared
that the personality of Christ is one of the three great bequests of antiquity to
modern civilization. He then sets out to "prove" that Jesus was not a Jew. His Galilean
origins, his inability to utter correctly the Aramaic gutturals, are to Chamberlain
"clear signs" that Jesus had "a large proportion of non-Semitic blood." He then makes
a typically fiat statement: "Whoever claimed that Jesus was a Jew was either being
stupid or telling a lie .. . Jesus was not a Jew."
300 Words
@jilles dykstra I have no hostility whatsoever against the USA people in general.
Several offered me hospitality in their homes.
What struck me each time was the igorance, the lack of information.
Local tv is just stupid advertising.
None of my hosts watched serious tv news, nowhere did I see a serious paper, just something
local about engagements, weddings and funerals.
One of my hosts I presented with the book of Anne Applebaum From West to East, I think
the title was, she travelled from the Baltic sea to the Black see.
He read it, had never realised about so many peoples.
Even a well traveled more or less well known American I found very ignorant, who reads
Readers Digest ?
A Berkeley assistant professor asked me what I knew about the Civil War, at the time,
end of the seventies, very little, but when I explained to him that Europe had been wars
galore, so why would I know much about an American war, he was shocked.
My strong objections are against USA society as a system, that allows a tiny minority
to run foreign policy at their pleasure, at the cost, expense and blood of others, USA
citizens and far more foreign citizens.
The death rate American soldiers against foreign casualties was calculated by Anatol
Lieven as one to fifty.
On Okinawa is was 7000 USA soldiers against 100.000 Japanese soldiers and 40.000 civilians.
Being a social democrat it abhors me that the USA always has abundant money for death
and destruction but seems incapable of providing decent affordable health care for all
its citizens; Your conception of American health care is incorrect. Yes, there are flaws,
but ANYONE can walk into an American hospital emergency room and they will be treated
REGARDLESS OF ABILITY TO PAY. Even illegal aliens will be treated
Patients in countries with "socialized medicine" quite often, have interminable wait
times for procedures that are routine here in the USA. Even Canada, our neighbor to the
north, has problems with timely availability of services. Canada has first-rate medical
personnel, who have to work under the constraints of a public system.
It is interesting to note, that in most countries with "socialized medicine" there is
a two-tier system of treatment those with private health insurance (or money) can (and
do) get better treatment than those who depend on the "public system".
In addition, there are life saving drugs that are unavailable in the public system as
they are considered "too expensive"
Witness Great Britain's "National Health Service" (NHS) with its NICE (National Institute
for Health and Care Excellence), which refuses to pay for certain breast cancer drugs,
deeming them to be "too expensive". One could argue that NICE is a "death panel" relegating
those who are unfortunate enough to need care relegated to death.
Go outside the NHS system to pay for your own care, and the door closes and locks behind
you. "NHS has invoked a policy of refusing care altogether to patients who, often upon
physician recommendation, choose to pay out-of-pocket for best-available drug treatments".
A breast cancer patient in the UK "Found that out the hard way when she tried to buy
Avastin out of her own pocket, only to have her doctor inform her that if she did so,
she would have to pay for all her treatment." Yet she has been paying income taxes of
20 to 45 percent for her "government provided free healthcare".
American health care needs improvement, but socializing it is not the answer
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Fidelios Automata ,
April 28, 2017 at 7:07 pm GMT
100 Words
@Sam Shama Israel has a free press in which a great deal of speculation is tolerated,
even welcomed. I haven't seen any articles in any of the major journals, or even in the
smaller ones, where Daesh is described as a collaborator.
To Israeli society's credit, humour is a normal and common enjoyment, in which spirit,
some skits produced - Eretz Nehderet being the most prominent one - portray a
darkly humourous relationship between Israeli doctors [and IDF medical corps] and Daesh
operating in the Golan.
So, Israeli med corps will, as modern protocol demands, aid any and all injured. You
should be more diligent in your search. Israel has been cooperating with ISIS and the
Israeli generals have loudly proclaimed their preference for ISIS over sovereign Syria.
200 Words
@Sean Anyone who wants to stage a preemptive nuclear attack wouldn't say so beforehand.
No-one can come up with a scenario in which Britain would ever first use nukes, so refusing
to rule it out is simply the practice of confronting potential aggression with uncertain
consequences though being slow to say what you will do, and never saying what
you won't.
Lets be clear: the British nukes are out in subs and if they got the coded order to
fire off a first use strike (for some reason we cannot yet imagine) the Trident captain
and crew would obey the command. Any statement to the contrary made by some politician
on BBC radio years before is going to be bloody irrelevant. Sean,
I think you are underestimating the utter evil and horror of such a pronouncement which
is an act of war and terrorism that is and has been standard operating practice of the
British Empire. There are two operative words at play "Gunboat Diplomacy" where the emphasis
is upon a canon in the face. Boom Baboom, but that's not gunpowder, nor iron ball, but
a big flash of a sun exploding
But there are those who think they can have a limited nuclear war
And "The Bitch Set Him Up!"
Yeah its LaRouche, he is the only one who called this, Donny doing the 180, and why
because Trump invoked the American System of Economics and was ready for peace with Russia
and China and because the DEAL, the real deal, the only Deal is the invitation by the
The Chinese and Russians as concerns the New Silk Road and One Belt Initiatives, which
Lyndon and Helga Zepp LaRouche and associates are noted architects of this strategic
move that would end British Empire Geopolotics
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300 Words
@annamaria You should be more diligent in your search. Israel has been cooperating
with ISIS and the Israeli generals have loudly proclaimed their preference for ISIS over
sovereign Syria.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/alliance-of-convenience-israel-supports-syrias-isis-terror-group/5587203
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3315347/Watch-heart-pounding-moment-Israeli-commandos-save-Islamic-militants-Syrian-warzone-risking-lives-sworn-enemies.html
http://21stcenturywire.com/2015/02/19/un-report-reveals-how-israel-is-coordinating-with-isis-militants-inside-syria/
http://ahtribune.com/world/north-africa-south-west-asia/1633-moshe-yaalon.html
And please spare us your lecturing on special moral qualities of IDF and Israelis
at large. Listen to your bloody Shaked; she is a Minister of Justice in your morally-lost
lands: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-lawmakers-call-genocide-palestinians-gets-thousands-facebook-likes
"Israelis gather on hillsides to watch and cheer as military drops bombs on Gaza:" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/20/israelis-cheer-gaza-bombing
The ongoing blood bath in the Middle East (millions died) is directly related to Oded
Yinon plan for Eretz Israel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_Sw You remind me
of someone I can't quite remember this moment, flitting hither and thither, the busy
little bee, nary a thought to what they are actually reading.
Take e.g., the Daily Mail article you deposited, apparently a bolster for you claim.
The Mail piece headlines say:
Saving their sworn enemy: Heartstopping footage shows Israeli commandos rescuing
wounded men from Syrian warzone – but WHY are they risking their lives for Islamic
militants?
++ Elite Israeli troops rescue wounded Syrians from the world's worst war almost every
night
++They have saved more than 2,000 people since 2013, at a cost of 50 million shekels
(£8.7million)
++Many are enemies of Israel and some may even be fighters for groups affiliated
to Al Qaeda
++MailOnline embedded with Israeli commandos stationed on the border between Israel
and Syria
++Dramatic video filmed by MailOnline and the Israeli army shows these operations
taking place
++Israel says that the operation is purely humanitarian but analysts believe Israel
also has strategic reasons
Go on, read the whole damned article. Take it from one of the victims, Ahmed, treated
by IDF medical corps:
'I will not fight against Israel in the future. Israel looks after wounded people
better than the Arabs. The Arabs are dogs,' said a wiry rebel fighter who gave his
name as Ahmed, 23, who was recovering from a gunshot wound to the groin.
This is overwhelmingly what Israel is doing there. At most, what you twist and label
a collaboration, is the realpolitik behind Israel's work in this regard, to form an alliance
of convenience, such that rockets are not launched into Israel, especially in the North.
And why shouldn't she?
You start your post, as usual, by instructing me to be more diligent in my readings.
As I note that proposal with the seriousness it deserves, I take the occasion to remind
you that you adopt the same attitude more broadly, as exempli gratia, when you bake goods,
not inflict your male relatives with cordite when the bite was expectant of a sweet morsel.
Read More
300 Words
@Sam Shama You remind me of someone I can't quite remember this moment, flitting
hither and thither, the busy little bee, nary a thought to what they are actually reading.
Take e.g., the Daily Mail article you deposited, apparently a bolster for you claim.
The Mail piece headlines say:
Saving their sworn enemy: Heartstopping footage shows Israeli commandos rescuing wounded
men from Syrian warzone - but WHY are they risking their lives for Islamic militants?
++ Elite Israeli troops rescue wounded Syrians from the world's worst war almost every
night
++They have saved more than 2,000 people since 2013, at a cost of 50 million shekels
(£8.7million)
++Many are enemies of Israel and some may even be fighters for groups affiliated
to Al Qaeda
++MailOnline embedded with Israeli commandos stationed on the border between Israel
and Syria
++Dramatic video filmed by MailOnline and the Israeli army shows these operations
taking place
++Israel says that the operation is purely humanitarian but analysts believe Israel
also has strategic reasons
Go on, read the whole damned article. Take it from one of the victims, Ahmed, treated
by IDF medical corps:
'I will not fight against Israel in the future. Israel looks after wounded people
better than the Arabs. The Arabs are dogs,' said a wiry rebel fighter who gave his
name as Ahmed, 23, who was recovering from a gunshot wound to the groin.
This is overwhelmingly what Israel is doing there. At most, what you twist and label
a collaboration, is the realpolitik behind Israel's work in this regard, to form an alliance
of convenience, such that rockets are not launched into Israel, especially in the North.
And why shouldn't she?
You start your post, as usual, by instructing me to be more diligent in my readings.
As I note that proposal with the seriousness it deserves, I take the occasion to remind
you that you adopt the same attitude more broadly, as exempli gratia, when you bake goods,
not inflict your male relatives with cordite when the bite was expectant of a sweet morsel.
"This is overwhelmingly what Israel is doing there."
Then why had not the Israelis' medics followed their "moral values" and rushed to save
Palestinian children when the "most moral " IDF had been slaughtering the tightly-packed
civilian population in Israel-occupied Gaza?
http://gaza.ochaopt.org/2015/06/key-figures-on-the-2014-hostilities/ :
"Of the Palestinian fatalities, 551 were children and 299 women. 11,231 Palestinians
were injured including 3,436 children and 3,540 women, 10 percent of whom suffer permanent
disability." Again, why the Israelis risk their lives to save ISIS "freedom fighters?"
As for Israel's collaboration with ISIS, there are other links:
The collaboration explains this revelation: "ISIS Apologized To Israel For Attacking
IDF Soldiers"
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-28/isis-apologized-israel-attacking-idf-soldiers
"You can assume that these terrorists are fighting for Israel. If they aren't part of
the regular Israeli army, they're fighting for Israel. Israel has common goals with Turkey,
the United States, France, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other countries," Ynet quoted
Assad " Sounds logical.
Here is an Israeli citizen who was involved in financing the neo-Nazis thugs that
burned the scores of civilians alive in Odessa. The ziocons-run Wall Street Journal wrote
a flattering article on the bloody Kolomojsky who also used to be a leader of Jewish
community in Ukraine:
https://www.rt.com/news/159168-kiev-businessman-massacre-mariupol/
Not a peep from Israel and the "righteous" Jewish organizations, which invoke the memory
of Holocaust to nick any criticism of Israel, but which are dead silent in the case of
ziocons' collaboration with neo-Nazis. Your post calls this "realpolitic." Nothing to
look at Though, how much have Jewish victims of WWII extracted from Germany for "moral
sufferings and more?" Read More
when someone like Bolton says 'they directly threaten us'
you can take it to the bank that the "us" he's referring to is Israel
us, the Jews ;)
he purports to mean the American people, but anyone on the planet who knows the first
thing about Ziocons like Bolton, know damn well he'd see virtually every single American
goyim ground up into the dirt rather that see one fingernail on one Jewish hand suffer
harm.
N. Korea does not threaten America or our interests. If anything, it threatens its
neighbors. And if so, then our trading partner China could effectively deal with it.
the only reason N. Korea is in the crosshairs is because somehow Israel considers
it a threat Hello Rurik.
Having thought about it, there are a few, but I will not list the others.
The real and plausible threat (anybody knowing about the effects of nuclear weapons
will know about the effects of US stratospheric tests of megaton weapons in the early
'60s and understand) is beyond the technical capabilities of the DPRK.
Their atomic bombs, on seismic data, are all damp fizzers. They don't have the lift
to do maximum economic damage, either.
They do seem to have the capacity to sink an attacking carrier battle group or two
with conventional weapons.
I would assign the highest probability, for ZOG USA, to the confrontation with Nth.
Korea just being a shadow-play aimed at Iran.
I vaguely recall the Izzy government being good buddies with DPRK.
Will add one digression that is of interest, in old, turn-of-last century photos of
party conferences in the DPRK, several officials in military uniform are cleary from
former Warsaw Pact places, or from the USSR, but I have never seen an article to mention
it. Read More
100 Words
@annamaria "This is overwhelmingly what Israel is doing there."
Then why had not the Israelis' medics followed their "moral values" and rushed to save
Palestinian children when the "most moral " IDF had been slaughtering the tightly-packed
civilian population in Israel-occupied Gaza? http://gaza.ochaopt.org/2015/06/key-figures-on-the-2014-hostilities/:
"Of the Palestinian fatalities, 551 were children and 299 women. 11,231 Palestinians
were injured including 3,436 children and 3,540 women, 10 percent of whom suffer permanent
disability." Again, why the Israelis risk their lives to save ISIS "freedom fighters?"
As for Israel's collaboration with ISIS, there are other links:
http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/israel-and-isis-are-allies-there-we-said-it/ri19708
The collaboration explains this revelation: "ISIS Apologized To Israel For Attacking
IDF Soldiers" http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-28/isis-apologized-israel-attacking-idf-soldiers
"You can assume that these terrorists are fighting for Israel. If they aren't part of
the regular Israeli army, they're fighting for Israel. Israel has common goals with Turkey,
the United States, France, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other countries," Ynet quoted
Assad " Sounds logical.
On your sweet morsel of moral relativism: "...what you twist and label a collaboration,
is the realpolitik behind Israel's work in this regard..."
For some time, the state of Israel was hailed as a "moral" project. Here is one of the
minor facts to dispel the nonsense: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/20/israelis-cheer-gaza-bombing
"Israelis sit on a hill to watch air strikes on Gaza, some bring drinks and snacks as
they cheer the explosions a few miles away." Never again, in short.
Meanwhile the warmongering Kagans' clan has got into collaboration with neo-Nazis:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-u-s-has-installed-a-neo-nazi-government-in-ukraine/5371554
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/20/a-family-business-of-perpetual-war/
http://www.voltairenet.org/article182892.html
Here is an Israeli citizen who was involved in financing the neo-Nazis thugs that burned
the scores of civilians alive in Odessa. The ziocons-run Wall Street Journal wrote a
flattering article on the bloody Kolomojsky who also used to be a leader of Jewish community
in Ukraine: https://www.rt.com/news/159168-kiev-businessman-massacre-mariupol/
Not a peep from Israel and the "righteous" Jewish organizations, which invoke the memory
of Holocaust to nick any criticism of Israel, but which are dead silent in the case of
ziocons' collaboration with neo-Nazis. Your post calls this "realpolitic." Nothing to
look at... Though, how much have Jewish victims of WWII extracted from Germany for "moral
sufferings and more?" The usual dribblings.
You manage to get the Kagans inserted in there somehow, although miss Nudelman (is
that it?).
Reading your posts are similar to tolerating the tiresome, repetitive adverts which
plague television these days, mostly peddling shaky pharmaceuticals. You ought to end
or preface each with the usual disclaimers on side effects, which in this case are mostly
benign and somnambulic in effect.
As to Gaza, I only remark that rocket attacks on Sderot will elicit a response; so
that the cure is simple: stop the rockets.
As to realpolitik, my comment pertained to ISIS in Syria; that Israel does what she
can to prevent the lunatics from sending rockets to Northern Israel. But feel free to
twist it to your heart's content and somehow link it to .Gaza!! There are no realpolitik
interests in Gaza; do get that through your head.
Read More
Having thought about it, there are a few, but I will not list the others.
The real and plausible threat (anybody knowing about the effects of nuclear weapons will
know about the effects of US stratospheric tests of megaton weapons in the early '60s
and understand) is beyond the technical capabilities of the DPRK.
Their atomic bombs, on seismic data, are all damp fizzers. They don't have the lift to
do maximum economic damage, either.
They do seem to have the capacity to sink an attacking carrier battle group or two with
conventional weapons.
I would assign the highest probability, for ZOG USA, to the confrontation with Nth. Korea
just being a shadow-play aimed at Iran.
I vaguely recall the Izzy government being good buddies with DPRK.
Will add one digression that is of interest, in old, turn-of-last century photos of party
conferences in the DPRK, several officials in military uniform are cleary from former
Warsaw Pact places, or from the USSR, but I have never seen an article to mention it.
Hey Che,
I would assign the highest probability, for ZOG USA, to the confrontation with
Nth. Korea just being a shadow-play aimed at Iran.
I just read something from one of the commenters here (Kiza) that the saber-rattling
at DPRK is a less than oblique threat to Russia and China, as the need for Rothschild,
et al- to exercise absolute and unilateral domination of the entire planet is growing
to an event horizon type imperative. (I'm not quoting, but I think that's the gist)
and that's as good of an analysis as I've seen yet, and it's consistent with everything
I know about human nature and history and everything I know about Rothschild, et al
Read More
You manage to get the Kagans inserted in there somehow, although miss Nudelman (is
that it?).
Reading your posts are similar to tolerating the tiresome, repetitive adverts which
plague television these days, mostly peddling shaky pharmaceuticals. You ought to end
or preface each with the usual disclaimers on side effects, which in this case are mostly
benign and somnambulic in effect.
As to Gaza, I only remark that rocket attacks on Sderot will elicit a response; so
that the cure is simple: stop the rockets.
As to realpolitik, my comment pertained to ISIS in Syria; that Israel does what she
can to prevent the lunatics from sending rockets to Northern Israel. But feel free to
twist it to your heart's content and somehow link it to ....Gaza!! There are no realpolitik
interests in Gaza; do get that through your head.
stop the rockets.
then stop the occupation
- and murder and theft and oppression and torture and daily horrors and humiliations
You manage to get the Kagans inserted in there somehow, although miss Nudelman (is
that it?).
Reading your posts are similar to tolerating the tiresome, repetitive adverts which
plague television these days, mostly peddling shaky pharmaceuticals. You ought to end
or preface each with the usual disclaimers on side effects, which in this case are mostly
benign and somnambulic in effect.
As to Gaza, I only remark that rocket attacks on Sderot will elicit a response; so
that the cure is simple: stop the rockets.
As to realpolitik, my comment pertained to ISIS in Syria; that Israel does what she
can to prevent the lunatics from sending rockets to Northern Israel. But feel free to
twist it to your heart's content and somehow link it to ....Gaza!! There are no realpolitik
interests in Gaza; do get that through your head. "There are no realpolitik interests
in Gaza "
Because the illegally occupied Gazans are defenseless, like dwellers of the former ghettos
in Europe?
By the way, why are you taking everything personally in my posts and then insert some
cheap childish insults into every response-comment, instead of answering point by point
to the documented facts ?
One of the main points of my posts is the congruence of ziocons' policies in the Middle
East with Oded Yinon plan. Another point is the incongruence of Israelis' pretense on
being in possession of superior morality (this one always goes with references to Holocaust)
in the context of the extraordinary influence of Israel-firsters on making military decision
by the US/NATO in the Middle East. You have been steadily avoiding these two points,
as if you have some case of cognitive blindness. Though to be fair, you did utter something
about realpoitic (moral relativism, in other words) being factored in Israel's policies.
But if you recognize this relativism, then your tribe should stop pestering Germans,
reminding them again and again about their guilt. It is over. Israel's policies, beginning
with the open terrorism in the 30-s and 40-s and up to the promoting the ongoing slaughter
in the Middle East, have already concealed any pretense on victimhood. Whether in Europe,
damaged by the influx of refugees from the ME and of low-IQ migrants from sub-Saharan
Africa, or in the US, irritated by the price for the illegal wars in the ME, the citizenry
is taking on a rather sour attitude towards the Lobby and other Friends of Israel. The
floods of refugees (of various kinds) make a point for the populace. The cause of the
wars and the Israel-firsters' efforts towards initiating these wars have been under discussion.
The Israel-firsters love their mythological fatherland so much that they put the well-being
of their countries of residence second to Israel. Not good for national policies.
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@Sam Shama Israel has a free press in which a great deal of speculation is tolerated,
even welcomed. I haven't seen any articles in any of the major journals, or even in the
smaller ones, where Daesh is described as a collaborator.
To Israeli society's credit, humour is a normal and common enjoyment, in which spirit,
some skits produced - Eretz Nehderet being the most prominent one - portray a
darkly humourous relationship between Israeli doctors [and IDF medical corps] and Daesh
operating in the Golan.
@annamaria "This is overwhelmingly what Israel is doing there."
Then why had not the Israelis' medics followed their "moral values" and rushed to save
Palestinian children when the "most moral " IDF had been slaughtering the tightly-packed
civilian population in Israel-occupied Gaza? http://gaza.ochaopt.org/2015/06/key-figures-on-the-2014-hostilities/:
"Of the Palestinian fatalities, 551 were children and 299 women. 11,231 Palestinians
were injured including 3,436 children and 3,540 women, 10 percent of whom suffer permanent
disability." Again, why the Israelis risk their lives to save ISIS "freedom fighters?"
As for Israel's collaboration with ISIS, there are other links:
http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/israel-and-isis-are-allies-there-we-said-it/ri19708
The collaboration explains this revelation: "ISIS Apologized To Israel For Attacking
IDF Soldiers" http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-28/isis-apologized-israel-attacking-idf-soldiers
"You can assume that these terrorists are fighting for Israel. If they aren't part of
the regular Israeli army, they're fighting for Israel. Israel has common goals with Turkey,
the United States, France, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other countries," Ynet quoted
Assad " Sounds logical.
On your sweet morsel of moral relativism: "...what you twist and label a collaboration,
is the realpolitik behind Israel's work in this regard..."
For some time, the state of Israel was hailed as a "moral" project. Here is one of the
minor facts to dispel the nonsense: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/20/israelis-cheer-gaza-bombing
"Israelis sit on a hill to watch air strikes on Gaza, some bring drinks and snacks as
they cheer the explosions a few miles away." Never again, in short.
Meanwhile the warmongering Kagans' clan has got into collaboration with neo-Nazis:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-u-s-has-installed-a-neo-nazi-government-in-ukraine/5371554
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/20/a-family-business-of-perpetual-war/
http://www.voltairenet.org/article182892.html
Here is an Israeli citizen who was involved in financing the neo-Nazis thugs that burned
the scores of civilians alive in Odessa. The ziocons-run Wall Street Journal wrote a
flattering article on the bloody Kolomojsky who also used to be a leader of Jewish community
in Ukraine: https://www.rt.com/news/159168-kiev-businessman-massacre-mariupol/
Not a peep from Israel and the "righteous" Jewish organizations, which invoke the memory
of Holocaust to nick any criticism of Israel, but which are dead silent in the case of
ziocons' collaboration with neo-Nazis. Your post calls this "realpolitic." Nothing to
look at... Though, how much have Jewish victims of WWII extracted from Germany for "moral
sufferings and more?" What do you expect from Ziofascists like Sam et al
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My strong objections are against USA society as a system, that allows a tiny minority
to run foreign policy at their pleasure, at the cost, expense and blood of others,
USA citizens and far more foreign citizens.
I can't argue with that Jilles
and you're right about the general ignorance and bovine stupidity of most Americans,
but that has been very carefully created by the PTB, who don't want an educated, thinking
populace.
what was it papa Bush said?
"if the American people knew what we have done, they would string us up from the lamp
posts"
if the American people could think, the results would be the same. If the American
people could think and were in possession of a moral soul, then they'd know that wars
based on lies should be repudiated and the war criminals brought to justice. But the
American sheople have been systematically dumbed down to the point of zombies, infatuated
with Kim Kardashian's ass. Today Idiocracy is a reality. It's true.
But, let me just say on behalf of Americans, that I don't really see it any better across
the pond. Sure, the Europeans are better educated, and generally speak at least two languages,
and have heard of Yalta and Copernicus, but with all that education, they just don't
seem to me to be any more principled or moral than the zombified Americans.
Sure, it is the US military that is the biggest bully on the block, but does that
excuse the other little bullies that stand behind him and give him moral support? There
were French jets bombing Libya just as ferociously as any American ones. The Brits have
never seen an act of aggression from the US military that they don't reverently applaud.
And the Germans, whose government goes along with every war crime America commits in
principle, are today complicit in a racial supremacist, genocidal holocaust against a
completely innocent victim whose only crime is that they existed - in Palestine, on land
that some Jewish supremacist coveted for themselves.
The irony? That these very same Germans feel excruciating and debilitating guilt for
a crime that they had nothing to do with, while at the same time facilitating the same
crime of genocide today, in their names, by funding and arming and providing "moral"
cover for the Zionists.
So sure, Europeans are far more educated, but seem to fall very short when it comes to
using that education to augment a moral foundation for their actions and the actions
of their respective governments. There seems to me to be a sort of all-pervasive cowardice
in Western Europe, and a Pavlovian, knee-jerk propensity to wallow in prostrate abasement
and self-flagellate as soon as anyone says "Holocaust". Sort of what they used to be
able to bludgeon Americans with by the pejorative "racist", until it became a joke.
Anyways, yes, we're ignorant, and bovine and dangerous, but morally, I just don't see
too many paragons of virtue or honor to hold up as examples today. Uruguay perhaps, and
I would include Putin's Russia insofar as he's trying to put out the fires the Zio-Western-fiend
is lighting all over the place, but then he too bolsters their agenda by antagonizing
the former Soviet satellite states with ultra-nationalistic chest thumping over the "great
war", (that the Bolsheviks in Russia were mainly responsible for). Note to Putin, let
it rest! The great victory that you celebrate in May was a catastrophe for Eastern Europe
(and millions of Russians too)
I would assign the highest probability, for ZOG USA, to the confrontation with Nth.
Korea just being a shadow-play aimed at Iran.
I just read something from one of the commenters here (Kiza) that the saber-rattling
at DPRK is a less than oblique threat to Russia and China, as the need for Rothschild,
et al- to exercise absolute and unilateral domination of the entire planet is growing
to an event horizon type imperative. (I'm not quoting, but I think that's the gist)
and that's as good of an analysis as I've seen yet, and it's consistent with everything
I know about human nature and history and everything I know about Rothschild, et al Hello
Rurik.
Have you read the Illuminatus! trilogy? I have, twice, once before and once after
struggling through Anna Rosenbaum's Atlas Shrugged.
It was better the second time, because it is partly a parody of Ayn Rand.
It is dirty hippy material, but it is fun.
All of these ideas, the Rothschilds, the Brit. Royal family, etc. do it all, they
work even less than the Protocols of the Elders, which seems to be a template for reality,
and the claims for it to just to being malicious fake are on very shallow foundations.
Sure, I have no doubt that the Rothschild clan is mainly evil, but I do not see any
sense in ideas that they have some solo supevillain role.
If you have not read the book(s), it was originally published in three, I recommend,
it should make you laugh at times.
Billionaire businessman
Marc Cuban
insists
that the H-1B visa racket is a
feature of the vaunted American free market.
This is nonsense on stilts. It can't go
unchallenged.
Another
billionaire, our president, has
ordered
that the H-1B program be reformed.
This, too, is disappointing. You'll see why.
First, let's
correct Mr. Cuban: America has not a free
economy, but a mixed-economy. State and markets
are intertwined. Trade, including trade in
labor, is not free; it's regulated to the hilt.
If anything, the labyrinth of work visas is an
example of a fascistic government-business
cartel in operation.
The H-1B
permit, in particular, is part of that
state-sponsored visa system. The primary H-1B
hogs-Infosys (and another eight, sister Indian
firms), Microsoft, and Intel-import labor with
what are grants of government privilege. Duly,
the corporations that hog H-1Bs act like
incorrigibly corrupt rent seekers. Not only do
they get to replace the American worker, but
they get to do so at his expense.
Here's how:
Globally, a
series of sordid liaisons ensures that American
workers are left high and dry. Through the
programs of the International Trade
Administration, the Export-Import Bank, the
Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the
International Monetary Fund, and other
oink-operations, the taxpaying American worker
is forced to subsidize and underwrite the
investment risks of the very corporations that
have given him the boot.
Domestically,
the fascistic partnership with the State amounts
to a subsidy to business at the expense of the
taxpayer. See, corporations in our democratic
welfare state externalize their employment costs
onto the taxpayers.
So while
public property is property funded by taxpayers
through expropriated taxes; belongs to
taxpayers; is to be managed for their benefit-at
least one million additional immigrants a year,
including recipients of the H-1B visa, are
allowed the free use of taxpayer-supported
infrastructure and amenities. Every new arrival
avails himself of public works such as roads,
hospitals, parks, libraries, schools, and
welfare.
Does this
epitomize the classical liberal idea of
laissez faire
?
Moreover,
chain migration or family unification means
every H-1B visa recruit is a ticket for an
entire tribe. The initial entrant-the meal
ticket-will pay his way. The honor system not
being an especially strong value in the Third
World, the rest of the clan will be America's
problem. More often than not, chain-migration
entrants become wards of the American taxpayer.
Spreading like
gravy over a tablecloth, this rapid, inorganic
population growth is detrimental to all
ecosystems: natural, social and political.
Take Seattle
and its surrounding counties. Between April 2015
and 2016, the area was inundated with "86,320
new residents, marking it the region's biggest
population gains this century. Fueled in large
part by the technology industry, an average of
236 people is moving to the Seattle area each
day,"
reported
Geekwire.com. (Reporters for our
local fish-wrapper-in my case, parrot-cage
liner-have discharged their journalistic duties
by inviting readers to "share" their traffic-jam
stories.)
Never as dumb
as the local reporters, the likes of Bill Gates,
Steve Ballmer, Mark Zuckerberg and Marc Cuban
are certainly as detached.
Barricaded in
their obscenely lavish compounds-from the
comfort of their monster mansions-these social
engineers don't experience the "environmental
impacts of rapid urban expansion"; the
destruction of verdant open spaces and farmland;
the decrease in the quality of the water we
drink and air we breathe, the increase in
traffic and traffic accidents, air pollution,
the cellblock-like housing erected to
accommodate their imported I.T. workers and
extended families, the delicate bouquet of amped
up waste management and associated seepages.
For locals,
this lamentable state means an inability to
afford homes in a market in which property
prices have been artificially inflated. Young
couples lineup to view tiny apartments. They
dream of that picket fence no more. (And our
"stupid leaders," to quote the president before
he joined leadership, wonder why birthrates are
so low!)
In a true free
market, absent the protectionist state,
corporate employers would be accountable to the
community, and would be wary of the strife and
lowered productivity brought about by a
multiethnic and multi-linguistic workforce. All
the more so when a foreign workforce moves into
residential areas almost overnight as has
happened in Seattle and its surrounds.
Alas, since
the
high-tech traitors
can externalize their
employment costs on to the community; because
corporations are subsidized at every turn by
their victims-they need not bring in the best.
Cuban thinks
they do. High tech needs to be able to "search
the world for the best applicants," he
burbled
to Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Yet more crap.
Why doesn't
the president know that the H-1B visa category
is not a special visa for highly skilled
individuals, but goes mostly to average workers?
"Indian business-process outsourcing companies,
which predominantly provide technology support
to corporate back offices," by
the Economist's accounting.
Overall, the
work done by the H1-B intake does not require
independent judgment, critical reasoning or
higher-order thinking. "Average workers;
ordinary talent doing ordinary work," attest the
experts who've been studying this intake for
years. The master's degree is the exception
within the H1-B visa category.
More
significant: THERE IS a visa category that is
reserved exclusively for individuals with
extraordinary abilities and achievement. I know,
because the principal sponsor in our family
received this visa. I first
wrote
about the visa that doesn't displace
ordinary Americans
in 2008
:
It's the O-1
visa.
"Extraordinary
ability in the fields of science, education,
business or athletics,"
states
the Department of Homeland Security,
"means a level of expertise indicating that the
person is one of the small percentage who has
risen to the very top of the field of endeavor."
Most
significant:
There is no cap on the number
of O-1 visa entrants allowed. Access to this
limited pool of talent is unlimited.
My point
vis-à-vis the O-1 visa is this: The H-1B hogs
are forever claiming that they are desperate for
talent. In reality, they have unlimited access
to individuals with unique abilities through the
open-ended O-1 visa program.
There is no
limit to the number of geniuses American
companies can import.
Theoretically,
the H-1B program could be completely abolished
and all needed Einsteins imported through the
O-1 program. (Why, even future first ladies
would stand a chance under the business category
of the O-1A visa, as a wealth-generating
supermodel could certainly qualify.)
Now you
understand my disappointment. In his
April 18 Executive Order,
President Trump
promised to merely reform a program that needs
abolishing. That is if "Hire American" means
anything to anybody anymore.
Borges writes, "dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships
foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy." As a preeminent mind, Borges
rightly considers the mind to be a man's greatest asset, for without mind, a man is nothing. The
more oppressive a political system, then, the greater its assault on its subjects' minds, for it's
not enough for any dictator, king or totalitarian system to oppress and exploit, but it must, and
I mean must, make its people idiotic as well. Every wrongful bullet is preceded and accompanied,
then followed up by a series of idiotic lies, but we're so used to such a moronic diet by now, our
trepanned intelligentsia don't even squirm in their tenured chairs.
Sane men and women don't consent to kill, rob and rape, much less be killed, robbed and raped,
least of all to enrich their masters , and that's why their minds must be molested as early
and as much as possible. Hence our nonstop media brainwashing us from the cradle, literally, to the
grave. Fixated by flickering boxes, even infants are now mind-conditioned to become scatterbrained
idiots before they stagger into kindergarten, to begin a lifelong process of becoming docile and
slogan-shouting Democrats and Republicans.
Yes, savages killed, but, like apes, our ancestors, they mostly tried to intimidate and trash
talk their way out of conflicts. Take the Maoris: from all accounts, they were a rather belligerent
people, but their killing of each other really took off with the introduction of the musket. The
greater a civilization, the greater its ability to accomplish great tasks, including massacre. A
savage tribe could never imagine wiping out entire cities by defecating exploding metal from the
sky, or sitting in a brightly lit and spic-and-span office stroking a joy stick to ejaculate missiles
half a planet away. Drone hell fire for y'all, with sides of bank-sponsored debt slavery and austerity,
plus an unlimited refill of American pop bullshit. Would you like a public suicide with that? No,
sir, these savages need to take webcast courses from us sophisticates when it comes to genocide,
or ecocide, or any other kind of cides you can think of. When it comes to pure, unadulterated savagery,
these quaint brutes ain't got shit on us plugged-in netizens chillaxin' in that shiny upside down
condo on da capital-punishment-for the-entire-world, y'all, hill.
You'd think that a government with absolute power would not bother with expensive parades and
elaborately-staged rallies in stadia, as are routine in North Korea, but such is the importance of
propaganda and mind-control. America has gone way beyond Kim Jong-Un and his Nuremberg-styled pageantry,
however, because the Yankee Magical Show is relentlessly pumped into our minds via television and
the internet, at home, in office or even as we're walking down the street, so that we're always swarmed
by sexy sale pitches, soft and hard porn, asinine righteousness and imbecilic trivia. All day long,
we can stuff ourselves with unlimited kitsch. Today's urgent topic, "Sylvester Stalone Spotted in
16th Century Painting." Yesterday's, "Tom Cruise's Daughter Gets Inked." Imagine a triple-amputee
Iraq vet or an unemployed mother, sitting in an about to be foreclosed home with unpaid bills scattered
across her kitchen table, staring at such headlines. At 48, I'm old enough to remember when it wasn't
this overwhelmingly stupid, though the dumbing down of America will only accelerate as this cornered
and bankrupt country becomes ever more vicious to its citizens and foreigners alike.
Not content to kill and loot, America must do it to pulsating music; cool, orgasmic dancing; raunchy
reality shows and violence-filled Hollywood blockbusters, and these are also meant for its victims,
no less. In a 1997 article published by the US Army War College,
Ralph Peters
gushes about a "personally intrusive" and "lethal" cultural assault as a key tactic in the American
quest for global supremacy. As information master, the American Empire will destroy its "information
victims." What's more, "our victims volunteer" because they are unable to resist the seductiveness
of American culture.
Defining democracy as "that deft liberal form of imperialism," Peters reveals how the word is
conceived and used these days by every American leader, whether talking about Libya, Syria, Iran
or America itself. Recognizing that the lumpens of his country are also victims of empire, Peters
frankly acknowledges that "laid-off blue-collar worker in America and the Taliban militiaman in Afghanistan
are brothers in suffering."
Much has been made of the internet as enabling democracy and protest, but whatever utility it may
have for the disenfranchised and/or rebellious, the Web is most useful to our rulers. As
Dmitry Orlov points out in a recent blog, the internet is a powerful surveillance tool for the
state and, what's more, it also keeps the masses distracted and pacified. Echoing Queen Victoria's
remark, "Give my people plenty of beer, good and cheap beer, and you will have no revolution among
them," Orlov observes that virtual sex thwarts rebellion. In sum, while the internet may empower
some people, as in allowing John
Michael Greer , Paul Craig Roberts
or Orlov to publish their unflinching commentaries, the same internet also drowns them out with
an unprecedented flood of drivel. Defending the empire, Ralph Peters cheerfully agrees, "The internet
is to the techno-capable disaffected what the United Nations is to marginal states: it offers the
illusion of empowerment and community."
Though our only hope is to be expelled from this sick matrix, many of us will cling even more
fiercely to these illusions of knowledge, love, sex and community as we blunder forward. A breathing
and tactile life will become even more alien, I'm afraid. Here and there, a band of unplugged weirdos,
to be hunted down and exterminated, with their demise shown on TV as warning and entertainment. Inhabiting
a common waste land, we can each lounge in our private electronic ghetto. Until the juice finally
runs out, that is.
"... The neocons, who have rarely met a slippery military slope they weren't tempted to roll down, embraced wholeheartedly both the strike and its justification. They view it as a first - but absolutely necessary - step toward a new phase of U.S. interventionism of precisely the kind that Bannon and his "nationalist" and Islamophobic allies abhor. ..."
"... During President Obama's two terms in office, he approved 542 such targeted strikes in 2,920 days - one every 5.4 days. From his inauguration through today, President Trump had approved at least 75 drone strikes or raids in 74 days - about one every day. ..."
"... John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus. ..."
It didn't take long for Donald Trump to discover that U.S. foreign policy is about as easy to turn
around as a warship in dry dock. Despite any number of promises to shake things up - during the election
and even in his first days as president - Trump is falling back on some very conventional approaches
to the world.
In the last week, for instance, Trump suddenly discovered that firing a few missiles at a much-hated
target - in this case, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces - can gain him plaudits from across
the political spectrum. Earlier, he said he'd focus American firepower on the Islamic State, not
Assad. He was cautious about intervening in the Syrian civil war.
Now the greenhorn president is heading down a well-worn path: see a problem, fire a missile at
it.
In so doing, Trump has scotched whatever remaining hopes his administration might have had about
negotiating some quick deals with Moscow. The relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin
had already been heading south - as I detailed a couple weeks back in
Shortest Reset Ever
- but now Trump has bloodied one of Russia's most important allies. Bye bye, bromance.
Also this week, after bashing China left and right during his campaign, Trump met with Chinese
Premier Xi Jinping and discovered that, hey, maybe the two countries can get along after all. Virtually
every president in recent memory has gone through a similar transformation. There are no political
costs in criticizing Beijing during an election campaign. But presidents soon discover the considerable
costs of not doing business with China once they occupy the Oval Office.
So much for Trump's promise to proclaim China a currency manipulator extraordinaire.
Meanwhile, some of the more ideological voices in the administration appear to be heading to the
sidelines. Strategic adviser Steve Bannon,
reportedly as a result of his clashes with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, has lost his seat
at the National Security Council and, it seems, even
the trust of the president . K.T. McFarland, once the number two under the disgraced former National
Security Adviser Michael Flynn, is also out, and probably on her way to Singapore. The generals and
the Wall Street execs seem now to have the upper hand.
But Bannon hasn't given up, and the war at the top is far from over. Bannon loves a good fight,
and he's the master of fighting dirty.
The remaking of Donald Trump into a more conventional - and thus, predictable - president is good
news in some quarters. No doubt the foreign policy establishment in Washington, which former president
Barack Obama and his advisers called The Blob, is rejoicing that the new president can be weaned
off his more fanatical delusions (and pumped full of The Blob's own fanatical delusions).
But the New Donald Trump, just like the much-hyped New Coke so many years ago, is just as bad
for our collective health as the old version. Don't be fooled by the ongoing Trump rebrand. The president
is just finding new ways to be toxic.
Striking Syria
Bombardiers have a tradition of writing slogans on the bombs they drop on their enemies. Donald
Trump might as well have scrawled "I'm Not Obama" on the 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles U.S. forces
directed at a Syrian airbase on Friday. The bombardment came in response to a chemical attack the
Assad government allegedly launched a few days earlier against a town in rebel-held Idlib province
that left 69 people dead.
Trump's desire for big wins has previously kept him out of the Syrian conflict and focused instead
on the Islamic State, which has been losing its grip over territory in recent months.
But Trump also wants to demonstrate that he's bigger and better than Barack Obama: He's more popular,
attracted more people to his inauguration, proposed a better health-care plan, has bigger hands,
and so on. Obama failed to attack Syria after a high-profile chemical attack in 2013. Here was an
opportunity for Trump to show his resolve. After sustaining non-stop attacks against his character,
his policies, and his advisers over the last several months, Trump has finally hit back with the
tools that, unfortunately, are now at his disposal.
Yet it was not much of a show of force. The airbase was not damaged enough to prevent the Syrian
government from
restoring it to full operational status within a couple days. And Syrian forces subsequently
re-bombed the very same town that had suffered the chemical attack. The Trump administration has
not followed up with any other demonstrations of power, nor does it seem likely to do so.
The problem isn't so much geopolitical, though the United States risks an outright confrontation
with Russia if it escalates. Rather, the problem for Trump is domestic.
Standard-issue hawks, like
John McCain
(R-AZ) and
Marco Rubio (R-FL), are urging Trump to go the next step toward regime change. So are the neocons,
as Jim Lobe
points out :
The neocons, who have rarely met a slippery military slope they weren't tempted to roll
down, embraced wholeheartedly both the strike and its justification. They view it as a first -
but absolutely necessary - step toward a new phase of U.S. interventionism of precisely the kind
that Bannon and his "nationalist" and Islamophobic allies abhor.
The nationalists and the libertarians have indeed reacted in horror. Richard Spencer, the darling
of the far-right, not only condemned the attack but even suggested that
he would support Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) in 2020 (presumably because she's sat down with both Assad
and Trump, a tyrannical twofer). Ron Paul
wrote that Trump's assertion that the missile attack was vital to U.S. national interests was
"nonsense."
Good luck trying to preserve such a fickle coalition. To do so, Trump will probably refocus his
military attention, as Rex Tillerson
has suggested , on the Islamic State. The limited missile strike accomplished its goal, which
wasn't to cripple Syrian forces in any serious way. Rather, the attack put distance between Trump
and Obama, reminded both Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un that Trump is trigger-happy when necessary, regained
some credit with European allies (France, Germany, and the president of the European Council all
pledged their support ), and did the minimum of damage to warn the Russians not to take Trump
for granted.
In this way, Trump is proving just as reluctant to engage in large-scale military adventures as
his predecessor. Before you rejoice that the wolf has revealed his inner fleece, however, remember
that the Trump administration has been in some ways more willing to use military force than the Obama
administration. As Micah Zenko
wrote at the CFR blog earlier this month:
During President Obama's two terms in office, he approved 542 such targeted strikes in
2,920 days - one every 5.4 days. From his inauguration through today, President Trump had approved
at least 75 drone strikes or raids in 74 days - about one every day.
Moreover, as Michael Klare
points out at The Nation , Trump has "stepped up the delegation of decision-making authority
to senior military officers, making it easier for them to initiate combat operations in a half-dozen
countries."
It's all a question of targets. Until he attacked Syria, Trump was "bombing the shit" out of non-state
actors, as he promised he would. Syria aside, he's not so interested in challenging actual states.
So far, at least.
Trump: What's Next?
As the 100-day mark approaches for the administration, Trump's staff is reportedly desperate for
a rebrand. The first months have been disastrous in so many different ways. RussiaGate remains a
dark cloud over the administration. The travel ban and the health-care substitute were both high-profile
disasters. The mainstream media has savaged Trump on a nearly daily basis.
"One hundred days is the marker, and we've got essentially 2 1/2 weeks to turn everything around,"
one White House official
told Politico . "This is going to be a monumental task."
According to the same article, the administration is divided between those who believe that the
Trump doctrine is "America First" and those who, like Communications Director Mike Dubke, argue that
there is no Trump doctrine.
When it comes to foreign policy, they're both right. The ostensible Trump doctrine is "America
First," but it's not a doctrine. It's an empty slogan. At one level, every administration has adhered
to some version of American exceptionalism and some effort at focusing on the U.S. economy. So, Trump's
special sauce is nothing new.
At another level, Trump has demonstrated that he will make the same concessions to international
realities as his predecessors. He'll negotiate with the Chinese. He'll poke the Russian bear. He'll
engage in showy military attacks. Maximum flexibility equals no doctrine.
The new Trump, then, is the worst of both worlds: blustery nationalism plus the conventional pieties
of the foreign policy establishment. It's certainly a relief that the United States won't go to war
with China any time soon and the U.S. president cares about the deaths of (some) children.
But as tensions escalate with North Korea and Trump's crude counter-terrorism campaign continues,
Mr. America First seems conceptually ill equipped and all-too-committed to business as usual to push
US foreign policy in a peaceful direction and make anyone sleep easy at night. John Feffer is
the director of Foreign Policy In Focus.
"... Donald Trump's pivot to U.S. involvement in regime change in multiple countries, combined with military and diplomatic bluster, swagger, and chest-thumping can best be summed up as combining the unitary executive imperialistic foreign policy of George W. Bush with the regime change agenda of Barack Obama, or "Bush version 2.0/Obama version 1.5" ..."
"... During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump's supporters did not mind the real estate billionaire's swashbuckling attitude. After all, Trump said he would worry about "America First". Trump decried the role played by his predecessors as the "world's policeman". Trump said he would not be the "president of the world" but the president of the United States. Everything changed on April 7, 2016, when Trump ordered 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles launched on the Syrian air base. ..."
"... At the United Nations, Trump's ambassador, Nikki Haley, proclaimed that the U.S. would take additional actions against Syria and that the United States did not see a future for Assad as president of Syria. Haley told CNN : "there's not any sort of option where a political solution is going to happen with Assad at the head of the regime... regime change is something that we think is going to happen ". ..."
"... Haley also expanded America's goals in Syria by stating that Trump also sought to eliminate Iranian influence in Syria. The statement about Iran and Syria went far beyond anything ever suggested by the Obama administration. ..."
"... In 2013, Trump tweeted the following about calls for the U.S. to attack Syria: "What will we get for bombing Syria besides more debt and a possible long term conflict? Obama needs Congressional approval." Trump sought no congressional approval for his action against Syria. In fact, Trump informed Chinese president Xi Jinping, while he was departing Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, about the attack on Syria before he informed members of Congress. Trump's attempt to impress President Xi had little impact. No sooner had Xi's plane departed Florida, the Chinese government news agency Xinhua stated: "It has been a typical tactic of the U.S. to send a strong political message by attacking other countries using advanced warplanes and cruise missiles". ..."
"... Trump had become what he decried earlier: an unaccountable world policeman who would, without U.S. constitutional or international legal authority, seek regime change through military means. ..."
"... All around the world, officials of the Trump administration re-adopted the regime change tactics of Obama. Trump's ambassador to Serbia, Kyle Scott, let it be known that Washington was not happy with the re-election on April 2 of Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic. Scott sent messages that Washington did not favor Vucic's continued close relations with Russia, encouraging anti-Vucic street protesters in the service of George Soros to stage anti-Vucic demonstrations. In neighboring Macedonia, Trump's ambassador Jess Baily continued to provide U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) support for Soros-backed protesters and opposition parties that were trying to replace the Macedonian government with one that favored integration with the European Union and a freeze in relations with Russia. ..."
"... At the end of March, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson gave Baily, who was visiting the State Department, a green light to continue the destabilization activities in Skopje that began under Obama. In Serbia and Macedonia, what appeared on the streets were the first signs of a concordat between Trump and Soros, something that was bound to enrage Trump's anti-globalization and anti-Soros erstwhile base of supporters. ..."
Donald Trump's pivot to U.S. involvement in regime change in multiple countries, combined
with military and diplomatic bluster, swagger, and chest-thumping can best be summed up as combining
the unitary executive imperialistic foreign policy of George W. Bush with the regime change agenda
of Barack Obama, or "Bush version 2.0/Obama version 1.5".
Trump's knee-jerk decision to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles against the Shayrat air base, a
forward operating base for Syrian and Russian military forces battling against Islamic State forces
in Palmyra and other locations, represents the type of reckless unilateralism employed by the Bush
administration in Iraq coupled with the "regime change" tactics of the Obama administration throughout
the Middle East and North Africa. However, even Barack Obama refused to be drawn into direct military
action against the Syrian government, preferring instead to use Syrian rebel factions backed by the
Turkish, Saudi, and Qatari governments and overseen by Central Intelligence Agency operatives to
launch attacks on Syrian government forces.
Trump's decision to attack Syria's forces was based on the shoddiest of video and photographic
"evidence" that was tainted with the fingerprints of the very dubious and terrorist-connected Syrian
"White Helmets" and the pathetic joke known as the "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights" in Coventry,
England. There was no wonder that Trump's cruise missile attack was celebrated wildly in the Islamic
State and Al Qaeda camps around the Middle East, by the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, and in the royal courts of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. These quarters had previously been worried
about Trump's campaign rhetoric to join with the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad and Russia
in defeating the jihadist scourge that swept across Syria as the result of Obama's "Arab Spring"
and regime change goals.
As the first Tomahawks were fired from the U.S. Navy destroyers USS Porter and
USS Ross , anxiety among the jihadist rebels in Syria, who were losing ground to Syrian and
allied forces, quickly turned to ecstasy. The Islamic State, Al Qaeda, Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam,
the Al Nusra Front, Liwa al-Haqq, and others had just been awarded by Trump their own high-tech military
force: the United States Navy.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump's supporters did not mind the real estate billionaire's
swashbuckling attitude. After all, Trump said he would worry about "America First". Trump decried
the role played by his predecessors as the "world's policeman". Trump said he would not be the "president
of the world" but the president of the United States. Everything changed on April 7, 2016, when Trump
ordered 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles launched on the Syrian air base.
At the United Nations, Trump's ambassador, Nikki Haley, proclaimed that the U.S. would take
additional actions against Syria and that the United States did not see a future for Assad as president
of Syria. Haley told CNN : "there's not any sort of option where a political solution is going
to happen with Assad at the head of the regime... regime change is something that we think is going
to happen ".
Haley also expanded America's goals in Syria by stating that Trump also sought to eliminate
Iranian influence in Syria. The statement about Iran and Syria went far beyond anything ever suggested
by the Obama administration.
There were reports that Trump's daughter, Ivanka Trump, a White House adviser without portfolio,
and her husband Jared Kushner, the senior White House presidential adviser, had convinced Trump to
attack Syria after being convinced of the authenticity of photos and videos showing Sarin victims,
including children, in the village of Khan Sheikoun. The sources of the "evidence" – the same sources
that originated previous dubious "evidence" of Syrian use of chemical weapons – were totally suspect.
In 2013, Trump tweeted the following about calls for the U.S. to attack Syria: "What will
we get for bombing Syria besides more debt and a possible long term conflict? Obama needs Congressional
approval." Trump sought no congressional approval for his action against Syria. In fact, Trump informed
Chinese president Xi Jinping, while he was departing Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, about
the attack on Syria before he informed members of Congress. Trump's attempt to impress President
Xi had little impact. No sooner had Xi's plane departed Florida, the Chinese government news agency
Xinhua stated: "It has been a typical tactic of the U.S. to send a strong political message by attacking
other countries using advanced warplanes and cruise missiles".
Trump had become what he decried earlier: an unaccountable world policeman who would, without
U.S. constitutional or international legal authority, seek regime change through military means.
Trump also decided to beef up U.S. air and naval forces in Northeast Asia in a show of force to
North Korea. In media leaks, Trump advisers let it be known that a nuclear attack on North Korea
or a U.S.-sanctioned assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jon Un, both with the goal of North
Korean regime change, were on the table as options. Trump's actions in Syria and on the Korean peninsula
demonstrated that he has gone "full neocon", much to the distress of his alt-right and "America First"
supporters. There were reports out of the White House that Trump's strategic policy adviser Stephen
Bannon had been kicked off the National Security Council in deference to the wishes of the neocons
who had effectively seized control of the White House's foreign policy apparatus.
All around the world, officials of the Trump administration re-adopted the regime change tactics
of Obama. Trump's ambassador to Serbia, Kyle Scott, let it be known that Washington was not happy
with the re-election on April 2 of Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic. Scott sent messages that Washington
did not favor Vucic's continued close relations with Russia, encouraging anti-Vucic street protesters
in the service of George Soros to stage anti-Vucic demonstrations. In neighboring Macedonia, Trump's
ambassador Jess Baily continued to provide U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) support
for Soros-backed protesters and opposition parties that were trying to replace the Macedonian government
with one that favored integration with the European Union and a freeze in relations with Russia.
At the end of March, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson gave Baily, who was visiting the State
Department, a green light to continue the destabilization activities in Skopje that began under Obama.
In Serbia and Macedonia, what appeared on the streets were the first signs of a concordat between
Trump and Soros, something that was bound to enrage Trump's anti-globalization and anti-Soros erstwhile
base of supporters.
In Latin America, Trump's envoys were backing the forces of reactionary proto-fascism. Washington
questioned the legitimacy of Ecuadorian leftist leader Lenin Moreno's presidential election victory
over a Wall Street-backed crony capitalist named Guillermo Lasso. In Argentina, U.S. embassy officials
rallied around Trump's billionaire friend, President Mauricio Macri, against labor and student leaders
protesting the Wall Street-directed austerity measures of the Argentine government.
While Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner prevailed on Trump to avenge the deaths of civilians in Khan
Sheikoun by launching a missile attack on Syria, neither of these two self-entitled products of crony
capitalism had much to say about the massacre of 43 Coptic Christians by the Islamic State while
attending Palm Sunday services at churches in Tanta and Alexandria in Egypt. Trump's vapid family
were silent in any call for retaliation against the actual financial and logistical supporters of
the Islamic State in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey. Ivanka certainly would not want to jeopardize
her fashion line sales in the high-priced boutiques of Jeddah, Doha, and Istanbul.
"Okay, step back and
absorb this one. Mr. Prasad is saying that millions of manufacturing workers in the Midwest lost
their jobs and saw their communities decimated because the Bush administration wanted to press China
to enforce Pfizer's patents on drugs, Microsoft's copyrights on Windows, and to secure better access
to China's financial markets for Goldman Sachs.
This is not a new story, in fact I say it all the time. But it's nice to have the story confirmed
by the person who occupied the International Monetary Fund's China desk at the time.
Porter then jumps in and gets his story completely 100 percent wrong:
"At the end of the day, economists argued at the time, Chinese exchange rate policies didn't cost
the United States much. After all, in 2007 the United States was operating at full employment. The
trade deficit was because of Americans' dismal savings rate and supercharged consumption, not a cheap
renminbi. After all, if Americans wanted to consume more than they created, they had to get it somewhere."
Sorry, this was the time when even very calm sensible people like Federal Reserve Board Chair
Ben Bernanke were talking about a "savings glut." The U.S. and the world had too much savings, which
lead to a serious problem of unemployment. Oh, we did eventually find a way to deal with excess savings.
Anyone remember the housing bubble?"
I don't remember Krugman or PGL saying China or trade policy was a problem at the time. They'd
just argue the Fed needs to lower rates to compensate.
Trump Isn't Wrong on China Currency Manipulation, Just Late
by Eduardo Porter
ECONOMIC SCENE APRIL 11, 2017
Has the United States mismanaged the ascent of China?
By April 15, the Treasury Department is required to present to Congress a report on the
exchange rate policies of the country's major trading partners, intended to identify manipulators
that cheapen their currency to make their exports more attractive and gain market share in
the United States, a designation that could eventually lead to retaliation.
It would be hard, these days, to find an economist who feels China fits the bill. Under
a trade law passed in 2015, a country must meet three criteria: It would have to have a "material"
trade surplus with the rest of the world, have a "significant" surplus with the United States,
and intervene persistently in foreign exchange markets to push its currency in one direction.
While China's surplus with the United States is pretty big - almost $350 billion - its global
surplus is modest, at 2.4 percent of its gross domestic product last year. Most significant,
it has been pushing its currency up, not down. Since the middle of 2014 it has sold over $1
trillion from its reserves to prop up the renminbi, under pressure from capital flight by Chinese
companies and savers.
Even President Trump - who as a candidate promised to label China a currency manipulator
on Day 1 and put a 45 percent tariff on imports of Chinese goods - seems to be backing away
from broad, immediate retaliation.
And yet the temptation remains. "When you talk about currency manipulation, when you talk
about devaluations," the Chinese "are world champions," Mr. Trump told The Financial Times,
ahead of the state visit of the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, to the United States last week.
For all Mr. Trump's random impulsiveness and bluster - and despite his lack of a coherent
strategy to engage with what is likely soon to become the world's biggest economy - he is not
entirely alone with his views.
Many learned economists and policy experts ruefully acknowledge that the president's intuition
is broadly right: While labeling China a currency manipulator now would look ridiculous, the
United States should have done it a long time ago.
"With the benefit of hindsight, China should have been named," said Brad Setser, an expert
on international economics and finance who worked in the Obama administration and is now at
the Council on Foreign Relations.
There were reasonable arguments against putting China on the spot and starting a process
that could eventually lead to American retaliation.
Yet by not pushing back against China's currency manipulation, and allowing China to deploy
an arsenal of trade tactics of dubious legality to increase exports to the United States, successive
administrations - Republican and Democratic - arguably contributed to the economic dislocations
that pummeled so many American workers over more than a decade. Those dislocations helped propel
Mr. Trump to power.
From 2000 to 2014 China definitely suppressed the rise of the renminbi to maintain a competitive
advantage for its exports, buying dollars hand over fist and adding $4 trillion to its foreign
reserves over the period. Until 2005, the Chinese government kept the renminbi pegged to the
dollar, following it down as the greenback slid against other major currencies starting in
2003.
American multinationals were flocking into China, taking advantage of its entry into the
World Trade Organization in December 2001, which guaranteed access to the American and other
world markets for its exports. By 2007, China's broad trade surplus hit 10 percent of its gross
domestic product - an unheard-of imbalance for an economy this large. And its surplus with
the United States amounted to a full third of the American deficit with the world.
Though the requirement that the Treasury identify currency manipulators "gaining unfair
competitive advantage in international trade" dates back to the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness
Act of 1988, China was never called out.
There were good reasons. Or at least they seemed so at the time. For one, China hands in
the administration of George W. Bush argued that putting China on the spot would make negotiations
more difficult, because even Chinese leaders who understood the need to allow their currency
to rise could not be seen to bow to American pressure.
Labeling China a manipulator could have severely hindered progress in other areas of a complex
bilateral economic relationship. And the United States had bigger fish to fry.
"There were other dimensions of China's economic policies that were seen as more important
to U.S. economic and business interests," Eswar Prasad, who headed the China desk at the International
Monetary Fund and is now a professor at Cornell, told me. These included "greater market access,
better intellectual property rights protection, easier access to investment opportunities,
etc."
At the end of the day, economists argued at the time, Chinese exchange rate policies didn't
cost the United States much. After all, in 2007 the United States was operating at full employment.
The trade deficit was because of Americans' dismal savings rate and supercharged consumption,
not a cheap renminbi. After all, if Americans wanted to consume more than they created, they
had to get it somewhere.
And the United States had a stake in China's rise. A crucial strategic goal of American
foreign policy since Mao's death had been how to peacefully incorporate China into the existing
order of free-market economies, bound by international law into the fabric of the postwar multilateral
institutions.
And the strategy even worked - a little bit. China did allow its currency to rise a little
from 2005 to 2008. And when the financial crisis hit, it took the foot off the export pedal
and deployed a giant fiscal stimulus, which bolstered internal demand.
Yet though these arguments may all be true, they omitted an important consideration: The
overhaul of the world economy imposed by China's global rise also created losers.
In a set of influential papers that have come to inform the thinking about the United States'
relations with China, David Autor, Daron Acemoglu and Brendan Price from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology; Gordon Hanson from the University of California, San Diego; and David
Dorn from the University of Zurich concluded that lots of American workers, in many communities,
suffered a blow from which they never recovered.
Rising Chinese imports from 1999 to 2011 cost up to 2.4 million American jobs, one paper
estimated. Another found that sagging wages in local labor markets exposed to Chinese competition
reduced earnings by $213 per adult per year.
Economic theory posited that a developed country like the United States would adjust to
import competition by moving workers into more advanced industries that competed successfully
in global markets. In the real world of American workers exposed to the rush of imports after
China erupted onto world markets, the adjustment didn't happen.
If mediocre job prospects and low wages didn't stop American families from consuming, it
was because the American financial system was flush with Chinese cash and willing to lend,
financing their homes and refinancing them to buy the furniture. But that equilibrium didn't
end well either, did it?
What it left was a lot of betrayed anger floating around among many Americans on the wrong
end of these dynamics. "By not following the law, the administration sent a political signal
that the U.S. wouldn't stand up to Chinese cheating," said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at
the Council on Foreign Relations. "As we can see now, that hurt in terms of maintaining political
support for open trade."
If there was a winner from this dynamic, it was Mr. Trump.
Will Mr. Trump really go after China? In addition to an expected executive order to retaliate
against the dumping of Chinese steel, he has promised more. He could tinker with the definitions
of "material" and "significant" trade surpluses to justify a manipulation charge.
And yet a charge of manipulation would add irony upon irony. "It would be incredibly ironic
not to have named China a manipulator when it was manipulating, and name it when it is not,"
Mr. Setser told me. And Mr. Trump would be retaliating against the economic dynamic that handed
him the presidency.
"What it left was a lot of betrayed
anger floating around among many Americans on the wrong end of these dynamics. "By not following
the law, the administration sent a political signal that the U.S. wouldn't stand up to Chinese
cheating," said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "As we can
see now, that hurt in terms of maintaining political support for open trade."
If there was
a winner from this dynamic, it was Mr. Trump."
So PGL the Facile and Krugman - the New Democrats - helped elect with their corporate free
trade.
"... Villagers reported the victims as three-month-old Asma Fahad Ali al Ameri; Aisha Mohammed Abdallah al Ameri, 4; Halima Hussein al Aifa al Emeri, Hussein Mohammed Abdallah Mabkhout al Ameri, both 5; Mursil Abedraboh Masad al Ameri, 6; Khajija Abdallah Mabkhout al Ameri, 7; Nawar Anwar al Awlaqi, 8; Ahmed Abdelilah Ahmed al Dahab, 11; Nasser Abdallah Ahmed al Dahab, 12. ..."
"... The concierge at Mar-a-Lago had the good manners not to interrupt Trump, Kushner, Bannon and the rest at dinner with pictures of the dead children. Therefore, no change of policy: they can go back to eating and planning the next raid. ..."
"Villagers reported the victims as three-month-old Asma Fahad Ali al Ameri; Aisha Mohammed
Abdallah al Ameri, 4; Halima Hussein al Aifa al Emeri, Hussein Mohammed Abdallah Mabkhout al Ameri,
both 5; Mursil Abedraboh Masad al Ameri, 6; Khajija Abdallah Mabkhout al Ameri, 7; Nawar Anwar
al Awlaqi, 8; Ahmed Abdelilah Ahmed al Dahab, 11; Nasser Abdallah Ahmed al Dahab, 12."
The concierge at Mar-a-Lago had the good manners not to interrupt Trump, Kushner, Bannon
and the rest at dinner with pictures of the dead children. Therefore, no change of policy: they
can go back to eating and planning the next raid.
Agent Orange failed to understand that he was elected mostly due to Hillary jingoism, not on his
own merits. [And that voters expect to hism to stop the wars for neoliberal empire expansion as
well as neocons war in support of Israeli regional interests.]
Or was forcefully "converted" into Hillary during the first 100 days of his presidency.
In the days since Trump brought the U.S. deeper into that country's six-year-old civil war,
his most fervent right-wing supporters have lashed out online, with many saying they feel
betrayed.
NBC Nightly News
Watch "NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt," providing reports and analysis of the day's most
newsworthy national and international events.
John
58 seconds ago
It's true. Trump has broken his campaign promises, and stabbed his supporters in the back.
He has done exactly what I expected Hillary and Jeb to do ... left Obamacare in place and
launched a sneak attack on Syria.
What's the point of voting in 2018?
wolf pfizer
1 minute ago
It's inter-religion war. Shiait Asad and sunni Rebels. We don't need to get involved
except for providing humanitarian assistance. There is a false narrative that is
being propagated here in the US about Rebels that somehow they are for democracy.
Don't be in any illusion that these Rebels are fighting for democracy. Average Syrian
enjoyed more personal freedom under Asad Regime compared to other Arab countries in
that part of the world. About the Chemical attack, the Rebels are vicious enough to
carry out such attack and pin it on Asad. Let neighboring countries take care of the
situation. We should stay out and concentrate on our homeland. We enough problems of
our own here.
Cory
3 minutes ago
As Americans we NEVER like to admit when we get something wrong. We always try to
justify things by blaming someone else. The Dems blame the GoP. The GoP blame the
Dems. It's always something. The older generation likes to blame the younger and
vice- versa. The real fact is everything that is right or wrong in this country is
the result of all of us. The past 50 years BOTH parties have had ample opportunity to
make changes and neither party has done anything to make changes. Any policy Trump
makes now someone else will change down the road, much like Trump has done to Obama.
Welcome to the new age of instability.
notinmymane
6 minutes ago
You Trumpanzees got conned by a snake-oil salesman. Didn't you know that he was a conman
before you voted for him? Stuuuuupid!
The Hated Stooge
6 minutes ago
And The Trump Vaudeville Act circle's the globe with Creepy Kushner leading the way.
Kushner will fix everything.
scrub
11 minutes ago
For every Trump supporter who is upset with his decision to bomb Syria there are a dozen or
more who still stand behind him and that decision. Why won't you do an article on that,
Yahoo? Have you informed all the readers, pro and anti-Trump alike, that Obama managed to
bomb at least one Middle East country every day that he was in office (8 fecking years, and
that was over oil, not inhumane treatment of people)? Where's the outrage over that?
Gertwise
12 minutes ago
This is exactly what they voted for. They were warned, pleaded with, shown facts, and they
still voted him into office. You reap what you sow.
Alex Verne
12 minutes ago
He does not need us anymore, ho ha new friends now. Neocons, Zionists even Clinton.
The SWAMP loves him now, he IS the SWAMP now.
Edward
20 minutes ago
They also think Bannon is still relevant.
Missile strike demonstrates American leadership. Always bipartisan support for that. Death chemical warfare agents unacceptable so must do something. Didn't I read a Syrian quoted the other day "I buried my family today. If they had been killed by barrel bombs I could have given Assad a pass but death by chemical weapons is unacceptable."? Did I not read that? That aside, clearly there are acceptable and unacceptable ways to kill civilians. Assad crossed that line and we had to do something.
PS Real men don't consult Congress before ordering missile strikes on sovereign nations. It'd be un-American to question the wisdom of bombing a butcher like Assad. What downside could there be?
Incompetent hawks are
awful. We can at least
take some comfort that
Schumer and Pelosi
called out Trump for
acting recklessly...
Oh, wait, that was in
an alternate reality
where they did that.
@#$%.
If it weren't for
incompetence and
belligerence we would
have any foreign
policy at all.
International Trade Lessons for the New York Times
The New York Times told readers * that Mexico is preparing to "play the corn card" in its negotiations
with Donald Trump. The piece warns:
"Now corn has taken on a new role - as a powerful lever for Mexican officials in the run-up
to talks over Nafta, the North American Free Trade Agreement.
"The reason: Much of the corn that Mexico consumes comes from the United States, making it
America's top agricultural export to its southern neighbor. And even though President Trump appears
to be pulling back from his vows to completely overhaul Nafta, Mexico has taken his threats to
heart and has begun flexing its own muscle.
"The Mexican government is exploring buying its corn elsewhere - including Argentina or Brazil
- as well as increasing domestic production. In a fit of political pique, a Mexican senator even
submitted a bill to eliminate corn purchases from the United States within three years."
It then warns of the potential devastation from this threat:
"The prospect that the United States could lose its largest foreign market for corn and other
key products has shaken farming communities throughout the American Midwest, where corn production
is a vital part of the economy. The threat is particularly unsettling for many residents of the
Corn Belt because much of the region voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Trump in the presidential election.
" 'If we lose Mexico as a customer, it will be absolutely devastating to the ag economy,' said
Philip Gordon, 68, who grows corn, soybeans and wheat on a farm in Saline, Mich., that has been
in his family for 140 years."
Okay, I hate to spoil a good scare story with a dose of reality, but let's think this one through
for a moment. According to the piece, instead of buying corn from the United States, Mexico might
buy it from Argentina or Brazil. So, we'll lose our Mexican market to these two countries.
But who is buying corn from Argentina and Brazil now? If this corn had previously been going
to other countries, then presumably these other countries will be looking to buy corn from someone
else, like perhaps U.S. farmers?
It is of course possible that Argentina and Brazil will switch production away from other crops
to corn to meet Mexico's demand, but that would likely leave openings in these other crops for
U.S. farmers. The transition to new markets for corn crops or a switch from corn to the crops
vacated by Brazil and Argentina would not be costless, but it also may not imply the sort of devastation
promised by the New York Times.
See, market economies are flexible. This is something that economists know, as should reporters
who write on economic issues. This may undermine scare stories that are being told to push an
agenda, but life is tough.
Not mentioned is that Mexico is the home of corn, that thousands of farmers who used to make their
livings raising native corns lost their farms to market rate competition from the USA under NAFTA.
Nick Begich - Wikipedia
Dr. Nick Begich
is the eldest son of the late United States Congressman from Alaska, Nick Begich Sr., and political
activist Pegge Begich. He is well known in Alaska for his own political activities. He was twice
elected President of both the Alaska Federation of Teachers and the Anchorage Council of Education.
He has been pursuing independent research in the sciences and politics for most of his adult life.
Begich received Doctor of Medicine (Medicina Alternitiva), honoris causa, for independent work in
health and political science, from The Open International University for Complementary Medicines,
Colombo, Sri Lanka, in November 1994.
"... What is being developed in the US under the codename Prompt Global Strike are non-nuclear strategic weapons. ..."
"... they will be more humane than nuclear weapons, because there will be no radiation, no Hiroshima or Nagasaki effect. However, in terms of military superiority, my friends at the Defence Ministry tell me the effect will be more devastating than from a modern nuclear bomb. ..."
"... What's more, our American partners are not abandoning the programme of deploying weapons in outer space, and they are essentially alone in voting against the initiatives co-sponsored by us, China and many other colleagues to commit not to do so. ..."
"... The Americans refuse to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which is also an important strategic stability factor. And of course the global missile defence system has an absolutely direct impact on strategic stability. ..."
"... Another point: imbalances in conventional weapons, which are also being modernised very quickly. ..."
Question: US President Donald Trump, in a recent statement,
unexpectedly proposed revisiting the issue of reducing strategic arms as a platform for bargaining.
Should strategic nuclear forces today be a subject of negotiations with the Americans or would it
be advisable at this point to put them outside the bounds of Russian-US relations?
Sergey Lavrov: To a very large extent, President Trump's position on the majority
of key issues on the foreign policy agenda, including further steps to limit strategic nuclear weapons
as you've mentioned, has yet to be finalized. By the way, if I remember right, Donald Trump mentioned
the issue of cooperation with us in this field as an example. He was asked whether he would be prepared
to lift sanctions on Russia. I believe that was the way the question was formulated. He responded
by saying they should see if there were issues on which they could cooperate with Russia on a mutually
beneficial basis in US interests, in particular, mentioning nuclear arms control.
At the same time, as you know, the US president said the Americans should modernise and build
up their nuclear triad. We need to wait until the military budget is finally approved under the new
administration and see what its priorities and objectives are and how these funds will be spent.
As for our further conversation, I briefly mentioned in my address that we are ready for such
a conversation but it should be conducted with acknowledgment of all strategic stability factors
without exception. Today, those who propose implementing the so-called nuclear zero initiative as
soon as possible, banning and destroying nuclear weapons and generally outlawing them absolutely,
ignore the fact that since the nuclear bomb was made and this new kind of weapon began to be produced
on a large scale in the USSR, the US, China, France and the UK, colossal changes have taken place
in military science and technology.
What is being developed in the US under the codename Prompt Global Strike are non-nuclear
strategic weapons. If they are developed (and this work is moving forward very actively, with
the objective of reaching any point in the world within an hour), of course, they will be more
humane than nuclear weapons, because there will be no radiation, no Hiroshima or Nagasaki effect.
However, in terms of military superiority, my friends at the Defence Ministry tell me the effect
will be more devastating than from a modern nuclear bomb.
What's more, our American partners are not abandoning the programme of deploying weapons in
outer space, and they are essentially alone in voting against the initiatives co-sponsored by us,
China and many other colleagues to commit not to do so.
The Americans refuse to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which is also an important
strategic stability factor. And of course the global missile defence system has an absolutely direct
impact on strategic stability.
Another point: imbalances in conventional weapons, which are also being modernised very quickly.
We always begin our dialogue with NATO by stressing the need to restore normal relations. We
propose normalisation and agreements on mutual verification measures but before that, it is necessary
to sit down and look at what each of us has deployed in proximity to each other, as well as in the
entire Euro-Atlantic region. There are a lot of factors that need to be considered if we want not
simply to ban nuclear weapons as idealists, but to ensure peace and security in the world and ensure
strategic stability that will be sustainable and based on global parity. Everything that I've mentioned
needs to be discussed. I may have missed some other factors.
I should also add that restrictions imposed by Russia and the US on each other have reached a
point where it is hard to say that we will be able to do a great deal together anymore. All states
that have nuclear weapons should be brought in – importantly, not only those that have them officially
but also de facto.
Yes, There Really Are Things We Can Do to Reduce the Trade Deficit
Donald Trump's bluster about imposing large tariffs and force companies to make things in America
has led to backlash where we have people saying things to the effect that we are in a global economy
and we just can't do anything about shifting from foreign produced items to domestically produced
items. Paul Krugman's blogpost * on trade can be seen in this light, although it is not exactly what
he say and he surely knows better.
The post points out that imports account for a large percentage of the cost of many of the goods
we produce here. This means that if we raise the price of imports, we also make it more expensive
to produce goods in the United States.
This is of course true, but that doesn't mean that higher import prices would not lead to a shift
towards domestic production. For example, if we take the case of transport equipment he highlights,
if all the parts that we imported cost 20 percent more, then over time we would expect car producers
in the United States to produce with a larger share of domestically produced parts than would otherwise
be the case. This doesn't mean that imported parts go to zero, or even that they necessarily fall,
but just that they would be less than would be the case if import prices were 20 percent lower. This
is pretty much basic economics -- at a higher price we buy less.
While arbitrary tariffs are not a good way to raise the relative price of imports, we do have
an obvious tool that is designed for exactly this purpose. We can reduce the value of the dollar
against the currencies of our trading partners. This is probably best done through negotiations,
** which would inevitably involve trade-offs (e.g. less pressure to enforce U.S. patents and copyrights
and less concern about access for the U.S. financial industry). Loud threats against our trading
partners are likely to prove counter-productive. (We should also remove the protectionist barriers
that keep our doctors and dentists from enjoying the full benefits of international competition.)
Anyhow, we can do something about our trade deficits if had a president who thought seriously
about the issue. As it is, the current occupant of the White House seems to not know which way is
up when it comes to trade.
The post points out that imports account for a large percentage of the cost of many of the
goods we produce here. This means that if we raise the price of imports, we also make it more
expensive to produce goods in the United States.
== end of quote ==
People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones ...
The problems is that many strategically important, high technology components production
is offshored.
"... " This looks more like what you'd see in a banana republic, " says Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen, a liberal watchdog group. " You've got a strongman who surrounds himself with billionaires or wealthy advisers who conduct the business of government to benefit their business. " ..."
"... In the first paragraph, we're told that jobs are moving to Mexico -- as usual. It's taken for granted (and without much concern here from Krugman) that US employers are going to keep exporting manufacturing jobs. This is followed by a defense of NAFTA, an attack on protectionism, and the suggestion that there is no alternative better than the status quo. And Democrats wonder why they're losing the Rust Belt states? ..."
"... The governmental action that was probably most important in creating the rust belt was the Reagan tax cuts. Those came as the Volcker effort to end inflation was still happening. That had to be continued, so the Reagan deficit could not be paid by inflating the money supply, and the necessary US bond sales kept our interest rate up, making the US the best place in the world to park money. Foreign exchange poured in, and the dollar's value soared by 70%. That rise made foreign production cheaper to Americans, and made US production uncompetitive elsewhere. ..."
"... Isn't this the same question that the British asked in 1845. The only thing we really know is that there are millions who no longer have a role in our economy. ..."
"... Liberals and Conservatives will not emerge until after the purge. Paul Krugman and Paul Ryan are part of the same priesthood of the only acceptable theology the Church of Neoliberalism. The belong to the same Tory Party of Robert Peel the only debate is about how best to grow the economy. ..."
"... The world's financial elite all fly the same flag called the Jolly Roger and finally we have a US government not ashamed to unfurl it. ..."
"... globalization has clearly not produced the promised big boost in overall growth in this country - economists would not be talking about "secular stagnation" if it had. ..."
"... Instead of denying the obvious facts and trying to divert the discussion with false claims about robots, why don't US economist try to work through the complications of trade and aim at policies which really would benefit US workers and might reduce the ever-growing inequality? Do they need to devote all their attention to defending the Democratic political establishment and their own failed theories and assumptions? ..."
"... It is obvious to most that the huge trade surge with China disrupted many commodity industries, steel, solar cells, electronics. ..."
"... If you do not see nothing obviously wrong, when a US company , bailed out by the US taxpayer, thanks the tax payer by importing cars made at Chinese wages to the US, putting out of work US workers, you must be a macro economist. ..."
"... Nowhere on the GM website is mentioned that those cars are made in China. Check ..."
"... the effective ban on big Western internet services like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as local data storage rules for those who are allowed to operate. It's all done in the name of security ..."
Amazing how so many conservatives dismiss what Krugman as to say since he's so clearly a 'commie.'
Then they support Trump the capitalist businessman who will get things done.
Meanwhile, in the real world, Krugman is writing capitalist essays on his blog about the benefits
of Trade, and trump is running a kleptocracy that seeks to bring back a disproven form of protectionism
that would be much more at home among early 20th century socialists than with Milton Freedman
or Adam Smith.
It goes to show that the Republicans are a party without a purpose. They have given up on their
capitalist roots and instead just cater to the whims of the highest bidding campaign contributors
and the worst instincts of their bigoted base.
Paul Mathisis a trusted commenter Fairfax, Virginia
1 day ago
Nobody Knew Trade Could Be So Complicated!
Actually everybody knows that negotiating trade deals takes years of intensive efforts because
there are many moving parts that all affect each other.
Since Trump has the attention span of the average 3 year old, he has no time for anything more
complicated than banning Muslims from traveling to America. That simple "solution" did not work
out either.
So Trump is not going to do anything on trade simply because it is way too complicated and
time consuming. After all, he couldn't even spend 3 weeks on replacing Obamacare with his "fantastic"
plan. One month ago:
"We have a plan that I think is going to be fantastic. . . . I think it's going to be something
special ... I think you're going to like what you hear." --CNN
Re: "Oh, and China currency manipulation was an issue 5 years ago - but isn't now." I find
this interesting. Five years ago China was building up their reserves by purchasing US government
and agency bonds to keep their exchange rate low. Today those reserves of government and agency
bonds are falling as they are converted into US real estate and corporate assets while the trade
deficit remains at some $500 billion. This is supposed to make everything OK. What am I missing
here? http://www.rweconomics.com/htm/WDCh_2.htm
China has more than 1.3 billion people, and wages in China have risen faster for a longer period
of time than anywhere ever.
It's not a mystery why wages in China are what they are. It started as a poor country with
an enormous, mostly rural population. If anything, the surprise is that they have managed to increase
wages so strongly for so long.
There are legitimate reasons to be concerned about trade and immigration, of course, but understanding
Trump requires one to abandon the notion that he is appealing to legitimate concerns.
He is appealing to spite. Anything resembling a legitimate concern is pretense, to give cover
to what would otherwise be recognized as ugly and deplorable. He says the spiteful parts loudly
and doesn't even feign competence or coherence on policy.
Once this is fully recognized, all that he says and does makes sense. It also suggests that
people interested in real substantive policy discussions should disregard Trump entirely.
Dr. K. is correct we should watch what DJT actually does, instead of what he says, though what
DJT says is designed to whip up his partisans by pointing to real issues, but instead of blaming
the ' lost factories ' and ' stripped wealth ' on the portion of economic strata DJT inhabits
- which is where the wealth stripping/lost factory hedgies and sacrosanct banker pay contract
holders also exist - DJT always points somewhere else.
Somewhere else is a moving target that can shift each time a new sun rises on the Twitter-verse.
And it's hard to see how everyone will continue to admire the Emperor's new clothes when the
stock markets reverse course, or if there is a 2011 re-dux next month over House GOP'ers raising
the debt ceiling.
Anyhoooo, the best indicator of how things are going regarding economic policies at the White
House is to see how DJT adviser Carl Icahn has benefited from specific policy carve-outs:
" This looks more like what you'd see in a banana republic, " says Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen,
a liberal watchdog group. " You've got a strongman who surrounds himself with billionaires or
wealthy advisers who conduct the business of government to benefit their business. "
Though DJT may be correct there are issues with NAFTA and at WTO, those issues are preferable
to bald-faced kleptocracy.
In the first paragraph, we're told that jobs are moving to Mexico -- as usual. It's taken for
granted (and without much concern here from Krugman) that US employers are going to keep exporting
manufacturing jobs. This is followed by a defense of NAFTA, an attack on protectionism, and the
suggestion that there is no alternative better than the status quo. And Democrats wonder why they're
losing the Rust Belt states?
Trump's record low approval rating is likely to take a further hit in the near future from
deteriorating economic conditions. Measures of consumer and business confidence soared since the
election yet hard economic data continues to weaken with the Atlanta Fed's GDPNow estimate of
first quarter GDP growth falling to just 0.9%, after this morning's weak personal income and spending
report. Indeed, growth in real personal consumption expenditures peaked way back in January 2015.
While there was a mild rebound that started in March 2016 the trend has since turned negative
since the start of the 2017. See chart:
Interesting fact is the recent polarization of consumer confidence readings. Democrats are
generally pessimists while Republicans are optimistic about the economy. That suggests consumer
confidence readings will fall when Republicans get over their infatuation with Trump. And will
most likely be driven by disappointing economic growth -- actual growth and not empty promises.
Trump promised 4% growth which is impossible over the long term due to slow population growth.
Yet, that growth rate now looks far out of reach even for a single quarter and fiscal stimulus
looks less and less likely to happen even if some tax cuts for the wealthy do manage to pass Congress.
Tax cuts are not stimulative if they heavily favor the wealthy. Probably the opposite is true
considering the Bush tax cuts were so ineffective.
Krugman is an economist; he's not merely trying to sway voters. And he knows that the decline
in industrial jobs is more due to productivity gains than factories' moving abroad. In any case,
measures like Trump's scolding businessmen is not and will not be important in keeping jobs from
leaving. More important is the exchange rate.
The governmental action that was probably most important in creating the rust belt was the
Reagan tax cuts. Those came as the Volcker effort to end inflation was still happening. That had
to be continued, so the Reagan deficit could not be paid by inflating the money supply, and the
necessary US bond sales kept our interest rate up, making the US the best place in the world to
park money. Foreign exchange poured in, and the dollar's value soared by 70%. That rise made foreign
production cheaper to Americans, and made US production uncompetitive elsewhere.
But the decline in manufacturing would be happening regardless. It is the same process that
did in most US family farms throughout the 20th century. US farming is now so efficient that farmers,
once 3/4 of us, are now as small a fraction of Americans as "gardeners, groundskeepers, and growers
of ornamental plants." The same thing is now happening to factories; we're just too efficient
at making things to require the number of manufacturing workers we once did.
Ron Cohenis a trusted commenter Waltham, MA
20 hours ago
Prof. Krugman, in your column today about Coal Country, you rightfully identify it as a state
of mind. But that state of mind is not nostaglia as you argue. Rather, it is a profound cultural
resentment that motivates the voters of West Virginia.
For perspective on this subject, I urge you to read Arlie Hochschild's, widely praised, "Strangers
in Their Own Land." http://thenewpress.com/node/10362
.
All but one of the columns, below, are from The New York Times. Taken together, they form a
coda to Hochschild's book. I suggest you start with the last one, Sabrina Tavernise's piece.
Bernie Sanders Has A Plan To Win Back Trump Voters, The Huffington Post, March 9, 2017
http://tinyurl.com/zy2nzxh
Trump Budget Proposal Reflects Working-Class Resentment of the Poor, Eduardo Porter, March
7, 2017 http://tinyurl.com/ho5zkha
Thank you or the opportunity of answering your question with my question.
Isn't this the same question that the British asked in 1845. The only thing we really know
is that there are millions who no longer have a role in our economy.
Liberals and Conservatives will not emerge until after the purge. Paul Krugman and Paul
Ryan are part of the same priesthood of the only acceptable theology the Church of Neoliberalism.
The belong to the same Tory Party of Robert Peel the only debate is about how best to grow the
economy.
The question that comes to my mind is why do we want to grow an economy where production exceeds
demand every day and our ideological Dogma says we must work even harder than ever to increase
the inequality between supply and demand?
We have ceded control to the Whigs and I fear it isn't only 3 million Irish peasants who will
disappear. The conversion of dollars into real estate really struck a high note as those worthless
hovels that housed 3 million economically worthless peasants provided room for what was most important
in the Irish economy pigs and cattle. Again I feel I must repeat there was no famine in Ireland
it was a failure of potato crops and each year Ireland exported enough food to feed all of Ireland's
hungry for seven potatoless years. Then as now the bible was The Economist.
The world's financial elite all fly the same flag called the Jolly Roger and finally we
have a US government not ashamed to unfurl it.
A good start would be to insist on living wages in mexico and Asia along with humane working
conditions. That's a starting position a trump or Clinton administration would never consider,
but Sanders would have. Bringing those changes about would create more of a level playing field
for US workers. Also if China isn't controlling currency anymore why is labor still so cheap.?
It can't be fully explained by excess labor supply. Something must be going on, and we should
be trying to figure it out.
skeptonomistis a trusted commenter Tennessee
1 day ago
lt's true that modern trade is very complicated but certain things are obvious. One is that
the US runs huge trade deficits, amounting to nearly $750 billion in goods. Yes, this is obviously
bigly unfair to the United States, that is considering the majority of its citizens and especially
wage earners, who have been put into competition with those in developing countries, rather than
the capitalists whose profits have been increased by the lower wage costs. Those goods represent
a very large number of jobs that are now in other countries. Another is that globalization has
clearly not produced the promised big boost in overall growth in this country - economists would
not be talking about "secular stagnation" if it had.
Instead of denying the obvious facts and trying to divert the discussion with false claims
about robots, why don't US economist try to work through the complications of trade and aim at
policies which really would benefit US workers and might reduce the ever-growing inequality? Do
they need to devote all their attention to defending the Democratic political establishment and
their own failed theories and assumptions?
Trade is a tough policy to debate with people and come to consensus. It is obvious to most
that the huge trade surge with China disrupted many commodity industries, steel, solar cells,
electronics. More should have been done to minimize the disruption. That said we are where we
are.
Our manufacturing now is higher up the value chain. Our commodity mills now need to innovate
to take advantage of niche higher value low volume markets that big producers can't supply effectively.
Innovate to develop new materials and specialized processes that displace current materials. Innovation,
flexibility and agility is our competitive advantage. Time to make the jobs of the future, commodity
production is in the past.
"But even there it's not obvious what you would demand from a new agreement."
Let me help out the professor with an article from the NY Times 3/30/17 and provide an obvious
example
"China's Taxes on Imported Cars Feed Trade Tensions With U.S."
reporting that a Jeep retailing for $ $40,530 in the US cost in China , quote " $ $71,000,
mostly because of taxes that Beijing charges on every car, minivan and sport utility vehicle that
is made in another country"
Meanwhile , quote "General Motors started shipping the Buick Envision model from a factory
in eastern China's Shandong Province to the United States last year. That decision irritated the
United Automobile Workers union"
But that is not all. The NY Times reported on 1/29/16 that GM's Cadillac devision started to
import its " plug-in hybrid version of its new CT6 flagship sedan from China " and "A PEEK under
the hood of three new cars from Buick and Cadillac will not reveal a Made in China label"
If you do not see nothing obviously wrong, when a US company , bailed out by the US taxpayer,
thanks the tax payer by importing cars made at Chinese wages to the US, putting out of work US
workers, you must be a macro economist.
Either US consumer win (cheaper cars) or US companies (more profit for the stock holders).
Final Note
Nowhere on the GM website is mentioned that those cars are made in China. Check
Ron,
Europe's parliamentary democracies have always given the 20% an outsized role in elections and
governance because coalitions are the rule not the exception and 20% is a lot of seats.
From here on a less than 4 hour drive to Waltham it looks like your 20% has the house, the senate,
the executive and soon the courts and the Supreme Court.
Donald Trump was a wake-up call for the world's 80% as Europe like North America is over 80% urban.
If Trump had the attention span and work ethic needed to become a dictator, he would seek the
confrontation over expelling the undocumented, not over trade. Trade isn't visceral enough, not
existential enough, to sustain the fear of the Other a dictator needs.
On China, there actually are a few obvious imbalances that affect the tech industry, though
it's doubtful the US has the leverage to change them.
The first comes from the Chinese government's drive to build their domestic tech industry by
coercing technology transfer from Western firms outsourcing manufacturing in China.
The second is the effective ban on big Western internet services like Google, Facebook, and
Twitter, as well as local data storage rules for those who are allowed to operate. It's all done
in the name of security (and censorship), of course, but it's also an obvious form of protectionism. Baidu and Weibo might not exist otherwise.
The government is also investing in a Chinese variant
of Linux, no doubt with the ultimate goal of gaining complete control over all software running
inside the country.
"... What's more, the overall numbers hide serious declines in most areas of manufacturing. A 2013 paper by Susan Houseman, Timothy Bartik and Timothy Sturgeon found that strong growth in computer-related manufacturing obscured a decline in almost all other areas. "In most of manufacturing," they write, "real GDP growth has been weak or negative and productivity growth modest." ..."
"... And, more troubling, the U.S. is now losing computer manufacturing. Houseman et al. show that U.S. computer production began to fall during the Great Recession. In semiconductors, output has grown slightly, but has been far outpaced by most East Asian countries. Meanwhile, trade deficits in these areas have been climbing. ..."
"... He cites Sematech, a government-led consortium that tried to help the U.S. retain its lead in semiconductor manufacturing in the 1980s and 1990s, as a successful example of high-tech industrial policy. ..."
Staying Rich
Without Manufacturing
Will Be Hard
MARCH 28, 2017 8:00
AM EDT
Discussions about
manufacturing tend to
get very contentious.
Many economists and
commentators believe
that there's nothing
inherently special
about making things
and that efforts to
restore U.S.
manufacturing to its
former glory reek of
industrial policy,
protectionism,
mercantilism and
antiquated thinking.
But in their
eagerness to guard
against the return of
these ideas,
manufacturing's
detractors often
overstate their case.
Manufacturing is in
bigger trouble than
the conventional
wisdom would have you
believe.
One common
assertion is that
while manufacturing
jobs have declined,
output has actually
risen. But this piece
of conventional wisdom
is now outdated. U.S.
manufacturing output
is almost exactly the
same as it was just
before the financial
crisis of 2008:
[chart]
In the 1990s, it
really was true that
manufacturing
production was booming
even though employment
in the sector was
falling. During that
decade, output rose by
almost half. That's
almost a 4 percent
annualized growth
rate. The expansion of
the early 2000s, in
contrast, saw
manufacturing increase
by only about 15
percent peak-to-peak
over eight years --
less than a 2 percent
annual growth rate.
And in the eight years
between 2008 and 2016,
the growth rate has
averaged zero.
But even this may
overstate U.S.
manufacturing's
performance. An
alternative measure,
called industrial
production, shows an
outright decrease from
a decade ago:
[chart]
So it isn't just
manufacturing
employment and the
sector's share of
gross domestic product
that are hurting in
the U.S. It's total
output. The U.S.
doesn't really make
more stuff than it
used to.
What's more, the
overall numbers hide
serious declines in
most areas of
manufacturing. A 2013
paper by Susan
Houseman, Timothy
Bartik and Timothy
Sturgeon found that
strong growth in
computer-related
manufacturing obscured
a decline in almost
all other areas. "In
most of
manufacturing," they
write, "real GDP
growth has been weak
or negative and
productivity growth
modest."
And, more
troubling, the U.S. is
now losing computer
manufacturing.
Houseman et al. show
that U.S. computer
production began to
fall during the Great
Recession. In
semiconductors, output
has grown slightly,
but has been far
outpaced by most East
Asian countries.
Meanwhile, trade
deficits in these
areas have been
climbing.
In other words,
Asia is still
solidifying its place
as the workshop of the
world, while the U.S.
de-industrializes. The
1990s provided a brief
respite from this
trend, as new
industries arose to
replace the ones that
had been lost. But the
years since the turn
of the century have
reversed this short
renaissance, and
manufacturing is once
more migrating
overseas.
Manufacturing
skeptics often draw
parallels to what
happened to
agriculture in the
Industrial Revolution.
But the two situations
aren't analogous. In
the 20th century, U.S.
agricultural output
soared even as it shed
jobs and shrank as a
percent of GDP.
Machines replaced most
human farmers, but the
total value of U.S.
crops kept climbing.
Meanwhile, the U.S.
to this day runs a
trade surplus in
agriculture even as it
runs a huge deficit in
manufactured products.
America pays for
computers and cars and
phones with soybeans
and corn and beef.
So U.S.
manufacturing is
hurting in ways that
U.S. agriculture never
did. The common
refrain that the
modern shift to
services parallels the
earlier shift to
industry might turn
out to be true, but
the parallels are not
encouraging.
Faced with this
evidence, many
skeptics will question
why the sector is
important at all. Why
should a country
specialize in making
things, when it can
instead specialize in
designing, marketing
and financing the
making of things?
This is a
legitimate question,
but there are reasons
to think a successful
developed nation still
needs a healthy
manufacturing sector.
Harvard University's
Kennedy School of
Government economist
Ricardo Hausmann
believes that a
country's economic
development depends
crucially on where it
lies in the so-called
product space. If a
country makes complex
products that are
linked to many other
industries -- such as
computers, cars and
chemicals -- it will
be rich. But if it
makes simple products
that don't have much
of a supply chain --
soybeans or oil -- it
will stay poor. In the
past, the U.S. was
very successful at
positioning itself at
the top of the global
value chain. But with
manufacturing's
decline, the rise of
finance, real estate
and other orphaned
service industries may
not be enough to keep
the country rich in
the long run.
More top economists
are starting to come
around to the view
that manufacturing is
important.
Massachusetts
Institute of
Technology economist
David Autor, in a
recent phone
conversation, told me
he now believes that
the U.S. should focus
more on industrial
policy designed to
keep cutting-edge
manufacturing
industries in the
country. He cites Sematech, a
government-led
consortium that tried
to help the U.S.
retain its lead in
semiconductor
manufacturing in the
1980s and 1990s, as a
successful example of
high-tech industrial
policy.
The stellar
performance of
semiconductor
manufacturing in the
1990s and 2000s
relative to other
industries in the
sector, as reported by
Houseman et al., seems
like something the
U.S. should aim to
emulate with
next-generation
industries.
So U.S. leaders
should listen to
manufacturing skeptics
a little bit less, and
pay more attention to
those who say the
sector is crucial.
It's worth noting that
President Donald
Trump, who was elected
on a promise to
restore American
manufacturing, has
shown more interest in
cutting government
programs designed to
give industry a
helping hand. If
there's going to be a
U.S. industrial policy
renaissance, it might
not be his
administration that
leads it.
"... The GOP and this administration are overwhelmingly self-avowed Christians yet they try to deny the poor to benefit the rich. This is not Christian but evil pure and simple. ..."
"... They are an American Taliban, just going about their subversion in a less overtly violent way. ..."
"... Much like Russian people viewed the country under Bolshevism, outside of brief WWII period. That's probably why we have Anti-Russian witch hunt now. To stem this trend. But it is the US neoliberal elite, not Russians, who drive the country to this state of affairs. By spending God knows how many trillions of dollar of wars of neoliberal empire expansion and by drastic redistribution of wealth up. And now the majority of citizens is facing substandard medical care, sliding standard of living and uncertain job prospects. ..."
"... US elections have been influenced by anyone with huge money or oil since the Cold War made an excuse for the US' trade empire enforced by half the world's war spending. ..."
"... The fake 'incidental' surveillance of other political opponents is a gross violation of human rights and the US' Bill of Rights. ..."
"... The disloyal opposition and its propagandists are running Stalin like show trails in their media... ..."
The GOP and this administration are overwhelmingly self-avowed Christians yet they
try to deny the poor to benefit the rich. This is not Christian but evil pure and simple.
I would love to see this lying, cheating, selfish, crazy devil (yeah, I know I sound
a bit OTT but the description is fact based) of a president and his enablers challenged
on their Christian values.
They are an American Taliban, just going about their subversion in a less overtly
violent way.
Are the people who consider our current rulers to be "American Taliban" inclined to become
"leakers" of government activities against the citizens, because they definitely stop to consider
the country as their own and view it as occupied by dangerous and violent religious cult?
Much like Russian people viewed the country under Bolshevism, outside of brief WWII period.
That's probably why we have Anti-Russian witch hunt now. To stem this trend. But it is the US
neoliberal elite, not Russians, who drive the country to this state of affairs. By spending God
knows how many trillions of dollar of wars of neoliberal empire expansion and by drastic redistribution
of wealth up. And now the majority of citizens is facing substandard medical care, sliding standard
of living and uncertain job prospects.
ilsm -> libezkova... March 26, 2017 at 05:42 AM
I see the angst over Sessions talking to a Russia diplomat twice as a red herring.
US elections have been influenced by anyone with huge money or oil since the Cold War made
an excuse for the US' trade empire enforced by half the world's war spending.
The fake 'incidental' surveillance of other political opponents is a gross violation of human
rights and the US' Bill of Rights.
The disloyal opposition and its propagandists are running Stalin like show trails in their
media.....
"... "They're taking in fundamentally the entire fiber network inside the United States and collecting all that data and storing it, in a program they call Stellar Wind," Binney said. ..."
"... "That's the domestic collection of data on US citizens, US citizens to other US citizens," he said. "Everything we're doing, phone calls, emails and then financial transactions, credit cards, things like that, all of it." ..."
"... "I mean, that's just East German," Tucker responded. ..."
"... Rather than help prevent terrorist attacks, Binney said collecting so much information actually makes stopping attacks more difficult. ..."
"... "This bulk acquisition is inhibiting their ability to detect terrorist threats in advance so they can't stop them so people get killed as a result," he said. ..."
"... "Which means, you know, they pick up the pieces and blood after the attack. That's what's been going on. I mean they've consistently failed. When Alexander said they'd stop 54 attacks and he was challenged to produce the evidence to prove that he failed on every count." ..."
"... Binney concludes ominously indicating the origin of the deep state... "They are like the praetorian guard, they determine what the emperor does and who the emperor is..." ..."
NSA whistleblower William Binney told Tucker Carlson on Friday that the NSA is spying on "all
the members of the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Congress, both House and Senate, as
well as the White House."
Binney, who served the NSA for 30 years before blowing the whistle on domestic spying in 2001, told
Tucker he firmly believes that Trump was spied on.
"They're taking in fundamentally the entire fiber network inside the United States and collecting
all that data and storing it, in a program they call Stellar Wind," Binney said.
"That's the domestic collection of data on US citizens, US citizens to other US citizens," he
said. "Everything we're doing, phone calls, emails and then financial transactions, credit cards,
things like that, all of it."
"Inside NSA there are a set of people who are -- and we got this from another NSA whistleblower
who witnessed some of this -- they're inside there, they are targeting and looking at all the members
of the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Congress, both House and Senate, as well as the
White House," Binney said.
"And all this data is inside the NSA in a small group where they're looking at it. The idea is
to see what people in power over you are going to -- what they think, what they think you should
be doing or planning to do to you, your budget, or whatever so you can try to counteract before it
actually happens," he said.
"I mean, that's just East German," Tucker responded.
Rather than help prevent terrorist attacks, Binney said collecting so much information actually
makes stopping attacks more difficult.
"This bulk acquisition is inhibiting their ability to detect terrorist threats in advance so they
can't stop them so people get killed as a result," he said.
"Which means, you know, they pick up the pieces and blood after the attack. That's what's been
going on. I mean they've consistently failed. When Alexander said they'd stop 54 attacks and he was
challenged to produce the evidence to prove that he failed on every count."
Binney concludes ominously indicating the origin of the deep state... "They are like the praetorian guard, they determine what the emperor does and who the emperor
is..."
Bringing history more up to date, this is Stalinism, i.e., fascism. As John
T. Flynn states, "Fascism is Fabian socialism plus the inevitable dictator." Neo-fascism of course
is Stalinism-blame Hitler.
So, is it fascism?
Yes, says Major Todd Pierce (retired) in an interview with Philip Weiss of
Mondoweiss - who says NSA whistle blower Bill Binney has "got to be one of the smartest
people in the world, I don't think that's an exaggeration. He was one of the smartest
people at the NSA.
Says Weiss: "And he agrees with me fully. Because he's seen the NSA. We're
a more sophisticated form of what I think has to be called fascism. The term fascism was
applied to the way the communists and Stalin got on as well. You bring the term fascist to what
it really means, and that ultimately is, ultramilitarism and authoritarianism combined with
an expansionist foreign policy. And that's us-what you can see us becoming."
The Roman Empire's death was far more complicated than "moral rot" and its "currency
devaluation." Read some history books.
Chris Hedges makes the observation that ALL empires that are scourges of the earth,
eventually turn inwards. As the empire begins its fatal decline, the terror they inflicted on
outsiders, is then turned against its own citizens.
We now see that happening in America. Banks, corporations, intel/military, etc. are turning
inward: destroying meaningful employment, humane health care, and pilfering billions of $s
reserved for the 1%.
Just Another Vi... -> FriendlyAquaponics •Mar 25, 2017 8:05 PM
A video worth revisiting......
Reuters ..........
... Obama criticizes Donald Trump endlessly....over Trumps assertions that the election is
rigged..,
telling the candidate to "stop whining and go try to make his case to get votes."
That's right, the DOD. They can't go completely rogue, without the explicit or implicit
approval of the Secretary of Defense and his Deputies.
It is rather phoney and hypocritical of any POTUS - including Pres. Thump - to moan about the
NSA, without loping off heads at the DOD and NSA. By that, I include all the Deputies, who do
the real work and know the real secrets.
It's time that Thump had a "Come to Jesus" meeting with all these guys. Else he's part of the
problem, and no amount of sugar coating can stop a turd being a turd.
TheReplacement -> HRClinton •Mar 25, 2017 9:42 PM
In an honest world, sure.
In reality, no. Like Binney said, they don't have to do anything they don't like because
NOBODY can prove they haven't complied with orders. There is nobody who can watch the
watchers. They can blackmail anyone.
'Gosh, I have no idea how that child porn got on my computer.'
CIA or NSA knows exactly how it got there. They put it there.
"... Now we have "synthetic" surveillance. You don't even need a court order. Now all incidental communication intercepts can be
unmasked. One can search their huge databases for all the incidental communications of someone of interest, then collect all of the
unmasked incidental communications that involve that person and put them together in one handy dandy report. Viola! You can keep tabs
on them every time they end up being incidentally collected. ..."
"... You ever went to an embassy party? Talked to a drug dealer or mafia guy without being aware of it? Correspond overseas? Your
communications have been "incidentally" collected too. There is so much surveillance out there we have probably all bounced off various
targets over the last several years. ..."
"... This is what police states do. In the past it was considered scandalous for senior U.S. officials to even request the identities
of U.S. officials incidentally monitored by the government (normally they are redacted from intelligence reports). John Bolton's nomination
to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was derailed in 2006 after the NSA confirmed he had made 10 such requests when he was Undersecretary
of State for Arms Control in George W. Bush's first term. The fact that the intercepts of Flynn's conversations with Kislyak appear
to have been widely distributed inside the government is a red flag. ..."
"... Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told me Monday
that he saw the leaks about Flynn's conversations with Kislyak as part of a pattern. ..."
"... The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington? Will these leaks be happening as I deal
on N.Korea etc? ..."
"... But no matter what Flynn did, it is simply not the role of the deep state to target a man working in one of the political branches
of the government by dishing to reporters about information it has gathered clandestinely. ..."
"... It is the role of elected members of Congress to conduct public investigations of alleged wrongdoing by public officials..
..."
The rank and file of the IC are not involved in this. So let's not tar everyone with the same brush, but Obama revised executive
order 12333 so that communication intercepts incidentally collected dont have to be masked and may be shared freely in the IC.
Now we have "synthetic" surveillance. You don't even need a court order. Now all incidental communication intercepts can
be unmasked. One can search their huge databases for all the incidental communications of someone of interest, then collect all
of the unmasked incidental communications that involve that person and put them together in one handy dandy report. Viola! You
can keep tabs on them every time they end up being incidentally collected.
You ever went to an embassy party? Talked to a drug dealer or mafia guy without being aware of it? Correspond overseas?
Your communications have been "incidentally" collected too. There is so much surveillance out there we have probably all bounced
off various targets over the last several years.
What might your "synthetic" surveillance report look like?
There's way more going on here then first alleged. From Bloomberg, not my choice for news, but There is another component to
this story as well -- as Trump himself just tweeted.
It's very rare that reporters are ever told about government-monitored communications of U.S. citizens, let alone senior U.S.
officials. The last story like this to hit Washington was in 2009 when Jeff Stein, then of CQ, reported on intercepted phone calls
between a senior Aipac lobbyist and Jane Harman, who at the time was a Democratic member of Congress.
Normally intercepts of U.S. officials and citizens are some of the most tightly held government secrets. This is for good reason.
Selectively disclosing details of private conversations monitored by the FBI or NSA gives the permanent state the power to destroy
reputations from the cloak of anonymity.
This is what police states do. In the past it was considered scandalous for senior U.S. officials to even request the identities
of U.S. officials incidentally monitored by the government (normally they are redacted from intelligence reports). John Bolton's
nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was derailed in 2006 after the NSA confirmed he had made 10 such requests
when he was Undersecretary of State for Arms Control in George W. Bush's first term. The fact that the intercepts of Flynn's conversations
with Kislyak appear to have been widely distributed inside the government is a red flag.
Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told me Monday
that he saw the leaks about Flynn's conversations with Kislyak as part of a pattern. "There does appear to be a well orchestrated
effort to attack Flynn and others in the administration," he said. "From the leaking of phone calls between the president and
foreign leaders to what appears to be high-level FISA Court information, to the leaking of American citizens being denied security
clearances, it looks like a pattern."
@?realDonaldTrump?
The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington? Will these leaks be happening
as I deal on N.Korea etc?
President Trump was roundly mocked among liberals for that tweet. But he is, in many ways, correct. These leaks are an enormous
problem. And in a less polarized context, they would be recognized immediately for what they clearly are: an effort to manipulate
public opinion for the sake of achieving a desired political outcome. It's weaponized spin.............
But no matter what Flynn did, it is simply not the role of the deep state to target a man working in one of the political
branches of the government by dishing to reporters about information it has gathered clandestinely.
It is the role of elected members of Congress to conduct public investigations of alleged wrongdoing by public officials..
..... But the answer isn't to counter it with equally irregular acts of sabotage - or with a disinformation campaign waged
by nameless civil servants toiling away in the surveillance state.....
"... Past administrations of both parties have been vigorous supporters of longer and stronger patent and copyright protections. These protections can raise the price of protected items by factors of ten or even a hundred, making them equivalent to tariffs of 1000 and 10,000 percent. These protections lead to the same sorts of economic distortion and corruption that economists would predict from tariffs of this size. ..."
"... Trump administration officials at a Group of 20 summit rejected concerns about spreading protectionism and made clear that the new administration would seek different approaches to global commerce. ..."
"... The United States influence over the Group of 20 nations, even when the US is supposedly taking generally unpopular stances is striking and makes me wonder why there is no open dissent. What is supposed to be unpopular may be less so among G20 governments than commonly assumed. ..."
The United States Has Been for Selective Protectionism, Not Free Trade
The New York Times might have wrongly lead readers to believe that presidents prior to Donald
Trump supported free trade in an article * noting his refusal to go along with a G-20 statement proclaiming
the importance of free trade. This is not true.
Past administrations of both parties have been vigorous supporters of longer and stronger patent
and copyright protections. These protections can raise the price of protected items by factors of
ten or even a hundred, making them equivalent to tariffs of 1000 and 10,000 percent. These protections
lead to the same sorts of economic distortion and corruption that economists would predict from tariffs
of this size.
Past administrations have also supported barriers that protect our most highly paid professionals,
such as doctors and dentists, from foreign competition. They apparently believed that these professionals
lack the skills necessary to compete in the global economy and therefore must be protected from the
international competition. The result is that the rest of us pay close to $100 billion more each
year for our medical bills ($700 per family).
U.S. Breaks With Allies Over Trade Issues Amid Trump's 'America First' Vows
By JACK EWING
Trump administration officials at a Group of 20 summit rejected concerns about spreading
protectionism and made clear that the new administration would seek different approaches to
global commerce.
Financial officials from the world's biggest economies have dropped from a joint statement
any mention of financing action on climate change, reportedly following pressure from the US
and Saudi Arabia....
The United States influence over
the Group of 20 nations, even when the US is supposedly taking generally unpopular stances
is striking and makes me wonder why there is no open dissent. What is supposed to be unpopular
may be less so among G20 governments than commonly assumed.
It has long been a mystery to
me why European nations adopt policies that hurt their economies just to pander to the whims
of US geopolitics. Cases in point: sanctions on Iran and Russia and support for Israel.
Does Immigration Help The Economy? Trump Administration To
Reopen H-1B Visa Program
By Lydia O'Neal @LydsONeal On 03/15/17 AT 4:30 PM
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)
announced Wednesday that it would not draw down the number of
H-1B visas doled out to foreign workers for fiscal year 2018,
leaving the total cap at 85,000, and would begin accepting
applications April 3.
The decision came less than two weeks after USCIS alarmed
proponents of freer immigration for skilled workers when it
suspended the premium processing route for H-1B visas, which
allows companies to import workers quickly with just 15
waiting days and a $1,225 fee, for a period of at least six
months.
The agency attributed the decision to its need to "process
long-pending petitions, which we have currently been unable
to process due to the high volume of incoming petitions and
the significant surge in premium processing requests over the
past few years," according to a USCIS press release. USCIS
also kept its expedited processing route, which is reserved
for emergency situations, in place.
H-1B visas are reserved for foreign nationals with a clear
relationship with the American company seeking to hire them,
as well as a bachelor's degree or higher in a "specialty
occupation," defined by USCIS as "in fields such as
engineering, math and business, as well as many technology
fields."
H-1B Visa Petitions Approved in 2014 by Level of Education
Showing petitions approved in the 2014 fiscal year by
level of education. Approved petitions exceed the number of
individual H-1B workers sponsored because multiple types of
petitions can be filed for a single worker. The U.S. caps the
number of H-1B workers that can be given a visa at 65,000 per
fiscal year.
The tech industry often cites the program, which primarily
benefits Indian workers and companies, as a necessary tool to
compensate for labor shortages, but the existence of that
shortage has long been disputed.
A recent study found that, had the program not been in
place between 1994 and 2001, tech workers' salaries would've
been up to 5 percent higher, while their employment would've
grown by up to 11 percent. The paper, by researchers at the
University of Michigan and the University of California, San
Diego, also pointed out that productivity in the sector rose
by as much as 2.5 percent, while consumer prices fell,
ultimately benefitting information technology firms.
Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the
Question of Apartheid: Palestine and the Israeli Occupation
By United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western
Asia
Executive Summary
This report concludes that Israel has established an
apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a
whole. Aware of the seriousness of this allegation, the
authors of the report conclude that available evidence
establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty
of policies and practices that constitute the crime of
apartheid as legally defined in instruments of international
law.
The analysis in this report rests on the same body of
international human rights law and principles that reject
anti-Semitism and other racially discriminatory ideologies,
including: the Charter of the United Nations (1945), the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), and the
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Racial Discrimination (1965). The report relies for its
definition of apartheid primarily on article II of the
International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of
the Crime of Apartheid (1973, hereinafter the Apartheid
Convention):
The term "the crime of apartheid", which shall include
similar policies and practices of racial segregation and
discrimination as practiced in southern Africa, shall apply
to inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing
and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons
over any other racial group of persons and systematically
oppressing them.
Although the term "apartheid" was originally associated
with the specific instance of South Africa, it now represents
a species of crime against humanity under customary
international law and the Rome Statute of the International
Criminal Court, according to which:
"The crime of apartheid" means inhumane acts committed in
the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic
oppression and domination by one racial group over any other
racial group or groups and committed with the intention of
maintaining that regime.
Against that background, this report reflects the expert
consensus that the prohibition of apartheid is universally
applicable and was not rendered moot by the collapse of
apartheid in South Africa and South West Africa (Namibia).
The legal approach to the matter of apartheid adopted by
this report should not be confused with usage of the term in
popular discourse as an expression of opprobrium. Seeing
apartheid as discrete acts and practices (such as the
"apartheid wall"), a phenomenon generated by anonymous
structural conditions like capitalism ("economic apartheid"),
or private social behaviour on the part of certain racial
groups towards others (social racism) may have its place in
certain contexts. However, this report anchors its definition
of apartheid in international law, which carries with it
responsibilities for States, as specified in international
instruments.
The choice of evidence is guided by the Apartheid
Convention, which sets forth that the crime of apartheid
consists of discrete inhuman acts, but that such acts acquire
the status of crimes against humanity only if they
intentionally serve the core purpose of racial domination.
The Rome Statute specifies in its definition the presence of
an "institutionalized regime" serving the "intention" of
racial domination. Since "purpose" and "intention" lie at the
core of both definitions, this report examines factors
ostensibly separate from the Palestinian dimension -
especially, the doctrine of Jewish statehood as expressed in
law and the design of Israeli State institutions - to
establish beyond doubt the presence of such a core purpose.
That the Israeli regime is designed for this core purpose
was found to be evident in the body of laws, only some of
which are discussed in the report for reasons of scope. One
prominent example is land policy. The Israeli Basic Law
(Constitution) mandates that land held by the State of
Israel, the Israeli Development Authority or the Jewish
National Fund shall not be transferred in any manner, placing
its management permanently under their authority. The State
Property Law of 1951 provides for the reversion of property
(including land) to the State in any area "in which the law
of the State of Israel applies". The Israel Lands Authority
(ILA) manages State land, which accounts for 93 per cent of
the land within the internationally recognized borders of
Israel and is by law closed to use, development or ownership
by non-Jews. Those laws reflect the concept of "public
purpose" as expressed in the Basic Law. Such laws may be
changed by Knesset vote, but the Basic Law: Knesset prohibits
any political party from challenging that public purpose.
Effectively, Israeli law renders opposition to racial
domination illegal.
Demographic engineering is another area of policy serving
the purpose of maintaining Israel as a Jewish State. Most
well known is Israeli law conferring on Jews worldwide the
right to enter Israel and obtain Israeli citizenship
regardless of their countries of origin and whether or not
they can show links to Israel-Palestine, while withholding
any comparable right from Palestinians, including those with
documented ancestral homes in the country. The World Zionist
Organization and Jewish Agency are vested with legal
authority as agencies of the State of Israel to facilitate
Jewish immigration and preferentially serve the interests of
Jewish citizens in matters ranging from land use to public
development planning and other matters deemed vital to Jewish
statehood. Some laws involving demographic engineering are
expressed in coded language, such as those that allow Jewish
councils to reject applications for residence from
Palestinian citizens. Israeli law normally allows spouses of
Israeli citizens to relocate to Israel but uniquely prohibits
this option in the case of Palestinians from the occupied
territory or beyond. On a far larger scale, it is a matter of
Israeli policy to reject the return of any Palestinian
refugees and exiles (totalling some six million people) to
territory under Israeli control.
Two additional attributes of a systematic regime of racial
domination must be present to qualify the regime as an
instance of apartheid. The first involves the identification
of the oppressed persons as belonging to a specific "racial
group". This report accepts the definition of the
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Racial Discrimination of "racial discrimination" as "any
distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on
race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has
the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the
recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of
human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political,
economic, social, cultural or any other field of public
life". On that basis, this report argues that in the
geopolitical context of Palestine, Jews and Palestinians can
be considered "racial groups". Furthermore, the International
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination is cited expressly in the Apartheid
Convention.
The second attribute is the boundary and character of the
group or groups involved. The status of the Palestinians as a
people entitled to exercise the right of self-determination
has been legally settled, most authoritatively by the
International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its 2004 advisory
opinion on Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall
in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. On that basis, the
report examines the treatment by Israel of the Palestinian
people as a whole, considering the distinct circumstances of
geographic and juridical fragmentation of the Palestinian
people as a condition imposed by Israel. (Annex II addresses
the issue of a proper identification of the "country"
responsible for the denial of Palestinian rights under
international law.)
This report finds that the strategic fragmentation of the
Palestinian people is the principal method by which Israel
imposes an apartheid regime. It first examines how the
history of war, partition, de jure and de facto annexation
and prolonged occupation in Palestine has led to the
Palestinian people being divided into different geographic
regions administered by distinct sets of law. This
fragmentation operates to stabilize the Israeli regime of
racial domination over the Palestinians and to weaken the
will and capacity of the Palestinian people to mount a
unified and effective resistance. Different methods are
deployed depending on where Palestinians live. This is the
core means by which Israel enforces apartheid and at the same
time impedes international recognition of how the system
works as a complementary whole to comprise an apartheid
regime.
Since 1967, Palestinians as a people have lived in what
the report refers to as four "domains", in which the
fragments of the Palestinian population are ostensibly
treated differently but share in common the racial oppression
that results from the apartheid regime. Those domains are:
1. Civil law, with special restrictions, governing
Palestinians who live as citizens of Israel;
2. Permanent residency law governing Palestinians living
in the city of Jerusalem;
3. Military law governing Palestinians, including those in
refugee camps, living since 1967 under conditions of
belligerent occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip;
4. Policy to preclude the return of Palestinians, whether
refugees or exiles, living outside territory under Israel's
control....
The proposal from the State Department would reverse a
decision made late in the Obama administration to suspend the
sale of precision guided munitions to Riyadh, which leads a
mostly Arab coalition conducting air strikes against
Iran-backed Al Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's approval this week of the
measure, which officials say needs White House backing to go
into effect, provides an early indication of the new
administration's more Saudi-friendly approach to the conflict
in Yemen, and a sign of its more hawkish stance on Iran.
It also signals a break with the more conservative approach
of Obama's administration about US involvement in the
conflict.
The move takes place as the Trump administration considers
its approach to the Yemeni war, which has pitted US and
Saudi-backed Yemeni President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi against
an alliance of ousted Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh and
Al Houthi rebels.
...a winning strategy so far. 15 years into the GWOT, the
only light at the end of the tunnel is generated by IEDs.
Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern
Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer
By Dean Baker
The Old Technology and Inequality Scam: The Story of
Patents and Copyrights
One of the amazing lines often repeated by people in
policy debates is that, as a result of technology, we are
seeing income redistributed from people who work for a living
to the people who own the technology. While the
redistribution part of the story may be mostly true, the
problem is that the technology does not determine who "owns"
the technology. The people who write the laws determine who
owns the technology.
Specifically, patents and copyrights give their holders
monopolies on technology or creative work for their duration.
If we are concerned that money is going from ordinary workers
to people who hold patents and copyrights, then one policy we
may want to consider is shortening and weakening these
monopolies. But policy has gone sharply in the opposite
direction over the last four decades, as a wide variety of
measures have been put into law that make these protections
longer and stronger. Thus, the redistribution from people who
work to people who own the technology should not be
surprising - that was the purpose of the policy.
If stronger rules on patents and copyrights produced
economic dividends in the form of more innovation and more
creative output, then this upward redistribution might be
justified. But the evidence doesn't indicate there has been
any noticeable growth dividend associated with this upward
redistribution. In fact, stronger patent protection seems to
be associated with slower growth.
Before directly considering the case, it is worth thinking
for a minute about what the world might look like if we had
alternative mechanisms to patents and copyrights, so that the
items now subject to these monopolies could be sold in a free
market just like paper cups and shovels.
The biggest impact would be in prescription drugs. The
breakthrough drugs for cancer, hepatitis C, and other
diseases, which now sell for tens or hundreds of thousands of
dollars annually, would instead sell for a few hundred
dollars. No one would have to struggle to get their insurer
to pay for drugs or scrape together the money from friends
and family. Almost every drug would be well within an
affordable price range for a middle-class family, and
covering the cost for poorer families could be easily managed
by governments and aid agencies.
The same would be the case with various medical tests and
treatments. Doctors would not have to struggle with a
decision about whether to prescribe an expensive scan, which
might be the best way to detect a cancerous growth or other
health issue, or to rely on cheaper but less reliable
technology. In the absence of patent protection even the most
cutting edge scans would be reasonably priced.
Health care is not the only area that would be transformed
by a free market in technology and creative work. Imagine
that all the textbooks needed by college students could be
downloaded at no cost over the web and printed out for the
price of the paper. Suppose that a vast amount of new books,
recorded music, and movies was freely available on the web.
People or companies who create and innovate deserve to be
compensated, but there is little reason to believe that the
current system of patent and copyright monopolies is the best
way to support their work. It's not surprising that the
people who benefit from the current system are reluctant to
have the efficiency of patents and copyrights become a topic
for public debate, but those who are serious about inequality
have no choice. These forms of property claims have been
important drivers of inequality in the last four decades.
The explicit assumption behind the steps over the last
four decades to increase the strength and duration of patent
and copyright protection is that the higher prices resulting
from increased protection will be more than offset by an
increased incentive for innovation and creative work. Patent
and copyright protection should be understood as being like
very large tariffs. These protections can often the raise the
price of protected items by several multiples of the free
market price, making them comparable to tariffs of several
hundred or even several thousand percent. The resulting
economic distortions are comparable to what they would be if
we imposed tariffs of this magnitude.
The justification for granting these monopoly protections
is that the increased innovation and creative work that is
produced as a result of these incentives exceeds the economic
costs from patent and copyright monopolies. However, there is
remarkably little evidence to support this assumption. While
the cost of patent and copyright protection in higher prices
is apparent, even if not well-measured, there is little
evidence of a substantial payoff in the form of a more rapid
pace of innovation or more and better creative work....
In the GE Aviation
lobby, as Indiana
Governor Holcomb
rocked slightly in
custom-made cowboy
boots – black, pointed
toes, an outline of
Indiana on the front
of the shaft – and the
sound of the ignition
of his SUV signaling
the end of a Wednesday
afternoon at the GE
plant, Plant Manager
Matteson added one
more thing:
Immigration reform
would really help on a
number of fronts,
starting with clearing
the way for the talent
pool coming out of
Indiana Universities
and other engineering
schools.
This is the
new manufacturing that
is replacing the
factories being
shuttered. They are
run by engineers, many
of them foreign. They
hire workers who they
will train and workers
must be capable of
learning and fitting
in with the work
culture. Manufacturing
is locating in urban
areas and near
Universities where
they can find a pool
of high skill talent
and a workforce that
is accustomed to
diversity. They will
NOT go to a redneck
sundown town where the
Indian engineers are
going to be harassed
and maybe shot. The
Sundown towns are
chasing away the very
people they need to
save their
communities. The
denigrate education
and fail to teach
their children the
math skills they would
need to become high
skill engineering
talent. Low skill jobs
cannot have high pay
without unions. These
voters have voted for
politicians who have
destroyed their unions
with Right to Work
laws and other bad
policy.
They are egged on
by Trump who
understands none of
this and promises to
return their low skill
jobs. The GOP and
Trump blame trade and
immigrants, pushing
the cultural buttons
to deflect attention
to their complicity in
destroying unions,
underfunding education
and failure to invest
in the workforce
Yep. There is certainly a roach motel policy aspect to
globalization. Dependencies upon existing supply chains both
for wage and regulatory arbitrage pricing and for invested
fixed capital stock impose yuuge drags on on-shoring efforts.
The poverty economics from 40 acres and mule all the way to
single parent eligibility requirements and subsequent
"reforms" for family financial aid were also roach motel
economics. Now we have the irony of the sharing economy
further suppressing wages.
Am I alone in thinking that Preet
Bharara, the just fired US Attorney for Southern District of New York, would be the ideal Special
Prosecutor of the Trump - Russia investigation
Bharara did not push back against "too big to prosecute" and sat out the biggest white collar
crime wave in the history of the world, so why is he such a saint?
I don't think you considered the bigger picture here which includes in Bharara's case his bosses
to whom he would have to had run any cases up the flag pole for approval and Obama and Company
were not at the time into frying Wall Street for their crimes b/c they were into restarting the
Bush/Cheney damaged, almost ruined, US and global Economy.
If you did not noticed Vault 7 scandal completely overtook everything else now. This is a
real game changer.
Just think, how many million if not billion dollars this exercise in removing the
last traces of democracy from the USA and converting us into a new Democratic Republic of Germany,
where everybody was controlled by STASI, cost. And those money were spend for what ?
BTW the Stasi was one of the most hated and feared institutions of the East German government.
If this is not the demonstration of huge and out of civil control raw power of "deep state"
I do not know what is.
If you are not completely detached from really you should talk about Vault 7. This is huge,
Snowden size scandal that is by the order of magnitude more important for the country then all
those mostly fake hints on connections of Trump and, especially "Russian hacking".
Tell me who stole the whole arsenal of CIA hacking tools with all the manuals? Were those
people Russians?
If not, you should print your last post, shred is and eat it with borsch ;-).
In the world of intelligence false flag operations is a standard tactics. Now what ? Difficult
situation for a Midwesterner...
libezkova -> libezkova...
Another difficult to stomach hypothesis:
"Boris and Natasha" version of hacking might well be a false flag operation. How about developing
Russian-looking hacking tools in CIA? To plant fingerprints and get the warrant for monitoring
Trump communications.
VAULT 7: CIA Staged Fake Russian Hacking to Set Up Trump - Russian Cyber-Attack M.O. As False
Flag
"The United States must not adopt the tactics of the enemy. Means are important, as ends. Crisis
makes it tempting to ignore the wise restraints that make men free. But each time we do so, each
time the means we use are wrong, our inner strength, the strength which makes us free, is lessened."
- Sen. Frank Church
WikiLeaks Press Release
Today, Tuesday 7 March 2017, WikiLeaks begins its new series of leaks on the U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency. Code-named "Vault 7" by WikiLeaks, it is the largest ever publication of confidential
documents on the agency.
The first full part of the series, "Year Zero", comprises 8,761 documents and files from an
isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley,
Virgina. It follows an introductory disclosure last month of CIA targeting French political parties
and candidates in the lead up to the 2012 presidential election.
Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses,
trojans, weaponized "zero day" exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation.
This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code,
gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA The archive appears to have been circulated
among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has
provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.
"Year Zero" introduces the scope and direction of the CIA's global covert hacking program,
its malware arsenal and dozens of "zero day" weaponized exploits against a wide range of U.S.
and European company products, include Apple's iPhone, Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows
and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.
Since 2001 the CIA has gained political and budgetary preeminence over the U.S. National Security
Agency (NSA). The CIA found itself building not just its now infamous drone fleet, but a very
different type of covert, globe-spanning force - its own substantial fleet of hackers. The agency's
hacking division freed it from having to disclose its often controversial operations to the NSA
(its primary bureaucratic rival) in order to draw on the NSA's hacking capacities.
Thought-provoking, wide-ranging blog post by Jared* on
international trade. I guess PGL only had time to read Timmy
Taylor in his rush to post first.
He disagrees with
Navarro** about trade deficits always being a problem and
notes that there are two sides or aspects to the equation.
"As long as the world's excess global savings continue to
flow to our shores, our trade deficit will persist, and going
after bilateral deficits one at a time becomes a game of
whack-a-mole that we can't win."
Jared notes how Brad Setser suggests a solution: "As Brad
Setser convincingly argues, encouraging countries with large
surpluses (which must show up as deficits somewhere else) to
engage in more internal investment is a far preferable way to
reduce our own imbalances than tariffs and trade barriers."
Too bad we don't have a WTO that could force surplus
nations like Germany and China to do this.
But Jared admits Navarro isn't always wrong (something PGL
can't bring himself to do given his hateful nature.)
"Second, Navarro is not wrong to worry about the drag on
demand from negative net exports, but only when there's
nothing in the pipeline to offset it. The Federal Reserve can
lower interest rates to offset the drag, but not if they're
near zero, or in "normalization" mode (raising rates), both
of which are operative today. Fiscal policy can pick up the
slack, but not if Congress refuses to step up.
So yeah, today's trade deficits are a problem. They've not
been large enough to keep the economy from growing and
unemployment from falling, but remember, it's year eight of
an economic expansion and we've still not fully closed the
GDP output gap (and that's even the case as potential GDP has
been lowered). In the absence of offsets, we could have used
that extra demand."
This is what the neoliberals like PGL and Sanjait don't
understand or can't admit. Why? Because of politics and how
Democrats like Bill Clinton and Obama pushed corporate free
trade deals and trade policy. Because critics like Navarro
and Bernie Sanders have struck a cord with populist voters
concerned about corporate trade.
Jared Bernstein wraps up with a plea for infrastructure
spending given the threat of the SecStags.
"But given the existential threat of climate change, or
for that matter, the general state of our public goods, I
find it awfully hard to accept the contention that there's
nothing productive in which to invest the excess savings
surplus countries continue to send our way."
Compare with Hillary' modest fiscal action which Alan
Blinder said wouldn't effect the Fed's reaction function.
DeLong still backed her over Sanders despite the threat of
the Secstags. Critics of Fed policy like Sanjait and PGL
still backed Hillary even though she had no criticisms of the
Fed or plans to reform its policy.
* like PGL, I pretend to know the write to give myself the
appearance more authority.
** PGL's bete noir.
Washington Post Lies to Readers Again: Job Loss in
Manufacturing Due to Trade, not Automation
The Washington Post must think that U.S. trade policy
is really awful. Why else would they continually lie to
their readers * and claim that the cause of the sharp job
loss in manufacturing in recent years was automation?
For fans of data rather than myths, the basic story is
that manufacturing has been declining as a share of total
employment since 1970. However there was relatively little
change in the number of jobs until the trade deficit
exploded in the last decade. Here's the graph.
[Manufacturing Employment, 1970-2017]
And, there was no great uptick in productivity **
coinciding with the plunge in employment at the start of
the last decade. It would be nice if the Washington Post
could discuss trade honestly. This sort of reporting gives
fuel to the Donald Trumps of the world.
In this context it is probably worth once again
mentioning that the Washington Post still refuses to
correct its pro-NAFTA editorial in which it made the
absurd claim *** that Mexico's GDP quadrupled from 1987 to
2007. The actual figure was 83 percent, according to the
International Monetary Fund.
"... He was elected not for his personal qualities, but despite them, as a symbol of anti-neoliberal movement. As the only candidate that intuitively felt the need for the new policy due to crisis of neoliberalism ("secular stagnation" to be exact) impoverishment of lower 80% and "appropriated" anti-neoliberal sentiments. ..."
"... And he is expected to accomplish at least two goals: ..."
"... Stop the wars of expansion of neoliberal empire fought by previous administration. Achieve détente with Russia as Russia is more ally then foe in the current international situation and hostility engineered by Obama administration was based on Russia resistance to neoliberalism ..."
"... Reverse or at least stem destruction of jobs and the standard of living of lower 80% on Americans due to globalization and, possibly, slow down or reverse the process of globalization itself. ..."
"... "And the banks - hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created - are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place," ..."
"... This is anathema for neoliberalism and it is neoliberals who ruled the country since 1980. So it is not surprising that they now are trying to stage a color revolution in the USA to return to power. See also pretty interesting analysis at ..."
The important mission has been accomplished - Trump has become president. What would motivate
many people to go out for weekend rallies now?
libezkova -> cm... , -1
"The important mission has been accomplished - Trump has become president."
You are absolutely wrong. Mission is not accomplished. It is not even started.
Trump IMHO was just a symbol of resistance against neoliberalism that is growing in the USA.
He was elected not for his personal qualities, but despite them, as a symbol of anti-neoliberal
movement. As the only candidate that intuitively felt the need for the new policy due to crisis
of neoliberalism ("secular stagnation" to be exact) impoverishment of lower 80% and "appropriated"
anti-neoliberal sentiments.
And he is expected to accomplish at least two goals:
Stop the wars of expansion of neoliberal empire fought by previous administration. Achieve
détente with Russia as Russia is more ally then foe in the current international situation and
hostility engineered by Obama administration was based on Russia resistance to neoliberalism
(despite
being neoliberal country with neoliberal President -- Putin is probably somewhat similar to Trump
"bastard neoliberal" a strange mixture of neoliberal in domestic politics with "economic nationalist"
on international arena that rejects neoliberal globalization, on term favorable to multinational
corporations).
Reverse or at least stem destruction of jobs and the standard of living of lower 80% on
Americans due to globalization and, possibly, slow down or reverse the process of globalization
itself.
The problem is there is extremely powerful and influential "fifth column" of globalization
within the country and they can't allow Trump to go this path. As Senator Dick Durbin said about
banks and the US Congress
== quote ==
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has been battling the banks the last few weeks in an effort to
get 60 votes lined up for bankruptcy reform. He's losing.
On Monday night in an interview with a radio host back home, he came to a stark conclusion:
the banks own the Senate.
"And the banks - hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many
of the banks created - are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly
own the place,"
== end of the quote ==
This is anathema for neoliberalism and it is neoliberals who ruled the country since 1980.
So it is not surprising that they now are trying to stage a color revolution in the USA to
return to power. See also pretty interesting analysis at
"... The two thinkers, recently in the news thanks to Steve Bannon, had different views on human nature. ..."
"... if human nature is universal, cultural convergence seems to be the logical outcome of a globalized world. ..."
"... Spengler's views can be seen in the context of a movement known as historicism, the idea that human societies were the products of historical and material circumstances, which arose as a result of the universalism propagated by the Enlightenment and spread by the French Revolution. While Spengler makes some valid points, particularly in arguing against the idea that history is goal-oriented and directional, his view denies the very concept of empathy, that one can look at, say, Caesar, and see things through his eyes. ..."
"... In other words, Evola believed that there was a common core to human beings, a set of higher principles and heroic "traditional" values that lay at the root of every successful civilization. Even when eclipsed, these values remained in a dormant form, waiting to be reactivated. It is not surprising, then, that Evola is popular among nationalists and reactionaries today, because his framework allows for a shared nationalistic struggle that is simultaneously individualistic and universal in the chivalric sense that true warriors always recognize and respect each other even when serving different causes. ..."
"... The problem is that the mere existence of human nature is no guarantee of its consummation. Human beings may live pathetic or ignoble or fragmentary lives. Evola's concern (whatever one might think of it) was with encouraging the perfection of human nature through political means. That perfection may have little to do with the commonest "material, psychological, and emotional factors"; indeed, it most certainly requires their overcoming. ..."
"... This is important, because it forms one of the strongest critiques that the far right brings against democratic republics: namely, that they are materialistic and emotionally hollow; that they provide no transcendental or ennobling vision of the life of human beings and the destiny of societies. ..."
The two thinkers, recently in the news thanks to Steve Bannon, had different views on human
nature.
The apocalyptic worldview promoted by prominent political figures such as Steve Bannon in the United
States and Aleksandr Dugin in Russia is premised on the notion that ordinary political and legislative
battles are more than just quibbles over contemporary issues. Rather, political debates are
fronts in a greater battle of ideas , and everything is a struggle for the meaning of civilization
and human nature. Bannon's worldview is preceded by the thought of two early-20th-century thinkers,
Oswald Spengler and Julius Evola-and his passing mention of the latter in a 2014 speech has caused
some controversy in recent weeks, including a New York Times article entitled
"Steve Bannon Cited Italian Thinker Who Inspired Fascists."
These thinkers wrote at a time when the Western narrative of progress and improvement was shattered
after World War I. Interest in both Spengler and Evola has recently revived, though Spengler was
always fairly well-known for his thesis that civilizations grew and declined in a cyclical fashion.
Although both Spengler and Evola shared a pessimism over the direction of modern Western civilization,
they differed on human nature. Is there a way to reconcile two vastly different observations?
The first is that people in different eras and locales display a remarkable degree of behavioral
similarity; id est , human nature is universal and constant. However, on the other hand, the
peculiarities and differences between some cultures are so great that it is hard to see how these
are derived from a common source. This question is really what lies at the root of the current argument
between cosmopolitanism and nationalism. For if human nature is universal, cultural convergence
seems to be the logical outcome of a globalized world.
Are there alternatives? Building off of ideas introduced in the early 19th century by Hegel, Spengler
argued that the very framework of human experience was limited by the time and the civilization
in which the person lived:
"Mankind" has no aim, no idea, no plan [and] is a zoological expression, or an empty word.
But conjure away the phantom, break the magic circle, and at once there emerges an astonishing
wealth of actual forms. I see, in place of that empty figment of one linear history which can
be kept up only by shutting one's eyes to the overwhelming multitier of facts, the drama of a
number of mighty Cultures. There is not one sculpture, one painting, one mathematics, one physics,
but many, each in its deepest essence different from the others, each limited in duration and
self-contained.
Spengler's views can be seen in the context of a movement known as historicism, the idea that
human societies were the products of historical and material circumstances, which arose as a result
of the universalism propagated by the Enlightenment and spread by the French Revolution. While Spengler
makes some valid points, particularly in arguing against the idea that history is goal-oriented and
directional, his view denies the very concept of empathy, that one can look at, say, Caesar, and
see things through his eyes.
Age after age, people look back on history for inspiration, and it is hard to accept this lack
of commonality with historical figures: the idea of a common human nature is a compelling concept.
It also has the weight of historical, literary, and anthropological evidence behind it. But it does
not follow that the idea of a fixed human nature leads to a form of neoliberal universalism.
One alternative was provided by Evola, who sought to reclaim the idea of human nature from the
Enlightenment and reconcile it with the observations described by Spengler and Hegel. Instead of
the liberal, convergent universalism championed by the Enlightenment, Evola advocated a traditionalist
universalism, because "there is no form of traditional organization that does not hide a higher
principle." In an
argument that echoes Plato's Theory of Forms, he wrote:
The supreme values and the foundational principles of every healthy and normal institution
are not liable to change. In the domain of these values there is no "history" and to think about
them in historical terms is absurd even where these principles are objectified in a historical
reality, they are not at all conditioned by it; they always point to a higher, meta-historical
plane, which is their natural domain and where there is no change.
In other words, Evola believed that there was a common core to human beings, a set of higher
principles and heroic "traditional" values that lay at the root of every successful civilization.
Even when eclipsed, these values remained in a dormant form, waiting to be reactivated. It is not
surprising, then, that Evola is popular among nationalists and reactionaries today, because his framework
allows for a shared nationalistic struggle that is simultaneously individualistic and universal in
the chivalric sense that true warriors always recognize and respect each other even when serving
different causes.
... ... ...
Akhilesh Pillalamarri is an editorial assistant at The American Conservative . He also
writes for The National Interest and The Diplomat .
"But the truth is probably a lot simpler: people are motivated by similar and fixed material,
psychological, and emotional factors across time and space, not by any liberal or 'meta-historical'
purposes."
Yet it seems to me that everything depends on just who the "people" in question are,
and what their relation is to the wellsprings of power. The motivations of the American electorate
are not those of a Napoleon; and these motivations in turn are not identical to those those of,
say, the Venetian Doge in the Renaissance. The character of the very social order changes dramatically
on the basis of the motivations of its rulers.
The problem is that the mere existence of human nature is no guarantee of its consummation.
Human beings may live pathetic or ignoble or fragmentary lives. Evola's concern (whatever one
might think of it) was with encouraging the perfection of human nature through political means.
That perfection may have little to do with the commonest "material, psychological, and emotional
factors"; indeed, it most certainly requires their overcoming.
This is important, because it forms one of the strongest critiques that the far right brings
against democratic republics: namely, that they are materialistic and emotionally hollow; that
they provide no transcendental or ennobling vision of the life of human beings and the destiny
of societies.
Until democratic republics can answer that charge, which is a poetic, a spiritual, a philosophical
charge, they will remain vulnerable to the peril of "fascist revolt."
"... an unwillingness or inability among Americans to question the country's sinlessness feeds a culture of public conformism, ..."
"... he daringly points out America's "hypocrisy," which also is corroborated by other scholars, among them James Hillman in his recent book "A Terrible Love of War" in which he characterizes hypocrisy as quintessentially American. ..."
"... The combined resentments lead to a sort of chip on the shoulder patriotism which so characterizes American nationalism. ..."
"... The book suggests that the Republican Party is really like an old style European nationalist party. Broadly serving the interests of the moneyed elite but spouting a form of populist gobbledygook, which paints America as being in a life and death, struggle with anti-American forces at home and abroad. It is the reason for Anne Coulter, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. That is the rhetoric of struggle acts as a cover for political policies that benefit a few and lay the blame for the problems of ordinary Americans on fictitious entities. ..."
"... The main side effects of the nationalism are the current policies which shackles America to Israel uncritically despite what that country might and how its actions may isolate America from the rest of the world. It also justifies America on foreign policy adventures such as the invasion of Iraq. ..."
"... " The [U. S.] conduct of the war against terrorism looks more like a baroque apotheosis of political stupidity;" ..."
"... "One strand of American nationalism is radical...because it continually looks backward at a vanished and idealized national past; " ..."
"... " [George W.] Bush, his leading officials, and his intellectual and media supporters..., as nationalists, [are] absolutely contemptuous of any global order involving any check whatsoever on American behavior and interests ;" ..."
"... I find that Mr. Lieven's assessment of both the United States' and Israel's role rings true. While he does not excuse Arab leaders for their misdeeds, he clearly documents a history in which the United States has repeatedly subordinated vital U.S. regional interests in favor of accepting whatever Israel chooses to do. ..."
... While there are incontestable civilizing elements to America's nationalism, there are
also dangerous and destructive ingredients, a sort of Hegelian thesis and antithesis theme
which places a strong question mark in America's historical theme of exceptionalism.
Unlike in other post-World War II nations, America's nationalism is permeated by values
and religious elements derived mostly from the South and the Southern Baptists, though the
fears and panics of the embittered heartland provide additional fuel.
Lieven's book, among other elements, is also a summation of lots of minor observations--even
personal ones he made as a student in the small town of Troy, Alabama--and historical details
which reflect the grand evolution of America's nationalism. When he says that "an unwillingness
or inability among Americans to question the country's sinlessness feeds a culture of public
conformism," then he has the support of Mark Twain who said something to the effect
that we are blessed with three things in this country, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience
and, thirdly, the common sense to practice neither one! Ditto when he daringly points
out America's "hypocrisy," which also is corroborated by other scholars, among them James Hillman
in his recent book "A Terrible Love of War" in which he characterizes hypocrisy as quintessentially
American.
Lieven continues with the impact of the Cold War on America's nationalism and then, having
always expanded the theme of Bush's foreign policy and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, examines
with commendable perspective the complex and very much unadmitted current aspects of the U.S.'s
relationships with the Moslems, the Iraq War and the impact of the pro-Israeli lobby. It
is the sort of assessment one rarely finds in the U.S. media . He exposes the alienation
the U.S. caused among allies and, in particular, the Arabs and the EU.
Lieven wrote this book with passion and commendable sincerity. Though it comes from a foreigner,
its advice would without question serve not only America's interest but also provide a substantial
basis for a detached and objective approach to solving the intractable Israeli-Palestinian
conflict to the satisfaction of all involved before worse deeds and more burdens materialize.
Tom Munro:
What this book suggests is that a significant number of Americans have an outlook similar
to European countries around 1904. A sense of identification with an idea of nation and a dismissive
approach to other countries and cultures. Whilst in Europe the experience of the first
and second world wars put paid to nationalism in America it is going strong. In fact Europeans
see themselves less as Germans or Frenchmen today than they ever have.
The reason for American nationalism springs from a pride in American institutions but
it also contains a deep resentment that gives it its dynamism . Whilst America as a nation
has not lost a war there are a number of reasons for resentment. The South feels that its values
are not taken seriously and it is subject to ridicule by the seaboard states. Conservative
Christians are concerned about modernism. The combined resentments lead to a sort of chip
on the shoulder patriotism which so characterizes American nationalism.
Of course these things alone are not sufficient. Europeans live in countries that are small
geographically. They travel see other countries and are multilingual. Most Americans do not
travel and the education they do is strong in ideology and weak in history. It is thus easier
for some Americans to develop a rather simple minded view of the world.
The book suggests that the Republican Party is really like an old style European nationalist
party. Broadly serving the interests of the moneyed elite but spouting a form of populist
gobbledygook, which paints America as being in a life and death, struggle with anti-American
forces at home and abroad. It is the reason for Anne Coulter, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh.
That is the rhetoric of struggle acts as a cover for political policies that benefit a few
and lay the blame for the problems of ordinary Americans on fictitious entities.
The main side effects of the nationalism are the current policies which shackles America
to Israel uncritically despite what that country might and how its actions may isolate America
from the rest of the world. It also justifies America on foreign policy adventures such as
the invasion of Iraq.
The book is quite good and repeats the message of a number of other books such as "What
is wrong with America". Probably there is something to be said for the books central message.
Keith Wheelock (Skillman, NJ USA)
A Socratic 'America know thyself': READ IT!, August 13, 2010
Foreigners, from de Tocqueville and Lord Bryce to Hugh Brogan and The Economist's John Micklethwait
and Adrian Woodridge, often see America more clearly than do Americans. In the post-World War
II period, R. L. Bruckberger's IMAGES OF AMERICA (1958) and Jean -Jacques Servan-Schreiber's
THE AMERICAN CHALLENGE (1967) presented an uplifting picture of America.
Two generations later, Englishman Anatol Lieven paints a troubling picture of a country
that is a far cry from John Winthrop's' "city upon a hill."
Has America changed so profoundly over the past fifty years or is Mr. Lieven simply highlighting
historical cycles that, at least for the moment, had resulted in a near `perfect storm?' His
2004 book has prompted both praise [see Brian Urquhart's Extreme Makeover in the New York Review
of Books (February 24, 2005)] and brick bats. This book is not a polemic. Rather, it is a scholarly
analysis by a highly regarded author and former The Times (London) correspondent who has lived
in various American locales. He has a journalist's acquaintance of many prominent Americans
and his source materials are excellent.
I applaud his courage for exploring the dark cross currents in modern-day America. In the
tradition of the Delphic oracle and Socrates, he urges that Americans `know thy self.' The
picture he paints should cause thoughtful Americans to shudder. Personally, I found his
book of a genre similar to Cullen Murphy's ARE WE ROME? THE FALL OF AN EMPIRE AND THE FATE
OF AMERICA.
I do not consider Mr. Lieven anti-American in his extensive critique of American cross
currents. That he wrote this in the full flush of the Bush/Cheney post-9/11 era suggests that
he might temper some of his assessments after the course corrections of the Obama administration.
My sense is that Mr. Lieven admires many of America's core qualities and that this `tough love'
essay is his effort to guide Americans back to their more admirable qualities.
Mr. Lieven boldly sets forth his book's message in a broad-ranging introduction:
" The [U. S.] conduct of the war against terrorism looks more like a baroque apotheosis
of political stupidity;"
"Aspects of American nationalism imperil both the nation's global leadership and its
success in the struggle against Islamic terror and revolution;"
"Insofar as American nationalism has become mixed up with a chauvinist version of Israeli
nationalism, it also plays an absolutely disastrous role in U.S. relations with the Muslim
world and in fueling terrorism;"
"American imperialists trail America's coat across the whole world while most ordinary
Americans are not looking and rely on those same Americans to react with `don't tread on
me' nationalist fury when the coat is trodden on;"
"One strand of American nationalism is radical...because it continually looks backward
at a vanished and idealized national past; "
"America is the home of by far the most deep, widespread and conservative religious
belief in the Western world;"
"The relationship between the traditional White Protestant world on one hand and the
forces of American economic, demographic, social and cultural change on the other may be
compared to the genesis of a hurricane;"
"The religious Right has allied itself solidly with extreme free market forces in the
Republican Party although it is precisely the workings of unrestricted American capitalism
which are eroding the world the religious conservatives wish to defend;"
"American nationalism is beginning to conflict very seriously with any enlightened,
viable or even rational version of American imperialism;"
" [George W.] Bush, his leading officials, and his intellectual and media supporters...,
as nationalists, [are] absolutely contemptuous of any global order involving any check whatsoever
on American behavior and interests ;"
"Nationalism therefore risks undermining precisely those American values which make
the nation most admired in the world;" and
"This book...is intended as a reminder of the catastrophes into which nationalism and
national messianism led other great countries in the past."
Mr. Lieven addressed the above points in six well-crafted and thought-provoking chapters
that I find persuasive. For some readers Chapter 6, Nationalism, Israel, and the Middle East,
may be the most controversial. I am the only living person who has lunched with Gamal Abdel
Nasser and David Ben-Gurion in the same week. I have maintained an interest in Arab-Israeli
matters ever since. I find that Mr. Lieven's assessment of both the United States' and Israel's
role rings true. While he does not excuse Arab leaders for their misdeeds, he clearly documents
a history in which the United States has repeatedly subordinated vital U.S. regional interests
in favor of accepting whatever Israel chooses to do.
In 1955 American historian Richard Hofstadter wrote,
"The most prominent and persuasive failing [of political culture] is a certain proneness
to fits of moral crusading that would be fatal if they were not sooner or later tempered
with a measure of apathy and common sense."
I am confident that Professor Hofstadter would agree with me that AMERICA RIGHT OR WRONG
is a timely and important book.
Not every globalist is a (((globalist))), but an important globalist is usually a (((globalist))).
Thank you if you are really fighting globalism and not being just another controlled opposition.
+Jake Coughlin People like Clinton and Merkel don't truly believe in globalism either, they
are just opportunists. I like to look at them as just pawns in this game. Clinton could never
be an independent politician, since she is receiving so much money from very controversial sources.
I really like Ron Paul too, he is awesome and he is addressing some very important subjects.
Thanks to globalism, The Rebel has media outlets that can transmit to other countries. Thanks
to globalism, they can buy high performance cameras to film their anti-globalism videos.
Thanks to globalism, you can buy a vast variety of products at a cheap price. Globalism is
what makes free markets possible.
In other words globalism is the very definition of freedom of businesses. Thanks to globalism,
you don't have to live in a primitive, nationalist, isolated, 1800s society where you have Kings
and Queens who rule like conservative tyrants and keep the population ignorant as peasants. Globalism
is capitalism, the very value that made America so notorious.
Nationalism is feeling that one's country is superior to another. That's not pride in one's
country, don't get it twisted. Patriotism is pride in one's country and its values. Don't let
the nationalist confuse you with their twisted definitions of globalism.
Nationalism is what tyrants during WW1 and WW2 fed to the people in order to make them sign
up for a war that would only benefit those monarchies. Nationalism appeals to a very primitive
feeling of pride instead of logic and progress. Nationalism goes hand in hand with isolationism
which prevents small businesses to grow and limits the country to a very small group of overpriced
home products. Nationalism is regressive thinking. It opposes development and growth.
Technological progress is not globalism. Trade agreements between countries are not globalism.
You don't have to destroy all independent countries to have free markets. Poor kid... this is
how severe case of globalist brainwashing looks like.
"... US companies were always able to offshore work. Before commodity internet, telecom, and international transport (OK in good part enabled by international trade/etc. deals), that was much more costly. ..."
"... IT has made it possible to effectively manage larger business/institutional aggregate than before on an industrial scale and using industrial management paradigms. Others and I have made that case before. ..."
"... Put yourself in 1980, though. Think about the coordination you can organize. Think about sending components to a low labor cost jurisdiction for assembly. Perhaps paying a tariff and transportation to get there, then a tariff and transportation to get back. The labor is essentially free, but the other is real money. Ten years later the tariffs start to disappear. Containerization continues to drive down transport per unit. ..."
"... Sure, by now the best manufacturers are often foreign. They did not get there without our help. ..."
"... In the case of subsidiaries, this requires international legal frameworks allowing US companies to operate foreign subsidiaries, or buying foreign companies, with low enough overheads ("compliance" etc.) to make distributing work worthwhile. ..."
"... The general sentiment seems to be that people in "low cost geographies" are of lesser quality at least as concerns the subject matter. This is not my experience. What used to lack (as of today I would doubt even that) is years of experience, as the offshoring industry branches hadn't existed in the remote locations, so all you could hire was freshers; or a lag in access to bleeding edge Western technology and research literature. This is no longer the case, and hasn't been the case for about a decade. ..."
"... That IN THEORY, the exchange rate and other prices should adjust to any change in tax or regulatory regime to at least partly offset it. A lot of the practical problems arise, because price adjustments do not actually seem to happen to the extent predicted, and large financial imbalances are seen to become secular features of the economic landscape. ..."
"Revoking Trade Deals Will Not Help American Middle Classes."
Brad lives in a world with jump discontinuities in the distribution of expected returns from
labor arbitrage. That changing the cost of doing a deal will not reduce or unwind deals because
the gains from trade individually exceed any costs that could be imposed. So he can say, elsewhere,
the jobs ain't coming back, full stop.
"If the United States had imposed barriers to the construction of intercontinental value chains
would the semi-skilled and skilled manufacturing workers of the U.S. be better off?"
Brad does not find any relation between "imposing barriers" and "removing subsidy". Or in establishing
the older trade deals, between "removing barriers" and "subsidizing foreign labor". Where the
foreign labor operated in a low environmental protection environment, a low labor protection environment,
and probably others, it seems enabling US firms to invest in foreign operations to reap the savings
of less protection should be seen as subsidy.
US companies were always able to offshore work. Before commodity internet, telecom, and
international transport (OK in good part enabled by international trade/etc. deals), that was
much more costly.
IMO, offshoring has largely been an automation and IT story.
Likewise domestic/national level business consolidation.
IT has made it possible to effectively manage larger business/institutional aggregate than
before on an industrial scale and using industrial management paradigms. Others and I have made
that case before.
This is not a new insight, but probably still not an obvious one.
Put yourself in 1980, though. Think about the coordination you can organize. Think about sending
components to a low labor cost jurisdiction for assembly. Perhaps paying a tariff and transportation
to get there, then a tariff and transportation to get back. The labor is essentially free, but
the other is real money. Ten years later the tariffs start to disappear. Containerization continues
to drive down transport per unit.
Point one is that Brad assumes there is no one doing this now who is near break-even and would
go upside down with any change in tariff regime, so there is no one to relocate to the USA.
Point two is that we import environmental degradation and below market labor when we allow/encourage
these to be part of the ROI calculation through tariff policy.
Sure, by now the best manufacturers are often foreign. They did not get there without our help.
Well, one can argue that environmental improvements credited to regulation were in part exporting
environmental degradation, simply by moving polluting production facilities "over there".
E.g. I have seen it in my own work and with many others: companies can farm out any work to foreign
subsidiaries or contractors they don't want to keep stateside for some reason. In the case of
subsidiaries, this requires international legal frameworks allowing US companies to operate foreign
subsidiaries, or buying foreign companies, with low enough overheads ("compliance" etc.) to make
distributing work worthwhile.
Considering the case of US vs. Asia - depending on where you are in the US, Asia/PAC (India/Far
East/Pacific) business hours are off by about a half day because of time zone effects. To a lesser
but similar degree this applies to Europe and the Middle East.
The general sentiment seems to be that people in "low cost geographies" are of lesser quality
at least as concerns the subject matter. This is not my experience. What used to lack (as of today
I would doubt even that) is years of experience, as the offshoring industry branches hadn't existed
in the remote locations, so all you could hire was freshers; or a lag in access to bleeding edge
Western technology and research literature. This is no longer the case, and hasn't been the case
for about a decade.
Then there is the aspect that people in "some" geographies are more habituated to top-down
management styles, talking back less, etc. which may be an advantage or liability depending on
what the business requires of them.
I think one thing that is forgotten almost always in such discussions is that the arguments for
or against trade start with barter not so much with monetary exchange.
That IN THEORY, the exchange
rate and other prices should adjust to any change in tax or regulatory regime to at least partly
offset it. A lot of the practical problems arise, because price adjustments do not actually seem
to happen to the extent predicted, and large financial imbalances are seen to become secular features
of the economic landscape.
This is why I'm inclined to say that trade barriers are a bit of red
herring, the really big issues are financial (including the need for finding ways to repair damaged
middle class balance sheets). We need to stop seeing redistribution as a dirty word. It is what
democratic governments worth the name should be doing.
"... When Mr. Bannon spoke on Thursday of "deconstructing the administrative state," it may have sounded like gobbledygook outside the hall, but it was an electrifying profession of faith for the attendees. It is through Mr. Bannon that Trump_vs_deep_state can be converted from a set of nostalgic laments and complaints into a program for overhauling the government. ..."
"... Mr. Bannon's film features predictable interviews with think-tank supply siders and free marketers fretting about big government. But new, less orthodox voices creep in, too, from the protectionist newscaster Lou Dobbs to the investment manager Barry Ritholtz. They question whether the free market is altogether free. Mr. Ritholtz says that the outcome of the financial crisis has been "socialism for the wealthy but capitalism for everybody else." ..."
"... By 2014, Mr. Bannon's own ideology had become centered on this distrust. He was saying such things about capitalism himself. "Think about it," he said in a talk hosted by the Institute for Human Dignity. "Not one criminal charge has ever been brought to any bank executive associated with 2008 crisis." He warned against "the Ayn Rand or the Objectivist School of libertarian capitalism," by which he meant "a capitalism that really looks to make people commodities, and to objectify people." Capitalism, he said, ought to rest on a "Judeo-Christian" foundation. ..."
"... If so, this was bad news for the Republican Party. By the time Mr. Bannon spoke, Ayn Rand-style capitalism was all that remained of its Reagan-era agenda. Free-market thinking had swallowed the party whole, and its Judeo-Christian preoccupations - "a nation with a culture" and "a reason for being" - along with it. A business orientation was what donors wanted. ..."
Weekly Standard senior editor Christoper Caldwell writes at the
New York Times
:
President Trump presents a problem to those who look at politics in terms of
systematic ideologies. He is either disinclined or unable to lay out his agenda
in that way. So perhaps it was inevitable that Mr. Trump's chief strategist,
Stephen K. Bannon, who does have a gift for thinking systematically, would be
so often invoked by Mr. Trump's opponents. They need him not just as a hate
object but as a heuristic, too. There may never be a "Trump_vs_deep_state," and unless one
emerges, the closest we may come to understanding this administration is as an
expression of "Bannonism."
Mr. Bannon, 63, has won a reputation for abrasive brilliance at almost every
stop in his unorthodox career - as a naval officer, Goldman Sachs mergers
specialist, entertainment-industry financier, documentary screenwriter and
director, Breitbart News cyber-agitprop impresario and chief executive of Mr.
Trump's presidential campaign. One Harvard Business School classmate described
him to The Boston Globe as "top three in intellectual horsepower in our class -
perhaps the smartest." Benjamin Harnwell of the Institute for Human Dignity, a
Catholic organization in Rome, calls him a "walking bibliography." Perhaps
because Mr. Bannon came late to conservatism, turning his full-time energy to
political matters only after the Sept. 11 attacks, he radiates an excitement
about it that most of his conservative contemporaries long ago lost.
Many accounts of Mr. Bannon paint him as a cartoon villain or internet troll
come to life, as a bigot, an anti-Semite, a misogynist, a crypto-fascist. The
former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat
of New York, have even called him a "white nationalist." While he is certainly
a hard-line conservative of some kind, the evidence that he is an extremist of
a more troubling sort has generally been either massaged, misread or hyped up.
There may be good reasons to worry about Mr. Bannon, but they are not the
ones everyone is giving. It does not make Mr. Bannon a fascist that he happens
to know who the 20th-century Italian extremist Julius Evola is. It does not
make Mr. Bannon a racist that he described Breitbart as "the platform for the
alt-right" - a broad and imprecise term that applies to a wide array of
radicals, not just certain white supremacist groups.
Where Mr. Bannon does veer sharply from recent
mainstream Republicanism is in his all-embracing nationalism. He speaks of
sovereignty, economic nationalism, opposition to globalization and finding
common ground with Brexit supporters and other groups hostile to the
transnational European Union. On Thursday, at this year's Conservative
Political Action Conference, he described the "center core" of Trump
administration philosophy as the belief that the United States is more than an
economic unit in a borderless word. It is "a nation with a culture
"
and
"
a reason for being."
...
When Mr. Bannon spoke on Thursday of "deconstructing the administrative
state," it may have sounded like gobbledygook outside the hall, but it was an
electrifying profession of faith for the attendees. It is through Mr. Bannon
that Trump_vs_deep_state can be converted from a set of nostalgic laments and complaints
into a program for overhauling the government.
...
Mr. Bannon adds something personal and idiosyncratic to this Tea Party mix.
He has a theory of historical cycles that can be considered elegantly simple or
dangerously simplistic. It is a model laid out by William Strauss and Neil Howe
in two books from the 1990s. Their argument assumes an 80- to 100-year cycle
divided into roughly 20-year "highs," "awakenings," "unravelings" and "crises."
The American Revolution, the Civil War, the New Deal, World War II - Mr. Bannon
has said for years that we're due for another crisis about now. His documentary
about the 2008 financial collapse, "Generation Zero," released in 2010, uses
the Strauss-Howe model to explain what happened, and concludes with Mr. Howe
himself saying, "History is seasonal, and winter is coming."
Mr. Bannon's views reflect a transformation of conservatism over the past
decade or so. You can trace this transformation in the films he has made. His
2004 documentary, "In the Face of Evil," is an orthodox tribute to the
Republican Party hero Ronald Reagan. But "Generation Zero," half a decade
later, is a strange hybrid. The financial crash has intervened.
Mr.
Bannon's film features predictable interviews with think-tank supply siders and
free marketers fretting about big government. But new, less orthodox voices
creep in, too, from the protectionist newscaster Lou Dobbs to the investment
manager Barry Ritholtz. They question whether the free market is altogether
free. Mr. Ritholtz says that the outcome of the financial crisis has been
"socialism for the wealthy but capitalism for everybody else."
By 2014, Mr. Bannon's own ideology had become centered on this distrust. He
was saying such things about capitalism himself. "Think about it," he said in a
talk hosted by the Institute for Human Dignity. "Not one criminal charge has
ever been brought to any bank executive associated with 2008 crisis." He warned
against "the Ayn Rand or the Objectivist School of libertarian capitalism," by
which he meant "a capitalism that really looks to make people commodities, and
to objectify people." Capitalism, he said, ought to rest on a "Judeo-Christian"
foundation.
If so, this was bad news for the Republican Party. By the time Mr.
Bannon spoke, Ayn Rand-style capitalism was all that remained of its Reagan-era
agenda. Free-market thinking had swallowed the party whole, and its
Judeo-Christian preoccupations - "a nation with a culture" and "a reason for
being" - along with it. A business orientation was what donors wanted.
But voters never more than tolerated it. It was Pat Buchanan who in his 1992
run for president first called on Republicans to value jobs and communities
over profits. An argument consumed the party over whether this was a
better-rounded vision of society or just the grousing of a reactionary. After a
generation, Mr. Buchanan has won that argument. By 2016 his views on trade and
migration, once dismissed as crackpot, were spreading so fast that everyone in
the party had embraced them - except its elected officials and its
establishment presidential candidates.
Mr. Bannon does not often go into detail about what Judeo-Christian culture is,
but he knows one thing it is not: Islam. Like most Americans, he believes that
Islamism - the extremist political movement - is a dangerous adversary. More
controversially he holds that, since this political movement is generated
within the sphere of Islam, the growth of Islam - the religion - is itself a
problem with which American authorities should occupy themselves. This is a
view that was emphatically repudiated by Presidents Obama and George W. Bush.
Mr. Bannon has apparently drawn his own views on the subject from intensive, if
not necessarily varied, reading. The thinkers he has engaged with in this area
tend to be hot and polemical rather than cool and detached. They include the
provocateur Pamela Geller, a campaigner against the "Ground Zero Mosque" who
once suggested the State Department was "essentially being run by Islamic
supremacists"; her sometime collaborator Robert Spencer, the director of the
website Jihad Watch, with whom she heads an organization called Stop
Islamization of America; and the former Department of Homeland Security
official Philip Haney, who has argued that officials in the Obama
administration had compromised "the security of citizens for the ideological
rigidity of political correctness."
He approves definition of neoliberalism as "socialism for the wealthy but capitalism for everybody
else."
Looks like his views are not very comparable with Republican Party platform (or Clinton wing
of Democratic Party platform, being "small republicans" in disguise)
== quote ==
"Think about it," he said in a talk hosted by the Institute for Human Dignity. "Not one criminal
charge has ever been brought to any bank executive associated with 2008 crisis." He warned against
"the Ayn Rand or the Objectivist School of libertarian capitalism," by which he meant "a capitalism
that really looks to make people commodities, and to objectify people." Capitalism, he said, ought
to rest on a "Judeo-Christian" foundation.
== quote ==
If so, this was bad news for the Republican Party. By the time Mr. Bannon spoke, Ayn Rand-style
capitalism was all that remained of its Reagan-era agenda. Free-market thinking had swallowed
the party whole, and its Judeo-Christian preoccupations - "a nation with a culture" and "a reason
for being" - along with it. A business orientation was what donors wanted.
Authors outlined important reasons of the inevitability of the dominance of chicken hawks and jingoistic
foreign policy in the USA political establishment:
.
"...Beyond the problems our delusions of grandeur have caused in the wider world, there are enormous
domestic consequences of prolonged war and interventionism. We shell out
over $1 trillion a year in military-related expenses even as our social safety net frays and our
infrastructure crumbles. Democracy
itself has become virtually dysfunctional."
.
"...leading presidential candidates are
tapping neoconservatives like
John Bolton and
Paul Wolfowitz
- who still think the answer to any foreign policy quandary is military power - for advice. Our leaders
seem to forget that following this lot's advice was exactly what caused the meltdown in the first place.
War still excites them, risks and consequences be damned."
.
"...A "war first" policy in places like Iran and Syria is being strongly pushed by neoconservatives
like former Vice President
Dick Cheney and
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman
John McCain.
"
.
"...But challenging the "exceptionalism" myth courts the danger of being labeled "unpatriotic" and
"un-American," two powerful ideological sanctions that can effectively silence critical or questioning
voices."
.
"...The United States did not simply support Kosovo's independence, for example. It bombed Serbia
into de facto acceptance. When the U.S. decided to remove the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Gaddafi
from power, it just did so. No other country is capable of projecting that kind of force in regions
thousands of miles from its borders."
.
"...The late political scientist Chalmers Johnson estimated that the U.S. has some 800 bases worldwide,
about the same as the British Empire had at its height in 1895.
. The United States has long relied on a military arrow in its diplomatic quiver, and Americans have
been at war almost continuously since the end of World War II. Some of these wars were major undertakings:
Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq (twice), Libya. Some were quick "smash and
grabs" like Panama and Grenada. Others are "shadow wars" waged by Special Forces, armed drones, and
local proxies. If one defines the term "war" as the application of organized violence, the U.S. has
engaged in close to 80 wars since 1945."
.
"...The state of ceaseless war has deeply damaged our democracy, bringing our surveillance and security
state to levels that many dictators would envy. The
Senate torture report, most
of it still classified, shatters the trust we are asked to place in the secret, unaccountable apparatus
that runs
the
most extensive Big Brother spy system ever devised."
.
"...the U.S. always reserves the right to use military force. The 1979 "Carter
Doctrine" - a document that mirrors the 1823 Monroe Doctrine about American interests in Latin America
- put that strategy in blunt terms vis-à-vis the Middle East:"
.
"...In early 2014, some 57 percent of Americans
agreed
that "over-reliance on military force creates more hatred leading to increased terrorism." Only 37 percent
believed military force was the way to go. But once the hysteria around the Islamic State began, those
numbers shifted to pretty much an even split: 47 percent supported the use of military force, 46
percent opposed it.
.
It will always be necessary in each new crisis to counter those who mislead and browbeat the public
into acceptance of another military intervention. But in spite of the current hysterics about ISIS,
disillusionment in war as an answer is probably greater now among Americans and worldwide than it has
ever been. That sentiment may prove strong enough to produce a shift away from perpetual war, a shift
toward some modesty and common-sense realism in U.S. foreign policy."
Notable quotes:
"... Beyond the problems our delusions of grandeur have caused in the wider world, there are enormous domestic consequences of prolonged war and interventionism. We shell out over $1 trillion a year in military-related expenses even as our social safety net frays and our infrastructure crumbles . Democracy itself has become virtually dysfunctional. ..."
"... leading presidential candidates are tapping neoconservatives like John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz - who still think the answer to any foreign policy quandary is military power - for advice. Our leaders seem to forget that following this lot's advice was exactly what caused the meltdown in the first place. War still excites them, risks and consequences be damned. ..."
"... A "war first" policy in places like Iran and Syria is being strongly pushed by neoconservatives like former Vice President Dick Cheney and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain . ..."
"... But challenging the "exceptionalism" myth courts the danger of being labeled "unpatriotic" and "un-American," two powerful ideological sanctions that can effectively silence critical or questioning voices. ..."
"... The United States did not simply support Kosovo's independence, for example. It bombed Serbia into de facto acceptance. When the U.S. decided to remove the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Gaddafi from power, it just did so. No other country is capable of projecting that kind of force in regions thousands of miles from its borders. ..."
"... As military expenditures dwarf funding for deteriorating social programs, they drive economic inequality. The poor and working millions are left further and further behind. Meanwhile the chronic problems highlighted at Ferguson, and reflected nationwide, are a horrific reminder of how deeply racism - the unequal economic and social divide and systemic abuse of black and Latino youth - continues to plague our homeland . ..."
"... The state of ceaseless war has deeply damaged our democracy, bringing our surveillance and security state to levels that many dictators would envy. The Senate torture report , most of it still classified, shatters the trust we are asked to place in the secret, unaccountable apparatus that runs the most extensive Big Brother spy system ever devised. ..."
"... the U.S. always reserves the right to use military force. ..."
"... In early 2014, some 57 percent of Americans agreed that "over-reliance on military force creates more hatred leading to increased terrorism." Only 37 percent believed military force was the way to go. But once the hysteria around the Islamic State began, those numbers shifted to pretty much an even split: 47 percent supported the use of military force, 46 percent opposed it. It will always be necessary in each new crisis to counter those who mislead and browbeat the public into acceptance of another military intervention. But in spite of the current hysterics about ISIS, disillusionment in war as an answer is probably greater now among Americans and worldwide than it has ever been. That sentiment may prove strong enough to produce a shift away from perpetual war, a shift toward some modesty and common-sense realism in U.S. foreign policy. ..."
U.S. foreign policy is dangerous, undemocratic, and deeply out of sync with real global
challenges. Is continuous war inevitable, or can we change course?
There's something fundamentally wrong with U.S. foreign policy.
Despite glimmers of hope - a tentative
nuclear agreement with Iran, for one, and a long-overdue thaw with Cuba - we're locked into seemingly
irresolvable conflicts in most regions of the world. They range from tensions with nuclear-armed
powers like Russia and China to actual combat operations in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa.
Why? Has a state of perpetual warfare and conflict become inescapable? Or are we in a self-replicating
cycle that reflects an inability - or unwillingness - to see the world as it actually is?
The United States is undergoing a historic transition in our relationship to the rest of the world,
but this is neither acknowledged nor reflected in U.S. foreign policy. We still act as if our enormous
military power, imperial alliances, and self-perceived moral superiority empower us to set the terms
of "world order."
While this illusion goes back to the end of World War II, it was the end of the Cold War and collapse
of the Soviet Union that signaled the beginning of a self-proclaimed "American Century." The idea
that the United States had "won" the Cold War and now - as the world's lone superpower - had the
right or responsibility to order the world's affairs led to a series of military adventures. It started
with President Bill Clinton's intervention in the Yugoslav civil war, continued on with George W.
Bush's disastrous invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and can still be seen in the Obama administration's
own misadventures in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and beyond.
In each case, Washington chose war as the answer to enormously complex issues, ignoring the profound
consequences for both foreign and domestic policy. Yet the world is very different from the assumptions
that drive this impulsive interventionism.
It's this disconnect that defines the current crisis.
Acknowledging New Realities
So what is it about the world that requires a change in our outlook? A few observations come to
mind.
First, our preoccupation with conflicts in the Middle East - and to a significant extent,
our tensions with Russia in Eastern Europe and with China in East Asia - distract us from the
most compelling crises that threaten the future of humanity. Climate change and environmental
perils have to be dealt with now and demand an unprecedented level of international collective
action. That also holds for the resurgent danger of nuclear war.
Second, superpower military interventionism and far-flung acts of war have only intensified
conflict, terror, and human suffering. There's no short-term solution - especially by force -
to the deep-seated problems that cause chaos, violence, and misery through much of the world.
Third, while any hope of curbing violence and mitigating the most urgent problems depends
on international cooperation, old and disastrous intrigues over spheres of influence dominate
the behavior of the major powers. Our own relentless pursuit of military advantage on every continent,
including through alliances and proxies like NATO, divides the world into "friend" and "foe" according
to our perceived interests. That inevitably inflames aggressive imperial rivalries and overrides
common interests in the 21st century.
Fourth, while the United States remains a great economic power, economic and political influence
is shifting and giving rise to national and regional centers no longer controlled by U.S.-dominated
global financial structures. Away from Washington, London, and Berlin,
alternative centers of
economic power are taking hold in Beijing, New Delhi, Cape Town, and Brasilia. Independent
formations and alliances are springing up: organizations like the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India,
China, and South Africa); the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (representing 2.8 billion people);
the Union of South American Nations; the Latin American trade bloc, Mercosur; and others.
Beyond the problems our delusions of grandeur have caused in the wider world, there are enormous
domestic consequences of prolonged war and interventionism. We shell out
over $1 trillion a year in military-related expenses even as our social safety net frays and
our infrastructure crumbles.
Democracy itself has become virtually dysfunctional.
Short Memories and Persistent Delusions
But instead of letting these changing circumstances and our repeated military failures give us
pause, our government continues to act as if the United States has the power to dominate and dictate
to the rest of the world.
The responsibility of those who set us on this course fades into background. Indeed, in light
of the ongoing meltdown in the Middle East, leading presidential candidates are
tapping neoconservatives like
John Bolton
and Paul Wolfowitz
- who still think the answer to any foreign policy quandary is military power - for advice. Our leaders
seem to forget that following this lot's advice was exactly what caused the meltdown in the first
place. War still excites them, risks and consequences be damned.
While the Obama administration has sought, with limited success, to end the major wars it inherited,
our government makes wide use of killer drones in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, and has put troops
back into Iraq to confront the religious fanaticism and brutality of the so-called Islamic State
(ISIS) - itself a direct consequence of the last U.S. invasion of Iraq. Reluctant to find common
ground in the fight against ISIS with designated "foes" like Iran and Syria, Washington clings to
allies like Saudi Arabia, whose leaders are fueling the crisis of religious fanaticism and internecine
barbarity. Elsewhere, the U.S. also continues to give massive support to the Israeli government,
despite its expanding occupation of the West Bank and its horrific recurring assaults on Gaza.
A "war first" policy in places like Iran and Syria is being strongly pushed by neoconservatives
like former Vice President
Dick Cheney
and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman
John McCain.
Though it's attempted to distance itself from the neocons, the Obama administration adds to tensions
with planned military realignments like the "Asia
pivot" aimed at building up U.S. military forces in Asia to confront China. It's also taken a
more aggressive position than even other NATO partners in fostering a new cold war with Russia.
We seem to have missed the point: There is no such thing as an "American Century." International
order cannot be enforced by a superpower alone. But never mind centuries - if we don't learn to take
our common interests more seriously than those that divide nations and breed the chronic danger of
war, there may well be no tomorrows.
Unexceptionalism
There's a powerful ideological delusion that any movement seeking to change U.S. foreign policy
must confront: that U.S. culture is superior to anything else on the planet. Generally going by the
name of "American exceptionalism," it's the deeply held belief that American politics (and medicine,
technology, education, and so on) are better than those in other countries. Implicit in the belief
is an evangelical urge to impose American ways of doing things on the rest of the world.
Americans, for instance, believe they have the best education system in the world, when in fact
they've dropped from 1st place to 14th place in the number of college graduates.
We've made students of higher education the most indebted section of our population, while falling
to 17th place in international education ratings. According to the Organization for Economic
Cooperation, the average American pays more than twice as much for his or her education than those
in the rest of the world.
Health care is an equally compelling example. In the World Health Organization's ranking of health
care systems in 2000, the United States was ranked 37th. In a more recent
Institute of Medicine report in 2013, the U.S. was ranked the lowest among 17 developed nations
studied.
The old anti-war slogan, "It will be a good day when schools get all the money they need and the
Navy has to hold a bake sale to buy an aircraft carrier" is as appropriate today as it was in the
1960s. We prioritize corporate subsidies, tax cuts for the wealthy, and massive military budgets
over education. The result is that Americans are no longer among the most educated in the world.
But challenging the "exceptionalism" myth courts the danger of being labeled "unpatriotic"
and "un-American," two powerful ideological sanctions that can effectively silence critical or questioning
voices.
The fact that Americans consider their culture or ideology "superior" is hardly unique. But no
other country in the world has the same level of economic and military power to enforce its worldview
on others.
The United States did not simply support Kosovo's independence, for example. It bombed Serbia
into de facto acceptance. When the U.S. decided to remove the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar
Gaddafi from power, it just did so. No other country is capable of projecting that kind of force
in regions thousands of miles from its borders.
The U.S. currently accounts for anywhere from 45 to 50 percent of the world's military spending.
It has hundreds of overseas bases, ranging from huge sprawling affairs like Camp Bond Steel in Kosovo
and unsinkable aircraft carriers around the islands of Okinawa, Wake, Diego Garcia, and Guam to tiny
bases called "lily
pads" of pre-positioned military supplies. The late political scientist Chalmers Johnson
estimated that the U.S. has some 800 bases worldwide, about the same as the British Empire had at
its height in 1895.
The United States has long relied on a military arrow in its diplomatic quiver, and Americans
have been at war almost continuously since the end of World War II. Some of these wars were
major undertakings: Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq (twice), Libya. Some
were quick "smash and grabs" like Panama and Grenada. Others are "shadow wars" waged by Special Forces,
armed drones, and local proxies. If one defines the term "war" as the application of organized
violence, the U.S. has engaged in close to 80 wars since 1945.
The Home Front
The coin of empire comes dear, as the old expression goes.
According Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, the final butcher bill for the Afghanistan
and Iraq wars - including the long-term health problems of veterans - will cost U.S. taxpayers around
$6 trillion. One can add to that the over $1 trillion the U.S. spends each year on defense-related
items. The "official" defense budget of some half a trillion dollars doesn't include such items as
nuclear weapons, veterans' benefits or retirement, the CIA and Homeland Security, nor the billions
a year in interest we'll be paying on the debt from the Afghan-Iraq wars. By 2013 the U.S. had already
paid out $316 billion
in interest.
The domestic collateral damage from that set of priorities is numbing.
We spend more on our "official" military budget than we do on Medicare, Medicaid, Health and Human
Services, Education, and Housing and Urban Development combined. Since 9/11,
we've
spent $70 million an hour on "security" compared to $62 million an hour on all domestic programs.
As military expenditures dwarf funding for deteriorating social programs, they drive economic
inequality. The poor and working millions are left further and further behind. Meanwhile the chronic
problems highlighted at Ferguson, and reflected nationwide, are a horrific reminder of how deeply
racism - the unequal economic and social divide and systemic abuse of black and Latino youth -
continues to plague our homeland.
The state of ceaseless war has deeply damaged our democracy, bringing our surveillance and
security state to levels that many dictators would envy. The
Senate torture report, most
of it still classified, shatters the trust we are asked to place in the secret, unaccountable apparatus
that runs
the most extensive Big Brother spy system ever devised.
Bombs and Business
President Calvin Coolidge was said to have remarked that "the business of America is business."
Unsurprisingly, U.S. corporate interests play a major role in American foreign policy.
Out of the top 10 international arms producers, eight are American. The arms industry spends millions
lobbying Congress and state legislatures, and it defends its turf with an efficiency and vigor that
its products don't always emulate on the battlefield. The F-35 fighter-bomber, for example - the
most expensive weapons system in U.S. history - will cost $1.5 trillion and doesn't work. It's over
budget, dangerous to fly, and riddled with defects. And yet few lawmakers dare challenge the powerful
corporations who have shoved this lemon down our throats.
Corporate interests are woven into the fabric of long-term U.S. strategic interests and goals.
Both combine to try to control energy supplies, command strategic choke points through which oil
and gas supplies transit, and ensure access to markets.
Many of these goals can be achieved with standard diplomacy or economic pressure, but the
U.S. always reserves the right to use military force. The 1979 "Carter
Doctrine" - a document that mirrors the 1823 Monroe Doctrine about American interests in Latin
America - put that strategy in blunt terms vis-à-vis the Middle East:
"An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded
as an assault on the vital interests of the United States, and such an assault will be repelled
by any means necessary, including military force."
It's no less true in East Asia. The U.S. will certainly engage in peaceful economic competition
with China. But if push comes to shove, the Third, Fifth, and Seventh fleets will back up the interests
of Washington and its allies - Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Australia.
Trying to change the course of American foreign policy is not only essential for reducing international
tensions. It's critically important to shift the enormous wealth we expend in war and weapons toward
alleviating growing inequality and social crises at home.
As long as competition for markets and accumulation of capital characterize modern society, nations
will vie for spheres of influence, and antagonistic interests will be a fundamental feature of international
relations. Chauvinist reaction to incursions real or imagined - and the impulse to respond by military
means - is characteristic to some degree of every significant nation-state. Yet the more that some
governments, including our own, become subordinate to oligarchic control, the greater is the peril.
Finding the Common Interest
These, however, are not the only factors that will shape the future.
There is nothing inevitable that rules out a significant change of direction, even if the demise
or transformation of a capitalistic system of greed and exploitation is not at hand. The potential
for change, especially in U.S. foreign policy, resides in how social movements here and abroad respond
to the undeniable reality of: 1) the chronic failure, massive costs, and danger inherent in "American
Century" exceptionalism; and 2) the urgency of international efforts to respond to climate change.
There is, as well, the necessity to respond to health and natural disasters aggravated by poverty,
to rising messianic violence, and above all, to prevent a descent into war. This includes not only
the danger of a clash between the major nuclear powers, but between regional powers. A nuclear exchange
between Pakistan and India, for example, would affect the whole world.
Without underestimating the self-interest of forces that thrive on gambling with the future of
humanity, historic experience and current reality elevate a powerful common interest in peace and
survival. The need to change course is not something that can be recognized on only one side of an
ideological divide. Nor does that recognition depend on national, ethnic, or religious identity.
Rather, it demands acknowledging the enormous cost of plunging ahead as everything falls apart around
us.
After the latest U.S. midterm elections, the political outlook is certainly bleak. But experience
shows that elections, important as they are, are not necessarily indicators of when and how significant
change can come about in matters of policy. On issues of civil rights and social equality, advances
have occurred because a dedicated and persistent minority movement helped change public opinion in
a way the political establishment could not defy.
The Vietnam War, for example, came to an end, despite the stubbornness of Democratic and Republican
administrations, when a stalemate on the battlefield and growing international and domestic opposition
could no longer be denied. Significant changes can come about even as the basic character of society
is retained. Massive resistance and rejection of colonialism caused the British Empire and other
colonial powers to adjust to a new reality after World War II. McCarthyism was eventually defeated
in the United States. President Nixon was forced to resign. The use of landmines and cluster bombs
has been greatly restricted because of the opposition of a small band of activists whose initial
efforts were labeled "quixotic."
There are diverse and growing political currents in our country that see the folly and danger
of the course we're on. Many Republicans, Democrats, independents, and libertarians - and much of
the public - are beginning to say "enough" to war and military intervention all over the globe, and
the folly of basing foreign policy on dividing countries into "friend or foe."
This is not to be Pollyannaish about anti-war sentiment, or how quickly people can be stampeded
into supporting the use of force. In early 2014, some 57 percent of Americans
agreed
that "over-reliance on military force creates more hatred leading to increased terrorism." Only 37
percent believed military force was the way to go. But once the hysteria around the Islamic State
began, those
numbers shifted to pretty much an even split: 47 percent supported the use of military force,
46 percent opposed it.
It will always be necessary in each new crisis to counter those who mislead and browbeat the public
into acceptance of another military intervention. But in spite of the current hysterics about ISIS,
disillusionment in war as an answer is probably greater now among Americans and worldwide than it
has ever been. That sentiment may prove strong enough to produce a shift away from perpetual war,
a shift toward some modesty and common-sense realism in U.S. foreign policy.
Making Space for the Unexpected
Given that there is a need for a new approach, how can American foreign policy be changed?
Foremost, there is the need for a real debate on the thrust of a U.S. foreign policy that chooses
negotiation, diplomacy, and international cooperation over the use of force.
However, as we approach another presidential election, there is as yet no strong voice among the
candidates to challenge U.S. foreign policy. Fear and questionable political calculation keep even
most progressive politicians from daring to dissent as the crisis of foreign policy lurches further
into perpetual militarism and war. That silence of political acquiescence has to be broken.
Nor is it a matter of concern only on the left. There are many Americans - right, left, or neither
- who sense the futility of the course we're on. These voices have to be represented or the election
process will be even more of a sham than we've recently experienced.
One can't predict just what initiatives may take hold, but the recent U.S.-China climate agreement
suggests that necessity can override significant obstacles. That accord is an important step forward,
although a limited bilateral pact
cannot
substitute for an essential international climate treaty. There is a glimmer of hope also in
the U.S.-Russian joint action that
removed
chemical weapons from Syria, and in negotiations with Iran, which continue despite
fierce opposition
from U.S. hawks and the Israeli government. More recently, there is Obama's bold move - long overdue
- to restore diplomatic
relations with Cuba. Despite shifts in political fortunes, the unexpected can happen if there
is a need and strong enough pressure to create an opportunity.
We do not claim to have ready-made solutions to the worsening crisis in international relations.
We are certain that there is much we've missed or underestimated. But if readers agree that U.S.
foreign policy has a national and global impact, and that it is not carried out in the interests
of the majority of the world's people, including our own, then we ask you to join this conversation.
If we are to expand the ability of the people to influence foreign policy, we need to defend democracy,
and encourage dissent and alternative ideas. The threats to the world and to ourselves are so great
that finding common ground trumps any particular interest. We also know that we won't all agree with
each other, and we believe that is as it should be. There are multiple paths to the future. No coalition
around changing foreign policy will be successful if it tells people to conform to any one pattern
of political action.
So how does the call for changing course translate to something politically viable, and how do
we consider the problem of power?
The power to make significant changes in policy ranges from the persistence of peace activists
to the potential influence of the general public. In some circumstances, it becomes possible - as
well as necessary - to make significant changes in the power structure itself.
Greece comes to mind. Greek left organizations came together to form Syriza, the political party
that was successfully elected to power
on a platform of ending austerity. Spain's anti-austerity Podemos Party - now the number-two party
in the country - came out of massive demonstrations in 2011 and was organized from the grassroots
up. We do not argue one approach over the over, but the experiences in both countries demonstrate
that there are multiple paths to generating change.
Certainly progressives and leftists grapple with the problems of power. But progress on issues,
particularly in matters like war and peace and climate change, shouldn't be conceived of as dependent
on first achieving general solutions to the problems of society, however desirable.
... ... ...
Conn Hallinan is a journalist and a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus. His writings appear
online at Dispatches From
the Edge. Leon Wofsy is a retired biology professor and long-time political activist. His comments
on current affairs appear online at Leon's
OpEd.
"... Yet, a return to protectionism is not likely to solve the problems of those who have lost ground due to globalisation without appropriate compensation of its 'losers', and is bound to harm growth especially in emerging economies. The world rather needs a more inclusive model of globalisation. ..."
"... From an energy point of view globalisation is a disaster. The insane level of fossil fuels that this current world requires for transportation of necessities (food and clothing) is making this world an unstable world. Ipso Facto. ..."
"... Those who believe that globalisation is bringing value to the world should reconsider their views. The current globalisation has created both monopolies on a geopolitical ground, ie TV make or shipbuilding in Asia. ..."
"... Do you seriously believe that these new geographical and corporate monopolies does not create the kind bad outcomes that traditional – country-centric ones – monopolies have in the past? ..."
"... Then there is the practical issue of workers having next to no bargaining power under globalization. Do people really suppose that Mexican workers would be willing to strike so that their US counterparts, already making ficew times as much money, would get a raise? ..."
"... Basically our elite sold us a bill of goods is why we lost manufacturing. Greed. Nothing else. ..."
"... So proof is required to rollback globalization, but no proof was required to launch it or continue dishing it out? It's good to be the King, eh? ..."
"... America hasn't just gotten rid of the low level jobs. It has also gotten rid of supervisors and factory managers. Those are skills you can't get back overnight. For US plants in Mexico, you might have US managers there or be able to get special visas to let those managers come to the US. But US companies have shifted a ton, and I meant a ton, to foreign subcontractors. Some would put operations in the US to preserve access to US customers, but their managers won't speak English. How do you make this work? ..."
"... The real issue is commitment. Very little manufacturing will be re-shored unless companies are convinced that it is in their longterm interest to do so. ..."
"... There is also what I've heard referred to as the "next bench" phenomenon, in which products arise because someone designs a new product/process to solve a manufacturing problem. Unless one has great foresight, the designer of the new product must be aware there is a problem to solve. ..."
"... When a country is involved in manufacturing, the citizens employed will have exposure to production problems and issues. ..."
"... After his speech he took questions. I asked "Would Toyota ever separate design from manufacturing?" as HP had done, shipping all manufacturing to Asia. "No" was his answer. ..."
"... In my experience, it is way too useful to have the line be able to easily call the designer in question and have him come take a look at what his design is doing. HP tried to get around that by sending part of the design team to Asia to watch the startup. Didn't work as well. And when problems emerged later, it was always difficult to debug by remote control. ..."
"... How about mass imports of cheap workers into western countries in the guise of emigrants to push down worker's pay and gut things like unions. That factor played a decisive factor in both the Brexit referendum and the US 2016 elections. Or the subsidized exportation of western countries industrial equipment to third world countries, leaving local workers swinging in the wind. ..."
"... The data sets do not capture some of the most important factors in what they are saying. It is like putting together a paper on how and why white men voted in the 2016 US elections as they did – and forgetting to mention the effect of the rest of the voters involved. ..."
"... I had a similar reaction. This research was reinforcing info about everyone's resentment over really bad distribution of wealth, as far as it went, but it was so unsatisfying ..."
"... "Right to work" is nothing other than a way to undercut quality of work for "run-to-the-bottom competitive pay." ..."
"... I've noticed that the only people in favor of globalization are those whose jobs are not under threat from it. ..."
"... First off, economic nationalism is not necessarily right wing. I would certainly classify Bernie Sanders as an economic nationalist (against open borders and against "free" trade). Syriza and Podemos could arguably be called rather ineffective economic nationalist parties. I would say the whole ideology of social democracy is based on the Swedish nationalist concept of a "folkhem", where the nation is the home and the citizens are the folk. ..."
"... So China is Turmpism on steroids. Israel obviously is as well. Why do some nations get to be blatantly Trumpist while for others these policies are strictly forbidden? ..."
"... One way to look at Globalization is as an updated version of the post WW1 Versailles Treaty which imposed reparations on a defeated Germany for all the harm they caused during the Great War. The Globalized Versailles Treaty is aimed at the American and European working classes for the crimes of colonialism, racism, slavery and any other bad things the 1st world has done to the 3rd in the past. ..."
"... And yes, this applies to Bernie Sanders as well. During that iconic interview where Sanders denounced open borders and pushed economic nationalism, the Neoliberal interviewer immediately played the global guilt card in response. ..."
"... During colonialism the 3rd world had a form of open borders imposed on it by the colonial powers, where the 3rd world lost control of who what crossed their borders while the 1st world themselves maintained a closed border mercantilist regime of strict filters. So the anti-colonialist movement was a form of Trumpist economic nationalism where the evil foreigners were given the boot and the nascent nations applied filters to their borders. ..."
"... Nationalism (my opinion) can do this – economic nationalism. And of course other people think oh gawd, not that again – it's so inefficient for my investments- I can't get fast returns that way but that's just the point. ..."
"... China was not a significant exporter until the 2001 inclusion in WTO: it cannot possibly have caused populist uprisings in Italy and Belgium in the 1990s. It was probably too early even for Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands, who was killed in 2002, Le Pen's electoral success in the same year, Austria's FPOE in 1999, and so on. ..."
"... In the 1930s Keynes realized, income was just as important as profit as this produced a sustainable system that does not rely on debt to maintain demand. ..."
"... "Although commercial banks create money through lending, they cannot do so freely without limit. Banks are limited in how much they can lend if they are to remain profitable in a competitive banking system." ..."
"... The Romans are the basis. Patricians, Equites and Plebs. Most of us here are clearly plebeian. Time to go place some bets, watch the chariot races and gladiatorial fights, and get my bread subsidy. Ciao. ..."
"... 80-90% of Bonds and Equities ( at least in USA) are owned by top 10 %. 0.7% own 45% of global wealth. 8 billionaires own more than 50% of wealth than that of bottom 50% in our Country! ..."
"... Globalisation has caused a surge in support for nationalist and radical right political platforms. ..."
"... Trump's withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership seems to be a move in that direction. ..."
"... Yet, a return to protectionism is not likely to solve the problems of those who have lost ground due to globalisation without appropriate compensation of its 'losers' ..."
"... and is bound to harm growth especially in emerging economies. ..."
"... The world rather needs a more inclusive model of globalisation. ..."
Definitely a pleasant read but IMHO wrong conclusion: Yet, a return to protectionism is
not likely to solve the problems of those who have lost ground due to globalisation without appropriate
compensation of its 'losers', and is bound to harm growth especially in emerging economies. The
world rather needs a more inclusive model of globalisation.
From an energy point of view globalisation is a disaster. The insane level of fossil fuels
that this current world requires for transportation of necessities (food and clothing) is making
this world an unstable world. Ipso Facto.
We need a world where goods move little as possible (yep!) when smart ideas and technology
(medical, science, industry, yep that's essential) move as much as possible. Internet makes this
possible. This is no dream but a XXIth century reality.
Work – the big one – is required and done where and when it occurs. That is on all continents
if not in every country. Not in an insanely remote suburbs of Asia.
Those who believe that globalisation is bringing value to the world should reconsider their
views. The current globalisation has created both monopolies on a geopolitical ground, ie TV make
or shipbuilding in Asia.
Do you seriously believe that these new geographical and corporate monopolies does not
create the kind bad outcomes that traditional – country-centric ones – monopolies have in the
past?
Yves Smith can have nasty words when it comes to discussing massive trade surplus and policies
that supports them. That's my single most important motivation for reading this challenging blog,
by the way.
Another thing is that reliance on complex supply chains is risky. The book 1177 B.C.: The Year
Civilization Collapsed describes how the ancient Mediterranian civilization collapsed when the
supply chains stopped working.
Then there is the practical issue of workers having next to no bargaining power under globalization.
Do people really suppose that Mexican workers would be willing to strike so that their US counterparts,
already making ficew times as much money, would get a raise?
Is Finland somehow supposed to force the US and China to adopt similar worker rights and environmental
protections? No, globalization, no matter how you slice it,is a race to the bottom.
I do not agree with the article's conclusion either.
Reshoring would have 1 of 2 outcomes:
Lots of manufacturing jobs and a solid middle class. We may be looking at more than 20
percent total employment in manufacturing and more than 30 percent of our GDP in manufacturing.
If the robots take over, we still have a lot of manufacturing jobs. Japan for example has
the most robots per capita, yet they still maintain very large amounts of manufacturing employment.
It does not mean the end of manufacturing at all, having worked in manufacturing before.
Basically our elite sold us a bill of goods is why we lost manufacturing. Greed. Nothing
else.
The conclusion is the least important thing. Conclusions are just interpretations, afterthoughts,
divagations (which btw are often just sneaky ways to get your work published by TPTB, surreptitiously
inserting radical stuff under the noses of the guardians of orthodoxy).
The value of these reports is in providing hardcore statistical evidence and quantification
for something for which so many people have a gut feeling but just cann't prove it (although many
seem to think that just having a strong opinion is sufficient).
Yes, correct. Intuition is great for coming up with hypotheses, but it is important to test
them. And while a correlation isn't causation, it at least says the hypothesis isn't nuts on its
face.
In addition, studies like this are helpful in challenging the oft-made claim, particularly
in the US, that people who vote for nationalist policies are bigots of some stripe.
You are missing the transition costs, which will take ten years, maybe a generation.
America hasn't just gotten rid of the low level jobs. It has also gotten rid of supervisors
and factory managers. Those are skills you can't get back overnight. For US plants in Mexico,
you might have US managers there or be able to get special visas to let those managers come to
the US. But US companies have shifted a ton, and I meant a ton, to foreign subcontractors. Some
would put operations in the US to preserve access to US customers, but their managers won't speak
English. How do you make this work?
The only culture with demonstrated success in working with supposedly hopeless US workers is
the Japanese, who proved that with the NUMMI joint venture with GM in one of its very worst factories
(in terms of the alleged caliber of the workforce, as in many would show up for work drunk). Toyota
got the plant to function at better than average (as in lower) defect levels and comparable productivity
to its plants in Japan, which was light years better than Big Three norms.
I'm not sure any other foreign managers are as sensitive to detail and the fine points of working
conditions as the Japanese (having worked with them extensively, the Japanese hear frequencies
of power dynamics that are lost on Westerners. And the Chinese do not even begin to have that
capability, as much as they have other valuable cultural attributes).
That is really interesting about the Japanese sensitivity to detail and power dynamics. If
anyone has managed to describe this in any detail, I would love to read more, though I suppose
if their ability is alien to most Westerners the task of describing it might also be too much
to handle.
I lean more to ten years than a generation. And in the grand scheme of things, 10 years is
nothing.
The real issue is commitment. Very little manufacturing will be re-shored unless companies
are convinced that it is in their longterm interest to do so. Which means having a sense
that the US government is serious, and will continue to be serious, about penalizing off-shoring.
Regardless of Trump's bluster, which has so far only resulted in a handful of companies halting
future offshoring decisions (all to the good), we are nowhere close to that yet.
There is also what I've heard referred to as the "next bench" phenomenon, in which products
arise because someone designs a new product/process to solve a manufacturing problem. Unless one
has great foresight, the designer of the new product must be aware there is a problem to solve.
When a country is involved in manufacturing, the citizens employed will have exposure to
production problems and issues.
Sometimes the solution to these problems can lead to new products outside of one's main
business, for example the USA's Kingsford Charcoal arose from a scrap wood disposal problem that
Henry Ford had.
If one googles for "patent applications by countries" one gets these numbers, which could be
an indirect indication of some of the manufacturing shift from the USA to Asia.
Patent applications for the top 10 offices, 2014
1. China 928,177
2. US 578,802
3. Japan 325,989
4. South Korea 210,292
What is not captured in these numbers are manufacturing processes known as "trade secrets"
that are not disclosed in a patent. The idea that the USA can move move much of its manufacturing
overseas without long term harming its workforce and economy seems implausible to me.
While a design EE at HP, they brought in an author who had written about Toyota's lean design
method, which was currently the management hot button du jour. After his speech he took questions.
I asked "Would Toyota ever separate design from manufacturing?" as HP had done, shipping all manufacturing
to Asia. "No" was his answer.
In my experience, it is way too useful to have the line be able to easily call the designer
in question and have him come take a look at what his design is doing. HP tried to get around
that by sending part of the design team to Asia to watch the startup. Didn't work as well. And
when problems emerged later, it was always difficult to debug by remote control.
And BTW, after manufacturing went overseas, management told us for costing to assume "Labor
is free". Some level playing field.
Oh gawd! The man talks about the effects of globalization and says that the solution is a "a
more inclusive model of globalization"? Seriously? Furthermore he singles out Chinese imports
as the cause of people being pushed to the right. Yeah, right.
How about mass imports of cheap workers into western countries in the guise of emigrants
to push down worker's pay and gut things like unions. That factor played a decisive factor in
both the Brexit referendum and the US 2016 elections. Or the subsidized exportation of western
countries industrial equipment to third world countries, leaving local workers swinging in the
wind.
This study is so incomplete it is almost useless. The only thing that comes to mind to say
about this study is the phrase "Apart from that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?" And what form
of appropriate compensation of its 'losers' would they suggest? Training for non-existent jobs?
Free moving fees to the east or west coast for Americans in flyover country? Subsidized emigration
fees to third world countries where life is cheaper for workers with no future where they are?
Nice try fellas but time to redo your work again until it is fit for a passing grade.
Aw jeez, mate – you've just hurt my feelings here. Take a look at the actual article again.
The data sets do not capture some of the most important factors in what they are saying. It
is like putting together a paper on how and why white men voted in the 2016 US elections as they
did – and forgetting to mention the effect of the rest of the voters involved.
Hey, here is an interesting thought experiment for you. How about we apply the scientific method
to the past 40 years of economic theory since models with actual data strike your fancy. If we
find that the empirical data does not support a theory such as the theory of economic neoliberalism,
we can junk it then and replace it with something that actually works then. So far as I know,
modern economics seems to be immune to scientific rigour in their methods unlike the real sciences.
Not all relevant factors need to be included for a statistical analysis to be valid, as long
as relevant ignored factors are randomized amongst the sampling units, but you know that of course.
Thanks for you kind words about the real sciences, we work hard to keep it real, but once again,
in all fairness, between you and me mate, is not all rigour, it is a lot more Feyerabend than
Popper.
What you say is entirely true. The trouble has always been to make sure that that statistical
analysis actually reflects the real world enough to make it valid. An example of where it all
falls apart can be seen in the political world when the pundits, media and all the pollsters assured
America that Clinton had it in the bag. It was only after the dust had settled that it was revealed
how bodgy the methodology used had been.
By the way, Karl Popper and Paul Feyerabend sound very interesting so thanks for the heads
up. Have you heard of some of the material of another bloke called Mark Blyth at all? He has some
interesting observations to make on modern economic practices.
I had a similar reaction. This research was reinforcing info about everyone's resentment
over really bad distribution of wealth, as far as it went, but it was so unsatisfying and
I immediately thought of Blyth who laments the whole phylogeny of economics as more or less serving
the rich.
The one solution he offered up a while ago was (paraphrasing) 'don't sweat the deficit spending
because it is all 6s in the end' which is true if distribution doesn't stagnate. So as it stands
now, offshoring arms, legs and firstborns is like 'nothing to see here, please move on'. The suggestion
that we need a more inclusive form of global trade kind of begs the question. Made me uneasy too.
"Gut things like unions." How so? In my recent interaction with my apartment agency's preferred
contractors, random contractors not unionized, I experienced a 6 month-long disaster.
These construction workers bragged that in 2 weeks they would have the complete job done -
a reconstructed deck and sunroom. Verbatim quote: "Union workers complete the job and tear it
down to keep everyone paying." Ha Ha! What a laugh!
Only to have these same dudes keep saying "next week", "next week", "next week", "next week".
The work began in August and only was finished (not completely!) in late January. Sloppy crap!
Even the apartment agency head maintenance guy who I finally bitched at said "I guess good work
is hard to come by these days."
Of the non-union guys he hired.
My state just elected a republican governor who promised "right to work." This was just signed
into law.
Immigrants and Mexicans had nothing to do with it. They're not an impact in my city. "Right
to work" is nothing other than a way to undercut quality of work for "run-to-the-bottom competitive
pay."
Now I await whether my rent goes up to pay for this nonsense.
They look at the labor cost, assume someone can do it cheaper. They don't think it's that difficult.
Maybe it's not. The hard part of any and all construction work is getting it finished. Getting
started is easy. Getting it finished on time? Nah, you can't afford that.
I've noticed that the only people in favor of globalization are those whose jobs are not
under threat from it. Beyond that, I think the flood of cheap Chinese goods is actually helping
suppress populist anger by allowing workers whose wages are dropping in real value terms to maintain
the illusion of prosperity. To me, a more "inclusive" form of globalization would include replacing
every economist with a Chinese immigrant earning minimum wage. That way they'd get to "experience"
how awesome it is and the value of future economic analysis would be just as good.
I'm going to question a few of the author's assumptions.
First off, economic nationalism is not necessarily right wing. I would certainly classify
Bernie Sanders as an economic nationalist (against open borders and against "free" trade). Syriza
and Podemos could arguably be called rather ineffective economic nationalist parties. I would
say the whole ideology of social democracy is based on the Swedish nationalist concept of a "folkhem",
where the nation is the home and the citizens are the folk.
Secondly, when discussing the concept of economic nationalism and the nation of China, it would
be interesting to discuss how these two things go together. China has more billionaires than refugees
accepted in the past 20 years. Also it is practically impossible for a non Han Chinese person
to become a naturalized Chinese citizen. And when China buys Boeing aircraft, they wisely insist
on the production being done in China. A close look at Japan would yield similar results.
So China is Turmpism on steroids. Israel obviously is as well. Why do some nations get
to be blatantly Trumpist while for others these policies are strictly forbidden?
One way to look at Globalization is as an updated version of the post WW1 Versailles Treaty
which imposed reparations on a defeated Germany for all the harm they caused during the Great
War. The Globalized Versailles Treaty is aimed at the American and European working classes for
the crimes of colonialism, racism, slavery and any other bad things the 1st world has done to
the 3rd in the past.
Of course during colonialism the costs were socialized within colonizing states and so it was
the people of the colonial power who paid those costs that weren't borne by the colonial subjects
themselves, who of course paid dearly, and it was the oligarchic class that privatized the colonial
profits. But the 1st world oligarchs and their urban bourgeoisie are in strong agreement that
the deplorable working classes are to blame for systems that hurt working classes but powerfully
enriched the wealthy!
And so with the recent rebellions against Globalization, the 1st and 3rd world oligarchs are
convinced these are nothing more than the 1st world working classes attempting to shirk their
historic guilt debt by refusing to pay the rightful reparations in terms of standard of living
that workers deserve to pay for the crimes committed in the past by their wealthy co-nationals.
And yes, this applies to Bernie Sanders as well. During that iconic interview where Sanders
denounced open borders and pushed economic nationalism, the Neoliberal interviewer immediately
played the global guilt card in response.
Interesting. Another way to look at it is from the point of view of entropy and closed vs open
systems. Before globalisation the 1st world working classes enjoyed a high standard of living
which was possible because their system was relatively closed to the rest of the world. It was
a high entropy, strongly structured socio-economic arrangement, with a large difference in standard
of living between 1st world and 3rd world working classes. Once their system became more open
by virtue (or vice) of globalisation, entropy increased as commanded by the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
so the 1st world and 3rd world working classes became more equalised. The socio-economic arrangements
became less structured. This means for the Trumpening kind of politicians it is a steep uphill
battle, to increase entropy again.
Yes, I agree, but if we step back in history a bit we can see the colonial period as a sort
of reverse globalization which perhaps portends a bit of optimism for the Trumpening.
I use the term open and closed borders but these are not precise. What I am really saying is
that open borders does not allow a country to filter out negative flows across their border. Closed
borders does allow a nation to impose a filter. So currently the US has more open borders (filters
are frowned upon) and China has closed borders (they can filter out what they don't want) despite
the fact that obviously China has plenty of things crossing its border.
During colonialism the 3rd world had a form of open borders imposed on it by the colonial
powers, where the 3rd world lost control of who what crossed their borders while the 1st world
themselves maintained a closed border mercantilist regime of strict filters. So the anti-colonialist
movement was a form of Trumpist economic nationalism where the evil foreigners were given the
boot and the nascent nations applied filters to their borders.
So the 3rd world to some extent (certainly in China at least) was able to overcome entropy
and regain control of their borders. You are correct in that it will be an uphill struggle for
the 1st world to repeat this trick. In the ideal world both forms of globalization (colonialism
and the current form) would be sidelined and all nations would be allowed to use the border filters
they think would best protect the prosperity of their citizens.
Another good option would be a version of the current globalization but where the losers are
the wealthy oligarchs themselves and the winners are the working classes. It's hard to imagine
it's easy if you try!
What's interesting about the concept of entropy is that it stands in contradiction to the concept
of perpetual progress. I'm sure there is some sort of thesis, antithesis, synthesis solution to
these conflicting concepts.
To overcome an entropy current requires superb skill commanding a large magnitude of work applied
densely on a small substratum (think of the evolution of the DNA, the internal combustion engine).
I believe the Trumpening laudable effort and persuasion would have a chance of success in a country
the size of The Netherlands, or even France, but the USA, the largest State machinery in the world,
hardly. When the entropy current flooded the Soviet system the solution came firstly in the form
of shrinkage.
We need to think more about it, a lot more, in order to succeed in this 1st world uphill struggle
to repeat the trick. I am pretty sure that as Pierre de Fermat famously claimed about his alleged
proof, the solution "is too large to fit in the margins of this book".
My little entropy epiphany goes like this: it's like boxes – containers, if you will, of energy
or money, or trade goods, the flow of which is best slowed down so everybody can grab some. Break
it all down, decentralize it and force it into containers which slow the pace and share the wealth.
Nationalism (my opinion) can do this – economic nationalism. And of course other
people think oh gawd, not that again – it's so inefficient for my investments- I can't get fast
returns that way but that's just the point.
Don't you mean "It was a LOWER entropy (as in "more ordered"), strongly structured socio-economic
arrangement, with a large difference in standard of living between 1st world"?
The entropy increased as a consequence of human guided globalization.
Of course, from a thermodynamic standpoint, the earth is not a closed system as it is continually
flooded with new energy in the form of solar radiation.
The Globalized Versailles Treaty -- Permit me a short laughter . The terms of the crippling
treaty were dictated by the victors largely on insecurities of France.
The crimes of the 1st against the 3rd go on even now- the only difference is that some of the
South like China and India are major nuclear powers now.
The racist crimes in the US are even more flagrant- the Blacks whose labour as slaves allowed
for cotton revolution enabling US capitalists to ride the industrial horse are yet to be rehabilitated
, Obama or no Obama. It is a matter of profound shame.
The benefits of Globalization have gone only to the cartel of 1st and 3rd World Capitalists.
And they are very happy as the lower classes keep fighting. Very happy indeed.
The gorgon cry of the past is all over the present , including in " unsuspecting" paying folks
of today! Blacks being brought to US as slave agricultural labour was Globalisation. Their energy
vibrated the machinery of Economics subsequently. What Nationalism and where is it hiding pray?
Bogus analysis here , yes.
The reigning social democratic parties in Europe today are not the Swedish traditional parties
of yesteryear they have morphed into neoliberal austerians committed to globalization and export
driven economic models at any cost (CETA vote recently) and most responsible for the economic
collapse in the EU
I wonder they chose Chinese imports as the cause of the right-wing shift, when they themselves
admit that the shift started in the 1990s. At that time, there were few Chinese imports and China
was not even part of the WHO.
If they are thinking of movements like the Lega Nord and Vlaams Blok, the reasons are clearly
not to be found in imports, but in immigration, the welfare state and lack of national homogeneity,
perceived or not.
And the beginnings of the precariat.
So it is not really the globalization of commerce that did it, but the loss of relevance of
national and local identities.
Correlation does not imply causation, but lack of correlation definitely excludes it.
The Lega was formed in the 1980s, Vlaams Blok at the end of the '70s. They both had their best
days in the 1990s. Chinese imports at the time were insignificant.
I cannot find the breakdown of Chinese imports per EU country, but here are the total Chinese
exports since 1983:
China was not a significant exporter until the 2001 inclusion in WTO: it cannot possibly
have caused populist uprisings in Italy and Belgium in the 1990s. It was probably too early even
for Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands, who was killed in 2002, Le Pen's electoral success in the
same year, Austria's FPOE in 1999, and so on.
The timescales just do not match. Whatever was causing "populism", it was not Chinese imports,
and I can think of half a dozen other, more likely causes.
Furthermore, the 1980s and 1990s were something of an industrial renaissance for Lombardy and
Flanders: hardly the time to worry about Chinese imports.
And if you look at the map. the country least affected by the import shock (France) is the
one with the strongest populist movement (Le Pen).
People try to conflate Trump_vs_deep_state and Brexit with each other, then try to conflate this "anglo-saxon"
populism with previous populisms in Europe, and try to deduce something from the whole exercise.
That "something" is just not there and the exercise is pointless. IMHO at least.
European regionalism is often the result of the rise of the EU as a new, alternative national
government in the eyes of the disgruntled regions. Typically there are three levels of government,
local, regional (states) and national. With the rise of the EU we have a fourth level, supra-national.
But to the Flemish, Scottish, Catalans, etc, they see the EU as a potential replacement for the
National-level governments they currently are unhappy being under the authority of.
Capitalism should be evolving but it went backwards. Keynesian capitalism evolved from the
free market capitalism that preceded it. The absolute faith in markets had been laid low by 1929
and the Great Depression.
After the Keynesian era we went back to the old free market capitalism of neoclassical economics.
Instead of evolving, capitalism went backwards. We had another Wall Street Crash that has laid
low the once vibrant global economy and we have entered into the new normal of secular stagnation.
In the 1930s, Irving Fisher studied the debt deflation caused by debt saturated economies. Today
only a few economists outside the mainstream realise this is the problem today.
In the 1930s, Keynes realized only fiscal stimulus would pull the US out of the Great Depression,
eventually the US implemented the New Deal and it started to recover. Today we use monetary policy
that keeps asset prices up but cannot overcome the drag of all that debt in the system and its
associated repayments.
In the 1920s, they relied on debt based consumption, not realizing how consumers will eventually
become saturated with debt and demand will fail. Today we rely on debt based consumption again,
Greece consumed on debt. until it maxed out on debt and collapsed.
In the 1930s Keynes realized, income was just as important as profit as this produced a
sustainable system that does not rely on debt to maintain demand. Keynes was involved with
the Bretton-Woods agreement after the Second World War and recycled the US surplus to Europe to
restore trade when Europe lay in ruins. Europe could rebuild itself and consume US products, everyone
benefitted.
Today there are no direct fiscal transfers within the Euro-zone and it is polarizing. No one
can see the benefits of rebuilding Greece, to allow it to carry on consuming the goods from surplus
nations and it just sinks further and further into the mire. There is a lot to be said for capitalism
going forwards rather than backwards and making the same old mistakes a second time.
The ECB didn't listen and killed Greece with austerity and is laying low the Club-Med nations.
Someone who knows what they are doing, after studying the Great Depression and Japan after 1989.
Let's keep him out of the limelight; he has no place on the ship of fools running the show.
DEBT on Debt with QEs+ ZRP ( borrowing from future) was the 'solution' by Bernanke to mask
the 2008 crisis and NOT address the underlying structural reforms in the Banking and the Financial
industry. He was part of the problem for housing problem and occurred under his watch! He just
kicked the can with explosive credit growth ( but no corresponding growth in the productive Economy!)and
easy money!
We have a 'Mother of all bubbles' at our door step. Just matter of time when it will BLOW and
NOT if! There is record levels of DEBT ( both sovereign, public and private) in the history of
mankind, all over the World.
DEBT has been used as a panacea for all the financial problems by CBers including Bernanke!
Fed's balance sheet was than less 1 Trillion in 2008 ( for all the years of existence of our Country!)
but now over 3.5 Trillions and climbing!
Kicking the can down the road is like passing the buck to some one (future generations!). And
you call that solution by Mr. Bernanke? Wow!
Will they say again " No one saw this coming'? when next one descends?
The independent Central Banks that don't know what they are doing as can be seen from their
track record.
The FED presided over the dot.com bust and 2008, unaware that they were happening and of their
consequences. Alan Greenspan spots irrational exuberance in the markets in 1996 and passes comment.
As the subsequent dot.com boom and housing booms run away with themselves he says nothing.
The money supply is flat in the recession of the early 1990s.
Then it really starts to take off as the dot.com boom gets going which rapidly morphs into
the US housing boom, courtesy of Alan Greenspan's loose monetary policy.
When M3 gets closer to the vertical, the black swan is coming and you have an out of control
credit bubble on your hands (money = debt).
We can only presume the FED wasn't looking at the US money supply, what on earth were they
doing?
The BoE is aware of how money is created from debt and destroyed by repayments of that debt.
"Although commercial banks create money through lending, they cannot do so freely without
limit. Banks are limited in how much they can lend if they are to remain profitable in a competitive
banking system."
The BoE's statement was true, but is not true now as banks can securitize bad loans and get
them off their books. Before 2008, banks were securitising all the garbage sub-prime mortgages,
e.g. NINJA mortgages, and getting them off their books. Money is being created freely and without
limit, M3 is going exponential before 2008.
Bad debt is entering the system and no one is taking any responsibility for it. The credit
bubble is reflected in the money supply that should be obvious to anyone that cares to look.
Ben Bernanke studied the Great Depression and doesn't appear to have learnt very much.
Irving Fisher studied the Great Depression in the 1930s and comes up with a theory of debt
deflation. A debt inflated asset bubble collapses and the debt saturated economy sinks into debt
deflation. 2008 is the same as 1929 except a different asset class is involved.
1929 – Margin lending into US stocks
2008 – Mortgage lending into US housing
Hyman Minsky carried on with his work and came up with the "Financial Instability Hypothesis"
in 1974.
Steve Keen carried on with their work and spotted 2008 coming in 2005. We can see what Steve
Keen saw in 2005 in the US money supply graph above.
The independent Central Banks that don't know what they are doing as can be seen from their
track record.
Good to see studies confirming what was already known.
This apparently surprised:
On the contrary, as globalisation threatens the success and survival of entire industrial
districts, the affected communities seem to have voted in a homogeneous way, regardless of
each voter's personal situation.
It is only surprising for people not part of communities, those who are part of communities
see how it affects people around them and solidarity with the so called 'losers' is then shown.
Seems like radical right is the preferred term, it does make it more difficult to sympathize
with someone branded as radical right . The difference seems to be between the radical liberals
vs the conservative. The radical liberals are too cowardly to propose the laws they want, they
prefer to selectively apply the laws as they see fit. Either enforce the laws or change the laws,
anything else is plain wrong.
Socialism for the upper classes, capitalism for the lower classes? That will turn out well.
Debt slaves and wage slaves will revolt. That is all the analysis the OP requires. The upper class
will respond with suppression, not policy reversal every time. Socialism = making everyone equally
poor (obviously not for the upper classes who benefit from the arrangement).
Regrettably today we have socialism for the wealthy, with all the benefits of gov regulations,
sympathetic courts and legislatures etc. etc.
Workers are supposed to take care for themselves and the devil take the hind most. How many
workers get fired vs the 1%, when there is a failure in the company plan?
The Romans are the basis. Patricians, Equites and Plebs. Most of us here are clearly plebeian.
Time to go place some bets, watch the chariot races and gladiatorial fights, and get my bread
subsidy. Ciao.
Globalization created winners and losers throughout the world. The winners liked it, the losers
didn't. Democracy is based on the support of the majority.
The majority in the East were winners. The majority in the West were losers.
The Left has maintained its support of neoliberal globalisation in the West. The Right has
moved on. There has been a shift to the Right. Democracy is all about winners and losers and whether
the majority are winning or losing. It hasn't changed.
Globalization( along with communication -internet and transportation) made the Labor wage arbitration,
easy in favor of capital ( Multi-Nationals). Most of the jobs gone overseas will NEVER come back.
Robotic revolution will render the remaining jobs, less and less!
The 'new' Economy by passed the majority of lower 80-90% and favored the top 10%. The Losers
and the Winners!
80-90% of Bonds and Equities ( at least in USA) are owned by top 10 %. 0.7% own 45% of
global wealth. 8 billionaires own more than 50% of wealth than that of bottom 50% in our Country!
The Rich became richer!
The tension between Have and Have -Nots has just begun, as Marx predicted!
I think it's about time that we stopped referring to opposition to globalization as a product
or policy of the "extreme right". It would be truer to say that globalization represents a temporary,
and now fading, triumph of certain ideas about trade and movement of people and capital which
have always existed, but were not dominant in the past. Fifty years ago, most mainstream political
parties were "protectionist" in the sense the word is used today. Thirty years ago, protectionism
was often seen as a left)wing idea, to preserve standards of living and conditions of employment
(Wynne Godley and co). Today, all establishment political parties in the West have swallowed neoliberal
dogma, so the voters turn elsewhere, to parties outside the mainstream. Often, it's convenient
politically to label them "extreme right", although in Europe some left-wing parties take basically
the same position. If you ignore peoples' interests, they won't vote for you. Quelle surprise!
as Yves would say.
Yes, there are many reasons to be skeptical of too much globalization such as energy considerations.
I think another interesting one is exchange rates.
One of the important concepts of MMT is the importance of having a flexible exchange rate to
have full power over your currency. This is fine as far as it goes but tends to put hard currencies
against soft currencies where a hard currency can be defined as one that has international authority/acceptance.
Having flexible exchange rates also opens up massive amounts of financial speculation relative
to fluctuations of these currencies against each other and trying to protect against these fluctuations.
""Keynes' proposal of the bancor was to put a barrier between national currencies, that is
to have a currency of account at the global level. Keynes warned that free trade, flexible exchange
rates and free movement of capital globally were incompatible with maintaining full employment
at the local level""
""Sufficiency provisioning also means that trade would be discouraged rather than encouraged.""
Local currencies can work very well locally to promote employment but can have trouble when
they reach out to get resources outside of their currency space especially if they have a soft
currency. Global sustainability programs need to take a closer look at how to overcome this sort
of social injustice. (Debt or Democracy)
As has already been pointed out so eloquently here in the comments section, economic nationalism
is not necessarily the preserve of the right, nor is it necessarily the same thing as nationalism.
In the UK the original, most vociferous objectors to EEC membership in the 70s (now the EU)
were traditionally the Left, on the basis that it would gradually erode labour rights and devalue
the cost of labour in the longer term. Got that completely wrong obviously .
In the same way that global trade has become synonymous with globalisation, the immigration
debate has been hijacked and cynically conflated with free movement of (mainly low cost, unskilled)
labour and race when they are all VERY different divisive issues.
The other point alluded to in the comments above is the nature of free trade generally. The
accepted (neoliberal) wisdom being that 'collateral damage' is unfortunate but inevitable, but
it is pretty much an unstoppable or uncontrollable force for the greater global good, and the
false dichotomy persists that you either embrace it fully or pull up all the drawbridges with
nothing in between.
One of the primary reasons that some competing sectors of some Western economies have done
so badly out of globalisation is that they have adhered to 'free market principles' whilst other
countries, particularly China, clearly have not with currency controls, domestic barriers to trade,
massive state subsidies, wage suppression etc
The China aspect is also fascinating when developed nations look at the uncomfortable 'morality
of global wealth distribution' often cited by proponents of globalisation as one of their wider
philanthropic goals. Bless 'em. What is clear is that highly populated China and most of its people,
from the bottom to the top, has been the primary beneficiaries of this global wealth redistribution,
but the rest of the developing world's poor clearly not quite so much.
The map on it's own, in terms of the English one time industrial Midlands & North West being
shown as an almost black hole, is in itself a kind of " Nuff Said ".
It is also apart from London, where the vast bulk of immigrants have settled.
The upcoming bye-election in Stoke, which could lead to U-Kip taking a once traditionally always
strong Labour seat, is right in the middle of that dark cloud.
The problem from the UK 's position, I suggest, is that autarky is not a viable proposition
so economic nationalism becomes a two-edged sword. Yes, of course, the UK can place restrictions
on imports and immigration but there will inevitably be retaliation and they will enter a game
of beggar my neighbour. The current government talks of becoming a beacon for free trade. If we
are heading to a more protectionist world, that can only end badly IMHO.
Unless we get some meaningful change in thinking on a global scale, I think we are heading
somewhere very dark whatever the relative tinkering with an essentially broken system.
The horse is long gone, leaving a huge pile of shit in it's stable.
As for what might happen, I do not know, but I have the impression that we are at the end of
a cycle.
This is quite interesting, but only part of the story. Interestingly the districts/provinces
suffering the most from the chinese import shock are usually densely populated industrial regions
of Europe. The electoral systems in Europe (I think all, but I did not check) usually do not weight
equally each district, favouring those less populated, more rural (which by the way tend to be
very conservative but not so nationalistic). These differences in vote weigthing may have somehow
masked the effect seen in this study if radical nationalistic rigth wing votes concentrate in
areas with lower weigthed value of votes. For instance, in Spain, the province of Soria is mostly
rural and certainly less impacted by chinese imports compared with, for instance, Madrid. But
1 vote in Soria weigths the same as 4 votes in Madrid in number of representatives in the congress.
This migth, in part, explain why in Spain, the radical rigth does not have the same power as in
Austria or the Netherlands. It intuitively fits the hypothesis of this study.
Nevertheless, similar processes can occur in rural areas. For instance, when Spain entered
the EU, french rural areas turned nationalistic against what they thougth could be a wave of agricultural
imports from Spain. Ok, agricultural globalization may have less impact in terms of vote numbers
in a given country but it still can be politically very influential. In fact spanish entry more
that 30 years ago could still be one of the forces behind Le Penism.
All this statistical math and yada yada to explain a rise in vote for radical right from 3%
in 1985 to 5% now on average? And only a 0.7% marginal boost if your the place really getting
hammmered by imports from China? If I'm reading it right, that is, while focusing on Figure 2.
The real "shock" no pun intended, is the vote totals arent a lot higher everywhere.
Then the Post concludes with reference to a "surge in support" - 3% to 5% or so over 30 years
is a surge? The line looks like a pretty steady rise over 3 decades.
Maybe I'm missing sommething here.
Also what is this thing they're callling an "Open World" of the past 30 years? And why is that
in danger from more balanced trade? It makes no sense. Even back in the 60s and 70s people could
go alll over the world for vacations. Or at least most places they coould go. If theh spent their
money they'd make friends. Greece even used to be a goood place people went and had fun on a beach.
I think this one is a situation of math runing amuck. Math running like a thousand horses over
a hill trampling every blade of grass into mud.
I bet the China factor is just a referent for an entire constellatio of forces that probably
don't lend themselves (no pun intended) partiicularly well to social science and principal component
analysis - as interesting as that is for those who are interested in that kind of thing (which
I am acctually).
Also, I wouldn't call this "free trade". Not that the authors do either, but trade means reciprocity
not having your livelihood smashed the like a pinata at Christmas with all your candy eaten by
your "fellow countrymen". I wouldn't call that "trade". It's something else.
Regarding your first point, it is a small effect but it is all due to the China imports impact,
you have to add the growth of these parties due to other reasons such as immigration to get the
full picture of their growth. Also I think the recent USA election was decided by smaller percentage
advantages in three States?
Globalisation is nothing but free trade extended to the entire world. Free trade is a tool
used to prevent competition. By flooding countries with our cheaper exports, they do not develop
the capacity to compete with us by making their own widgets. So, why are we shocked when those
other countries return the favor and when they get the upper hand, we respond in a protectionist
way? It looks to me that those countries who are now competing with us in electronics, automobiles,
etc. only got to develop those industries in their countries because of protectionism.
Refugees in great numbers are a symptom of globalization, especially economic refugees but
also political and environmental ones. This has strained the social order in many countries that
have accepted them in and it's one of the central issues that the so-called "right" is highlighting.
It is no surprise there has been an uproar over immigration policy in the US which is an issue
of class as much as foreign policy because of the disenfranchisement of large numbers of workers
on both sides of the equation - those who lost their jobs to outsourcing and those who emigrated
due to the lack of decent employment opportunities in their own countries.
We're seeing the tip of the iceberg. What will happen when the coming multiple environmental
calamities cause mass starvation and dislocation of coastal populations? Walls and military forces
can't deter hungry, desperate, and angry people.
The total reliance and gorging on fossil energy by western countries, especially the US, has
mandated military aggression to force compliance in many areas of the world. This has brought
a backlash of perpetual terrorism. We are living under a dysfunctional system ruled by sociopaths
whose extreme greed is leading to world war and environmental collapse.
Who created the REFUGEE PROBLEMS in the ME – WEST including USA,UK++
Obama's DRONE program kept BOMBING in SEVEN Countries killing innocents – children and women!
All in the name of fighting Terrorism. Billions of arms to sale Saudi Arabia! Wow!
Where were the Democrats and the Resistance and Women's march? Hypocrites!
Globalisation has caused a surge in support for nationalist and radical right political
platforms.
Just a reminder that nationalism doesn't have to be associated with the radical right. The left
is not required to reject it, especially when it can be understood as basically patriotism, expressed
as solidarity with all of your fellow citizens.
Trump's withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership seems to be a move in that direction.
Well, that may be true as far as Trump's motivations are concerned, but a major component (the
most important?) of the TPP was strong restraint of trade, a protectionist measure, by intellectual
property owners.
Yet, a return to protectionism is not likely to solve the problems of those who have lost
ground due to globalisation without appropriate compensation of its 'losers'
Japan has long been 'smart' protectionist, and this has helped prevent the 'loser' problem, in
part because Japan, being nationalist, makes it a very high priority to create/maintain a society
in which almost all Japanese are more or less middle class. So, it is a fact that protectionism
has been and can be associated with more egalitarian societies, in which there are few 'losers'
like we see in the West. But the U.S. and most Western countries have a long way to go if they
decide to make the effort to be more egalitarian. And, of course, protectionism alone is not enough
to make most of the losers into winners again. You'll need smart skills training, better education
all around, fewer low-skill immigrants, time, and, most of all strong and long-term commitment
to making full employment at good wages national priority number one.
and is bound to harm growth especially in emerging economies.
Growth has been week since the 2008, even though markets are as free as they've ever been. Growth
requires a lot more consumers with willingness and cash to spend on expensive, high-value-added
goods. So, besides the world finally escaping the effects of the 2008 financial crisis, exporting
countries need prosperous consumers either at home or abroad, and greater economic security. And
if a little bit of protectionism generates more consumer prosperity and economic stability, exporting
countries might benefit overall.
The world rather needs a more inclusive model of globalisation.
Well, yes, the world needs more inclusivity, but globalization doesn't need to be part of the
picture. Keep your eyes on the prize: inclusivity/equality, whether latched onto nationally, regionally,
'internationally' or globally, any which way is fine! But prioritization of globalization over
those two is likely a victory for more inequality, for more shoveling of our wealth up to the
ruling top 1%.
"... In the conclusion, he says "I argued that it is the roach motel of currencies. Like the Hotel
California of the song: you can check in, but you can't check out." To be precise, that's true of the
Roach Motel (see here , if you don't know what that's all about), but, according to the Eagles, you
can actually check out of the Hotel California, though you can never leave (hmm... sounds kind of like
"Brexit"...). ..."
"... In any case, the fact it hangs together because eurozone members feel trapped by the costs
of exit is hardly an affirmative case for the single currency. ..."
Barry Eichengreen column headlined "Don't Sell the Euro Short. It's Here to Stay"
He writes:
Two forms of glue hold the euro together. First, the economic costs of break-up would be great.
The minute investors heard that Greece was seriously contemplating reintroducing the drachma with
the purpose of depreciating it against the euro, or against a "new Deutsche mark," they would
wire all their money to Frankfurt. Greece would experience the mother of all banking crises. The
"new Deutsche mark" would then shoot through the roof, destroying Germany's export industry.
More generally, those predicting, or advocating, the euro's demise tend to underestimate the
technical difficulties of reintroducing national currencies.
In the conclusion, he says "I argued that it is the roach motel of currencies. Like the Hotel
California of the song: you can check in, but you can't check out." To be precise, that's true of
the Roach Motel (see here
, if you don't know what that's all about), but,
according to the Eagles,
you can actually check out of the Hotel California, though you can never leave (hmm... sounds
kind of like "Brexit"...).
In any case, the fact it hangs together because eurozone members feel trapped by the costs
of exit is hardly an affirmative case for the single currency. In Greece's case, its hard to
believe that the costs of exit really would have been higher than the costs of staying; this
FT Alphablog post by Matthew Klein pointed out this figure from the
IMF's Article IV report :
The fact that the eurozone rolls on with no sign that a depression in one of its smaller constituent
economies is enough to bring about a fundamental change is disturbing. It wouldn't be able to ignore
an election of Marine LePen as President of France -
Gavyn Davies
considers the consequences of that.
"The fact that the eurozone rolls on with no sign that a depression in one of its smaller
constituent economies is enough to bring about a fundamental change is disturbing."
Why so? Isn't it in fact encouraging, a sign that the eurozone can withstand such problems
(especially a problem in one of its smaller economies)? There's scant reason to think it would
be a good thing if the eurozone opted for "fundamental change" every time one of its constituent
nations experienced a problem.
Fair enough - it is true that the Greek crisis didn't cause the euro to break up at least.
But I think what happened in Greece (and Ireland to an extent) is more than a local problem; it
revealed a fundamental design flaw which they haven't fully confronted - the lack of a "banking
union". From the outset, economists doubted whether the euro area met the traditional criteria
for an optimum currency area (OCA), and those issues are relevant, but I think Greece shows that
a banking union (i.e., shared lender of last resort, banking regulation and deposit insurance)
is necessary to make it work. I.e., if Greek banks were european banks, the bank-sovereign "doom
loop" could be circumvented. The euro area needs a way for countries to go bankrupt without bringing
their banks down with them.
I tend to agree with you regarding the necessity for a "banking union"; not having one is
indeed a design flaw, and no, it hasn't been confronted. Does that mean the eurozone's days are
numbered? Could be, but of course we won't know for certain-sure until the breakup does (or doesn't)
happen. So it goes.
...So my question for the degrowth community is whether declining investment is an occasion
for celebration? Does this mean that economic policy is actually getting something right?
Here's one answer I won't accept: we don't care about growth in general, just growth of bad
stuff, like fossil fuels, accumulation of waste, destruction of coastlines, etc. That isn't a
degrowth position. Everyone wants more of the good and less of the bad, however they define it.
I'm in favor of only toothsome pizza crusts and I'm dead set against the soggy kind, but that's
not the same as being on a diet.
This is a practical, policy-relevant question. There are many smart economists trying to understand
the investment slump so they can devise policies to turn it around. You'll notice this concern
is prominent in the writing on increasing industrial concentration, the shareholder value obsession,
globalization and outsourcing, and other topics. The goal of these researchers is to reform corporate
and market structure in order to restore a higher rate of investment, among other things. That
of course would tend to accelerate economic growth. So what's the degrowth position on all this?
Should economists be looking for additional measures to discourage investment?
Again, please don't tell me that it's just investment in "bads" that needs to be discouraged.
That's a given across the entire spectrum of economic rationality (which is admittedly somewhat
narrower than the political spectrum). In the aggregate, is it good that investment is trending
down?
My own view, as readers of this blog will know (see here and here), is that degrowth is a suicide
cult masquerading as a political position. I'm pretty sure that radically transforming our economy
to make it sustainable will involve a tremendous amount of investment and new production, and
it seems clear to me that boosting living standards through more and better consumption is both
politically and ethically essential. But I could be wrong. I would sincerely appreciate intelligent
arguments from the degrowth side.
[Asked and answered, sort of. Degrowth or beneficial degrowth is relative to what metrics (i.e.,
resources rather than capital) and realistically a far enough ways from where we are now to be
moot.]
I think this is too simplistic. There is (and has always been) a growing realization that more
is not always better. This insight is not uniform for any given geographic or socioeconomic population
group, but often informed by how one relates to the economic process (which correlates with age),
individually as well as at the peer group level.
When a larger group is exposed to a situation where the trappings of success are hard to obtain
(e.g. younger people coming out of school/college into a bad job market), or where there is an
appearance that new technology/gadgets may be initially exciting but don't really translate into
better quality of life or better effectiveness of work/activities ("productivity"), or even degrade
either (more typical for older people who are not seeing new gadgets/technologies for the first
time?), then rejection of whatever is proclaimed as "improvement" can become socially acceptable.
I'm also at the point where I don't really want new stuff, because my impression is that it
is generally not better than the previous edition, or if better, then not better in a write-home-about-it
way. And the realization many acquisitions create more liabilities than benefits in the long term
(for one thing, accumulation of junk and need to throw out "something" - which I may not really
want to throw out).
A problem with today's views about globalization is that they look backward rather than forward.
The future's globalization is much different from the past's globalization. In particular, growing
nationalism is the future in the places, such as China, that have benefited from globalization.
By that I mean China is beginning to produce goods for China firms rather than for western firms
to compete with goods produced for western (American) firms including goods produced in China
for western firms.
It's a much different dynamic than what we have experienced in the past 30 years. And the response
to the new globalization should (and will) be much different.
Ironically, Trump's views about globalization come closer to what will be the response as western
firms adjust to the new globalization. Is Trump that smart? No, it's just that everybody else
is that dumb.
"... The revival of nationalism in western Europe, which began in the 1990s, has been associated
with increasing support for radical right parties. This column uses trade and election data to show
that the radical right gets its biggest electoral boost in regions most exposed to Chinese exports.
Within these regions communities vote homogenously, whether individuals work in affected industries
or not. ..."
"... "Chinese imports" is only an expression, or correlate, of something else - the neoliberal YOYO
principle and breakdown/deliberate destruction of social cohesion ..."
"... As a side effect, this removes the collective identity, and increased tribalism is the compensation
- a large part it is an attempt to find/associate with a group identity, which of course gives a large
boost to readily available old identities, which were in the past (ab)used by nationalist movements,
largely for the same reasons. ..."
The revival of nationalism in western Europe, which began in the 1990s, has been associated
with increasing support for radical right parties. This column uses trade and election data to
show that the radical right gets its biggest electoral boost in regions most exposed to Chinese
exports. Within these regions communities vote homogenously, whether individuals work in affected
industries or not.
"Chinese imports" is only an expression, or correlate, of something else - the neoliberal
YOYO principle and breakdown/deliberate destruction of social cohesion.
As a side effect, this removes the collective identity, and increased tribalism is the
compensation - a large part it is an attempt to find/associate with a group identity, which of
course gives a large boost to readily available old identities, which were in the past (ab)used
by nationalist movements, largely for the same reasons.
It seems to be quite apparent to me that the loss of national/local identity has not (initially?)
promoted nationalist movements advocating a stronger national identity narrative, but a "rediscovery"
of regional identities - often based on or similar to the geography of former kingdoms or principalities
prior to national unification, or more local municipal structures (e.g. local administrations,
business, or interest groups promoting a historical narrative of a municipal district as the village
or small town that it descended from, etc. - with the associated idyllic elements).
In many cases these historical identity narratives had always been undercurrents, even when
the nation state was strong.
And I mean strong not in the military or executive strength sense, but accepted as legitimate
and representing the population and its interests.
In these days, national goverments and institutions (state/parties) have been largely discredited,
not least due to right wing/elite propaganda (and of course due to observed corruption promoted
from the same side).
I'm not aware that either have discredited any deep state (BTW which Clinton?). The first thing
I would ask for is clarification what you mean by "deep state" - can you provide a usable definition?
Obama has rejected calls for going after US torturers ("we want to move past this").
And if you don't know where the 6 months of innuendo about the Russians comes from since Aug
16 you are reading the treasonous agitprop from the democrat wind machine centered in NY, Boston
and LA.
I'm not sure this answers my question, and it seems to accuse me of something I have not said
or implied (taking treason lightly) - or perhaps cautioning me against such?
Are you willing to define the terms you are discussing? (Redirecting me to a google search
etc. will not address my question. How exactly do you define "deep state"? You can quote from
the internet of course.)
From a previous life I know a concept of "a state within the state" (concretely referring to
the East German Stasi and similar services in other "communist" countries in concept but only
vaguely in the details). That is probably related to this, but I don't want to base any of this
on speculation and unclear terms.
1) Mexican workers are paid ~$1 an
hour and US workers doing the same work are paid ~$13 hour
and US plants are closing and moving to Mexico
and
2) ..."But some companies that produce goods in Mexico say
there's no going back to the U.S. That includes Delphi.
The company just announced a plan for more layoffs in
Warren, where only 1,500 employees remain.
Speaking at Barclay's Global Automotive Conference in New
York in December, Delphi's chief financial officer Joe
Massaro explained what he thought would happen to Delphi
under several Trump trade scenarios.
If Trump were to close the border with Mexico outright,
"in less than a week, all the people who voted for him in
Michigan and Ohio would be out of work," Massaro argued,
underscoring the fact that many factories in the U.S.,
including car makers in Detroit, depend on parts made in
Mexico.
If the United States were to withdraw from NAFTA and start
taxing imports from Mexico again, Delphi would continue doing
business in Mexico, he said. The company would pass on the
extra cost to its suppliers or to consumers, or would find a
way to reduce its production costs - which could mean layoffs
or salary cuts in Mexico."...
Trump can't fix that discrepancy in worker pay. Reagan's
so-called Free Trade began a race to the bottom for US
workers. It was known and discussed at the time. Reagan and
the Republican Party did not stand up for US workers and
neither did the Democrats in the day. Workers pay was
bartered off for cheaper goods to be bought at our stores.
That's the bargain made by Wall Street and D.C. and accepted
by American Workers who liked paying less at the store, not
realizing it meant they would be paid less - eventually.
And they certainly never dreamed it meant that in 20+
years their jobs would disappear overseas too.
Be worried: maybe they can. Since the hounding of Flynn, Trump has joined the
anti-Russia bandwagon, demanding that Russia return to Crimea to Ukraine, and making no
mention of removing sanctions. So all the threats and intimidation from the "intelligence
community" and the MSM
worked
, didn't they? Waiting for Trump to show some
real guts here. Waiting
The globalist mafia is trying to destroy Trump. There might be the same part of intelligence
community which is still loyal to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Still Flynn discussing sanctions, which could have been a violation of an 18th century
law, the Logan Act, that bars unauthorized citizens from brokering deals with foreign governments
involved in disputes with the United States.
Keith Kellogg links with Oracle my be as asset to Trump team.
As far back as the passage of the Patriot Act after 9/11, civil libertarians worried about
the surveillance state, the Panopticon, the erosion of privacy rights and due process in the name
of national security.
Paranoid fantasies were floated that President George W. Bush was monitoring the library cards
of political dissidents. Civil libertarians hailed NSA contractor Edward Snowden as a hero, or at
least accepted him as a necessary evil, for exposing the extent of Internet surveillance under President
Barack Obama.
Will civil libertarians now speak up for former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, whose
career has been destroyed with a barrage of leaked wiretaps? Does anyone care if those leaks were
accurate or legal?
Over the weekend, a few honest observers of the Flynn imbroglio
noted that none of the strategically leaked intercepts of his conversations with Russian Ambassador
Sergey Kislyak proved he actually did anything wrong .
The media fielded accusations that Flynn discussed lifting the Obama administration's sanctions
on Russia – a transgression that would have been a serious violation of pre-inauguration protocol
at best, and a prosecutable offense at worst. Flynn ostensibly sealed his fate by falsely assuring
Vice President Mike Pence he had no such discussions with Kislyak, prompting Pence to issue a robust
defense of Flynn that severely embarrassed Pence in retrospect.
On Tuesday, Eli Lake of
Bloomberg News joined the chorus of skeptics who said the hive of anonymous leakers infesting
the Trump administration never leaked anything that proved Flynn lied to Pence:
He says in his resignation letter that he did not deliberately leave out elements of his conversations
with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak when he recounted them to Vice President Mike Pence. The New York
Times and Washington Post reported that the transcript of the phone call reviewed over the weekend
by the White House could be read different ways. One White House official with knowledge of the
conversations told me that the Russian ambassador raised the sanctions to Flynn and that Flynn
responded that the Trump team would be taking office in a few weeks and would review Russia policy
and sanctions . That's neither illegal nor improper.
Lake also noted that leaks of sensitive national security information, such as the transcripts
of Flynn's phone calls to Kislyak, are extremely rare. In their rush to collect a scalp from
the Trump administration, the media forgot to tell its readers how unusual and alarming the Flynn-quisition
was:
It's very rare that reporters are ever told about government-monitored communications of U.S.
citizens, let alone senior U.S. officials. The last story like this to hit Washington was in 2009
when Jeff Stein, then of CQ, reported on intercepted phone calls between a senior Aipac lobbyist
and Jane Harman, who at the time was a Democratic member of Congress.
Normally intercepts of U.S. officials and citizens are some of the most tightly held government
secrets. This is for good reason. Selectively disclosing details of private conversations monitored
by the FBI or NSA gives the permanent state the power to destroy reputations from the cloak of
anonymity. This is what police states do.
In the past it was considered scandalous for senior U.S. officials to even request the identities
of U.S. officials incidentally monitored by the government (normally they are redacted from intelligence
reports). John Bolton's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was derailed in
2006 after the NSA confirmed he had made 10 such requests when he was Undersecretary of State
for Arms Control in George W. Bush's first term. The fact that the intercepts of Flynn's conversations
with Kislyak appear to have been widely distributed inside the government is a red flag.
While President Trump contemplated Flynn's fate on Monday evening, the
Wall Street Journal suggested: "How about asking if the spooks listening to Mr. Flynn
obeyed the law?" Among the questions the WSJ posed was whether intelligence agents secured proper
FISA court orders for the surveillance of Flynn.
That s the sort of question that convulsed the entire political spectrum, from liberals to libertarians,
after the Snowden revelations. Not long ago, both Democrats and Republicans were deeply concerned
about accountability and procedural integrity for the sprawling surveillance apparatus developed
by our law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Those are among the most serious concerns of the
Information Age, and they should not be cast aside in a mad dash to draw some partisan blood.
There are several theories as to exactly who brought Flynn down and why. Was it an internal White
House power struggle, the work of Obama administration holdovers, or the alligators of the "Deep
State" lunging to take a bite from the president who promised to "drain the swamp?"
The
Washington Free Beacon has sources who say Flynn's resignation is "the culmination of
a secret, months-long campaign by former Obama administration confidantes to handicap President Donald
Trump's national security apparatus and preserve the nuclear deal with Iran."
Flynn has prominently opposed that deal. According to the Free Beacon, this "small task
force of Obama loyalists" are ready to waylay anyone in the Trump administration who threatens the
Iran deal, their efforts coordinated by the sleazy Obama adviser who boasted of his ability to manipulate
the press by feeding them lies, Ben Rhodes.
Some observers are chucking at the folly of Michael Flynn daring to take on the intelligence community,
and paying the price for his reckless impudence. That is not funny – it is terrifying. In
fact, it is the nightmare of the rogue NSA come to life, the horror story that kept privacy advocates
tossing in their sheets for years.
Michael Flynn was appointed by the duly elected President of the United States. He certainly should
not have been insulated from criticism, but if he was brought down by entrenched, unelected agency
officials, it is nearly a coup – especially if, as Eli Lake worried on Twitter, Flynn's resignation
inspires further attacks with even higher-ranking targets:
Lake's article caught the eye of President Trump, who endorsed his point that intelligence and
law enforcement agencies should not interfere in U.S. politics:
Thank you to Eli Lake of The Bloomberg View – "The NSA & FBI should not interfere in our politics and
is" Very serious situation for USA
On the other hand, Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard openly endorsed the Deep State overthrowing
the American electorate and overturning the results of the 2016 election:
Obviously strongly prefer normal democratic and constitutional politics. But if it comes to
it, prefer the deep state to the Trump state.
Among the many things hideously wrong with this sentiment is that the American people know absolutely
nothing about the leakers who brought Flynn down, and might be lining up their next White House targets
at this very moment. We have no way to evaluate their motives or credibility. We didn't vote for
them, and we will have no opportunity to vote them out of office if we dissent from their agenda.
As mentioned above, we do not know if the material they are leaking is accurate .
Byron York of the Washington Examiner addressed the latter point by calling for full disclosure:
Important that entire transcript of Flynn-Kislyak conversation be released. Leakers have already
cherrypicked. Public needs to see it all.
That is no less important with Flynn's resignation in hand. We still need to know the full story
of his downfall. The American people deserve to know who is assaulting the government they voted
for in 2016. They deserve protection from the next attempt to manipulate our government with cherry
picked leaks.
They also deserve some intellectual consistency from those who have long and loudly worried about
the emergence of a surveillance state, and from conservatives who claim to value the rule of law.
Unknown persons with a mysterious agenda just made strategic use of partial information from a surveillance
program of uncertain legality to take out a presidential adviser.
Whether it's an Obama shadow government staging a Beltway insurrection, or Deep State officials
protecting their turf, this is the nightmare scenario of the post-Snowden era or are we not having
that nightmare anymore, if we take partisan pleasure in the outcome?
"... Support James Howard Kunstler blog by visiting Jim's Patreon Page -- ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... Putin Led a Complex Cyberattack Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Finds ..."
"... Did the Russians make Hillary Clinton look bad? Or did Hillary Clinton manage to do that herself? The NSA propaganda was designed as a smokescreen to conceal the veracity of the Wikileaks releases. Whoever actually rooted out the DNC and Podesta emails for Wikileaks ought to get the Pulitizer Prize for the outstanding public service of disclosing exactly how dishonest the Hillary operation was. ..."
"... The story may have climaxed with Trump's Friday NSA briefing, the heads of the various top intel agencies all assembled in one room to emphasize the solemn authority of the Deep State's power. ..."
"... This hulking security apparatus has become a menace to the Republic. ..."
"... Whether Trump himself is a menace to the Republic remains to be seen. Certainly he is the designated bag-holder for all the economic and financial depravity of several preceding administrations. When the markets blow, do you suppose the Russians will be blamed for that? Did Boris Yeltsin repeal the Glass-Steagall Act? Was Ben Bernanke a puppet of Putin? No, these actions and actors were homegrown American. For more than thirty years, we've been borrowing too much money so we can pretend to afford living in a blue-light-special demolition derby. And now we can't do that anymore. The physics of capital will finally assert itself. ..."
"... perhaps it's a good thing that the American people for the moment cannot tell exactly what the fuck is going on in this country, because from that dismal place there is nowhere to go but in the direction of clarity. ..."
The bamboozlement of the public is nearly complete. The Deep State has persuaded 80 percent of
Americans that all news is propaganda, especially the news emanating from the Deep State's own intel
department. They're still shooting for 100 percent. The fakest of all "fake news" stories turns out
to be "Russia Hacks Election." It was reported conclusively Saturday on the front page of The
New York Times , a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Deep State:
Putin Led a Complex Cyberattack Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Finds
WASHINGTON - President
Vladimir V. Putin of Russia directed a vast cyberattack aimed at denying
Hillary Clinton the presidency and installing
Donald
J. Trump in the Oval Office, the nation's top intelligence agencies said in an extraordinary
report they delivered on Friday to Mr. Trump.
You can be sure that this is now the "official" narrative aimed at the history books, sealing
the illegitimacy of Trump's election. It was served up with no direct proof, only the repeated "assertions"
that it was so. In fact, it's just this repetition of assertions-without-proof that defines propaganda.
It can also be interpreted as a declaration of war against an incoming president. The second civil
war now takes shape: It begins inside the groaning overgrown apparatus of the government itself.
Perhaps after that it spreads to the WalMart parking lots that have become America's new town square.
(WalMart sells pitchforks and patio torches.)
Did the Russians make Hillary Clinton look bad? Or did Hillary Clinton manage to do that herself?
The NSA propaganda was designed as a smokescreen to conceal the veracity of the Wikileaks releases.
Whoever actually rooted out the DNC and Podesta emails for Wikileaks ought to get the Pulitizer Prize
for the outstanding public service of disclosing exactly how dishonest the Hillary operation was.
The story may have climaxed with Trump's Friday NSA briefing, the heads of the various top
intel agencies all assembled in one room to emphasize the solemn authority of the Deep State's power.
Trump worked a nice piece of ju-jitsu afterward, pretending to accept the finding as briefly and
hollowly as possible and promising to "look into the matter" after January 20 th - when
he can tear a new asshole in the NSA. I hope he does. This hulking security apparatus has become
a menace to the Republic.
Whether Trump himself is a menace to the Republic remains to be seen. Certainly he is the
designated bag-holder for all the economic and financial depravity of several preceding administrations.
When the markets blow, do you suppose the Russians will be blamed for that? Did Boris Yeltsin repeal
the Glass-Steagall Act? Was Ben Bernanke a puppet of Putin? No, these actions and actors were homegrown
American. For more than thirty years, we've been borrowing too much money so we can pretend to afford
living in a blue-light-special demolition derby. And now we can't do that anymore. The physics of
capital will finally assert itself.
What we're actually seeing in the current ceremonial between the incoming Trump and the outgoing
Obama is the smoldering wreckage of the Democratic Party (which I'm still unhappily enrolled in),
and flames spreading into the Republican party - as idiots such as Lindsey Graham and John McCain
beat their war drums against Russia. The suave Mr. Obama is exiting the scene on a low wave of hysteria
and the oafish Trump rolls in on the cloudscape above, tweeting his tweets from on high, and
perhaps it's a good thing that the American people for the moment cannot tell exactly what the fuck
is going on in this country, because from that dismal place there is nowhere to go but in the direction
of clarity.
BY: Right. Brexit and maybe even Trump's
victory say something about the arrogance of the elite.
Bankers say that free trade should prevail. Even we,
academics-how many of us are actually looking into
distribution and redistribution? Few. We're still spending
time on writing dynamic models to talk about the gains of
trade.
Even if old-fashioned free trade is correct, the speed of
adjustment is very important. We know that rapid adjustment
is no good. How many of us ask ourselves what should be the
adjustment in trade? We rarely talk about that.
The world may have changed. I gave you my conjecture. But we
are also arrogant. We hold on to our old beliefs on the gains
of trade.
----
Very Dani Rodrick, I thought. Interesting stuff.
Also, this is something that I think you'll like. I have not
read all of it yet but here is the link and an excerpt:
http://evonomics.com/time-new-economic-thinking-based-best-science-available-not-ideology/
"Some will cling on to the idea that the consensus can be
revived. They will say we just need to defend it more
vigorously, the facts will eventually prevail, the populist
wave is exaggerated, it's really just about immigration,
Brexit will be a compromise, Clinton won more votes than
Trump, and so on. But this is wishful thinking. Large swathes
of the electorate have lost faith in the neoliberal
consensus, the political parties that backed it, and the
institutions that promoted it. This has created an
ideological vacuum being filled by bad old ideas, most
notably a revival of nationalism in the US and a number of
European countries, as well as a revival of the hard
socialist left in some countries."
I think Peter K has been making similar points for a long
time now. Interesting stuff.
Consensus among whom? The economic-political elite? Maybe;
but certainly not among the general electorate. Most voters
were voting for parties out of habit, or on cultural issues
(for or against diversity and civil rights), or bread &
butter economic issues ("the Republicans will cut my taxes
and the regulation of my business" versus "the Democrats will
preserve my Medicare and Social Security"). I don't think
most voters had/have any clue of what neoliberalism is.
Well, you raise an excellent point. I don't have a solid
rejoinder but I will note that if even 5% of the electorate
changes its mind an election result can flip one way or the
other. But, yes, I agree with you that most voters are not
selecting a candidate based on which candidate's economic
philosophy is most closely aligned with theirs. Still,
especially in the primaries, where the voters are a different
population than the general, it could make a difference. I
would argue that it was just this difference that made
Sanders surprisingly popular among the Democratic primary
voters.
The question is to what extent people were voting FOR a
candidate, as AGAINST a candidate or the status quo. That's
the only point I was trying to make.
Most voters have neither the time, energy, inclination, or
knowledge base to delve into the issues to make an informed
decision on which candidate/platform most reflects their
values and aspirations. They subcontract out that vetting of
individual candidates to parties that they believe are
broadly reflective of their views.
This past general election, and its preceding primaries,
was the result of a broad revolt against the candidates
anointed by the parties' elites, indicating deep
dissatisfaction with the status quo.
"I think Peter K has been making similar points for a long
time now. Interesting stuff."
Yes I liked the as well.
Luigi Zingales is a member of the editorial board for Pro
Market and he had some piece published in the New York Times
about economics and politics (specifically Italian I think).
He was the first I read who compared Trump with Silvio
Berlusconi. Zingales discussed how Berlusconi was brought
down, by being treated as an ordinary conservative
politician. Perhaps the same will work with Trump.
Yes, I had read the evonomics piece and thought it was good.
Thanks. Eric Beinhocker makes some good points. I liked his
optimism as far as some forms of populism were concerned, and
had a slight hope that Donald Trump might turn into a
Theodore Roosevelt type of populist. That hope has
disappeared completely and now we face the realization that
we are truly completely screwed.
asymmetric information, and the recent illuminating example
of Wells Fargo's excellence in pushing products that
customers did not want nor need.
BY: Some financial "innovation" is faddish. It does not
create value.
GR: Approximately 9 percent of U.S. GDP is finance. Some
economists argue that probably 3-5 percent is useful for
allocating capital, storing value, smoothing consumptions,
and creating competition, and the rest is preying on
asymmetric information
"
~~Guy Roinik~
Do you see how this asymmetric information
plays out?
It is the retail vendor who keeps better information than
the retail customer. It is the vendor's expectations of
disinflation vs inflation rather than the customer's
expectations that control the change in M2V. Got it?
When vendor expects deflation he dumps inventory, but when
he expects inflation he holds on to inventory as he waits for
higher profit margins to arrive. He holds onto merchandise by
simply raising prices. But why do economists advertise the
reverse mechanism? Why does the status quo have a need for
distorting truth?
Inflation is offered to the proles as a substitute for tax
relief to the impoverished. Do you see how it works?
"
Tax relief for the wealthy will give you delicious inflation.
Now jump for it!
"
~~The Yea Sayers~
... A 2015 survey by the U.S. Dept. of Transportation
found there are more than 450 structurally deficient bridges
in the state, although the number is down from previous
years. Every working day, nearly 10 million cars, trucks, and
school buses cross these deteriorating overpasses. And then
there's the nation's rail system and airports, which lag far
behind other nations in speed, efficiency, and modernization.
...
Bridgework and a partial plate! Should we shift gears on
our interstate construction?
By building our long haul interstates as one-way roads
interleaved with roads going in other direction, we could
have twice as many roads but intersections could be much
simpler, efficient, and less confusing. Freeflow
overpass/underpass with turning ramps will save fuel thus
environment. Sure!
We waste lot of traffic control man hours and squad cars
that could be otherwise deployed towards solving crime and
crushing the mob. By proper design and construction of speed
bumps some of this highway patrol could be eliminated. Ceu!
Rather that short 2 foot bumps in the road, build smooth
slow and long valley and knoll that will not rattle your
frame and bill you for steering realignment but instead send
an 18 wheeler up into the air for a half gainer. This kind of
speed trap could eliminate lot of bad
"... And I am not sure that it was neoliberal globalization as the only factor in rasining the standards of living in case of China. They have also industrialization process going on, give or take. Chinese maquiladoras were allowed under strict conditions of transferring technology. That's what distinguishes China from India or Mexico, where neoliberal administrations were much less protective of interest of their nations and allowed Western monopolies more freedom. ..."
"... On the basis of careful empirical work, Rodrik concluded that "globalization makes it difficult to sustain the postwar social bargain" of labor peace in exchange for "steadily improving worker pay and benefits." ..."
"... It's not globalization, it's "neoliberal globalization" and neoliberalism in general which killed the New Deal capitalism. As soon as the US elite realized the cookies are not enough for everybody they start withdrawing them from the table. Stagnation and the subsequent collapse of the USSR also played an important role, allowing neoliberal propagandists to claim the victory. ..."
""seem unimpressed by the fact that globalization has lifted
hundreds of millions of desperately poor people in China and
India into the global middle class. ""
Ergo enabling the savaging
of working class people in the US was worth it.
And I am not sure that it was neoliberal globalization as the
only factor in rasining the standards of living in case of China. They have also industrialization process going on, give or
take. Chinese maquiladoras were allowed under strict conditions
of transferring technology. That's what distinguishes China from
India or Mexico, where neoliberal administrations were much less
protective of interest of their nations and allowed Western monopolies
more freedom.
After all the Communist Party is still a ruling Party of China.
With a neoliberal twist yes, but they still adhere to the ideas
of Marx.
Kuttner really captures the contributions of Dani Rodrik. If
I had to pick one sentence to capture this review - it would
be this:
On the basis of careful empirical work, Rodrik concluded
that "globalization makes it difficult to sustain the postwar
social bargain" of labor peace in exchange for "steadily
improving worker pay and benefits."
libezkova -> pgl...
, -1
It's not globalization, it's "neoliberal globalization" and neoliberalism
in general which killed the New Deal capitalism. As soon as the US elite realized the cookies are not enough
for everybody they start withdrawing them from the table.
Stagnation and the subsequent collapse of the USSR also played
an important role, allowing neoliberal propagandists to claim
the victory.
"... Block refugee admissions from the war-torn country of Syria indefinitely. ..."
"... Suspend refugee admissions from all countries for 120 days. After that period, the U.S. will only accept refugees from countries jointly approved by the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department and the Director of National Intelligence. ..."
"... Expedite the completion of a biometric entry-exit tracking system for all visitors to the U.S. and require in-person interviews for all individuals seeking a nonimmigrant visa. ..."
"... Suspend the visa interview waiver program indefinitely and review whether existing reciprocity agreements are reciprocal in practice. ..."
According to the draft executive order, President
Donald Trump plans
to:
Block refugee admissions from the war-torn country of Syria indefinitely.
Suspend refugee admissions from all countries for 120 days. After that period, the U.S. will
only accept refugees from countries jointly approved by the Department of Homeland Security, the
State Department and the Director of National Intelligence.
Cap total refugee admissions for fiscal year 2017 at 50,000 ― less than half of the 110,000
proposed by the Obama administration.
Ban for 30 days all "immigrant and nonimmigrant" entry of individuals from countries designated
in Division O, Title II, Section 203 of the 2016 consolidated appropriations act: Iraq, Syria,
Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. These countries were
targeted last year in restrictions on dual nationals' and recent travelers' participation
in the visa waiver program.
Suspend visa issuance to countries of "particular concern." After 60 days, DHS, the State
Department and DNI are instructed to draft a list of countries that don't comply with requests
for information. Foreign nationals from those countries will be banned from entering the U.S.
Establish "safe zones to protect vulnerable Syrian populations." The executive order tasks
the secretary of defense with drafting a plan for safe zones in Syria within 90 days. This would
be be an escalation of U.S. involvement in Syria and could be the first official indication of
how Trump will approach the conflict there.
Expedite the completion of a biometric entry-exit tracking system for all visitors to the
U.S. and require in-person interviews for all individuals seeking a nonimmigrant visa.
Suspend the visa interview waiver program indefinitely and review whether existing reciprocity
agreements are reciprocal in practice.
The draft order, which is expected to be signed later this week, details the Trump administration's
plans to "collect and make publicly available within 180 days ... information regarding the number
of foreign-born individuals in the United States who have been radicalized after entry into the United
States and engaged in terrorism-related acts." It also describes plans to collect information about
"gender-based violence against women or honor killings" by foreign-born individuals in the U.S.
The
language is unclear as to whether the names of these individuals, which could include American citizens,
would be made public, nor does the document define "radicalized" or "terrorism-related acts," leaving
open the potential to sweep vast numbers of people onto the list.
The move is reminiscent of the
expansive enemies lists created by former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover last century.
Jimmy Dore makes some great points from time to time but this
particular rant has so many flaws that it would be a real
undertaking to itemize all of them.
Millions if not billions of people, including millions of
USAmericans have been horrified at US terrorism wherever it
occurs. We weren't OK with the US terrorizing these seven
countries or any of the other countries the US has terrorized.
We protested. We talked to our political representatives. We
advised young men to refuse to volunteer to kill and be killed
for money. We did whatever we could think of to stop the
carnage. We were unsuccessful.
It's not the temporary ban on immigration that upsets people so
much as singling out people from specific countries, whether
Obama's Republican Congress in did it or Trump did it. The ban
should be on all religious extremists including apartheid
Zionists and Christian extremists. Religious extremists from all
of the major religious have committed heinous atrocities.
I could go on, but those are the main points I wanted to make.
What? Fake news isn't enough for you, so now you're engaging
in fake debate? You have problems with Jimmy's points then
argue them. Too many for you? Then pick the top six and
critique them. Otherwise stop stuffing your fingers in your
ears and loudly singing patriotic songs to drown out the
unpleasant truths. P.S. There were significant protests when
Bush Jr. was running the show but they all died out after
Obama took over the nation's reins. After that all I heard
from the American left about his constant assault on the
Constitution, keeping Guantanamo, the country's wars of
aggression, U.S. support of the military coup in Honduras,
his unconditional and unlimited subsidization of Wall Street,
his unprecedented vendetta against government whistle
blowers, and his impressive accumulation of 306 golf outings
(at a gob smacking five hours a pop!) ... was crickets.
You read different stuff than I do. I heard a fire hose
stream of Progressive/liberal criticism of Obama's
policies and enormous disappointment in Obama - including
from people like Michael Moore, Rachael Maddow, and Amy
Goodman, and especially from Glenn Greenwald, Assange and
other brilliant political thinkers as well as from
Veterans for Peace, Pro-Palestine humanitarians, and
anti-nuclear activists. Medea Benjamin has been on the
front lines for eight years attacking Obama's war
mongering. Of course we need many more like her. Unless
you are her, using a fake name, then why weren't you right
there with her?
And the Demo establishment lines up to attack Drumpf's ban;
hoping to get some easy votes for corporatist neo-con
hypocrites? Cynical demo pigs would love to impeach Drumpf and
wage nice with Pence. We are f*^ked unless we (us "lefty
ranters" and more) don't demand radical change from the
Corporatist neo-fascist establishments of both parties - the
party of dicks and the party of pant-suited V's. And the
media/wall street/military industrial complex can't get enough
of this.
BEWARE -- Why is the Zionist control media, and many Zionist
controlled organizations, so adamant about allowing people from
war torn Muslim countries come to the US ?
The main purpose of all the noise against president Trump is to
weaken him and then force him to take the positions the deep
state wants him to take. Among the many problems he has he is
only an apprentice.
Trump's Muslim ban is not about terrorism or keeping America
safe. Otherwise Saudia Arabia would have been on the top of
list. This is about countries that stand against the US/Israel
agenda.
https://www.darkmoon.me/ /dona..
.
This guy should take Wolf Blitzer's job and expose the truth on
the national media. Blitzer can be consigned to telling risible
lies on You Tube, as should most of the jokers in the so-called
mainstream media.
People attacking Trump after 11 days in office, NEVER criticized
Mrs. Clinton, Obama forblowing up and killing hundreds of
thousands in Ukraine, Libya, Syria, etc, the phony bought and
paid for Establishment Liberals who only call them 'war crimes '
when an (R) is attached to the Presidents name like: Michael
Moore, Rachael Maddow, Medea Benjamin and Amy Goodman,
all frauds and liars like CNN, CBS and NBC, who ran this slimey
headline:
"Citizens" who speak at town meetings are hired, scripted actors
"Last December, the town council in Camarillo, a small town in
southern California, a man called Prince Jordan Tyson stood up
and delivered a three minute speech as a "concerned citizen"
about a planned construction project before the council.
Tyson is not a concerned citizen of Camarillo: he's a struggling
actor from Beverly Hills, who was paid $100 to deliver a
scripted position from the podium while misrepresenting himself
as a local, sincere citizen.
Tyson worked for Adam Swart, a recent UCLA grad, who runs a
company called "Crowds on Demand," which hires actors to attend
politicians' campaign meetings, and to deliver scripted dialog
in the guise of concerned citizens. Swart says that he has been
paid by "dozens of campaigns for state officials, and 2016
presidential candidates" whom he won't name, because if he "did,
nobody would hire us."
http://boingboing.net/2016/02/19/citizens-who-spe...
All those demonstrating against Trump are a asset to the deep
state. I can't understand why those demonstrators in the UK/EU
bashing Trump, there are more pressing reasons to demonstrate
in the UK, poverty, austerity, families relying on food banks
that the supermarkets have thrown out, where are the marches
against that obscenity, instead of going along with the agenda
of the Clinton band wagon, those causing havoc in the US/UK/EU,
would be better employed in demonstrating against those who have
created all those immigrants Muslim or otherwise in the first
place, ie; bush blair obama the clintons etc; time those out on
the streets got their priorities right.
People attacking Trump after 11 days in office, NEVER criticized
Mrs. Clinton, Obama forblowing up and killing hundreds of
thousands in Ukraine, Libya, Syria, etc, the phony bought and
paid for Establishment Liberals who only call them 'war crimes '
when an (R) is attached to the Presidents name like: Michael
Moore, Rachael Maddow, Medea Benjamin and Amy Goodman,
all frauds and liars like CNN, CBS and NBC, who ran this slimey
headline:
"Citizens" who speak at town meetings are hired, scripted actors
"Last December, the town council in Camarillo, a small town in
southern California, a man called Prince Jordan Tyson stood up
and delivered a three minute speech as a "concerned citizen"
about a planned construction project before the council.
Tyson is not a concerned citizen of Camarillo: he's a struggling
actor from Beverly Hills, who was paid $100 to deliver a
scripted position from the podium while misrepresenting himself
as a local, sincere citizen.
Tyson worked for Adam Swart, a recent UCLA grad, who runs a
company called "Crowds on Demand," which hires actors to attend
politicians' campaign meetings, and to deliver scripted dialog
in the guise of concerned citizens. Swart says that he has been
paid by "dozens of campaigns for state officials, and 2016
presidential candidates" whom he won't name, because if he "did,
nobody would hire us."
http://boingboing.net/2016/02/19/citizens-who-spe...
Strife Over
Immigrants: Can California Predict the
Nation's Future?
https://nyti.ms/2jW2PTW
via
@UpshotNYT
NYT - Emily Badger - February 1, 2017
The political ads warned that illegal immigrants were dashing, by the millions, over the Mexican
border, racing to claim taxpayer-funded public services in California.
"They keep coming," the announcer intoned over grainy aerial footage and a thrumming bassline.
When viewed on YouTube today, these ads hardly seem the stuff of multicultural California as we know
it.
In 1994, though, that message helped lift California's governor, the Republican Pete Wilson, to
re-election. That same year, voters adopted a referendum, Proposition 187, denying state services
to undocumented immigrants, including public education and health care.
California is often held up as a harbinger of the demographics - and, Democrats hope, the politics
- of the nation to come. Mr. Wilson's bet against immigration is thought to have hurt Republicans
in the long run in the state. But in the dawn of the Trump era, the state is also a cautionary tale
of what happens during the tumultuous years when that change is occurring rapidly.
Donald J. Trump has taken office in a nation that is not only growing more diverse, but also growing
more diverse everywhere, because of both foreign immigration and shifting internal migration patterns
that are touching the last bastions of nearly all-white America.
After an election in which Mr. Trump appealed to unease about the nation's changing identity -
and a month when he alarmed civil rights leaders and immigration advocates - his presidency poses
a very different question from his predecessor's.
Not: Are we post-racial? But: How will we handle the racial change that is only going to accelerate?
Sociological studies suggest that increasing contact between groups can yield familiarity and
tolerance. But it can also unnerve, especially in communities where that rapid change is most visible
- and when politicians stand to gain by exploiting it. California lashed out at diversity before
embracing it.
"There's a very rich history of xenophobia, of racism, of trying to wipe each other out," said
Connie Rice, a longtime civil rights lawyer in California. "It's not like we were all of a sudden
born the Golden State." ...
Related?
More Californians dreaming of a country without
Trump: poll
http://reut.rs/2j6s8iG
Reuters - Sharon Bernstein - January 24
The election of Republican businessman Donald Trump as president of the United States has some
Californians dreaming - of their own country.
One in every three California residents supports the most populous U.S. state's peaceful withdrawal
from the union, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll, many of them Democrats strongly opposed
to Trump's ascension to the country's highest office.
The 32 percent support rate is sharply higher than the last time the poll asked Californians about
secession, in 2014, when one-in-five or 20 percent favored it around the time Scotland held its independence
referendum and voted to remain in the United Kingdom.
California also far surpasses the national average favoring secession, which stood at 22 percent,
down from 24 percent in 2014.
The poll surveyed 500 Californians among more than 14,000 adults nationwide from Dec. 6 to Jan.
19 and has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of one percentage point nationally and
five percentage points in California.
The idea of secession is largely a settled matter in the United States, though the impulse to
break away carries on in some corners of the country, most notably in Texas.
While interest has remained about the same nationwide, it has found more favor in California and
the concept has even earned a catchy name - "Calexit."
"I don't think it's likely to happen, but if things get really bad it could be an option," said
Stephen Miller, 70, a retired transportation planner who lives in Sacramento and told pollsters he
"tended to support" secession. ...
'Calexit' would be a disaster for progressive values
http://fw.to/ks9LHNS
LA Times - January 27
Imagine if President Trump announced that he wanted to oust California from the United States.
If it weren't for us, after all, Trump would have won the popular vote he so lusts after by 1.4 million.
Blue America would lose its biggest source of electoral votes in all future elections. The Senate
would have two fewer Democrats. The House of Representatives would lose 38 Democrats and just 14
Republicans. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, among the most liberal in the nation, would be
changed irrevocably. And the U.S. as a whole would suddenly be a lot less ethnically diverse than
it is today.
For those reasons, Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan,
Republicans with White House ambitions, opponents of legalizing marijuana, advocates of criminalizing
abortion and various white nationalist groups might all conclude –– for different reasons –– that
they would benefit politically from a separation, even as liberals and progressives across America
would correctly see it as a catastrophe.
So it makes sense that the leader of the Yes California Independence Campaign, Marcus Ruiz Evans,
was - contrary to popular assumptions - a registered Republican when he formed the separatist group
two years ago, according to the San Jose Mercury News. He briefly hosted conservative talk radio
shows in Fresno, and would not tell the newspaper if he voted for Trump. ...
Point well made! Regarding the argument that today's
immigrants aren't as willing as past immigrants to
assimilate, I recently read that 80% of 19th Century German
immigrants returned to Germany, and 30% of Italian immigrants
did the same.
Our national mythology glosses over the history of how
unwelcoming our country has mostly been to new immigrants.
The idea that America has always been a land that welcomed
immigrants and provided them immediate opportunity is very
comfortable, but it contradicts a much harsher history. It's
a real shame that so many of our fellow countrymen are
willfully ignorant of their own ancestors' struggles, and are
willing to inflict the same harshness on our newest arrivals.
On the other hand, the news coverage of this past
weekend's protests over the Trump immigration Executive Order
included a picture of a man carrying a sign saying,
"Mexican-Americans Welcome Muslim Refugees!" I can't thing of
anything that expresses the ideals of real Americanism better
than that!
President Trump signed an executive order on Friday titled "Protecting the Nation From Foreign
Terrorist Entry Into the United States." Following is the language of that order, as supplied by
the White House.
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and laws of the United States of
America, including the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1101
et seq
., and section
301 of title 3, United States Code, and to protect the American people from terrorist attacks by
foreign nationals admitted to the United States, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Purpose
.
The visa-issuance process plays a crucial role in detecting individuals
with terrorist ties and stopping them from entering the United States. Perhaps in no instance was
that more apparent than the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when State Department policy
prevented consular officers from properly scrutinizing the visa applications of several of the 19
foreign nationals who went on to murder nearly 3,000 Americans. And while the visa-issuance process
was reviewed and amended after the September 11 attacks to better detect would-be terrorists from
receiving visas, these measures did not stop attacks by foreign nationals who were admitted to the
United States.
Numerous foreign-born individuals have been convicted or implicated in terrorism-related crimes
since September 11, 2001, including foreign nationals who entered the United States after receiving
visitor, student, or employment visas, or who entered through the United States refugee resettlement
program. Deteriorating conditions in certain countries due to war, strife, disaster, and civil unrest
increase the likelihood that terrorists will use any means possible to enter the United States. The
United States must be vigilant during the visa-issuance process to ensure that those approved for
admission do not intend to harm Americans and that they have no ties to terrorism.
In order to protect Americans, the United States must ensure that those admitted to this country
do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles. The United States cannot, and
should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies
over American law. In addition, the United States should not admit those who engage in acts of bigotry
or hatred (including "honor" killings, other forms of violence against women, or the persecution
of those who practice religions different from their own) or those who would oppress Americans of
any race, gender, or sexual orientation.
Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to protect its citizens from foreign nationals
who intend to commit terrorist attacks in the United States; and to prevent the admission of foreign
nationals who intend to exploit United States immigration laws for malevolent purposes.
Sec. 3. Suspension of Issuance of Visas and Other Immigration Benefits to Nationals of Countries
of Particular Concern
.
(a) The Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary
of State and the Director of National Intelligence, shall immediately conduct a review to determine
the information needed from any country to adjudicate any visa, admission, or other benefit under
the INA (adjudications) in order to determine that the individual seeking the benefit is who the
individual claims to be and is not a security or public-safety threat.
(b) The Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Director
of National Intelligence, shall submit to the President a report on the results of the review described
in subsection (a) of this section, including the Secretary of Homeland Security's determination of
the information needed for adjudications and a list of countries that do not provide adequate information,
within 30 days of the date of this order. The Secretary of Homeland Security shall provide a copy
of the report to the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence.
(c) To temporarily reduce investigative burdens on relevant agencies during the review period
described in subsection (a) of this section, to ensure the proper review and maximum utilization
of available resources for the screening of foreign nationals, and to ensure that adequate standards
are established to prevent infiltration by foreign terrorists or criminals, pursuant to section 212(f)
of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1182(f), I hereby proclaim that the immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into the
United States of aliens from countries referred to in section 217(a)(12) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1187(a)(12),
would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, and I hereby suspend entry into the United
States, as immigrants and nonimmigrants, of such persons for 90 days from the date of this order
(excluding those foreign nationals traveling on diplomatic visas, North Atlantic Treaty Organization
visas, C-2 visas for travel to the United Nations, and G-1, G-2, G-3, and G-4 visas).
(d) Immediately upon receipt of the report described in subsection (b) of this section regarding
the information needed for adjudications, the Secretary of State shall request all foreign governments
that do not supply such information to start providing such information regarding their nationals
within 60 days of notification.
(e) After the 60-day period described in subsection (d) of this section expires, the Secretary
of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State, shall submit to the President
a list of countries recommended for inclusion on a Presidential proclamation that would prohibit
the entry of foreign nationals (excluding those foreign nationals traveling on diplomatic visas,
North Atlantic Treaty Organization visas, C-2 visas for travel to the United Nations, and G-1, G-2,
G-3, and G-4 visas) from countries that do not provide the information requested pursuant to subsection
(d) of this section until compliance occurs.
(f) At any point after submitting the list described in subsection (e) of this section, the Secretary
of State or the Secretary of Homeland Security may submit to the President the names of any additional
countries recommended for similar treatment.
(g) Notwithstanding a suspension pursuant to subsection (c) of this section or pursuant to a Presidential
proclamation described in subsection (e) of this section, the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security
may, on a case-by-case basis, and when in the national interest, issue visas or other immigration
benefits to nationals of countries for which visas and benefits are otherwise blocked.
(h) The Secretaries of State and Homeland Security shall submit to the President a joint report
on the progress in implementing this orderwithin 30 days of the date of this order, a second report
within 60 daysof the date of this order, a third report within 90 days of the date of this order,
and a fourth report within 120 days of the date of this order.
Sec. 4. Implementing Uniform Screening Standards for All Immigration Programs
.
(a) The
Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Director of National Intelligence, and
the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation shall implement a program, as part of the adjudication
process for immigration benefits, to identify individuals seeking to enter the United States on a
fraudulent basis with the intent to cause harm, or who are at risk of causing harm subsequent to
their admission. This program will include the development of a uniform screening standard and procedure,
such as in-person interviews; a database of identity documents proffered by applicants to ensure
that duplicate documents are not used by multiple applicants; amended application forms that include
questions aimed at identifying fraudulent answers and malicious intent; a mechanism to ensure that
the applicant is who the applicant claims to be; a process to evaluate the applicant's likelihood
of becoming a positively contributing member of society and the applicant's ability to make contributions
to the national interest; and a mechanism to assess whether or not the applicant has the intent to
commit criminal or terrorist acts after entering the United States.
(b) The Secretary of Homeland Security, in conjunction with the Secretary of State, the Director
of National Intelligence, and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, shall submit to
the President an initial report on the progress of this directive within 60 days of the date of this
order, a second report within 100 days of the date of this order, and a third report within 200 days
of the date of this order.
Sec. 5. Realignment of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for Fiscal Year 2017
.
(a) The
Secretary of State shall suspend the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) for 120 days. During
the 120-day period, the Secretary of State, in conjunction with the Secretary of Homeland Security
and in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, shall review the USRAP application
and adjudication process to determine what additional procedures should be taken to ensure that those
approved for refugee admission do not pose a threat to the security and welfare of the United States,
and shall implement such additional procedures. Refugee applicants who are already in the USRAP process
may be admitted upon the initiation and completion of these revised procedures. Upon the date that
is 120 days after the date of this order, the Secretary of State shall resume USRAP admissions only
for nationals of countries for which the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security,
and the Director of National Intelligence have jointly determined that such additional procedures
are adequate to ensure the security and welfare of the United States.
(b) Upon the resumption of USRAP admissions, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the
Secretary of Homeland Security, is further directed to make changes, to the extent permitted by law,
to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided
that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual's country of nationality.
Where necessary and appropriate, the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security shall recommend legislation
to the President that would assist with such prioritization.
(c) Pursuant to section 212(f) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1182(f), I hereby proclaim that the entry
of nationals of Syria as refugees is detrimental to the interests of the United States and thus suspend
any such entry until such time as I have determined that sufficient changes have been made to the
USRAP to ensure that admission of Syrian refugees is consistent with the national interest.
(d) Pursuant to section 212(f) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1182(f), I hereby proclaim that the entry
of more than 50,000 refugees in fiscal year 2017 would be detrimental to the interests of the United
States, and thus suspend any such entry until such time as I determine that additional admissions
would be in the national interest.
(e) Notwithstanding the temporary suspension imposed pursuant to subsection (a) of this section,
the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security may jointly determine to admit individuals to the
United States as refugees on a case-by-case basis, in their discretion, but only so long as they
determine that the admission of such individuals as refugees is in the national interest - including
when the person is a religious minority in his country of nationality facing religious persecution,
when admitting the person would enable the United States to conform its conduct to a preexisting
international agreement, or when the person is already in transit and denying admission would cause
undue hardship - and it would not pose a risk to the security or welfare of the United States.
(f) The Secretary of State shall submit to the President an initial report on the progress of
the directive in subsection (b) of this section regarding prioritization of claims made by individuals
on the basis of religious-based persecution within 100 days of the date of this order and shall submit
a second report within 200 days of the date of this order.
(g) It is the policy of the executive branch that, to the extent permitted by law and as practicable,
State and local jurisdictions be granted a role in the process of determining the placement or settlement
in their jurisdictions of aliens eligible to be admitted to the United States as refugees. To that
end, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall examine existing law to determine the extent to which,
consistent with applicable law, State and local jurisdictions may have greater involvement in the
process of determining the placement or resettlement of refugees in their jurisdictions, and shall
devise a proposal to lawfully promote such involvement.
Sec. 6. Rescission of Exercise of Authority Relating to the Terrorism Grounds of Inadmissibility
.
The Secretaries of State and Homeland Security shall, in consultation with the Attorney General,
consider rescinding the exercises of authority in section 212 of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1182, relating
to the terrorism grounds of inadmissibility, as well as any related implementing memoranda.
Sec. 7. Expedited Completion of the Biometric Entry-Exit Tracking System. (a) The Secretary of
Homeland Security shall expedite the completion and implementation of a biometric entry-exit tracking
system for all travelers to the United States, as recommended by the National Commission on Terrorist
Attacks Upon the United States.
(b) The Secretary of Homeland Security shall submit to the President periodic reports on the progress
of the directive contained in subsection (a) of this section. The initial report shall be submitted
within 100 days of the date of this order, a second report shall be submitted within 200 days of
the date of this order, and a third report shall be submitted within 365 days of the date of this
order. Further, the Secretary shall submit a report every 180 days thereafter until the system is
fully deployed and operational.
Sec. 8. Visa Interview Security
.
(a) The Secretary of State shall immediately suspend the
Visa Interview Waiver Program and ensure compliance with section 222 of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1222, which
requires that all individuals seeking a nonimmigrant visa undergo an in-person interview, subject
to specific statutory exceptions.
(b) To the extent permitted by law and subject to the availability of appropriations, the Secretary
of State shall immediately expand the Consular Fellows Program, including by substantially increasing
the number of Fellows, lengthening or making permanent the period of service, and making language
training at the Foreign Service Institute available to Fellows for assignment to posts outside of
their area of core linguistic ability, to ensure that non-immigrant visa-interview wait times are
not unduly affected.
Sec. 9. Visa Validity Reciprocity
.
The Secretary of State shall review all nonimmigrant
visa reciprocity agreements to ensure that they are, with respect to each visa classification, truly
reciprocal insofar as practicable with respect to validity period and fees, as required by sections
221(c) and 281 of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1201(c) and 1351, and other treatment. If a country does not
treat United States nationals seeking nonimmigrant visas in a reciprocal manner, the Secretary of
State shall adjust the visa validity period, fee schedule, or other treatment to match the treatment
of United States nationals by the foreign country, to the extent practicable.
Sec. 10. Transparency and Data Collection
.
(a) To be more transparent with the American
people, and to more effectively implement policies and practices that serve the national interest,
the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Attorney General, shall, consistent
with applicable law and national security, collect and make publicly available within 180 days, and
every 180 days thereafter:
(i) information regarding the number of foreign nationals in the United States who have been charged
with terrorism-related offenses while in the United States; convicted of terrorism-related offenses
while in the United States; or removed from the United States based on terrorism-related activity,
affiliation, or material support to a terrorism-related organization, or any other national security
reasons since the date of this order or the last reporting period, whichever is later;
(ii) information regarding the number of foreign nationals in the United States who have been
radicalized after entry into the United States and engaged in terrorism-related acts, or who have
provided material support to terrorism-related organizations in countries that pose a threat to the
United States, since the date of this order or the last reporting period, whichever is later; and
(iii) information regarding the number and types of acts of gender-based violence against women,
including honor killings, in the United States by foreign nationals, since the date of this order
or the last reporting period, whichever is later; and
(iv) any other information relevant to public safety and security as determined by the Secretary
of Homeland Security and the Attorney General, including information on the immigration status of
foreign nationals charged with major offenses.
(b) The Secretary of State shall, within one year of the date of this order, provide a report
on the estimated long-term costs of the USRAP at the Federal, State, and local levels.
Sec. 11. General Provisions
.
(a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or
otherwise affect:
(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or
(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary,
administrative, or legislative proposals.
(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability
of appropriations.
(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural,
enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies,
or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
"... I happen to think the heartlessness of this Order was a feature, not a bug, in order to garner maximum attention. I just read Mish's comment section, and Trump's base is cheering. ..."
"... silent on ethnic racism and the rest of US so much more guilty ..... on drone assassination and militarist nation building gone awry, tilting with nuclear war to keep NATO less recondite, etc, etc....... ..."
"... Before the Nazi had the power to go after the Jews they had effect the party's police state, before which ordinary Germans [and whatever police there were after the depression shuttered everything] permitted the party to do organized violence on their opponents: the social democrats, socialists, bolshevists, et al. ..."
"... The ban on returning residents is utterly against the law. ..."
'Mr. Trump's executive
order is un-American, not Christian, and hopefully
unconstitutional. This is a shameful act and no good person
can remain silent.'
Thanks for saying this Bill. JFK International had a
demonstration against this ban that featured the detention of
a brave Iraqi who helped US troops. This ban is also
incredibly stupid.
I happen to think the heartlessness of
this Order was a feature, not a bug, in order to garner
maximum attention. I just read Mish's comment section, and
Trump's base is cheering.
But on a longer term scale, heartlessness towards
Muslim immigrants and DREAMers is going to turn persuadables
against Trump. That and the next recession.
We'll differ on this one part, people that voted for Trump
are not persuadables. They have always voted the same way in
every single election they have voted in.
Amazes me that
even now people keep thinking that Trump voters are anything
but loyal GOP voters. And I think the best argument against
this (besides common sense) is the reaction of Rep leaders to
this obviously illegal action.
They're silent.
They cannot afford to speak out against this racist
policy, as their own voters are for this racist policy.
silent on ethnic racism and the rest of US so much more
guilty ..... on drone assassination and militarist nation
building gone awry, tilting with nuclear war to keep NATO
less recondite, etc, etc.......
Are the libruls all
riled up because the immigrant ban might reduce terror
shootings in US to reduce screaming for techno-murder?
There were a fair amount of voters who "came home" to the GOP
before the election, even though they found Trump himself
distasteful. At least some of those nouveau-Reagan democrats
also voted for him because of his economic agenda. They
believed that his racism was all for show.
Once upon a time, for
academic reasons I read the same book that Trump was rumored
to have by his bedside in NYC: the english translation of the
full text of Adolf Hitler's speeches. Hitler's argument for
getting ordinary Germans to go along with his extreme
anti-Semitic agenda was masterful. It went in essence like
this: "I know that there are a very few good Jews, and you
may know a few of them. But the vast majority of Jews, who
you don't know, are evil. But in order to get to the mass of
bad apples, we might have to inflict some hardship on a few
good people." By getting people to overlook their own
experience with Jews they knew, he prevailed.
In contrast - for example - gay rights triumphed when
enough people knew gays in their ordinary lives, and realized
that they were no different from anybody else. So they were
unable to see any valid reason to discriminate against them.
This ban is much more like the second situation than the
first. It is inflicting a lot of pain on a lot of good
people, in order to get to (allegedly) a few bad apples, and
people can see that. It is not going to be popular.
Before the Nazi had the power to go after the Jews they
had effect the party's police state, before which ordinary
Germans [and whatever police there were after the depression
shuttered everything] permitted the party to do organized
violence on their opponents: the social democrats,
socialists, bolshevists, et al.
"We'll differ on this one part, people that voted
for Trump are not persuadables. They have always voted the
same way in every single election they have voted in."
Reminds me of the obstinate, closed-mindedness which Trump
voters direct at immigrants and Muslims.
Neoliberals have not delivered a growing, healthy economy
despite Krugman's claims that everything is great, crime is
down, etc.
Obama's record for 8 years is an average of 1.7
percent growth. NGDP is even worse which is why I support an
NGDP target for the Fed. It would show how poorly they have
done.
This after decades of corporate trade deals and a
shrinking middle class.
People are angry. They want scapegoats. Trump provided
them with scapegoats and the uneducated white working class
took the bait.
I appreciate Bill's judgement that Trump's acts are odious,
but "un-American, not Christian, and hopefully
unconstitutional" seems to be going too far.
It only takes a quick tour of historical US acts on
immigration to find plenty of precedent.
1870-1943, Chinese.
1882, lunatics.
1907, Japanese
1921, everybody.
1923, Indians.
1932, everybody, especially Mexicans.
Mme. Chiang Kai Shek (recently
deceased at age 106 on Long Island) has much to answer for
before the bar of history, but she had one shining moment.
Supposedly at one point during WW2 both she and Winston
Churchill were living at the White House (must have made for
interesting dinner conversation). Anyway, during that time
she gave a speech to Congress. In that speech she pointed out
that Japanese militarist propaganda, that America's myth of
liberty and equality before the law was hypocritical, had one
inconvenient feature: given the Chinese and Japanese
Exclusion Acts, it was true.
This speech was so shaming that Congress changed the law
to allow Asian immigation - in a trickle at first, but
thereafter a river.
Yes, and her teenage voyage to San Francisco ended with her
being treated exactly like the people being detained at
airports this weekend. It made a lifelong impression on her.
Yes, its pretty unremarkable. And you are correct the that
Christian Arab refugees from Syria have been accepted at 5%
of the rate their population would suggest:
"But the
numbers tell a different story: The United States has
accepted 10,801 Syrian refugees, of whom 56 are Christian.
Not 56 percent; 56 total, out of 10,801. That is to say,
one-half of 1 percent.
The BBC says that 10 percent of all Syrians are Christian,
which would mean 2.2 million Christians. It is quite obvious,
and President Barack Obama and Secretary John Kerry have
acknowledged it, that Middle Eastern Christians are an
especially persecuted group."
Here's a quite detailed discussion of the background around
the EO and its implementation ... including the 2015 law
limiting visas from those countries, and the reference for
the above quote. It also contrasts the headlines in much of
the press. As they say, read the whole thing.
"There is a postponement of entry from 7 countries (Iraq,
Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen) previously
identified by the Obama administration as posing
extraordinary risks.
That they are 7 majority Muslim countries does not mean
there is a Muslim ban, as most of the countries with the
largest Muslim populations are not on the list (e.g., Egypt,
Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey,
Nigeria and more).
Thus, the overwhelming majority of the Muslim world is not
affected.
Moreover, the "ban" is only for four months while
procedures are reviewed, with the exception of Syria for
which there is no time limit.
There is a logic to the 7 countries. Six are failed states
known to have large ISIS activity, and one, Iran, is a sworn
enemy of the U.S. and worldwide sponsor of terrorism.
And, the 7 countries on the list were not even
so-designated by Trump. Rather, they were selected last year
by the Obama administration as posing special risks for visa
entry ..."
I believe they don't mention that IIRC we were bombing 5
of the 7 counties on the list last month.
The current system relies on referrals from the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Syria's population in
2011 was 90 percent Muslim and 10 percent Christian, CNS
said. Less than 3% admitted as refugees are Christian. But
not the state dept's doing.
I've seen some farmers of late complaining about Trump's
protectionism hurting their business. Yes they are smart
enough to realize that the dollar appreciation will reduce
their exports. Too bad these rural Americans were not smart
enough on election day not to vote Trump in as President.
The man knows only what he's seen on cable TV most of which
he doesn't understand. Knows nothing about: economics, trade,
foreign affairs, government, law, ... He epitomizes the know
nothings of the world, and, the fact that he doesn't know
doesn't bother him in the least. A narcissists-grandiose type
with neither regard nor interest for the probable
consequences.
I think it's wrong to even hope Trump turns out well. I think
the country needs act to save democracy, to save itself from
traveling down the road of despots and tyrants, from the
likes of Trump who can be manipulated by the likes of Bannon.
stupid is one who ignores that Obama presidency growth
averaged 1.7% and failed to lift millions while wall street
prospered and corporate market power increased both in goods
and labor markets.
As President Donald Trump prepares - in the words of his
chief of staff - "a buffet of options" for dealing with
Mexico, trade and immigration, it's time for the Texas
congressional delegation to make a strong statement in
support of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Though much of Trump's focus last week was on the border
wall (and ways to make Mexico pay for it), his focus next
week is expected to be on trade.
"President Trump has taken his first steps toward an
'America first' approach to international trade, pulling out
of the Trans-Pacific Partnership on Monday and reaffirming
his intent to renegotiate NAFTA, the North American Free
Trade Agreement," the Boston Globe reports. "What does this
mean for U.S. companies and American workers? Trump's
executive order to withdraw from the TPP is anticlimactic.
That agreement was already a dead-letter, having been
disclaimed by both presidential candidates and never ratified
by Congress. But a new NAFTA could upend U.S.-Mexican
relations and disrupt whole sectors of the US economy."
And that would be disastrous for Texas.
Texas companies, big and small, export a total of $92.5
billion worth of goods to Mexico each year. That figure
dwarfs second-place California, which exports just $26.8
billion of goods.
"From the booming border city of Laredo to the bustling
trading hub of Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas has become the
nation's top exporter of goods, according to the Federal
Reserve Bank of Dallas, and Mexico is its biggest customer,"
the Wall Street Journal explains. "Some 382,000 jobs in Texas
alone depend on trade with Mexico, according to 2014 data
released this month by the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars, a nonpartisan global research group.
Goods exported from Texas help support more than a million
jobs across the U.S., according to the U.S. Commerce
Department."
Texas' top exports to Mexico are computer and electronic
products, petroleum and coal products, chemicals, machinery
and transportation equipment.
As University of Oregon economist Mark Thoma points out,
"NAFTA isn't the problem, and tariffs aren't the answer."
He says Trump believes that NAFTA is the reason the U.S.
has lost manufacturing jobs. But that's not the case, he
explains.
"Domestic manufacturing's employment decline began long
before NAFTA came along," Thoma wrote for CBS News.
"According to University of California Berkeley professor
Brad DeLong's calculations, 'A sector of the economy that
provided three out of 10 nonfarm jobs at the start of the
1950s and one in four nonfarm jobs at the start of the 1970s
now provides fewer than one in 11 nonfarm jobs today.
Proportionally, the United States has shed almost two-thirds
of relative manufacturing employment since 1971.' In
addition, much of that drop can be attributed to
technological change - the rise of robots and digital
technology - rather than globalization. Renegotiating trade
agreements can't change this."
It's time for the Texas delegation to Washington to stand
up and say they won't support Trump's short-sighted attempts
to kill NAFTA. Ditching NAFTA would be a mistake.
What is the answer? Seems to me that 'liberal' economists are
convinced that they know what we should NOT be doing, but
come up short on proposals that will actually solve the
problem.
All the focus on blaming trade for loss of manufacturing
distracts from the real conversation needed: How can we
better address the dislocation of workers due to advances in
technology?
Trump and the right blame trade and believe
that better trade policies or tariffs or "shaking up the
markets?" will miraculously bring back coal mining and
manufacturing.
The anti-NAFTA left is focusing on the ant and ignoring
the elephant. This enables Trump by placing all focus on
trade. Why focus on government programs to help the
dislocated if the dislocation problem can be fixed by
renegotiating NAFTA? Serious ideas such as green energy jobs
are dismissed in favor of fixing trade instead. The
conversation will never turn to real solutions about how
modern manufacturing jobs increasingly require computer
skills, education and training.
Most small towns have lost jobs because the manufacturers
they do have are hiring fewer workers or not net expanding
their workforce. At the same time, service sector jobs remain
low pay and much opposition to raising minimum wage or
Obamacare to provide them with health insurance.
Having the comparative data on manufacturing employment as a
percent of total employment for the United States, Canada,
United Kingdom, Germany, France, Sweden, the Netherlands,
Australia and Japan, running from 1970 through 2012, what is
striking is the similarity of pattern.
Also striking is the
relation between gains in manufacturing productivity and
decline in percent manufacturing employment in the United
States.
Mark Thoma, Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman would appear to
be right about trade relations having fairly little to do
with the long term decline of percent of employment in
manufacturing in the United States or other developed
countries.
What Happened to Automation and Robots: WaPo Tells of
Labor Shortage in Japan
Wow, things just keep getting worse. Automation is taking
all the jobs, and the aging of the population means we won't
have any workers. Yes, these are completely contradictory
concerns, but no one ever said that our policy elite had a
clue. (No, I'm not talking about Donald Trump's gang here.)
Anyhow, the Washington Post had a front page story *
telling us how older people are now working at retirement
homes in Japan as a result of the aging of its population.
The piece includes this great line:
"That means authorities need to think about ways to keep
seniors healthy and active for longer, but also about how to
augment the workforce to cope with labor shortages."
You sort of have to love the first part, since folks might
have thought authorities would have always been trying to
think about ways to keep seniors healthy and active longer.
After all, isn't this a main focus of public health policy?
The part about labor shortages is also interesting. When
there is a shortage of oil or wheat the price rises. If there
were a labor shortage in Japan then we should be seeing
rapidly rising wages. We aren't. Wages have been virtually
flat in recent years. That would seem to indicate that Japan
doesn't have a labor shortage -- or alternatively it has
economically ignorant managers who don't realize that the way
to attract workers is to offer higher pay.
As The Hill reports
, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus on Sunday
said the president's executive order barring refugees and people from seven
majority-Muslim nations does not affect green card holders.
"We didn't overrule the Department of Homeland Security,
as far as green card holders moving
forward, it doesn't affect them,"
Priebus said on NBC's "Meet The
Press."
But Priebus noted if a person is traveling back and forth to one of the seven
countries included in that order, that person is likely to be "subjected temporarily
with more questioning until a better program is put in place."
"We don't want people that are traveling back and forth to one of these
seven countries that harbor terrorists to be traveling freely back and forth between
the United States and those countries,"
he said.
When pressed further on whether the order impacts green card holders, though, Priebus
appeared to reverse himself, saying, "Well, of course it does."
"If you're traveling back and forth, you're going to be subjected to
further screening,
" he said.
Furthermore, Priebus also said more countries could be added to the list already
included in the president's executive order.
"Perhaps other countries needed
to be added to an executive order going forward,"
he said.
"But in order to do this in a way that was expeditious, in a way that would pass
muster quickly, we used the 7 countries that have already been codified and
identified."
As we noted yesterday, of the seven countries that are on the banned list, we note
that the United States is actvely bombing five of them.
maybe he didn't include saudi arabia because he is a genius.
couldn't do it on the first go, but if enough people raise their
voice about that exclusion, he will be like, what do you think
folks, should I include SA? Ok, done!
The seven countries listed were already defined by the Obama
administration as principle threats, which is WHY Trump used them in
his EO of his FIRST WEEK in office. This is part of his campaign
agenda and using Obama policy was the fastest way to get it started.
You can also bet that there are PLENTY of government employees who
will do their best to make ANY such policy an embarrassment.
(f)
Suspension
of entry or imposition of restrictions by President
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens
or of any class of aliens into the United States would be
detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by
proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary,
suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as
immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens
any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. Whenever the
Attorney General finds that a commercial airline has failed
to comply with regulations of the Attorney General relating
to requirements of airlines for the detection of fraudulent
documents used by passengers traveling to the United States
(including the training of personnel in such detection), the
Attorney General may suspend the entry of some or all aliens
transported to the United States by such airline.
Standard Disclaimer: How long do you think those planes
will keep flying when hit with a million dollar a day fee?
10M? 100M?
Or do the words "any restrictions he may deem to be
appropriate." still fail to register within that pea-sized
brain of yours.
Trump banned 7 countries who produced not a single terrorist attack on US
soil, but Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Russian, Indian and Israeli Muslims are
not in the list, such are uselessness. What about US jail system, it seems
to produce more Muslims than the immigration. Even USA army produced more
terrorists than the 7 countries.
I came here to accuse you of being full of shit but the first few were
somalia, afghanistan, pakistan. not going to dig deeper because the
conclusion is obvious - we just need a full blown muslim ban.
Where the Trump admin is clumsy, inexperience
and naive is in thinking that every move they will make will NOT be used as
an opportunity to assassinate them politically and in PR terms.
The fight happens mainly in the media, for voters minds anyway.
Trump admin should learn this. Fast.
P.S. The decision was just fucking stupid. Non-muslim, non-refugee PhDs
who've been working for US tech/aerospace/finance/medical industry were left
stranded. I'm not sure that Bubba from Alabama or Joe from Flint would get
those jobs, even if Trump kicked out every single foreign PhD working in the
US. Also, Silicon Valley would totally tank, if that happened. It was just a
stupid move. Stupid.
I think what you're missing here, along with many others, is that
this administration DOES NOT CARE what the MSM thinks. They can fabricate
all the protests and memes they want, the administration will just shrug
and say "whatever".
W said he "had a mandate", then did half-steps. Obama said he "had a
mandate" , then didn't do any of it (close Gitmo, close black sites, end
the middle east wars (hell, he more than doubled the middle east
entanglements!)), Trump isn't even bothering to say he has a mandate,
he's just proceeding as if it's a given.
So go ahead and rage MSM and associated protesters, but I doubt it'll
do you any good.
The only way for him to avoid that from occuring would be to turn over
the office to them and not make any decision they have not given approval
to.
The effectiveness of their PR using the msm and their protest
events will lessen if Trump ignores them and makes moves quickly and
moves on. They will have difficulty getting attention over last months
news - Unless they get more destructive or violent.
Sorry BigFat, I like Ron Paul as much as you do, but his Libertarian Foreign
Policy viewpoint on the Islamic issue is COMPLETELY naive. They want to
establish a caliphate REGARDLESS whether they are bombed or not. They are
inextricably linked to following what the Koran says about murdering
Christians and Jews and establishing Sharia Law to dominate and subdue
unbelievers (yes even naive Libertarians).... goodness me bro, educate
yourself. Watch this school in Britain that is teaching students crazy
Sharia Law viewpoints and ask yourself if these people in its current form
are really compatible with Western Society:
It took Charles Martel "The Hammer" to put a stop to the Islamist creed
of conquering Europe after the Moors completely took over Spain and were
headed north towards France and the rest of last vestiges of the West. It
looks as if we need a revival of his bloodline in order to really bring
about peace and security in the West.
Criminal factions in the USA created ISIS. The American people are
trying to undo that crime and bring those responsible to justice. This
ain't gonna happen in a week.
No, you are wrong, VISAS and Green Cards are NOT "Forever documents"
granting the holder full citizenship or voting rights. It CAN be suspended
for ANY reason deemed proper under the ALREADY WRITTEN LAWS. The President
can suspend ANY entry:
"8 US Code 1182 Inadmissable Aliens
Section (10) (f)
Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of
any class of aliens
into the United States would be detrimental to
the interests of the United States,
he may by proclamation, and for
such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or
any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry
of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.
Whenever
the Attorney General finds that a commercial airline has failed to comply
with regulations of the Attorney General relating to requirements of
airlines for the detection of fraudulent documents used by passengers
traveling to the United States (including the training of personnel in such
detection), the Attorney General may suspend the entry of some or all aliens
transported to the United States by such airline."
Additionally, theree can be action that can be taken on any airline or
transporter that accepts fradulent documents for admission. The United
States Law on immigration was NEVER get here stay here. WE get to choose
and it is NOT for democrats or globalists or elitiets to make that call. It
is .... wait for it.... wait for it...
WE THE (FUCKING) PEOPLE. WE DECIDE. Not a bunch of libtards that gave
up on America.
The fact that even Green Card holders
are aliens (with legal permanent residence in the US) is clear. A Green
Card expirs after 10 years, you can apply for another 10 years, but then
either become a citizen or leave the country. I understand that.
I was referring to the 90-day ban in the executive order. The
executive order appears to me - among many other things - to imply, for
example, that all Green Card holders, say, from Iran that just left the
US for, say, a week to go on vacation (but have otherwise lived and
worked here for years) will be barred from re-entering the US for a
period of 90 days until various objectives in the executive order are
worked out.
From Trump's executive order, Sec. 3. (c): '... I hereby proclaim that
the immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into the United States of aliens
from countries referred to in section 217(a)(12) of the INA, 8 U.S.C.
1187(a)(12), would be detrimental to the interests of the United States,
and I hereby suspend entry into the United States, as immigrants and
nonimmigrants, of such persons for 90 days from the date of this order'
The way I read this is that if I am a Green Card holder from Syria who
has lived in the US for the past 17 years and has studied and worked
here, but who went on vacation to Venice, Italy, I WILL BE (no exception)
barred from re-entering the US for 90 days. While your quote of 8 U.S.C.
1182(f) appears to indicate that the president can do exactly that I
still think it is not clear cut from a legal perspective. We will see. If
I am wrong I am wrong. I maintain that the Trump administration did not
think through this executive order carefully. We can reconvene in the
near future once this initial transient period is over to see where we
are.
You obviously don't understand the size and scope of the problems this
administration is inheriting. Your agenda is clear. Bash Trump at every turn
and deflect from Obama's disastrous policies.
I find it interesting that you claim that my agenda is clear from just
reading one of my posts. That is not enough information that would allow
you make such a grand claim. Maybe you should go back and only claim
things, for which you have sufficient evidence. BTW, in my original post
I actually do bash the previous administration.
ANOTHER OBAMA DHS SCREW UP: 20,000 GREEN CARDS HANDED OUT LIKE CANDY
In the latest instance of the Obama administration's neglect and
indifference toward America's immigration problem, around 20,000 green cards
have been wrongly distributed or contained false information.
The DHS report highlights that at least 19,000 green cards were issued with
either incorrect information or sent in duplicate, while the USCIS also
received over 200,000 complaints that cards had either been sent to the wrong
address or not received at all.
Furthermore, the OIG report found that over 2,400 immigrants who had only
been cleared for two-year conditional residence status were inadvertently
issued cards that don't expire for 10 years.
Oh, and BTW, these countries
where Drumpf has businesses or business interests are exempt:
1. Saudi Arabia
2. United Arab Emirates
3, Turkey
4. Indonesia
Of course, no terrorists ever came from those nations. Oh,
wait...
It's one thing to try to tighten immigration overview.
Quite another to knee-jerk your way into an international
political blow-up with a fucked-up bull-in-china-shop
approach to strategy and tactics.
1. Saudi Arabia is the centerpiece of the petrodollar. An attack on Saudi
Arabia is an attack on the dollar and worthy of a military response. Nixon and
Kissinger laid the foundation of this monetary order and Carter made it very
clear about US defending Saudi Arabia.
2. UAE is a key ally of Saudi Arabia.
3. Turkey is a key NATO member, contributing a large percentage of troops
and vehicles, and also controls a key outlet for Russian warships based in
Crimea.
4. Indonesia controls the Strait of Malacca, a strategic chokepoint for oil
headed to East Asia.
I would refer everyone complaining about KSA and friends not being on the
list to your post.
Become self-sufficient (money/energy/manufacturing not
critically dependant on others), then you can tell KSA what you really think
of them. With all the winning these days, maybe it's not so far-fetched a
dream...
It's a difficult issue. We can't have our cake and eat it too. Some risk must be
accepted in order to remain within the law. Obama issued these visas and we have
to abide by them and that is that. We can not have witch hunts in this country.
Fortunately going forward, we can refuse new visas. And what is taking President
Trump so long to ban new border crossing "refugee" claims? That is actually a
more pressing issue.
It is not a matter of we vs. them, it's we vs. us. This Administration is proving
in 7 days to be rank amateurs.
So many statements and decrees have been walked
back, cancelled or corrected. No one thinks these things through or understands
what is lawful or possible.
So many statements and numbers have been proven objectively wrong and changed
on the fly.
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, he cannot be trusted.
The Administration appointees and the Vampire Squid already control more wealth
than 1/3rd of the population.
Today we learn that the National Security Council has been downsized so as not
to include the Dec Def, or White House Security Adviser. A joke that only
President Paranoid can love.
When will the loyalists realize we have been PUNKED by this Administration?
Good thing there's no Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, nor anti-Western Jihadis in
Turkey, etc.
What I want to know is - regarding the drone ordering, cakewalk
promising, WMD swearing terrorists who started all shit to begin with - when will
they
be banned permanently from sunlight and fresh air?
Do you really think for a moment that Google is so desperate to hire good
programmers that it needs to recruit from Syria/Iraq/etc???
The Obama
administration and its henchmen for years has preyed upon the generosity of
businesses like those in Silicon Valley, to get them to hire from these Muslim
countries. This is how a Muslim governs. Obama did this with the express intent
of cirumventing any limitations on refugees, this way their status was immediately
legal.
This is a Muslim invasion. They are not refugees. And Islam is an evil cult,
which should not be given the title of 'religion'.
"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in
the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." - James Madison
This story is about an investigation by George Webb that
takes us back to the Dulles Brothers and the birth of the CIA in 1947. It
includes a cast of characters, entities, and events leading up to Snowden;
including Booze Allen; the Carlie Group; the Enron scandal; Kosovo; Somalia;
Argentina; East Timor; the Clinton Foundation in Haiti; Hillary's arming of ISIS,
and destruction of Libya. And then there's the FALSE FLAG attack on Syria, using
Sarin Gas from Libya, for which Assad was blamed.
Webb began investigating of the Clinton Foundation and has
descended into a labyrinth of a Rabbit hole. Be assured the prima facie evidence
against Hillary in Libya and the Foundation, including Bill, is overwhelming.
If you are interested in the depth of the Rabbit Hole and the
psychopaths within, please see:
Good point. Much as I disagree with both bombing Muslims and
denying refugees, it is refreshing to see a president
actually try to accomplish what he believes in...after eight
years of a president who just shrugged his shoulders, told us
it can't be done, and that Americans should just suck it
up...the jobs are never coming back!
What 'liberal's fail
to understand is that Trump probably cares less about whether
he succeeds in banning Muslim immigrants and is more
concerned about how deplorables perceive how hard he is
trying.
If Obama and Hillary had tried half as hard as Trump to
accomplish things that working Americans wanted, then Trump
wouldn't be president. It is tragic that Democrats were more
interested in rolling over and having their bellies rubbed by
wealthy and powerful interests than beating their heads
against the wall for American workers.
In one way, the things that Trump is doing are similar to
what other newly elected presidents have done. In their first
weeks they try to reward the base voters by pushing through a
huge number of changes that are high on those voters'
agendas. Then they turn back to more normal, professional,
DC-oriented politics.
But in this case, we might not get a
return to normal. Possibly the most worrisome thing he is
done yet is put the lunatic cretin Bannon on the NSC, and
demote the Joint Chiefs and DNI. He's creating his own little
radical, ideological national security directorate of
wild-eyed, amateur outsiders and Holy Warriors.
He has already started a process for reviewing the US's
ISIS policies, including looking for ways to avoid
international law constraints. I expect that within a
relatively short time, he will launch a major, ruthless
military blitz against ISIS. He will team up with Putin to do
it. It will be combined with a domestic campaign of
persecution and intimidation directed against various kinds
of Muslims and non-Muslim political dissidents.
Trump believes he's the head of a movement, one that
overthrew the Republican establishment and faces unyielding
opposition from the press.
It's the economic and cultural nationalism of Jeff
Sessions and Bannon etc. He's a populist which is why he is
concerned with how popular he is. It's why the size of crowds
matters to him. It's why it matters whether or not he won the
popular vote. It's why he tweets directly at his supporters.
He repeatedly called Iraq a disaster on the campaign
trail. Many of his voters agree. I don't see him putting
boots on the ground, at least not for any extended period of
time or for an occupation. He's isolationist. America First.
They want to withdraw from the world, from alliances.
His Defense Secretary Mattis says torture doesn't work and
Trump said he'll defer to him. We'll see. Yes he'll probably
do some sort of military adventure but it will be drawn up by
Mattis and the generals. He'll declare victory and go home
and change the subject. When all is said and done he's a
real-estate developer and a con man. He'll use bombing ISIS
as a distraction. I see him as more like Berlusconi. Corrupt.
How many of the 9/11 terrorists came from Saudi Arabia? So if
all but one came from that country the travel ban on people
from 7 countries must certainly include Saudi Arabia, right?
No apparently not - because it could hurt Trumps personal
business deals. The criteria to select countries for this
cruel and completely unnecessary travel ban (leaving many
students at american universities stranded in their home
countries) has apparently not been designed based on actual
likelihood of terrorism.
Judge Blocks Trump Order on Refugees Amid Chaos
and Outcry Worldwide
https://nyti.ms/2jHS6tQ
NYT - MICHAEL D. SHEAR, NICHOLAS KULISH and ALAN FEUER - Jan
28
WASHINGTON - A federal judge in Brooklyn came to the aid
of scores of refugees and others who were trapped at airports
across the United States on Saturday after an executive order
signed by President Trump, which sought to keep many
foreigners from entering the country, led to chaotic scenes
across the globe.
The judge's ruling blocked part of the president's
actions, preventing the government from deporting some
arrivals who found themselves ensnared by the presidential
order. But it stopped short of letting them into the country
or issuing a broader ruling on the constitutionality of Mr.
Trump's actions. ...
In a rare middle-of-the night decision, two federal judges
in Boston temporarily halted President Trump's executive
order blocking immigrants from seven Muslim-majority nations
from entering the United States.
At 1:51 a.m., Judge Allison Burroughs and Magistrate Judge
Judith Dein imposed a seven-day restraining order against
Trump's executive order, clearing the way for lawful
immigrants from the seven barred nations – Iran, Iraq, Yemen,
Somalia, Sudan, Libya and Syria – to enter the US.
"It's a great victory today," said Susan Church, a lawyer who
argued the case in court. "What's most important about today
is this is what makes America great, the fact that we have
the rule of law."
The ruling prohibits federal officials from detaining or
deporting immigrants and refugees with valid visas or green
cards or forcing them to undergo extra security screenings
based solely on Trump's order. The judges also instructed
Customs and Border Protection to notify airlines overseas
that it is safe to put immigrants on US-bound flights. ...
Judge Who Blocked Trump's Refugee Order Praised
for 'Firm Moral Compass'
https://nyti.ms/2jDI930
NYT - CHRISTOPHER MELE - January 29, 2017
The federal judge who blocked part of President Trump's
executive order on immigration on Saturday night worked for
years in the Manhattan district attorney's office, where she
was one of the lead prosecutors on the high-profile Tyco
International fraud trial.
Colleagues remembered the judge, Ann M. Donnelly, as an
astute lawyer unfazed by the spotlight. She found herself in
its glare unexpectedly on Saturday night, when she heard an
emergency appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union
challenging the executive order barring refugees. She granted
a temporary stay, ordering that refugees and others detained
at airports across the United States not be sent back to
their home countries.
Enforcing Mr. Trump's order by sending the travelers home
could cause them "irreparable harm," Judge Donnelly ruled.
The order, just before 9 p.m., capped an intense day of
protests across the country by opponents of the order, which
suspended the entry of all refugees to the United States for
120 days, barred Syrian refugees indefinitely and blocked
entry for 90 days for citizens of seven predominantly Muslim
countries. ...
Protest Grows 'Out of Nowhere' at Kennedy Airport
After Iraqis Are Detained
https://nyti.ms/2jDgKhA
NYT - ELI ROSENBERG - January 28, 2017
It began in the morning, with a small crowd chanting and
holding cardboard signs outside Kennedy International
Airport, upset by the news that two Iraqi refugees had been
detained inside because of President Trump's executive order.
By the end of the day, the scattershot group had swelled
to an enormous crowd.
They filled the sidewalks outside the terminal and packed
three stories of a parking garage across the street, a mass
of people driven by emotion to this far-flung corner of the
city, singing, chanting and unfurling banners.
This was the most public expression of the intense
reaction generated across the country by Mr. Trump's
polarizing decision. While those in some areas of the country
were cheered (#) by the executive order, the reaction was
markedly different for many in New York. References to the
Statue of Liberty and its famous inscription became a
rallying cry.
Similar protests erupted at airports around the country.
Word of the protest at Kennedy first filtered out on
social media from the immigrant-advocacy groups Make the Road
New York and the New York Immigration Coalition. It seemed
like it might stay small.
But the drama seemed to rise throughout the day. ...
#- Trump's Immigration Ban Draws Deep Anger
and Muted Praise
https://nyti.ms/2jBezLG
NYT - RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA - Jan 28, 2017
A group of Nobel Prize winners said it would damage
American leadership in higher education and research. House
Speaker Paul D. Ryan and some relatives of Americans killed
in terrorist attacks said it was right on target. An
evangelical Christian group called it an affront to human
dignity.
The reaction on Saturday to President Trump's ban on
refugees entering the United States, with particular focus on
certain Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa, was
swift, certain - and sharply divided.
The order drew sharp and widespread condemnation Saturday
from Democrats, religious groups, business leaders, academics
and others, who called it inhumane, discriminatory and akin
to taking a "wrecking ball to the Statue of Liberty."
Thousands of professors, including several Nobel laureates,
signed a statement calling it a "major step towards
implementing the stringent racial and religious profiling
promised on the campaign trail." ...
'Give me your tired, your poor:' The story behind the Statue
of Liberty's famous immigration poem
http://ti.me/2keeIFr
Time - Katie Reilly - January 28, 2017
In the wake of
President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration
Friday, many critics quickly took up a familiar rallying cry,
lifting words from the Statue of Liberty that have for
decades represented American immigration: "Give me your
tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe
free."
Former independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin,
Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison and former Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright all invoked those words - written by
American author and poet Emma Lazarus in 1883 - as they
condemned Trump's suspension of the country's refugee
assistance program. ...
The poet James Russell Lowell said he liked the poem "much
better than I like the Statue itself" because it "gives its
subject a raison d'être which it wanted before," according to
the New York Times.
"Emma Lazarus was the first American to make any sense of
this statue," Esther Schor, who wrote a biography on Lazarus,
told the Times in 2011. ...
"Wherever there is humanity, there is the theme for a
great poem," she once said, according to the Jewish Women's
Archives.
The poem was later published in New York World and the New
York Times, just a few years before Lazarus died in 1887.
The Statue of Liberty arrived in New York in 1885 and was
officially unveiled in 1886, but Lazarus' poem did not become
famous until years later, when in 1901, it was rediscovered
by her friend Georgina Schuyler. In 1903, the last lines of
the poem were engraved on a plaque and placed on the pedestal
of the Statue of Liberty, where it remains today.
The poem, in its entirety, is below:
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
I happen to think the heartlessness of this
Order was a feature, not a bug, in order to garner maximum
attention. I just read Mish's comment section, and Trump's
base is cheering.
But on a longer term scale, heartlessness towards Muslim
immigrants and DREAMers is going to turn persuadables against
Trump. That and the next recession.
We'll differ on this one part, people that voted for Trump
are not persuadables. They have always voted the same way in
every single election they have voted in.
Amazes me that
even now people keep thinking that Trump voters are anything
but loyal GOP voters. And I think the best argument against
this (besides common sense) is the reaction of Rep leaders to
this obviously illegal action.
They're silent.
They cannot afford to speak out against this racist
policy, as their own voters are for this racist policy.
ilsm -> EMichael...
, -1
silent on ethnic racism and the rest of US so much more
guilty ..... on drone assassination and militarist nation
building gone awry, tilting with nuclear war to keep NATO
less recondite, etc, etc.......
Are the libruls all riled
up because the immigrant ban might reduce terror shootings in
US to reduce screaming for techno-murder?
"... most reports on Mexican employment aggregate manufacturing jobs with "industry", which would include oil gas drilling and construction...i did find one graph that shows a 20%, 5 million job jump in Mexican industrial employment in the first six years after NAFTA, but they never reached their prior peak, and i find the rest of the period inconclusive, not knowing much about Mexican business cycles: ..."
The percentage of employees working in manufacturing in the
US fell in a long surprisingly straight line from the late
1960s. The big drop in employee count in 2000 was a result of
the collapse of the dot-com boom. There has been a long,
steady downward pressure on manufacturing jobs, but we see
big drops in their absolute numbers in just about every
recession.
I do know that the 1990s were a big decade for increased
manufacturing efficiency. Supercomputers and
micro-controllers changed the way we designed and built cars,
cans and washing machines, for example. I know Silicon Valley
was rapidly changing the way computers were assembled as
design rules made chip design easier and new techniques made
chip placement and connection simpler. Does anyone even use a
wire wrap gun anymore? There was also the impact of the
Japanese challenge of the 1980s which made manufacturers
rethink their supply chain and encouraging robotics and
continuous inspection.
The official story is that the adoption of computers
didn't show up in productivity figures, but if you looked at
manufacturing, their impact was pervasive. Not every industry
is going to advance at the same time, and improvements that
helped one often lower costs and help others.
If you look at the chart, the big drop in 2000 rivals the
drop in the early 1980s and the similar drop during the most
recent crash. It's like a strong gust of wind knocking down
an old tree trunk. The trunk was rotting and weakening for
years, but it was the wind storm that knocked it down.
Nope. As you say, "the 1990s were a big decade for increased
manufacturing efficiency."
And yet the number of jobs in
manufacturing in the U.S. Actually *increased* slightly. And
the increase was worldwide.
"In November 1999, U.S. Trade Representative Charlene
Barshefsky and Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji made a trade deal
that led to China's admission into the World Trade
Organization (WTO) on November 10, 2001."
Offshoring intensified, according to the official
statistics of the U.S. Trade Representative. Here's the link,
showing that offshoring doubled by 2001:
http://www.trivisonno.com/offshoring
What happened that caused the decline in employment in the
U.S. To be so much more severe than in any other
industrialized country was China.
most reports on Mexican employment aggregate manufacturing
jobs with "industry", which would include oil gas drilling
and construction...i did find one graph that shows a 20%, 5
million job jump in Mexican industrial employment in the
first six years after NAFTA, but they never reached their
prior peak, and i find the rest of the period inconclusive,
not knowing much about Mexican business cycles:
Increases in productivity (technology is a broad term)
likely explain the bulk of the massive decrease in
manufacturing in both the USA and Japan. Furriners certainly
make good scapegoats, however.
"... Loss of one business is OK, two -- the same. But at some point quantity turns into quality and you get entirely new situation. Point of no return. ..."
"... If too many business close you not only lose the whole sector and but you suffer additional loses from the destruction of vertically integrated suppliers. You might lose the whole chain. ..."
"... And your "more technologically advanced facilities" will close too. I saw such a chain of event in chemical industry. And then you will get polluted ingredients from China and lose your customers to Germany. ..."
"... Looks like you do not understand the complexity of of manufacturing chains and thinking in very simplistic terms. ..."
"... And remember that your "high technological sector" is not immune. IT can be and is outsourced to India. Computers for Dell are now assembled in Taiwan. Gradually the design will move too as the best design is when you are close to production facility and understand complex processes involved in production. ..."
The problem is that you don't have the ability to compare what would have happened without NAFTA.
There is no doubt that the pain is real in those communities that saw their factory shut down
and the product being produced in Mexico instead. But would that factory have been shut down anyway
if NAFTA had not been? We know that a lot of manufacturing related to cars moved from the north
to the south within US - and from solid middle class salaries to $10-14/hour. Efficiencies and
hunts for lower cost would have continued regardless of NAFTA. So even though we know some effects
are real we don't know how much they count in the bigger picture of change.
Good point
Carrier will keep jobs here (for now) Will automate later
Try this scenario:
American businesses under pressure from shareholders and corporate raiders underinvest in their
manufacturing facilities and milk the profits. Meanwhile, new more productive competitors are
built incorporating technological advances many of them in developing countries that have strong
growth.
Recession hits and the least competitive businesses close. Those are primarily the rust belt
dinosaurs. After the recession ends, it is more competitive to increase production at more technologically
advanced facilities than to try to restart the dinosaurs. There is net loss of jobs to foreign
competition but much is due to misguided industrial and tax policy, not trade deals.
"Recession hits and the least competitive businesses close. Those are primarily the rust belt
dinosaurs. After the recession ends, it is more competitive to increase production at more
technologically advanced facilities than to try to restart the dinosaurs. There is net loss
of jobs to foreign competition but much is due to misguided industrial and tax policy, not
trade deals."
That't pure neoliberal baloney. Free market propaganda.
Loss of one business is OK, two -- the same. But at some point quantity turns into quality
and you get entirely new situation. Point of no return.
If too many business close you not only lose the whole sector and but you suffer additional
loses from the destruction of vertically integrated suppliers. You might lose the whole chain.
And your "more technologically advanced facilities" will close too. I saw such a chain
of event in chemical industry. And then you will get polluted ingredients from China and lose
your customers to Germany.
Looks like you do not understand the complexity of of manufacturing chains and thinking
in very simplistic terms.
And remember that your "high technological sector" is not immune. IT can be and is outsourced
to India. Computers for Dell are now assembled in Taiwan. Gradually the design will move too as
the best design is when you are close to production facility and understand complex processes
involved in production.
There was recently a story how Intel lost serious money just trying to move the process from
one place to another.
Another factor that outsourcing of manufacturing radically changes the balance of power between
the capital and the labor. It helped to decimate the power of organized labor, which was the explicit
goal of neoliberalism: atomization of labor force and conversion of them into autonomous "self-enhancing"
(via education and training at your own expense) units, competing with each other in the (pretty
unfair) "labor market".
It's simply amazing how many factors played in hand for neoliberal coup d'état of 1980th: computer
revolution, Internet and related communication revolution, financialization ( 401(k) plans were
enacted into law in 1978), dissolution of the USSR, outsourcing and related decimation on trade
unions power. And then came Clinton and officially buried the New Deal.
"... "[T]he decline in manufacturing employment ... is driven mainly by the secular trend of labor-saving technological progress." At this point I call nonsense. Until somebody shows me the "technological progress" that hit precisely like a tsunami in the year 2000, The argument made by DeLong and Rodrick is nonsense. I already debunked the "but, Germany!" Argument the other day, so don't even try that. ..."
"... The U.S. went from 30% of its nonfarm employees in manufacturing to 12% because of rapid growth in manufacturing productivity and limited demand, yes? The U.S. went from 12% to 9% because of stupid and destructive macro policies--the Reagan deficits, the strong-dollar policy pushed well past its sell-by date, too-tight monetary policy--that diverted it from its proper role as a net exporter of capital and finance to economies that need to be net sinks rather than net sources of the global flow of funds for investment, yes? The U.S. went from 9% to 8.7% because of the extraordinarily rapid rise of China, yes? The U.S. went from 8.7% to 8.6% because of NAFTA, yes? ..."
"... And yet the American political system right now is blaming all, 100%, every piece of that decline from 30% to 8.6% and every problem that can be laid its door on brown people from Mexico. ..."
"... Sanders addressed the issue too and for that he's insulted by the likes of Sanjait and other progressive neoliberals. ..."
What did NAFTA really do? : Brad De Long has written a
lengthy essay that defends NAFTA (and other trade deals) from the charge that they are responsible
for the loss of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. I agree with much that he says – in particular
with the points that the decline in manufacturing employment has been a long-term process that
predates NAFTA and the China shock and that it is driven mainly by the secular trend of labor-saving
technological progress. There is no way you can hold NAFTA responsible for employment de-industrialization
in the U.S. or expect that a "better" deal with Mexico will bring those jobs back.
At the same time, the essay leaves me frustrated and uneasy. It seems to gloss over the distributional
pain of NAFTA and overstate the overall gains.
So what does the evidence say on these issues? ...
A recently published academic study by Lorenzo Caliendo and Fernando Parro uses all the bells-and-whistles
of modern trade theory to produce the estimate that these overall gains amount to a "welfare"
gain of 0.08% for the U.S. That is, eight-hundredth of 1 percent! ... Trade volume impacts were
much larger: a doubling of U.S. imports from Mexico.
What is equally interesting is that fully half of the miniscule 0.08% gain for US is not an
efficiency gain, but actually a benefit due to terms-of-trade improvement. That is, Caliendo and
Parro estimate that the world prices of what the U.S. imports fell relative to what it exports.
These are not efficiency gains, but income transfers from other countries (here principally Mexico
and Canada). These gains came at the expense of other countries.
A gain, no matter how small, is still a gain. What about the distributional impacts?
The most detailed empirical analysis of the labor-market effects of NAFTA is contained in a
paper by John McLaren and Shushanik Hakobyan. They find that the aggregate effects were rather
small (in line with other work), but that impacts on directly affected communities were quite
severe. It is worth quoting John McLaren at length, from an
interview : ...
In other words, those high school dropouts who worked in industries protected by tariffs prior
to NAFTA experienced reductions in wage growth by as much as 17 percentage points relative to
wage growth in unaffected industries. I don't think anyone can argue that a 17 percentage drop
is small. As McLaren and Hakobyan emphasize, these losses were then propagated throughout the
localities in which these workers lived.
So here is the overall picture that these academic studies paint for the U.S.: NAFTA produced
large changes in trade volumes, tiny efficiency gains overall, and some very significant impacts
on adversely affected communities.
The consequences of NAFTA for Mexico are another topic which would require a separate post.
Let me just say that the great expectations the country's policy makers had for NAFTA
have not been fulfilled . ...
So is Trump deluded on NAFTA's overall impact on manufacturing jobs? Absolutely, yes.
Was he able to capitalize on the very real losses that this and other trade agreements produced
in certain parts of the country in a way that Democrats were unable to? Again, yes.
Tell me something! Who was the biggest friend NRA ever garnered?
44th President? When weapons industry was under Democratic threat of gun control did you see
lot and lot of folks rushing down to the firearms dealer for a final purchase of their favourite
hardware?
Same thing with the wall-around-USA? Under threat, consumers are now buying up all the running-shoes
in China and considering the purchase of all the tea in China-cups.
Even the wholesalers are filling their warehouse with new products from Pacific avenue in hopes
of avoiding the import duty about to befall us. Is that why all the consumer non-cyclical stocks
have shown such a splendid performance? From the expected profit on warehoused products that avoided
the new tariff If, will same trend boost same equities until the rumour becomes yesterday's news?
"[T]he decline in manufacturing employment ... is driven mainly by the secular trend of labor-saving
technological progress." At this point I call nonsense. Until somebody shows me the "technological
progress" that hit precisely like a tsunami in the year 2000, The argument made by DeLong and
Rodrick is nonsense. I already debunked the "but, Germany!" Argument the other day, so don't even
try that.
Let's try again with this fact: "the decline in manufacturing employment has been a long-term
process that predates NAFTA and the China shock". Did manufacturing employment peak exactly in
2000?
It seems manufacturing peaked during the Carter years. And then came Reagan and his toxic macroeconomic
mix which led to a massive dollar appreciation. What Krugman just wrote.
Good point. Manufacturing employment fell when Reagan came into power and it fell again after
2000. I guess the NAFTA bashers have some weird lag and lead model.
Yep. A new President Bush looking backward from the early '00s probably said, "Man, technology
is wreaking havoc on the working man. If this continues it's going to be real bad."
No, let's try again with THIS fact: manufacturing employment fell 12% during the 1980-82 recesions,
then remained stable until 2000.
Then it fell by over 30% in 10 years.
Please tell me exactly what technology improvement washed over manufacturing employment *precisely*
in the year 2000 to make it fall off a cliff exactly then? Oh and by the way, during that decade
the US$ declined in value on a trade weighted basis.
And while I am at it, Japan, Canada, France and Italy had far smaller % declines than the U.S.
C.mon, tell me what happened in the year 2000 that has made the decline in U.S. manufacturing
employment such a big outlier since then. Surely the free trade apologists here can name the productivity
improvement in the year 2000. What was it?
using the 2000 bubble is some nice cherry picking. if ones chooses the two previous recessions
the trends are very similar. there was also a distinct change in the slope of productivity per
hour starting in the late 80s so i think this is a more appropriate starting point
The U.S. Was not the only country that had a recession in 2001. Why the collapse *only* in the
U.S.?
I will move on when people admit that collapse was not due to an overnight spike in productivity.
We have double the loss of nearly any other industrialised country.
Was there possibly something else that happened in the year 2000?
ironically, i'm probably more opposed to so-called "free trade" deals than NDD. i've been gassed,
shot at, and even voted for perot despite his *repugnant* social conservatism. imo, the decimation
of labor rights and deregulation were major contributors to the ratification of trade agreements
that harmed working class people while benefiting the rich. i also believe the irrational black-white
position of many sanders social democrats on trade only helps trumpists promote america first
nationalism. union-busters, deregulators, and "job-creating" CEOs should not get a get-out-of-jail-free
card!
The percentage of employees working in manufacturing in the US fell in a long surprisingly straight
line from the late 1960s. The big drop in employee count in 2000 was a result of the collapse
of the dot-com boom. There has been a long, steady downward pressure on manufacturing jobs, but
we see big drops in their absolute numbers in just about every recession.
I do know that the 1990s were a big decade for increased manufacturing efficiency. Supercomputers
and micro-controllers changed the way we designed and built cars, cans and washing machines, for
example. I know Silicon Valley was rapidly changing the way computers were assembled as design
rules made chip design easier and new techniques made chip placement and connection simpler. Does
anyone even use a wire wrap gun anymore? There was also the impact of the Japanese challenge of
the 1980s which made manufacturers rethink their supply chain and encouraging robotics and continuous
inspection.
The official story is that the adoption of computers didn't show up in productivity figures,
but if you looked at manufacturing, their impact was pervasive. Not every industry is going to
advance at the same time, and improvements that helped one often lower costs and help others.
If you look at the chart, the big drop in 2000 rivals the drop in the early 1980s and the similar
drop during the most recent crash. It's like a strong gust of wind knocking down an old tree trunk.
The trunk was rotting and weakening for years, but it was the wind storm that knocked it down.
Nope. As you say, "the 1990s were a big decade for increased manufacturing efficiency."
And yet the number of jobs in manufacturing in the U.S. Actually *increased* slightly. And
the increase was worldwide.
"In November 1999, U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky and Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji
made a trade deal that led to China's admission into the World Trade Organization (WTO) on November
10, 2001."
Offshoring intensified, according to the official statistics of the U.S. Trade Representative.
Here's the link, showing that offshoring doubled by 2001:
http://www.trivisonno.com/offshoring
What happened that caused the decline in employment in the U.S. To be so much more severe than
in any other industrialized country was China.
Increases in productivity (technology is a broad term) likely explain the bulk of the massive
decrease in manufacturing in both the USA and Japan. Furriners certainly make good scapegoats,
however.
"So here is the overall picture that these academic studies paint for the U.S.: NAFTA produced
large changes in trade volumes, tiny efficiency gains overall, and some very significant impacts
on adversely affected communities."
Yes the free trade cheerleaders always miss the distributional impacts. But I do remember a
few international economists when NAFTA first passed saying the efficiency gains would be only
modest. I guess they were not heard over the cheerleading.
But one should also note that shot across the bow of Team Trump that Dani took. As always -
one of the best on the issue of globalization.
Technological advances also have uneven distributional pain
Job losses to strong dollar policy have uneven distributional pain
Trump tells the lie that better Trade agreements will fix the distributional pain.
It won't because trade agreements only create a small fraction of that pain.
The elephant in the room is Technological advances. It is unwise and undesirable to fight progress
(as in Luddite)
The question obscured by scapegoating NAFTA is what policies will address dislocation? Clinton
proposed shifting dislocated miners to clean energy jobs. Dislocated miners rejected that idea
in favor of an empty promise to return mining jobs. The conversation will return to square one,
"What policies will address dislocation?" only after Trump trade policy upheaval fails because
it addresses the wrong problem
I'm not a Luddite but we could and should address those distributional consequences that you properly
note. And you are spot on - Trump is creating more dislocations with his stupid bluster.
I agree. The march of technology is responsible for the productivity gains, and those gains led
to the majority of the job losses.
But it is an economic argument that simply will not win elections when we say "only 5% of the
folks lost their jobs in manufacturing due to trade, so our recommended trade policy to you, the
American people, is to keep doing what we have been doing for the last 25 years, because it only
substantially harms a small number of Americans."
To the extent Americans vote based on trade considerations in the first place (which is unclear
to me), to win elections we need to be proposing plans for trade surpluses or balanced trade.
(My preference is to seek balanced trade.).
This is why I have been beating a drum about the Buffett plan
http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/growing.pdf
trying to get you smart folks here to critique it and try to get some energy behind it, in
my own small (and ineffective way).
It is kind of hard to talk about a 13 year old plan when the updated numbers for today are much
more in favor of US. Today, if we just balanced our trade with China we would no longer have a
trade deficit.
This is a fair point. But it could be that 10 years from now we have some other cause of concern.
I seem to recall in the late 80's the concern was Japan taking over and a huge trade deficit with
Japan. That concern has receded but now the lion's share of the imbalance is with China. Can we
fix it once and for all? Also, what sort of policy proposals should people get behind that are
(A) winners politically/ help win elections, (B) economically sound, and (C) good for US workers
/ reduce inequality?
It would be great if some small group of smart folks like those who comment here could develop
such a policy prescription in the coming months by arguing and discussing amongst ourselves. If
we could do that then we could try to infect some unsuspecting politicians with the ideas, and
who knows, maybe in 4 years it could make a difference for our world.
The trade deficit is actually not that important nor is manufacturing. We are moving towards a
"Star Trek" like future where food and things can be delivered on demand without people having
to do anything. If we continue to want people to acquire those things using money, we have to
find ways to provide people with money. The reason we provide people with money via a job is that
we think there is a societal value to connecting work with getting money (to acquire stuff). I
am not sure how we can get out of that primitive mindset of "deserving" and spend our time on
something more meaningful.
"So is Trump deluded on NAFTA's overall impact on manufacturing jobs? Absolutely, yes. Was
he able to capitalize on the very real losses that this and other trade agreements produced in
certain parts of the country in a way that Democrats were unable to? Again, yes."
I guess Trump is not going to invite Dani to work for his CEA. Which is a loss for the nation.
"[H]igh school dropouts who worked in industries protected by tariffs prior to NAFTA experienced
reductions in wage growth by as much as 17 percentage points relative to wage growth in unaffected
industries."
And those high school drop outs all voted for Trump. So the bottom line is that high school
drop outs rule the nation because the rest of us don't vote as a bloc.
The problem is that you don't have the ability to compare what would have happened without NAFTA.
There is no doubt that the pain is real in those communities that saw their factory shut down
and the product being produced in Mexico instead. But would that factory have been shut down anyway
if NAFTA had not been? We know that a lot of manufacturing related to cars moved from the north
to the south within US - and from solid middle class salaries to $10-14/hour. Efficiencies and
hunts for lower cost would have continued regardless of NAFTA. So even though we know some effects
are real we don't know how much they count in the bigger picture of change.
Good point
Carrier will keep jobs here (for now) Will automate later
Try this scenario:
American businesses under pressure from shareholders and corporate raiders underinvest in their
manufacturing facilities and milk the profits. Meanwhile, new more productive competitors are
built incorporating technological advances many of them in developing countries that have strong
growth.
Recession hits and the least competitive businesses close. Those are primarily the rust belt
dinosaurs. After the recession ends, it is more competitive to increase production at more technologically
advanced facilities than to try to restart the dinosaurs. There is net loss of jobs to foreign
competition but much is due to misguided industrial and tax policy, not trade deals.
While he is generally right, this is rather disingenuous, since offshoring jobs started long before
NAFTA. It began with the maquiladora system in Mexico and by the 1990s had largely shifted to
SE Asia (anybody remember the Asian Tigers?). Even many maquiladoras relocated there. By the late
1990s, when NAFTA was signed, most of those jobs had already gone. As I keep saying, you need
to look at the details and not just the aggregates. Most the labor intensive industries relocated
to low wag/benefit countries with no labor or environmental protections before NAFTA, leaving
only those most amenable to automation. Blaming automation only works if you ignore the first
part.
The maquiladora system did start well before NAFTA. But note China has taken business away from
those maquiladoras. Putting that 20% border tax on Mexico that Trump wants means more business
for Asia.
I remember studying a prototype computer at an MIT lab in the mid-1980s. All of the chips (mainly
7400 series) were marked with Central American country names. One guy joked that he was glad we
had the contras fighting against freedom down there so we didn't have to worry about our supply
of 7404s.
What productivity increase hit like a tsunami in the U.S. and only the U.S. Precisely in the year
2000? Not in 1999 or any other year in the 1990s, but starting precisely in the year 2000.
If you can't name it, the thick skull is not mine.
"Hey look, there Dani Rodrik saying exactly what I've been saying for a while."
LOL no he's not!!!
"At the same time, the essay leaves me frustrated and uneasy. It seems to gloss over the distributional
pain of NAFTA and overstate the overall gains."
"Was he able to capitalize on the very real losses that this and other trade agreements produced
in certain parts of the country in a way that Democrats were unable to? Again, yes."
I don't want to cause more fights, and also I don't want to be the target of ridicule, but...
what is it that Dani Rodrick is saying that agrees with what you've said? I am not disputing you,
just asking for clarification, as he says several things here.
The consequences of NAFTA for Mexico are another topic which would require a separate post. Let
me just say that the great expectations the country's policy makers had for NAFTA have not been
fulfilled....
Between 1992 and 2015, real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Mexico increased slower than
in any country in Central America, any country in south America save for unfortunate Venezuela
and slower than in Canada or the United States.
Between 1992 and 2014, total factor productivity for Mexico actually decreased. Mexico fared
more poorly in productivity than in any country for which there are records in Central America,
any country in South America other than Venezuela and more poorly than in Canada or the US.
Between 1992 and 2015, real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Mexico increased slower than
in any country in Central America, any country in South America save for unfortunate Venezuela
and slower than in Canada or the United States.
Between 1992 and 2014, total factor productivity for Mexico actually decreased. Mexico fared
more poorly in productivity than in any country for which there are records in Central America,
any country in South America other than Venezuela and more poorly than in Canada or the US.
Between 1992 and 2015, real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Mexico increased slower than
in the Dominican Republic or Trinidad. Jamaica however grew more slowly.
Between 1992 and 2013, the last year for which there are records, real per capita Gross Domestic
Product for Mexico increased slower than in Puerto Rico or Cuba, despite the US embargo of trade
with Cuba.
Between 1992 and 2015, real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Mexico increased slower than
in language related Spain, Portugal, Angola or the Philippines.
Anne - Google processed trade. A big deal in China. And exactly what maquiladoras are. Yes they
do compete. And workers in these sectors are making around $3 an hour regardless of nation.
Google processed trade. A big deal in China. And exactly what maquiladoras are. Yes they do compete.
And workers in these sectors are making around $3 an hour regardless of nation.
Trump wants border taxes aka tariffs. Paul Ryan wants the Destination Based Cash Flow Tax aka
border adjustments. If Trump does not know they are different, his advisers are lying to him.
Of course I am no fan of that border adjustments idea Speaker Ryan is pushing. But that is a much
deeper conversation. Let's just say - Ryan is lying every time the weasel smiles.
Trump wants border taxes aka tariffs. Paul Ryan wants the Destination Based Cash Flow Tax aka
border adjustments....
[ I am only interested in understanding the difference between a tariff and a destination tax
and who pays each. The point is to understand each of the 2 possibilities and who will pay in
each case. Tariffs are paid by consumers. Who will pay a destination tax?
Yes I am sure they understand that this will reduce the value of the peso at least by 20% so in
the end US will end up paying for the wall and then some. It is just that low information voters
and low information Presidents will think we made Mexico pay for it.
"At the same time, [DeLong's] essay leaves me frustrated and uneasy. It seems to gloss over
the distributional pain of NAFTA and overstate the overall gains."
He's a neoliberal like PGL and Sanjait.
They don't care about the distributional pain. They're hacks defending hack centrist politicians.
The distributional pain helped elect Trump and the neoliberals can't admit it.
"At the same time, [DeLong's] essay leaves me frustrated and uneasy. It seems to gloss over the
distributional pain of NAFTA and overstate the overall gains."
Rodrik could have substituted PGL or Krugman for DeLong.
"The distributional pain helped elect Trump and the neoliberals can't admit it."
Distributional pain aka the Stopler Samuelson theorem. I talk about this often. Krugman does
too. But then this requires a little bit of analytical ability which serial idiots like you don't
do. Rage on - troll.
All you and Krugman do is mock Bernie Sanders and his supporters, people who would actually
do something about the distributional pain Rodrik talks about.
Rodrik:
"At the same time, [DeLong's] essay leaves me frustrated and uneasy. It seems to gloss over
the distributional pain of NAFTA and overstate the overall gains."
Just like PGL and Krugman. That's why neoliberal Hillary lost. It's why Trump won. And the
neoliberals still won't admit it.
In short, it's complicated – not all bad, by any means, but not the pure uprising of idealists
the more enthusiastic supporters imagine.
The political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels have an illuminating discussion
of Sanders support. The key graf that will probably have Berniebros boiling is this:
Yet commentators who have been ready and willing to attribute Donald Trump's success to anger,
authoritarianism, or racism rather than policy issues have taken little note of the extent to
which Mr. Sanders's support is concentrated not among liberal ideologues but among disaffected
white men.
The point is not to demonize, but, if you like, to de-angelize. Like any political movement
(including the Democratic Party, which is, yes, a coalition of interest groups) Sandersism has
been an assemblage of people with a variety of motives, not all of them pretty. Here's a short
list based on my own encounters:
1.Genuine idealists: For sure, quite a few Sanders supporters dream of a better society, and
for whatever reason – maybe just because they're very young – are ready to dismiss practical arguments
about why all their dreams can't be accomplished in a day.
2.Romantics: This kind of idealism shades over into something that's less about changing society
than about the fun and ego gratification of being part of The Movement. (Those of us who were
students in the 60s and early 70s very much recognize the type.) For a while there – especially
for those who didn't understand delegate math – it felt like a wonderful joy ride, the scrappy
young on the march about to overthrow the villainous old. But there's a thin line between love
and hate: when reality began to set in, all too many romantics reacted by descending into bitterness,
with angry claims that they were being cheated.
3.Purists: A somewhat different strand in the movement, also familiar to those of us of a certain
age, consists of those for whom political activism is less about achieving things and more about
striking a personal pose. They are the pure, the unsullied, who reject the corruptions of this
world and all those even slightly tainted – which means anyone who actually has gotten anything
done. Quite a few Sanders surrogates were Naderites in 2000; the results of that venture don't
bother them, because it was never really about results, only about affirming personal identity.
4.CDS victims: Quite a few Sanders supporters are mainly Clinton-haters, deep in the grip of
Clinton Derangement Syndrome; they know that Hillary is corrupt and evil, because that's what
they hear all the time; they don't realize that the reason it's what they hear all the time is
that right-wing billionaires have spent more than two decades promoting that message. Sanders
has gotten a number of votes from conservative Democrats who are voting against her, not for him,
and for sure there are liberal supporters who have absorbed the same message, even if they don't
watch Fox News.
5.Salon des Refuses: This is a small group in number, but accounts for a lot of the pro-Sanders
commentary, and is of course something I see a lot. What I'm talking about here are policy intellectuals
who have for whatever reason been excluded from the inner circles of the Democratic establishment,
and saw Sanders as their ticket to the big time. They typically hold heterodox views, but those
views don't have much to do with the campaign – sorry, capital theory disputes from half a century
ago aren't relevant to the debate over health reform. What matters is their outsider status, which
gives them an interest in backing an outsider candidate – and makes them reluctant to accept it
when that candidate is no longer helping the progressive cause.
So how will this coalition of the not-always disinterested break once it's over? The genuine
idealists will probably realize that whatever their dreams, Trump would be a nightmare. Purists
and CDSers won't back Clinton, but they were never going to anyway. My guess is that disgruntled
policy intellectuals will, in the end, generally back Clinton.
The question, as I see it, involves the romantics. How many will give in to their bitterness?
A lot may depend on Sanders – and whether he himself is one of those embittered romantics, unable
to move on.
I guess I am a little confused by the way this article is laid out. The article says the overall
picture is Large trade volume change, little gain (insignificant gain) and large wage drop for
poor.
Meaning, trade has increased but it has little efficiency gain on the economy and it mainly
just depressed wages for the poor in the US. So, am I missing something here?
I thought the whole point of free trade was to lower tariffs/quotas/taxes to allow for each
country to specialize based off their advantages/cost...resulting in a lower price in the international
market. This lower price would then result in benefiting everyone that has to buy that product
ie cars. So, even though you lost your job in automobiles to Mexico you would be able to buy a
new car much cheaper because labor cost is extremely cheap in Mexico. The end result would be
short term unemployment rise but given you could find another job the medium/long run unemployment
would be in equilibrium. Thus, everyone in the medium/long run are better off because of free
trade.
Does the term, "tiny efficiency gains" mean that jobs went to mexico because it was cheaper
labor/regulations and in turn the final product came back to the U.S. virtually the same price
as it was before NAFTA? If that is the case it would make sense to scrap NAFTA.
My understanding is that the benefit of NAFTA or any free trade agreement is essentially going
to be lower cost. This is because inefficient companies or rich countries like U.S. have high
living wage causing the final product to cost more and its all protected from international prices
with quotas/tariffs/import taxes. Thats not to neglect the wage drop in the US due to free trade,
but the argument is that cheaper products is far superior than a small amount of job loss/wage
drop.
I thought the whole point of free trade was to lower tariffs/quotas/taxes to allow for each country
to specialize based off their advantages/cost...resulting in a lower price in the international
market. This lower price would then result in benefiting everyone that has to buy that product
ie cars. So, even though you lost your job in automobiles to Mexico you would be able to buy a
new car much cheaper because labor cost is extremely cheap in Mexico. The end result would be
short term unemployment rise but given you could find another job the medium/long run unemployment
would be in equilibrium. Thus, everyone in the medium/long run are better off because of free
trade....
[ I need to understand this better, but I would agree and argue the adjustment process would
have occurred had the high employment years of the Clinton presidency continued to the Bush presidency
but that was not the case. The problem of trade dislocations that were not compensated for is
found during the Bush years. ]
"The idea here is to explain why targeting the economically large and persistent US trade deficit
is a reasonable policy goal.
This view is not widely accepted among economists. Everyone gets the by identity, the trade
deficit is a drag on growth, but numerous arguments push back on the idea that it's a problem.
Dean Baker and I tackle the issue here. The punchline, as suggested above, is not that the
drag impact of the trade deficit never gets offset. It clearly does, at times. But when offsets
are less forthcoming–the Fed's run out of ammo; the fiscal authorities have gone all austere–the
demand-reducing drag from trade imbalances is a problem.
Second, even in flush times, the trade deficit, which is exclusively in manufactured goods,
affects the industrial composition of employment, and it is in this regard that Trump has been
able to so effectively tap its politics. While high-ranking democrats were running around pushing
the next trade deal, he was talking directly to those voters who clearly perceived themselves
far more hurt than helped by globalization."
The U.S. went from 30% of its nonfarm employees in manufacturing to 12% because of rapid
growth in manufacturing productivity and limited demand, yes? The U.S. went from 12% to 9% because
of stupid and destructive macro policies--the Reagan deficits, the strong-dollar policy pushed
well past its sell-by date, too-tight monetary policy--that diverted it from its proper role as
a net exporter of capital and finance to economies that need to be net sinks rather than net sources
of the global flow of funds for investment, yes? The U.S. went from 9% to 8.7% because of the
extraordinarily rapid rise of China, yes? The U.S. went from 8.7% to 8.6% because of NAFTA, yes?
And yet the American political system right now is blaming all, 100%, every piece of that
decline from 30% to 8.6% and every problem that can be laid its door on brown people from Mexico.
By not making it clear that you are talking about 0.1%-points of a 21.4%-point phenomenon,
I think you are enabling that. I don't think this is a good thing to do...
"Was Trump able to capitalize on the very real losses that this and other trade agreements produced
in certain parts of the country in a way that Democrats were unable to? Again, yes."
How did he capitalize? By addressing the issue unlike the progressive neoliberals DeLong and
PGL's candidate Hillary.
Just talking about the Stopler Samuelson theorem every now and then doesn't address the issue.
"... If the American peasants were going to revolt they would have done it already. Fortunately for the rich, the peasants have been mollified by opiates, marijuana, cheap industrial calories, videogames and unlimited trash entertainment, and a fawning endless adoration for the rich and famous. And when that fails theyve got mega churches spouting hopium too. ..."
"... By the way, look around most of the country. It's designed without public squares which are necessary for protest and assembly. Look at the BLM protests, they tried to take the freeways and the whites just got furious that their fat SUVs were impeded. ..."
"... Americans are the most apathetic population on earth ..."
"... Peasants do not start revolutions. It is members of the enlightened elite who clap their hands and trigger the avalanche. Their attempts at gradual reform begin by harnessing, and thereby empowering, the threatened, desperate lower-middle class, which turns and rends their fellows and their superiors (the 90-99% in today's jargon). The breakdown of consensus in the middle orders creates chaos, which in turn empowers those who benefit from instability, especially psychopaths, who cannot last long in places with community or corporate memory, but who flourish in civil disorder. ..."
"... They are right. A french-revolution-style reckoning is coming. We will have to dismantle and redistribute their fortunes. And those that resist will not survive. ..."
"... They should be afraid, and they should know that the later the reckoning, the angrier the mob. The angrier the mob, the likelier accidents happen. ..."
"... They are mostly blind to the need to redistribute, and those that are not are blocked by the system (the neoliberal world order) from acting. ..."
"... I guess they adhere that now-old adage: He who dies with the most toys WINS. ..."
"... This very day, NYT reports that Peter Thiel has (i.e., "bought") New Zealand citizenship. And then hilariously goes on to suggest that this expedient could well be thanks to Thiel's adolescent enthusiasm for "Lord of the Rings", which is where they produced the movie, so "becoming a citizen might be the next best thing to living in Middle-earth itself ." ..."
"... The Masque of the Red Death ..."
"... And therein lies the error: they don't judge themselves by the norms they sold (or failed to sell) to us. ..."
"... I'd count the Zuck's purchase of 700 acres (similar acreage to Central Park) as a bolt-hole. And peter Thiel's in New Zealand. Guess the help will be relegated to the Blueseed floating city ..."
"... The French aristocracy was pretty surprised in 1789 how unprepared they were. I'd tend to put them in the former group. Our oligarchy? Definitely psychopaths. ..."
"... The current hedgies should watch Adam Curtis's 4 part docu "The MayFair Set". It's on utube. Or, if 4 hours is too long, they could watch just part 2, notice James Goldsmith, and then watch part 4 starting at about minute 23. Another prepper. Why all the paranoia and prepping? ..."
"... Lavish follies apparently become tiresome or expensive to maintain or lonely or in some other way unappealing after they're built. So now one can rent a villa at Goldsmith's Mexican hideaway, for a considerable sum of course. ..."
"... IF collapse came, I absolutely WOULD go on a 1%er hunt. Open season. ..."
"... Sarcasm on. Hedge fund managers anticipate They're so good at that. That's why hedge fund yields for pension funds are so much better than other fund yields for pension funds. (8^)) Sarcasm off. ..."
"... I don't understand why these pampered, self-worshipping, self-entitled rich scumbags think that New Zealanders will welcome them with open arms if SHTF. ..."
"... Yes, that's the flaw. New Zealand would be great for their purposes if not for the small problem that it's full of New Zealanders. The society is strongly egalitarian, much more so than the US, and has different core values (less about freedom and more about fairness). ..."
"... Thiel's land purchase in the South Island has been front page news lately, along with the news that he didn't have to comply with foreign investment criteria because he is a NZ citizen (which just raised the question of how and why he received citizenship). ..."
"... "What does that really tell us about our system? It's a very odd thing. You're basically seeing that the people who've been the best at reading the tea leaves-the ones with the most resources, because that's how they made their money-are now the ones most preparing to pull the rip cord and jump out of the plane." ..."
"... buying airstrips and farms ..."
"... Prime Minister Bill English has defended a decision to grant citizenship to American tech billionaire Peter Thiel, saying "a little bit of flexibility" is useful when it comes to citizenship laws. ..."
"... English said there needed to be a balance between giving everyone a fair chance of citizenship, and encouraging those who would make a positive difference to New Zealand. ..."
"... "If people come here and invest and get into philanthropy and are supportive of New Zealand, then we're better off for their interest in our country, and as a small country at the end of the world, that's not a bad thing. ..."
"... NZ First leader Winston Peters' suggestion that the Government was selling citizenship was "ridiculous", English said. ..."
If the American peasants were going to revolt they would have done it already. Fortunately
for the rich, the peasants have been mollified by opiates, marijuana, cheap industrial calories,
videogames and unlimited trash entertainment, and a fawning endless adoration for the rich and
famous. And when that fails theyve got mega churches spouting hopium too.
By the way, look around most of the country. It's designed without public squares which
are necessary for protest and assembly. Look at the BLM protests, they tried to take the freeways
and the whites just got furious that their fat SUVs were impeded.
If you want to see the future watch Idiocracy not the French Revolution. Americans are
the most apathetic population on earth .
Maybe they just have different priorities? Maybe they have come from countries where life looks
like "the s hit the f" is the norm, but still manage to make do?
Peasants do not start revolutions. It is members of the enlightened elite who clap their
hands and trigger the avalanche. Their attempts at gradual reform begin by harnessing, and thereby
empowering, the threatened, desperate lower-middle class, which turns and rends their fellows
and their superiors (the 90-99% in today's jargon). The breakdown of consensus in the middle orders
creates chaos, which in turn empowers those who benefit from instability, especially psychopaths,
who cannot last long in places with community or corporate memory, but who flourish in civil disorder.
Is Trump the reformer who triggers the avalanche – our Duc D'Orleans, later Philippe Egalite,
under which name he was guillotined? The looks on the faces of Louis XVI and Hillary Clinton were
probably equally dumbfounded when they found themselves stymied by their respective rivals at
the "Assembly of Notables."
They are right. A french-revolution-style reckoning is coming. We will have to dismantle and
redistribute their fortunes. And those that resist will not survive.
They should be afraid, and they should know that the later the reckoning, the angrier the mob.
The angrier the mob, the likelier accidents happen.
At this point, I do not see another option. They are mostly blind to the need to redistribute,
and those that are not are blocked by the system (the neoliberal world order) from acting.
A truly nutty non-solution from the greediest nastiest bastards on the planet. Just frickin
great. They know what they should do, but they adamantly refuse to do it in order to remain mired
in the greedy proflgate ways.
I guess they adhere that now-old adage: He who dies with the most toys WINS.
I wonder when the elites will make themselves Pyramids? Or are they planning to bury themselves
inside these damn bunkers instead? Using the bunkers as necropoli probably makes more sense than
what they're actually planning to use them for.
This very day, NYT reports that Peter Thiel has (i.e., "bought") New Zealand citizenship. And
then hilariously goes on to suggest that this expedient could well be thanks to Thiel's adolescent
enthusiasm for "Lord of the Rings", which is where they produced the movie, so "becoming a citizen
might be the next best thing to living in Middle-earth itself ."
The good news is, these guys will doubtless revert to cannibalism in short order .
I guess they haven't read The Masque of the Red Death .
The story takes place at the castellated abbey of the "happy and dauntless and sagacious"
Prince Prospero. Prospero and 1,000 other nobles have taken refuge in this walled abbey to
escape the Red Death, a terrible plague with gruesome symptoms that has swept over the land.
Victims are overcome by "sharp pains", "sudden dizziness", and hematidrosis, and die within
half an hour. Prospero and his court are indifferent to the sufferings of the population at
large; they intend to await the end of the plague in luxury and safety behind the walls of
their secure refuge, having welded the doors shut.
They don't subscribe to the propertarian patriarchal norms that they sold to the public, except
for appearances, which are often cited as pretexts for ejection from the halls of power. They
owe the public cultural shibboleths no real honor, especially not within their private practices.
They are not obligated to enact the stories they write or take to heart the submission they counsel
to us. They didn't get to group hegemony by competing.
I see the paralogic. They're American. Therefore, adversity and competition is the normal posture
for every interaction. Therefore, everything is a fair contest which they won fair and square
against us. Which suggests that they probably subscribe more perfectly to the same alleged social
"norms" they impose on us. And therein lies the error: they don't judge themselves by the norms
they sold (or failed to sell) to us.
If they were as crippled by someone having fun without them when there is plenty of fun to
be had, there would be no ruling class.
on the other hand they have more time and money to gain actually useful skills than wage slaves
EVER will. A variant of the rich get richer phenomena which seems to be how things usually work
out, rather than the poor getting even as mostly happens only in morality tales. Now get to work
and shut up about it!
I'd count the Zuck's purchase of 700 acres (similar acreage to Central Park) as a bolt-hole.
And peter Thiel's in New Zealand. Guess the help will be relegated to the Blueseed floating city
Jet = high time preference
Amel 64= low time preference, in fact not even so relevant to insist on staying on course to NZ.
http://www.amel.fr/en/amel-64/
W. Somerset Maugham's retelling of the tale (1933) "An Appointment in Samarra" comes to mind:
There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little
while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the
marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled
me.
She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away
from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me.
The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks
and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace
and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening
gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?
That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished
to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
Examine the mentality of planning for a "collapse."
The hedge fund managers above all are escaping to rural areas, with clean water and air. They've
planned on how to get by with less for themselves and their families.
The article also spoke of bunkers of under ground apartment complexes, silos, etc that would be
enclaves for communities of wealthy citizens where they would ration, learn how to ration, share,
get by with less.
They all think it will be temporary while the ignorant masses destroy each other without their
surperior leadership. They imagine being able to return and begin the hard work of returning things
to the way they were, with themselves back in elite positions.
Just think. If they could imagine maybe getting by on less and used that sense of community
they expect to magically develop in their bunkers, there wouldn't be amy "collapse" to fear anyway.
If they could imagine their clean water and air natural retreats, with food, are simple things
the rest of the planet would like to enjoy and should be able to enjoy without exploitation, there
wouldn't be any collapse to fear.
So not only will their getaways be big failures, but the imagined return to the world after
the crisis is also naive.
Not only would things not be the same, you'd have to be a special kind of idoit or psycopath
to think anything would still be hunky dory with a return to the status quo..
if you survive the carnage they imagine in some kind of collapse.
"you'd have to be a special kind of idiot or psychopath"
The French aristocracy was pretty surprised in 1789 how unprepared they were. I'd tend
to put them in the former group. Our oligarchy? Definitely psychopaths.
The 0.01 percenters would much rather create doomsday bunkers than fix their own greed and
power lust. I guess they know themselves well.
I could poke so many what if holes into their daydream scenarios. Hours of fun since their
most of their scenarios depend on order and business as usual ultimately being restored. I guess
they learned nothing from what typically happens to refugees regardless of their class and they
assume that the "problem" will be localized instead of global and that their assets will be worth
more with them alive than dead.
It is impossible to convince someone afflicted with the greatest pandemic in human history
- Greed - that they are better off having a smaller % of a growing pie than a larger % of a stagnant
or shrinking pie.
The epicenters for the global pandemic are London, New York, and Washington D.C., though not
necessarily in that order.
Wait, I thought Trump was going to revoke federal funding for "sanctuary cities", as well as
the governor of Texas at the state level. Oh, wrong group?
This elite fear and their related actions have been "out there" for years. Puzzling me is what
has changed to elevate this topic in their Davos 2017 discussions?
The current hedgies should watch Adam Curtis's 4 part docu "The MayFair Set". It's on utube.
Or, if 4 hours is too long, they could watch just part 2, notice James Goldsmith, and then watch
part 4 starting at about minute 23. Another prepper. Why all the paranoia and prepping?
Maybe they should just stop destroying companies and pay taxes. They might sleep better if
they felt they were part of the country instead of pirates living apart. imo.
Lavish follies apparently become tiresome or expensive to maintain or lonely or in some other
way unappealing after they're built. So now one can rent a villa at Goldsmith's Mexican hideaway,
for a considerable sum of course.
They can never actually "go Galt" because they need us. If I remember correctly, Galt was some
sort of industrialist who built and manufactured actual things. What do most of these billionaires
provide us? It's difficult to imagine a hedge fund going very well after the apocalypse. Will
people continue updating their facebook pages when the world collapses? Can I paypal my tribal
wasteland overlord his tribute after our government has collapsed?
I suppose they'll just sitting around looking at all bank statements, bored out of their minds
waiting for the power to come back on.
It isn't just elite anxiety, this has been playing out among the lower classes as well. It's
not just prepper reality shows either; we've had almost 10 years now of zombie apocalypse themed
entertainment and a general revival of the post-apocalypse genre across multiple entertainment
platforms.
We know the empire is collapsing, we just wont acknowledge it out loud.
[Reddit CEO Steve] Huffman has calculated that, in the event of a disaster, he would seek
out some form of community: "Being around other people is a good thing. I also have this somewhat
egotistical view that I'm a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge, or at least not
a slave, when push comes to shove."
Yeah, your skills running a content aggregate site that's become a haven for the alt-right,
that's going to be the things the masses will be looking for in a leader in a post-apocalyptic
society.
What if the guy fueling the jet pours some sugar into the tank? What if the guy who drives
the fuel truck to the airstrip gets "lost" on the day of the apocalypse? What if your driver on
the way to the airport pulls a gun on you? You better get a jumbo jet to fit everyone on that
could spoil your plan. It'll be like the end of the "Jerk". It is just terrible to have to rely
on people and to need all these badges of affluence. Why can't a rich soul be a rapacious rich
jerk, in peace?
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
These stories really make me hope that the collapse that these people are preparing for is
a flu pandemic. In that case, no one is going anywhere as the first thing that will be done by
states is close the borders to slow down transmission of the virus. Good luck getting to New Zealand
then!
Also, let's not forget the Archdruid's (accurate) contention that the (presumably very well
armed) security staff will be eager to hunt down the elites after society collapses.
Charles Hugh Smith in his book Survival+ however does offer some good advice for elites who
want to survive collapse indefinitely: find a tight-knit community and immediately use all the
money and resources at your disposal to make sure that they're self-sustaining, well-armed and
grateful. Then learn some useful skills like playing musical instruments or blacksmithing and
move on in. Maybe someone should send these poor deluded bunker builders a copy!
"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any
material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason.
But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others,
are a solemn, basic, God-given right. The sensitivity of the poor to injustice is a trivial thing
compared with that of the rich.
- John Kenneth Galbraith
"The Age of Uncertainty" 1977
If this is a true quote, it does indeed make the blood come out one's ears that Galbraith could
have said it. It is so wrong that its vast wrongness can only be explained by knowing that the
guy was an economist by training. If he had bothered to learn any history–any history at all,
whatsoever, in any way, of any kind–he would never have been able to spout that inane nugget of
anti-truth.
Let's see: August 4, 1789. Just one notable one, among about 47 bajillion counterexamples to
bonehead Galbraith's alleged quotation.
Why don't they bail on the rest of the world now? They might as well get while the getting
is good, and the rest of the world will benefit from their absence. Seems like a win/win to me.
Ahem. This is part of the reason that some rich folks (*COUGH* Elon Musk *COUGH*) is pushing
so hard for (rich) people to pony up and help pay for a one-way trip to Mars. A bunch of pampered
rich people bailing out on Earth to go to the ULTIMATE gated community on Mars where they can
claim all the land from their feet to the horizon.
A pipe dream, of course. Such an endeavor would be ABSOLUTELY dependent upon continued upkeep
and support from Earth, AND Mars is NOT hospitable, at all Nonetheless, the impulse is there
for all to see: use your accumulated (unearned) wealth to get away from the Earth you have raped
to get where you are, before it's too late! Take all your marbles and just up and leave everyone
else to cook in the sewage and heat you've left behind. But at least your pillaging made it possible
for you and a select few others to get out.
As for fancy bunkers like converted missile silos. Note: as a veteran of the cold war and all
that nuke war shit, I KNOW how those things work (and don't work). Fancy air filters on missile
silos will filter out radiation, biological, and MOST chemical agents, but they will not, they
CANNOT, filter out oxygen displacing chemicals (carbon monoxide, halon, ammonia, etc). Some cluster
of rich douchebags and their immediate families think they can hide out for up to 5 years in a
luxury converted missile silo. Well I will just pull a car up to one of your air intakes, run
a line from my exhaust pipe to your intake, and pump your luxury bunker full of carbon monoxide.
Sleep the sleep of the dead, motherf*ckers.
BTW – many of the dystopian authors of the 40s, 50s, and 60s served in the military in WW II.
It is not an accident that they wrote these types of novels and short stories. They had observed
dystopian societies and their outcomes personally. I think the current 1% think they can control
the future in the same way that many of them thought in the 1780s and 1910-1945.
In Jack Womack's Dryco novels, Dryco (a kind of uber-Walmart-cum-Raytheon that owns everything)
becomes worried about CEO safety and covertly engineers a citizen "rebellion" on Long Island,
necessitating a permanently-stationed US military in Manhattan, to protect the elite. The Dryco
inner circle begins moving operations north, to the Bronx and Westchester County, to stay ahead
of rising sea levels. Those books were written mostly in the late '80s/early '90s but still resonate.
Sarcasm on. Hedge fund managers anticipate They're so good at that. That's why hedge fund yields for pension funds are so much better
than other fund yields for pension funds. (8^)) Sarcasm off.
Perhaps they have been reading too much economic doomer porn?
Just three months ago anybody who even considered voting for Sanders, Green, or Trump was a
selfish fool who just wanted to see the world burn. For the sake of our fellow man – consider
the children! – we were encouraged to fall in line to prevent our society from collapsing into
war and economic ruin. If only we'd have know that some of the wealthiest and most influential
people in the country were literally bracing themselves for the apocalypse with absolutely no
intention of helping a single soul escape or doing a thing to prevent the disaster. I guess if
you're rich enough it's OK not to give a shit about destroying the world.
It's important that as many people as possible read the NYT article to see just how crazy and
how horrifyingly self-serving the 1% really is. The idea that anybody will need bunkers or private
airstrips is stupid as hell and straight out of a zombie movie, but it's a perfect illustration
of how little these people care about the world around them.
Spread the word. This is the time to bail. Donald Trump is President. He is at war with corporate
media moguls. Even Bloomberg published an article on America's carnage. The suicide rate of women
under 75 is increasing. The cover-up of the neoliberal looting is collapsing. The millions of
refugees flooding Europe can't be hidden. Blaming Russia doesn't work. A world war is an extinction
event.
Who will be on the last plane out of East Hampton?
I don't understand why these pampered, self-worshipping, self-entitled rich scumbags think
that New Zealanders will welcome them with open arms if SHTF.
If the US were to go tits up the
way they fear. to such an extent that they actually felt the need to flee, the entire world would
get hit hard too. These same clowns talk about globalization and how the world is, and NEEDS to
be, interconnected. Well, you don't get to have it both ways. The US is a huge economic chunk
of the world. If it bites it, then so will a LOT of other nations, and New Zealand is not some
self-sufficient paradise that would be left untouched.
The LEGITIMATE people, the LEGITIMATE citizens of New Zealand, wouldn't take these leeches
in with open arms, strewing their walking paths with flowers and candy, if they abandon the US
in a collapse THAT THEY WERE LARGELY RESPONSIBLE FOR. They cannot run away and escape their culpability
and the fruits of their unending greed and selfishness.
Yes, that's the flaw. New Zealand would be great for their purposes if not for the small problem
that it's full of New Zealanders. The society is strongly egalitarian, much more so than the US,
and has different core values (less about freedom and more about fairness). If these people had
what it takes to be New Zealanders they would not need to leave the USA in the first place. Failing
that, they are going to be constantly under siege if they move here, in a figurative sense and
possibly a literal one if they try to engage in the same kind of behaviour that required them
to flee the USA.
Thiel's land purchase in the South Island has been front page news lately, along with the news
that he didn't have to comply with foreign investment criteria because he is a NZ citizen (which
just raised the question of how and why he received citizenship).
deep down they know they are a bunch of grifters who have produced nothing of any real value.
some of them are deluded but many know it has all been one big debt fueled scam, involving predatory
behavior (pirate equity) and risk free gambling (hedge scum managers, you lose and they still
win) further abetted by tax avoidance and other shifty activity.
[ "What does that really tell us about our system? It's a very odd thing. You're basically
seeing that the people who've been the best at reading the tea leaves-the ones with the most resources,
because that's how they made their money-are now the ones most preparing to pull the rip cord
and jump out of the plane." ]
The "Peak Oil Doomers" know very well why hedge fund jack offs are " buying airstrips and
farms "
"supposedly" (so take w/salt), the entire food supply of the Northeast flows through 4 highways
(I 90/80/76/95--sounds plausible). Ain't too hard to seize those chokepoints and disrupt the entire
Northeast.
Similarly the crossings of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers also are major chokepoints for
our just-in-time way of life.
We've all seen the empty bread shelves when 12″ of snow are forecast. I imagine that would
be nothing in the 1:1,000,000 chance civilization truly goes pear-shaped.
Prime Minister Bill English has defended a decision to grant citizenship to American tech billionaire
Peter Thiel, saying "a little bit of flexibility" is useful when it comes to citizenship laws.
(he didn't meet the criteria for citizenship under the law)
English said there needed to be a balance between giving everyone a fair chance of citizenship,
and encouraging those who would make a positive difference to New Zealand.
"If people come here and invest and get into philanthropy and are supportive of New Zealand,
then we're better off for their interest in our country, and as a small country at the end of
the world, that's not a bad thing.
(but he has money and spread a lot of it around and we like that)
NZ First leader Winston Peters' suggestion that the Government was selling citizenship
was "ridiculous", English said.
(even though everything I just said appears to confirm it)
"... Krugman dislikes Trump (as do I). He seems motivated to find fault with Trump's policies. In
fuzzy things like economics and their intersection with politics it is challenging, and perhaps actually
impossible, for most of us to remain balanced. If someone as smart and knowledgeable as Paul Krugman
subconsciously decides to dislike a policy, his brain is more than clever enough to invent reasonable
economic arguments against the policy. ..."
"... Cognitive bias. Using % of jobs that are manufacturing is relative to what was happening in
other job areas: like Reagan building up the military and civil service to buy weapons a tiny part of
the growth in that sector was manufacturing. ..."
"... I understand the textbook story is the Fed raises rates when the budget deficit increases.
I am not sure if the empirical data supports that though. Perhaps the Fed cares more about inflation
than budget deficits and perhaps budget deficits do not directly result in inflation? But if that is
correct, what is the basis for Professor Krugman's assertion that Trump's budget will push up interest
rates? ..."
"... It's like how Greenspan and Rubin told Clinton he had to drop his middle class spending bill
in order to focus on deficit reduction. Greenspan was threatening to raise rates and Clinton bent the
knee to the "independent" Fed. ..."
"... Krugman should remember that "Integrity, once sold, is difficult to repurchase - even at 10x
the original sales price." ..."
Reagan, Trump, and Manufacturing : It's hard to focus on ordinary economic analysis amidst this
political apocalypse. But ... like it or not the progress of
CASE NIGHTMARE
ORANGE may depend on how the economy does. So, what is actually likely to happen to trade and
manufacturing over the next few years?
As it happens, we have what looks like an unusually good model in the Reagan years... - it's not
part of the Reagan legend, but the import quota on Japanese automobiles was one of the biggest protectionist
moves of the postwar era.
I'm a bit uncertain about the actual fiscal stance of Trumponomics: deficits will surely blow
up, but I won't believe in the infrastructure push until I see it, and given savage cuts in aid to
the poor it's not entirely clear that there will be
net stimulus . But suppose there is. Then what?
Well, what happened in the Reagan years was "twin deficits": the budget deficit pushed up interest
rates, which caused a strong dollar, which caused a bigger trade deficit, mainly in manufactured
goods (which are still most of what's tradable.) This led to an accelerated decline in the industrial
orientation of the U.S. economy:
And people did notice. ...
Again, this happened despite substantial protectionism.
So Trump_vs_deep_state will probably follow a similar course; it will actually shrink manufacturing despite
the big noise made about saving a few hundred jobs here and there.
On the other hand, by then the BLS may be thoroughly politicized, commanded to report good news
whatever happens.
Forced Japan to accept restraints on auto exports. The agreement set total Japanese auto exports
at 1.68 million
vehicles in 1981-82, 8 percent below 1980 exports. Two years later the level was permitted to
rise to 1.85 million.(33)
Clifford Winston of the Brookings Institution found that the import limits have actually cost
jobs in the U.S. auto
industry by making it possible for the sheltered American automakers to raise prices and limit
production. In 1984,
Winston writes in Blind Intersection? Policy and the Automobile Industry, 32,000 jobs were lost,
U.S. production fell
by 300,000 units, and profits for U.S. firms increased $8.9 billion. The quotas have also made
the Japanese firms
potentially more formidable rivals because they have begun building assembly plants in the United
States.(34) They
also shifted production to larger cars, introducing to American firms competition they did not
have before the quotas
were created. In 1984, it was estimated that higher prices for domestic and imported cars cost
consumers $2.2 billion a
year.(35) At the height of the dollar's exchange rate with the yen in 1984-85, the quotas were
costing American
consumers the equivalent of $11 billion a year
The Reagan Record on Trade: Rhetoric vs. Reality
By Sheldon L. Richman
Executive Summary
When President Reagan imposed a 100 percent tariff on selected Japanese electronics in 1987,
he and the press gave the impression that this was an act of desperation. Pictured was a long-forbearing
president whose patience was exhausted by the recalcitrant and conniving Japanese. After trying
for years to elicit some fairness out of them, went the story, the usually good-natured president
had finally had enough.
When newspapers and television networks announced the tariffs, the media reminded the public
that such restraints were imposed by a staunch free trader. The less-than-subtle message was that
if "Free Trader" Ronald Reagan thought the tariff necessary, then Japan surely deserved it. After
more than seven years in office, Ronald Reagan is still widely regarded as a devoted free trader.
A typical reference is that of Mark Shields, a Washington Post columnist, to Reagan's "blind devotion
to the doctrine of free trade."
If President Reagan has a devotion to free trade, it surely must be blind, because he has been
off the mark most of the time. Only short memories and a refusal to believe one's own eyes would
account for the view that President Reagan is a free trader. Calling oneself a free trader is
not the same thing as being a free trader. Nor does a free-trade position mean that the president,
but not Congress, should have the power to impose trade sanctions. Instead, a president deserves
the title of free trader only if his efforts demonstrate an attempt to remove trade barriers at
home and prevent the imposition of new ones.
By this standard, the Reagan administration has failed to promote free trade. Ronald Reagan
by his actions has become the most protectionist president since Herbert Hoover, the heavyweight
champion of protectionists.
[ I appreciate this reference, which is in turn extensively referenced. ]
This is simple. It means instead of shipping low end Toyota Corolla's that were small, manual
transmission, no A/C, etc., the Japanese started to make larger, more expensive cars, even luxury
cars like Lexis, etc.
If this helps, think of Volkswagen being limited to shipping 1,000 cars to the US. They would
probably send us only the top-end Porsches (VW owns that brand) and none of the more middle class
cars.
To Anne's point on whether this is an accurate portrayal of what happened: I have no recollection
and no knowledge about this.
What really happened is simple. The Japanese car companies got that quota rents (Menzie Chinn
documented this recently) from what was effectively a quota on the imports of Japanese cars. American
consumers instead imported European cars. Any benefits to US car manufacturing was trivial and
totally undo for the aggregate US economy by the massive dollar appreciation. All one has to do
is to look at the exchange rate back then and one gets why net exports fell dramatically.
Japanese manufacturers exported more expensive models in the 1980s due to voluntary export
restraints, negotiated by the Japanese government and U.S. trade representatives, that restricted
mainstream car sales. ...
Acura holds the distinction of being the first Japanese automotive luxury brand. ... In its
first few years of existence, Acura was among the best-selling luxury marques in the US. ...
In the late 1980s, the success of the company's first flagship vehicle, the Legend, inspired
fellow Japanese automakers Toyota and Nissan to launch their own luxury brands, Lexus and Infiniti,
respectively. ...
I am reluctant to disagree with Paul Krugman, as he has forgotten more economics than I'll ever
know. But my first thought as I read this was: motivated reasoning. It is quite interesting, and
affects all of us, and the brilliant folks seem to be more susceptible to it than the average
folks.
Krugman dislikes Trump (as do I). He seems motivated to find fault with Trump's policies.
In fuzzy things like economics and their intersection with politics it is challenging, and perhaps
actually impossible, for most of us to remain balanced. If someone as smart and knowledgeable
as Paul Krugman subconsciously decides to dislike a policy, his brain is more than clever enough
to invent reasonable economic arguments against the policy.
Of course, none of this implies that Krugman is actually wrong in this case.
One question for folks. Krugman says "the budget deficit pushed up interest rates, which caused
a strong dollar, which caused a bigger trade deficit, mainly in manufactured goods (which are
still most of what's tradable.)" I am wondering why a budget deficit has to push up interest rates?
In 2009 we ran a large budget deficit at low interest rates. In WW 2 we did as well (I think,
not really sure about this). Is it well established that budget deficits push up interest rates?
Cognitive bias. Using % of jobs that are manufacturing is relative to what was happening in
other job areas: like Reagan building up the military and civil service to buy weapons a tiny
part of the growth in that sector was manufacturing.
What else was going on in late 70's early 80's... a lot of growth on service sector.
It is called cherry picking the chart to make a point with non thinkers.
Right, I think the answer is that budget deficits only push up interest rates if the Fed allows
that to happen. The Fed could keep rates low if they wanted by signaling a willingness to buy
up as much federal debt as is needed to hit some low target rate. So I think Krugman is, in effect,
predicting that they will not do that, and that they will instead counteract the fiscal expansion
with tighter monetary policy on the theory that this is needed to counteract potential "overheating".
I bought a house in 1985, I bet interest rates would go down by taking a 1 year ARM. I did quite
well each year it adjusted! I sold it in 1990 and rates were low enough to go fixed conventional
on the "trade up".
It is reputed the high rates helped cause the "Volcker" recession in the gray around 82.
Thinking about it some more. If I understand this correctly, the thought is that deficit spending
is stimulative, and the economy is already at full employment, so the Fed will raise interest
rates to prevent the economy from "overheating." The increase in rates slows the economy down
by two mechanisms:
(1) when the cost of capital is higher, fewer investments get made than when it is lower (say,
a business needs to see a higher ROI when interest rates are high than when they are low). (As
an aside, outside of the housing market, I don't think this effect is very strong. Real businesses
don't change their approach to investment if rates change by, say, 100%; from 2% to 4%. At least,
not the ones I have been exposed to, which are generally looking for ~ 15% IRR on investments.)
(2) People globally may be more inclined to hold dollars when the risk-free rate is higher,
which increases demand for the currency, which means the currency gets stronger, and exports are
less competitive and imports more competitive, counter-acting the stimulus.
The thing I don't like about this line of thought is that it is fatalist. It suggests that
fiscal policy really does not matter, it will all be offset by monetary policy. There is no real
impact to the economy whether we run huge budget deficits or surpluses. Me not liking it does
not mean it is wrong, obviously, but I just don't buy it. When I run into things like this in
economics I really start to wonder how much of macro is based on empirical observations and correlations
versus 'models.'
I think I ought to take an intro econ course and actually learn something. Or read an introductory
macro text book...
Krugman says "the budget deficit pushed up interest rates, which caused a strong dollar, which
caused a bigger trade deficit, mainly in manufactured goods (which are still most of what's tradable.)"
I am wondering why a budget deficit has to push up interest rates?
In 2009 we ran a large budget deficit at low interest rates.... Is it well established that
budget deficits push up interest rates?
[ Here then is the relevant matter to be analyzed. ]
Anne, thank you. From this plot I see that during Clinton's presidency we went from a budget deficit
to a surplus. And interest rates dropped. During the George W. Bush presidency we went from a
surplus to a deficit. And interest rates dropped.
There does not appear to be any obvious correlation between the budget deficit and interest
rates.
I understand the textbook story is the Fed raises rates when the budget deficit increases.
I am not sure if the empirical data supports that though. Perhaps the Fed cares more about inflation
than budget deficits and perhaps budget deficits do not directly result in inflation? But if that
is correct, what is the basis for Professor Krugman's assertion that Trump's budget will push
up interest rates?
With war looming, it's time to be prepared. So last week I switched to a fixed-rate mortgage.
It means higher monthly payments, but I'm terrified about what will happen to interest rates once
financial markets wake up to the implications of skyrocketing budget deficits.
From a fiscal point of view the impending war is a lose-lose proposition. If it goes badly,
the resulting mess will be a disaster for the budget. If it goes well, administration officials
have made it clear that they will use any bump in the polls to ram through more big tax cuts,
which will also be a disaster for the budget. Either way, the tide of red ink will keep on rising.
Last week the Congressional Budget Office marked down its estimates yet again. Just two years
ago, you may remember, the C.B.O. was projecting a 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion. Now it projects
a 10-year deficit of $1.8 trillion.
And that's way too optimistic. The Congressional Budget Office operates under ground rules
that force it to wear rose-colored lenses. If you take into account - as the C.B.O. cannot - the
effects of likely changes in the alternative minimum tax, include realistic estimates of future
spending and allow for the cost of war and reconstruction, it's clear that the 10-year deficit
will be at least $3 trillion.
So what? Two years ago the administration promised to run large surpluses. A year ago it said
the deficit was only temporary. Now it says deficits don't matter. But we're looking at a fiscal
crisis that will drive interest rates sky-high.
A leading economist recently summed up one reason why: "When the government reduces saving
by running a budget deficit, the interest rate rises." Yes, that's from a textbook by the chief
administration economist, Gregory Mankiw.
But what's really scary - what makes a fixed-rate mortgage seem like such a good idea - is
the looming threat to the federal government's solvency.... ]
Yes, thank you for that column from 2003. Yes, Prof. K was correct about the future trend in deficits
back then, but incorrect about the future trend in interest rates.
It is certainly conceivable that he is wrong now as well.
Krugman captures very well what happened in the 1980's. He went to work for the CEA hoping to
undo this disaster. Of course the political hacks in the Reagan White House did not listen to
the CEA. Now he watches people in the Trump White House that are even more insane than these political
hacks. You draw whatever conclusion you want but his concerns strike me as real from someone who
has been there.
pgl - thank you. I am not drawing any hard and fast conclusions, just trying to learn. I appreciate
your comment that is based on both education and experience.
I am still thinking about this Buffett proposal on trade with import certificates.
http://fortune.com/2016/04/29/warren-buffett-foreign-trade/
Jared Bernstein mentioned it in passing in an opinion piece in the NY Times yesterday. I put
a comment on his website asking him to share more of his thoughts on it, and he said that he will
if/when he has time. I hope he does.
No. Budget deficits for a country such as the US do not push up interest rates. They would in
fact lower the interbank rate if not countered by Federal Reserve actions.
If budget deficits added to aggregate demand to the point that the Fed thought its inflation
target was in jeopardy, the Fed might raise its target rate of interest in the hopes of quelling
demand.
The Fed has almost complete control over the interest rate paid by the Federal government when
it decides to issue new debt. WWII is a great example of this. So is our most recent depression.
Will Fiscal Policy Really Be Expansionary?
By Paul Krugman
It's now generally accepted that Trump_vs_deep_state will finally involve the kind of fiscal stimulus
progressive economists have been pleading for ever since the financial crisis. After all, Republicans
are deeply worried about budget deficits when a Democrat is in the White House, but suddenly become
fiscal doves when in control. And there really is no question that the deficit will go up.
But will this actually amount to fiscal stimulus? Right now it looks as if Republicans are
going to ram through their whole agenda, including an end to Obamacare, privatizing Medicare and
block-granting Medicaid, sharp cuts to food stamps, and so on. These are spending cuts, which
will reduce the disposable income of lower- and middle-class Americans even as tax cuts raise
the income of the wealthy. Given the sharp distributional changes, looking just at the budget
deficit may be a poor guide to the macroeconomic impact.
Given the extent to which things are in flux, I can't put numbers on what's likely to happen.
But I was able to find matching analyses by the good folks at Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
of tax * and spending ** cuts in Paul Ryan's 2014 budget, which may be a useful model of things
to come.
If you leave out the magic asterisks - closing of unspecified tax loopholes - that budget was
a deficit-hiker: $5.7 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years, versus $5 trillion in spending cuts.
The spending cuts involved cuts in discretionary spending plus huge cuts in programs that serve
the poor and middle class; the tax cuts were, of course, very targeted on high incomes.
The pluses and minuses here would have quite different effects on demand. Cutting taxes on
high incomes probably has a low multiplier: the wealthy are unlikely to be cash-constrained, and
will save a large part of their windfall. Cutting discretionary spending has a large multiplier,
because it directly cuts government purchases of goods and services; cutting programs for the
poor probably has a pretty high multiplier too, because it reduces the income of many people who
are living more or less hand to mouth.
Taking all this into account, that old Ryan plan would almost surely have been contractionary,
not expansionary.
Will Trumponomics be any different? It would matter if there really were a large infrastructure
push, but that's becoming ever less plausible. There will be big tax cuts at the top, but as I
said, the push to dismantle the safety net definitely seems to be on. Put it all together, and
it's extremely doubtful whether we're talking about net fiscal stimulus.
Now, you might think that someone will explain this to Trump, and that he'll demand a more
Keynesian plan. But I have two words for you: Larry Kudlow.
In looking at economic trends, the other issue to take into account is private lending. Individual
debt (credit cards, etc.) is already back up to the levels before the financial crisis and Trump's
appointees are determined to deregulate financial institutions, which may contribute to a return
to the predatory lending that created the last set of booms and busts. *
It's hard to focus on ordinary economic analysis amidst this political apocalypse. But getting
and spending will still consume most of peoples' energy and time; furthermore, like it or not
the progress of CASE NIGHTMARE ORANGE may depend on how the economy does. So, what is actually
likely to happen to trade and manufacturing over the next few years?
As it happens, we have what looks like an unusually good model in the Reagan years - minus
the severe recession and conveniently timed recovery, which somewhat overshadowed the trade story.
Leave aside the Volcker recession and recovery, and what you had was a large move toward budget
deficits via tax cuts and military buildup, coupled with quite a lot of protectionism - it's not
part of the Reagan legend, but the import quota on Japanese automobiles was one of the biggest
protectionist moves of the postwar era.
I'm a bit uncertain about the actual fiscal stance of Trumponomics: deficits will surely blow
up, but I won't believe in the infrastructure push until I see it, and given savage cuts in aid
to the poor it's not entirely clear that there will be net stimulus. * But suppose there is. Then
what?
Well, what happened in the Reagan years was "twin deficits": the budget deficit pushed up interest
rates, which caused a strong dollar, which caused a bigger trade deficit, mainly in manufactured
goods (which are still most of what's tradable.) This led to an accelerated decline in the industrial
orientation of the U.S. economy:
[Graph]
And people did notice. Using Google Ngram, we can watch the spread of terms for industrial
decline, e.g. here:
[Graph]
And here:
[Graph]
Again, this happened despite substantial protectionism.
So Trump_vs_deep_state will probably follow a similar course; it will actually shrink manufacturing despite
the big noise made about saving a few hundred jobs here and there.
On the other hand, by then the Bureau of Labor Statistics may be thoroughly politicized, commanded
to report good news whatever happens.
RMO declines sharply during recessions and the worse the downturn, the harder manufacturing
gets hit. Ergo, avoiding recessions is the absolute best policy for manufacturing. Trade and the
dollar's value don't have nearly as strong correlations.
RMWW rise strongly during sustained expansions of private industry employment.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USPRIV
Trade deficits have little correlation but the correlation with private industry employment growth
is strong: 16 million new jobs since 1Q2010.
All of this should be obvious, as Keynes said: "The ideas (about economics) . . . are extremely
simple and should be obvious."
"Well, what happened in the Reagan years was "twin deficits": the budget deficit pushed up
interest rates, which caused a strong dollar, which caused a bigger trade deficit, mainly in manufactured
goods (which are still most of what's tradable.)"
Deficit spending would always stimulate an economy except the Fed controls the brakes.
The Fed is especially worried about wage price inflation spirals
When inflation pops its head above target, the Fed slams on the brakes.
At the ZLB, inflation is far below target so the Fed has its foot off the brakes.
Deficit spending is stimulatory because the Fed does not apply the brakes by raising interest
rates.
This is textbook economics
The first intelligent comment here. Yes Volcker kept real interest rate very high for a while
which led to a dramatic appreciation of the dollar. But even as Volcker took off the monetary
brakes to let the economy get back to full employment, real interest rates stayed elevated and
the real appreciation was not entirely reversed. So we got a sustained trade deficit even in the
face of trade protection. That is the simple point that some here wish to duck.
Yes but historically it does not seem like it has worked that way. There does not appear to be
an obvious correlation between budget deficits and either (a) interest rates themselves, or (b)
the change in interest rates.
It seems like the Fed is acting on inflation signals. It is not so clear that (changes in)
budget deficits necessarily result in (changes in) inflation. Unless there is a direct link between
budget deficits and inflation it is hard to credibly argue that increasing the budget deficit
results in increased inflation results in Federal Reserve raising rates to choke off inflation.
The history of budget deficits and interest rates that Anne showed above don't provide much
support for Prof. Krugman's point.
Krugman is predicting that the Fed will raise rates to counter Trump's fiscal expansion and will
appreciate the dollar. That's what happened with Volcker jacking rates to fight inflation.
He doesn't spell this out exactly.
It's like how Greenspan and Rubin told Clinton he had to drop his middle class spending
bill in order to focus on deficit reduction. Greenspan was threatening to raise rates and Clinton
bent the knee to the "independent" Fed.
That's when Clinton threw a tantrum about being an "Eisenhower Republican."
The Senate Democrats like Schumer get what the populist backlash is about. That's why they're
promising $1 trillion over 10 years in government spending rather than Hillary's $275 over 5 years.
They can do the math. They know what happened in the election. It wasn't just about Comey or
the DNC hack. The election shouldn't have been that close.
"the budget deficit pushed up interest rates" We had large budget deficits during the Great Recession
and they didn't push up interest rates. In fact Obama focused too much on deficit reduction.
"... Trump may be a Nationalist, but he is also an anti-regulatory elite with no regard for business ethics or accountability to the community. He is also for "greedy take all" and against fair distribution of profits in the economy. ..."
"... The key point here is that as long as there is no viable alternative to neoliberalism, nationalism is the only game in town for the opposition forces. That's why trade union members now abandoned neoliberal (aka Clintonized ) Democratic Party. ..."
"... Traditionally, Neoliberalism espouses privatization, fiscal austerity, deregulation, free trade and reduction in government spending. ..."
"... One way to sum up neoliberalism is to say that everything-everything-is to be made over in the image of the market, including the state, civil society, and of course human beings. Democracy becomes reinterpreted as the market, and politics succumbs to neoliberal economic theory, so we are speaking of the end of democratic politics as we have known it for two and a half centuries. ..."
"... As the market becomes an abstraction, so does democracy, but the real playing field is somewhere else, in the realm of actual economic exchange-which is not, however, the market. We may say that all exchange takes place on the neoliberal surface. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is often described-and this creates a lot of confusion-as "market fundamentalism," and while this may be true for neoliberal's self-promotion and self-presentation, i.e., the market as the ultimate and only myth, as were the gods of the past, I would argue that in neoliberalism there is no such thing as the market as we have understood it from previous ideologies. ..."
"... it seeks to leave no space for individual self-conception in the way that classical liberalism, and even communism and fascism to some degree, were willing to allow. ..."
"... I am suggesting that the issue is not how strong the state is in the service of neoliberalism, but whether there is anything left over beyond the new definition of the state. Another way to say it is that the state has become the market, the market has become the state, and therefore both have ceased to exist in the form we have classically understood them. ..."
I will go with worth reading. I don't think that is controversial at all and there is way more
than an element of truth in it. But knowing is one thing and organizing politically in a manner
sufficient to bring about change is entirely another.
They are correct. We need an alternative to Nationalism and Trump.
They are not correct about mysterious elites controlling things.
The elites pursued anti-regulatory policies that allowed them to reap short term profits without
regard for stability or sustainability. It is not government control but lack of regulation that
allowed BIgF to run wild and unaccountable.
Trump may be a Nationalist, but he is also an anti-regulatory elite with no regard for
business ethics or accountability to the community. He is also for "greedy take all" and against
fair distribution of profits in the economy.
The plant closures are headlined and promote the mistaken belief that globalization is the
prime cause of job loss. These large closures are only 1/10th of the job losses and dislocations
due to automation and transformation from manufacturing to service economies. Wealthy elites are
allowed to greedily hoard all the profits from automation and not enough is being invested in
the service economy. Austerity is not a policy to control the masses, it is a policy to protect
the wealth accumulated by elites from fair distribution.
Trump is not going to bring manufacturing plants back to American rural backwaters. Those left
behind must build their own service economy or relocate to a sustainable region that is making
the transition.
The key point here is that as long as there is no viable alternative to neoliberalism,
nationalism is the only game in town for the opposition forces. That's why trade union members
now abandoned neoliberal (aka Clintonized ) Democratic Party.
All Western societies now, not only the USA, experience nationalist movements Renaissance.
And that's probably why Hillary lost as she represented "kick the can down the road" neoliberal
globalization agenda.
An important point also is that nationalism itself is not monolithic. There are at least two
different types of nationalism in the West now:
ethnic nationalism (old-style), where the "ethnicity" is the defining feature of belonging
to the "in-group"
cultural nationalism (new style), where the defining traits of belonging to the "in-group"
is the language and culture, not ethnicity.
As for your statement
"Trump may be a Nationalist, but he is also an anti-regulatory elite with no regard for
business ethics or accountability to the community. He is also for "greedy take all" and against
fair distribution of profits in the economy."
This might be true, but might be not. It is not clear what Trump actually represents. Let's
give him the benefit of doubt and wait 100 days before jumping to conclusions.
Traditionally, Neoliberalism espouses privatization, fiscal austerity, deregulation, free
trade and reduction in government spending.
What exactly did Clinton want to privatize? What budget did she propose slashing? Did
she want to deregulate banks or environmental regulations?
She supported some trade liberalization, but also imposing sanctions. What government spending
did she want to reduce?
Fact: She supported the opposite of most of these policies.
Donald Trump promised to pursue all of these Neoliberal policies. The GOP and their propaganda
megaphone is very good at tarring the opposition as supporting the very policies they are enacting.
They made Al Gore into a liar, John Kerry into a coward with a purple band aid and Hillary into
a Wall Street shill. None of this is true. But Trump and his GOP are doing all the things you
accuse Democrats of doing.
You are wrong. Your definition of neoliberalism is formally right and we can argue along those
lines that Hillary is a neoliberal too (Her track record as a senator suggests exactly that),
it is way too narrow. There is more to it:
"One way to sum up neoliberalism is to say that everything-everything-is to be made over
in the image of the market, including the state, civil society, and of course human beings."
(see below)
"Another way to say it is that the state has become the market, the market has become the
state, and therefore both have ceased to exist in the form we have classically understood them."
"In the current election campaign, Hillary Clinton has been the most perfect embodiment
of neoliberalism among all the candidates, she is almost its all-time ideal avatar, and I believe
this explains, even if not articulated this way, the widespread discomfort among the populace
toward her ascendancy. People can perceive that her ideology is founded on a conception of
human beings striving relentlessly to become human capital (as her opening campaign commercial
so overtly depicted), which means that those who fail to come within the purview of neoliberalism
should be rigorously ostracized, punished, and excluded.
This is the dark side of neoliberalism's ideological arm (a multiculturalism founded on
human beings as capital), which is why this project has become increasingly associated with
suppression of free speech and intolerance of those who refuse to go along with the kind of
identity politics neoliberalism promotes.
And this explains why the 1990s saw the simultaneous and absolutely parallel rise, under
the Clintons, of both neoliberal globalization and various regimes of neoliberal disciplining,
such as the shaming and exclusion of former welfare recipients (every able-bodied person should
be able to find work, therefore under TANF welfare was converted to a performance management
system designed to enroll everyone in the workforce, even if it meant below-subsistence wages
or the loss of parental responsibilities, all of it couched in the jargon of marketplace incentives)."
In this sense Hillary Clinton is 100% dyed-in-the-wool neoliberal and neocon ("neoliberal with
the gun"). She promotes so called "neoliberal rationality" a perverted "market-based" rationality
typical for neoliberalism:
== quote ==
When Hillary Clinton frequently retorts-in response to demands for reregulation of finance,
for instance-that we have to abide by "the rule of law," this reflects a particular understanding
of the law, the law as embodying the sense of the market, the law after it has undergone a
revolution of reinterpretation in purely economic terms.
In this revolution of the law persons have no status compared to corporations, nation-states
are on their way out, and everything in turn dissolves before the abstraction called the market.
One way to sum up neoliberalism is to say that everything-everything-is to be made over
in the image of the market, including the state, civil society, and of course human beings.
Democracy becomes reinterpreted as the market, and politics succumbs to neoliberal economic
theory, so we are speaking of the end of democratic politics as we have known it for two and
a half centuries.
As the market becomes an abstraction, so does democracy, but the real playing field
is somewhere else, in the realm of actual economic exchange-which is not, however, the market.
We may say that all exchange takes place on the neoliberal surface.
Neoliberalism is often described-and this creates a lot of confusion-as "market fundamentalism,"
and while this may be true for neoliberal's self-promotion and self-presentation, i.e., the
market as the ultimate and only myth, as were the gods of the past, I would argue that in neoliberalism
there is no such thing as the market as we have understood it from previous ideologies.
The neoliberal state-actually, to utter the word state seems insufficient here, I would
claim that a new entity is being created, which is not the state as we have known it, but an
existence that incorporates potentially all the states in the world and is something that exceeds
their sum-is all-powerful, it seeks to leave no space for individual self-conception in
the way that classical liberalism, and even communism and fascism to some degree, were willing
to allow.
There are competing understandings of neoliberal globalization, when it comes to the question
of whether the state is strong or weak compared to the primary agent of globalization, i.e.,
the corporation, but I am taking this logic further, I am suggesting that the issue is
not how strong the state is in the service of neoliberalism, but whether there is anything
left over beyond the new definition of the state. Another way to say it is that the state has
become the market, the market has become the state, and therefore both have ceased to exist
in the form we have classically understood them.
Of course the word hasn't gotten around to the people yet, hence all the confusion about
whether Hillary Clinton is more neoliberal than Barack Obama, or whether Donald Trump will
be less neoliberal than Hillary Clinton.
The project of neoliberalism-i.e., the redefinition of the state, the institutions of society,
and the self-has come so far along that neoliberalism is almost beyond the need of individual
entities to make or break its case. Its penetration has gone too deep, and none of the democratic
figureheads that come forward can fundamentally question its efficacy.
It came as a part of series of three separate executive actions that President Trump took on
Monday.
"The first is a withdrawal of the United States from the Trans Pacific Partnership," White
House chief of staff Reince Priebus said, explaining the first executive action President Trump
was taking in the list of three. The other two were one freezing hiring of all federal employees
except in the military, and one that restores the Mexico City policy.
As President Trump signed the executive action killing the TPP, he announced for the cameras
in the oval office that it was a "great thing for the American worker, what we just did."
Trump campaigned heavily against TPP, so it's only fitting he'd crush it once and for all on
his first business day as President of the United States. It's his efforts campaigning against
it-and the efforts of failed presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)-that shook Washington's
political establishment, and eventually forced failed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary
Rodham Clinton to come out against the deal that was supposed to be a legacy achievement of now
former President Barack Obama.
Trump hammered TPP repeatedly throughout his campaign and even leading up to it in speeches
and interviews, including many exclusive interviews with Breitbart News.
"... The era of neoliberalism ended in the autumn of 2008 with the bonfire of financialisation's illusions. The fetishisation of unfettered markets that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan brought to the fore in the late 1970s had been the necessary ideological cover for the unleashing of financiers to enable the capital flows essential to a new phase of globalisation in which the United States deficits provided the aggregate demand for the world's factories (whose profits flowed back to Wall Street closing the loop nicely). ..."
"... when the bottom fell out of this increasingly unstable feedback loop, neoliberalism's illusions burned down and the west's working class ended up too expensive and too indebted to be of interest to a panicking global establishment. ..."
"... Thatcher's and Reagan's neoliberalism had sought to persuade that privatisation of everything would produce a fair and efficient society unimpeded by vested interests or bureaucratic fiat. That narrative, of course, hid from public view what was really happening: a tremendous buildup of super-state bureaucracies, unaccountable supra-state institutions (World Trade Organisation, Nafta, the European Central Bank), behemoth corporations, and a global financial sector heading for the rocks. ..."
"... Their purpose was to impose acquiescence to a clueless establishment that had lost its ambition to maintain its legitimacy. When the UK government forced benefit claimants to declare in writing that "my only limits are the ones I set myself", or when the troika forced the Greek or Irish governments to write letters "requesting" predatory loans from the European Central Bank that benefited Frankfurt-based bankers at the expense of their people, the idea was to maintain power via calculated humiliation. Similarly, in America the establishment habitually blamed the victims of predatory lending and the failed health system. ..."
"... It was against this insurgency of a cornered establishment that had given up on persuasion that Donald Trump and his European allies rose up with their own populist insurgency. They proved that it is possible to go against the establishment and win. Alas, theirs will be a pyrrhic victory which will, eventually, harm those whom they inspired. The answer to neoliberalism's Waterloo cannot be the retreat to a barricaded nation-state and the pitting of "our" people against "others" fenced off by tall walls and electrified fences. ..."
"... This is all about globalisation, specifically wage deflation for the working classes from competing with emerging markets and freedom of movement, and also from offshoring of working class jobs to emerging markets. ..."
"... Until there is a viable alternative economic philosophy, nationalism is the future, whether we like it or not. ..."
"... Enough is enough. Globalisation is now only working for the rich and powerful. The model is simple - globalisation lowers the cost for consumers of everything, because the lowest cost geography produces everything (China, India etc), which is great until nobody has a job any more, so nobody can afford anything. ..."
"... The challenge is not to stick with the status quo, it's to find an alternative to nationalism that works for everyone. ..."
"... Fine words, but we're along way from that right now. What's happening in Europe, and across the Atlantic, is really only just getting started. Our elites may well be suffering from a crisis of legitimacy, and yet they are still very much in control. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is based on the acceptance that the rich elite are deserving of their wealth and privileges. The elite have used their mouthpieces, such as tabloids and think tanks, to ram this home; but the banking crisis of 2008 helped disabuse people of this myth that justifies rampant inequality in the US and the UK in particular. ..."
"... Trump and Brexit are expressions of the paradigm shift that is underway; but up till now, rather ironically, a billionaire and a rich former stockbroker have been the voice of protest, because it is they who have the money, connections and vanity to ensure they are heard. ..."
"... These classes of "globalization losers," particularly in the United States, have had little political voice or influence, and perhaps this is why the backlash against globalization has been so muted. They have had little voice because the rich have come to control the political process. The rich, as can be seen by looking at the income gains of the global top 5 percent in Figure 1, have benefited immensely from globalization and they have keen interest in its continuation. But while their use of political power has enabled the continuation of globalization, it has also hollowed out national democracies and moved many countries closer to becoming plutocracies. Thus, the choice would seem either plutocracy and globalization – or populism and a halt to globalization. ..."
"... Some of the gains of the top 5 percent could go toward alleviating the anger of the lower- and middle-class rich world's "losers." ..."
"... the history of the last quarter century during which the top classes in the rich world have continually piled up larger and larger gains, all the while socially and mentally separating themselves from fellow citizens, does not bode well for that alternative ..."
"... Social Neoliberals (mass immigration, family breakdown, individualism etc) combine with economic Neoliberals (profit maximisation, global capital movements etc) to get their way. ..."
"... I'm fairly sure that in time it will be shown that thier is a cabal of think-tanks and supranationalists who have perverted everything to thier own benefit. How and why does a Labour Peer get free accomodation on Baron Rothschilds' estate? How and why does the royal bank Coutts get bailed out by the taxpayer with no strings attached? ..."
The answer to neoliberalism's Waterloo cannot be a retreat to barricaded nation-states and the pitting
of 'our' people against 'others' fenced off by high walls
A clash of two insurgencies is now shaping the west. Progressives on both sides of the Atlantic
are on the sidelines, unable to comprehend what they are observing. Donald Trump's inauguration marks
its pinnacle.
One of the two insurgencies shaping our world today has been analysed ad nauseum. Donald Trump,
Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen and the broad Nationalist International that they are loosely connected
to have received much attention, as has their success at impressing upon the multitudes that nation-states,
borders, citizens and communities matter.
However, the other insurgency that caused the rise of this Nationalist International has remained
in the shadows: an insurrection by the global establishment's technocracy whose purpose is to
retain control at all cost. Project Fear in the UK, the troika in continental Europe and the unholy
alliance of Wall Street, Silicon Valley and the surveillance apparatus in the United States are
its manifestations.
The era of neoliberalism ended in the autumn of 2008 with the bonfire of financialisation's
illusions. The fetishisation of unfettered markets that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan brought
to the fore in the late 1970s had been the necessary ideological cover for the unleashing of financiers
to enable the capital flows essential to a new phase of globalisation in which the United States
deficits provided the aggregate demand for the world's factories (whose profits flowed back to Wall
Street closing the loop nicely).
Meanwhile, billions of people in the "third" world were pulled out of poverty while hundreds of
millions of western workers were slowly sidelined, pushed into more precarious jobs, and forced to
financialise themselves either through their pension funds or their homes. And when the bottom
fell out of this increasingly unstable feedback loop, neoliberalism's illusions burned down and the
west's working class ended up too expensive and too indebted to be of interest to a panicking global
establishment.
Thatcher's and Reagan's neoliberalism had sought to persuade that privatisation of everything
would produce a fair and efficient society unimpeded by vested interests or bureaucratic fiat. That
narrative, of course, hid from public view what was really happening: a tremendous buildup of super-state
bureaucracies, unaccountable supra-state institutions (World Trade Organisation, Nafta, the European
Central Bank), behemoth corporations, and a global financial sector heading for the rocks.
After the events of 2008 something remarkable happened. For the first time in modern times the
establishment no longer cared to persuade the masses that its way was socially optimal. Overwhelmed
by the collapsing financial pyramids, the inexorable buildup of unsustainable debt, a eurozone in
an advanced state of disintegration and a China increasingly relying on an impossible credit boom,
the establishment's functionaries set aside the aspiration to persuade or to represent. Instead,
they concentrated on clamping down.
In the UK, more than a million benefit applicants faced punitive sanctions. In the Eurozone, the
troika ruthlessly sought to reduce the pensions of the poorest of the poor. In the United States,
both parties promised drastic cuts to social security spending. During our deflationary times none
of these policies helped stabilise capitalism at a national or at a global level. So, why were they
pursued?
Their purpose was to impose acquiescence to a clueless establishment that had lost its ambition
to maintain its legitimacy. When the UK government forced benefit claimants to declare in writing
that "my only limits are the ones I set myself", or when the troika forced the Greek or Irish governments
to write letters "requesting" predatory loans from the European Central Bank that benefited Frankfurt-based
bankers at the expense of their people, the idea was to maintain power via calculated humiliation.
Similarly, in America the establishment habitually blamed the victims of predatory lending and the
failed health system.
It was against this insurgency of a cornered establishment that had given up on persuasion
that Donald Trump and his European allies rose up with their own populist insurgency. They proved
that it is possible to go against the establishment and win. Alas, theirs will be a pyrrhic victory
which will, eventually, harm those whom they inspired. The answer to neoliberalism's Waterloo cannot
be the retreat to a barricaded nation-state and the pitting of "our" people against "others" fenced
off by tall walls and electrified fences.
The answer can only be a Progressive Internationalism that works in practice on both sides of
the Atlantic. To bring it about we need more than fine principles unblemished by power. We need to
aim for power on the basis of a pragmatic narrative imparting hope throughout Europe and America
for jobs paying living wages to anyone who wants them, for social housing, for health and education.
Only a third insurgency promoting a New Deal that works equally for Americans and Europeans can
restore to a billion people living in the west sovereignty over their lives and communities.
bag0shite
This is all about globalisation, specifically wage deflation for the working classes
from competing with emerging markets and freedom of movement, and also from offshoring of
working class jobs to emerging markets.
Liberalism has created so much wealth for the west and has dramatically reduced inequality
over the last century, however it is no longer working for those on lower incomes in the west.
Until there is a viable alternative economic philosophy, nationalism is the future,
whether we like it or not.
chantaspell -> bag0shite 1d ago
nationalism is the future, whether we like it or not.
No it's not. Because what we've got, although flawed, is far superior to Nationalism's
false promises. Nationalism will, or perhaps already has, peaked.
bag0shite -> chantaspell
... go and tell that to all the families who don't have a job because their roles were
offshored to Eastern Europe or China. Got and tell that to truck drivers who earn a pittance
because there is essentially an infinite supply of Poles willing to do it for peanuts.
Enough is enough. Globalisation is now only working for the rich and powerful. The model
is simple - globalisation lowers the cost for consumers of everything, because the lowest cost
geography produces everything (China, India etc), which is great until nobody has a job any
more, so nobody can afford anything.
The challenge is not to stick with the status quo, it's to find an alternative to
nationalism that works for everyone.
MMGALIAS -> bag0shite 1d ago
This is all about globalisation, specifically wage deflation for the working classes
from competing with emerging markets and freedom of movement, and also from offshoring of
working class jobs to emerging markets.
The working classes have voted against their own interests in the last 3 decades, now we
are all supposed to feel sorry for them when the neoliberal policies they have voted for have
come back to bite them?
Northman1
"The answer can only be a Progressive Internationalism that works in practice on both sides
of the Atlantic. To bring it about we need more than fine principles unblemished by power. We
need to aim for power on the basis of a pragmatic narrative imparting hope throughout Europe
and America for jobs paying living wages to anyone who wants them, for social housing, for
health and education.
Only a third insurgency promoting a New Deal that works equally for Americans and Europeans
can restore to a billion people living in the West sovereignty over their lives and
communities".
These are fine aspirations. You precede them by saying that we cannot:
"...retreat to a barricaded nation-state and the pitting of 'our' people against 'others'
fenced off by tall walls and electrified fences".
This presumably refers to physical barriers to prevent illegal immigration and tariff barriers
to prevent free trade.
Tell me though how you can achieve the aspirations you set out whilst allowing millions of
people from the third world to flood into Europe at an enormous economic and social cost and
also trading freely with countries that don't trade fairly (e.g. China with its currency
manipulation, government subsidies, product dumping and lack of environmental/ safety/ worker
protection regulations)
greenwichite -> Northman1
He's brilliant on the problem...lame on the solution.
And wrong.
The answer is to only trade freely with countries that play by the same environmental,
currency and labour-rights rules as we do.
Otherwise, we are just allowing ourselves to be undercuts by cheats.
That's not "barricading" oneself anywhere...it's basic common sense, which has
unfortunately eluded our leaders for decades. In Thatcher's case, I think she was quite happy
for mercantilist, protectionist Asian powers to destroy our industry, for her own
party-political purposes.
MMGALIAS -> Northman1
and also trading freely with countries that don't trade fairly (e.g. China with its
currency manipulation, government subsidies, product dumping and lack of environmental/
safety/ worker protection regulations)
The West doesn't trade freely either, just ask the African farmers who are tariffed into
poverty by the EU.
Tiresius -> legalizefreedom
I agree. It's a well argued piece and I agree with the conclusion that neither the neo
liberal free trade consensus , nor its reaction , will provide an answer to the worsening
economic condition of the blue collar west. I also am convinced that in the longer term the
only real answer is a return to the principles of social democracy and equity of opportunity.
This will however be a long march. Neo liberalism has been in the ascendant for over 30
years , it has brought some significant benefits to a few in the west , and many elsewhere ,
and of course a lot of Chinese billionaires , a large number of western voters have lost or
are losing faith in a system that has failed to deliver rising living standards for them ,
incurred high levels of debt and reduced social mobility.
It is a failure of the narrative of the centre left that those people are persuaded by
increasing protectionism rather than social democracy. So now we will see where the reaction
to free trade liberalism takes us , it has to run its course before the prescriptions of
social democracy can be reformulated , hopefully with more inspiring leaders than at present.
Andrew Skidmore
'Only a third insurgency promoting a New Deal that works equally for Americans and
Europeans can restore to a billion people living in the West sovereignty over their lives
and communities.'
Fine words, but we're along way from that right now. What's happening in Europe, and
across the Atlantic, is really only just getting started. Our elites may well be suffering
from a crisis of legitimacy, and yet they are still very much in control.
From the Trump administration Whitehouse website:
'The Trump Administration will be a law and order administration. President Trump
will honor our men and women in uniform and will support their mission of protecting the
public. The dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America is wrong. The Trump Administration
will end it.'
Hmmmmmm....?
thetowncrier -> Andrew Skidmore
As ever, a master of subtlety. I expect the American Stasi to come into being by the end of
next week, with a brand new special 'badge' to go with their black shirts.
2bveryFrank
Neoliberalism is based on the acceptance that the rich elite are deserving of their
wealth and privileges. The elite have used their mouthpieces, such as tabloids and think
tanks, to ram this home; but the banking crisis of 2008 helped disabuse people of this myth
that justifies rampant inequality in the US and the UK in particular.
Trump and Brexit are expressions of the paradigm shift that is underway; but up till
now, rather ironically, a billionaire and a rich former stockbroker have been the voice of
protest, because it is they who have the money, connections and vanity to ensure they are
heard.
They, however, are very unlikely to deliver and then true and genuine voices of the people
will emerge - voices that will target the root causes of discontent rather than convenient,
nationalistic scapegoats such as immigration.
ReasonableSoul -> 2bveryFrank
"and then true and genuine voices of the people will emerge - voices that will target
the root causes of discontent rather than convenient, nationalistic scapegoats such as
immigration."
So working class people who struggle to compete for the low wage jobs and strained welfare
services that are taken by migrants are not allowed to protest immigration policy?
Recent mass migrations (of the last 30 years) are unprecedented.
In Europe, whole towns have been transformed, particularly culturally.
Imposing huge demographic changes on a people is a form of authoritarian social
engineering.
SeenItAlready
This is covered by a report in YaleGlobal (and a similar one in the Harvard Business
Review) from 2014 which adds a few stats showing how middle-class salaries in the 'Western
World' were the only ones to stagnate in the period 1998 to 2008 (and obviously drop post
2008, but that isn't covered):
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/tale-two-middle-classes
This is the last section of that report:
The populists warn disgruntled voters that economic trends observed during the past
three decades are just the first wave of cheap labor from Asia pitted in direct competition
with workers in the rich world, and more waves are on the way from poorer lands in Asia and
Africa. The stagnation of middle-class incomes in the West may last another five decades or
more.
This calls into question either the sustainability of democracy under such conditions or
the sustainability of globalization.
If globalization is derailed, the middle classes of the West may be relieved from the
immediate pressure of cheaper Asian competition. But the longer-term costs to themselves
and their countries, let alone to the poor in Asia and Africa, will be high. Thus, the
interests and the political power of the middle classes in the rich world put them in a
direct conflict with the interests of the worldwide poor.
These classes of "globalization losers," particularly in the United States, have had
little political voice or influence, and perhaps this is why the backlash against
globalization has been so muted. They have had little voice because the rich have come to
control the political process. The rich, as can be seen by looking at the income gains of
the global top 5 percent in Figure 1, have benefited immensely from globalization and they
have keen interest in its continuation. But while their use of political power has enabled
the continuation of globalization, it has also hollowed out national democracies and moved
many countries closer to becoming plutocracies. Thus, the choice would seem either
plutocracy and globalization – or populism and a halt to globalization.
Another solution, one that involves neither populism nor plutocracy, would require enormous
effort at the understanding of one's own longer-term self-interest. It would imply more
substantial redistribution policies in the rich world. Some of the gains of the top 5
percent could go toward alleviating the anger of the lower- and middle-class rich world's
"losers." These need not nor should be mere transfers of money from one group to
another.
Instead, money should come in the form of investments in public education, local
infrastructure, housing and preventive health care. But the history of the last quarter
century during which the top classes in the rich world have continually piled up larger and
larger gains, all the while socially and mentally separating themselves from fellow
citizens, does not bode well for that alternative
Personally I see the whole US election here... written a couple of years before it
happened:
Hillary as Globalisation
Trump as Populism
And Bernie (who as the report suggests wasn't even allowed by the Globalist forces to -
present himself) as Redistribution
moranet -> Rusty Woods
Just as in the 1920s early 30s, when centrist governments attempting mild redistributive
banking reforms -MacDonald, Herriot, Van Zeeland, Azaña- came up against a "Wall of Money"
when the financial markets reacted, and were overthrown in favour of orthodox liberal
governments (the 'technocratic insugency' described by Prof. Varoufakis). And when public
opinion inevitably lost its patience, propelling harder nosed reformers close to power...
that's when political and financial elites discovered rule by executive decree and the
adjournment of parliaments.
So we know very well what happens next in Europe, when liberal capitalism and
liberal-democracy find themselves on opposing teams.
anewdawn
There are two sorts of nationalism in my view. There is the nasty, evil, Nazi style that
promotes the insane social darwinism, and superiority, but a hypocritical imperialism towards
other states and countries.
There is another type of nationalism that good decent people who really care about
democracy would approve of however. It is the sort that seeks to protect the poor and the
middle classes by stopping global corporations from off shoring their jobs to sweatshops in
countries that have lower human rights records for the purpose of cheap labour and more
profit. There is the sort of nationalism that promotes local democracy as opposed to tying
countries up to TTIP and TPP which undermines the governments and laws of individual
countries. There is a type of nationalism that seeks to protect their neighbors by insisting
on fair trade and good treatment of workers in other countries.
If you listen to Trumps speech, he seems to be the second type when he promises to bring
back jobs to the rust belt, but only time will tell if he really is of the first type - it
will surface soon in his attitude to invasions of the middle east and control of the global
corporations.
ID0118186 -> anewdawn
But those same middle classes are part of the problem, they want their consumer goods,
their iPods and iPhones and iPads, but they don't want to pay the real cost of them if they
were made by well-paid and well-trained skilled workers in their own country.
You have to address the whole issue: you can't have cheap prices and protectionism, unless you
let wages fall to near the same level that they are in developing countries - also unpopular.
So if you want nationalism as you describe it, be willing to pay 50 to 100% more for many
goods and services; or buy a lot less, which kills your economy anyway.
epidavros -> anewdawn
And then there is also the phoney internationalism of the EU - which is really a turbo
charged nationalism of what will soon be 27 countries bent on protectionism, technocratic rule
and a firmly closed mindset with a firmly debunked ideology.
toadalone -> anewdawn
I like your description of the two nationalisms. I think Varoufakis' point is that that
kind of nationalism can't survive on its own, as an island in a globalised world: nationalists
of that kind have to work together with their neighbouring counterparts to make their
respective benign nationalisms function. It's a very difficult proposal to bring to fruition,
even though I think it's right.
As for Trump: I think that seasoning campaign speeches with a flavour of benign nationalism
is, sadly, little more than a well-established PR technique. I don't believe what Trump says
for an instant (partly because he constantly breaks the fourth wall by saying the complete
opposite a few days later).
Other leaders who deploy this flavour of nationalism are more complicated. Viktor Orbán, for
instance. It's very difficult to tell, with him, how much of his protectionist-nationalist
rhetoric is genuine (but impossible to implement, given Hungary's membership of the EU), and
how much of it is just more of the same
dangle-shiny-things-in-front-of-the-voters-while-doing-what-you-want. And as with Trump,
Orbán's "benign" nationalism comes as just one flavour in a dish also heavily flavoured with
demented backward-looking authoritarian nationalism, with Kulturkampf and all the other
trimmings.
The weird thing about Trump is how he turns these contradictions into a kind of conscious
performance art. It's possible to view Orbán as someone who's cracking up a bit under the
pressure of believing six impossible things before breakfast. Trump is more healthy (from the
Trump's own point of view, of course, not from ours). He's embraced the crazy completely, and
revels in it. While probably reserving some quiet time for himself, in which he can privately
drop the mask, or rather the 500 different masks.
QuayBoredWarrior -> ReubenK1
Perhaps you should read this bit again:
The answer can only be a Progressive Internationalism that works in practice on both
sides of the Atlantic. To bring it about we need more than fine principles unblemished by
power. We need to aim for power on the basis of a pragmatic narrative imparting hope
throughout Europe and America for jobs paying living wages to anyone who wants them, for
social housing, for health and education.
Only a third insurgency promoting a New Deal that works equally for Americans and Europeans
can restore to a billion people living in the West sovereignty over their lives and
communities.
If you need to know what the New Deal involved, I suggest you Google it or buy a book about
it. If there is a library still open near you, you might able to borrow a book for free.
I think what is suggested is a new New Deal, an interventionist strategy to replace the
laissez-faire, the-market-knows-best approaches of the 80s/90s/00s. The details of which will
need to be hammered out as we progress. BTW, the New Deal was a haphazard and piecemeal
programme that was often based on hope over accepted wisdom. The aim was stabilisation and an
end to the mass impoverishment of American workers. If we have this aim, I'm sure we can work
out what needs to be done. It won't only be professors who come up with suggestions but all
those who coalesce behind these aims.
The first thing necessary is to loosen the grip of those who bang on about deficit
reduction above all else. This counter-productive approach needs to be crushed. It works for
no one and it doesn't work for the future. The services being destroyed will have to be built
up again and the deficit-above-all-else proselytisers have no strategy for this at all. It's
as if their true aim is to see them destroyed forever.
SeenItAlready
Their purpose was to impose acquiescence to a clueless establishment that had lost
its ambition to maintain its legitimacy. When the UK government forced benefit claimants to
declare in writing that "my only limits are the ones I set myself", or when the troika
forced the Greek or Irish governments to write letters "requesting" predatory loans from
the European Central Bank that benefited Frankfurt-based bankers at the expense of their
people, the idea was to maintain power via calculated humiliation. Similarly, in America
the establishment habitually blamed the victims of predatory lending and the failed health
system.
Not only that...
They also came out with the wheeze of getting the poor to fight amongst themselves
I'm convinced that is what is behind the explosion in Identity Politics we have seen over the
last few years - where different groups are encouraged to dislike each other on gender,
gender-orientation and and racial lines. Of course social class is kept well out of any of
these discussions... in spite of it being the source of most of the real repression
SeenItAlready -> SeenItAlready
different groups are encouraged to dislike each other on gender, gender-orientation and and
racial lines. Of course social class is kept well out of any of these discussions... in spite
of it being the source of most of the real repression
Likewise immigration where the immigrants themselves are made an issue of and blamed or
defended... of course in reality salary dumping and job losses have nothing to do with them
The wealthy class who encouraged the immigration of cheap labour, who did not provide any
protection for workers impacted by it and who then effectively sacked local workers in favour
of cheaper labour have again pulled-off a very neat trick by shifting the terms of the debate
to the innocent immigrants who were simply following opportunity and invitations. Likewise the
immigrants feel that they are being persecuted by the locals...
And so the rich sit back and rub their hands with glee... poor immigrants and poor locals
fighting, poor men and poor women fighting, poor whites and poor non-whites fighting. No
chance of the pitchforks arriving for quite a while, if ever...
FreddySteadyGO -> SeenItAlready
And so the rich sit back and rub their hands with glee... poor immigrants and poor
locals fighting, poor men and poor women fighting, poor whites and poor non-whites
fighting. No chance of the pitchforks arriving for quite a while, if ever...
Absolutely, its all far too convenient.
Social Neoliberals (mass immigration, family breakdown, individualism etc) combine with
economic Neoliberals (profit maximisation, global capital movements etc) to get their way.
I'm fairly sure that in time it will be shown that thier is a cabal of think-tanks and
supranationalists who have perverted everything to thier own benefit. How and why does a
Labour Peer get free accomodation on Baron Rothschilds' estate? How and why does the royal
bank Coutts get bailed out by the taxpayer with no strings attached?
SeenItAlready -> FreddySteadyGO
My reply to you got totally deleted, it seems that saying to much about this subject is not
acceptable to these people, which I guess is no surprise considering...
I said in my removed message that I didn't think there was any 'conspiracy' and that it was
the normal divide-and-conquer behaviour which people in power have applied since time
immemorial to those they would wish to control
Now I've changed my mind...
mysterycalculator
Could it be that Francis Fukuyama got it wrong with his historicist vision of liberal
democracy as the final stage in a Hegelian dialectic? Should he have gone with Marx's
interpretation of Hegel's dialectic instead, arguing that political freedom without economic
freedom is not enough? If so, then the argument for a redistributive social justice has to be
the way forward. Though as Karl Popper was keen to point out, Hegal and historicist visions
are bunk. Though interestingly Popper had much more time for Marx. A redistributive social
justice within the checks and balances of a liberal democratic internationalist social order -
that might be a way forward!
Sven Ringling
As long as this problem is seen as a left vs right, we won't address it. Trump's ideas are
in many cases very left. He wants to subsidise jobs through tarifs/trade wars/ anything that
reduces imports and therefore benefits job creation in their large market with a large trade
deficit in the short run.
Corbyn wants to subsidise the poorer part of the population directly or through public
services taking the money directly from businesses and the rich - though he is not disinclined
to isolationism either.
Both recipies work in the short run, both are likely to backfire in the long run the way
they are currently pushed.
It was Labour's big mistake to think UKIP is on the right and therefore a risk for the
Tories only.
And this Greek clown considered left is not far from that American clown. Clowny-ness is
actually their mist defining feature.
ReasonableSoul
Maintaining funcional borders is not a "retreat to a barricaded nation-state and the
pitting of 'our' people against 'others' fenced off by tall walls and electrified fences."
Even liberal Sweden became so overwhelmed by the endless stream of migrants/refugees
arriving that it had to shut the border.
ID614534 1d ago
2
3
Why does every debate about the nation state have to be economic? Peoples of the world are
often tied to their places of birth by language religion and culture. Not every song has to be
sung in an American accent and we don't all want to replace Nan's pie recipe with a Big Mac
and fries.
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epidavros 1d ago
6
7
Fine words, but the problem is that there is no progressive internationalism and there are no
real progressives. The response to the EU referendum widely seen to have been a call to end
unmanaged migration and undue interference of those very supra national, unaccountable elite
bodies you mention has been to call for the UK to be punished, to pay the price, to be treated
entirely differently from trade partners like Canada and dealt with as a pariah. Not
progressive. Not international. And very much the problem, not the cure.
The huge irony here is that with all this talk of populism and barricading behind borders the
UK and USA are seeking to tear theirs down, while the EU is erecting ideological barricades to
protect its elite and their project.
One thing is for sure - the solution is not the status quo. Either in the USA or the EU.
From amazon review of his book
In the Jaws of the Dragon "Anyone who has read "The World is Flat" should also read "In The
Jaws Of The Dragon" to understand both sides of the issues involved in offshoring. Eamon Fingleton clearly
defines the differences between the economic systems in play in China and Japan and the United States
and how those differences have damaged the United States economy. The naive position taken by both the
Republicans and the Democrats that offshoring is good for America is shown to be wrong because of a
fundamental lack of knowledge about who we are dealing with. Every member of Congress and the executive
branch should read this book before ratifying any more trade agreements. The old saying of the marketplace
applies: Take advantage of me once, shame on you. Take advantage of me twice, shame on me."
Notable quotes:
"... Similar miscommunication probably helps explain the European media's unreflective scorn for Donald Trump. Most European commentators have little or no access to the story. They have allowed their views to be shaped largely by the American press. ..."
"... That's a big mistake. Contrary to their carefully burnished self-image of impartiality and reliability, American journalists are not averse to consciously peddling outright lies. This applies even in the case of the biggest issues of the day, as witness, for instance, the American press's almost unanimous validation of George Bush's transparently mendacious case for the Iraq war in 2003. ..."
"... Most of the more damning charges against Trump are either without foundation or at least are viciously unfair distortions. Take, for instance, suggestions in the run-up to the election that he is anti-Semitic. In some accounts it was even suggested he was a closet neo-Nazi. Yet for anyone remotely familiar with the Trump story, this always rang false. After all he had thrived for decades in New York's overwhelmingly Jewish real estate industry. Then there was the fact that his daughter Ivanka, to whom he is evidently devoted, had converted to Judaism. ..."
"... In appointing Jared Kushner his chief adviser, he has chosen an orthodox Jew (Kushner is Ivanka's husband). Then there is David Friedman, Trump's choice for ambassador to Israel. Friedman is an outspoken partisan of the Israeli right and he is among other things an apologist for the Netanyahu administration's highly controversial settlement of the West Bank. ..."
"... As is often the case with Trumpian controversies, the facts are a lot more complicated than the press makes out. ..."
"... So far, so normal for the 2016 election campaign. But it turned out that Kovaleski was no ordinary Trump-hating journalist. He suffers from arthrogryposis, a malady in which the joints are malformed. For Trump's critics, this was manna from heaven. Instead of merely accusing the New York real estate magnate of exaggerating a minor, if troubling, sideshow in U.S.-Arab relations, they could now arraign him on the vastly more damaging charge of mocking someone's disability. ..."
"... In any case in responding directly to the charge of mocking Kovaleski's disability, Trump offered a convincing denial. "I would never do that," he said. "Number one, I have a good heart; number two, I'm a smart person." ..."
"... other much discussed Trumpian controversies such as his disparaging remarks about Mexicans and Muslims. In the case of both Mexican and Muslims, an effort to cut back immigration is a central pillar of Trump's program and his remarks, though offensive, were clearly intended to garner votes from fed-up middle Americans. ..."
"... In reality, as the Catholics 4 Trump website has documented, the media have suppressed vital evidence in the Kovaleski affair. ..."
Battlefield communications in World War I sometimes left something to be desired. Hence a famous
British anecdote of a garbled word-of-mouth message. As transmitted, the message ran, "Send reinforcements,
we are going to advance." Superior officers at the other end, however, were puzzled to be told: "Send
three and four-pence [three shillings and four-pence], we are going to a dance!"
Similar miscommunication probably helps explain the European media's unreflective scorn for
Donald Trump. Most European commentators have little or no access to the story. They have allowed
their views to be shaped largely by the American press.
That's a big mistake. Contrary to their carefully burnished self-image of impartiality and
reliability, American journalists are not averse to consciously peddling outright lies. This applies
even in the case of the biggest issues of the day, as witness, for instance, the American press's
almost unanimous validation of George Bush's transparently mendacious case for the Iraq war in 2003.
Most of the more damning charges against Trump are either without foundation or at least are
viciously unfair distortions. Take, for instance, suggestions in the run-up to the election that
he is anti-Semitic. In some accounts it was even suggested he was a closet neo-Nazi. Yet for anyone
remotely familiar with the Trump story, this always rang false. After all he had thrived for decades
in New York's overwhelmingly Jewish real estate industry. Then there was the fact that his daughter
Ivanka, to whom he is evidently devoted, had converted to Judaism.
Now as Trump embarks on office, his true attitudes are becoming obvious – and they hardly lean
towards neo-Nazism.
In appointing Jared Kushner his chief adviser, he has chosen an orthodox Jew (Kushner is Ivanka's
husband). Then there is David Friedman, Trump's choice for ambassador to Israel. Friedman is an outspoken
partisan of the Israeli right and he is among other things an apologist for the Netanyahu administration's
highly controversial settlement of the West Bank. Trump even wants to move the American embassy
in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This position is a favourite of the most ardently pro-Israel
section of the American Jewish community but is otherwise disavowed as insensitive to Palestinians
by most American policy analysts.
Many other examples could be cited of how the press has distorted the truth. It is interesting
to revisit in particular the allegation that Trump mocked a disabled man's disability. It is an allegation
which has received particular prominence in the press in Europe. But is Trump really such a heartless
ogre? Hardly.
As is often the case with Trumpian controversies, the facts are a lot more complicated than
the press makes out. The disabled-man episode began when, in defending an erstwhile widely ridiculed
contention that Arabs in New Jersey had publicly celebrated the Twin Towers attacks, Trump unearthed
a 2001 newspaper account broadly backed him up. But the report's author, Serge Kovaleski, demurred.
Trump's talk of "thousands" of Arabs, he wrote, was an exaggeration.
Trump fired back. Flailing his arms wildly in an impersonation of an embarrassed, backtracking
reporter, he implied that Kovaleski had succumbed to political correctness.
So far, so normal for the 2016 election campaign. But it turned out that Kovaleski was no
ordinary Trump-hating journalist. He suffers from arthrogryposis, a malady in which the joints are
malformed. For Trump's critics, this was manna from heaven. Instead of merely accusing the New York
real estate magnate of exaggerating a minor, if troubling, sideshow in U.S.-Arab relations, they
could now arraign him on the vastly more damaging charge of mocking someone's disability.
Trump's plea that he hadn't known that Kovaleski was handicapped was undermined when it emerged
that in the 1980s the two had not only met but Kovaleski had even interviewed Trump in Trump Tower.
That is an experience I know something about. I, like Kovaleski, once interviewed Trump in Trump
Tower. The occasion was an article I wrote for Forbes magazine in 1982. If Trump saw my by-line today,
would he remember that occasion 35 years ago? Probably not. The truth is that Trump, who has been
a celebrity since his early twenties, has been interviewed by thousands of journalists over the years.
A journalist would have to be seriously conceited – or be driven by a hidden agenda – to assume that
a VIP as busy as Trump would remember an occasion half a lifetime ago.
In any case in responding directly to the charge of mocking Kovaleski's disability, Trump
offered a convincing denial. "I would never do that," he said. "Number one, I have a good heart;
number two, I'm a smart person." Setting aside point one (although to the press's chagrin, many
of Trump's acquaintances have testified that a streak of considerable private generosity underlies
his tough-guy exterior), it is hard to see how anyone can question point two. In effect Trump is
saying he had a strong self-interest in not offending the disabled lobby let alone their millions
of sympathisers.
After all it was not as if there were votes in dissing the disabled. This stands in marked contrast
to other much discussed Trumpian controversies such as his disparaging remarks about Mexicans
and Muslims. In the case of both Mexican and Muslims, an effort to cut back immigration is a central
pillar of Trump's program and his remarks, though offensive, were clearly intended to garner votes
from fed-up middle Americans.
In reality, as the Catholics 4 Trump website has documented, the media have suppressed vital
evidence in the Kovaleski affair.
For a start Trump's frenetic performance bore no resemblance to arthrogryposis. Far from frantically
flailing their arms, arthrogryposis victims are uncommonly motionlessness. This is because relevant
bones are fused together. As Catholics 4 Trump pointed out, the media should have been expected to
have been chomping at the bit to interview Kovaleski and thus clinch the point about how ruthlessly
Trump had ridiculed a disabled man's disability.
The website added: "If the media had a legitimate story, that is exactly what they would have
done and we all know it. But the media couldn't put Kovaleski in front of a camera or they'd have
no story."
Catholics 4 Trump added that, in the same speech in which Trump did his Kovaleski impression,
he offered an almost identical performance to illustrate the embarrassment of a U.S. general with
whom he had clashed. In particular Trump had the general wildly flailing his arms. It goes without
saying that this general does not suffer from arthogryposis or any other disability. The common thread
in each case was merely an embarrassed, backtracking person. To say the least, commentators in Europe
who have portrayed Trump as having mocked Kovaleski's disability stand accused of superficial, slanted
reporting.
All this is not to suggest that Trump does not come to the presidency unencumbered with baggage.
He is exceptionally crude – at least he is in his latter-day reality TV manifestation (the Trump
I remember from my interview in 1982 was a model of restraint by comparison and in particular never
used any expletives). Moreover the latter-day Trump habit of picking Twitter fights with those who
criticize him tends merely to confirm a widespread belief that he is petty and thin-skinned.
Many of his pronouncements moreover have been disturbing and his abrasive manner will clearly
prove on balance a liability in the White House. That said, the press has never worked harder or
more dishonestly to destroy a modern American leader.
Let's give him the benefit of the doubt, therefore, as he sets out to make America great again.
The truth is that American decline has gone much further than almost anyone outside American industry
understands. Trump's task is a daunting one.
Eamonn
Fingleton is an expert on America's trade problems and is the author of In Praise of Hard Industries:
Why Manufacturing, Not the Information Economy, Is the Key to Future Prosperity (Houghton Mifflin,
Boston). A version of this article appeared in the Dublin Ireland Sunday Business Post.
America's fate looks dicey in the showdown with the Chinese juggernaut, warns this vigorous jeremiad.
Fingleton (In Praise of Hard Industries) argues that China's "East Asian" development model of aggressive
mercantilism and a state-directed economy "effortlessly outperforms" America's fecklessly individualistic
capitalism
Am nteresting thought (replace imperialism with neoliberalism) : "I think that it is possible
that Trump has come to the conclusion that imperialism has stopped working for the USA, that far from
being the solution to the contradictions of capitalism, imperialism might well have become its most
self-defeating feature. "
Revival of far right in Europe also is connected with the crisis of neoliberalism.
Notable quotes:
"... This might be something crucial: I cannot imagine Trump trying to simply do "more of the same" like his predecessors did or trying to blindly double-down like the Neocons always try to. ..."
"... I am willing to bet that Trump really and sincerely believes that the USA is in a deep crisis and that a new, different, sets of policies must be urgently implemented. ..."
"... I think that it is possible that Trump has come to the conclusion that imperialism has stopped working for the USA, that far from being the solution to the contradictions of capitalism, imperialism might well have become its most self-defeating feature. ..."
"... Is it possible for an ideological system to dump one of its core component after learning from past mistakes? I think it is, and a good example of that is 21 st Century Socialism , which has completely dumped the kind of militant atheism which was so central to the 20 th century Socialist movement. In fact, modern "21st Century Socialism" is very pro-Christian. Could 21 st century capitalism dump imperialism? Maybe. ..."
"... Furthermore, the Trump inaugural speech did, according to RT commentators, sound in many aspects like the kind of speech Bernie Sanders could have made. And I think that they are right. Trump did sound like a paleo-liberal ..."
"... Today, when Trump pronounced the followings words " We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world – but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first " he told the Russians exactly what they wanted to hear: Trump does not pretend to be a "friend" of Russia and Trump openly and unapologetically promises to care about his own people first, and that is exactly what Putin has been saying and doing since he came to power in Russia: caring for the Russian people first. After all, caring for your own first hardly implies being hostile or even indifferent to others. ..."
"... All it means is that your loyalty and your service is first and foremost to those who elected you to office. This refreshing patriotic honesty, combined with the prospect of friendship and goodwill will sound like music to the Russian ears. ..."
Just hours ago Donald Trump was finally sworn in as the President of the United States. Considering
all the threats hanging over this event, this is good news because at least for the time being, the
Neocons have lost their control over the Executive Branch and Trump is now finally in a position
to take action. The other good news is
Trump's inauguration speech which included this historical promise " We do not seek to impose
our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow ".
Could that really mean that the USA has given up its role of World Hegemon? The mere fact of asking
the question is already an immensely positive development as nobody would have asked it had Hillary
Clinton been elected.
The other interesting feature of Trump's speech is that it centered heavily on people power and
on social justice. Again, the contrast with the ideological garbage from Clinton could not be greater.
Still, this begs a much more puzzling question: how much can a multi-billionaire capitalist be trusted
when he speaks of people power and social justice – not exactly what capitalists are known for, at
least not amongst educated people. Furthermore, a Marxist reader would also remind us that "
imperialism
is the highest stage of capitalism " and that it makes no sense to expect a capitalist to
suddenly renounce imperialism.
But what was generally true in 1916 is not necessarily true in 2017.
For one thing, let's begin by stressing that the Trump Presidency was only made possible by the
immense financial, economic, political, military and social crisis facing the USA today. Eight years
of Clinton, followed by eight years of Bush Jr and eight years of Obama have seen a massive and full-spectrum
decline in the strength of the United States which were sacrificed for the sake of the AngloZionist
Empire. This crisis is as much internal as it is external and the election of Trump is a direct consequence
of this crisis. In fact, Trump is the first one to admit that it is the terrible situation in which
the USA find themselves today that brought him to power with a mandate of the regular American people
(Hillary's "deplorables") to "drain the DC swamp" and "make America", as opposed to the American
plutocracy, "great again". This might be something crucial: I cannot imagine Trump trying to
simply do "more of the same" like his predecessors did or trying to blindly double-down like the
Neocons always try to.
I am willing to bet that Trump really and sincerely believes that the USA is in a deep crisis
and that a new, different, sets of policies must be urgently implemented. If that assumption
of mine proves to be correct, then this is by definition very good news for the entire planet because
whatever Trump ends up doing (or not doing), he will at least not push his country into a nuclear
confrontation with Russia. And yes, I think that it is possible that Trump has come to the conclusion
that imperialism has stopped working for the USA, that far from being the solution to the contradictions
of capitalism, imperialism might well have become its most self-defeating feature.
Is it possible for an ideological system to dump one of its core component after learning
from past mistakes? I think it is, and a good example of that is
21 st
Century Socialism , which has completely dumped the kind of militant atheism which was
so central to the 20 th century Socialist movement. In fact, modern "21st Century Socialism"
is very pro-Christian. Could 21 st century capitalism dump imperialism? Maybe.
Furthermore, the Trump inaugural speech did, according to RT commentators, sound in many aspects
like the kind of speech Bernie Sanders could have made. And I think that they are right. Trump did
sound like a paleo-liberal, something which we did not hear from him during the campaign. You
could also say that Trump sounded very much like Putin. The question is will he now also act like
Putin too?
There will be a great deal of expectations in Russia about how Trump will go about fulfilling
his campaign promises to deal with other countries. Today, when Trump pronounced the followings
words " We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world – but we do so with the
understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first " he told the
Russians exactly what they wanted to hear: Trump does not pretend to be a "friend" of Russia and
Trump openly and unapologetically promises to care about his own people first, and that is exactly
what Putin has been saying and doing since he came to power in Russia: caring for the Russian people
first. After all, caring for your own first hardly implies being hostile or even indifferent to others.
All it means is that your loyalty and your service is first and foremost to those who elected
you to office. This refreshing patriotic honesty, combined with the prospect of friendship and goodwill
will sound like music to the Russian ears.
Then there are Trump's words about " forming new alliances " and uniting " the civilized
world against Radical Islamic Terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the
Earth ". They will also be received with a great deal of hope by the Russian people. If the USA
is finally serious about fighting terrorism and if they really wants to eradicate the likes of Daesh,
then Russia will offer her full support to this effort, including her military, intelligence, police
and diplomatic resources. After all, Russia has been advocating for " completely eradicating Radical
Islamic Terrorism from the face of the Earth " for decades.
There is no doubt in my mind at all that an alliance between Russia and the USA, even if limited
only to specific areas of converging or mutual interests, would be immensely beneficial for the entire
planet, and not for just these two countries: right now all the worst international crises are a
direct result from the "tepid war" the USA and Russia have been waging against each other. And just
like any other war, this war has been a fantastic waste of resources. Of course, this war was started
by the USA and it was maintained and fed by the Neocon's messianic ideology. Now that a realist like
Trump has come to power, we can finally hope for this dangerous and wasteful dynamic to be stopped.
The good news is that neither Trump nor Putin can afford to fail. Trump, because he has made an
alliance with Russia the cornerstone of his foreign policy during his campaign, and Putin because
he realizes that it is in the objective interests of Russia for Trump to succeed, lest the Neocon
crazies crawl back out from their basement. So both sides will enter into negotiations with a strong
desire to get things done and a willingness to make compromises as long as they do not affect crucial
national security objectives. I think that the number of issues on which the USA and Russia can agree
upon is much, much longer than the number of issues were irreconcilable differences remain.
So yes, today I am hopeful. More than anything else, I want to hope that Trump is "for real",
and that he will have the wisdom and courage to take strong action against his internal enemies.
Because from now on, this is one other thing which Putin and Trump will have in common: their internal
enemies are far more dangerous than any external foe. When I see rabid maniacs like
David Horowitz declaring
himself a supporter of Donald Trump ,
I get very, very concerned and I ask myself "what does Horowitz know which I am missing?". What is
certain is that in the near future one of us will soon become very disappointed. I just hope that
this shall not be me.
Could that really mean that the USA has given up its role of World Hegemon?
Well, another author here, David Chibo, seems to think that the intent is exactly the opposite:
for the US (the nation) to become World Hegemon. As opposed to what we have today, to
multinational capital being World Hegemon
When I see rabid maniacs like David Horowitz declaring himself a supporter of Donald Trump
Saying someone's a "rabid maniac" without giving any reason for one's statement is so mainstream
media like.
So far as I know, the mature-age Horowitz has written some interesting books: I can recommend
Hating Whitey , One party classrooms , Left illusion . His autobiography
( A point in time ot something like that) is a good book too.
He is also a very active anti-crazy left activist, and runs a site with a list of leftist anti-white
hate groups.
I hope I said enough for you to understand why I am surprised and not particularly pleased
by seeing him called a "rabid maniac".
The United States is in a deep crisis which nobody except Trump had the courage to discuss.
The United States Government has been overspending what is has been taking in by an average
of 875 billion dollars, per year, for last decade and a half.
Our national debt has ballooned to a hair under 20 trillion dollars in 16 years. from 5.7 trillion
in 2000.
Our Gross Domestic Product, on the other hand, is only 18.7 trillion having merely doubled
from 9.3 trillion in 2000.
A general crisis point for the solvency of a nation is when its national debt eclipses its
GDP, which happened to us two years ago .and the spread is growing, not tightening.
If this continues at its present course, the world will no longer wish to purchase our debt
and begin selling off our treasury bonds. The credit worthiness of the United States will be in
serious jeopardy and the US dollar may be sacrificed as the worlds currency.
I am not sure how President Trump wishes to tackle this but it will be his number one job to
save the United States from its ruinous policies of perpetual war and insolvency and chart a
new course , hopefully one of peace and prosperity.
There will be no more wars of choice because we simply cannot afford them.
So one can be optimistic, the era of reckless war and obscene war spending is over but its
really almost ten years to late for this.
Do not lose heart, however, there are many ways we can pay down our debt,quickly, without raising
income taxes.
And if we can GROW the economy at a healthy pace,without generating too much inflation, we
should be able to dodge the bullet.
I hope The Donald , and his cabinet, put their thinking caps on, and undertake policies which
are highly successful.
The United States is in a deep crisis which nobody except Trump had the courage to discuss.
The United States Government has been overspending what is has been taking in by an average
of 875 billion dollars, per year, for last decade and a half.
Our national debt has ballooned to a hair under 20 trillion dollars in 16 years. from 5.7 trillion
in 2000.
Our Gross Domestic Product, on the other hand, is only 18.7 trillion having merely doubled
from 9.3 trillion in 2000.
A general crisis point for the solvency of a nation is when its national debt eclipses its
GDP, which happened to us two years ago....and the spread is growing, not tightening.
If this continues at its present course, the world will no longer wish to purchase our debt
and begin selling off our treasury bonds. The credit worthiness of the United States will be in
serious jeopardy...and the US dollar may be sacrificed as the worlds currency.
I am not sure how President Trump wishes to tackle this but it will be his number one job to save
the United States from its ruinous policies of perpetual war and insolvency ...and chart a new
course , hopefully one of peace and prosperity.
There will be no more wars of choice because we simply cannot afford them.
So one can be optimistic, the era of reckless war and obscene war spending is over...but its
really almost ten years to late for this.
Do not lose heart, however, there are many ways we can pay down our debt,quickly, without raising
income taxes.
And if we can GROW the economy at a healthy pace,without generating too much inflation, we
should be able to dodge the bullet.
I hope The Donald , and his cabinet, put their thinking caps on, and undertake policies which
are highly successful.
It is so important to us all.
Guess you didn't watch the debate where Trump said there is a very large bubble over wall street,
and its bigger than the housing bubble (my words not Trumps) and our GDP the figures the government
puts out as David Stockman Reagan budget director said is very suspect to say the least, for I
have seen it stated anywhere from $16 trillion to $18 trillion and change much like the BLS report
I suspect.
Not much wiggle room for Trump a crashing bubble on wall street almost 100,000,000 un-employed
per the Lay-Off-List, no that fails to jibe with the figure the government puts out, much like
the GDP I suspect, and there should be no doubt in anyone's mind that the debt will grow under
Trump as he re-builds the military, as more tax dollars are flushed down the drain to keep company
with the trillions already there.
Chalmers Johnson was right in his excellent books from Blowback to The Sorrows of Empire Militarism,Secrecy,and
the End of the Republic and our 900+ bases around the globe, can Trump change that close at least
half of those bases that cost us billions of dollars we don't have or will it be the status quo
I suspect it will be the later
When I see rabid maniacs like David Horowitz declaring himself a supporter of Donald Trump
Saying someone's a "rabid maniac" without giving any reason for one's statement is so... mainstream
media like.
So far as I know, the mature-age Horowitz has written some interesting books: I can recommend
Hating Whitey , One party classrooms , Left illusion . His autobiography
( A point in time ot something like that) is a good book too.
He is also a very active anti-crazy left activist, and runs a site with a list of leftist anti-white
hate groups.
I hope I said enough for you to understand why I am surprised and not particularly pleased by
seeing him called a "rabid maniac".
Anonymous:
I can back up Horowitz being termed "a rapid maniac". Some time ago I met him at one of his
book signings. At that time I would be regarded as one of his disciples, i.e. his camp followers.
That changed once I actually met him. His eyes were those of a crazed man. Enough said!
"After all, caring for your own first hardly implies being hostile or even indifferent to others.
All it means is that your loyalty and your service is first and foremost to those who elected
you to office. This refreshing patriotic honesty, combined with the prospect of friendship and
goodwill will sound like music to the Russian ears."
But it could mean NOT putting Zionist-Globalist interest first.
And that's what it's all about.
Gentiles don't mind each nation putting its interest first. But that means gentiles putting
their national interests above Jewish elitist interest.
Since nationalism favors gentile interests, Jews have pushed globalism and Zionism. That way,
all gentile nations are to favor globalism(that favors Jewish worldwide networking) over nationalism
and favor Zionism(Jewish nationalism) over any gentile nationalism.
The problem is that the issues between Russia and US are not that easy to resolve. For example,
will US keep the "anti-Iran" missile defense systems in East Europe? Will they continue to state
that Ukraine and Georgia will be in NATO? Will the recent NATO troops in Poland, Baltic states
and Romania stay? There are a few others, like the Ukraine problem – Crimea, Donbass, economic
collapse.
None of those issues are suitable for a deal. A deal requires things that either side can let
go. We don't have that here. Most likely the tensions will recede, some summits will be held,
a few common policies will be attempted (e.g. Middle East), but none of the really big issues
(missiles, NATO expansion, Crimea, Ukraine) will be addressed. US has gone too far down that road
to backtrack now – it is all logistics at this point. And logistics don't change short of something
like a war.
So we are stuck. But at least we are no longer heading towards a catastrophe.
The United States is in a deep crisis which nobody except Trump had the courage to discuss.
The United States Government has been overspending what is has been taking in by an average
of 875 billion dollars, per year, for last decade and a half.
Our national debt has ballooned to a hair under 20 trillion dollars in 16 years. from 5.7 trillion
in 2000.
Our Gross Domestic Product, on the other hand, is only 18.7 trillion having merely doubled
from 9.3 trillion in 2000.
A general crisis point for the solvency of a nation is when its national debt eclipses its
GDP, which happened to us two years ago....and the spread is growing, not tightening.
If this continues at its present course, the world will no longer wish to purchase our debt
and begin selling off our treasury bonds. The credit worthiness of the United States will be in
serious jeopardy...and the US dollar may be sacrificed as the worlds currency.
I am not sure how President Trump wishes to tackle this but it will be his number one job to save
the United States from its ruinous policies of perpetual war and insolvency ...and chart a new
course , hopefully one of peace and prosperity.
There will be no more wars of choice because we simply cannot afford them.
So one can be optimistic, the era of reckless war and obscene war spending is over...but its
really almost ten years to late for this.
Do not lose heart, however, there are many ways we can pay down our debt,quickly, without raising
income taxes.
And if we can GROW the economy at a healthy pace,without generating too much inflation, we
should be able to dodge the bullet.
I hope The Donald , and his cabinet, put their thinking caps on, and undertake policies which
are highly successful.
It is so important to us all.
I am not sure how President Trump wishes to tackle this but it will be his number one job
to save the United States from its ruinous policies of perpetual war and insolvency and chart
a new course , hopefully one of peace and prosperity.
There will be no more wars of choice because we simply cannot afford them.
That's an interesting point, the US does have creditors and it has reached its credit limit,
and hasn't exactly been making good investments with the money that was borrowed.
The real issues seem to be making spending efficient (for example US healthcare that costs
about 2x the Canadian rate per person for the same result), and rebasing production in the US
(more US taxpayers).
The Socialist UK government was in a similar position in the early 1970′s with a "welfare state"
that it couldn't afford, general industrial strife and a "class war". When the UK's creditors
saw that things weren't going to change they sold off government bonds and the country got the
"Sterling Crisis" with Sterling losing what was left of its Reserve Currency status.
At least Trump is indicating a political will for change, but he needs to act quickly.
When I see rabid maniacs like David Horowitz declaring himself a supporter of Donald Trump
Saying someone's a "rabid maniac" without giving any reason for one's statement is so... mainstream
media like.
So far as I know, the mature-age Horowitz has written some interesting books: I can recommend
Hating Whitey , One party classrooms , Left illusion . His autobiography
( A point in time ot something like that) is a good book too.
He is also a very active anti-crazy left activist, and runs a site with a list of leftist anti-white
hate groups.
I hope I said enough for you to understand why I am surprised and not particularly pleased by
seeing him called a "rabid maniac".
I listened to Trump's speech live on headphones while power walking on a country road. Something
about that scenario allowed me to give it a focus that I may not have had if I was watching it
on the idiot box or reading a transcript.
If I'm not mistaken, he literally called most of his esteemed guests ( ex-presidents especially)
corrupt criminals, frauds and traitors. An unbelievable moment where the mob was reminded that
politicians are not to be fawned over. They work for the people.
The rest of the speech of course was lyrics for a remake of the song 'Dream the Impossible
Dream'. But still, if the population wasn't attention deficit affected, that part of his speech
could have been right up there with Ike's MIC moment.
This is a very good article. I agree with it almost entirely.
Is it possible for an ideological system to dump one of its core component after learning
from past mistakes? Could 21st century capitalism dump imperialism? Maybe.
When would it be possible for the anti-imperialist ideological system to dump its core belief
that, Lenin's demented (and unoriginal) ramblings to the contrary, capitalism has intrinsically
zilch to do with imperialism?
Because from now on, this is one other thing which Putin and Trump will have in common:
their internal enemies are far more dangerous than any external foe. When I see rabid maniacs
like David Horowitz declaring himself a supporter of Donald Trump, I get very, very concerned
and I ask myself "what does Horowitz know which I am missing?".
David Horowitz merely demonstrated that, unlike "
renegade Jews " such as the Kristols and the Krauthammers, he is a patriot of his own country
(the USA) first and a Jewish nationalist second. I consider that perfectly fine and worthy of
respect.
@Chet Roman "drain the DC swamp" and "make America", as opposed to the American plutocracy,
"great again"
While I am hopeful and will give Trump the chance to prove himself. Unfortunately, he like Obama
before him, has appointed most the same plutocrats/neoliberal parasites in his administration
that are part of what the Saker calls the "AngloZionist Empire". Will they, like the patrician
FDR, promote policies against their own class interests? Time will tell but, after the same betrayal
by "Hope and Change" Obama I would not bet on it.
Not that I'm very sanguine about all the Goldman Sachs people in Trump's cabinet either, but
if you're looking for reasons for optimism: At least Trump–unlike Clinton, Bush and Obama–hasn't
appointed any retreads; i.e., people who've served in previous cabinets. That may indicate that
some change is in the offing. Let's hope it's a change for the best.
The key to US solvency and credit worthiness is the "ratio" of Debt to GDP ..Our GDP should
ALWAYS be in the plus column, and when its not . it's bad news.
Like today, it is bad news (Debt 19.9 T / GDP 18.7 T) it is such bad news our big media has
refused to discuss it ..The only person to bring it up , ever, was the Donald.
The big media does not want to say the wars they lied us into bankrupted our nation because
it makes them accountable.
The scaly truth is that they "are" accountable.
Ironically,Donald Trump (who knows this too) now has the power as President to generate over
two trillion dollars in revenues, literally overnight, and move our Debt to GDP ratio right back
in the plus column.
Do you want to know how ?
He goes on record that the Iraq War "lies" constituted a defrauding of the American people
, our country, and the brave men and women who fought and died there .and he has chosen to recognize
this "defrauding " as a supreme terrorist act against the wellbeing of our nation ,our citizenry
and the values that make us who we are ..
He goes on to say that ALL the perpetrators will be held accountable for this despicable act
of deception , so that it may never happen again.
Then he proceeds with operation "Clean Sweep" and takes down all the back room billionaire
oligarchs who jockeyed for the war and profited from it .
Lets say by the time he is done he has arrested 700 belligerent oligarchs and media moguls
and seizes all their assets .If they are each worth, on average, 4 billion dollars .
then 700 x 4 billion = 2.8 trillion dollars
If this 2.8 trillion goes to paying down the national debt .then "bingo" our Debt to GDP ratio
is right back in the" plus column" .
Our National debt is reduced by 2.8 T and the GDP stays the same ..the new ratio is 17.1 T
Debt/ 18.7 T GDP.
Our credit worthiness, as a nation, is now out of the" danger zone".
Whatever assets the criminal oligarchs had, are auctioned off and redistributed to all the
good people who would never "lie us into war".
This sends an enormously reassuring message throughout the world that we are able to take care
of business at home, and clean house when necessary.
This would also serve as a much needed tonic within the entire "establishment" community, as
they would be intensely fearful of ever defrauding the American people again.
Would you do it ? ..If you were President, Anna, would you demand accountability ?
300 Words
@Anon "After all, caring for your own first hardly implies being hostile or even indifferent
to others. All it means is that your loyalty and your service is first and foremost to those who
elected you to office. This refreshing patriotic honesty, combined with the prospect of friendship
and goodwill will sound like music to the Russian ears."
But it could mean NOT putting Zionist-Globalist interest first.
And that's what it's all about.
Gentiles don't mind each nation putting its interest first. But that means gentiles putting
their national interests above Jewish elitist interest.
Since nationalism favors gentile interests, Jews have pushed globalism and Zionism. That way,
all gentile nations are to favor globalism(that favors Jewish worldwide networking) over nationalism
and favor Zionism(Jewish nationalism) over any gentile nationalism.
"Gentiles don't mind each nation putting its interest first. But that means gentiles putting
their national interests above Jewish elitist interest.
Since nationalism favors gentile interests, Jews have pushed globalism and Zionism. That way,
all gentile nations are to favor globalism(that favors Jewish worldwide networking) over nationalism
and favor Zionism(Jewish nationalism) over any gentile nationalism."
That seems to be true.
I was shocked to read a letter in the current London Review of Books, actually a rebuttal to another
letter, by Adam Tooze. Tooze had written a review of a book by Wolfgang Streeck. In his rebuttal
Tooze attacked Streeck as an anti-Semite because Streeck had *dared* to write a book that presents
arguments for the primacy of the nation-state as opposed to globalist forces. Tooze's argument
basically came down to: nation-state = chauvinism = anti-Semitism, where globalization = "Semitism,"
I suppose, and Tooze actually more or less accused Streeck of anti-Semitism on this basis: that
you cannot defend the idea of the nation-state without being in effectively anti-Semitic. He didn't
show any other evidence but just this supposed syllogism, all of it theoretical. Interestingly
Tooze was the one making the equation of globalism and Jews-not Streeck! But still, Streeck was
the guilty one. Tooze spent a lot of breath on the word "Volk" for "people." Of coure, Streeck
in German, and that is the German word for "people." Any other overtones "Volk" has acquired in
English are the fault of the English, as English has its own second word, "folk," which German
does not, and so English speakers didn't have to take over the German word and demonize it. They
could have demonized their own word . . . Tooze's pedantry and intellectual sloppiness were quite
startling. I look forward to seeing a rebuttal and maybe counterattack from Streeck in the next
LRB . . .
Like today, it is bad news (Debt 19.9 T / GDP 18.7 T)
These are bad news, but the news which are even worse is the fact that of these 18.7 Trillion
of nominal GDP, probably third (most likely more) is a virtual GDP–the result of cooking of books
and of financial and real estate machinations. Trump knows this, I am almost 99% positive, even
99.9%, on that.
This is a very good article. I agree with it almost entirely.
Is it possible for an ideological system to dump one of its core component after learning from
past mistakes?... Could 21st century capitalism dump imperialism? Maybe.
When would it be possible for the anti-imperialist ideological system to dump its core belief
that, Lenin's demented (and unoriginal) ramblings to the contrary, capitalism has intrinsically
zilch to do with imperialism?
Because from now on, this is one other thing which Putin and Trump will have in common: their
internal enemies are far more dangerous than any external foe. When I see rabid maniacs like
David Horowitz declaring himself a supporter of Donald Trump, I get very, very concerned and
I ask myself "what does Horowitz know which I am missing?".
David Horowitz merely demonstrated that, unlike "
renegade Jews " such as the Kristols and the Krauthammers, he is a patriot of his own country
(the USA) first and a Jewish nationalist second. I consider that perfectly fine and worthy of
respect.
" one other thing which Putin and Trump will have in common: their internal enemies are far
more dangerous than any external foe. "
"Make America Great Again"- is just an empty political slogan like bait on a fishing hook that
only dumb fish would be attracted to.
I suggest readers look at an article by Andrew Levine, a very insightful Jewish American political
commentator and regular contributor to Counterpunch.
"the civilized world against Radical Islamic Terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from
the face of the Earth".
What has ISIS done to America or Trump that he should want to totally obliterate them? Before
you denounce or pronounce me as dumb heretical dissenter, read on.
Sunni Arabs in the Middle East have been exploited and controlled by racially arrogant European
interlopers and colonists since the fall of the Ottomans. They have been especially mistreated
and ravaged by vengeful Americans since 2001. They also facilitated a revival of Shia-Sunni sectarian
conflict in Syria and Iraq. Now the displaced and persecuted Sunni minority want to form their
own state, free from foreign interference to practice their chosen religion and way of life. I
grant you that they are also vengeful and violent to those who persecuted them by using terrorist
methods and that they practiced "ethnic cleansing" but that does not make them "uncivilized",
the civilized Americans and Europeans did the same when conquering their settler colonies. So
why not let them have their own land, just like the Jewish Europeans were given and make peace
with time provided they renounce their goal of spreading Wahhabi Muslim empire by force?
The Arab states which emerged after the dissolution of the Ottoman Caliphate were not meant
to be replaced by an Arab Caliphate. The fight of the Sunnis is not the fight of a 'persecuted'
minority, but of the former dominant minority for the re-establishment of their dominant position
in the frame of the Caliphate, with wet dreams of world domination. ISIS is but the tip of the
iceberg. Their eradication would cool down the overheated minds of the Caliphate dreamers.
The key to US solvency and credit worthiness is the "ratio" of Debt to GDP.....Our GDP should
ALWAYS be in the plus column, and when its not.... it's bad news.
Like today, it is bad news (Debt 19.9 T / GDP 18.7 T)...it is such bad news our big media has
refused to discuss it .....The only person to bring it up , ever, was the Donald.
The big media does not want to say the wars they lied us into bankrupted our nation because it
makes them accountable.
The scaly truth is that they "are" accountable.
Ironically,Donald Trump (who knows this too) now has the power as President to generate over two
trillion dollars in revenues, literally overnight, and move our Debt to GDP ratio right back in
the plus column.
Do you want to know how ?
He goes on record that the Iraq War "lies" constituted a defrauding of the American people , our
country, and the brave men and women who fought and died there....and he has chosen to recognize
this "defrauding " as a supreme terrorist act against the wellbeing of our nation ,our citizenry
and the values that make us who we are.....
He goes on to say that ALL the perpetrators will be held accountable for this despicable act of
deception , so that it may never happen again.
Then he proceeds with operation "Clean Sweep" and takes down all the back room billionaire oligarchs
who jockeyed for the war and profited from it .
Lets say by the time he is done he has arrested 700 belligerent oligarchs and media moguls and
seizes all their assets....If they are each worth, on average, 4 billion dollars .......
then 700 x 4 billion = 2.8 trillion dollars
If this 2.8 trillion goes to paying down the national debt....then "bingo" our Debt to GDP ratio
is right back in the" plus column" ....
Our National debt is reduced by 2.8 T and the GDP stays the same .....the new ratio is 17.1 T
Debt/ 18.7 T GDP.
Our credit worthiness, as a nation, is now out of the" danger zone".
Whatever assets the criminal oligarchs had, are auctioned off and redistributed to all the good
people who would never "lie us into war".
This sends an enormously reassuring message throughout the world that we are able to take care
of business at home, and clean house when necessary.
This would also serve as a much needed tonic within the entire "establishment" community, as they
would be intensely fearful of ever defrauding the American people again.
Would you do it ?.....If you were President, Anna, would you demand accountability ?
Would you do it ? ..If you were President, Anna, would you demand accountability
Not to speak for Anna, but maybe I would – if blessed with balls of titanium, or perhaps by
underestimating the capacity of the deep state to slice them off. Being human, one can only hope
that Trump will do what I cannot, or could not in his shoes.
One thing he cannot do is feign ignorance or pretend to be unaware of the critters festering
in the swamp – after all, he campaigned on the promise of draining it. Where hope falters is in
seeing the cabinet he is building with characters unlikely to do much in the swamp-draining department.
Without a strong cadre of testicular fortitude surrounding him in his cabinet, his most sincere
attempts at swamp-drainage will be quixotic at best.
So, where does one place hope lest one becomes a blathering cynic or a nattering nabob of negativity?
Ego -- That is where my chips are stacked. Nothing defines or motivates Trump more than
his self-perception. I believe that it is much more than showmanship that propels his self-promotion,
and nothing would be more devastating to the man than to be ridiculed or perceived as a failure.
I doubt that Netanyahu could do to him what he did to Obama and survive the retaliatory deluge
that would follow. I think Trump's hidden strength is his desire for vengeance against those that
wrong him (I expect there to be tribulations in HRC's future). If the deep state doesn't do him
in first, there is the strong possibility of damage on the deep state – one that they may never
recover from in this world of instant information that wilts night-flowers.
He may redefine victory on occasion for outcomes that are too difficult for him to accept,
but in the end, he will "Make Trump Great Again," and if fortune favors us, help the US benefit
in the process, if not the rest of the world.
That does not rule out that his naiveté may cause him to stumble and fall, perhaps more than
once, and he has not always succeeded in business, but it seems that he does build on his failures,
and is unlikely to make the same mistake twice.
Doesn't appear like a lot to cling to, but in this dystopic world, it is the best we have.
Is it enough?
Bernie Sanders just said on CBS that he is ready to work with Trump on
1) lowering drug prices by purchasing drugs from abroad and Medicare negotiate prices
2) infrastructure projects
3) better trade deals
Lets see if entrenched interests in the GOP and Democrat party let them work together. My guess
is NOT.
What that would accomplish is lay bare the corruption that is part of both parties.
Let's see if Trump actually wants to do any of those things Sanders wants. In other words will
he "reach across the aisle."
Let's see if Republicans in Congress cooperate.
I think it's unlikely although not impossible (as Krugman etc do)
Trump thinks of himself as a reality TV star. He likes the drama. But he seems to have no interest
in the details of policy. He found the border tax his advisers were floating as too complicated.
"... In Europe and the US it was right wing nationalist populism which opposes free trade, mass
immigration and military intervention abroad. ..."
"... Trump instinctively understood that he must keep pressing these three buttons, the importance
of which Hillary Clinton and most of the Republican Party leaders, taking their cue from their donors
rather than potential voters, never appreciated. ..."
"... The vehicle for protest and opposition to the status quo in the Middle East and North Africa
is, by way of contrast, almost entirely religious and is only seldom nationalist, the most important
example being the Kurds. ..."
"... Secular nationalism was in any case something of a middle class creed in the Arab world, limited
in its capacity to provide the glue to hold societies together in the face of crisis. ..."
"... It was always absurdly simple-minded to blame all the troubles of Iraq, Syria and Libya on
Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad and Muammar Gaddafi, authoritarian leaders whose regimes were more the
symptom than the cause of division. ..."
"... Political divisions in the US are probably greater now than at any time since the American
Civil War 150 years ago. Repeated calls for unity in both countries betray a deepening disunity and
alarm as people sense that they are moving in the dark and old norms and landmarks are no longer visible
and may no longer exist. ..."
"... Criticism of Trump in the media has lost all regard for truth and falsehood with the publication
of patently concocted reports of his antics in Russia ..."
"... But the rise of Isis, the mass influx of Syrian refugees heading for Central Europe and the
terror attacks in Paris and Brussels showed that the crises in the Middle East could not be contained.
They helped give a powerful impulse to the anti-immigrant authoritarian nationalist right and made them
real contenders for power. ..."
"... One of the first real tests for Trump will be how far he succeeds in closing down these wars,
something that is now at last becoming feasible. ..."
In the US, Europe and the Middle East there were many who saw themselves as the losers from globalisation,
but the ideological vehicle for protest differed markedly from region to region. In Europe and
the US it was right wing nationalist populism which opposes free trade, mass immigration and military
intervention abroad. The latter theme is much more resonant in the US than in Europe because
of Iraq and Afghanistan. Trump instinctively understood that he must keep pressing these three
buttons, the importance of which Hillary Clinton and most of the Republican Party leaders, taking
their cue from their donors rather than potential voters, never appreciated.
The vehicle for protest and opposition to the status quo in the Middle East and North Africa
is, by way of contrast, almost entirely religious and is only seldom nationalist, the most important
example being the Kurds. This is a big change from 50 years ago when revolutionaries in the
region were usually nationalists or socialists, but both beliefs were discredited by corrupt and
authoritarian nationalist dictators and by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Secular nationalism was in any case something of a middle class creed in the Arab world, limited
in its capacity to provide the glue to hold societies together in the face of crisis. When Isis
forces were advancing on Baghdad after taking Mosul in June 2014, it was a fatwa from the Iraqi Shia
religious leader Ali al-Sistani that rallied the resistance. No non-religious Iraqi leader could
have successfully appealed to hundreds of thousands of people to volunteer to fight to the death
against Isis. The Middle East differs also from Europe and the US because states are more fragile
than they look and once destroyed prove impossible to recreate. This was a lesson that the foreign
policy establishments in Washington, London and Paris failed to take on board after the invasion
of Iraq in 2003, though the disastrous outcome of successful or attempted regime change has been
bloodily demonstrated again and again. It was always absurdly simple-minded to blame all the
troubles of Iraq, Syria and Libya on Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad and Muammar Gaddafi, authoritarian
leaders whose regimes were more the symptom than the cause of division.
But it is not only in the Middle East that divisions are deepening. Whatever happens in Britain
because of the Brexit vote or in the US because of the election of Trump as president, both countries
will be more divided and therefore weaker than before. Political divisions in the US are probably
greater now than at any time since the American Civil War 150 years ago. Repeated calls for unity
in both countries betray a deepening disunity and alarm as people sense that they are moving in the
dark and old norms and landmarks are no longer visible and may no longer exist.
The mainline mass media is finding it difficult to make sense of a new world order which may or
may not be emerging. Journalists are generally more rooted in the established order of things than
they pretend and are shocked by radical change. Only two big newspapers – the Florida Times-Union
and the Las Vegas Review-Journal endorsed Trump before the election and few of the American
commentariat expected him to win, though this has not dented their confidence in their own judgement.
Criticism of Trump in the media has lost all regard for truth and falsehood with the publication
of patently concocted reports of his antics in Russia, but there is also genuine uncertainty
about whether he will be a real force for change, be it good or ill.
Crises in different parts of the world are beginning to cross-infect and exacerbate each other.
Prior to 2014 European leaders, whatever their humanitarian protestations, did not care much what
happened in Iraq and Syria. But the rise of Isis, the mass influx of Syrian refugees heading
for Central Europe and the terror attacks in Paris and Brussels showed that the crises in the Middle
East could not be contained. They helped give a powerful impulse to the anti-immigrant authoritarian
nationalist right and made them real contenders for power.
The Middle East is always a source of instability in the world and never more so than over the
last six years. But winners and losers are emerging in Syria where Assad is succeeding with Russian
and Iranian help, while in Iraq the Baghdad government backed by US airpower is slowly fighting its
way into Mosul. Isis probably has more fight in it than its many enemies want to believe, but is
surely on the road to ultimate defeat. One of the first real tests for Trump will be how far
he succeeds in closing down these wars, something that is now at last becoming feasible.
"... "But after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or fascist dictorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peace makers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." ..."
"... Moscow-Ankara-Washington axis........ How about a Beijing-Moscow-Berlin axis, what have the Turks got to offer? ..."
"... Clinton was to solve global warming with nuclear winter. Sheesh! read Obama's neocon anthem aka the speech he gave in Stockholm where he conned the Nobel committee. ..."
"... Putin's 'interventions' are minimalist and defensive, the Clinton neocons would push NATO up to Smolensk with feckless disregard for any entity in the way of US empire. ..."
"... Neoliberal is starting wars because the empire sees "unjust peace" as excuse to engage with shock and awe despite the dbody count. ..."
"... Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity has questions the whole "Putin did it" narrative, demanding evidence: "we strongly suspect that the evidence your intelligence chiefs have of a joint Russian-hacking-WikiLeaks-publishing operation is no better than the "intelligence" evidence in 2002-2003 – expressed then with comparable flat-fact "certitude" – of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." ..."
The rest of spring time for
jihadis are known bollux: Libya, Egypt*, Syria, Iraq,
Afghanistan...... Lebanon outside spring time for jihadis it
is under Shiite wraps not so bollux.
*CIA and generals jailed the jihadis to keep Camp David
bribes coming.
I am terribly worried that a move of the US embassy to
Jerusalem is part if a set of provocations leading to US
military interventions to eliminate the threats as this group
defines them to be (radical islamists). This would
immediately make the US and Russian oil industries more
valuable as the middle east becomes enflamed.
A new axis
arises: Russia, the new ottoman and the US.
I just cant help thinking that this is the plan, you will
be measured on your patriotism and allegiances here.
Dismaying.
But it does go hand in hand with this "America First"
schtick.
"But after all it is the leaders of a country who
determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag
the people along, whether it is a democracy or fascist
dictorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship.
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the
bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is
tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peace
makers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to
danger. It works the same in any country."
"I am terribly worried that a move of the US embassy to
Jerusalem is part if a set of provocations leading to US
military interventions to eliminate..."
You could be right,
but most of Trump's campaign talk was isolationist, if
contradictory. The Iraq adventurism was a disaster, etc.
He doesn't like diplomacy, like the Iran deal, so there
could be more brinkmanship which is dangerous. But a war
would be very unpopular. Again he may not care since war
could be used as a distraction.
Authoritarian allies like the Arab dictatorships are happy
in that a Trump administration won't criticize them about
human rights violations or freedom of the press. Russia and
China will be happy about that as well.
Trump is basically a real-estate developer/tax fraud etc.
I don't see war as a foregone conclusion.
He used the word 'to protect' in his inaugural. That is
definitely not isolationism especially after declaring that
he will eliminate radical Islam from the earth (close to a
direct quote, I'm pretty sure).
And isn't he the one who
said during the campaign that we ought to just sieze the
oilfields?
So just provoke a few things, a few will do, then announce
the alliance wuth russia to settle this in the region, once
and for all, so we are protected.
Who indeed will step up and say no, they will not do this
type of thing?
Clinton was to solve global warming with nuclear winter.
Sheesh! read Obama's neocon anthem aka the speech he gave in
Stockholm where he conned the Nobel committee.
Putin's 'interventions' are minimalist and defensive, the
Clinton neocons would push NATO up to Smolensk with feckless
disregard for any entity in the way of US empire.
Neoliberal is starting wars because the empire sees
"unjust peace" as excuse to engage with shock and awe despite
the dbody count.
Clinton would be mobilizing to crush Russia using the
exploded the image of a few suffering Balts to tilt with
nuclear winter.
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity has questions
the whole "Putin did it" narrative, demanding evidence: "we
strongly suspect that the evidence your intelligence chiefs
have of a joint Russian-hacking-WikiLeaks-publishing
operation is no better than the "intelligence" evidence in
2002-2003 – expressed then with comparable flat-fact
"certitude" – of the existence of weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq."
http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/another_demand_for_russian_hacking_20170119
But this JohnH-come-lately drinks whatever Kool-Aid the
establishment gives him...
"Does the Russian government hack, as many other governments
do? Of course. Did it hack the emails of the Democratic
National Committee? Almost certainly, though it was likely
not alone in doing so. In the Internet age, hacking is the
bread and butter of intelligence agencies. If Russian
intelligence did not do so, this would constitute gross
misfeasance, especially since the DNC was such easy pickings
and the possibility of gaining important insights into the
U.S. government was so high. But that is not the question.
It was WikiLeaks that published the very damaging
information, for example, on the DNC's dirty tricks that
marginalized Sen. Bernie Sanders and ensured that Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton would win the Democratic
nomination. What remains to be demonstrated is that it was
"the Russians" who gave those emails to WikiLeaks. And that
is what the U.S. intelligence community doesn't know."
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/01/20/obama-admits-gap-in-russian-hack-case/
Democrats want to blame Russia for their ineptitude and their
lousy candidate.
Democrats want to blame Russia for exposing the DNC's
rigging of the primaries...by blaming Russia for rigging the
general elections [abject hypocrisy.]
Neither Democrats nor the intelligence services know who
gave the documents to WikiLeaks or, if they do, they don't
want you to know who it was.
reject all war. We are all extremely fortunate that Hillary
Clinton will not be taking office this weekend. Had Hillary
been elected we would be facing a crisis over Syria. Hillary
wants to overthrow the
"
Her victims are our cousins. Each of us emanates from the
same living cell. Within Minkowski-time-space we remain
connected as one animal. No!
We cannot open up our American hospitality to suspected
terrorists. What we can do is open up our homeland to
foreigners who are moving over to make space for her victims.
Ceu
When South Africa takes in Syrians, we can take in an
equal number of South Africans or other foreigners who are
demonstrating their love for our cousins, our cousins now
victimized by our own Mama-War-Bucks. Tell me something!
Was the HRC-email-server moved to her private home so that
SWH, Slick Willie himself could control the World? Hey!
"... The strongest advocates for bringing offshore manufacturing back to the United States acknowledge automation's effect on the workforce but say it doesn't negate the need for more domestic factories. Harry Mosser, founder of the Reshoring Institute, which encourages companies to bring manufacturing operations back to the United States, said that even a highly automated factory is better for workers than no factory at all. ..."
"... These days it is more about planned/welcomed obsolescence - the product basically works, but some critical parts may be low grade, making it break after a while so you have to buy something new. This also affects "brands that used to be good". ..."
"... The internet also has played a role - online stores could underbid brick and mortar, then the latter had to cheapen and cut their offerings, driving more customers to the internet, etc. ..."
SOUTHBRIDGE - A mainstay of Massachusetts manufacturing since
the late 1800s, the Hyde Group tool company made a big leap
overseas in 2010, when it outsourced production of its mass
market putty knives and wallpaper blades to China.
"At
heart, we're manufacturers. It was the hardest thing for us
to do, us in a fourth-generation family," said Bob Clemence,
vice president of sales at Hyde Group, and great-grandson of
the man who bought the company in the 1890s. "In order for us
to stay in business and still employ people, we had to move
our low-end business off-shore. It really was like a stab in
the heart."
But the cost advantage of China has been steadily shrinking;
it's now 40 percent cheaper to make the tools there than in
Southbridge. And if that continues to fall, then Hyde might
be able to help President Donald Trump fulfill a central
campaign promise: bringing manufacturing back to the United
States.
"Forty percent [savings] is a huge number to overcome,"
Clemence said. "We've determined that if it's 20 percent or
less, we're going to do it domestically."
As Trump cajoles American companies into returning
production to US soil, experiences like Hyde's illustrate the
complex, multifaceted decisions manufacturers face as they
choose where to build their products.
The president has talked of using lower taxes, fewer
regulations, and higher tariffs to bring about a renaissance
of American manufacturing. But for factory owners, it's not
simply about cheaper labor. The costs of energy and raw
materials, the emergence of global competitors, and the
location and demands of suppliers and customers all weigh on
these decisions, a myriad of cross currents that will make it
difficult to fix the factory economy with just a few bold
prescriptions.
"It's going to be not an easy job," said Enrico Moretti,
professor of economics at the University of California,
Berkeley, who predicted that even if factories stay in the
United States, production will be increasingly automated.
"I'm not sure there is one explicit policy, a magic switch,
that executive power in Washington can switch to retain jobs
in the US."
In the eyes of factory owners, singling them out won't
necessarily solve the problem. Some say they were forced to
move production overseas by their customers. At Hyde, it was
the retail stores that carry its tools demanding lower
prices.
"It doesn't matter what they say about made in the USA,
it's all about price," Clemence said. "They've taken some
basic items and said there are commodity products and said,
'We only buy them by price.' "
In Norwood, the Manufacturing Resource Group opened a
second factory just across the US border in Mexico in 2011
because customers demanded cheaper versions of its cable
assemblies, wire harnesses, and other electric components.
"The decision to open in Mexico wasn't ours," MRG
president Joe Prior said. "We were told that, 'You need to
have a low-cost option, or we're not going to be able to do
business with you.' "
The Norwood and Mexico factories nearly mirror one
another, each employing about 70 people, with mostly the same
equipment and capabilities. The Norwood factory still
accounts for most of its business, as MRG's local customers
are willing to pay more for quicker shipping and customer
service. But other customers simply want a cheaper product -
wages at the Mexico factory are a quarter the cost of
Norwood, while health care costs about 90 percent lower.
Prior said if Trump does impose a high tariff on imported
products, as he has threatened, then that cost would probably
be shouldered by customers of the Mexican factory.
"If there is a tax, it just has to be passed on to our
customers and they'd have to make a decision about whether it
makes sense for them anymore," he said.
Since many US companies sell to customers around the
world, a high tariff might bring some production back home -
but at a cost. For Eastern Acoustic Works, that might mean
losing international customers for its sound equipment.
The Whitinsville company is closing its factory here,
laying off 27 workers and outsourcing most production of
speaker systems and subwoofers to a contract manufacturer in
China. There were just too many competitors around the world
making similar equipment for Eastern Acoustic to justify
charging higher prices for its US-made products, general
manager TJ Smith said. Eastern Acoustic will instead
concentrate on new sales, marketing, and R&D initiatives,
creating white-collar jobs that will help it grow.
"Running a factory takes a lot of focus and energy," Smith
said. "We have to ask ourselves, what are we good at? What do
we want to call our competencies?"
Smith said Eastern Acoustic might be forced to bring
production back to the United States if the Trump tariff goes
into effect. However, that move might also prompt the company
to drop its international clients - Asia accounts for 30
percent of Eastern Acoustic's sales - because the US-made
products wouldn't be competitive in overseas markets.
"It would split my business up too much, so I couldn't
support" an overseas factory, Smith said. "For our scale, I
would lean toward [choosing] the domestic market at this
point because that's what I know and I'm closer to it."
But the higher tariffs might help Eastern Acoustic in
another way - by raising prices on products its European
competitors are selling to US customers. "So that might
increase my near-term opportunity domestically," Smith said.
Raw materials, such as steel or energy, is another area
Trump would have to address. Foreign steel, especially, is so
much cheaper that it is very difficult for manufacturers not
to use. But Trump's promise to promote more domestic oil and
gas production could be a major boon to factories.
For example, US companies are benefiting from very cheap
domestic natural gas; that's especially important in
processing industries that use a lot of chemicals in their
production. ...
President Donald Trump has spoken often about trade's
effect on US manufacturing employment but has said
comparatively little about another economic force that has
caused factories to shed jobs: high-tech machines and
automation.
At the Hyde Group's Southbridge factory, the amount of
work that 100 employees do now would have required 180
workers more than a decade ago, said Bob Clemence, the
company's vice president of sales.
While the number of blue-collar assembly-line jobs at US
factories has been dropping in huge numbers for decades,
Enrico Moretti, a professor at the University of California,
Berkeley, said the number of engineers working in factories
has about doubled. Future manufacturing jobs will probably
require engineering skills and training, Moretti said.
At Hyde, the typical factory worker might operate two or
three computerized machines at a time, and the work generally
requires an associate's degree or some college education,
Clemence said. That's a far cry from 20 years ago, when the
factory used to host night classes to help employees earn
high school degrees.
"We could still do the GED," Clemence said. "But I need
someone coming in the door that already has that degree
information. I don't need somebody that is only running a
fork truck."
In his presidential farewell address Jan. 10, President Obama
highlighted the effects of technology on the workforce,
noting "the relentless pace of automation that makes a lot of
good middle-class jobs obsolete." He also called for ensuring
higher-level education, as well as stronger labor unions, to
blunt the effect.
Even if future manufacturing employees are trained to
handle robots and high-tech machines, the math is simple
enough: Machines and robots require fewer workers on factory
floors. When the appliance maker Carrier, a division of
United Technologies Corp., agreed to keep in Indiana about
800 jobs it had planned to send to Mexico, it marked an early
public relations win for Trump. Within days, however, United
Technologies' chief executive said new investments in the
Indiana factory would probably result in automation and
eventual job losses.
The strongest advocates for bringing offshore manufacturing
back to the United States acknowledge automation's effect on
the workforce but say it doesn't negate the need for more
domestic factories. Harry Mosser, founder of the Reshoring
Institute, which encourages companies to bring manufacturing
operations back to the United States, said that even a highly
automated factory is better for workers than no factory at
all.
"If you bring back any manufacturing, you bring back some
employment," he said.
"At Hyde, the typical factory
worker might operate two or three computerized machines at a
time, and the work generally requires an associate's degree
or some college education,"
What are "computerized machines," Fred? and why only two
or three?
In my personal experience (as an IT guy)
observing electronic techs in computer
manufacturing (some decades ago) monitoring
several 'computerized' testing machines at once. (Made for
interesting challenges trying to measure productivity.)
Why
only two or three? When an 'event' happens,
prompt operator response is usually called for.
No, a cnc cell will typically have 4 or 5 cnc
machines. You just need labor to feed, stack and turn one off
if there is an issue. One will do. Injection molding can be 2 to 4 presses. This is why Labor
should have been paid more as they are replacing 3 and 4
people.
We already have this environment and plants are not
crawling with engineers. They are needs for programming only
and even then an operator might be able to do it.
"We could still do the GED," Clemence said. "But I need
someone coming in the door that already has that degree
information. I don't need somebody that is only running a
fork truck."
Translation: "We will not pay for upgrading
the skills of fresh hires as long as we still have older
workers in their 50's+ with existing skills *who are not
leaving*."
And that aspect is hinted at right above - 20+ years ago,
when today's 50+ were 20/30-ish, they paid for their
education, and those people are still in the accessible labor
pool.
But they *will* age out, and then they hand wringing and
wailing about skill shortages will intensify (and you better
believe companies will *then* arrange the skill upgrades).
> In the eyes of factory owners, singling them out won't
necessarily solve the problem. Some say they were forced to
move production overseas by their customers. At Hyde, it was
the retail stores that carry its tools demanding lower
prices. "It doesn't matter what they say about made in the
USA, it's all about price," Clemence said. "They've taken
some basic items and said there are commodity products and
said, 'We only buy them by price.' "
Yup. Consumers matter.
So long as we care more about getting the lowest price than
whether the workers who made the widget were getting a fair
deal the problem will persist.
It was said elsewhere in the article that "customers"
actually meant retail chains.
With many products, including
food, the origin of the product or its ingredients is not
properly disclosed. "Made for", "distributed by", "packed
in", "packaging printed in", are not actionable.
Then with advances in manufacturing and material sciences,
it has become harder to judge the expected quality and
workmanship of a product by its external appearance - most
look well finished and spiffy, parts are fitting well, etc.
About 20+ years that wasn't the case, and it was much
easier to tell that something is cheap junk (when looking
good on the outside it may still be junk inside, but at least
there was a way of identifying the lowest category).
These days it is more about planned/welcomed obsolescence
- the product basically works, but some critical parts may be
low grade, making it break after a while so you have to buy
something new. This also affects "brands that used to be
good".
Then one can only go by price, as that's a difference that
can still be discerned. And obviously there is a feedback
dynamic - stores observe what sells, and slowly remove
variety and "mid range" products.
The internet also has played a role - online stores could
underbid brick and mortar, then the latter had to cheapen and
cut their offerings, driving more customers to the internet,
etc.
An interesting quote: "So, given that the US is under GLOB occupation, Americans should welcome
ANY foreign interference that loosens this grip and empowers the historical white majority. "
Notable quotes:
"... the antecedent for "it" seems to be the danger to us from terrorism and foreign dictators–JD ..."
"... Watch: 'You Have Made Me Proud' – President Obama's Farewell Speech Is a Powerful Road-Map for Upholding Democracy , ..."
"... Donald Trump's News Conference: Full Transcript and Video, ..."
"... On the suggestion that Vladimir Putin helped Trump get elected: ..."
"... On the allegations in the BuzzFeed file about stuff he had paid those honey-trap hookers to do in Moscow: ..."
"... On whether he thinks the American public is concerned about him not releasing his tax returns: ..."
"... On Lindsey Graham proposing a bill for tougher sanctions on Russia: ..."
"... That's the Trump we know and love. So was his reaction when a CNN reporter kept demanding to ask a question: "Don't be rude. No, I'm not going to give you a question You are fake news! " ..."
"... One of the reasons low-income Americans admire rich people is that they are do-ers who seem to live gilded lives, and not on the backs of the poor. It's the professional classes they don't like-the lawyers and doctors and teachers, who invade their lives with bills and lectures. The people who look and sound like Hillary Clinton. Trump was showing that he, too, was under the cosh of the miserable lawyers-he even had one come to the podium. ..."
"... Bad news, Trump haters: This bonkers show has made him even MORE popular, writes JUSTIN WEBB. He played to the gallery with something bordering on genius , ..."
"... Watch your back, Mr. President-Elect. Richard Nixon was way less rumbustious than you are; but they took down Nixon . ..."
"... BBC is still in nonstop 'take down Trump' mode, every other day the headline starts 'Donald Trump has provoked outrage' . ..."
"... From time to time I make a resolution never to vote for any person who has shed tears in public. ..."
"... Yes, but you and your wife are IMMIGRANTS. Unwanted. Undesired. Doesn't matter if you are white or non-white. ..."
"... All this talk of Russian hacking and Russian interference emanating from the Progs misses the point. I don't believe in most of it. But surely Russians did what they could to favor Trump. But what's wrong with that, at least from our perspective? ..."
"... The fact is the US is not ruled by Americans but by the GLOB, or Globalist Tyranny. Though the GLOB is a diverse bunch of globalist-elites, the top dogs are Zionists, homos, and Anglo-Cuck-Collaborators. And these people have ZERO feeling for the historical white majority of the Americans. Anglo-Collaborators are too cucked out to have any white sentiments. They are like Joe Biden who will sell his ma down the river for his cookies and creams. These cucks are willing to turn all historically white nations into EU and US into non-white majority nations AS LONG AS they and their children are assure of privilege and power in the New Order. They are globo-quislings. ..."
"... So, given that the US is under GLOB occupation, Americans should welcome ANY foreign interference that loosens this grip and empowers the historical white majority. ..."
"... Now, the Russian role in 2016 was nothing like French role in the War of Independence, but it may have tipped the balance. White Americans should rejoice and thank the Russians. ..."
"... American Media are not American. It is mostly GLOB. And it means that as long as US is under Glob power, it is under alien tyranny. Indeed, even with Trump as president, the most powerful force in the US is Jewish-Glob power. ..."
"... Trump's tweets are an act of genius. He has rocked the whole liberal establishment by stating his own opinions and speaking directly to those who have been ignored for years. ..."
"... This is revolutionary, Trump could never have survived a Presidential run in the past, he would have been unable to fight back, no one would be able to hear him. ..."
"... Who would have thought that a President could ignore and ridicule major media players in an age where careers are destroyed by the media because they disagree with gay marriage... ..."
"... The Zionists, CIA and FBI could finish with Trump in no time at all, but the problem is that it's not just Trump, he's only riding a wave. Eliminate Trump and they could get something much worse, so they probably calculate that it's better to try to corrupt Trump ( he's a dealmaker) despite his connection to the thing that they fear the most i.e. Radical Anglo Nationalism. ..."
"... Americans are generally aware of the founders of this country. However, immigrants like the Irish, Italians, and Slavs were considered to be "garbage" by nativists at various points in time. Millions of immigrants who came to the States had little money, but a strong work ethic and the willingness to embrace our customs and our political traditions. ..."
This is the Week of the Two Presidents-
Donald Trump succeeds Barack Obama at noon on Friday January 20. Both men recently addressed
major gatherings: Barack Obama made his official farewell to the nation, Donald Trump held his first
formal press conference since being elected. Each event was highly characteristic. My take: I for
one am glad we have heard the last of Obama. And Trump's rumbustiousness is thrilling .
Obama stepped out in front of a huge audience in
Chicago and delivered a long, gassy speech-51 minutes and 10 seconds. That's
10 minutes longer than the Farewell Addresses of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan
combined .
Bush 41 did not technically give a farewell address, although his speech to
West Point cadets, the last of his presidency, is sometimes cited as such. I don't know its duration,
but the transcript runs
to 3,300 words. The transcript of Obama's farewell address is just short of 5,000 words, so he left
Poppy Bush in the dust, too. This is a guy who really likes the
sound of his own voice.
The gold standard in
political speeches, so far as I'm concerned, was the one
Calvin Coolidge
delivered to the Massachusetts Senate 102 years ago, after being elected President of that body.
It
consisted of forty-four words, thus
:
Honorable Senators: My sincerest thanks I offer you. Conserve the firm foundations of our institutions.
Do your work with the spirit of a soldier in the public service. Be loyal to the Commonwealth
and to yourselves, and be brief; above all things, be brief.
That makes
the
Gettysburg Address , at 272 words, look positively flabby. It makes Obama's farewell address
look morbidly obese.
What did Obama's speech actually contain? Well, there was lots of
"hope"
and "change": five "hopes" and sixteen "changes" by my count. I couldn't actually pin down anything
declarative about "hope", but there was definitely a consistent theme on "change." Change is good!
Don't be afraid of change! -
Constant change has been America's hallmark; that it's not something to fear but something
to embrace It [ the antecedent for "it" seems to be the danger to us from terrorism and
foreign dictators–JD ] represents the fear of change; the fear of people who look or speak
or pray differently
If you fear change you are a bad person!
I'm sorry, Mr. President, but that is inane. Some change is good, some isn't. Saying, "Change
is good!" makes as much sense as saying, "
Weather is good!" or "Vegetation is good!" If an asteroid were to strike the earth and wipe out
the human race, that would be a major change, wouldn't it? Not many of us would consider it good,
though.
And just as change is not necessarily good, fear is not necessarily bad. We have the fear instinct
for a very good reason: to preserve ourselves against dangers. We may argue about whether some one
particular phenomenon is or is not dangerous, but fear itself is useful and valuable, not a failing
or a weakness .
Take for example that "fear of people who look or
speak
or
pray differently." If people who look different from me in some one particular way have
a homicide rate seven times that of people who look the same as me, and
a robbery rate thirteen times, isn't fear of those people rational? If violent acts of terrorism
against innocent civilians are almost exclusively committed by people who pray a certain way, is
not fear of people who pray that way justified?
And look at Obama's illogical assumptions:
If we're unwilling to invest in the children of immigrants, just because they don't look like
us, we will diminish the prospects of our own children-because those brown kids will represent
a larger and larger share of America's workforce.
Note the patronizing conflation of "immigrants" with "brown kids." I'm an immigrant; my wife is
an immigrant; neither of us is brown.
Note also the meteorological approach to immigration. It's like the weather! Can't do
anything about it! In fact immigration is just a policy, that we can change at will. We could, without
any offense to the Constitution, stop all immigration and require all noncitizens to leave
our territory.
How would that be for "change"! To fear it would, of course, be weak and un-American.
And then there are Obama's characteristic weaselly little half-truths:
I reject discrimination against Muslim Americans who are just as patriotic as we are.
I have no problem with the first half of that. I too reject discrimination against American citizens
who are Muslims.
Again, I don't know of any constitutional reason why we can't do that.
But the second half, Obama's assertion that Muslims are
just as patriotic as we are, is open to question. It's true in the sense that some Muslims, like
some non-Muslims, are patriotic, while others aren't. The proportions in each case bears
examining. The non-patriotism of Muslim non-patriots is of a seriously different kind from
the non-patriotism of Episcopalian, Catholic, Baptist, Congregationalist, Unitarian, Jewish, agnostic,
atheist, and Wiccan non-patriots.
From time to time I make a resolution never to vote for any person who has
shed tears in public. Then I recall that this is somewhat un-American of me, and feel a bit ashamed.
My fellow Americans mostly like that kind of thing, and I ought to yield to their taste.
I just can't, though. I'm from a
nation and a
time
that admired reserve, fortitude, and the stiff upper lip. "I have lost my leg, by God!" Lord
Uxbridge
told the Duke of Wellington on the field of Waterloo, as cannonballs whizzed by. "By God, and
have you!" replied the Duke.
Those are my people. They're dead now, or old, even in the Mother Country. But they had something
that's been lost, and the loss of which I regret very much.
The questions and answers, not counting the nested presentation by Trump's lawyer, were seventy-four
hundred words, of which by far the majority were Trump's. So chances are Trump spoke more
words than Obama. And they were pure Trumplish: unfiltered, demotic, boastful, pugnacious in
self-defense, hyperbolic in praise, brutal in scorn, sometimes contradictory, occasionally nonsensical.
When he didn't want to answer a question he just blustered. Would Obamacare guarantee coverage
for current beneficiaries? Trump:
You're gonna be very, very proud of what we put forth having to do with health care We're
going to be submitting, as soon as our secretary's approved, almost simultaneously, shortly thereafter,
a plan. It'll be repeal and replace. It will be essentially, simultaneously. It will be various
segments, you understand, but will most likely be on the same day or the same week, but probably,
the same day, could be the same hour. So we're gonna do repeal and replace, very complicated stuff.
And we're gonna get a health bill passed, we're gonna get health care taken care of in this country
The plan will be repeal and replace Obamacare. We're going to have a health care that is far
less expensive and far better.
The information content of that answer is, let's be frank, zero. You could in fact, in the spirit
of Coolidge, you could make an economical translation of that 430-word answer from Trumplish into
Coolidgean using just three words: "Wait and see."
That's OK, though. Donald Trump is by no means the first President to answer a reporter's question
with blustery evasion-by no means.
It was Trump's style and demeanor at the presser that had us Trumpians clapping along with him.
Those, and his one-liners. Four sample one-liners:
On the suggestion that Vladimir Putin helped Trump get elected: "If Putin likes Donald
Trump, guess what, folks? That's called an asset, not a liability." On the
allegations in the BuzzFeed file about stuff he had paid those honey-trap hookers to do in
Moscow: "I'm also very much of a germaphobe, by the way, believe me." On whether he thinks
the American public is concerned about him not releasing his tax returns: "No, I don't think
they care at all." On Lindsey Graham proposing a bill for tougher sanctions on Russia:
"I hadn't heard Lindsey Graham was going to do that. Lindsey Graham. I've been competing
with him for a long time. He is going to crack that one percent barrier one day."
That's the Trump we know and love. So was his reaction when a CNN reporter kept demanding to ask
a question: "Don't be rude. No, I'm not going to give you a question You are
fake news! " Similarly with BuzzFeed, which Trump said is, quote, "a failing pile of garbage."
Along the lines of the old
joke about
Harry Truman
and the word "manure," I guess America should be glad he used the word "garbage."
Of all the commentary on Trump's presser, I think the one that got to the heart of the matter
was Justin Webb's in the Daily Mail , January 12th, pertaining to the point in the presser
where Trump brought up his lawyer to explain about his business interests:
One of the reasons low-income Americans admire rich people is that they are do-ers who
seem to live gilded lives, and not on the backs of the poor. It's the professional classes they
don't like-the lawyers and doctors and teachers, who invade their lives with bills and lectures.
The people who look and sound like Hillary Clinton. Trump was showing that he, too, was under
the cosh of the miserable lawyers-he even had one come to the podium.
And he was demonstrating that, despite this, he had admirably emerged with his businesses intact.
I am no psychology professor, but this seemed to me to be playing to the gallery-i.e. those "ordinary"
Americans who are so fed up with the political class-with something bordering on genius.
Mail man Webb then goes on to warn that Trump might be too combative, too
much the Alpha Male, for the suits in D.C. to put up with for long, so that
they will find a way to force him out. Webb concludes:
If they succeed, it would be a bitter blow to the millions of working-class Americans who voted
for Trump, folk who felt he alone among politicians understood their aspirations, and who would
have been thrilled by his extraordinary, rumbustious performance this week. It would again confirm
their view that the political establishment looks after its own-while the "little people" are
brushed aside.
I don't think I count as working-class. My hands are rather
soft , and
I only wear boots
for hiking or shoveling
snow . I'll
admit that I was thrilled by Trump's performance, though, just as much as Justin Webb's
hypothetical working-class Americans.
And yes, like Webb, I worry that Trump's don't-give-a-damn rumbustiousness may be too much for
the seat-warmers and log-rollers of Washington, D.C.-among which category I would include our
intelligence agencies -to the degree
that they will find some way to unseat him. Watch your back, Mr. President-Elect.
Richard Nixon was way less rumbustious than you are; but
they took down
Nixon
.
And in case you're wondering, listeners, "rumbustious" is indeed a word-
I looked it up .
Another great article by El Derbo. BTW an alternate version of Wellington's reply to Uxbridge
goes, "By Jove, so you have!" Whatever his merits the Duke was not strong on empathy. But if he
was, w0uld he have been such a winning general?
Justin Webb was the BBCs US correspondent for years (
as was his father ) . He's also one of the presenters of the R4 Today programme.
( BBC is still in nonstop 'take down Trump' mode, every other day the headline starts
'Donald Trump has provoked outrage' . Today on R4 we had the Observer's literary editor
in conversation about Trump with Malcolm Gladwell – I wonder if that was positive or negative?)
I'm somewhat less worried about Fort Marcy. Important difference between Trump and Nixon or
Reagan: Trump has his own security forces, both physical and cyber. He doesn't have to rely on
the Deepstate-owned Secret Service.
He clearly understands how these things work, as demonstrated by his discussion of paper messages
vs email. He's been 'controversial' for decades and he's been watching his back effectively for
decades.
I reject discrimination against Muslim Americans who are just as patriotic as we are.
Perhaps he accepts discrimination against Muslim Americans whose patriotism differs, or is
less than, "us," whoever that is? It's a slimy, unctuous, political phrase.
Another good piece that ought to be gracing the pages of the Spectator and the Telegraph, if
those publications were still traditionalist conservative and weren't firmly in the grip of pc
censorship and neoconnery.
From time to time I make a resolution never to vote for any person who has shed tears
in public. Then I recall that this is somewhat un-American of me, and feel a bit ashamed.
My fellow Americans mostly like that kind of thing, and I ought to yield to their taste
I agree entirely, and I don't have the burden of having to try to assimilate to a foreign country's
culture, so I can say so without qualification. I don't like men who openly display sentimentality
and don't respect them as leaders.
Women are a different matter, but with a few unusual exceptions they don't make good leaders
anyway.
By the way, here's a matter that affects both your country of origin and your adopted one:
how remarkable is it that supposedly serious people ("Theresa May's advisers") are reported as
putting David Cameron forward as a candidate for Secretary General of NATO? The man who repeatedly
displayed his complete unsuitability for any role in strategic decision making by not only pushing
the disastrous destruction of Libya's government in 2011 but, only two years later and with the
costs of that earlier blunder in full view, actually wanted to do the same to Syria! Worse, not
only did he evidently want to do it, but he lacked the competence to manage a compliant Parliament
into giving him the required rubber stamp!
Of course, it's not all that remarkable if one ditches the naïve idea that those "advising
May" are not either incompetent themselves or acting out of ulterior motives that are incompatible
with any genuine British national interest.
An optimist might suggest that perhaps clever subversion rather than stupidity is the explanation
here. What better way to further undermine an institution that has long outlived its original
purpose and has become a vehicle for troublemaking and disorder, yet has such deep institutional
roots and serves such a useful role for nefarious US deep state purposes that it cannot be rooted
out, than to put at its helm an individual so patently unsuited to such a role?
But that is surely hopelessly optimistic. Most likely the obvious explanation is correct, that
it is just another instance of the trademarked mix of incompetence and evil that seems to have
been running US sphere foreign policy since the 1990s.
If we're unwilling to invest in the children of immigrants, just because they don't look
like us "
This is precisely the error made by progressives immersed in the scuzzy identity politics bathtub.
I don't want to "invest" in the children of Irish illegal immigrants either. And they look a lot
like me. Their parents are likely to be moronic leftists who arrived here with disdain and contempt
for rule of law, no different than the parents of MS-13 gangbangers in Brentwood. Very basically,
if you can't stand in line like everyone else, you're not worth investing in.
There will likely be gunplay at the Inaugural. At Maidan snipers shot people on both sides
of the conflict. Maidan is the model for the coup against Trump. Either there will be an Erdogan
style purge, or Trump will be impeached, imprisoned or martyred.
"Secession is just around the corner it's a comming."
That is a pipe dream. Now, Derby "This is a guy who really likes the sound of his own voice."
Pot, meet kettle.
"Note the patronizing conflation of "immigrants" with "brown kids." I'm an immigrant;
my wife is an immigrant; neither of us is brown."
Yes, but you and your wife are IMMIGRANTS. Unwanted. Undesired. Doesn't matter if you are
white or non-white.
"At the same time, and without any inconsistency I can see, I think we have all the Muslims
we need."
Why should an Englishman and a Chinese woman (race mixing, I thought that was a big no-no)
be allowed to enter the United States? We already have too many of your kind already!
"But the second half, Obama's assertion that Muslims are just as patriotic as we are,
is open to question. It's true in the sense that some Muslims, like some non-Muslims, are patriotic,
while others aren't. The proportions in each case bears examining.
Indeed, the proportions in each case bears examining. How many American Muslims committed acts
of terrorism on American soil prior to 911?
"The non-patriotism of Muslim non-patriots is of a seriously different kind from the
non-patriotism of Episcopalian, Catholic, Baptist, Congregationalist, Unitarian, Jewish, agnostic,
atheist, and Wiccan non-patriots."
This is gooblygook. Either a person is loyal or disloyal. Now, using Derbs logic, the non-patriotism
of Jew non-patriots is also noteworthy for being a "different kind". Because Jews cause all kinds
of havoc, right?
"Richard Nixon was way less rumbustious than you are; but they took down Nixon."
Nixon took himself down by enabling his posse to spy on Democrats and use campaign money to
buy the silence of those who were caught at Watergate. Certainly, Woodward and Bernstein and others
employed questionable means during their investigation, but the LARGER issue was to expose the
lies of an administration. Julian Assange and Edward Snowden merely copied the strategies of these
two reporters, yet somehow they are lionized for their uncovering despite their covert means to
obtain information?
Strangely enough, Trump has already done more to improve the lives of ordinary Americans by
saving some jobs in Indianapolis, before he even takes office, than the last three presidents
have accomplished in 24 years in office.
The disgrace (conundrum?), as it were, is that plenty of 30- and 40- and 50-something Americans
find Obama's shtick appealing, whether the self-referential I, me, my, or the weepiness–it's not
just dopey Millennials without the experience of time. They've all been inculcated with the idea
that it's the feelz that matters.
All this talk of Russian hacking and Russian interference emanating from the Progs misses
the point. I don't believe in most of it. But surely Russians did what they could to favor Trump.
But what's wrong with that, at least from our perspective?
After all, didn't the French welcome the American role in driving out German Occupation during
WWII? Didn't Philippines welcome the Americans in driving out the Japanese?
The fact is the US is not ruled by Americans but by the GLOB, or Globalist Tyranny. Though
the GLOB is a diverse bunch of globalist-elites, the top dogs are Zionists, homos, and Anglo-Cuck-Collaborators.
And these people have ZERO feeling for the historical white majority of the Americans. Anglo-Collaborators
are too cucked out to have any white sentiments. They are like Joe Biden who will sell his ma
down the river for his cookies and creams. These cucks are willing to turn all historically white
nations into EU and US into non-white majority nations AS LONG AS they and their children are
assure of privilege and power in the New Order. They are globo-quislings.
So, given that the US is under GLOB occupation, Americans should welcome ANY foreign interference
that loosens this grip and empowers the historical white majority.
Any people who are under alien tyranny should welcome other alien forces to counter-balance
the alien force currently in power.
It's like the American Revolution wouldn't have been possible without the crucial help of the
French. The British were too powerful, and most of the major battles won by the Americans were
actually fought by the French.
Now, the Russian role in 2016 was nothing like French role in the War of Independence,
but it may have tipped the balance. White Americans should rejoice and thank the Russians.
After all, there are parallels. In the 90s, the globalists took over Russia and totally looted
and plundered that country.
It was nationalism that restored Russian sovereignty somewhat(though it still has long way
to go).
So, white Americans need to look to Russia and Russian-Americans. Indeed, just as Jewish-Americans
feel closer to Russian-Jews and French Jews than to white gentile Americans(whom most Jews despise),
white gentile Americans should feel closer to white gentiles all over the world than with Jews
or other elements of the GLOB. White Americans and white Russians should regard one another as
brothers. After all, white Russians don't want to destroy White America. It is the Jewish globalists
who have that agenda.
Pan-Zionism and Pan-Jewish-ism govern Jewish mindset and power. Jewish Americans feel closer
to Israeli-Jews, Hungarian Jews, French Jews, and British Jews than with gentile Americans.
So, white gentiles need a pan-white-ism. If Jewish-Americans and Russian Jews work together
to plunder both Russian gentiles and American gentiles, then gentiles in both nations should work
together to defend themselves from avaricious globalist Jewish power. Why should only Jews have
the right to create tribal networks all over the world?
I say white gentiles also need to create pan-white or pan-European networks all over. They
need to bury the hatchet because they face similar threats in both US and EU.
If someone is holding you hostage, and another person saves you from your captor, should you
blame the other person for having saved you? No, of course not. You should thank him.
So, if Russia played a role in helping white Americans liberate themselves from the tyranny
of the Glob, white Americans should be grateful.
Jewish GLOB would like us to believe that their power & control is 'American as bagel and cream
cheese and lox', but their power is alien and anti-American. After all, globalism is a neo-imperialist
war directed at ALL nations. So, if alien Russian influence was crucial in 2016, it was in helping
knock out the alien Jewish influence. While there are good decent patriotic Jewish Americans,
most of Jewish Power in the US is not patriotic or nationalist but GLOBO-IMPERIALIST and committed
to destroying the national sovereignty of all white nations. Consider what Jews tried to do to
Hungary and Poland.
They tried to force those nations to surrender to non-stop Muslim and African invasions caused
by wars fomented by Neocons and their cuck-whores.
Besides, even now, Russian influence in the US is minuscule compared to the power of the GLOB.
Glob elites are just a tiny percentage of US population, but they control 90% of media, Wall Street,
Hollywood, academia, and much else. The fact that such a small minority controls so much of American
Power should be the real scandal.
American Media are not American. It is mostly GLOB. And it means that as long as US is
under Glob power, it is under alien tyranny. Indeed, even with Trump as president, the most powerful
force in the US is Jewish-Glob power.
So, gentile Americans should welcome ANY foreign/alien help to weaken the power of the alien
GLOB that controls most of the institutions in America. Look how the whores of Congress pledge
their main loyalty to Israel, Israel, and Israel.
" His cabinet appointees are almost exclusively wealthy ( actually extremely wealthy) white
men"
So it would have made you feel better if he had appointed a cabinet made up exclusively of
poor people of color, right.
I am thinking that you are German because your viewpoints are identical with the german leftist
" Gutmensch" SJW worldview, and you simply do not comprehend that average Americans are not jealous
or spiteful of "Wealthy" folks, on the contrary, they respect them and congratulate them for their
status.
You guys have no problem with wealthy "Old white men" as long as they are leftists, such as BC
or B Sanders or WB, or BG.
Myself I am an "Old white man" and I am not ashamed to be an "Old white man", so put that in your
"Gutmensch" pipe and smoke it.
Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member of forty-plus years and pro jazz artist.
I do think the "the fear of change" is a healthy element to have in a world that looks like
"The Shockwave Rider" come true.
Master Soda , "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to statism. Statism leads to blank
checks for politicians. Blank checks for politicians leads to welfare/warfare and micromanagement
and control freakshows sold as progressivism."
Mr. Derbyshire writes that "Saying, "Change is good!" makes as much sense as saying, "Weather
is good!" or "Vegetation is good!"
I have made the same point, but about different, more contentious words, for decades.
Two of the words I said were silly to regard as good or bad were " intolerance" and "discrimination",
words that for at least 30 years have, in the minds of many politicians, educators, executives
and the brainwashed, morphed into synonyms for "bad!", which is a truly dumb and gutless surrender
of language, it's and meaning and power of independent thought.
A society, any society, anywhere on earth, falls by what it chooses wisely to discriminate
against and what it refuses to tolerate. Sometimes these choices are contentious and harder to
justify against the slogans and sound-bites that we have been relentlessly force-fed for a half
century.
Just mooting, that discrimination or intolerance are, of themselves, not necessarily bad, prompts
the Pavlovian reflex of sharp intakes of breath and dutiful frowns from many listeners. Dare moot
that "racism", sexism or homophobia (a ridiculous word etymologically) of any of the other proscribed
-isms and –obiahs are, in their milder degrees, sensible social phenomena, and vitriol flows from
the mouths of PC believers as reason departs as readily as it does from believers of the ROP when
their cult is challenged logically. One is labelled as irredeemably evil despite, and I repeat,
ANY society, anywhere on earth, falls by what it chooses to discriminate against and what it refuses
to tolerate just as much as it rises by what it encourages.
What we choose to encourage or discriminate against is far too important to be treated as dogma.
The rules that govern society should be open to rigorous debate and examination, not, as is
the case here in the UK and most of Europe, "defended" by a cowed and complicit Fourth Estate,
and enforces by imprisonment for so-called "hate speech."
Good luck America, I hope that Trump grows into the job and proves a much better President
than the tactically-weepy O'Bummer.
Never heard of "The Shockwave Rider" but it's true about how fear can be manipulated, although
it's not just Lefty pols who exploit it.
According to their creed, pols ramp up fears or damp down reasonable and prudent ones, according
to their agenda.
That is indeed a well-informed comment, unsurprisingly made under anonimity. If I published
the same comment under my own name here in the UK, it would be off to the gulag for me, as we
do not have the admirable First Amendment of The US contitution.
If you published this under your own name in America, it would "only" be punishable by a media
hounding, career death and the sort of public vilification seen during The Cultural Revolution.
"And it is important for the United States to stand up for the basic principal that big
countries don't go around and invade and bully smaller countries."
That was so bizarre I had to laugh, but noted the corporate press softball pitchers at this
"news" conference didn't even smile at that absurd statement. No need for a "fact check" news
story. Hell, the USA don't just bully and invade, it destroys and lays waste to entire nations
on a yearly basis. Obama had dozens of foreigners murdered via drones and snipers each week, but
perhaps that's not considered a bully tactic.
"fear of people who look or speak or pray differently."
Typical SJW gobbledygook. First of all, no one looks, speaks, or prays like I do, so that's
right out the window. It may look that way to you, but that's because you're ignorant,
racist, jealous, and un-American.
Second, and much more important: It's not fear that causes me to resist the trashing of my
country. It's love. I'm not remotely fearful of third-world refuse, but I'm definitely disgusted
with the way the country I love seems to be circling the drain, and I'll do just about
anything I can to prevent it.
That most definitely includes supporting a 'rumbustious' president who–despite offering genuine
causes for concern–has made all the right enemies. Even if I agreed with him about nothing, I'd
support him for that reason alone. What's that? They're threatening war? Nonsense. The war has
been going on for half a century. But we have only begun to fight.
On whether he thinks the American public is concerned about him not releasing his tax
returns: "No, I don't think they care at all."
My favorite part of the whole press conference came right before this:
Reporter: But every president since the '70s has [released his tax returns] - Trump (sarcastically):
Gee, I've never heard that. I've never heard that before.
Nonsense. Derb is an engaging and entertaining writer. You, on the other hand, are a tiresome
bore.
"Yes, but you and your wife are IMMIGRANTS. Unwanted. Undesired. Doesn't matter if you are
white or non-white."
Derb and his family are okay by me. You, however – I'd have no problem having you summarily
deported.
"Why should an Englishman and a Chinese woman (race mixing, I thought that was a big no-no)
be allowed to enter the United States? We already have too many of your kind already!"
No, we have too many of your kind, whatever your kind may be.
"Indeed, the proportions in each case bears examining. How many American Muslims committed
acts of terrorism on American soil prior to 911?"
Prior to 911? What's so special about that day? Gosh, what might have happened on that particular
date. How many countries did Hitler invade before Czechoslovakia?
"This is gooblygook. Either a person is loyal or disloyal."
No, they can simply be uninterested. I.e., America really isn't their country, it's just a
place they happen to be.
"Nixon took himself down by enabling his posse to spy on Democrats and use campaign money to
buy the silence of those who were caught at Watergate."
You are a fool – a contemptible and stupid fool. Nixon was no dirtier than either Johnson or
Kennedy. He was taken down because the Washington Press Corps, the Democratic party (which he
had humiliated), and elements of the Civil Service wanted him gone.
To be fair (why you might ask? But let me slide on) Obama did speak of not bullying small countries.
I am not aware of any drone strikes on people who were government officials or otherwise representative
of their small countries. Are you? Or of any other assassinations. Trade sanctions?
For the first time in history we will have a [sic] oligarch in the White House .
Despite my having voted for him and supported his campaign, I have my suspicions and reservations
about the man as well (I'm a cynic and a pessimist), but the statement above is complete horse-shit.
Trump's tweets are an act of genius. He has rocked the whole liberal establishment by
stating his own opinions and speaking directly to those who have been ignored for years.
This is revolutionary, Trump could never have survived a Presidential run in the past,
he would have been unable to fight back, no one would be able to hear him.
Who would have thought that a President could ignore and ridicule major media players in
an age where careers are destroyed by the media because they disagree with gay marriage...
"Statists are always gonna state and absolute power always corrupts absolutely. Trump is merely
the right's version of Obama. If you really thought the left-right paradigm was abandoned, that
the powers-that-be would let an actual outsider not only run for president but win well, I suggest
you spend more time researching the new world order and less time voting for some power-hungry
individual who claims to make everything great again." – Dan Dicks
Thanks for a lively piece Mr Derbyshire. As we gain experience in life we realize that there
are probably twenty 'good talkers' for every 'do-er' jockeying for acceptance in positions of
power – and we still get taken in by the talkers, even though they almost invariably have
an insignificant track-record for the desired position. They end up departing with little accomplished,
still talking: Obama being a perfect text book example.
You say:
And just as change is not necessarily good, fear is not necessarily bad. We have the fear
instinct for a very good reason: to preserve ourselves against dangers. We may argue about
whether some one particular phenomenon is or is not dangerous, but fear itself is useful and
valuable, not a failing or a weakness.
I remember, when running a company, there came one of those fashionable (and short-lived) management
crazes promoting the ideas of W. Edwards Deming, an American whose philosophy helped to bring
about a massive change in Japanese industry. Deming asserted that 'quality' had to be instilled
into everything in the workplace and he had fourteen points for management – mostly sound common
sense except, I could never get along with point number eight "abolish fear in the workplace".
Now, this sounds terrific and who could oppose it?
Except that without a little bit of fear/uncertainty/insecurity, no organization can run well
– people just get too comfortable and secure and discipline declines. But how the Hell can you
ever admit to that in public? Or in a book? Of course you can't!
Congrats USA. Nice article as always Mr. Derb,, but I think you are too optimistic. We will
have to wait and see. From what little I know of USA polititcs, Trump is great because so many
of his attackers are arseholes. Myths floating about the pallets of cash to Iran:simply a retum
of stolen money, Much more to say. Too tired.
The dirt poor white middle Americans whose factories have closed and communities decimated,
voted for him in droves and where are they now? . I expect the poor whites who voted for
him will soon realize that they have been mugged.
yea, we'd have been so much better off with Hillary, huh?
but you're forgetting one thing about Trump's victory regardless of all of that-
and that's how great it makes us deplorables all feel at watching Obama and Michelle and people
like you going through your butt-hurt, existential crisis. Your angst and dread exhilarates us
all and reminds us how wonderful the political process can be. How, in a word; satisfying
.. it can be.
so as your knickers are twisting over your equivocating gender bits, we're buoyed by your tears.
In fact, I'd like to see a veritable ocean of your collective tears, and maybe sail a huge, obnoxious
yacht from Texas to Kalingrad on it, flying a proud confederate, rebel battle flag. And I'll even
name the ship The Deplorables, and when I've had my fill of Budweiser beer, Sherriff Joe and Vlad
and I'll (I'd invite him too) relieve our white male piss into your ocean of tears, and watch
as the salt mingles with the diversity. I'd be fun, no?
Just watching Van Jones and Michelle and all those Hollywood snowflakes and SJW and castrating
Maddow dykes and sodomites and race hustlers and La Raza pendejos and Kristol war pigs and entrenched
ticks in DC- sucking the blood of the republic, and all the assorted butt-hurt losers and haters
that have languished in smug certitude at the destruction of my kind, just seeing them all desolate
and inconsolable, just that, makes the Donald Trump win a precious moment to savor and
cherish.
So please do keep posting, and telling us all how bad it's going to be. How indeed, calamitous
and catastrophic! this all is. Where else can I relish such delicious and tasty morsels of sweet
schadenfreude, than right here on the UR?
His cabinet appointees are almost exclusively wealthy (actually, extremely wealthy) white
men.
Obviously you are a dumbass racist or you would know that white people, especially white men
are extremely smart and capable. Don't want to believe me? Pull your head out of your ass for
a second and look around you – we created almost everything you see or use. Your modern world
doesn't exist at all without us because WE created it from the constitutional laws you live by
to the car you drive, cell phone you play Angry Birds on, to the computer and the software that
runs it and lets you post to this site. Oh yeah – we also created the Internet. Yeah, that's right
– White Men – the best thing that ever happened to this world and your shitty life. Get over yourself,
racist!
W. Edwards Deming, an American whose philosophy helped to bring about a massive change in
Japanese industry.
Deming went to Japan to sell his ideas because American manufacturing wouldn't listen to him.
His quality ideas are now instituted in the ISO requirements which every manufacturer adheres
to if they want to sell internationally.
Certainly – but at least you don't see fellow management saluting you in the corridor with
fourteen fingers anymore – it came and went in US as a fad lasting approximately two years but
required more than ten for full implementation.
One good thing about Trump presidency is the anti-war Left will be activated once again.
Hopefully, they will prevent future wars.
One would like to think that. However the entity that calls itself the Left has become remarkably
fond of war. They've discovered that war could be a useful tool for imposing transgender bathroom
rights on the entire planet.
If Trump (God forbid) looked like starting a war with Russia would there be any opposition
from an anti-war Left?
I have no idea what you mean by "saluting with 14 fingers", but ISO is not a fad. Drive around
any area with manufacturing and you will see companies touting their ISO 9000 certification because
of Deming. His ideas were good and he has had a lasting effect on manufacturing across the globe.
It's the country of those immigrants who are naturalized, either recently or in the past.
That fact is undeniable.
It's quite deniable. The founding stock of this country were not "immigrants" – they were colonists.
They never left the realms of the British monarch. They simply moved to his dominions beyond the
seas. Thus they never had to be naturalized, since they were already his subjects. When they declared
their independence, they made themselves citizens of their own country. Again, no act of naturalization
was necessary.
As Steve Sailer has often remarked, the story of these founders and patriots as colonists,
frontiersmen, and pioneers has been allowed to fade from the public consciousness in favor of
the narrative of the "wretched refuse of [the old world's] teeming shore " Yet immigrants past
and present enjoy American liberty and prosperity only because of the efforts of the original
settlers to win them, and their willingness to share those blessings with deserving newcomers.
Immigrant issue is the fig leaf under which certain brand of conservatives hide their frustration
at the fact that the elite,the military-industrial complex , the colonizers of new age globalist
and expansionist have not been to continue to provide them with the certainties and the beauties
of creature comfort at a reduced affordable way as was the case until may be 1990 .
Now they have to work like anyone else New age slavery has not exempted them from rigor of
life and work as have been before. This current scenario also appeared during great depression
They ,then did not have the fig leaf of blaming the immigrants to cover their naked butts that
personify their mental make up and intellectual understanding of their current situation. . They
went for Roosevelt's They supported New Deal. They still love free stuffs and goodies Just look
at the demands for Federal emergency relief program to get their butt out of the natural disasters
.
Honorable Senators: My sincerest thanks I offer you. Conserve the firm foundations of our
institutions. Do your work with the spirit of a soldier in the public service. Be loyal to
the Commonwealth and to yourselves, and be brief; above all things, be brief.
It's nice to see a reference to Calvin Coolidge, IMHO Americas finest post 1900 President.
He was Progressive when it meant things like women's suffrage, opportunity for minorities and
universal health care, but at the same time was a Conservative in the truest sense of the word
with a great respect for the Constitution and the Founders of the US.
He also had this really useful idea that most proposals for legislation derived from Special
Interests (and needed to be excluded ), and that any legislation that did go forward had to have
its downsides thoroughly checked beforehand.
Barak Hussein Obama has not returned the Nobel Peace (Piss) Prize. This demonstrates he lacks
decency and self-respect. The warmongers Obama and Hitlery are THE fascists!!! Bush II, Obama
and Hitlery to Nuerenberg! Long live PRESIDENT TRUMP!
He clearly understands how these things work, as demonstrated by his discussion of paper
messages vs email. He's been 'controversial' for decades and he's been watching his back effectively
for decades.
The Zionists, CIA and FBI could finish with Trump in no time at all, but the problem is
that it's not just Trump, he's only riding a wave. Eliminate Trump and they could get something
much worse, so they probably calculate that it's better to try to corrupt Trump ( he's a dealmaker)
despite his connection to the thing that they fear the most i.e. Radical Anglo Nationalism.
The trouble is Pascal's wager implies contradictions because it is simultaneously valid for
any and every god or system that promises (infinite) rewards and most of those religions don't
allow for the others to be true. Anyway the concept of one's sentient self without a body has
surely been impossible to believe in for several generations at least.
Why hasn't Keynes's 1930 "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren" worked out? With birth
control and technologucal advances since 1930 all Americans could be living in great material
comfort and with plenty of leisure time for most of their lives. Is it just the crude insatiability
of most human beings untamed by the more ascetic traditions? Is it status seeking by too many?
(That might include enjoying the greatest locations which can't be added to with more storeys).
Is it widespread criminality and its costs? Or .?
"It's quite deniable. The founding stock of this country were not "immigrants" – they
were colonists."
I wasn't debating nor disputing this point. Mr. Anon pointed out that there are immigrants
by which "America really isn't their country, it's just a place they happen to be." He is other
than accurate in his assessment. Those groups who emigrated here and are now citizens are part
of this country. It is their country as well if they went through the process legally.
"As Steve Sailer has often remarked, the story of these founders and patriots as colonists,
frontiersmen, and pioneers has been allowed to fade from the public consciousness in favor
of the narrative of the "wretched refuse of [the old world's] teeming shore "
Americans are generally aware of the founders of this country. However, immigrants like
the Irish, Italians, and Slavs were considered to be "garbage" by nativists at various points
in time. Millions of immigrants who came to the States had little money, but a strong work ethic
and the willingness to embrace our customs and our political traditions.
"Yet immigrants past and present enjoy American liberty and prosperity only because of
the efforts of the original settlers to win them, and their willingness to share those blessings
with deserving newcomers."
Those original settlers included the British, the Dutch, and the Spanish, among others, who
also forcibly removed tribal groups from their settled areas, as well as invaded the world and
invited the world by instituting slavery in the Thirteen Colonies.
"... Here's an excerpt from the speech Trump delivered in Cincinnati on December 1, that presents
Trump's views on the topic: ..."
"... "We will pursue a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past We will
stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments . Our goal is stability not chaos, because
we want to rebuild our country [the United States] We will partner with any nation that is willing to
join us in the effort to defeat ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism In our dealings with other countries,
we will seek shared interests wherever possible and pursue a new era of peace, understanding, and good
will." ..."
"... This is why none of the major media published Trump's comments. The corporate bosses who own
the media have nothing to gain by promoting the views of a populist executive who wants to minimize
the carnage by working cooperatively with foreign leaders the media has already designated as 'enemies
of the state', like Vladimir Putin. How does that advance the media's agenda? ..."
"... But the Washington power-elite know what Trump said, and they have acted accordingly. They
have put together a plan that is designed to undermine Trump's credibility, back him into a corner and
remove him from office. That's the plan, regime change in the USA. ..."
"... This is why CIA Director John Brennan took the unprecedented step of appearing on FOX News
Sunday. Brennan and the other heads of the Intelligence Community have taken a leading role in the desperate
character assassination campaign that is intended to obliterate public confidence in Trump in order
to foil his attempts at resetting relations with Russia. ..."
"... lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of
Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition . He can be reached at [email protected]
. ..."
Donald Trump wants to fundamentally change U.S. foreign policy. The President-elect wants to abandon
the destabilizing wars and regime change operations that have characterized US policy in the past
and work collaboratively with countries like Russia that have a mutual interest in fighting terrorism
and establishing regional security. Here's an excerpt from the speech Trump delivered in Cincinnati
on December 1, that presents Trump's views on the topic:
"We will pursue a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past
We will stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments . Our goal is stability not chaos,
because we want to rebuild our country [the United States] We will partner with any nation that
is willing to join us in the effort to defeat ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism In our dealings
with other countries, we will seek shared interests wherever possible and pursue a new era of
peace, understanding, and good will."
Trump's approach to foreign policy may seem commendable given the disastrous results in Afghanistan,
Libya, Syria and Iraq, but it is also a dramatic departure from the last 70 years of activity during
which time the United States has either overthrown or attempted to overthrow 57 foreign governments.
(According to author William Blum) This is why the political class and their wealthy constituents
are so worried about Trump, it's because they don't want the new president mucking-around in a process
he doesn't understand, a process that has reshaped the world in a way that clearly benefits US mega-corporations
while reinforcing Washington's iron grip on global power. The bottom line is that "violence works"
and any deviation from the present policy represents a direct threat to the people whose continued
power and prosperity depend on that violence.
This is why none of the major media published Trump's comments. The corporate bosses who own
the media have nothing to gain by promoting the views of a populist executive who wants to minimize
the carnage by working cooperatively with foreign leaders the media has already designated as 'enemies
of the state', like Vladimir Putin. How does that advance the media's agenda?
It doesn't, which is why they'd rather the public remain in the dark about what Trump actually
said.
But the Washington power-elite know what Trump said, and they have acted accordingly. They
have put together a plan that is designed to undermine Trump's credibility, back him into a corner
and remove him from office. That's the plan, regime change in the USA.
This is why CIA Director John Brennan took the unprecedented step of appearing on FOX News
Sunday. Brennan and the other heads of the Intelligence Community have taken a leading role in the
desperate character assassination campaign that is intended to obliterate public confidence in Trump
in order to foil his attempts at resetting relations with Russia. The CIA's involvement in the
coups in Ukraine and Honduras, as well as the agency's funding, arming and training of Sunni militants
in Libya and Syria, attest to the fact that Brennan does not see peace and reconciliation as compatible
with US foreign policy objectives. Like his elitist paymasters, Brennan is committed to perpetual
war, regime change, and mass annihilation. Trump offers some relief from this 70 year-long nightmare
policy. Check out this quote from Vice President-elect, Mike Pence on FOX News Sunday:
"I think the president elect has made it very clear that we have a terrible relationship with
Russia right now. And that's not all our own doing, but really is a failure of American diplomacy
in successive administrations. And what the president elect has determined to do is to explore
the possibility of better relations. We have a common enemy in ISIS, and the ability to work with
Russia to confront, hunt down and destroy ISIS at its source represents an enormously important
priority of this incoming administration. But what the American people like about Donald Trump
is that he's someone who can sit down, roll his sleeves up and make a deal. And what you're hearing
in his reflections whether it be with Russia, or China or other countries in the world, is that
we're going to reengage. We're going to put America first, we're going to reengage in a way that
advances America's interests in the world and that advances peace."
Not on your life. US elites and their think tank lackeys would never allow it, not in a million
years. Even now, after six years of death and destruction in Syria, elites at the Council on Foreign
Relations are still resolved to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. (Re: "Aleppo's Sobering
Lessons," Project Syndicate, by Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations) The
same is true at the Brookings Institute where chief strategist Michael O' Hanlon leads the charge
for splitting up the battered country so Washington can control vital pipeline corridors, establish
military bases in the east, and eliminate a potential threat to Israeli expansion. Here's a clip
from a recent piece by O' Hanlon that appeared in the Wall Street Journal. The author admits that
the US goal is to splinter to country into multiple parts transforming it into a failed state:
"To achieve peace, Syria will need self-governance within a number of autonomous zones. One
option is a confederal system by which the whole country is divided into such zones. A less desirable
but minimally acceptable alternative could be several autonomous zones within an otherwise still-centralized
state-similar to how Iraqi Kurdistan has functioned for a quarter-century .
Many Syrians will not like the idea of a confederal nation, or even of a central government
controlling half the country with the other half divided into three or four autonomous zones.
But the broad vision should be developed soon."
(Wall Street Journal)
"Autonomous zones" in a "confederal system" is a sobriquet for a broken, Balkanized failed state
run by tribal elders, disparate warlords and bloodthirsty jihadists. O' Hanlon's vision for Syria
is a savage dysfunctional dystopia run by homicidal fanatics who rule with an iron fist. Is it any
wonder why the Syrian people have fought tooth and nail to fend off the terrorist onslaught?
The United States is entirely responsible for the bloody decimation of Syria. It is absurd to
think that either the Saudis, the Qataris or the Turks would have launched a war on a strategically-critical
nation like Syria without a green light from Washington. The conflict is just the latest hotspot
in Washington's 15 year-long war of terror. The ultimate goal is to remove all secular Arab leaders
who may pose a threat to US imperial ambitions, open up the region to US-dominated extractive industries,
and foment enough extremism to legitimize a permanent military presence.
Russia's intervention into the Syrian conflict in September 2015, has cast doubt on Washington's
ability to prevail in the six year-long war. The election of Donald Trump has further complicated
matters by affecting a seismic shift in policy that could end the fighting and lead to improved relations
between the US and Russia. Naturally, that is not in the interests of the vicious neocons or their
liberal interventionist counterparts who see the proxy war in Syria as a pivotal part of their plan
to clip Russia's wings, discredit Putin in the eyes of the international community, and lay the groundwork
for regime change in Moscow. Washington's ultimate plan for Russia hews closely to that of Zbigniew
Brzezinski who– in an titled "A Geostrategy for Eurasia"– had this to say:
"Given (Russia's) size and diversity, a decentralized political system and free-market economics
would be most likely to unleash the creative potential of the Russian people and Russia's vast
natural resources. A loosely confederated Russia - composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic,
and a Far Eastern Republic - would also find it easier to cultivate closer economic relations
with its neighbors. Each of the confederated entitles would be able to tap its local creative
potential, stifled for centuries by Moscow's heavy bureaucratic hand. In turn, a decentralized
Russia would be less susceptible to imperial mobilization." (Zbigniew Brzezinski, A Geostrategy
for Eurasia, Foreign Affairs, 76:5, September/October 1997)
Nice, eh? In other words, Washington's plan for Russia is no different than its plan for Syria.
Both countries will be chopped up into smaller bite-size chunks eliminating the possibility of a
strong nationalist government rising up and resisting Washington's relentless exploitation and repression.
It's divide and conquer writ large.
"A loosely confederated Russia" also fits perfectly with Washington's top priority to spread military
bases across Asia, control crucial energy supplies, open up financial markets, impose Washington's
neoliberal economic policies, and maintain a stranglehold on China's explosive growth. It's the Great
Game all over again, and Washington is "In it to win it."
Here's an excerpt from a speech Hillary Clinton gave in 2011 titled "America's Pacific Century".
The speech underscores the importance that elites attach to the "rebalancing" plan contained in the
term "pivot to Asia". The strategy relies on the opening up of new markets to US corporations and
Wall Street, controlling critical resources, and "forging a broad-based military presence" across
the continent. Washington intends to be the main player in the world's most prosperous region. Here's
Clinton:
"The future of politics will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq, and the United States
will be right at the center of the action . One of the most important tasks of American statecraft
over the next decade will therefore be to lock in a substantially increased investment - diplomatic,
economic, strategic, and otherwise - in the Asia-Pacific region
Harnessing Asia's growth and dynamism is central to American economic and strategic interests
and a key priority for President Obama. Open markets in Asia provide the United States with unprecedented
opportunities for investment, trade, and access to cutting-edge technology ..American firms (need)
to tap into the vast and growing consumer base of Asia The region already generates more than
half of global output and nearly half of global trade. As we strive to meet President Obama's
goal of doubling exports by 2015, we are looking for opportunities to do even more business in
Asia."
("America's Pacific Century", Secretary of State Hillary Clinton", Foreign Policy Magazine,
2011)
Onward, to Asia, the next great US battlefield! The killing never ends.
As we noted earlier, the pivot to Asia is Washington's top priority. Clinton merely confirms what
geopolitical strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski laid out in his 1997 magnum opus The Grand Chessboard:
American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives. Here's a short excerpt from the book:
"For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia (p.30) .. Eurasia is the globe's largest
continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the
world's three most advanced and economically productive regions. .About 75 per cent of the world's
people live in Eurasia, and most of the world's physical wealth is there as well, both in its
enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world's GNP and about
three-fourths of the world's known energy resources." (p.31)
For Washington to achieve its foreign policy objectives, it must eliminate or defeat all emerging
threats to its dominance. In practical terms, that means the Russo-Sino plan to transform Europe
and Asia into a giant free trade zone that extends from Lisbon to Vladivostok– must be sabotaged
by any means possible. The State Department's coup in Kiev as well as aggressive efforts to restrict
the flow of Russian gas to the EU via Nord Stream and South Stream, have temporarily succeeded in
undermining Moscow's plan for accelerated economic integration. Had Hillary won the election, the
US would have stepped up its provocations, its sanctions, its military buildup on Russia's borders,
its gas war, its attacks on Russia's markets and currency, and its proxy wars in Syria and Ukraine.
But now that Trump has been thrown into the mix, anything is possible. Even a fundamental change
in the policy.
The question is whether the deep state powerbrokers –who have already launched a number of attacks
on Trump in the media - will throw in the towel and allow Trump to develop his own independent foreign
policy or take steps to have him removed from office.
Early indications suggest that a coup is already underway.
Trump to date has been "all talk and no action" and as we know "actions speak louder than words".
The voters who put their trust in Trump rather than Hillary now expect actions and Trump to deliver
on his election "plank".
Needless to say politicians tend to "talk the walk" but not "walk the walk". So unless he delivers
he is going to be another big disappointment for his supporters. I and many other cynics have
maintained he is not going to deliver.
But, what do I know? However the American Establishment probably knows a lot more than me and
if they are worried about Trump and want him out of power then they feel threatened by him and
his supporters may have really voted for a change that challenges the status quo.
A purge of the Neo -liberal Globalist Establishment is long over due and much to be desired BUT
we don't know who and what will replace them. Trump may be an "existential threat" to the malevolent
swamp creatures that dwell in Washington but he might also be a threat to the whole country. We
hope for a benevolent outcome; "Time will tell".
But none of it has worked. Brzezinski, or whoever, can write books, can dream big, can play
with maps after dinner at Georgetown parties – but it is has not worked. The 'divide and conquer'
ended up dividing the world more, and conquering almost nothing. It is a mess, and the coming
consequences were going to be dire.
Results matter. Trump is not just an emotional reaction to the crazy globalist neocon-liberal
idiocy, he is also a reaction to failure. If Clinton took over and doubled down on the same policies
(she was going to), there simply would be a lot more failure. And there is no way to dress up
failures as 'good for us'. Neo-cons/liberals have had everything on their side – power, academia,
media, all institutions – except results.
Trump might fail, or he might succeed, but by coming in at this time, he is in effect saving
the failing policies – they don't have to answer for the obvious and accelerating failures that
these interventions have caused. The authors will avoid consequences and will very quickly
shift into 'we were betrayed', or 'if we just had 10 more years', the usual escapist nonsense
that failed ideologues always use. (The communist ideologues still claim that the problem was
that 'they should had tried harder, had 'purer' communism', blabla .and same is true about other
failed ideologies).
And they will be back. Whether in 'a year or two' as Kerry just said at Davos, or in 2020,
2024, they will be back. This mental state is incurable. (But if we get a few years break, well,
let's be thankful for that.)
An interesting and well-reasoned post. Indeed, it's kind of shocking when you think about it
just how much our government is doing running around the world messing in the affairs of nations
that really shouldn't be our concern
About whether Trump means what he said during the campaign, well yes, there is always the danger
that he will 'pull an Obama' and stab his constituents in the back – talk is cheap. And yet, if
that were the case then, as with Obama, we would expect the elites to make nice with him. Instead
the elites are if anything ramping up their attacks.
Now the enemy of my enemy is not always a friend – Trump could yet be a disaster. But the war
that the deep state is waging on him is perhaps not a bad sign.
And for those who find his tweets repellent, well, that's the only mechanism he has to avoid
letting the corporate press completely shut him out and control the dialog. Trump's genius (or
luck) is that by being outrageous he has, unlike Nader or Perot or Dean etc., been unable to be
silenced by the corporate press. Although in the long run it can't be a sustainable system I would
say that breaking up the big corporate industrial/press cartels should be a prime aim. No more
news outlets owned by (for example) tech titans with a zillion dollars in CIA contracts and numerous
other non-press business interests, you get the idea.
For Washington to achieve its foreign policy objectives, it must eliminate or defeat all
emerging threats to its dominance. In practical terms, that means the Russo-Sino plan to transform
Europe and Asia into a giant free trade zone that extends from Lisbon to Vladivostok– must
be sabotaged by any means possible.
Too late. In December the last remaining Sharia objections to trade in gold were resolved.
One billion plus Muslims can now bypass paper money at will and trade in gold. (Gaddafi attempted
to do that in Africa and it cost him his life) China has begun to purchase oil with gold all over
the mideast. Bye bye petro dollars. Hello breadlines in the former empire.
It is well worth considering the possibility that were our perpetual war making to finally
end, our "deep state neocon warmongers " might find themselves on the receiving end of a very
robust "reckoning" for the titanic criminal catastrophes they have inculcated.
Please tell me where is it written that they shouldn't be ?
The prodigious assault to disinherit President Trump may well reflect not only their contempt
at the thought he might be ending their "evil" wars, but the very real fear in their hearts, they
may be held to account, for starting them in the first place.
One cannot overstate the level of absolute impunity our Neocons have enjoyed over the last
decade, for committing some of the most horrific crimes the world has seen, since WWII.
Nor can one discount their imperial need of a win for Queen Hillary as being, first and foremost,
a lock on that very impunity.
Her loss at the ballot box had very little to do with the voters rejection of her projected
veneer of "progressive " values, but a frank realization by the electorate that Ms. Clinton was
nothing more than a belligerent neocon warmonger in a phony "liberal" pantsuit.
This "unraveling" has left them all twisting in the wind.
How could it not ?
After all, Donald Trump, is a billionaire oligarch who not only wants "peace", but has been
highly articulate and cuttingly accurate as to how (and why) our wars have been total disasters.
This presents quite an unsettling conundrum for all the back room billionaire oligarchs who
have always been able to buy their wars as well as the Presidents ( and the Press ) willing to
start them.
The fact they might, now, find themselves out of their hegemonic "drivers seat" .and in the
criminals "hot seat", as targets for "bone-crushing" war crimes tribunals, . could have them all
frantically climbing the walls.
Well, even if he does a little of what he promised – such as deport those illegals that have
a criminal record – that alone will be good. If he could also do something for the Millennials
to be able to move out of their parents' homes, that would be good too.
"... "the high military, the corporation executives, the political directorate have tended to come together to form the power elite of America." ..."
"... He describes how the power elite can be best described as a "triangle of power," linking the corporate, executive government, and military factions: "There is a political economy numerously linked with military order and decision. This triangle of power is now a structural fact, and it is the key to any understanding of the higher circles in America today." ..."
"... During the election campaign the power elite's military faction under Trump confounded all political pundits by outflanking and decisively defeating the power elite's political faction. ..."
"... At the time this was the highest level internal US intelligence confirmation of the theory that western governments fundamentally see the Islamic State as their own tool for regime change in Syria. The military faction began a steady stream of "one-sided" leaks to Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh who published one article after another that undermined the political (Obama administration) and corporate (CIA and intelligence) factions of the power elite, while painting the military faction in a positive light. ..."
"... The first article entitled Whose Sarin? was published on 19 December, 2013 and concerned the East Ghouta sarin gas attack of August 21, 2013. Hersh documents a clear campaign within the power elite's military faction to "foot-drag" and hopefully block the planned US retaliation for crossing President Obama's "red line": "[S]ome members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were troubled by the prospect of a ground invasion of Syria as well as by Obama's professed desire to give rebel factions non-lethal support. In July, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, provided a gloomy assessment, telling the Senate Armed Services Committee in public testimony that 'thousands of special operations forces and other ground forces' would be needed to seize Syria's widely dispersed chemical warfare arsenal, along with 'hundreds of aircraft, ships, submarines and other enablers'." ..."
"... A cornered Obama welcomed a draft UN resolution calling on the Assad government to get rid of its chemical arsenal. The political faction's step-down pleased many senior military officers, explains Hersh: "One high-level special operations adviser told me that the ill-conceived American missile attack on Syrian military airfields and missile emplacements, as initially envisaged by the White House, would have been 'like providing close air support for al-Nusra'." ..."
"... General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs had irritated many in the Obama administration by repeatedly warning Congress over the summer of the danger of American military involvement in Syria. The military faction also had the advantage of a British intelligence report of a sample of sarin, recovered by Russian military intelligence operatives, proving it was not from the Syrian army. Further suspicions were aroused within the military faction when more than ten members of the al-Nusra Front were arrested in southern Turkey with two kilograms of sarin. Hersh quotes his internal military source: "'We knew there were some in the Turkish government,' a former senior US intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence, told me, 'who believed they could get Assad's nuts in a vice by dabbling with a sarin attack inside Syria – and forcing Obama to make good on his red line threat.'" ..."
"... Further revelations included how the Obama administration, through the CIA, had by early 2012 created a "rat line", a back channel highway into Syria, used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to jihadists, some of them affiliated with Al-Qaeda. ..."
"... Hersh's source explains how a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the assault by a local militia on the American consulate and a nearby undercover CIA facility in Benghazi, which resulted in the death of the US ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and three others in September 2012, revealed a secret agreement for the "rat line" reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdoğan administrations: "By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi's arsenals into Syria." ..."
"... After Washington abruptly ended the CIA's role in the transfer of arms from Libya the "rat line" continued and became more ominous: "'The United States was no longer in control of what the Turks were relaying to the jihadists,' the former intelligence official said. Within weeks, as many as forty portable surface-to-air missile launchers, commonly known as manpads, were in the hands of Syrian rebels." ..."
In a recent UNZ article titled:
Political science's "theory of everything" a concise map of the US establishment, both the
visible and invisible government was mapped. Based on this map a theory emerged that showed how the
visible government has been subverted by an invisible unelected government that was described as
a corporate-deep-state. The levels of the US establishment were identified as a power elite conspiratorial
leadership overseeing a corporatocracy and directing a deep state that has gradually subverted the
visible US government and taken over the "levers of power."
The power elite
The invisible rulers of the US establishment were revealed by Professor C. Wright Mill in his
article titled, The Structure of
Power in American Society (The British Journal of Sociology, March 1958), in which he explains
how, "the high military, the corporation executives, the political directorate have tended to come
together to form the power elite of America."
He describes how the power elite can be best described as a "triangle of power," linking the corporate,
executive government, and military factions: "There is a political economy numerously linked with
military order and decision. This triangle of power is now a structural fact, and it is the key to
any understanding of the higher circles in America today."
The 2016 US election, like all other US elections, featured a gallery of pre-selected candidates
that represented the three factions and their interests within the power elite. The 2016 US election,
however, was vastly different from previous elections. As the election dragged on the power elite
became bitterly divided, with the majority supporting Hilary Clinton, the candidate pre-selected
by the political and corporate factions, while the military faction rallied around their choice of
Donald Trump.
During the election campaign the power elite's military faction under Trump confounded all
political pundits by outflanking and decisively defeating the power elite's political faction.
In fact by capturing
the Republican nomination and overwhelmingly defeating the Democratic establishment, Trump and the
military faction not just shattered the power elites' political faction, within both the Democratic
and Republican parties, but simultaneously ended both the Clinton and Bush dynasties.
During the election campaign the power elite's corporate faction realised, far too late, that
Trump was a direct threat to their power base, and turned the full force of their corporate media
against Trump's military faction, while Trump using social media bypassed and eviscerated the corporate
media causing them to lose all remaining credibility.
As the election reached a crescendo this battle between the power elite's factions became visible
within the US establishment's entities. A schism developed between the Defense Department and the
highly politicized CIA This schism, which can be attributed to the corporate-deep-state's covert
foreign policy, traces back to the CIA orchestrated "color revolutions" that had swept the Middle
East and North Africa.
The covert invasion of Syria
A US Pentagon, DIA report, formerly classified "SECRET//NOFORN" and dated August 12, 2012, was
circulated widely among various government agencies, including CENTCOM, the CIA, FBI, DHS, NGA, State
Dept., and many others.
Astoundingly, the
declassified report states that for "THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY [WHO] SUPPORT THE [SYRIAN]
OPPOSITION THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY
IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION
WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME ".
The document shows that as early as 2012, US intelligence predicted the rise of the Salafist Islamic
State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), but instead of clearly delineating the group as an enemy,
the report envisions the terror group as a US strategic asset.
At the time this was the highest level internal US intelligence confirmation of the theory that
western governments fundamentally see the Islamic State as their own tool for regime change in Syria.
The military faction began a steady stream of "one-sided" leaks to Pulitzer Prize winning investigative
journalist, Seymour Hersh who published
one article after another
that undermined the political (Obama administration) and corporate (CIA and intelligence) factions
of the power elite, while painting the military faction in a positive light.
Whose sarin?
The first article entitled
Whose Sarin?
was published on 19 December, 2013 and concerned the East Ghouta sarin gas attack of August
21, 2013. Hersh documents a clear campaign within the power elite's military faction to "foot-drag"
and hopefully block the planned US retaliation for crossing President Obama's "red line": "[S]ome
members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were troubled by the prospect of a ground invasion of Syria
as well as by Obama's professed desire to give rebel factions non-lethal support. In July, General
Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, provided a gloomy assessment, telling the Senate Armed
Services Committee in public testimony that 'thousands of special operations forces and other ground
forces' would be needed to seize Syria's widely dispersed chemical warfare arsenal, along with 'hundreds
of aircraft, ships, submarines and other enablers'."
A cornered Obama welcomed a draft UN resolution calling on the Assad government to get rid of
its chemical arsenal. The political faction's step-down pleased many senior military officers, explains
Hersh: "One high-level special operations adviser told me that the ill-conceived American missile
attack on Syrian military airfields and missile emplacements, as initially envisaged by the White
House, would have been 'like providing close air support for al-Nusra'."
The Red Line and the Rat Line
The second article titled
The Red Line and the Rat Line was published on 17 April, 2014 and explains why Obama delayed
and then relented on Syria when he was not shy about rushing into Libya: "The answer lies in a clash
between those in the administration (political faction) who were committed to enforcing the red line,
and military leaders who thought that going to war was both unjustified and potentially disastrous."
General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs had irritated many in the Obama administration
by repeatedly warning Congress over the summer of the danger of American military involvement in
Syria. The military faction also had the advantage of a British intelligence report of a sample of
sarin, recovered by Russian military intelligence operatives, proving it was not from the Syrian
army. Further suspicions were aroused within the military faction when more than ten members of the
al-Nusra Front were arrested in southern Turkey with two kilograms of sarin. Hersh quotes his internal
military source: "'We knew there were some in the Turkish government,' a former senior US intelligence
official, who has access to current intelligence, told me, 'who believed they could get Assad's nuts
in a vice by dabbling with a sarin attack inside Syria – and forcing Obama to make good on his red
line threat.'"
Further revelations included how the Obama administration, through the CIA, had by early 2012
created a "rat line", a back channel highway into Syria, used to funnel weapons and ammunition from
Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to jihadists, some of them affiliated with
Al-Qaeda.
Hersh's source explains how a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the assault by a local militia
on the American consulate and a nearby undercover CIA facility in Benghazi, which resulted in the
death of the US ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and three others in September 2012, revealed a secret
agreement for the "rat line" reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdoğan administrations:
"By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the
CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi's arsenals into Syria."
After Washington abruptly ended the CIA's role in the transfer of arms from Libya the "rat line"
continued and became more ominous: "'The United States was no longer in control of what the Turks
were relaying to the jihadists,' the former intelligence official said. Within weeks, as many as
forty portable surface-to-air missile launchers, commonly known as manpads, were in the hands of
Syrian rebels."
The Killing of Osama bin Laden
The third article titled
The Killing of Osama bin Laden was published on 17 April, 2014. The Obama administration
needed a public relations win on the eve of his second term election and according to Hersh's military
source: "'the killing of bin Laden was political theatre designed to burnish Obama's military credentials.'"
Hersh's article goes on to systematically debunk the Obama administration's entire clumsy cover
story while implicating the Saudis and Pakistanis who financed and protected Osama bin Laden. He
goes on to reveal that once he had outlived his usefulness, to the Pakistanis, he was traded to the
Americans who murdered him in cold blood and tossed his mutilated body parts over the Hindu Kish
mountains.
The article further reveals how the Senate Intelligence Committee's long-delayed report on CIA
torture, released in December 2013 concluded that the CIA lied systematically about the effectiveness
of its torture programme in gaining intelligence that would stop future terrorist attacks in the
US.
Military to Military
Hersh's fourth article titled
Military
to Military was published on 7 January 2016, and details how an exasperated military faction
continued to repeat warnings that the fall of the Assad regime would lead to Libyan style chaos and,
potentially, to Syria's takeover by jihadi extremists. They were continuously ignored by both the
political faction and the intelligence services: "[A]lthough many in the American intelligence community
were aware that the Syrian opposition was dominated by extremists the CIA-sponsored weapons kept
coming General Dempsey and his colleagues on the Joint Chiefs of Staff kept their dissent out of
bureaucratic channels, and survived in office. General Michael Flynn did not. 'Flynn incurred the
wrath of the White House by insisting on telling the truth about Syria,' said Patrick Lang, a retired
army colonel who served for nearly a decade as the chief Middle East civilian intelligence officer
for the DIA. 'He thought truth was the best thing and they shoved him out. He wouldn't shut up.'
Flynn told me his problems went beyond Syria. 'I was shaking things up at the DIA – and not just
moving deckchairs on the Titanic. It was radical reform. I felt that the civilian leadership did
not want to hear the truth. I suffered for it, but I'm OK with that.'"
Hersh's paper further highlights a rebellion under the leadership of Joint Chiefs of Staff that
was then led by General Martin Dempsey. He began to send a flow of US intelligence through allied
militaries to the Syrian Arab Army and he orchestrated a deliberate plan to downgrade the quality
of the arms being supplied to the rebels by the CIA The military's indirect pathway to Assad disappeared
with Dempsey's retirement in September 2015. The political faction then replaced Dempsey, as chairman
of the Joint Chiefs, with General Joseph Dunford who advocated a "hard line" on Russia.
The power elite's military faction realised that radical reform could not begin until the military
faction had full political support behind them.
Rise of the Generals
In the 2016 US election Trump with the full weight of the military faction behind him pulled off
a stunning victory against the entire political faction – defeating both the Democratic and Republican
Party machines – and the corporate media.
The cornerstone of the corporatocracy, the Wall Street lobby, due to the sheer amount of fiat
petrodollar based money it generates, and the influence it has over the US establishment was officially
dethroned. The locus of power within the power elite had suddenly and dramatically shifted from Wall
St to the Pentagon.
Although the situation is very fluid on the eve of the Trump presidency a map highlighting the
US establishment entities supporting either Trump or his defeated opponent Clinton can be arguably
mapped below.
Trump quickly named security hardliners including past and present generals and FBI officials,
to key security and intelligence positions while the corporate media accused Trump of having a starry-eyed
fascination with the brass of America's losing wars.
Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, who was forced from his position as director of the Defense
Intelligence Agency in 2014, will be President-elect Donald Trump's national security adviser. Army
retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg will be serving in a supporting capacity to Flynn as chief
of staff of the National Security Council (NSC).
Trump selected retired General James Mattis to lead the Department of Defense. Mattis, a
documented war criminal , had helped cover up the 2005 Haditha massacre of 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians
by US soldiers. His soldiers also directly committed war crimes in the US sieges of Fallujah in 2004,
when his forces not only used white phosphorus but fired on and killed up to 5,000 innocent civilians.
General Mattis has called for a "new security architecture for the Mideast built on sound policy
Iran is a special case that must be dealt with as a threat to regional stability, nuclear and otherwise."
On a positive Mattis also got Trump to
reconsider his stance on torture stating, "'I've never found it to be useful."
General John Kelly, another long-serving Marine with a reputation for bluntness, has been picked
to head the Department of Homeland Security. He is the most senior US officer to have lost a child
in the "war on terror". His son Robert, a first lieutenant in the marines, was killed in combat in
Afghanistan in 2010. He therefore strongly opposed efforts by the Obama administration to close the
prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, claiming that the remaining detainees were "all bad boys," both
guilty and dangerous.
And in selecting career military men like Flynn, Mattis and Kelly as his senior civilian advisers
on military matters, Trump is in essence strengthening defense while creating rival intelligence
entities that will remain loyal to his military faction.
Meanwhile Big Oil's Rex Tillerson - the former CEO of world's largest oil company, ExxonMobil
- is to be Secretary of State. He has a two-decade relationship with Russian President Vladimir V.
Putin, who awarded Tillerson the Order of Friendship in 2013.
Mindful of others who defied the US establishment, Trump's supporters delivered an ominous warning
to rival power elite factions that
should Trump be assassinated then a civil war would follow. In reality an assassination in today's
climate, without the support of the corporatocracy's now discredited media, would usher in martial
law and further ensconce the military faction within their seat of power.
Playing chess like Putin
Trump and his military faction appear to greatly admire Putin personally, and in September 2016
during the NBC Commander-in-Chief Forum Trump stated: "I will tell you that, in terms of leadership,
he's getting an 'A' and our president is not doing so well." Trump's military faction, unlike the
other two factions sees Russia as more of a partner than an adversary and he is deeply committed
to reorienting American foreign policy in a pro-Russian direction.
Trump knows Putin's history well and appears intent on following in his footsteps. Putin took
office by
striking a deal with Russia's political elite to protect former Russian President Yeltsin and
his family from prosecution in exchange for Putin becoming Prime Minister and later President.
Then on July 28, 2000, after they had funded his election campaign, Vladimir Putin gathered the
18 most powerful businessmen (corporatocracy) in Russia and denounced the corporate elite as creators
of a corrupt state. During the transition from Communism in the 1990s these oligarchs – the majority
Jewish – had taken control of every single lever of power in Russia including the central bank, the
mass media and even the Kremlin.
In a second meeting on January 24, 2001, Vladimir Putin met with 21 leading oligarchs and stressed
that the Russian state had no plans to re-nationalize the economy, but added that they should have
"a feeling of responsibility [to] the people and the country" and asked them to donate $2.6 million
to a fund he was setting up to help families of soldiers wounded or killed in action.
True to his word the oligarchs that complied were allowed to keep the money they had looted from
the Russian people. Those that didn't comply, like Berezovsky and Gusinsky, Russia's two most infamous
and hated oligarchs, were gradually pushed out, and in some cases even imprisoned.
After defeating the oligarchs and gaining control of their media Putin then began to methodically
cleanse the Russian government and the Kremlin of corporate influence.
Corporatocracy
Professor Jeffry Sachs calls the US corporate conspiracy The Rigged Game in which the political
system has come to be controlled by powerful corporate interest groups – the "corporatocracy" – who
dominate the policy agenda. Sachs explains how "[a] healthy economy is a mixed economy, in which
government and the marketplace both play their role. Yet the federal government has neglected its
role for three decades."
President Trump appears to have taken a page from Sach's book and, even before taking office,
is signalling that his government will not neglect its role.
During an interview with Fortune on April 19, 2016, Donald Trump explicitly explained how
he planned on taking back the economic "levers of power" from Wall Street's Federal Reserve by supporting:
"proposals that would take power away from the Fed, and allow Congress to audit the U.S. central
bank's decision making."
On December, 6, 2016 it was the
military industrial complex's Boeing that felt the brunt of his attack when President-elect Donald
Trump called for the scrapping of multi-billion dollar plans for Boeing to build a new Air Force
One, calling the costs "ridiculous and totally out of control." He then followed this up on December
12, 2016, when he took on the
Lockheed Martin by attacking the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter on Twitter, saying the cost of the
next-generation stealth plane is "out of control," stating: "Billions of dollars can and will be
saved on military (and other) purchases after January 20th."
In an early December
interview with TIME ahead of his selection as TIME's Person of the Year, Trump railed against
the Healthcare lobby when he stated that he doesn't "like what's happened with drug prices" and that
he will "bring down" the cost of prescription medication.
Even earlier, on January 2016, at Liberty University, Trump had startled Silicon Valley when he
promised to punish companies that offshore production by placing
tariffs on their imports coming back to the US: "We're going to get Apple to build their damn
computers and things in this country instead of in other countries."
The Big Oil lobby, initially ambivalent, now appears to have put its weight behind Trump. There
are signs that the Big Oil lobby may have fallen out with the corporatocracy over the economic sanctions
on Russia and access to its vast untapped oil fields, as well as Saudi Arabia's two years of flooding
the global market with cheap crude in order to drive oil prices down and economically damage the
Russian economy. This policy had made both US shale oil and US energy independence unsustainable.
While the corporatocracy will survive, the days of crony capitalism appear to be coming to an
end.
The death of neoliberalism
The Trump election, much like Brexit before it, signals an entirely new development not witnessed
since the shift towards neoliberalism under President Reagan over 40 years ago. Trump has promised
to end the neoliberal, hyper-globalisation ideology in which the interests of the working class have
been sacrificed in favour of the corporatocracy that has been encouraged to invest around the world
depriving Americans of their jobs.
The global financial crisis of 2008, the worst since the great depression of 1931, saw Wall Street
bailed out by the taxpayers while the responsible bankers were not prosecuted for their crimes. Under
the Obama administration this was further compounded by rejecting bailouts for homeowners, oversee
growing inequality, militarisation, covert operations and the facilitating of overseas war crimes.
Meanwhile, nine years on, the neoliberal practice of quantitative easing has failed to revive
the economic patient who remains on "life support." This after effect of the global financial crisis
has served to undermine the peoples' faith and trust in the competence of the power elite's political
faction and the corporate media. Trump's ascendency thus signals the beginning of the end of the
neoliberal era.
Trumps promise to, "Put America first," pulls the plug on neoliberalism's economic life support
and imposes a new era of economic nationalism. The military faction will abandon unfettered capitalism,
free trade agreements and globalisation in favour of de-globalisation, economic nationalism, rebuilding
of infrastructure, the middle class and manufacturing.
The table below is fluid but is based on current policy details, revealed by Trump, and details
how the current neoliberal policies may gradually shift to policies of economic nationalism.
Government departments
Masses' Policies
Neo-Liberal Policies
Economic nationalism Policies
Corporatocracy lobbies
Dept. of State
Establishment of friendly relations with other nations.
Maintenance of the petrodollar through the support of compliant authoritarian nations or
covert funding of unstable extremists to overthrow non-compliant nations
Maintenance of the petrodollar through the support of compliant authoritarian nations.
Multilateral approach of working with Russia while continuing to isolate China and Iran
Wall Street-Washington complex
Dept. of the Treasury
Lower and fairer tax system that incentivises workers and savers
Financialisation, corporate subsidies, tax loopholes and overseas tax havens.
nationalisation, cutting of corporate subsidies, closing of tax loopholes and overseas
tax havens.
Universal human rights, equal justice and fair trials
Non-prosecution of criminal bank leaders, with prosecution of deep state whistle blowers.
Prosecution of corporate crime, Non-prosecution of military and police crimes, continued
prosecution of deep state whistle blowers.
Dept. of Housing & Urban Development
Affordable and easily accessible housing.
Financialisation, housing speculation and homelessness.
Removal of "red tape", opening up of land for building
Dept. of Defense
Security and Defense of citizens against foreign enemies
Maintenance of the petrodollar, full spectrum dominance, exceptionalism, war on terrorism
and the militarization of foreign policy .
Maintenance of the petrodollar, full spectrum dominance, multi-polarity, war on terrorism
military-industrial complex
Dept. of Veterans Affairs
Support and subsidies for veterans
Cheap outsourced care facilities and abandoned veterans.
Renationalisation of care facilities and housing, medical and mental care
for war veterans.
Dept. of Transport
Electric vehicles, subsidised transport and easily accessible transportation
grid.
Subsidised car-centric policies and urban planning.
Subsidised car-centric policies and urban planning.
Big Oil-transport-military complex
Dept. of Energy
Environmental protection, reliable and nationalised mostly renewable energy
supply.
Subsidised fossil fuel energy dependence and debunking of climate change.
Subsidised fossil fuel energy dependence and debunking of climate change.
Dept. of the Interior
Management and conservation federal land and natural resources.
Waiving of environmental protection, access for sea lanes, pipelines, mining
and resource extraction.
Waiving of environmental protection, access for sea lanes, pipelines, mining
and resource extraction.
Dept. of Health & Human Services
Subsidised and universal Healthcare.
mandatory healthcare and privatisation.
privatised healthcare
Healthcare industry
Dept. of Homeland Security
Security and Privacy.
Mass Surveillance and copyright enforcement.
Mass Surveillance
Silicon Valley
Dept. of Agriculture
Healthy, nutritious and affordable food.
Food monopolisation and dependence through patented GMOs.
Breaking up of monopolies, increased competition.
Big Ag (Monsanto)
Dept. of Education
Subsidised and universal education.
Class-based privatisation and outsourcing.
Increased investment in education.
Organised Labor
Dept. of Labor
Jobs and decent wages.
Outsourcing, mass immigration to lower wages, commodification of Labor, deregulation,
deindustrialisation, under employment and unemployment.
Reshoring, border controls to boost wages, return of skilled labor, reregulation,
reindustrialisation, full employment, lower taxes
All lobbies
Monetary hegemony strategy
The power elite's monetary hegemony petrodollar strategy will remain unchanged under Trumps' military
faction. However, Trump's foreign policy signals the end of America's unipolar moment, the period
that was called the "new world order" by George Bush after the collapse of the former USSR and the
US's 1991 Gulf War victory.
It took the actions of former
rogue CIA operatives,
called Al Qaeda, to give the US an excuse to invade and conquer key economic chokepoints and
geopolitical pivot nations, in the heart of the world's oil reserves that would give the power elite
global economic and military dominance. These power elite plans were given to the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, at the time, and documented in a memo that a puzzled senior staff officer showed to General
Wesley Clark:"[W]e're going to
take out seven countries in five years , starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya,
Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran."
The Republican-led neoconservative "war on terror" phase, that took place from 2001 to 2011, symbolised
the overt US invasion, occupation and destruction of primarily Afghanistan and Iraq. When worldwide
condemnation combined with Iraqi military resistance proved too great, the power elite were forced
to switch to more covert means.
Under the new Obama administration, a Democratic-led, CIA-orchestrated "Arab Spring" took place
from 2011-2016 and symbolised the covert invasion of Libya and Syria using reconstituted terrorist
death squads. The power elite had not only used the 9/11 attack conducted by elements of their rogue
terrorist death squads to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, but they were now going to reconstitute a
compliant group of the same terrorists and use them to covertly invade Libya and Syria.
With the Syrian government's capture of Aleppo in late 2016, it became apparent to all observers
that both the overt and covert US invasions were soundly defeated primarily by heroic resistance
forces in Iraq and Syria, respectively.
With the barbaric US invasions blunted, the Trump administration now represents a rear-guard attempting
to hold onto key nations in the heart of the world's global energy reserves and maintain the US's
petrodollar monetary hegemony backing, while Trump transitions his economy from a financial to an
industrial economy. Trump will thus continue to secure the GCC nations, especially Saudi Arabia,
provided they reign in their terrorist death squads, plaguing the Middle East. Israel will also be
fully supported and used to maintain the current Middle Eastern stalemate against Iran.
It is however Trump's détente with Russia that is truly significant as it signals the end of the
unipolar "new world order." Russia will once again be allowed its own "sphere of influence." This
will most likely see Crimean reunification accepted the return of economically plundered Ukraine
to Russian influence and the Russian presence in Syria acknowledged.
In return the military faction wants to desperately break up the tripartite strategic Eurasian
team of Russia-China-Iran. The military faction wants Russia to help block China's rise in the South
China Sea and to contain Iran. The military faction appears to have been inspired by documented war
criminal, Henry Kissinger, who at
the Primakov lecture in February 2016 stated: "The long-term interests of both countries call
for a world that transforms the contemporary turbulence and flux into a new equilibrium which is
increasingly multipolar and globalized ..Russia should be perceived as an essential element of any
new global equilibrium, not primarily as a threat to the United States." Draining the swamp?
For the first time in memory the US establishment, consisting of the visible US Government and
the invisible corporate-deep-state that has subverted it, have had a dramatic schism. Contrary to
corporate media hand-wringing, the 2016 US election for the masses was never about a choice for Trump
over Clinton, it was in reality a choice of, the same united power elite maintaining the same US
establishment under President select Clinton, versus a divided power elite led by Trump's military
faction.
This seminal moment represents a change of both US strategy and tactics that have been used to
maintain the US's economic and military power.
Strategically, while the power elite have finally abandoned America's unipolar moment, they will
now maintain the US as a multipolar global hegemon receiving its petrodollar tribute. Their plans
are to finally grant Russia, but not China, its own "sphere of influence" and to cleave it away from
its Eurasian and Middle Eastern allies.
Economically and tactically neoliberalism, as an ideology, is now officially dead. The power elite's
corporatocracy (corporate faction) will be tamed and replaced by a protectionist, localised, rebuilding
of America's manufacturing base.
While not exactly "draining the swamp," the new Trump administration plans on "fencing off some
of the alligators" that have devoured so many innocents during 40 years of neoliberalism at home
and militarism abroad.
To listen to a podcast by the author explaining how the political science's "theory of everything"
may help to predict the new Trump administration select the following link:
Krauthammer said, "I wanted to make a point about the speech. A part that we overlooked but I
am sure is not being overlooked around the world. There are two audiences obviously for inaugural
address-domestic and foreign. I guarantee you that they are quaking in their boots in foreign
capitals, particularly of our allies and trading partners. The way that Trump spoke about the
outside world was the most aggressive, most sort of hyper nationalist and in some ways, most
hostile of any inaugural address I think since the second World War. What Trump pointed out, what
he drew was a picture of a zero-sum world where what we've done for the world, they have been
stealing from us. He says for decades we have enriched foreign industry at the expense of our
American industry, subsidized others' military at the expense of the weakening of our army."
"We've made others rich while becoming poor. Then this scattering sense that the wealth of our
middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed around the world. In other
words, the other guys, "the other," including friends. Kennedy spoke harshly about the communist
world. This is about our allies," he continued.
"They have been stealing from us, our corrupt ruling class has taken the money of the
middle-class and sent it around the world. That is the exaggerated anti-globalist view. I can
understand a lot of the sentiments, but imagine how this has been heard in East Asia, in Europe,
in other places, and then he ends up with a phrase that may not be as a resonant here, he says we
are going to have one principle, "America First." It is capitalized in the version that you get
printed out, and capitalized in the name of the isolationist party from the 1930s that fought to
keep us out of any entanglements abroad, i.e., out of the second World War, led by Charles
Lindbergh and others that dismantled a week after Pearl Harbor. For many people around the world,
the British in particular, that is quite a resonant phrase, and it says to them, to the free
world, since Harry Truman and Eisenhower, we constructed a world where we carried a lot of
you-economically, militarily, etc. That game is over, you are on your own. That is an amazing
message for an inaugural address. We heard it on the campaign, but that is policy now and it's
going to have a huge effect around the world."
From comments: "Saying Davos without Trump is like Hamlet without the prince implies a dignity
about the event which is rather far fetched. More like the Dark Side without Darth Vader ... trouble
is, Davos ain't fiction." "The biggest cabal of sociopathic criminals the world has ever
known."
Notable quotes:
"... This is not new. Klaus Schwab, the man who founded the World Economic Forum in the early 1970s, warned as long ago as 1996 that globalisation had entered a critical phase. "A mounting backlash against its effects, especially in the industrial democracies, is threatening a very disruptive impact on economic activity and social stability in many countries," he said. ..."
"... Schwab's warning was not heeded. There was no real attempt to make globalisation work for everyone. Communities affected by the export of jobs to countries where labour was cheaper were left to rot. The rewards of growth went disproportionately to a privileged few. Resentment quietly festered until there was a backlash. For Schwab, Brexit and Trump are a bitter blow, a repudiation of what he likes to call the spirit of Davos. ..."
"... It would be wrong, however, to imagine that business is terrified at the prospect of a Trump presidency. Boardrooms rather like the idea of a big cut in US corporation tax. They favour deregulation. They purr at plans to spend more on infrastructure. Wall Street is happy because it thinks the new president will mean stronger growth and higher corporate earnings. ..."
"... 'Policy decisions-not God, nature, or the invisible hand-exposed American manufacturing workers to direct competition with low-paid workers in the developing world. Policymakers could have exposed more highly paid workers such as doctors and lawyers to this same competition, but a bipartisan congressional consensus, and presidents of both parties, instead chose to keep them largely protected.' ..."
"... Good article by the way. Recommend others to read. Thanks. ..."
"... Stop trying to shackle every conservative to the desperate and ugly views of the few. Deplorables and their alt-right kin, are so small in number. We ought keep an eye on the Deplorables but little else ... they're politically insignificant. I wish you'd stop trying to throw the average Republican voter into the basket of bigoted, racist rednecks. It's deplorable! ..."
"... Saying Davos without Trump is like Hamlet without the prince implies a dignity about the event which is rather far fetched. More like the Dark Side without Darth Vader ... trouble is, Davos ain't fiction. ..."
"... Why would Daniel go into the lion's den? Trump is committed to stopping the excesses of the "swamp rats" most of whom are at Davos. The world will be turned on its head in 2017; it is going to be interesting to watch the demise of those at the top of the pyramid. ..."
"... What exactly is the "Spirit of Davos" then? A bunch of fat, rich elderly men and their hangers-on troughing themselves to the point of bursting on fine wines and gourmet food, while paying lip-service to the poor? ..."
"... One question for Davos might be: how are you going to resolve differences between the vast majority of people who exist as national citizens, and the multinational elite? It's not a new question. ..."
"... Multinationals, corporate and individuals, can dodge the taxes which pay for services we all rely on but especially citizens. ..."
"... Davos is not restricting attendance to high office bearers. Trump could have gone, had he wanted to, or he could have sent one of his family/staff - that's how Davos works. ..."
"... Bilderberg is by invitation, as far as I know, Davos by application and paying a high membership, plus fee. But the fact he is not represented could be a good sign if it means that the focus is on solving domestic issues as opposed to spending so much time and resources on international ones. ..."
"... My own take on the annual Davos circus is as follows:. It is a totally useless conclave and has never achieved anything tangible since its inception. ..."
"... This gives an excellent opportunity for those who hold so-called "numbered" or other secret bank accounts in the proverbially secretive Swiss banks to have their annual tete-a-tete with their bankers and carry out whatever maintenance has to be done to their bank accounts. After all, in tiny Switzerland, it is only a hop from one town to another. No one will miss you if you are not visible for a day or two. If any nosy taxman back home asks: "What was the purpose of your visit to Switzerland?", one can say with a straight face: "Oh, I was invited to be a keynote speaker at Davos to talk about the increasing income disparity in the world and on what steps to take to mitigate it."! ..."
"... I think globalisation is inhumane. Someone calculated that if labour were to follow capital flows we would see one third of the globe move around on a constant basis. One son in Cape Town a daughter in New York and a brother in Tokyo. It's not how human societies operate we are group animals like herds of cows. We need to be firmly rooted in order to build functioning and humane societies. That is the migration aspect of globalization the other aspect is the complete destruction of diverse cultures. ..."
Trump's influence can also be felt in other ways. The manner in which he won the US election,
tapping in to deep-seated anger about the unfair distribution of the spoils of economic growth,
has been noted. There is talk in Davos of the need to ensure that globalisation works for everyone.
This is not new. Klaus Schwab, the man who founded the World Economic Forum in the early 1970s,
warned as long ago as 1996 that globalisation had entered a critical phase. "A mounting backlash
against its effects, especially in the industrial democracies, is threatening a very disruptive
impact on economic activity and social stability in many countries," he said.
Schwab's warning was not heeded. There was no real attempt to make globalisation work for everyone.
Communities affected by the export of jobs to countries where labour was cheaper were left to
rot. The rewards of growth went disproportionately to a privileged few. Resentment quietly festered
until there was a backlash. For Schwab, Brexit and Trump are a bitter blow, a repudiation of what
he likes to call the spirit of Davos.
It would be wrong, however, to imagine that business is terrified at the prospect of a Trump
presidency. Boardrooms rather like the idea of a big cut in US corporation tax. They favour deregulation.
They purr at plans to spend more on infrastructure. Wall Street is happy because it thinks the
new president will mean stronger growth and higher corporate earnings.
In Trump's absence, it has been left to two senior members of the outgoing Obama administration
– his vice-president, Joe Biden, and secretary of state John Kerry – to fly the US flag.
Just
as significantly, Xi Jinping is the first Chinese premier to attend Davos and has made it clear
that, unlike Trump, he has no plans to resile from international obligations. The sense of a changing
of the guard is palpable.
missuswatanabe
It's the way globalisation has been managed for the benefit of the richest in the developed
world that has been bad for the masses rather than globalisation itself.
I thought this was an interesting, if US-centric, perspective on things:
'Policy decisions-not God, nature, or the invisible hand-exposed American manufacturing
workers to direct competition with low-paid workers in the developing world. Policymakers could
have exposed more highly paid workers such as doctors and lawyers to this same competition,
but a bipartisan congressional consensus, and presidents of both parties, instead chose to
keep them largely protected.'
Good article by the way. Recommend others to read. Thanks.
Paul Paterson -> ConBrio
Decent, hardworking Americans facing social and economic insecurity, whether on the right
or left, ought to be the focus. We need to deal with the concerns of the average citizen, however
it is they vote. Fringe groups don't serve our attention given tbe very real problems the country
faces.
Stop trying to shackle every conservative to the desperate and ugly views of the few. Deplorables
and their alt-right kin, are so small in number. We ought keep an eye on the Deplorables but
little else ... they're politically insignificant. I wish you'd stop trying to throw the average
Republican voter into the basket of bigoted, racist rednecks. It's deplorable!
What we should concern ourselves with is the very real social and economic insecurity felt
by many in red states and blue states alike. Those decent and hardworking Americans, regardless
of party, are joined in much. Deplorables aren't the average Republican voter and didn't win
Trump an election - they are too few to win much of anything.
What you keep referring to as Deplorables are decent Americans seeking change and socioeconomic
justice. You are mixing up citizens who happen to vote for the GOP withbwhite nationalist scum.
How dare you tar all conservatives with the hate monger brush!
Spunky325 -> Paul Paterson
Actually, before taking office, Trump strong-armed Ford and GM into putting more money in
their American plants, instead of moving more production to Mexico. He's also questioned cost-overruns
on Air Force One and several military projects which is causing companies to back off. I can't
think of another American president who has felt it was important to keep jobs in America or
who has questioned military spending. Good for him!
Paul Paterson -> Spunky325
You've made it quite clear "you can't think" as you've bought into the ruse. The question
is why are you so boastful about it? Trump's policies are even seen by economists on the right
as creating staggering levels of debt, creating more economic inequality and unlikely to increase
jobs.
Among many flaws, they point out tax proposals that hurt the poor and middle class to such
a degree it almost seems targeted. This is the same economic plot that has failed working Americans
repeatedly. You folks are getting caught up in a time share pitch and embracing policy that
has little chance to help the average American - however it is they vote. It isn't supposed
to but y'all are asleep at the wheel.
DrBlamm0
Saying Davos without Trump is like Hamlet without the prince implies a dignity about
the event which is rather far fetched. More like the Dark Side without Darth Vader ... trouble
is, Davos ain't fiction.
johhnybgood
Why would Daniel go into the lion's den? Trump is committed to stopping the excesses
of the "swamp rats" most of whom are at Davos. The world will be turned on its head in 2017;
it is going to be interesting to watch the demise of those at the top of the pyramid.
bilyou
What exactly is the "Spirit of Davos" then? A bunch of fat, rich elderly men and their
hangers-on troughing themselves to the point of bursting on fine wines and gourmet food, while
paying lip-service to the poor?
Maybe Trump just decided to trough it at his tower and avoid hanging out with a grotesque
bunch of insufferable see you next Tuesdays.
Ricardo_K
One question for Davos might be: how are you going to resolve differences between the
vast majority of people who exist as national citizens, and the multinational elite? It's not
a new question.
Multinationals, corporate and individuals, can dodge the taxes which pay for services we
all rely on but especially citizens.
James Patterson
Xi's statements on a trade war are completely self serving. But his assertions that he is
against protectionism and unfair trading practices is laughably hypocritical. China refuses
to let any Silicon Valley Internet company one inch past the Great Firewall. Under his direction
the CCP has imposed draconian regulations, which change by the week, on American Companies
operating in China making fair competition with local Chinese companies impossible.
The business climate in China is reprehensible. The CCP has resorted to extortion, requiring
that U.S. tech companies share their most sensitive trade secrets and IP with Chinese state
enterprises or get barred from conducting business there. Sadly, U.S. companies entered China
with high expectations and invested hundreds of millions of dollars in factories, labs and
equipment. This threat has caused many CEO's to sacrifice their company's long term viability
by transferring their most closely guarded technological advances to China or face the loss
their entire investment in China. Even so, multinationals are beginning the Chinese exodus
led by those with less financial exposure soon to be followed by companies like Apple despite
significant economic ties.
True, most people believe a 'trade war' with China means America is the defacto loser because
of dishonest reporting. The truth is that America's economic exposure to China is extremely
limited. U.S. exports to China represent only 7% of America's total exports worldwide; which
in turn accounts for less than 1% of total U.S. GDP (Wells Fargo Economics Group 2015). Most
of America's exports to China are raw materials, which can be redirected to other markets with
some effort. So even if China blocked all U.S. exports tomorrow, America's economy could absorb
the blow with minimal damage. This presents the U.S. government with a wide range of options
to deal with China's many trade infractions and unfair practices as aggressively or punitively
as it wishes.
europeangrayling
Poor Davos attendees. You feel for them at their fancy alpine Bilderberg. It's like the
meeting of the mafia organizations, if the mafia became legal and respected now and ran the
world economy. And I don't think those economic royalists at Davos miss Trump, Trump was a
small fish compared to the Davos people. They make Trump look like a dishwasher.
They are just pissed Trump came out against the TPP and those globalist 'free trade' deals,
and doesn't want more regime change maybe. They like everything else about Trump's policies,
the big tax cuts, environmental and banking deregulations galore, it's like Reagan 2.0, without
the 'free trade'. But they really want that 'free trade' though, those guys are used to getting
everything. Imagine if Bernie won, they would really hate that guy, he is also against the
TPPs and trade, and for less war, and against everything else they are used to. And that's
good, if those honorable brilliant Davos gentleman don't like you, that's not a bad thing.
soundofthesuburbs -> soundofthesuburbs
With secular stagnation we should all be asking why is economics so bad?
Keynesian redistributive capitalism went out with Margaret Thatcher and inequality has been
rising ever since (there is a clue there for the economists amongst us).
How did these new ideas rise to prominence?
"There Is No Nobel Prize in Economics
It's awarded by Sweden's central bank, foisted among the five real prizewinners, often to economists
for the 1% -- and the surviving Nobel family is strongly against it."
"The award for economics came almost 70 years later-bootstrapped to the Nobel in 1968 as a
bit of a marketing ploy to celebrate the Bank of Sweden's 300th anniversary." Yes, you read
that right: "a marketing ploy."
Today's economics rose to prominence by awarding its economists Nobel Prizes that weren't Nobel
Prizes.
No wonder it's so bad.
Global elites can use all sorts of trickery to put their ideas in place, but economics is economics
and if doesn't reflect how the economy operates it won't work.
Secular stagnation – what more evidence do we need?
HauptmannGurski -> bcarey
Davos is not restricting attendance to high office bearers. Trump could have gone, had
he wanted to, or he could have sent one of his family/staff - that's how Davos works.
Bilderberg is by invitation, as far as I know, Davos by application and paying a high membership,
plus fee. But the fact he is not represented could be a good sign if it means that the focus
is on solving domestic issues as opposed to spending so much time and resources on international
ones.
Meanwhile, alibaba's Jack Ma said in Davos that the US had spent many trillions on wars in
the last 30 years and neglected their own infrastructure. Money is for people, or some such
like, he said. Just mentioning it here, because the MSM tend to dislike running this kind of
remark.
Rajanvn -> HauptmannGurski
My own take on the annual Davos circus is as follows:. It is a totally useless conclave
and has never achieved anything tangible since its inception.
Did it, in any way, with all the stars in the financial galaxy gathered in one place, warn
against the 2008 global financial meltdown? The real reason why so many moneybags congregate
at a place which would be shunned by all who have no affinity for snow sports may be, according
to my own reckoning, may not be that innocent and may even be quite sinister.
This gives an excellent opportunity for those who hold so-called "numbered" or other
secret bank accounts in the proverbially secretive Swiss banks to have their annual tete-a-tete
with their bankers and carry out whatever maintenance has to be done to their bank accounts.
After all, in tiny Switzerland, it is only a hop from one town to another. No one will miss
you if you are not visible for a day or two. If any nosy taxman back home asks: "What was the
purpose of your visit to Switzerland?", one can say with a straight face: "Oh, I was invited
to be a keynote speaker at Davos to talk about the increasing income disparity in the world
and on what steps to take to mitigate it."!
Roland33
I think globalisation is inhumane. Someone calculated that if labour were to follow capital
flows we would see one third of the globe move around on a constant basis. One son in Cape
Town a daughter in New York and a brother in Tokyo. It's not how human societies operate we
are group animals like herds of cows. We need to be firmly rooted in order to build functioning
and humane societies. That is the migration aspect of globalization the other aspect is the
complete destruction of diverse cultures.
If everyone drives Toyota and everyone drinks Starbucks
we lose the diversity of culture that people claim they find so valuable. And replaces it with
a mono-culture of Levi jeans and McDonalds. Wealth inequality is really something that can
be reduced if you look various countries score higher in this regard than others while still
being highly successful market economies but I think money is secondary to the displacement
and alienation that come with the first two aspects of globalisation. I find it strange that
it is now the right that advocates reversing these neoliberal trends and the left that seems
to champion it. I was conscious during the 90's and anti-globalisation was clearly a left wing
issue. For whatever reason the left just leaves room for the right to harvest the grapes of
wrath they warned about many years ago. Don't blame the "populist" right ask why the left left
them the space.
"... What is called "Secular Stagnation" should be properly named "Secular Stagnation of societies which accepted neoliberalism as a polito-economical model". Very similar to what happened with Marxism: broken promised, impoverishment of the majority of population, filthy enrichment, corruption and all forms of degradation at the top. ..."
"... In the USA the level of elite degradation became really visible despite attempt to mask it with jingoism as a smoke screen (look at the candidates of the last Presidential race - the choice was between horrible and terrible) ..."
"... Speaking about the level of demoralization I understand why somebody might hate Trump, but Hillary as alternative ? Give me a break. In this sense wining about Trump inauguration just signify the inability to connect the dots and understand that the last election was what in chess was called Zugzwang. ..."
"... The fact is that neoliberalism as a social system no longer is viewed favorably by the majority of the US population (like Bolshevism before them in the USSR ). In this sense I think that with Trump election "the train just left the station". ..."
So he organically can't state the main point: neoliberal ideology is bankrupt and neoliberalism
as a social system is close, or may be entered the decline stage.
That's why neoliberal MSM lost large part of their influence. Much like Soviet MSM during Brezhnev's
rule.
What is called "Secular Stagnation" should be properly named "Secular Stagnation of societies
which accepted neoliberalism as a polito-economical model". Very similar to what happened with
Marxism: broken promised, impoverishment of the majority of population, filthy enrichment, corruption
and all forms of degradation at the top.
Neoliberal elite ("masters of the universe") is split. The majority is still supporting "change
we can believe in" (the slogan courtesy of master of "bait and switch") which means "kick the
can down the road". While the other part is flirting with far right movements.
In the USA the level of elite degradation became really visible despite attempt to mask
it with jingoism as a smoke screen (look at the candidates of the last Presidential race - the
choice was between horrible and terrible)
Trump is just a symptom of a much larger problem. Look what happened when Marxist ideology
was discredited and everybody understood that Marxism can't deliver its social promises. And look
at the level of degradation of Soviet Politburo before the collapse which resulted is the election
of this naïve, "not so bright", deeply provincial, inexperienced politician (Gorbachov). who was
also determined "to make the USSR great again". The level of demoralization of the society was
pretty acute. Nobody believed the government, the MSM, the Party.
The system was unable to produce leaders of the caliber that can save it. That was one of the
reasons why it was doomed (bankruptcy of ideology means among other things that there is nobody
to defend it and nationalism works both ways). I think we see a very similar processes in
the USA now.
With CIA performing the role of KGB in their efforts to prevent or at least slow down the inevitable
changes is the system (although at the end of the day KGB brass was simply bought and stepped
aside allowing the Triumph of neoliberalism in the xUSSR space).
Speaking about the level of demoralization I understand why somebody might hate Trump,
but Hillary as alternative ? Give me a break. In this sense wining about Trump inauguration just
signify the inability to connect the dots and understand that the last election was what in chess
was called Zugzwang.
The fact is that neoliberalism as a social system no longer is viewed favorably by the
majority of the US population (like Bolshevism before them in the USSR ). In this sense I think
that with Trump election "the train just left the station".
"It Can't Happen Here" - Color Revolution By Force
The "Donald Trump likes Russia" and "Russia bad" strategy was propagated by the Clinton election
campaign. It build on constant U.S. incitement against Russia after the U.S. coup in Ukraine partially
failed and after the Russian intervention on the side of the government in Syria. Hillary Clinton
as Secretary of State was the main force behind the original anti-Russian campaign. When Clinton
lost the election to Trump the theme connecting Trump and Russia was continued and
fanned by parts of the U.S. intelligence community.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI published a propaganda report claiming nefarious
Russian cyber activities during the election without providing any evidence. The report came together
with the
expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats by the Obama administration. The DHS then
planted a
false story of Russian cyber-intrusion into a Vermont utility with the Washington Post.
The Director of National Intelligence Clapper followed up with a "report" of alleged Russian interference
with the election. Even the Putinphobe Masha Gessen
found that to be a shoddy piece of implausible propaganda. The DNI then
helped to publish an
MI6 "report" of fakes asserting Russian influence on Trump. In an unprecedented threat escalation
the Pentagon
sends a whole brigade and other assets to the Russian border.
Now the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, warns the President elect to "
watch his tongue ". Is there any precedence of some "intelligence" flunky threatening a soon
to be President?
This has been, all together, a well though out propaganda campaign to reinforce the scheme Clinton
and her overlords have been pushing for quite some time: Russia is bad and a danger. Trump is aligned
with Russia. Something needs to be done against Trump but most importantly against Russia.
Propaganda works. The campaign is having
some effects
:
Americans are more concerned than they were before the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign began about
the potential threat Russia poses to the country, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released
on Friday. The Jan. 9-12 survey found that 82 percent of American adults, including 84 percent
of Democrats and 82 percent of Republicans, described Russia as a general "threat" to the United
States. That's up from 76 percent in March 2015 when the same questions were asked.
Such extensive and expensive campaigns are not run by chance. They have a larger purpose.
Originally the campaign was only directed against Russia with the apparent aim of reigniting a
(quite profitable) cold war. Seen from some distance the campaign now looks more like the preparation
for a typical CIA induced
color-revolution :
In most but not all cases, massive street protests followed disputed elections, or requests for
fair elections, and led to the resignation or overthrow of leaders considered by their opponents
to be authoritarian.
What is missing yet in the U.S. are the demonstrations and the large civilian strife.
Unlike the earlier CIA launched color revolutions in Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004) and elsewhere,
all recent U.S. instigated "color-revolutions", i.e. putsch attempts, have been accompanied by the
use of force from the side of the "peaceful protesters". Such
color-revolutions by force were instigate in Libya, Syria and Ukraine.
A common denominator of these was the primary use of violence occurred from the "good side" against
the "bad side" while the propagandists claimed that it was the "bad side" that started the shooting
and strife. The "good site" is inevitably "demonstrating peacefully" even when many policemen or
soldiers on the "bad side" die. Thus was the case in Libya where the U.S. and its Gulf proxies used
al-Qeada aligned Jihadis from Benghazi as "peaceful demonstrators" against the government, in Syria
where the NATO and Gulf supported Muslim Brotherhood killed policemen and soldiers during "peaceful
demonstrations" in Deraa and in Ukraine where fascist sharpshooters killed demonstrators and policemen
from a hotel roof in the hand of the opposition. All three happened while Hillary Clinton was Secretary
of State.
There have been claims of an upcoming color-revolution in the U.S. from different extremist sides
of the political spectrum. Before the election Neocon Jackson Diehl
claimed that "Putin" was preparing a color-revolution against a President-elect Clinton to enthrone
Donald Trump. But as Trump won fair and square and Clinton lost that plot did not make it to the
stage. After the election the conspiracy peddler Wayne Madsen immediately "
discovered " that Clinton and George Soros were launching a color-revolution against Trump.
Remnants of the Clinton campaign have called for a large anti-Trump demonstration during the inauguration
on January 20 in Washington DC.
Mass shootings in the United States by this or that type of lunatics
happen every other month. There are no wild conspiracy theories or nefarious plots necessary
to consider some what-if questions around such an event.
So what happens after some "Trump supporter" on January 20 starts to shoot into the demonstrating
masses (and also into the police cordons)?
What if the CIA, DHS and DNI then detect and certify that the ensuing "massacre" was a "Russian
plot"?
Posted by b on January 15, 2017 at 12:28 PM |
Permalink
I am amazed and scared how easily propaganda works in democracies, while no one, NO ONE ever deal
or mentions it! Western populations are truly naive and swallow anything. No wonder Hitler could
amass millions of germans.
I am amazed and scared how easily propaganda works in democracies, while no one, NO ONE ever deal
or mentions it! Western populations are truly naive and swallow anything. No wonder Hitler could
amass millions of germans.
The signs are not good. The veteran journalist Claire Hollingworth has just died at 105. Finian
Cunningham comments on her death and the current amnesia over the significance of
the 1000's of NATO tanks massing in east Europe :
"A measure of this apparent collective amnesia can be gleaned from the passing of veteran English
newspaper journalist Clare Hollingworth, who died this week at the age of 105. Hollingworth published
the "scoop of the century" in 1939 when she first reported Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland,
which then sparked the Second World War. The headline of her original report in Britain's Daily
Telegraph on August 29, 1939, read: "1,000 tanks massed on Polish frontier."
Amid media tributes to the deceased journalist, reference to contemporary events was absent.
In the same week that Clare Hollingworth passed away, tanks were again rolling into Poland from
Germany, this time driven by American troops. But Western media outlets made no such connection."
One thing to understand is that, since 1963, the President is no longer fully a President in the
US. The CIA has constructed a system of control within Congress, the military, and the intelligence
services to direct US policy. When Jimmy Carter's CIA Director Stansfield Turner tried to eliminate
a lot of the ops side of intelligence (the agents and the plots that always seem to be nearby
other course corrections (like Dallas, Watergate) the ops side created an oil crisis and a hostage
crisis in Iran. Reagan had been a spokesman for the Congress For Freedom, a CIA operation that
imported fascists, to include a large group of Ukrainian OUN-B residua. Those people and their
children became the backbone of the US reinsertion of fascism in Eastern Europe and Russia.
Since Reagan, all Presidents seem to have deep intelligence backgrounds. Of course, George
Bush was former CIA Director (and undoubtedly an agent prior to his political career), and his
son was his son. Some of Dubya's pre-Presidential failed business dealings appear to have been
money laundering, likely for the CIA Since they burst upon the national scene there are hints
that the Clintons probably were recruited for intelligence work in the late sixties, prior to
even meeting each other.
Obama, with SOS Clinton looking over his shoulder, was mostly a Deep State ally.
Clinton was supposed to win. In fact, there are indications that Clinton and her Deep State
allies worked to make Trump her opponent. She succeeded that far, but not enough to win the electoral
college. Trump is certainly anathema to most working class Americans. His problem with the Deep
State is that he wants friendly relations with Russia.
What the world is witnessing is how the Deep State negotiates hardball with Trump.
"Advice for the USA to simplify things: Cut out the middle man and inaugurate Putin on the 20th"
Or, rephrased to correctly reflect the true nature of the who's really in charge in this country:
Advise for the cosmetic US government and the corporate infotainment: cut out the middle man and
inaugurate the head of the Deep State on the 20th.
It's astounding that Fecesbrook and other social media control outlets support calls for assassination
of the President-elect, by not removing them. This is gonna be an explosive January, Spring and
year.
I think there is a factional civil war going on in the deep state.
Clinton who would have kept the party going was supported by the CIA, with many of their guys
endorsing her.
Trump seems to be the candidate of a less reckless faction. Remember, he was endorsed by a
few hundred senior officers. It seems the army is tired of cleaning up the CIA messes.
Recall the CIA and Army were fighting each other by proxy in Syria.
Remember, Trump has Flynn on his side. And the army. And the FBI, and every patriot in the
IC.
Anon 1
"I consider it as the chief source of stability to our political system, whereas the consolidation
of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will
be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it."
Robert E Lee to Lord Acton, 1866
According to the Israeli website alyaexpress-news.com, a unit of 35 armed and masked men and
women on Maidan square is commanded by four former Israeli Army officers, who wear a kippah
under their helmets.
The site claims that these former officers, who live today in Ukraine, joined the movement
since the beginning of the events alongside the Freedom Party (Svoboda), although the latter
has a reputation for being virulently anti-Semitic.
With the help of the Israeli Embassy, this intervention force reportedly also handled the
transfer of 17 seriously injured persons to Israel for treatment.
The presence of Israeli units had been reported in a similar scenario in Georgia, both in
during the "Rose Revolution" (2003) that in the war against South Ossetia (2008).
I think b describes well why a color revolution is plausible. But some traditional 'color revolution'
tactics, like the use of snipers, may not be necessary because:
(1) Pence appears to be much more friendly to the Clinton/CIA establishment; and
(2) there are other means of removing Trump: impeachment or 25th Amendment
Anti-Trump organizations have stated their intention to disrupt the inauguration. The likelihood
of street violence seems high. This "resistance" and Russian tensions will weigh on the minds
of Congressman and frighten the public.
The de-legimization campaign seems likely to culminate with Trump's impeachment for violations
of the Logan act (see below) and/or VP Pence invoking the 25th Amendment. As President, Pence
would choose a VP. One possible choice is Hillary - winner of the popular vote - thereby creating
a 'unity' government. Democrats have already labeled such unity as = PURPLE =. Republican
Party RED combined with Democratic Party BLUE.
This trajectory helps to explain the consternation with FBI Dir. Comey. Democrats believe that
Comey helped Trump in the last days of the campaign. The FBI is said to be investigating the Clintons.
And Comey refused to discuss with Congress (in closed hearing) details of any possible
investigation into Russian interference into US elections. Comey is now himself under investigation
by DOJ's Inspector General (an Obama appointee) .
It's not unusual for incoming administrations to have discussions with foreign governments
before taking office. But repeated contacts just as Obama imposed sanctions raised questions
about whether Trump's team discussed -- or even helped shape -- Russia's response .
Reuters reports that Flynn and Kislyak talked several times on Dec. 29.
Putin unexpectedly did not retaliate against the U.S. for the move, a decision Trump quickly
praised.
More broadly, Flynn's contact with the Russian ambassador suggests the incoming administration
has already begun to lay the groundwork for its promised closer relationship with Moscow.
That effort appears to be moving ahead, even as many in Washington, including Republicans,
have expressed outrage over intelligence officials' assessment that Putin launched a hacking
operation aimed at meddling in the 2016 presidential election to benefit Trump.
. . .
Trump has been willing to insert himself into major foreign policy issues during the transition,
at times contradicting the current administration and diplomatic protocol.
He accepted a call from Taiwan's president, ignoring the longstanding "One China" policy
that does not recognize the island's sovereignty. Asked about that Friday by the Journal,
he responded, "Everything is under negotiation."
He also publicly urged the U.S. to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution
condemning Israeli settlements , then slammed the Obama administration for abstaining and
allowing the measure to pass.
We are in a time as dangerous as the early 1960's.
Then they wanted war in Vietnam and got rid of JFK to get it.
Now they want a bigger war with Russia as the target.
Anything can happen in the next few weeks.
Its interesting too that the debate should be about why Democrats lost why Hillary didnt generate
enough votes, no, instead they start a hysteria about Trump and Russia.
Well, if a color revolution does transpire to dethrone Trump, one thing is FOR certain: Circe
and Chipnik will say, "see, I told you that Trump was at the center of the plot to give the government
fully to our fascist-ponzi-overlords," without even a twinge of irony.
#5
Nailed it and now they come out from behind behind the curtain to do the work under the propaganda
arm the so-called liberal press own by the elite who really don't like change except when they
win.
#2, Amerika hasn't been a D in a long time if ever.
Polling tends to reflect a wag-the-dog effect, i.e. the media runs a saturation campaign based
on a particular premise, then polls are taken which generally support the premise. What is mildly
surprising is that the alleged Russian threat perception has only increased six percentage points
after all the crazy headlines of the past few weeks.
The American public may be too polarized for a successful colour revolution. The Russia/Trump
freak-out is localized in the Beltway establishment, Democratic Party, and the mainstream media
- which, when united, represents a formidable force in concentrating and saturating a message
across consensus reality, but the degree to which the message has actually been internalized by
the public-at-large may be far less than it may appear. But the stakes are obviously very very
high for the deep state faction which desires the confrontation with Russia, and therefore a dramatic
false flag event is unfortunately extremely possible if it is determined that the impeachment
gambit might not work. (the impeachment concept might not work, at least not immediately, because,
like the electoral college, it would be too obviously a reversal of the election and a large portion
of the public would reject it)
The Timeline is spot on. Right after the election, Soros held a meet-up in Washington said
to be a planning session and to re-assess. Short weeks thereafter both Hill and Bill appeared
sporting purple dress-up. Notice also in the ensuing weeks other Hill/Bill supporters sporting
purple ties.
Soros' underwriting revolutions is coming home to USA. He should be brought before the ICJ.
Conspiracy theory becomes a fact.
January 20 may ignite the spark. Bikers for Trump assembled; J20 gang; 5000 national guards
and security people providing 360 barricade. What could go wrong?
Some 4 years ago I read at the GEAB.eu LEAP's website, that they anticipated the USA would
become ungovernable in year 2016.. Cue it up.
(GEAB, France, a French Think-Tank most articles by subscription)
~ ~ ~ ~
Death Threats:
To a blind person?
1. "Death Threats Force Opera Star Bocelli To Pull Out Of Inauguration Performance"
"Andrea is very sad to be missing the chance to sing at such a huge global event but he has
been advised it is simply not worth the risk..." according to a source close to blind opera
singer Bocelli who had been determined to 'press ahead' and sing at Donald Trump's inauguration.
On Thursday, US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper released a rare statement,
saying that he met with Trump to express his "profound dismay" over the dossier.
"This document is not a US intelligence community (IC) product and I do not believe the leaks
came from within the IC," Clapper said.
~ ~ ~ ~
You would think Clapper's statement would be covered by MSM, No?:
'Mass shootings' is a bit of a specious reach. Americans are psychologically and emotionally 'bleached'.
The 'mass shootings' are largely juveniles on Aderal and Prozac, mentally bleached by the State.
The vast majority of 'mass' shootings are collectively in the gun states, as here:
https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/50060317/police_shootings.0.0.png, and
that's just the State shootings of citizens.
You won't see the victorius Trumpeteers shooting into crowds, you'll see massive civil and
union actions against each new Jesuit-Jew SCOTUS decision, but the Trump State will remain so
opaque, and the poodled Fourth Estate so pandered and Java-Script clik-bait revenue-driven, only
blogs like MoA will post the truth...if they can absent themselves fron the Two-Party Conspiracy-State
Koolaid drinking.
There is only the One Party of Mil.Gov.Fed, which survives and undermines every Administration,
and metastasizes on every new law and every specious blog-post about post-inauguration 'mass-shootings'.
SOW, my PC is now in the shop, after visiting a Breitbart Jerusalem article, and watching a
proxy-script malware drop down, that froze out internet access, even after I bleached my cookies
and did a Foxfire uninstall and re-install. We are far more likely to 'go dark' under Trump and
his Breitbart Zook propaganda machine, than see any Red-on-Blue.
Just a couple of loose (meaning bordering on idiotic) thoughts:
1. Mina says we need to drop this whole Trump thing. And she's right. Just b/c the world is
going to end on Friday doesn't mean we should be preoccupied. Besides SNL has it covered, as usual.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V8TO6y0IR4
2. The "MI6 Report?" A bit of a misnomer isn't it? I haven't seen any allegations that MI6
itself was involved, making the term "MI6 Report" itself inferential propaganda fluff. Better
name: "Steele Report"
The 2004 "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine and the 2000 overthrow of Milosevic didn't rely on the
use of violence.
The slick youth oriented campaigns from Otpor! and the Ukrainian follow up, along with heavy
support from outside actors such as the US, were enough.
I doubt there is a need for violence to get rid of Trump if this was the strategy they intended
to use. Catchy slogans amd symbols along with the support of the media could be enough to instigate
some kind of proceedings leading to his removal from office.
No need for a color revolution, the coup have already been made right in front of us, = Trump's
image have been smeared and his policy on Russia wont work.
That is one good b.'s assumption and it is not far fetched at all.
Some sort of an American Spring is looming, if things fall in place next week.
Would it be a sort of Maidan's effect, unrest etc. remains to be seen, but I doubt it.
What is lacking there is a critical mass. And that is people.
Their psyche is right now not for Trump and against Clinton. It is a bit of schizophrenic situation
atm. and ideals worth fighting and dying for are not too high. Or their conviction.
What and how this is envisaged by IC might be as well a long and a painful processes of "legal"
threading through various investigative hearings, commissions and panels followed by legislative
votings on different issues that might come up, as impeachments, scandals and all the arsenal
of "soft" torture where expected result is that Americans are kept enchanted, asleep and hypnotised,
thus neutralised.
Like the rest of us are supposed to be.
Quickest way to jump into prevention of Trump's presidency would be to quickly build up a false
flag set of events and start a big conflict with Russia or with one of their interest zones. That
would set the spotlight away from Washington while fractions IC would have enough time to clear
its ranks and prepare the actual coup.
What they do not understand is that nobody ever goes to war with Russia. Ever.
So, maybe better outcome for everybody would be wishful thinking scenario of a
Designated Survivor
Kiefer Sutherland's
TV-series .
There is actually much more abundant evidence of British interference in the US election, than
there is for Russian interference. The MI6 smear memo is a glaring example, but on top of that
is the state-owned BBC constant stream of anti-Trump propaganda, the petition against allowing
Trump to visit Britain, Foreign Minister Boris Johnson called Trump "clearly out of his mind",
accused him of "quite stupefying ignorance" that makes him "unfit for office" and said he would
not visit New York because of the "real risk of meeting Donald Trump". Where is the outrage, where
is the congressional committee investigating this blatant foreign interference in our democratic
process? By our ex-colonial masters to boot. Are they still nursing grudges from the Revolutionary
War and the War of 1812?
Purple is a reminder of the One Party of Mil.Gov.Fed, the Purple State Apparatchik that holds
the reins of power, a 99.4% unappointed, unelected, civil and military unionized Purple Gog-Magog
that just raised USArya's debt limit by $10 TRILLION, and uses Red-Blue Tinfoil the way the Jesuits
and Jews always have since they first rose to power in 1917. That 100 Centeniary is Trump, the
Orange Jesuit with the Jesuit-Jew SCOTUS at his Right Hand, Global Business Mafias at his Left
Hand, and poodled Congress at his feet.
Well, thing is, in the US, the bulk of people with guns, knowing how to use them, and ready to
use them, is on Trump's side, when it was more split on Ukraine, Syria or Libya. So this leaves
the US Army to do most of the fighting on Clinton's (or the Borg's) behalf. Not sure the troopers
would do it gladly. I mean, the Civil War traumatized the US way more than even WWII.
At this point, one has to wonder if for such a coup to succeed, a cause uniting the people wouldn't
be required, like, say, a significant foreign war that would need the support of US people coming
together, which would both unite it to the point of reducing the will of NRA people to resist
the takeover, and which would focus the attention somewhere else. Having some hot war on Russian
border could maybe do the trick.
Though in such a case, the Borg better make it work inside the US, because the military would
be quite busy in Europe, so if Trump supporters still took arms to protest the coup, it just couldn't
deal with all threats.
Very speculative, of course. I still think they don't plan that well and will do a half-assed
job that will backfire, and will try to undermine Trump in the long run rather than trying to
take him down right now.
2. The "MI6 Report?" A bit of a misnomer isn't it? I haven't seen any allegations that MI6
itself was involved, making the term "MI6 Report" itself inferential propaganda fluff. Better
name: "Steele Report"
Steele requested permission of high ranking officials to go through with this report and he
got the green light. Also he has very influential friends in MI6 and was involved in MAJOR propaganda
campaigns before, like Litvinenko's.
Therefore it wasnt a "solo" campaign, and UK will have to do serious mea culpas to fix the
relationship with Trump.
"So what happens after some 'Trump supporter' on January 20 starts to shoot into the demonstrating
masses (and also into the police cordons)?"
Trump has already made his own funeral arrangements: Pence is the gravedigger, not the media
or color conspiracies. A massacre of protesters against Trump would just make Trumpists horny.
If Trump really pisses of enough of his peers in the owner class, their minions will impeach him.
Hell, picking Pence was like Trump handing in an undated resignation letter, just to set their
minds at ease.
"What if the CIA, DHS and DNI then detect and certify that the ensuing 'massacre' was a 'Russian
plot'?"
If the police massacre protesters, then no conservative will believe it was a Russian plot.
If a nobody massacres protesters, and the CIA etc. say it was a Russian plot, then Trump will
get shirty with Putin. But then the whole point of this campaign is to force his hand on Russia
policy, not this BS about a color revolution. If the CIA accuse the dead protesters of being part
of a Russian plot, then and only then is when you'll know they're getting serious (about either
an immediate war with Russia or forcing Trump to step down.)
Gross misstatements in the OP? 1) Clinton was not the main driver of foreign policy for the
conclusive reason no Secretary of State has been the main driver in foreign policy since John
Foster Dulles. And that was only because Eisenhower was a general who treated his cabinet like
a military staff. 2) Trump did not win the vote at all, he won the Electoral College, which isn't
"fair and square," as everybody knew since the controversies over the actual Electoral College
votes during the lifetimes of the Founding Fathers themselves. The Electoral College is unfair
and slanted, on purpose, and everybody who cares to know, knows it. There is a point when there's
being stupid, and there's being a liar. Neither is a good place to be.
When Trump tries to take Putin to the cleaners, which is what he means when talks about making
a deal with Russia, either Putin crawls (my guess, but I'm not a mind reader, but Putin's got
no principles, no plan and very little power,) or he signs on to the cold (or surface of the sun
hot) war with China. At this point, these people are just bad cop to Trump's good cop. His tinpot
Orthodox God had better help Putin if he thinks these anybody in this government is anything but
an enemy.
PS 1) Forgot to mention the belief that an official from the previous administration isn't allowed
to criticize Trump really betrays something uncomfortably close to servility. Trump's a twitter-pated
nitwit. He knew Godwin's Law means you lose if you mention Nazis. Turning Brennan's perfectly
normal use of Trump's internet gaffe into a threat on Trump's life and/or the nation itself? Why
not rant about the threat to motherhood and apple pie, too?
2) Curtis@11 tells us Trumpery looks up to Robert E. Lee, a traitor and a slaver (literally,
seizing blacks on the Gettysburg campaign as slaves,) and a wretched buffoon like Acton. So much
the worse for Trumpists!
...
So what happens after some "Trump supporter" on January 20 starts to shoot into the demonstrating
masses (and also into the police cordons)?
What if the CIA, DHS and DNI then detect and certify that the ensuing "massacre" was a "Russian
plot"?
b.
Trump came into this election with his eyes wide open.
During the campaign he once said "I know things most people don't know."
If one of the things Trump knows is that CIA color revolutions are started by enhancing Gene
Sharp's Non-violent Protest playbook with guns, then he'll have that possibility covered most
likely by the 200 military officers whom he claims have offered their support for a Trump Presidency.
I find it bizarre that the name Chuck Hagel (the man who never lies) hasn't been mentioned
at all since campaigning began.
The only mass movement is the one that elected Donald Trump stop the depredation of mid-America.
The intelligence community coup attempt is strictly inside the Beltway. The death knell of the
Democratic Party is their support of a war with Russia to hide their incompetence and corruption.
We are watching one gang of oligarchs fight another for control of the pirate plunder; globalists
verses nationalists. Government by and for the people was flushed down the toilet in 2000. The
USA is not a sovereign state, it is an Empire in decline. If Mike Pence takes the reins, the purple
Clinton/Obama/Bush corporate globalists won.
The main difference between Hitler and today's America is Hitler built a police state at home
to take war abroad while the US took war abroad to build a police state at home. The results will
be the same; a fearful, murderous Nazism of "enemies" abroad and "undesirables" and at home.
1) Clinton was not the main driver of foreign policy for the conclusive reason no Secretary
of State has been the main driver in foreign policy since John Foster Dulles. And that was
only because Eisenhower was a general who treated his cabinet like a military staff. 2) Trump
did not win the vote at all, he won the Electoral College, which isn't "fair and square," as
everybody knew since the controversies over the actual Electoral College votes during the lifetimes
of the Founding Fathers themselves. The Electoral College is unfair and slanted, on purpose,
and everybody who cares to know, knows it. There is a point when there's being stupid, and
there's being a liar. Neither is a good place to be.
1. Reminder since you may have missed the leaked emails and important events during Hillary
Clinton's tenure as SoS: the force behind the push in Lybia
(a) Lybia - Get the gold
(b) "we came, we saw, he died." Cackles.
(c) Ditto the lies surrounding Stevens – the arms smuggling to AQ in Syria
2. Suggest some read up on the Constitution and structure of the Republic of The United States
of America. The Electoral College is designed to balance small states vs large states; the same
rationale for the Senate.
3. On Election day, November 8, the voters selected the Electors to the Electoral College who
then vote for the President and VP. Smart presidential candidates craft their campaign with the
Electoral College's target, 270 votes. MSM polls showing Clinton having a 95% chance of winning,
(Newsweek Madame President) so she disappeared during the last three weeks in October.
4. Newsflash: Clinton's so-called national popular vote win by "millions" is a fraud. Millions
of illegals voted in California, placing the so-called popular vote in her column. Never mind
California. How about Wayne County, Detroit, Michigan's recount that was aborted? One example;
a sealed ballot box had Clinton with 306 votes and when opened, the count was only 50. Other ballot
boxes had similar anomalies.
5. Trump won by a landslide; where it counts ---in the Counties --- 302 votes in the Electoral
College for the final count.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The Electoral College is unfair! Then so is the make-up of the Senate: regardless of population
the 50 states x 2 senators each = 100. Get over it.
Trump may be a skillful deal-maker but he won't be taking Putin to the Cleaners. Ask Rex Tillerson.
". . . the degree to which the message has actually been internalized by the public-at-large
may be far less than it may appear. . ."
This sensible comment goes to the 'polls' taken - haven't we recently seen the worth of polls?
These are the same polls that gave us Hillary as a sure bet.
You have to have a trusting public somewhat unaware of the forces in play to work a color revolution,
and even the one in Ukraine has not worked. People will know, enough people will know, what is
happening. If it's tried there will most assuredly be support for anything Trump and his followers
may do in response. There's no slam dunk here, CIA We don't love you; we don't even trust you.
Try something at your own peril.
If Americans want anything at this point, they do want an orderly change of government. They
may not have high hopes for the incoming crowd but they don't want chaos. They do not want to
be the next Syria. And even if they don't know precisely who's doing what in the days before the
inauguration, they'll be suspicious of anyone who tries to start something.
When 9/11 events were underway, remember the passengers on the plane in Pennsylvania? There'll
be good citizens ready to put out any fire even at the cost of their own lives; I'm betting on
them.
Hmmm.... The intrigue is fascinating!! BUT! We must recall the primary goal/motivation for the
Deep State's Outlaw US Empire since 1990 has been to acquire Full Spectrum Domination of the planet
and its people, to which it's had fairly solid success--except with Russia, China and their few
allies, the numbers of which are growing slowly. It's said by Putin and Xi that there's no ideological
battle akin to the Cold War, but I don't think that's true: Both Putin, Xi, and their nation's
economic plans for Eurasian integration are based on Win/Win aims for all involved, whereas the
stated ideological goal of the Outlaw US Empire is stated above--enslaving the Hydra (Hydra being
the global masses). The current "strategy" was to attack both Russia and China simultaneously,
with an emphasis on Russia; Trump and his crew, however, are proposing a different approach based
on the tried and true Divide and Conquer concept that's worked so well to now, but is no longer
effective thanks to Neoliberalcon behavior allowing an understanding--and thus countermoves--to
be gained of their modus. Clearly, Neoliberalcons are miffed that the ball is being taken from
them regarding Imperial policy--note there's very little (elite) bickering about what the Republican
controlled congress is doing to domestic policy, where most Mass Resistance to Trump/Congress
is occurring. From a domestic POV, it seems like Trump's most likely to alienate those who thought
he'd improve their standing because of his unwillingness to confront the Republican Congress's
destruction of critical social and ecological programs.
Trump's election outcome seems to mimic what was predicted to occur if a Third Party won and
had to confront an antithetical congress having its own plans/policies to implement, adding the
assumption that the Deep State would oppose such a Party as a matter-of-course, doing everything
it could to delegitimize the incoming administration. If a Color Revolution's planned, then I'd
expect to see a big rise in Tea Party activity, as most Soros-sponsored US-ngos are already at
odds with Congress, not Trump's as yet unknown Imperial policy direction.
We are seeing some deep divisions not just within the State but in the public. We are now seeing
the healthy growth of "alternative" Narratives which are far more compelling and based more on
objective truth than the mainstream Narratives which means, over the long haul, they should win
out unless those Narratives are rigorously suppressed. The only chance the authorities have to
suppress these competing points of view and a lurch towards reality is to create an external enemy.
Now we see the Democrats and "moderate" Republicans joining forces with the National Security
State and the mainstream media to create the utterly fictional Russian "threat" in the same way
they've created all the phony threats of the past. Will it work? I don't know--what I do know
is that the majority of the population "wants" to believe in scapegoats and an enemy because it
radically simplifies life and allows people to join together in virtual "two minutes of hate."
This kind of thing usually works when you have "progressvies" and "leftists" joining in along
with the usual warmongers in howling for blood. What I call the "Stasi left" is now showing itself
for the CIA minions (people don't really know how "liberal" most of the CIA actually is) they
are and perhaps have been or at least wannabe.
I had for some time wanted to dissociate myself from the left but am now ready to do so not
because I'm no longer on the left but because "the left" seem no longer to be on the left. I know
it's time to move away from those divisions which are mainly just part of the mind-control regime
we've been under since 1917. We have to choose. Continue to research what is the truth as best
we can or join in the tribal wars that may well end in mutual destruction and certainly a possible
civil war.
I know Trump is attempting to placate those who might murder him--we'll see how it works. From
where I sit it seems unlikely that Trump will put a dent in the ongoing Imperial project and the
criminals it harbors.
You forgot to include the green revolution in Iran instigated by CIA and Mossad operatives with
the help of Jundallah and MEK. Since it could be attempted again during Trump's Presidency; let's
not sweep it under the rug and out of the pages of infamous recent history. Although, I believe
Trump and his cabal will take more hostile and aggressive measures against Iran than instigating
a color revolution.
That being said; permit me to change the title to: Planting the Bad Seed. I'm not sure
if you did this intentionally or not, but the pen is a mighty sword that you use skilfully therefore
I should assume it was deliberate.
I don't think I've yet read such artful, crafty and not to overuse, Machiavellian false equivalency
as I just did now with this piece first introducing it with an outline of nefarious machinations
against Trump, followed by a synopsis of fake revolutions to get to the grain. So in other words
you're saying that the CIA or present state enemies of Trump would use the unsuspecting, and I'm
not being facetious-innocent- leftist masses for their end. This is not to say that Neolibs are
not lurking in there to sabotage this Presidency exploiting legitimate and justified dissent and
dissenters as tools to use against Trump.
Moreover, the only one doing the sabotaging here ; no, I won't go that far. Maybe you'll
re-evaluate how this piece comes off, so let me give you the benefit of doubt while I still condemn
it and its author who has yet to reconsider and join the good fight instead. If there are
nefarious machinations in the works to sabotage Trump, then you are similarly busy working
the Trump side with equally nefarious propaganda by raising a conspiracy spectre intended as an
influence manoeuvre to crush all LEGITIMATE DISSENT against Trump that includes, more importantly,
dissent against the cabal that brought him to power, by smearing such dissenters with the same
brush you're using against those who would use them. Therefore in my opinion you are just
as exploitive as Trump, his enemies and the deep state cabal that surrounds him and that he fully,
absolutely represents.
So let's say Chipnik is right, that at some point in time, which may not be during the inauguration,
the Trump fascist squad aggressively lean on protesters or as Chip writes, start shooting into
the crowd. Your angle is to first plant the seed, that it won't necessarily be the Trump squad
that is or would be responsible for such a heinous act, but other forces meant to make Trump look
like the fascist; never mind, that this is who he REALly is.
So you're trying to delegitimize the revolution before it even starts. This is pretty devious;
if not ugly; I'm being kind. As a matter of fact, it feels kind of sinister to suppress with twisted
assumption, before it even gets started, the inevitable uprising you know Trump will ignite with
his repressive regime. Is this not resorting to goebbel hasbara for an end you imagine is justified;
a highly questionable, even wicked means to what YOU imagine will be a beneficial end like perhaps
détente with Russia? What an intangible, sorry excuse that would be to extinguish real and enduring
change BY THE PEOPLE that might end up benefitting your cause as well.
What the hell are you trying to pull with this piece? Are you trying to crush growing and overwhelming
legitimate dissent by planting a conspiracy theory that whatever revolution Trump accelerates
with his wrongful actions will be illegitimate and fraudulent because it isn't inspired by justified
dissent against him or better yet against the system that spawned Trump , but instigated
by nefarious forces conspiring to overthrow him?
Let me tell you something; the Revolution has been a long time simmering BEFORE Trump appeared
on the political scene. If Trump is the accelerant that will finally make it explode then that's
too bad for your own 'justified' goal and Trump for continuing the deep state subornation and
subversion of democracy! Your goal (if honourable) should regrettably be the necessary, hopefully,
temporary casualty of the rebellion against Trump's dangerous deception to quote an Engdahl
phrase that best describes him.
Trump is an asterisk in the reasons for the Revolution that should have happened after 9/11;
and that you would try to delegitimize it this way planting a seed that might spread like poison
to kill it, is reprehensible. The Revolution, my friend, won't and shouldn't be strictly limited
to Trump. The Revolution will be about the entire two-faced monopoly and the evil forces sustained
by this monopoly that brought Trump to power and repeatedly suborn leadership and subvert the
people's power. People deserve to have this long-awaited Revolution, and if you, with your
grain of conspiracy, propagate a theory that delegitimizes this Revolution making it only about
a coup against Trump, then you are no better than the cabal you pretend to expose.
Propaganda works. Then stop using it to kill the Revolution.
True, but sarcastically, symbolically or not, you, yourself, did reference there would be 'shootings
on crowds after Trump assumes office' in several previous posts.
Trump can fire Brennan just as JFK fired Allan Dulles. How'd that work out?
Posted by: fast freddy | Jan 15, 2017 3:23:11 PM | 36
Ever heard of Mike Pompeo?
Posted by: From The Hague | Jan 15, 2017 5:00:25 PM | 46
Yeah. Meet the new boss; same as the old boss.
Circe, because there can only be one revolution at a time, Soros is Calvinistically the most righteous
and therefore has priority? Get over this liberal conceit of righteous pitched battle. In the meantime,
talk to my filter.
Posted by: Jonathan | Jan 15, 2017 6:25:55 PM |
55
Circe, because there can only be one revolution at a time, Soros is Calvinistically the most righteous
and therefore has priority? Get over this liberal conceit of righteous pitched battle. In the
meantime, talk to my filter.
Posted by: Jonathan | Jan 15, 2017 6:25:55 PM |
55
Trump should order further investigation on Hillary and send her to jail where she belongs.
No one plays with Donald Trump without bearing consequences
Trump should order further investigation on Hillary and send her to jail where she belongs.
No one plays with Donald Trump without bearing consequences
Looks like there is going to be a big turnout . I think that these people had mentioned that they
would put themselves in between any protesters of Trump
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1qlkIXja6U
"... CIA Director Brennan Warns Trump To "Watch What He Says"
"There is no basis for Mr Trump to point fingers at the intelligence community for 'leaking'
information... "
So the head of the Ministry for Dis-Information complains that there is 'no basis' (aka 'no
facts') for this allegation. When did lack of evidence ever bother the CIA?
And Brennan does not like comparison by his new boss (who's not like the old boss):
"What I do find outrageous is equating intelligence community with Nazi Germany," Brennan said.
"I do take great umbrage at that."
This is the gangster-in-chief running the Afghan opium trade and any number of odious regime
change programs that have killed and mained tens of millions now demanding 'evidence' when the
finger is pointed his way.
"Hypocrite" is the word for this type of odious person. And Trump had better watch his back.
These types are worse than nazi Germans.
If you watch Podesta speech on the n7ght of the election wgen he called the few remaining ppl
in the room to go to sleep and wait for more in the morning it seems pretty clear they were already
planning. Let s hope for some significant leaks.
Trump made some interesting comments in an interview with the Times today. They seem to be aimed
at disaffected Europeans and there are lots of those these days.
"Merkel made a catastrophic mistake (letting a million refugees in)"
"Countries want their own identity and the UK wanted its own identity,"
@10 unnamed, 'In 5 days he will hold the reins of power'
that's my expectation. despite the cinamatography @14 john
@15 yet another unnamed, 'These people are nuts'
i certainly hope you're right! that brennan and the rest are immediately shown the door and
the deconstruction of the vile, 'unamerican' cia begins on saturday, in the pale afternoon.
@19 ya unnamed, '... Hillary didnt generate enough votes ...'
hillary won the popular vote ... if the elctronic tally system is to be believed. not
@22 jayc, 'The Russia/Trump freak-out is localized in the Beltway establishment, Democratic
Party, and the mainstream media ...'
that's my feeling too. i think this is a media tempest in a media teapot. the good news is
they are alienating ordinary americans, just as their choice of hillary for empress did. i hope
the tnc msm go down along with republicrat/demoblican party ... and the vile cia.
@23 likklemore, 'You would think Clapper's statement would be covered by MSM, No?'
no. it's a perfunctory cover-the-ass-of-the-nsa/cia-combine statement. clapper put the more
than 'dodgy dossier' in the obama/trump briefing in order for it to be leaked. now he's decrying
others' - fully intended - use of his more than dodgy inclusion. the tnc msm know what he's done
and what he's doing and are acting accordingly. his statement is a footnote for the history books.
@35 lp, 'This is really funny stuff. A government that festooned with Goldman-Sachs bankers
has to worry about being toppled in a coup?'
even a blind pig can smell the acorns ... or g-sax truffles?
@36 ff, 'Trump can fire Brennan just as JFK fired Allan Dulles'
and he'd better. and he'd better finish the job: kill the cia. or the cia will certainly kill
him. one way or another.
@37, @39 s
with the exception of your assessment of russia and china and their leadership - and your nasty,
supercilious tone - i agree, think most of what you say is about right. why should anyone care
what i think?
@42 hw, 'State Department color revolutions. State Dept runs US Ambassadors and, thereby, color
revolutions'
yeah, but now State is a condominium of the cia/pentagon. mostly the cia.
@45 mm, 'the difference between Hitler and today's America is Hitler built a police state at
home to take war abroad while the US took war abroad to build a police state at home'
well put.
@47 likkelmore, 'The Electoral College is designed to balance small states vs large states;
the same rationale for the Senate.'
The Electoral College was designed to balance slave states vs non-slave states; the same rationale
for the Senate.
'so is [was] the make-up of the Senate'
check.
@48 juliana, 'If Americans want anything at this point, they do want an orderly change of government'
The're sinister when used to cement the reality that the propaganda is meant to create. In which
case, most Americans believe .... could well be reworded as: most of your fellow citizens
have accepted our disinformation - you should too!
<> <> <> <> <> <> <>
karlof1 @49:
Divide and Conquer
No doubt Russia and China are aware of this possible strategy. It leads to the question of whether
it is better for our globally-linked human society that Russia integrate with the West or join
with China as counterweight.
<> <> <> <> <> <> <>
Banger @50:
... deep divisions not just within the State but in the public.
Sadly, public divisions don't seem to mean much except when exploited by a powerful elite faction.
Thus public divisions become a resource for elite maneuvering.
Kudos: You were early in anticipating a leader like Trump who would exploit the discontent.
Narratives which are far more compelling and based more on objective truth ...
I think narratives that spin truth around accepted myths are most compelling (and what we see
all-too-often).
"moderate" Republicans
I wouldn't call McCain, Graham, Rubio, and Company "moderates". William Banzai depicts them as
American Jihadis!
<> <> <> <> <> <> <>
Circe @52
WTF! b has previously spoken of the desireability of a real resistance to Trump, saying:
Trump should and must be fought but that fight should be about important economic and social
issues for which people care and of which there are plenty.... Every attempt to accuse Trump
of this or that "Russia" outrage that has nothing to do with the average voter's life simply
fails. These pseudo scandals waged within the "elite" media against him just makes him stronger.
Oh, and while I'll admit my conviction may come off as conceit; you, OTOH, are at the height
of arrogant cynicism masking who knows what ideological Z-aberration known for its hubris.
Though we must not forget the same tactic used against Chavez in Venezuela, in ' The coup
that failed, stillborn ? , or much more recently another unsuccessful rehash against Maduro.
These are merely the newest, latest refined & distilled, incarnation of methods & technique,
we have used against foreign governments since the 1800's!(two centuries of refinement). The latest
methods are designed to maximize Plausible-Deniablility and maximize supposed credibility
of the proxies, and create a foundation for continuing attempts should it not be successful (not
- all or nothing), whilst always presenting Faux arguments/justifications in the
latest 'methods', re Democracy, Rule of Law, Rights, Oppression, Dis=Enfranchised ... whilst launching
a foreign State sponsored, instigated, financed, managed, resourced, Coup!
From 1887 Samoa, 1893 Hawaii thru to 1953 Mossadegh (Iran), 1954 Guatemala, 1958 Lebanon, thru
to 1973 Allende (Chile), 1991 Haiti and then thru to today.
All our chickens have come home to roost. :(
@ Posted by: Bob In Portland | Jan 15, 2017 1:08:57 PM | 5
The CIA is not the 'entire' Deep State, nor is the CIA or the Deep State (think all aspects
and scale and scope of GLADIO) the actual drivers/deciders. The CIA and other such entities 150
years before the CIA was legally born, are mercenaries acting upon the directions/instructions
they receive , in actions such as these. YMMV
dh, not only did he say that Merkel had made a big mistake, Trump also told Bild that the EU was
built to give the Germans primacy in Europe and for the EU to give the US a trading rival. He
applauded Brexit, saying that everyone wanted to keep their identity and wanted a quick trading
deal with the UK. Interesting times we live in.
The 9/11, WMD, MH17 crew are still out and about so it will be interesting to see what happens
in the near future.
I wouldn't like to be part of the cannon fodder brigade the US has moved to Russia's borders.
They are starting to look like sacraficial goats for the good cause of geo-politics at this stage.
Color Revolutions are diplomacy by other means? If so, looking back a decade in Iran is just a
start. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GG06Ak03.html
Perhaps review of centuries is needed.
England 1689 France 1789 1989 USSR...
You jest assuredly ... who controls the ' Sole Remaining Superpower ', which spends
more on its Military, let alone Intelligence/Proxy/NGO entities/forces, than the next largest
13 nations COMBINED, in a domestic US counter-election Coup is, ... not of significance ... everything
re our rapacious actions on the people of Terra may be affected by these events, let alone domestically,
for good of bad, or not.
2. The "MI6 Report?" A bit of a misnomer isn't it? I haven't seen any allegations that MI6
itself was involved, making the term "MI6 Report" itself inferential propaganda fluff. Better
name: "Steele Report"
again, given the well documented & corroborated, FACTS, throughout these threads, you jest, yes
?
Russia is still dominated by the Oligarchs- and who are they? Dual nationals of the same Little
Horn as the dual nationals that run USA. And Iran. And China and Trump.
The only REAL, committed, passionate, mass united group of citizens is the 'Bag-of-Depplorables',
most of the assets being burnt up in this Psyop campaign are 'False' or long ago 'Bought & Paid
for'.
Will those of the US citizenry who identify with or are misled/deceived by 'Identity Politics'
and 'Fake Left' 'R2P', etc narratives be prepared to step up and put it all, 'On the Line'? Somewhat
doubt it.
Given what they openly say in comments and the twitts, etc, one doubts they, the 'Deplorables'
who won the election for the Trumpster, will stand by passively should this continue to escalate
beyond the 20th. No doubt at all.
Geez, I have to break my rule with you; this one time, 'coz you probably didn't read my comment
(56) in response to the post you quote 'b' from where I compared him to Lt. Col. Nicholson in
Bridge on the River Kwai, (decent guy; but thoroughly misdirecting his genius to assisting the
enemy). Here is the excerpt where I address that part of his post you quoted.:
At times reading this; I thought I had entered the twilight zone of Breitbart, and only
when I got to this disclaimer, was relieved to see that there is still a glimmer of hope that
you will return to the side fighting the good fight.
But the war against Trump is not over. In my view Trump should and must be fought [no kidding!]
but that fight should be about important economic and social issues for which people care and
of which there are plenty. Trump has his own cabal, libertarian billionaires like the Koch
brothers, several generals in his cabinet and arch Zionists like Adelson. But that cabal's
henchmen are not yet installed throughout the government. It is important to hinder such infestation.
Yes, I do recognize a glimmer of hope, understated, but promising. You might yet blow up
that bridge you've magnificently engineered, but I'd like to make these adjustments: the fight
will and should not be restricted to economic and social issues. Do you really believe that the
intended repression and exploitation will be limited to the U.S. alone???
And allow me to correct this sentence by adding my two cents in square parenthesis:
But that cabal's henchmen are not yet [ALL] installed throughout the government.
Have you looked at his cabinet and entourage lately?
Therefore, it is YOU, jr, that failed to keep up. Don't try to bait me; I'm so bored with your
spin.
Interesting also is how the false narratives/dissembling is strong and responsive, in this
thread, from particular posters, so quickly and in great quantity ...
The simple question is: If Trump is not perceived as the greatest threat in at least ~71 years
to the Military-Industrial-Corporate-Complex, and, more importantly their ultimate owners, the
puppet-masters behind the curtain, the 0.01% owners thereof. Hence, why are we seeing these very
events unfurl before our very eyes ?
This is no charade or deceptive play to distract, amuse or entertain. That is bullshit.
Add UK and maybe France, Canada and Australia to the list and leave Iran and China out. They haven't
been Z-infested yet; except maybe with spies and operatives.
In every country under so called color revolution the underlying theme was imminent economic collapse
that elites not only were unable to prevent but even actively pursuited and used the phony revolution
to cover up their own theft and introduction global banking thieves into local economy under exigency
of crisis, by selling land and state monopolies.
If b is right preplaned economic crisis in the US is about to happen and a scape goat is about
to be sworn in.
That is the position of many independent economists recognizing that FED is covering up already
ongoing depression that needs to be blamed on somebody but the establishment.
Lt. Col. Nicholson in Bridge on the River Kwai, (decent guy; but thoroughly misdirecting his
genius to assisting the enemy)
An entirely false, fantasy, fiction, perpetrated in a movie FICTION!
Veterans were and still are incensed. Let alone those who survived the industrialized torments/tortures,
forced labor, starvation, neglect/disease and Death Marches, as well as their families who struggle
with those survivors, to this very day .
And it is used as a reference, for support ?! WTF! Have you ever personally met any of the
survivors, and talked with them ?! A few still endure, many were only 17-20 at the time ...
Have you no decency left, to try that one on, none at all ?
There was the real Revolution in Iran deposing the Shah and then there was an attempt at a
fake one orchestrated by CIA and Mossad; the green revolution.
Just want to emphasis that I was referring to the later fake one in my own post @52 above.
Sociopaths & psychopaths, sometimes both, in dedicated service to their Patrons, the ultimate
Psychopathic Sociopaths, the soulless, inhuman, rapacious, 'Old Grey Men', of the 0.01%.
The 0.01% who steered and enabled, incrementally, their tools, such as the NSA (created by
Presidential Executive Order, Not thru an Act of Legislation), to ' Collect it all/Process
it all '.
Which is merely a reflection of the 0.01%s desires ... re Terra and all that is on it and populate
it.
Well, I stand corrected! Your vitriol wasn't a lapse, it was vomiting on our host.
You have yet to suggest anything constructive.
Supporting Obama-Hillary's Democratic Party against Trump is a NON-STARTER. The Democratic
Party has proven to be thoroughly corrupt, and is more 'Zionist' than you care to admit (because
that is adverse to your mission) .
I think most independent thinkers have decided that a better starting point for change is Trump's
in-your-face MAGA tyranny because the MSM-fueled globalist stab-you-in-the-back tyranny is more
dangerous. The sheep are too willing to sleepwalk into the latter.
So we CHEER when Trump puts down MSM because they are a tool that is used against the people,
but you GROAN because he's gaining ground.
Its clear that you are not here to be constructive. Your mission is to De-legitimize Trump.
And where are the charges from the DoJ from all this illegal voting? Republicans have been
screaming out this "problem" for sixteen years and yet can never offer up such evidence. How many
cases were brought up during the Bush years? This is one of those far-right fake news stories
like the Vince Foster murder or Pizzagate. There's as much evidence of this electoral fraud as
there is of Russian hacking of the election.
You get "insiders" speaking about things like same-day no-ID registrations allowing people
to vote. They're being very, very deceptive. These people get provisional ballots, which basically
are not ever counted in just about every state that has them. Same with absentee ballots. The
problem with absentee ballots is that they so easily disqualified over trivialities (i.e., stray
pencil marks) and voters are left with this idea that their vote was counted. Why is there an
explosion in absentee ballots? Because minority communities, the same communities that have their
names purged from voting roles by GOP state governments, not to mention reduce machines for voting
day and limit open hours, but absentee ballot voters think that it's better to send in absentee
votes than wait in crazy lines on voting day.
Democrats lost because they couldn't muster the vote from the plurality and conservatives ALWAYS
come out to vote; they are the only reliable voting group out there. That's why the win Congress
and at the state level. They win because their opposition are a bunch of out-of-touch elitist
morons more concerned about get the "firsts". The first woman president, the first black president,
the first hispanic senator, and so on and that is purely a reflection on the Democratic Party
establishment's cosmopolitan champagne socialism obsession. They *are* out of touch which is why
50% of the population no longer votes. There's no point voting Democrat anymore.
For crying out loud! I wasn't making any statement on whether or not the film fictionalized
the actual events. I was using that character's role in the film to make an analogy here. Now
go lecture and scream at someone else for a change.
likklemore@47 Illegals voting by the millions, like the hint about blacks somehow rigging the
voting in urban areas, really is nothing but race baiting. OF course you talk about the Republic,
that's practically a certificate of mad dog reaction. No, one man one vote is equal, the Electoral
College is not. Even worse for you, if you really want to go the inequality route, you're the
one who is inferior, being someone who upholds the equality of states rather than the equality
of people, and mindlessly repeat lame slanders about the dark hordes somehow cheating at the polls
and deranged irrelevancies instead of arguments. I suggest you more than most benefit from the
proposition that all should have equal rights, because if they had to earn them, you lose.
And lest I forget, your lame unthinking babble. You think the Senate is fair and square? No,
you don't. When it's called the UN General Assembly, you know to the marrow of your bones it's
not. Before you start ranting about what you think, you really need to have actual thoughts first.
Trumpists are not the defenders of the people, Trumpists are the leaders in the attack on the
people.
Circe: Even Islamic Revolution of 1979 was US backed. They wanted the Shah out. He had become
"undependable" starting back around the time he threw his multi million $ celebration of 2500
Years of Persian Empire stuff- crowning himself Shah han Shah etc
French were well aware he had cancer- they were treating him.
Like the West has installed the MBros jihadis across the region to take down secular regimes of
Gadaffi, Mubarak, Saddam, Assad. West had no hesitation installing an Islamic one to take out
secular Shah. In Hegelian fashion, it began the Pike Program of "West vs Islam" phase of the Three
World Wars. Or "Clash of Civilizations" or "War on Terror". The list above re: SNIPERS is interesting,
as this motif also occurred in Tehran during the protests in Ferdowsi Sq w/ mysterious gunmen
shooting into demos to incite the crowd.
As for China not being dominated by the Zios? Afraid so. David Rockefeller had a vise grip via
Chase Manhattan Bank very early on, and never forget that Trotsky "Lev Bronstein" was trained,
equipped and prepped while living in in high style the Bronx on his way to Bolshevik Rev.
Just to be clear; I'll repeat this for the literacy challenged and bald-faced liar who wrote I
support Democrats.:
The Revolution will be about the entire two-faced monopoly and the evil forces sustained
by this monopoly that brought Trump to power and repeatedly suborn leadership and subvert
the people's power.
Where does this indicate affiliation with one party or another??? Trump and Hillary belong
to the two-faced monopoly. I am an equal opportunity dissenter; I don't give a rat's ass about
either party or their chosen change messiah-con, Trump being the latest, that the deep-state
cabal use to lure the servitude into believing they live in a democracy with equal opportunity
for all and things are gonna change.
Do you support the Constitution as it stands, the Laws of the United States, Federal & State
or not ?
Or only when it conveniently suits your argument/narrative/position ... regardless of facts
?
This is why Intelligence Analysts (ultimately realists doing a job) for example, in the main,
and most of the Military and a surprising number of citizens, are staying out of it, neutral,
and incrementally ever so slowly pushing back against the screed and leaning towards the new POTUS/Administration.
Why ?
But, hey, he won the election, she lost! What is going on here ?
Generations of belief in unreal myths re Democracy, etc, are, in effect, working against the
Coup plotters Psyop campaign narrative.
Steele requested permission of high ranking officials to go through with this report and he
got the green light. Also he has very influential friends in MI6 and was involved in MAJOR
propaganda campaigns before, like Litvinenko's.
Sorry, Harry, but I can't decipher the above. Having a link to your source[s] might help.
For instance, what do you mean by Steele got "permission" from "high ranking officials"?? Even
if the assertion is factual, "high ranking officials" does not necessarily mean MI6. Officials
where? US, UK, Ru ??? And having friends in MI6 has nothing to do with your assertion that Steele
"requested permission" to do a dirty like this one.
Let's presume you have a source that says Steele got "permission" from MI6. Do you see the
implications of that? The report was initially commissioned by an as yet unidentified Republican
candidate. But that person dropped out before the investigation really got started. So Steele
shopped the project to Hillary's bunch of bums. And so what you are saying is that Steele went
to some "high ranking official" I presume you mean in the UK, and further, within the context
of the comment, you mean MI6 – and from that high ranking MI6 person came a green-light for Steele
to do a hit-piece on a US presidential candidate. IOW, you are accusing the UK in precisely the
same way the MSM and Obama are accusing Russia/Putin.
Accepted wisdom has it that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and yet I see
no proof here of any sort. Please pass me a link to a reliable source that says Steele asked for
and rec'd permission from MI6. That would be very hot.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Outraged | Jan 15, 2017 8:12:56 PM | 72
You jest assuredly ... who controls the 'Sole Remaining Superpower', which spends more on its
Military, let alone Intelligence/Proxy/NGO entities/forces, than the next largest 13 nations
COMBINED, in a domestic US counter-election Coup is, ... not of significance ... everything
re our rapacious actions on the people of Terra may be affected by these events, let alone
domestically, for good of bad, or not.
I have absolutely no earthly idea what you are talking about. Is that "paragraph" supposed
to be a response to my comment #25? Are we on the same page? Planet? What does the "Sole Remaining
Superpower" have to do with any of this?
To review: The topic is whether MI6 is eye-balls deep in the Steele Report. If it is, then
calling it the "MI6 Report" makes sense. If not, then "MI6 Report" is a misleading misnomer and
propaganda in its own right.
again, given the well documented & corroborated, FACTS, throughout these threads, you jest,
yes ?
OK, that's better. I can understand that one. I noticed you capitalized "FACTS." Now we're
talkin' the same language, dude.
See my response to Harry, above. Same goes for you: Can you give me a link to a reliable source
saying MI6 signed off on this attack on a US presidential candidate? Throw some FACTS my way.
. .
As long as the money flows, Democratic Party and sympathetic establishment operatives will try
to derail Trump.
At some point, a real resistance with some integrity will spring up once the Democratic Party
and its lackeys have failed so miserably that they are a laughing stock.
Circe,
Got it. Agree 100%. Until we take out the ventriloquists, we will be forever trapped in the fake
left-right paradigm arguing over the Elite's puppet du jour- but never taking on the Deep State
puppeteers. Seems we'd rather be manipulated by them, and persist in bickering w/ each other.
93 "Generations of belief in unreal myths re Democracy, etc, are, in effect, working against the
Coup plotters Psyop campaign narrative."
Spot on. The powers that be have to, over a very short period, try to turn this narrative around.
It seems than now they will be impaled on their own democratic sword.
Apologies for CIA typo. It should read State Department color revolutions. State Dept runs
US Ambassadors and, thereby, color revolutions.
Respectfully, the CIA through the 'Local Station'(CIA), local Company technical/support sections
& assets & agents, sources & proxies (NGOs/Associations/Union/Business elements), AND
The State Department, through Diplomats/Officers and CIA under Official Cover(OC)(Diplomatic),
also interacting with and managing the previous, though mostly focused on High level political,
corporate entities/assets,
... simultaneously ... concurrently ... run the Coups and 'faux' revolutions/uprisings/'Arab
Springs' ...
To a varying lesser or greater degree there of, limited and/or competing co-operation/conflict.
The Agency(CIA) and the State Department are not a monolithic entity ... there are common and
partially overlapping interests and objectives, sometimes more, others less so ... yet they have
never acted as one, as a 'Borg'.
Phil Agee's published diary, to corroborate my brief explanation above in excruciating detail,
is an accessible, open, unclassified insight re how this all actually works, for ant interested
reader at MOA.
There are no blanks in Philip Agee's Inside the Company: CIA Diary. This densely detailed
expose names every CIA officer, every agent, every operation that ...
...
Philip Agee discusses his experiences inside the CIA
Philip Agee was a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who served in Latin America.
After resigning from the CIA he lectured and wrote on the Agency's clandestine operations.
His activities were not unnoticed. Ex-CIA Director and later President Bush the first called
Agee "a traitor to our country." He is the author of Inside the Company: CIA Diary and On the
Run. He died in Cuba in January 2008.
"Trump's (and Putin's) Plan to Dissolve the EU and NATO."
By Josh Marshall...January 15, 2017...8:12 PM EDT
"Most people in this country, certainly most members of
the political class and especially its expression in
Washington, don't realize what Donald Trump is trying to do
in Europe and Russia. Back in December I explained that Trump
has a plan to break up the European Union. Trump and his key
advisor Steve Bannon (former Breitbart chief) believe they
can promise an advantageous trade agreement with the United
Kingdom, thus strengthening the UK's position in its
negotiations over exiting the EU. With such a deal in place
with the UK, they believe they can slice apart the EU by
offering the same model deal to individual EU states. Steve
Bannon discussed all of this at length with Business Week's
Josh Green and Josh and I discussed it in great detail in
this episode of my podcast from mid-December.
Now we have a rush of new evidence that Trump is moving
ahead with these plans.
One point that was clear in Green's discussions with
Bannon and Nigel Farage is that Trump wants to empower Farage
as its interlocutor with the United Kingdom. Given Farage's
fringe status in the UK, on its face that seems crazy. But
that is the plan. And it is a sign of how potent Farage's
guidance and advice has become for Trump's view of Europe,
the EU and Russia.
Two days ago, the United States out-going Ambassador to
the EU gave a press conference in which he opened up about
Farage's apparently guiding role in the Trump world and what
he's hearing from EU Member states.
From the The Financial Times (sub.req.) ...
... Donald Trump's transition team have called EU leaders
to ask "what country is to leave next" with a tone suggesting
the union "is falling apart" this year, according to the
outgoing US ambassador to the bloc.
... In a pugnacious parting press conference, Anthony
Gardner warned of "fringe" voices such as Nigel Farage, the
former UK Independence party leader, holding influence in
Washington over Mr Trump's team.
... Speaking days before leaving office, Mr Gardner said
it would be "lunacy" and "the height of folly" for the US to
ditch half a century of foreign policy in order to support
further EU fragmentation or become a "Brexit cheerleader" in
Brussels.
... "I was struck in various calls that were going on
between the incoming administration and the EU that the first
question is: what country is about to leave next after the
UK?" he said.
... "The perceived sense is that 2017 is the year in which
the EU is going to fall apart. And I hope that Nigel Farage
is not the only voice being listened to because that is a
fringe voice."
Today in a new interview with the Germany's Bild and the
Times of London Trump expanded on these goals dramatically.
Trump leveled a series of attacks on German Chancellor Angela
Merkel, suggesting he'd like to see her defeated for
reelection and saying she'd hurt Germany by letting "all
these illegals" into the country. Trump also called NATO
"obsolete", predicted other countries would soon leave the
EU, and characterized the EU itself as "basically a vehicle
for Germany."
Trump and Bannon are extremely hostile to Merkel and eager
to see her lose. But what is increasingly clear is that Trump
will make the break up of the EU a central administration
policy and appears to want the same for NATO.
My own view is that Trump and Bannon greatly overestimate
America's relative economic power in the world. Their view
appears to be that no European country will feel it is able
to be locked out of trade with a US-UK trade pact. An America
eager to break up the EU seems more likely to inject new life
into the union. However that may be, Trump and Bannon clearly
want to create a nativist world order based on the US, Russia
and states that want to align with them. The EU and NATO are
only obstacles to that goal."
In two separate, and quite striking, interviews with Germany's Bild (
paywall
)
and London's Sunday Times (
paywall
),
Donald Trump did what he failed to do in his first US press conference, and covered an
extensive amount of policy and strategy, much of which however will likely please
neither the pundits, nor the markets.
Among the numerous topics covered in the Bild interview, he called NATO obsolete,
predicted that other European Union members would join the U.K. in leaving the bloc and
threatened BMW with import duties over a planned plant in Mexico, according to a Sunday
interview granted to Germany's Bild newspaper that will raise concerns in Berlin over
trans-Atlantic relations. Furthermore, in his first "exclusive" interview in the UK
granted to the Sunday Times, Trump said he will offer Britain a quick and "fair" trade
deal with America within weeks of taking office to help make Brexit a "great thing".
Trump revealed that he was inviting Theresa May to visit him "right after" he gets into
the White House and wants a trade agreement between the two countries secured "very
quickly".
Trump told the Times that other countries would follow Britain's lead in leaving the
European Union, claiming it had been deeply damaged by the migration crisis. "I think
it's very tough," he said. "People, countries want their own identity and the UK wanted
its own identity."
Elsewhere, quoted in German from a conversation held in English, Trump predicted
Britain's exit from the EU will be a success and portrayed the EU as an instrument of
German domination with the purpose of beating the U.S. in international trade. For that
reason, Trump said, he's fairly indifferent whether the EU breaks up or stays together,
according to Bild.
According to Bloomberg
, Trump's comments "leave little doubt that he will stick to
campaign positions and may in some cases upend decades of U.S. foreign policy, putting
him fundamentally at odds with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on issues from free trade
and refugees to security and the EU's role in the world."
Trump then attacked another carmarker, previosuly unnoticed by the president-elect,
when he warned
the United States will impose a border tax of 35 percent on cars
that German carmaker BMW plans to build at a new plant in Mexico and export to the U.S.
market
. A BMW spokeswoman said a BMW Group plant in San Luis Potosi would
build the BMW 3 Series starting from 2019, with the output intended for the world
market. The plant in Mexico would be an addition to existing 3 Series production
facilities in Germany and China. Trump said BMW should build its new car factory in the
United States because this would be "much better" for the company.
He went on to say Germany was a great car producer, borne out by Mercedes Benz cars
being a frequent sight in New York, but there was no reciprocity. Germans were not
buying Chevrolets at the same rate, he said, making the business relationship an unfair
one-way street. He said he was an advocate of free trade, but not at any cost. The BMW
spokeswoman said the company was "very much at home in the U.S.," employing directly and
indirectly nearly 70,000 people in the country.
Going back to foreign policy, Trump discussed his stance on Russia and suggested he
might use economic sanctions imposed for Vladimir Putin's encroachment on Ukraine as
leverage in nuclear-arms reduction talks, while NATO, he said, "has problems."
"[
NATO] is obsolete, first because it was designed many, many years ago
,"
Bild quoted Trump as saying about the trans-Atlantic military alliance.
"Secondly, countries aren't paying what they should" and NATO "didn't deal with
terrorism."
While those comments expanded on doubts Trump raised about the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization during his campaign, he reserved some of his most dismissive remarks for
the EU and Merkel, whose open-border refugee policy he called a "catastrophic mistake."
He further elaborated on this stance in the Times interview, where he said he was
willing to lift Russian sanctions in return for a reduction in nuclear weapons.
When asked about the prospect of a nuclear arms reduction deal with Russia, Trump
told the newspaper in an interview: "For one thing, I think nuclear weapons should be
way down and reduced very substantially, that's part of it."
Additionally, Trump said Brexit will turn out to be a "great thing." Trump said he
would work very hard to get a trade deal with the United Kingdom "done quickly and done
properly".
Trump praised Britons for voting last year to leave the EU. People and countries want
their own identity and don't want outsiders to come in and "destroy it." The U.K. is
smart to leave the bloc because the EU "is basically a means to an end for Germany,"
Bild cited Trump as saying. "
If you ask me, more countries will leave
,"
he was quoted as saying.
While Trump blamed Brexit on an influx of refugees he said that Britain was forced to
accept, the U.K.'s number of asylum applications in 2015 was a fraction of the 890,000
refugees who arrived in Germany that year at the peak of Europe's migrant crisis.
With Merkel facing an unprecedented challenge from the anti-immigration Alternative
for Germany as she seeks a fourth term this fall, Trump was asked whether he'd like to
see her re-elected. He said he couldn't say, adding that while he respects Merkel, who's
been in office for 11 years, he doesn't know her and she has hurt Germany by letting
"all these illegals" into the country.
Among Trump's other comments to Bild::
the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq may have been the worst
in U.S. history;
that Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, is a natural talent who will
bring about an accord with Israel
Trump plans to keep using social media including Twitter once he's in the
White House to sidestep the press and communicate directly with his followers
People entering the U.S. will face "extreme" security checks, possibly
including some European nationals
But perhaps the most troubling, if only to legacy US diplomatic relations, was that,
as the Times noted, "despite all of Mr Trump's expressions of admiration for Mr Putin
and Mrs Merkel, he revealed that he was prepared to cut ties with both: "Well, I start
off trusting both - but let's see how long that lasts. It may not last long at all."
It is unclear if this litany of strategic and tactical announcements, many of which
quite shocking in their audacity and scope, is merely meant to serve as a launching pad
for further negotiations, something Trump has proven quite adept at doing by stunning
his counterparties into a state of abrupt silence, or if these are actually meant to
serve as a basis for future US policy; if it is the latter, when US markets reopen they
may have a distinct case of indigestion because while the market had desperately hoped
for more clarity out of Trump on his policies, what emerged in these two interview is
hardly it.
Taking the UK out of the EU single
market would be "the greatest job-killing act in Welsh
economic history", Plaid Cymru has said.
Several of Sunday's newspapers claim Prime Minister
Theresa May will signal the move in a speech on Tuesday.
Plaid's treasury spokesman Jonathan Edwards told the BBC's
Sunday Politics Wales programme the impact on Wales would be
"devastating".
Downing Street has described the reports as "speculation".
The Carmarthen East and Dinefwr MP said pulling out of the
single market and customs union would have a "huge impact on
jobs and wages in Wales".
"The reality of what we're going to hear from [Theresa
May] on Tuesday, it's going to be the greatest job-killing
act in Welsh economic history, probably in British economic
history," he added. ...
It's a shorthand reference to one possible outcome of
negotiations between the U.K. and the EU -- the U.K. giving
up its membership in Europe's single market for goods and
services in return for gaining full control over its own
budget, its own law-making, and most importantly, its own
immigration. If that happens, British leaders will be under
pressure to quickly land a new trade pact or individual
industry-by-industry deals with the EU. Otherwise, companies
will be subjected to standard World Trade Organization rules,
which would impose tariffs on them. Banks would lose the easy
access they now enjoy to the bloc.
2. How would that differ from a softer Brexit?
A softer form would see the U.K. maintain some tariff-free
access to the single market of some 450 million consumers.
The U.K. would likely still have to contribute to the EU
budget, allow some freedom of labor movement and follow some
EU rules. That's what Norway does, as a member of the
European Economic Area but not of the EU. ...
Plaid Cymru: the Party of Wales, often referred to simply as
Plaid) is a social-democratic political party in Wales
advocating for Welsh independence from the United Kingdom
within the European Union. ... (Wikipedia)
'How can the United Kingdom possibly gain economically from
completely leaving the
European Union?'
Voters decided that the UK was paying
more to be 'in the EU' than they were
receiving (in subsidies, etc.) for
*being* members. That and they were
expected by Way Too European, welcome
foreign workers, obey crazy regulations
imposed by foreigners, yada yada yada.
(Wales, BTW, gets/got lots of aid from the EU.)
Or, is the key word 'completely'?
It was said months ago by the other major
EU members that they want Britain *out*, so
that alone should be a reason for PM May
to demand a very Soft Brexit.
After these months since the vote to leave the European
Union, where the United Kingdom had special privileges to
begin with, I still find no coherent rationale to the
decision. There is no reason to think the cost of being an EU
member was anywhere near the benefits to the UK, and evidence
to the contrary that was repeatedly promised has never been
produced.
Simon Wren-Lewis has written often on Brexit and
seems as puzzled as I am by the seeming toughness as well as
the determination of Teresa May on the leaving.
It would seem UK voters were bamboozled about
the finances. They do pay a lot *in* to be
EU members, as do other large/wealthy
members, but they also got a lot back.
They were told it was costing too much.
'they were
expected (to be) Way Too European, welcome
foreign workers, obey crazy regulations
imposed by foreigners, etc.'
Britain has always had mixed feelings
about being 'European' it seems, since
the end of their empire.
No worries. There will
still be The Five Eyes,
the 'Special Relationship'.
An exclusive club: The 5 countries that don't spy on each
other
http://to.pbs.org/2iv8mNk
via @PBS NewsHour - October 25, 2013
It was born out of American and British intelligence
collaboration in World War II, a long-private club nicknamed
the "Five Eyes." The members are five English-speaking
countries who share virtually all intelligence - and pledge
not to practice their craft on one another. A former top U.S.
counter-terrorism official called it "the inner circle of our
very closest allies, who don't need to spy on each other."
This is the club that German chancellor Angela Merkel and
French President Francois Hollande say they want to join - or
at least, win a similar "no-spying" pact with the U.S.
themselves.
It all began with a secret 7-page agreement struck in 1946
between the U.S. and the U.K., the "British-US Communication
Agreement," later renamed UKUSA. At first their focus was the
Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites. But after
Canada joined in 1948, and Australia and New Zealand in 1956,
the "Five Eyes" was born, and it had global reach. They
pledged to share intelligence - especially the results of
electronic surveillance of communications - and not to
conduct such surveillance on each other. Whiffs of the club's
existence appeared occasionally in the press, but it wasn't
officially acknowledged and declassified until 2010, when
Britain's General Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ,
released some of the founding documents. The benefits of
membership are immense, say intelligence experts. While the
U.S. has worldwide satellite surveillance abilities, the club
benefits from each member's regional specialty, like
Australia and New Zealand's in the Far East. "We practice
intelligence burden sharing," said one former U.S. official.
"We can say, 'that's hard for us cover, so can you?'" The
ease and rapidity of information-sharing among the five
"makes it quicker to connect the dots," said another
intelligence veteran. "You can't underestimate the importance
of the common language, legal system and culture," said
another. "Above all, there is total trust." ...
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for the United States
had by 2014 recovered from the international recession to the
level of 2007. Recovery for the United Kingdom came in 2015.
The recession and recovery obviously were socially difficult
and took an extended time.
Then too, there had been a time
of war from the US and UK extending from 2001.
An extended period of social turmoil that is difficult to
grasp or shut out.
PM May is in way over her head and does not know what she is
doing. Nor does she know what she says has meaning and
effects. She's not long for office, imo of course.
Brexit: The Story on Tariffs and Currency Fluctuations
The New York Times decided to tout the risks * that higher
tariffs could cause serious damage to industry in the UK
following Brexit:
For Mr. Magal [the CEO of an engineering company that
makes parts for the car industry], the threat of trade
tariffs is forcing him to rethink the structure of his
business. The company assembles thermostatic control units
for car manufacturers, including Jaguar Land Rover in Britain
and Daimler in Germany.
"Tariffs could add anything up to 10 percent to the price
of some of his products, an increase he can neither afford to
absorb nor pass on. 'We don't make 10 percent profit - that's
for sure,' he said, adding, 'We won't be able to increase the
price, because the customer will say, "We will buy from the
competition."' "
The problem with this story, as conveyed by Mr. Magal, is
that the British pound has already fallen by close to 10
percent against the euro since Brexit. This means that even
if the European Union places a 10 percent tariff on goods
from the UK (the highest allowable under the World Trade
Organization), his company will be in roughly the same
position as it was before Brexit. It is also worth noting
that the pound rose by roughly 10 percent against the euro
over the course of 2015. This should have seriously hurt Mr.
Magal's business in the UK if it is as sensitive to relative
prices as he claims.
[Graph]
It is likely that Brexit will be harmful to the UK economy
if it does occur, but many of the claims made before the vote
were wrong, most notably there was not an immediate
recession. It seems many of the claims being made now are
also false.
Great Ironies of History #23,453: Supporters of China's
Entry to WTO Now Argue for TPP as Bulwark Against China
As the protectionist supporters of the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP) desperately try to regroup, it's
entertaining to see how they think that China-bashing is
their best hope for success. (Yes, supporters of the TPP are
protectionist. A major thrust of the deal is to impose longer
and stronger patent and copyright and related protections on
the member countries. These are by definition forms of
protectionism, even if economists and reporters tend to like
them.)
Anyhow, we got an example of the China bashing of a TPP
supporter in a Washington Post column * by Fareed Zakaria, in
which he warned readers that China would be the main
beneficiary from a decision by Donald Trump not to pursue the
TPP as president. The economists at the Peterson Institute
for International Economics are also among those making the
argument for the TPP as an obstacle to China's growing
political strength in the region. Many of these same people
argued vociferously for allowing China to enter the World
Trade Organization in 2000 without imposing conditions like
respect for human rights or labor rights, which may have
fundamentally altered China's path of political development.
It is striking that they now think the U.S. public should now
be concerned about the growing power of a country with little
respect for these rights.
"As the protectionist supporters of the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP) desperately try to regroup, it's
entertaining to see how they think that China-bashing is
their best hope for success"
A New York Times
article * on Robert
Lighthizer, Donald
Trump's pick to be
trade representative,
left out some
important background
information. It notes
that Lighthizer wants
to reduce the size of
the U.S. trade deficit
with China. It then
told readers that this
could lead to major
conflicts with China:
"Exports are
important for China.
It consistently sells
$4 worth of goods to
the United States for
each $1 of imports.
That mismatch has
produced a bilateral
trade surplus for
China equal to about 3
percent of the
country's entire
economy, creating tens
of millions of jobs.
"The benefits to
China from that
surplus have been
increasing rapidly in
the past few years."
It is worth noting
that China has
actually sharply
reduced its trade
surplus in prior
years. According to
the International
Monetary Fund ** it
peaked at 9.9 percent
of GDP in 2007. It
then declined sharply
to just 1.8 percent of
GDP in 2011. It has
since edged slightly
higher, but it is
still less than 3.0
percent of GDP.
Ordinarily, we
would expect that a
fast growing
developing country
like China would be
running a trade
deficit, as capital
flows into the country
to take advantage of
higher returns. This
has not happened in
China's case as the
government has offset
inflows of private
capital by buying up
trillions of dollars
of foreign assets. It
now holds more than $3
trillion in reserves
in addition to another
$1.5 trillion in
foreign assets in the
form of sovereign
wealth funds.
Reportedly China
has recently been
trying to raise the
value of its currency.
This would suggest an
obvious path of
agreement between the
U.S. and China under
which the two
countries could act
jointly to raise the
value of China's
currency against the
dollar, thereby
putting downward
pressure on the trade
deficit.
The piece also
notes Lighthizer's
advocacy of the
efforts of the Reagan
administration to
pressure Japanese
manufacturers to
"voluntarily" limit
their exports to the
United States. It
would have been worth
mentioning that these
restrictions on
exports led the
Japanese manufacturers
to begin to set up
factories in the
United States. Today,
most of the cars that
Japanese auto
companies sell in the
United States are
assembled here,
although they still do
include a substantial
amount of foreign
content.
This piece
seriously
misrepresents a
proposal for corporate
tax reform advocated
by Republicans in
Congress as a route to
tax imports. In fact,
the tax has been
developed by
economists who are
very much conventional
free traders. The
purpose is to simplify
the tax code and
eliminate the enormous
waste associated with
the gaming of current
system. The treatment
of imports and exports
is intended to make
the tax symmetric with
the treatment of
value-added taxes in
many U.S. trading
partners. It is not
intended as a
protectionist measure
to reduce the trade
deficit.
"... In the case of the US, a Republican donor-class candidate should have been a Democrat donor-class candidate. Owing to the particular corruption of the Democratic party over the last 8 years, effectively run by the Clinton crime family, the field was unofficially limited to just one. The collapse of the Republican establishment from below still makes my heart sing. Would that the same might occur among Democrats. ..."
"... `I do not understand the pushback [against transnational causes for these events]. Do they really believe that Trump, Brexit, Le Pen, the rise of many right-wing populist parties in Europe etc. have nothing to do with economics? That suddenly all these weird nationalists and nativists got together thanks to the social media and decided to overthrow the established order? People who believe this remind me of Saul Bellow's statement that "a great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is strong."' ..."
"... These are not idiomatic one-off events due to contingent political situations peculiar to each individual country. ..."
"... Something bigger is going on. If Marine LePen wins in France (and I predict she will), that will provide even more evidence. This looks like a global rebellion against globalization + neoliberal economics because the bottom 96% are realizing they're getting screwed and all the benefits are going to the top 6% of professional class + licensed professionals + top 1% in the financial robber barony. ..."
"... Because the 'soft' left, in collaboration with the soft right (and the hard right) have worked assiduously since roughly about 1979 to destroy the 'hard left'. ..."
"... If you help crush the communists then don't be surprised if, in 20 years time, you get the Nazis, because people who hate the system will vote to destroy it, and they will use whatever weapons are to hand to do so . If 'left wing' options aren't available, they will choose 'right wing' ones. ..."
"... I think that the Democratic Party is unlikely to hand over power to the average man and woman in America, but I'm sure that the Republican Party is even less likely to do so; anybody who voted Republican in 2016 because it seemed the best chance of getting power for the average man and woman was played for a sucker. ..."
"... The original Nazis emerged and rose to power in a context where the Communists were trying to destroy the system, and also seeking to crush the Social-democrats; close to the opposite of the pattern you're describing. ..."
"... And Trump, as we all know, is highly suspicious of the EU. Moreover, there is likely to be a battle between the 'liberal (in the highly specific American sense) leaning' intelligence services (the CIA etc.) and the Trump administration. ..."
"... And, thanks to Obama, the CIA, NSA etc. have far more leeway and freedom to act than they did even 20 years ago. It is also possible/likely that MI5/MI6 might be 'let off the leash' by a British (or English) nationalist orientated Conservative Government. ..."
"... you must know why you yourself aren't doing it, and the reasons that apply to you could easily apply to other people as well. ..."
"... There are people making statements daily about how what the Tories are doing is not in the interest of the vast majority of people; but with what effect? ..."
by Henry on January 5, 2017 A piece I wrote on Brexit and the
UK party system has
just come out
in Democracy. More than anything else, I wrote the article to get people to read Peter
Mair. I didn't know Mair at all well – he was another Irish political scientist, but was based in
various European universities and in a different set of academic networks than my own. I met him
once and liked him, and chatted briefly a couple of times after that about email. I wish I'd known
him better – his posthumously edited and published book,
Ruling the Void is the single most compelling
account I've read of what has gone wrong in European politics, and in particular what's gone wrong
for the left. It's still enormously relevant years after his death. The ever ramifying disaster that
is the British Labour party is in large part the working out of the story that Mair laid out – how
party elites became disconnected from their base, how the EU became a way to kick issues out of politics
into technocracy, and how it all went horribly wrong.
The modern Labour Party is caught in an especially unpleasant version of Mair's dilemma. Labour's
leaders tried over decades to improve the party's electoral prospects in a country where its traditional
class base was disappearing. They sought very deliberately and with some success to weaken its
party organization in order to achieve this aim. However, their success created a new governing
class within Labour, one largely disconnected from the party grassroots that it is supposed to
represent. Ed Miliband recognized this problem as party leader and tried to rebuild the party's
connection to its grassroots. However, as Mair might have predicted, there weren't any traditional
grassroots out there to cultivate. Mair argued that the leadership and the base were becoming
disengaged from each other, so that traditional parties were withering away. Labour has actually
taken this one stage further, creating a party in which the leadership and membership are at daggers
drawn, each able to stymie the other, but neither able to prevail or willing to surrender.
This has all changed. Class and ethnic and religious identities no longer provide secure
foundations for European parties, which have more and more tried to become "catchalls," appealing
to wide and diffuse groups of voters. People are not attached to parties for life anymore,
often waiting until just before Election Day to decide whom to vote for. Party membership figures
across Western Europe have shrunk by more than half in a generation.
Do you evaluate this change (on balance) positively or negatively? and why?
Also, since I'm commenting anyway, one minor query:
(Some European countries had different parties for Catholics and Protestants.)
Which countries did you have in mind? There are few European countries that have (or had) both
enough Catholics for a significant Catholic party and enough Protestants for a significant Protestant
party.
I know about the Netherlands, which had separate Catholic and Protestant parties until
the 1970s, when the Catholic party merged with the main Protestant parties (although there's
still a small Protestant party on the margins), but that's just one country.
Germany had a distinct Catholic party (but no specifically Protestant party) under the
Wilhelmine Reich and the Weimar Republic, but not the Federal Republic;
Switzerland has a Catholic-based party but no specifically Protestant-based party; where
else? (There's Northern Ireland, of course, but that's a bit different.) What am I missing?
The Labour Party is so weak that the Conservatives do not need to worry about Labour defeating
them in the next election, or perhaps in the election after that.
I don't think this is obvious, precisely because of the volatility of the situation. I remember
people saying this about the Cameron government in 2015 and I objected at the time that no-one
knew how the Brexit referendum will turn out. Now Cameron is gone and just about forgotten. It's
true that the Conservatives are still in, but it's a very different crew.
More importantly, we haven't yet seen what Brexit means, in any sense. May has been coasting
on the referendum result, and Labour has been wedged, unable to oppose the referendum outcome
and also unable to criticise May's Brexit policy because she either doesn't have one or isn't
telling. This can't continue forever (presumably not beyond March), and when the situation changes,
anything can happen.
Some scenarios where the Conservatives could come badly unstuck
(a) they put up a "have cake and eat it" proposal that is rejected so humilatingly that they
look like fools, then cave in and accept minor concessions on migration in return for a face-saving
soft Brexit
(b) hard Brexit becomes inevitable and the financial sector flees en masse
(c) train-crash Brexit with no agreement and a massive depression
The only scenarios I can see that would cement the current position are
(a) a capitulation by the EU on migration etc, with continued single market access
(b) an economically successful hard Brexit/non-fatal train crash
It seems to me that (a) is politically infeasible and (b) is economically unlikely
That's not to gloss over Labour's problems or your diagnosis, with which I generally agree.
" how party elites became disconnected from their base, how the EU became a way to kick issues
out of politics into technocracy, and how it all went horribly wrong."
This sounds exactly like what has happened to the Democratic party in America. Which suggests
that there's something transnational going on, much larger than the specific political situation
in any given country
The essay is excellent as we might expect, Henry. I'm not convinced that Labour had any other
choice but to elect Corbyn. Single data points are always suspect, but the decision by the Labor
bigwig (have succeeded in forgetting which) to mock 'white-van man' clearly suggests she was playing
to a constituency within Labour primed to share in a flash-sneer at the prols. I'd have
expected as much from any Tory. I have other quibbles, the decision by Labour to take a position
on the referendum and on Remain always seemed critical to forcing Labour to adopt anti-immigrant
Tory-light postures in order to have it both ways with working-class voters hostile to London
and Brussels.
More problematic is this paragraph: "Research by Tim Bale, Monica Poletti, and Paul Webb shows
that these new members tend to be well-educated and heavily left-wing. They wanted to join the
Labour Party to remake it into an unapologetically left-leaning party. However, the research suggests
that they aren't prepared to put in the hard grind. While most of them have posted about Labour
on social media or signed a petition, more than half have never attended a constituency meeting,
and only a small minority have gone door to door or delivered leaflets. They are at best a shaky
foundation for remaking the Labour Party." Your questionable decision to deploy 'they' and 'them'
muddies the reality a bit, as does your decision to rely on metrics from the past to predict future
behavior.
I take your point that failing to attend a political rally, or go door-to-door, means something
in a time when populist parties are in the 'ascent.' But as you point out this rise can only occur
because the 'old parties' have failed so badly to connect activists and members. Again, that said,
I'm still not convinced all is doom and gloom. Labour activists opposed to EU membership were
effectively gagged/shamed by the elite right up to the present. It is only now this week, that
Labour has elected to make English compulsory for new immigrants:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chuka-umunna-immigrants-should-be-made-to-learn-english-on-arrival-in-uk-classes-esol-social-a7509666.html
Labour wasn't anything but Tory-lite until Jeremy and the new influx of members. I'm not personally
in favor of the new policy. It does seem to me more Tory-lite. But the battles are now more out
in the open. My guess is that Labour will survive and will rule again, but only if the party can
persuade Scotland and Wales to remain part of the UK. Adopting Tory-lite policies is precisely
what alienated Scots Labour voters and drove them into the arms of the SNP, so that's that the
PLP gives you.
Britain is entering a period of flux: jobs, housing, respect for all – including all those
dead, white people who made such a mess of the world, and respect for all forms of work, and greater
social and economic movement within Britain will likely go over quite well with large sections
of the electorate. Strong borders and a sensible immigration policy is part of that.
@10 "This sounds exactly like what has happened to the Democratic party in America. Which suggests
that there's something transnational going on, much larger than the specific political situation
in any given country"
"This sounds " Yes, in general terms. Yet, the donor-class candidates could have and should
have won in Brexit and in the US.
In the case of the Brexit, I argued before and after that simply allowing Labour candidates
and members to express their own views publicly, rather than adhere to a (sufficiently unpopular)
particular policy set by Henry's elite would have negated the need to adopt anti-immigrant Tory
lite stances – a straddle that fooled nobody and drove Labour voters to UKIP in not insignificant
numbers.
In the case of the US, a Republican donor-class candidate should have been a Democrat donor-class
candidate. Owing to the particular corruption of the Democratic party over the last 8 years, effectively
run by the Clinton crime family, the field was unofficially limited to just one. The collapse
of the Republican establishment from below still makes my heart sing. Would that the same might
occur among Democrats.
Had, however, the Clinton campaign actually placed the candidate in Wisconsin, in Michigan,
and in Pennsylvania rather than bank on turning off voters, we'd be looking at a veneer of stability
covering up the rot now on display.
The point being: there's always something transnational going on. I explained Brexit to my
own students as a regional rebellion against London, as much as Brussels. Henry's essay is good
on Brexit and UKIP. Both the US and UK outcomes could have been avoided.
Britain is entering a period of flux: jobs, housing, respect for all – including all those
dead, white people who made such a mess of the world, and respect for all forms of work, and
greater social and economic movement within Britain will likely go over quite well with large
sections of the electorate.
If Britain were to enter a period of jobs, housing, and respect for all, with greater social
and economic mobility, it would be reasonable to expect most people to be pleased; but there's
no evidence that anything of the kind is happening, or is going to happen.
"The PLP didn't opt to get along, they opted to fight, and got mauled."
They lost the battle but are winning the war.
Corbyn has been keeping a very low profile since his re-election, proposals for reform such
as mandatory reselection seem to have been dropped, and the left of the party is squabbling over
whether it remains a Corbyn fan club or an active agent for the democratisation of the party.
Party policy remains inchoate and receives little media publicity.
Michels hasn't been disproved just yet, and I suspect the party remains immune to lasting reform,
short of a major split.
I suspect the party remains immune to lasting reform, short of a major split.
There are plenty of examples from the UK and other countries, including the Labour Party itself,
of parties undergoing major splits, and the evidence doesn't suggest that the experience is conducive
to lasting reform.
Yes, after the second election, the PLP have opted for the long game, with the expectation
that a disastrous General Election (one of the reasons why the talk up the possibility of an early
one at every opportunity) will see a return to "normality". In the meantime, the strategy is to
make Corbyn an irrelevance, hence the lack of coverage in the MSM, except for a drip of mocking
articles of which today's by Gaby Hinsliff in the Graun is typical.
Corbyn and his organisation don't help themselves but, faced with such irredentism, they have
little leverage on the situation.
You don't make a single mention of Scotland, which is a massive omission to make. (And frankly,
it's a particularly odd mistake for an Irishman: it's supposed to be the English who blithely
assume that where they live is coterminous with the whole United Kingdom).
I like a lot of the essay, but it's gravely weakened by the fact that you're prepared to discuss
things like political elites and class allegiance- and, in a European context, religious allegiance-
but you don't mention national or regional political identities. You really can't leave those
things out and give an accurate picture of current British politics.
I agree that a Labour revival isn't coming along soon. The problem is that a lot of people in
Labour think and hope that it might, and that makes them very unwilling to start thinking about
electoral alliances, because they are committed to standing candidates everywhere.
Labour, imo, needs some further and serious bad shocks to get them into the frame of mind that
could make an anti-Tory alliance possible. Once it is, FPTP could turn from the secret of Tory
success into the mechanism for their destruction. But 2020 might be too soon.
Forming coalitions and alliances requires negotiation and making trade-offs and active listening:
unfortunately there are probably too many people in the Labour Party who would find that very
difficult. They appear not to be willing to negotiate even with their own members.
I really can't see the obsession with an 'anti-Tory alliance'. Given that it involves allying
with a party who recently were effectively part of a pro-Tory alliance, it only works in any sense
if you think that the Tories have morphed into the far-right, or if you have a well-worked out
programme of constitutional reform you want to implement.
The bit that concerns involving the SNP particularly baffles me. Given that they have been
at daggers drawn with the Labour Party in Scotland, and that they are highly unlikely to step
aside from any of their 90-odd % of Scottish seats to give their alliance partner a few more MPs,
it seems a non-starter. This impression is magnified when you consider that the spectre of a Labour-SNP
minority government was thought to have scared off potential Labour voters at the last election.
Corbyn is just awful. A toxic mix of naivity, ego, and blundering stupidity.
His concept of role is almost non-existant. He walks onto a train without having pre-booked,
finds it difficult getting two seats together, and decides on the spot that all trains must be
nationalised. He spots a man sleeping rough and decides ending rough sleeping is his top priority.
He blunders around like he's just landed from another planet, sees an injustice and thinks he,
Jeremy, is the first person ever to see such a terrible thing, and decides on the spot to make
it his top priority to eliminate this evil by the simple policy expedient of saying he will eliminate
it.
He doesn't do policy in any recognisable sense. He does positioning statements which he assembles
with mates and puts on his personal web site. Take his "Manifesto for Digital Democracy". It claims
to be a policy, but in reality its just a list of Things That Jeremy Thinks Are Good. It doesn't
appear to have gone through a discussion process or approval process. It is not clear if this
is a party policy or just a personal document.
His position on Brexit is a disaster. On the issue which is coming to define politics in the
UK he is neither clearly for it nor clearly against it. He gives the impression he finds it a
dull subject. He is at best second choice for everyone, first choice for no-one; at worst, he
is an irrelevance.
Worse, he appears completely oblivious to the power games being played out in his name. Neighbouring
constituencies are to be carved up so Jeremy's seat can be preserved. His son Seb is given a job
in John McDonnell's office. He is effectively held captive by a North London clique who look after
him, tell him he's great, and then use his "policies" as a checklist against which to assess conformance
of MPs to The One True Corbyn Way and pursue vendettas.
His personality is completely unsuited to the job of Leader, let alone Prime Minister. Even
if you believe in Jeremy's policies you need to find someone else to implement them because he
lacks any of the requisite capabilities.
Nothing is going to magically get better.
No matter how bad things get, under Jeremy they can always get worse.
'Unofficially limited' dies give one the wiggle room to assert just about anything. It's a way
of lying which can't be rebutted. If you say 'but there were 3 candidates', he'll respond that
he did say 'unofficially' limited. If you say 'but two of them did quite well', he'll respond
that he did, after all, say 'unofficially' limited. So he can take a case where there was actually
a competitive race, and make it seem like there was never a competitive race. Of course, his post
is, officially, approved by the moderators
While most of them have posted about Labour on social media or signed a petition, more than
half have never attended a constituency meeting, and only a small minority have gone door to door
or delivered leaflets.
There's a strong feel of "young folks aren't doing politics the way my generation used to do
politics" about this, especially given the activities you're complaining they're not doing. Is
posting on social media achieving more or less than posting leaflets to fill up people's recycling
bins?
kidneystones @14 claims: "I explained Brexit to my own students as a regional rebellion against
London, as much as Brussels."
If that's correct, why did we get: [1] Trump/Sanders in the U.S., [2] Brexit in the UK, [3]
repudiation of Matteo Renzi along with the referendum in Italy, [4] a probable win for Marine
LePen in France (wait for it, you'll be oh-so-shocked when it happens)?
`I do not understand the pushback [against transnational causes for these events]. Do they
really believe that Trump, Brexit, Le Pen, the rise of many right-wing populist parties in Europe
etc. have nothing to do with economics? That suddenly all these weird nationalists and nativists
got together thanks to the social media and decided to overthrow the established order? People
who believe this remind me of Saul Bellow's statement that "a great deal of intelligence can be
invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is strong."'
I would suggest kidneystones is simply wrong. These are not idiomatic one-off events due
to contingent political situations peculiar to each individual country.
Something bigger is going on. If Marine LePen wins in France (and I predict she will),
that will provide even more evidence. This looks like a global rebellion against globalization
+ neoliberal economics because the bottom 96% are realizing they're getting screwed and all the
benefits are going to the top 6% of professional class + licensed professionals + top 1% in the
financial robber barony.
@43 Actually, I make no claim against trans-national developments. Quite the opposite.
Elsewhere, I've written that we are dealing with a world-wide tension between advocates of
globalization and their opponents. Where you differ is in determinations and outcomes, which I
argue are based on the actors, actions and dynamics of each state and which are, as such, unique.
There is nothing at all inevitable about any of this and JQ very sensibly reminds us of the volatility
of the present moment.
What is clear to me at least is that ideas and actions matter. Labour need not have decided
in 2014, or so, to ban members from advocating either a referendum, or leaving the EU. I dug all
this up at the time and the timeline is easy enough to recreate.
Austria stepped back from the brink, as did Greece when it repudiated Golden Dawn. The French
right and left worked together to keep the presidency out of the hands of the FN, although it's
less clear how that successful these efforts will be in the future.
The next few years will be telling. I see no reliable evidence to indicate good fortune, or
end times. The safest bet is more of the same, repackaged, with all the predictable shrieks and
yells about 'never before' etc. that usually accompanies the screwing of the lower orders. The
donor class is utterly dedicated to retaining power. I think JQ is spot on regarding alliances.
We didn't come this far just to have the wheels fall off.
The populism of the right (which I support in large measure) points the way. I'd have preferred
to see a populism of the left win, but too many are/were unwilling to burn down establishment
with the same willingness and enthusiasm of those on the right. Indeed, this thread has several
vocal defenders of an utterly corrupt Democratic party apparatus busted cold for colluding to
steal the nomination. There's a reason donors forked over 1.2 billion to the Clinton crime family
and it wasn't to help Hillary turn over power to the average woman and man in America.
Because the 'soft' left, in collaboration with the soft right (and the hard right) have
worked assiduously since roughly about 1979 to destroy the 'hard left'.
'High points' in this 'epic battle' include Neil Kinnock's purging of Militant, the failure
of the trade union establishment to (in any meaningful sense) support the miners' strike (1984),
the failure of the Democratic party establishment to get behind McGovern (1972), Carter's rejections
of Keynesianism (and de facto espousal of monetarism) in roughly 1977, Blair's war on 'Bennism',
the tolerance of/espousal of Reaganite anti-Communism by most sectors of the British left by the
late 1980s/early 1990s, and so on.
So what we are left with nowadays is angry working class people who would, in previous generations
(i.e. the 1950s, and 1960s) have voted Communist or chosen some other 'radical' left wing option
(and who did vote in such a way in the 1950s/1960s) no longer have that option.
What the 'soft left' hoped is that, with 'radical' left wing options off the table, the proles
would STFU and stop voting, or at least continue to vote for a 'nice' 'respectable' soft left
party.
What they failed to predict is that (as they were designed to do) neo-liberal policies immiserated
the working class, leaving that class angrier than ever before.
And so, the working class wanted to lash out, to register their anger, their fury. But, as
noted before, the 'traditional' way to do that was off the table. Ergo: Trump, Brexit etc.
If you help crush the communists then don't be surprised if, in 20 years time, you get
the Nazis, because people who hate the system will vote to destroy it, and they will use whatever
weapons are to hand to do so . If 'left wing' options aren't available, they will choose 'right
wing' ones.
We have all read this story book before: the 'social democrats' connived with the German state
to crush the 1918/1919 working class uprising, and then were led, blubbering, to Dachau 20 years
later. One wonders how many of them reflected that they themselves might be partially responsible
for their fate.
In the same way: the 'soft left' connived and collaborated with the Right to crush the 'radical
left' in the US and the UK (and worldwide) and then were SHOCKED!! and AMAZED!! that the Right
don't really like them very much and were only using them as a tool to defeat the organised
forces of the working class, and that with the 'radicals' out of the way, the parties of the 'soft
left' (with no natural allies left) can now be picked off one by one, at the Right's leisure.
I think that the Democratic Party is unlikely to hand over power to the average man and
woman in America, but I'm sure that the Republican Party is even less likely to do so; anybody
who voted Republican in 2016 because it seemed the best chance of getting power for the average
man and woman was played for a sucker.
(Incidentally, if 'the donor class' means the same thing as 'rich people', wouldn't it be clearer
to refer to them as 'rich people'? and if 'the donor class' means something different from 'rich
people', what constitutes the difference?)
Any tirade against Corbyn is entirely pointless, because you're not addressing the reasons
why he was elected, or what he represents. I think most of those that support him have a varying
degree of criticism, and many would prefer a more able leader. The problem for Labour is that
there is not a more able leader available that understands the need to ditch Third Way nonsense.
If any of the PLP "big beasts" had done this in any meaningful way, instead of plotting against
him, they would be leader by now.
So what we are left with nowadays is angry working class people who would, in previous generations
(i.e. the 1950s, and 1960s) have voted Communist or chosen some other 'radical' left wing option
(and who did vote in such a way in the 1950s/1960s) no longer have that option.
In the US, only tiny numbers of voters supported Communist candidates in the 1950s and 1960s.
It's true that the option of voting Communist no longer exists, because the Communist Party has
stopped running candidates, but that seems to be a realistic response by the party to its derisory
level of voter support. If there are people who still want to follow the Communist line, what
they would have done in 2016 is turn out to vote against Trump (that's what the party was urging
on its website; the information is still accessible).
In Italy, on the other hand, it's true that large numbers of voters supported Communist candidates
in the 1950s and 1960s; and in Italy, voters still have the option of supporting Communist candidates,
but the numbers of those who choose to do so have become much smaller.
People who voted for Trump weren't doing so because they were denied the option of voting Communist;
and people who voted 'No' in the Italian referendum weren't doing so because they were denied
the option of voting Communist.
If you help crush the communists then don't be surprised if, in 20 years time, you get the
Nazis, because people who hate the system will vote to destroy it, and they will use whatever
weapons are to hand to do so.
The original Nazis emerged and rose to power in a context where the Communists were trying
to destroy the system, and also seeking to crush the Social-democrats; close to the opposite of
the pattern you're describing.
Yes, and another situation where 'mostpeople' have failed to follow the logic of a situation
through. Many intellectuals can see that it is not in the EU's interests for the UK to prosper
out of the EU lest it 'encourager les autres'. Fewer have pointed out that this works the other
way, too. It is no longer in the UK's interests for the EU to prosper (or, indeed, to continue),
and a new nationalist orientated Conservative government might make moves in this direction.
As Jeremy Corbyn alone has had the perspicacity to point out, insofar as there is a political
movement in the UK that is most closely aligned with Donald Trump's Republicanism, it is the Conservatives
under May (the UK's latest intervention vis a vis the UN and Israel was a blatant attempt to curry
favour with the new American administration).
And Trump, as we all know, is highly suspicious of the EU. Moreover, there is likely to
be a battle between the 'liberal (in the highly specific American sense) leaning' intelligence
services (the CIA etc.) and the Trump administration. Assuming Trump wins (not a certainty)
it is possible/likely that Trump will use the newly 'energised' intelligence services to pursue
a more 'American nationalism' orientated policy, and it is likely that this new approach will
see the EU being viewed as much more of an economic competitor to the US, rather than a tool for
the containment of Russia, as it is primarily seen at the moment.
And, thanks to Obama, the CIA, NSA etc. have far more leeway and freedom to act than they
did even 20 years ago. It is also possible/likely that MI5/MI6 might be 'let off the leash' by
a British (or English) nationalist orientated Conservative Government.
It is not implausible, therefore, that the US and the UK will use what 'soft' power they have
to weaken the EU and sow division wherever they can. And of course the EU has enough problems
of its own, such that these tactics might work. Certainly it is highly possible that the EU will
simply not exist by 2050, or at least, not in the form that we have it at present.
"One of the consequences of the phenomenon you're discussing is that volatility is incredibly
high. I'd never before seen a politically party as totally, irredeemably fecked as Fianna Fail
in 2010, but look at them now."
I think this is just one of the features of postmodern politics. For potential governmental
parties they only have to retain enough support to be a realistic alternative, and even with 20%
of the vote Fianna Fail had enough of a profile that an opportunistic campaign of opposition could
lead to them recovering their fortunes to some extent at the next election. I suspect that even
PASOK and New Democracy will receive a similar bounce at the next Greek election.
These kind of stances usually involve avoiding too close a link to certain social groups and
maintaining a distance from potentially principled and activist party memberships. This explains
the hostility of Labour MPs towards Corbyn and the left of the party. They feel that ideological
commitments and an orientation towards the poor and disadvantaged will reduce the party's freedom
of maneuver, damaging their chances of capitalizing electorally on Tory failure.
Of course, they have not provided any reason why anyone of a left-wing persuasion should support
such a cynical and opportunistic worldview, apart from the fact that the Tories are evil. And
they then wonder why many people are alienated from politics.
"Fewer have pointed out that this works the other way, too. It is no longer in the UK's interests
for the EU to prosper (or, indeed, to continue) "
Interesting, I'd not seen that elsewhere. I'd be pretty certain that this is the objective
of people like Hannan.
".. and it is likely that this new approach will see the EU being viewed as much more of an
economic competitor to the US, rather than a tool for the containment of Russia, as it is primarily
seen at the moment."
Maybe less to do with competition than regulation? The Trump view is presumably that anything
that restricts continued plundering of the economy, especially transnational institutions.
@Igor
"I think this is just one of the features of postmodern politics. For potential governmental
parties they only have to retain enough support to be a realistic alternative "
"This explains the hostility of Labour MPs towards Corbyn and the left of the party. They feel
that ideological commitments and an orientation towards the poor and disadvantaged will reduce
the party's freedom of manoeuvre, damaging their chances of capitalising electorally on Tory failure."
"Perhaps these parties are in fact in sync with global political trends because they are
all nationalist parties and nationalism is clearly on the rise at the moment. "
Yes, they are clearly part of the nationalist turn. Or at least I assume that is true of Plaid
Cymru and the SNP, but it definitely is of Sinn Fein, who are policy wise a leftist party, but
ideologically first and foremost a nationalist one. You can see this in polling on their support
base, which tends to be more reactionary* and culturally conservative than even the irish centre
right parties, yet Sinn Fein as a political party often takes position (such as their strong support
for gay marriage) in opposition to the preferences of a large chunk of their base.
This Is particularly the case with immigration, where for going on a decade local politicians
have noted that this is one of the concerns they often hear in constituency work that they don't
make a priority in national politics. It's difficult to (as Sinn Fein does) see yourself (rightly
or wrongly) as the nationalism of a historically oppressed minority, and to support the rights
of that minority in the north (I'm making no normative claims on the correctness of their interpretation)
and then attack other minorities. This is why they're institutionally , and seemingly ideologically,
commited to diversity and multiculturalism in the south of ireland, while also being fundamentally
a nationalist party. (Question is (1) does this posture survive the current leadership , and (2)
is it enough to stave off explicitly nativist parties**) Afaict this is also true of the snp,
I don't know about PC.
But there's still a lot of poison in it. "Anti englishness" , which a lot of this, (at least
implicitly") can encourage , might be more acceptable than anti immigrant sentiment, but it's
still qualitatively the same mind set.
*this is 're a big chunk if their base, but by no means the full story.
**basically what happens to the independent vote, which is (afaict)possibly the real populist
turn in ireland.
At the risk of sounding like I'm simply saying 'but Ireland is special!' I think the (partial)
resurgence of Fianna Fail is a bit of a sui generis phenomenon. Irish politics have historically
been tribal in a way that makes UK voters look like an exemplar of rational choice theory. It
is only the very slightest exaggeration to say that my father's vote in every general election
he has participated in was determined in 1922, several decades before his birth – I'm sure other
Irish Timberteers have experienced similar. Even then, FF is still far away from the kind of hegemonic
dominance it enjoyed prior to the crash – when a poll result of 38% would have been regarded as
disastrous – and the FF/FG combined vote total is still struggling to hit 60%. While I'd agree
that this looks like pretty strong evidence for the 'resurgence of the right' thesis of European
politics at first glance, the failure of the left in Ireland is more due to a) Sinn Fein and Labour
being deeply imperfect vessels for the transmission of left-wing politics (albeit for very different
reasons) b) the low-cost of entry into the Irish political system due to PR-STV leading to a splintering
of the political left.
Additionally, the attempt by former Fine Gael deputy Lucinda Creighton to tap into the supposed
right-wing resurgence via the Renua party ended in an electoral curb-stomping as comprehensive
as it was satisfying to witness. So I don't think a surge in popularity for 'the right' is what's
going on here.
It should also be noted that Michael Martin is an infinitely more talented politician than
Enda Kenny (even though that is a bit of a 'world's tallest dwarf' comparison), and has explicitly
positioned FF to the left of FG, but also as a fundamentally 'centrist' and 'moderating' force.
In other words, he's pursuing a political strategy similar to that of Tony Blair, and is reaping
political dividends for doing so. Shocking, I know! (And FWIW – I have a deep, fundamental dislike
of FF and all it stands for and would never consider voting for them, lest anyone think I'm here
to carry water for Martin).
Unfortunately, for those arguing the 'Jeremy Corbyn is only getting clobbered in the polls
because of the perfidy of the PLP/the biased right-wing media/dark forces within MI5' the Irish
experience doesn't offer much comfort. After 2010 the various hard-left groupuscules in Ireland
put aside their factional differences and were able to mount a relatively united front in two
successive elections, and under leaders like Richard Boyd Barrett, Joe Higgins and Clare Daly.
All of these individuals are relatively charismatic, as well as possessing strong skills as political
communicators (attributes even Corbyn's most ardent defenders would admit he is lacking in).
They also had an issue, in the form of water charges, that allowed them to develop an extremely
clear, very popular political position which resonated with large swathes of the electorate in
every region of the country (again, something UK Labour is severely missing).
The results? Just over 5% of the vote in the last election for a total of 10 TDs, and basically
zero influence over the actual governance of the country.
This is not because of some vast array of structural forces and barriers are arrayed against
them (as discussed above, PR-STV makes the barrier to entry into Irish politics very low). It
is because, as with Corbyn, the electorate neither trusts them to competently administer the
state, nor supports their vision for its future socio-economic development. You can argue
that the electorate are ignorant, or mistaken in this regard, but given that Corbyn has at various
points in his career argued that East Germany, Cuba and Venezuela represent optimal socio-economic
systems, I would argue that they're probably right on this particular question.
In the US, only tiny numbers of voters supported Communist candidates in the 1950s and 1960s.
The effect is not direct. It comes down to the fact that for the average working person, there
two main ways they could be significantly better or worse off; wages could be higher, or tax could
be lower.
One of those is a thing that is promised by political parties, one isn't.
The actual rate of tax, or the feasibility or secondary effects of changing, don't really matter.
Leaving the EU, whatever else it means, means not paying tax to it. A belief that the tax paid
to the EU ends up as a net benefit to the payee requires a level of trust in the system that is
easy to argue against.
The US has lower taxes than any other developed democracy, and so presumably wouldn't carry
on functioning as one if you cut further. Which means to deliver further tax cuts, you need a
politician who doesn't understand, doesn't care, or just possibly is in hock to those who wish
the US harm.
Traditional Communists similarly considered the collapse of the system to be more of a goal
than a worry. Without them, arguments against higher wages always prevail.
Kidneystones: "Owing to the particular corruption of the Democratic party over the last 8 years,
effectively run by the Clinton crime family, the field was unofficially limited to just one."
Seconding Belle here – 'effectively run' means 'defeated by another, and forced to work your
way back up'.
The Labour Party as a functioning opposition seems to have vanished – seriously: what did the
general public hear from them over the last year or so apart from party infighting and accusations
of anti-semitism?
I still support many of Corbyn's policies and ironically
so does much of the general public . But he lost my trust with his ridiculous wavering over
Brexit and ineffectiveness as a politician in general.
I actually don't think it would be too hard to organize an effective opposition considering
the fact that the Tories have no idea at all what they are doing and their policies are not in
the interest of the vast majority of people. But you have to hit them over the head with this
on a daily basis and I have no idea why nobody does it.
Well I wouldn't say it was entirely pointless. It is important to establish a baseline, and
in this case the baseline is that Corbyn's leadership is most unlikely to deliver electoral success
for Labour.
But your main point is a fair one, so time to try a different tack.
Policy is a misleading guide to whether a party is left or right. The current conservative
party is running a significant deficit, is committed to maintaining the NHS free at the point
of use, has implemented a living wage, has introduced same-sex marriage, and at the last election
touted state spending as the way to improve economic performance. all these policies were traditionally
associated with left-wing parties.
Policy is free, and it isn't particularly sticky. Given those features, policy is not a particularly
reliable feature. No private company would make policy its chief USP as it can easily be replicated
and customers show little loyalty based on policy. So if policy is not a route to political identity,
what is?
What voters want from a political party is that the party holds them and their interests paramount
as it goes about its business. When it implements a policy, it makes sure that policy is implemented
in a way that benefits them and their group. They want to be sure that in the difficult and complex
world of politics, the people they have voted for will look after their interests. The modern
Conservative party understand this. So Teresa May puts her target market – Just managing families
– dead centre in her Downing Street speech. And so far she has very high levels of public support.
By contrast, Labour doesn't seem to know who it represents, who it is batting for, and what
it wants for them. It doesn't give clear signals about where British workers stand in its hierarchies
of priorities. Until someone stands up and clearly articulates a vision of ambition for the mass
of the people then Labour will get out-fought in all significant political debates.
Certainly it is highly possible that the EU will simply not exist by 2050, or at least,
not in the form that we have it at present.
What a weak and trivial assertion.
It is possible that the US will not exist by 2050 in the form that we have it at present. It
is possible that the UK will not exist by 2050 in the form that we have it at present. It is possible
that the Conservative Party [the Democratic Party] [the Labour Party] [the Republican Party] will
not exist by 2050 in the form that we have it at present. It is possible that MI5 [MI6] [the CIA]
[the NSA] will not exist by 2050 in the form that we have it at present. [Lather, rinse, repeat.]
'The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being
contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.' (Winston Churchill,
A History Of The English-Speaking Peoples )
@52
Yeah maybe I should clarify that. Obviously much of the UK's trade is done with the EU so in that
sense the UK does have an economic interest in the EU prospering, but only in terms of
individual states. The UK (arguably) does not have an interest, any more in the EU as a unified
political/economic entity and if, as seems plausible, the UK now moves in a more Trumpian
direction, this tendency might well continue.
@55 Your evidence argues against your own argument. You have persistently argued, across many
CT threads, that the only and sole reason that Labour is doing badly right now is because of Corbyn.
And then the evidence you provide is that the left is doing badly in Ireland too. Do you see the
problem?
The fact is that if there was any serious alternative to Corbyn, the PLP would have put him
or her forward in the recent leadership election, and s/he would probably have won. But there
is no such candidate because the problems the Labour party face are much more deeply rooted than
the current crisis caused by the Corbyn leadership and these problems are faced by almost every
centre-left political party in the West . (The 'radical' left, as I pointed out above, having
essentially vanished in almost all of the developed world).
Let's not forget that as recently as the late 1990s, almost every country in Europe was governed
by the centre left. Now, almost none* of them are. That's the scale of the collapse. Indeed the
usual phrase for this phenomenon is 'Pasokification'. Not Corbynification (at least not yet).
Corbyn certainly doesn't have a solution to this problem but then nobody else does either,
so there you go.
All elections for the last few decades:
Many people in the UK: "Can we have our share of the benefits of globalisation?"
Tacit cartel: "After the City has taken the lion's share and we've had our cut, there might be
something left that you can have."
Referendum:
Tacit cartel: "Vote Remain or everybody will lose the benefits of globalisation!"
It's obviously in the interests of (hard) Brexiteers that the EU should fail, but it's not clear
what they can do to promote this end, except in the sense that hard Brexit itself will be mutually
damaging. Supporting ideological soulmates like Le Pen might help but could be a two edged sword
(do Le Pen voters welcome British support?)
By contrast, there's a great deal that the EU can do to harm the UK at modest cost, for example,
by objecting whenever they try to carry over existing WTO arrangements made under EU auspices.
Of course, they have not provided any reason why anyone of a left-wing persuasion should
support such a cynical and opportunistic worldview, apart from the fact that the Tories are
evil.
Preventing people from doing evil seems like a powerful motivation to me.
Traditional Communists similarly considered the collapse of the system to be more of a goal
than a worry. Without them, arguments against higher wages always prevail.
It's commonplace for minimum wages to be increased without Communists playing any role.
Yes, there's a definite thread of wanting to make the EU fail from the Brexiters (at the same
time as believing that it's going to fail anyway, which is why we should get out). As you say,
it's not clear what the UK could do to make this happen, especially from the outside pissing in.
Vice versa, whatever "the EU" thinks about wanting the UK to fail, "the EU" can't do much about
it, and the interests of the member states' governments may or may not be the same. On the other
hand, if there's one way to get them to respond with one voice, the UK attempting to damage Germany's
relationship with France might be it.
What voters want from a political party is that the party holds them and their interests
paramount as it goes about its business. When it implements a policy, it makes sure that policy
is implemented in a way that benefits them and their group. They want to be sure that in the
difficult and complex world of politics, the people they have voted for will look after their
interests. The modern Conservative party understand this. So Teresa May puts her target market
– Just managing families – dead centre in her Downing Street speech.
Anybody who thinks that the Conservatives are going to hold paramount the interests of 'just
about managing' families has been played for a sucker.
Corbyn, like Trump, is the consequence – not the cause of the some twenty years of failed policies.
Vastly more popular than Corbyn isn't saying much. Some 20 percent of those who pulled the lever
in November for Trump don't believe he's qualified for his new position.
Henry's essay does a good job, I think, of identifying the general problem Labour faces. As
for the leadership, it's going go be extremely difficult to find a senior Labour PLP big beast
who did not vote for the Iraq war/Blairites, or who did not oppose even the referendum on Brexit,
not to mention Leave. Both of these issues are deal-breakers, it seems, for some of the more active
members still remaining in Labour. Left-leaning Labour voters, especially those in Scotland, are
unhappy with Tory-lite and with the pro-war positions of the Blairites. Labour voters hostile
to London generally (many in Wales), and to the focus on Europe, rather than depressed regions
of Britain, are unlikely to rally around PLP figures who spent much of the run-up to the vote
calling Leave supporters closet racists.
Actions and decisions have consequences and the discussions that seem to distress a few here
and there (not to mention Labour's low-standing in the polls) are both long overdue and essential
if Labour plans on offering a coherent platform on anything. Running on the NHS and education
and even housing was fine for a while, and might still be so. Intervening in Syria, Libya, and
Iraq complicates matters considerably, as does forcing Labour supporters to adhere to either side
of the Remain/Leave case.
A little civility and good will here and there would do a world of good, but I'm aware that
discussion is better suited to Henry's earlier post on science fiction.
"It's obviously in the interests of (hard) Brexiteers that the EU should fail, but it's not clear
what they can do to promote this end, except in the sense that hard Brexit itself will be mutually
damaging."
I don't think this is right. Australia has neighbours that we aren't in a trade and currency
and migration zone with, but I don't think Australia wants these countries to fail economically
or any other way. I don't see why Britain would want the EU to fail - the UK is better off being
neighbours with stable prosperous countries in the EU than a lot of failed states pulling out
of the EU I would think .??
"While most of them have posted about Labour on social media or signed a petition, more than
half have never attended a constituency meeting, and only a small minority have gone door to door
or delivered leaflets."
My observations is that people do more voluntary work of this hands on kind with non-profit
advocacy groups than political parties.
Maybe as the major political parties became more similar, and weren't polarised in the sense
they were in the post-war era to the 80s, people prefer to volunteer for specific causes they
believe in, rather than for major political parties.
It's not 'Britain' that wants the EU to fail; it's the people who were strong supporters of
UK withdrawal from the EU who want that, because to them failure of the EU would provide vindication,
or at least a plausible appearance of it.
you must know why you yourself aren't doing it, and the reasons that apply to you could easily
apply to other people as well.
I wasn't aware that I was supposed to organize the opposition.
There are people making statements daily about how what the Tories are doing is not in
the interest of the vast majority of people; but with what effect?
Seriously, I don't see that. Now there might be a big media conspiracy to drown out these voices,
but I think it's more plausible that the current Labour leadership is just not very good at this
game.
'I don't see why Britain would want the EU to fail - the UK is better off being neighbours with
stable prosperous countries in the EU than a lot of failed states pulling out of the EU I would
think .??'
Yeah just to be absolutely precise (again) I don't think the UK would ever want the EU to fail,
exactly. But if the perception gains ground that the EU is trying to shaft the UK (and remember
it's in the EU's interests to do just that) 'tit for tat' moves can spiral out of control and
might be politically popular.
The joker in the pack is the new Trump Presidency. Almost all American Presidents since the
war have been (either de facto or de jure) pro-EU for reasons of realpolitik. Trump might go either
way but we know he holds grudges. In recent months Angela Merkel chose to give Trump veiled lessons
on human rights, whereas the May administration has done its utmost to ditch all its previous
'opinions' and fawn all over him.Who is Trump likely to like most?
If the UK goes to Trump and begs for help in its economic war with the EU, Trump might listen.
More generally (and a propos of nothing, more or less), it might be 'number magic' but at least
since the late 19th century 'Western' history tends to divide into 30 year blocks (more or less).
You had the 40 year bloc between the Franco-Prussian war and 1914. Then of course the 30 years
of chaos between 1914 and 1945. Then the Trente Glorieuses between 1945 and 1975. Finally we had
the era of the 'two neos': neoliberalism at home, and neoconservatism abroad (AKA the 'let them
eat war' period) between 1976 and 2006.
We now seem to be moving into a new era of Neo-Nationalism, with a concommitant suspicion of
trans-national entities (e.g. the EU), a rise in interest in economic protectionism, and increasing
suspicion of immigration. Needless to say, this is not a Weltanschauung that makes things easy
either for the Left or for Liberals. One might expect both the soft and hard right to thrive,
on the other hand.
"Preventing people from doing evil seems like a powerful motivation to me."
The problem is that merely asserting that the Tories are bad does not necessarily mean that
people will (or even should) automatically assume that you are a viable or less evil alternative.
Indeed, the response of the Labour Party's leading lights after the 2015 election was to minimise
the distance between themselves and the Tories, and their actions during the 'interregnum' between
Miliband and Corbyn demonstrated that they were quite willing to connive with evil in the shape
of Tory welfare policy as they assumed it would appease 'aspirational voters'.
This is the crux of the divide within the Labour Party. Corbyn's political career has concentrated
on defending those at home or abroad who cannot or find it difficult to defend themselves. The
majority of Labour's career politicians argue that these people are politically marginal and defending
their interests will not win elections or achieve political power. To some extent they have a
point, but they fail to acknowledge that their own brand of cynical opportunism has alienated
not just many Labour members but also many potential voters.
The accusations of anti-Semitism and sympathy for dictators made by Corbyn's enemies were so
virulent not just in an attempt to smear his reputation, but also to try and salve their own consciences,
having thrown so many of their moral scruples aside in an increasing futile quest to secure the
support of the mythical median voter.
"Policy is a misleading guide to whether a party is left or right."
You what?
I would have thought that policy, by which I mean actually implemented policies and actions,
with real effects, rather than rhetoric, sound-bites or general bullshit, is precisely how we
determine if a party is left or right.
As for the remainder of that paragraph:
"The current conservative party is running a significant deficit "
As any decent economist, and even George Osborne, will tell you, the deficit is an outcome
of the economy, not under the direct control of the chancellor so, despite the rhetoric, it's
not really meaningful to use as a policy target. Further, IIRC, in the history of modern advanced
economies, I believe they have run deficits in something like 98% of years, so the presence of
a deficit is hardly unusual if you're in government.
" is committed to maintaining the NHS free at the point of use "
This is just a bullshit phrase and, in the context of actual policy, entirely meaningless.
The Tory party has a long term project to privatise large sections of the NHS, and is currently
driving it into the ground as a means to this end. New Labour laid the foundations for this to
happen, so is equally to blame. No self-respecting left party would go anywhere near those policies.
" at the last election touted state spending as the way to improve economic performance."
More sound-bites. Nothing is delivered. Believe it or not, the state spends money with this
aim all of the time. The scope of what new spending is to be delivered is likely to be small.
The other items sound like you think that we are still in the centrist liberal nirvana of Blair/Clegg/Cameron
where we were governed by managerialist technocrats, concerned with "what works", delivering much
the same policy no matter who was elected, only competing with each other on the basis of media
platitudes. But that has caused massive resentment, failed, and is the reason for Brexit and Corbyn.
Precisely because none of those parties were delivering policies that benefited most people.
Indeed, I think that you will find that 600,000 Labour Party members believe that there is,
or rather should be, a big dividing line in policy between themselves and the Tory Party.
"The modern Conservative party understand this. So Teresa May puts her target market – Just
managing families – dead centre in her Downing Street speech."
This reads like it has come directly from Central Office. Do you really believe that the Tories
give two hoots about "just managing families"? Did Hammond reduce Osborne's austerity plan in
any way in the last Budget?
Labour, as a whole, certainly doesn't seem to know who it represents ATM. There are multiple
reasons for that: an irredentist PLP, a media sympathetic to the PLP and determined to trivialise
or ignore Corbyn, and the disorganisation and incoherence of Corbyn and his organisation amongst
them. But deposing Corbyn and returning to neoliberal bullshit won't solve the reasons why he
exists.
Brexit has not happened yet, so it can be whatever you want it to be: that freedom to project
counterfactuals tends to accentuate the centrifugal not the consensual as far as diversity of
opinion is concerned. I actually think Corbyn is unusually wise for a Labour leader to mumble
and fumble a lot at this stage. If it is a personal failing, it is appropriate to circumstances.
The Tories have given themselves a demolition job to do. If your opponent is handling dynamite,
best not to get close and certainly a bad idea to try to snatch it from them.
From the standpoint of Labour constituencies like Corbyn's own in North London, taking The
City down a peg or three would possibly be a means of relief, but if any Brexit negotiating "event"
triggered an exodus of financial sector players the immediate political fallout would be akin
to the sky falling and certainly would cause consternation among Tory donor groups not that supportive
of May's brand. And, failing to invoke Article 50 is likely to be corrosive to the Tories in ways
that benefit Labour as much as the Liberal Democrats only if Labour refrains from expressions
of hostility to Leave voters - a point too subtle for some Blairites, apparently.
There are a lot of different ways for Brexit to sink the Tory ship. May could be forced to
procrastinate on invoking Article 50. Invoking Article 50 by Royal Prerogative could bring on
a constitutional crisis, or at least a dispute over whether Article 50 has been invoked at all
in a way that satisfies the Treaty. Having invoked, the EU may well step in their own dog poop,
with overtly hostile or simply opportunistic gambits, underestimating the costs imo but otherwise
as JQ suggests.
The whole negotiating scheme will almost certainly run aground on sheer complexity and the
unworkable system of decision-making in the European Council. That could result in procrastination
in an endless series of extensions that keep Britain effectively in for years and years. Or, one
side or both could just let the clock run out, with or without formally leaving negotiations.
Meanwhile, at home, in addition to The City, Scotland and Ireland are going to be nervous, possibly
hysterical.
I suppose if you think the EU is fine just as it is, it is easy to overlook the glaring defects
in its design, particularly the imperviousness to reformist, adaptive politics. The EU looks to
go down with the neoliberal ship - hell, it is the neoliberal ship! I suppose the sensible Labour
position on the EU would be a set of reform proposals that would paper over different viewpoints
within the Labour Party, but that is not possible, because EU reform is not possible, which is
why Brexit is the agenda. Corbyn's instincts seem right to me; Labour should not prematurely oppose
Brexit alienating Leave voters nor should it start a love-fest for an EU that might very shortly
make itself very ugly toward Britain.
The Euro certainly and the EU itself may well break before the next General Election in Britain
opening up policy possibilities for Tories or Labour that can scarcely be imagined now. It is
not inconceivable to me that Scandanavia, Netherlands and Switzerland might be persuaded to form
a downsized EU2 sans Euro with Britain and a reluctant Ireland.
In my view, Corbyn as a political personality is something of a stopped clock, but as others
have pointed out, Labour like other center-left neoliberal parties have been squandering all their
credibility in post-modern opportunism. A stopped clock is right more often than one perpetually
fast or slow.
Labour has a chance to remake itself as a membership party while the Tories play with Brexit
c4 (PE-4). Membership support is what distinguishes Labour from the Liberals and transforming
Labour into a new Liberal party is apparently what Blair had in mind. Let Brexit mature as an
issue and let Labour try out the alternative model of an active membership base.
I wasn't aware that I was supposed to organize the opposition.
You're not, of course. But when you wrote 'I have no idea why nobody does it', it wasn't immediately
clear to me that what you meant was 'I have no idea why the Labour leadership doesn't do it' (where
'it' referred back to 'hit them over the head with this', and 'them' referred back to 'the vast
majority of people' and 'this' referred back to 'the fact that the Tories have no idea at all
what they are doing and their policies are not in the interest of the vast majority of people').
There are people making statements daily about how what the Tories are doing is not in the
interest of the vast majority of people; but with what effect?
Seriously, I don't see that.
Perhaps that's a result of where you've chosen to look. Seriously, where have you looked? have
you, for example, looked at the Labour Party's website?
Igor Belanov
If you think Labour is just as evil as the Conservatives, then obviously you have no motivation
to support Labour against the Conservatives.
Is that what you think, that Labour is just as evil as the Conservatives?
Sidenote to J-D @ 8 on parties with religious identification
The disappearance of religious affiliation or identity as an organizing principle in Europe
is interesting. You might recall that the British Tory Party was an Anglican Party, committed
to establishment and the political disability of Catholics and Dissenters, as defining elements
of their credo. Despite the extreme decline in religious observance in Britain, I imagine there
remain strong traces of religious identity in British party identification patterns.
Elsewhere in Europe, the Greek Orthodox Church plays a political role in Greece and Cyprus,
though the current SYRIZA government is somewhat anti-clerical. Anti-clerical doctrines have been
revived in France by tensions with Muslims.
"... The decision by the Obama administration to push ahead with the TPP may well have cost Hillary Clinton the presidency ..."
"... No doubt. But the Wall St. Dems are going to keep blaming Bernie Bros and the Russians. And they'll keep helping themselves to that sweet corporate payola. ..."
"... Talk about pushing ahead with TPP, this piece is jaw dropping. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-wallach/tpp-how-obama-traded-away_b_13872926.html?section=us_politics ..."
"... I see it as karma. TPP may have been the worst thing ever tried by a US President, to date. I didn't realize that so many people understood it though, at least I didn't get that impression in central California. ..."
"... And not just Hillary Clinton. The whole Democratic party. Obama has been a disaster for Democrats. There is a piece in the WAPO by Matt Stoller today discussing just this issue. ..."
"... Excellent point. Basically will corporations pass along increased costs to consumers? ..."
"... Take a look at what happened when the price of oil spiked. Corporations that had healthy profit margins in general didn't pass on to consumers their increased costs when oil was part of their COGS (cost of good sold). Though in contrast, airlines did. At the time Airlines had low profit margins. But I suspect their pricing power is less elastic regardless – their 10Ks show their entire business model is metric'd on the price of fuel. ..."
"... Offshoring isn't about lower consumer goods prices. The cost of labor in a mass-produced product is small, often trivial. That's what mass production is designed to do. ..."
"... The addiction to foreign trade is for the money in it. The importer doubles his money, the wholesaler doubles his money, the distributor doubles his money and the retailer gets what he can. The Chinese manufacturer is satisfied but most of the street cost goes to the intermediaries. ..."
"... In this case, "sovereignty" means the power to regulate commerce. Insofar as the signatories are democracy, it also means democracy – the ability to carry out the decisions of representative bodies. ..."
"... Countries without an internationally traded currency will not willingly sign up for specious 'trade in money' sections. Galbraith the Younger wrote a famous paper on the subject that clearly established there is no such thing as a trade in money. Every way I look at it, its a rip-off, facilitated by a useful idiot in the country's central bank. ..."
"... ISDS is nothing more than a scheme to enable direct foreign attacks on the legislative process itself – even more direct and invasive than influencing elections by hacking, propaganda or whatever ..."
By Jomo Kwame Sundaram, former UN Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development. Originally
published at Inter Press Service and cross
posted from
Triple Crisis
President-elect Donald Trump has promised that he will take the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership
Agreement (TPPA) on the first day of his presidency. The TPP may now be dead, thanks to Trump and
opposition by all major US presidential candidates. With its imminent demise almost certain, it is
important to draw on some lessons before it is buried.
Fraudulent Free Trade Agreement
The TPP is fraudulent as a free trade agreement, offering very little in terms of additional growth
due to trade liberalization, contrary to media hype. To be sure, the TPP had little to do with trade.
The US already has free trade agreements, of the bilateral or regional variety, with six of the 11
other countries in the pact. All twelve members also belong to the World Trade Organization (WTO)
which concluded the single largest trade agreement ever, more than two decades ago in Marrakech –
contrary to the TPPA's claim to that status. Trade barriers with the remaining five countries were
already very low in most cases, so there is little room left for further trade liberalization in
the TPPA, except in the case of Vietnam, owing to the war until 1975 and its legacy of punitive legislation.
The most convenient computable general equilibrium (CGE) trade model used for trade projections
makes unrealistic assumptions, including those about the consequences of trade liberalization. For
instance, such trade modelling exercises typically presume full employment as well as unchanging
trade and fiscal balances. Our colleagues' more realistic macroeconomic modelling suggested that
almost 800,000 jobs would be lost over a decade after implementation, with almost half a million
from the US alone. There would also be downward pressure on wages, in turn exacerbating inequalities
at the national level.
Already, many US manufacturing jobs have been lost to US corporations' automation and relocation
abroad. Thus, while most politically influential US corporations would do well from the TPP due to
strengthened intellectual property rights (IPRs) and investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms,
US workers would generally not. It is now generally believed these outcomes contributed to the backlash
against such globalization in the votes for Brexit and Trump.
Non-Trade Measures
According to the Peterson Institute of International Economics (PIIE), the US think-tank known
for cheerleading economic liberalization and globalization, the purported TPPA gains would mainly
come from additional investments, especially foreign direct investments, due to enhanced investor
rights. However, these claims have been disputed by most other analysts, including two US government
agencies, i.e., the US Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service (ERS) and the US International
Trade Commission (ITC).
Much of the additional value of trade would come from 'non-trade issues'. Strengthening intellectual
property (IP) monopolies, typically held by powerful transnational corporations, would raise the
value of trade through higher trading prices, not more goods and services. Thus, strengthened IPRs
leading to higher prices for medicines are of particular concern.
The TPP would reinforce and extend patents, copyrights and related intellectual property protections.
Such protectionism raises the price of protected items, such as pharmaceutical drugs. In a 2015 case,
Martin Shkreli raised the price of a drug he had bought the rights to by 6000% from USD12.50 to USD750!
As there is no US law against such 'price-gouging', the US Attorney General could only prosecute
him for allegedly running a Ponzi scheme.
"Medecins Sans Frontieres" warned that the agreement would go down in history as the worst "cause
of needless suffering and death" in developing countries. In fact, contrary to the claim that stronger
IPRs would enhance research and development, there has been no evidence of increased research or
new medicines in recent decades for this reason.
Corporate-Friendly
Foreign direct investment (FDI) is also supposed to go up thanks to the TPPA's ISDS provisions.
For instance, foreign companies would be able to sue TPP governments for ostensible loss of profits,
including potential future profits, due to changes in national regulation or policies even if in
the national or public interest.
ISDS would be enforced through ostensibly independent tribunals. This extrajudicial system would
supercede national laws and judiciaries, with secret rulings not bound by precedent or subject to
appeal.
Thus, rather than trade promotion, the main purpose of the TPPA has been to internationally promote
more corporate-friendly rules under US leadership. The 6350 page deal was negotiated by various working
groups where representatives of major, mainly US corporations were able to drive the agenda and advance
their interests. The final push to seek congressional support for the TPPA despite strong opposition
from the major presidential candidates made clear that the main US rationale and motive were geo-political,
to minimize China's growing influence.
The decision by the Obama administration to push ahead with the TPP may well have cost Hillary
Clinton the presidency as she came across as insincere in belatedly opposing the agreement which
she had previously praised and advocated. Trade was a major issue in swing states like Ohio, Michigan
and Pennsylvania, where concerned voters overwhelmingly opted for Trump.
The problem now is that while the Obama administration undermined trade multilateralism by its
unwillingness to honour the compromise which initiated the Doha Development Round, Trump's preference
for bilateral agreements benefiting the US is unlikely to provide the boost to multilateralism so
badly needed now. Unless the US and the EU embrace the spirit of compromise which started this round
of trade negotiations, the WTO and multilateralism more generally may never recover from the setbacks
of the last decade and a half.
The decision by the Obama administration to push ahead with the TPP may well have cost
Hillary Clinton the presidency
No doubt. But the Wall St. Dems are going to keep blaming Bernie Bros and the Russians. And
they'll keep helping themselves to that sweet corporate payola.
I see it as karma. TPP may have been the worst thing ever tried by a US President, to date.
I didn't realize that so many people understood it though, at least I didn't get that impression
in central California.
And not just Hillary Clinton. The whole Democratic party. Obama has been a disaster for
Democrats. There is a piece in the
WAPO by Matt Stoller today discussing just this issue.
Not knowing what he does not know may be beneficial. To be freed from the straitjacket of political
sophistry that has led to previous disasters for American workers is, perhaps, a positive.
I'd be willing to pay twice as much for Chinese junk as I do now.
Corporations, Hollywood, Big Pharma and Silicon Valley will be hurt? Tough luck, they are there
to make profits and are no friend of American workers. Might as well say it, because of their
behavior, they are the enemy of progress for workers.
Short version:
Trump has done more for American workers and has obtained more net benefit out of the car companies,
before he's even sworn in than the Clintons did in ten collective years of 'public service'.
>I'd be willing to pay twice as much for Chinese junk as I do now.
And I don't think you would even have to every time you can manage to look at what it costs*
to make something in China instead of the USA, and compare it to the retail price, you get a real
"whoa".** The price is just enough less to drive the US manufacturer themselves out of business,
most of the money *does* stay in the US but it goes to the top 0.1%.
This is more about control of the proles than economics, sometimes I think.
*like anybody can totally figure it out given the Chinese state's involvement in everything,
but we can make decent guesses
**I know that American mfg cost is generally 1/2 of retail price and sometimes as low as 1/3.
I'm talking about 1/10 to 1/20th for Chinese goods.
Excellent point. Basically will corporations pass along increased costs to consumers?
Take a look at what happened when the price of oil spiked. Corporations that had healthy
profit margins in general didn't pass on to consumers their increased costs when oil was part
of their COGS (cost of good sold). Though in contrast, airlines did. At the time Airlines had
low profit margins. But I suspect their pricing power is less elastic regardless – their 10Ks
show their entire business model is metric'd on the price of fuel.
Offshoring isn't about lower consumer goods prices. The cost of labor in a mass-produced
product is small, often trivial. That's what mass production is designed to do.
It's more about dropping more of the top line to the bottom line. Along with the fake aristo
disdain for wage earners that seems to be a requirement for corporate managers.
That 35% tariff sure equals a lot of profits lost on cars made in Mexico. Therefore, they will
be made in America. Due to the competitive nature of auto sales, the lack of interest in teenagers
in buying cars, I think Detroit will not raise prices to match the labor cost difference. Also,
there will be even less demand for U.S. made cars as most of the Mexican factories will possibly
remain open for the Latin American market, which means even fewer exports of American made cars.
A scarcity of markets means lower prices.
The addiction to foreign trade is for the money in it. The importer doubles his money,
the wholesaler doubles his money, the distributor doubles his money and the retailer gets what
he can. The Chinese manufacturer is satisfied but most of the street cost goes to the intermediaries.
The Chinese governments interest for many years was simply receiving the foreign money payments
and paying out the exchange in RMB.
Trump hasn't done a thing for American workers. Indiana taxpayers (American workers) are on
the hook for Carrier taking on roughly 700 jobs of the 2000 that Trump said he would "save". We
don't even know the deep details of that "deal". If anyone thinks that Carrier signed off on that
deal without the permission of Carrier's parent, United Technologies (a pure defense firm), I
have a bridge to sell them. What future "deal" did the American taxpayer (worker) get subjected
to when this "deal" was made behind closed doors to a defense contractor whose *only* means of
revenue is from the American taxpayer (worker)?
What about the citizens (workers) of Indiana who are going to carry the financial and social
burden of the 1300 Carrier workers that Trump promised (early on in his campaign) whose jobs he
would save. The carrier deal, in fact, was virtually the same deal that Pence had put on the table
a year ago.
United Technologies has *three* air conditioning brands; their Mexican lines are still open,
and the 700 jobs that Trump said he "saved" are not committed to any kind of permanent status
in the USA. Again, the Mexican manufacturing lines remain open, operating, and ready to accept
those jobs when Carrier thinks it's appropriate.
As for the auto companies? Please. Trump did NOTHING that wasn't already planned, or that wasn't
already inspired by market forces and in the works.
FORD on the cancelled Mexican plant:
http://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2017/01/04/we-didnt-cut-a-deal-with-trump-ford-on-canceled-mexican-plant
"'To be clear, Ford is still moving its production of small vehicles to Mexico. The Ford Focus
will still be produced in Mexico, just at an existing Mexican plant instead of the canceled plant.
"[T]he reason we are canceling our plant in Mexico, the main reason, is because we are seeing
a decline in demand for small vehicles here in North America.."
Trump is a fraud and an overt liar; he's a pure clinical narcissist who doesn't work for anyone
but his frail ego – ever seeking out his next source of narcissistic supply – a supply he has
been able to control from his early days from the happy accident of inherited wealth – going on
from there to use his inheritance to enrich himself at the expense of others.
Yes, American workers have been screwed over, but they have been screwed over mostly by Plutocrats
who have owned both parties for decades. Ironically (in the face of all the anti-immigration talk),
the vast majority of those Plutocrats have been *white, male* CEOs.
Anyone looking at Trump's early appointments and Cabinet nominees – not to mentioned his unhinged
comments and tweets – who is not scared stiff by the presence of this goon in the White House
– is suffering from a serious case of confirmation bias.
Why would you be willing to pay twice as much for Chinese junk? Especially if it were still
junk? If I were going to pay twice as much for something, I would rather that something be American
not-junk rather than Chinese junk.
Given the reality that the most modern manufacturing capacity in the world is Chinese when
it comes to consumer durables, it is racist to assume that "American" products are automatically
better. The disinvestment in American manufacturing would take decades to replace.
last night listening to some folks opine re starbucks as a ubiquitous bad, the defense was
they generally treat their employees ok, better than mcdonalds certainly, homeless people are
given a little space before they get cleared out after a few hours if they are civil, which seemed
to make the "striving to be good consumers, attempting to be socially responsible" lean towards
well maybe they guessed it might be ok to go there. They all have i phones, however, and I didn't
say it as I like my job, but was thinking "how many suicide nets does starbucks have in their
global domain?" To call that racist makes me wonder about your comment, maybe if you had said
is it racist, but no further, and in direct relation to that, china got manufacturing
because suicide nets are a solution for apple that would not go over well around here. Maybe that's
why they produce there, and not because the chinese are better at manufacturing?
You can only play the race card but so many times before you wear it out. And it is pretty
thin.
I assume that American-made Science Diet dog food won't have poison in it the way I have to
assume Chinese dog food may have. I assume that American-made sheet rock won't offgas sulfur dioxide
gas which turns into sulfuric acid in moist air ( as in Florida), and destroys household appliances
in a year or less. The way some Chinese high-sulfur sheetrock did at least once in Florida. I
assume an American-made Oakland-Bay-Bridge at twice the price would not now be already having
the decay and bad-build problems which the Cheap China Crap Construction bridge is already having.
Shall I go on?
You sound like a Free Trade Treason hasbarist for China. In fact, I think you are.
You still want to call me racist? Well . . . kiss me, I'm deplorable.
>Trump's plan to enter into bi-lateral trade deals (after supposedly tearing up extant pacts)
Well we never know what the frell he is actually going to do, sure can't judge by what he says.
If he did start with and modifies "extant pacts", that would actually make a lot of sense
and maybe even go decently well at a more-than-glacial speed.
Of course – I hate when people speculate, and especially when they speculate that somebody
is going to do literally the opposite of what they said they were going to do, yet here I am doing
exactly that. My only excuse is that his personality is not to get that deep into anything, so
it just seems more likely that he would simply focus on whatever specific aspect of a given treatry
is problematical, wack a bit at that (for better or worse), and move on.
Bi-lateral trade deals can focus on relatively narrow trade areas and in this case those needn't
so much time to get negotiated and passed. I don't know if that is Trump's strategy.
This is a great summary of the recent fate of the TPP and the reasons for it. It may not be
dead yet – even though it has been unceremoniously tossed on the cart of the dead (monty python).
But the thinking behind it is terminal. Why no one ever discussed the military aspect of the TPP
can be attributed to its strict secrecy. It was obvious to lots of people that the TPP was NATO
for the Pacific and China was the target, and equally obvious that it was bad policy from any
perspective. Bilateral trade will survive this debacle and world trade will continue – but trade
will not be such a military tool, hopefully. It will be a good thing.
It was not obvious to me. It is still not obvious to me. "China" was the excuse advanced for
TPP late in the day when the Tradesters discovered that popular sentiment was turning against
the Corporate Globalonial Plantationist purpose of the TPP, and hence against the TPP itself.
First, she is much closer to correct than you re the purpose of TPP. Secondly, why would you
argue that the 'Tradesters' had to resort to 'China' in order to attempt to sell their putrid
deal if 'China' was not viewed by said 'Tradesters' as a word loaded with a host of negative associations,
most of which are based on typical US foreign policy jingoistic nonsense rooted in what is certainly
a classic case of US/Western supremacist nonsense, if not the more obvious, overt racism now making
a rather spectacular comeback?
Lesson learned is to avoid electing corrupt candidates that call it a gold standard right
away you know who is receiving, and who is paying, the gold.
And then there are sitting elected officials pushing the crap with all their might, anticipating
their gold shares maturing as soon as they leave office
Trade was a major issue in swing states like Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where concerned
voters overwhelmingly opted for Trump.
Bravo! "Concerned voters" is a much better descriptor than "deplorables", "working class whites"
or even, in this case, "working class voters" as there were also sovereignty issues.
The wording of your comment is rather ambiguous – are you stating that "statistics show" that
"sexism played a big role" in the swing states? Where do you situate yourself relative to Lambert's
discussion of the subject?
The sexism card is wearing about as thin as the racism card is wearing. Clinton lost support
in the Midwest when she revealed herself to be a Free Trade Traitor against America by stating
that she would put her husband, NAFTA Bill, in charge of the economic recovery when she got elected.
That expression of support for anti-American Trade Treason guaranteed her loss right there.
Statistics show . . . that figures lie when liars figure.
" trade agreements take a long time to negotiate, typically because they also include services,
and those take way longer to sort out than the physical goods side."
My first reaction: good. Services shouldn't be in trade pacts. And if they take a long time to
get done, all the better. The fetish for "trade pacts" is mostly destructive.
Fundamentally: they're superfluous. People have always traded, mostly without "pacts." When
it comes to "absolute advantage," literally trading apples for oranges, everybody really does
benefit and barriers melt away. Under modern conditions. "comparative advantage" is a falsehood,
as a close look at the conditions Ricardo set for it will show. It requires that labor and capital
don't move at all freely between countries – true in his day, but certainly not in ours. Bizarrely,
his theory is being used, dishonestly, to promote the destructive free movement of capital, and
that's what "services" mostly means.
The point that trade agreements take a long time is probably true, as well as not an objection;
but it isn't an argument for multilateral agreements like the TPP; it's an argument for the WTO,
if it had been done right. The plan was to set up an overarching, worldwide structure for trade.
But it should have been done under the UN, and it shouldn't include attacks on sovereignty like
the tribunals. The real reason for other agreements is that the requirement for consensus in the
WTO put up a dead end sign: thus far, and no farther. So the "Washington Consensus" tried for
work arounds. But the consensus model makes sense, and the rules should be universal.
The real gist of Ricardo is that trade is NOT an unmitigated good. It easily becomes more or
less subtle forms of imperialism. Furthermore, low trade barriers make sense. Diversity depends
on barriers. They encourage a modicum of self-reliance and provide firewalls so that a financial
collapse in one country doesn't automatically go world-wide. We probably had it right in the 50s
and 60s, when the economy was far healthier. Granted, there were still a lot of actual colonies
then, so it's hard to tell how that translates to modern conditions.
I don't think I'm saying anything that isn't very familiar here. We should beware of capitalist
ideologies.
The fetish for Multilaterialism is also destructive. Multilateralism is just "french" for Corporate
Globalonial Plantationist trade pacts designed to exterminate sovereignty for dozens of countries
at a time.
" Our colleagues' more realistic macroeconomic modelling suggested that almost 800,000 jobs
would be lost over a decade after implementation, with almost half a million from the US alone.
There would also be downward pressure on wages, in turn exacerbating inequalities at the national
level."
Yes, that's what these "trade agreements" are FOR. You don't think the PTB take bullshit economics
seriously, do you?
As an aside, I never particularly liked the sovereignty argument against TPP (which I note
is omitted from this article) because I felt it painted with an overly broad brush. More specifically,
I would argue that it can sometimes be a good thing if nation-states collectively agree to be
bound by rules that supersede national legislation. The Geneva Convention is one example.
TPP would have been bad not because it compromised national sovereignty, but because of the
reasons for which it did so. Overriding national legislation to protect human rights is one thing.
Overriding it to grant multinational corporations more power over workers, consumers and governments
is quite another.
"I would argue that it can sometimes be a good thing if nation-states collectively agree to
be bound by rules that supersede national legislation. The Geneva Convention is one example."
In this case, "sovereignty" means the power to regulate commerce. Insofar as the signatories
are democracy, it also means democracy – the ability to carry out the decisions of representative
bodies.
The Pacific Rim countries might approve "needless suffering and death" if it keeps them in
the west's good books.
Countries without an internationally traded currency will not willingly sign up for specious
'trade in money' sections. Galbraith the Younger wrote a famous paper on the subject that clearly
established there is no such thing as a trade in money. Every way I look at it, its a rip-off,
facilitated by a useful idiot in the country's central bank.
These agreements, whether global or bilateral, are an invitation to central bankers to become
traitors to their own country; an attempt to take over a nation without firing a shot, a blast
from a future that permits only trade blocks and no countries.
I am convinced what the world really wants is a debate on the shape of world government. I
do not agree that the chap with the most printed money calls the shots. We are better than that.
ISDS is nothing more than a scheme to enable direct foreign attacks on the legislative
process itself – even more direct and invasive than influencing elections by hacking, propaganda
or whatever . Imagine if Vladimir Putin were to accomplish a legislative objective in the
U.S. simply by launching an ISDS extortion suit via a Russian state owned enterprise and a willing
ISDS tribunal outside the U.S. court system and not at all accountable to U.S. interests. What
would the pro TPP corporate Dems have to say then?
The document reads like "the gang that couldn't shoot straight." It's a joke.
Notable quotes:
"... People who already dislike Trump will believe the allegations while people who like Trump will hate the press and intelligence agencies (?) even more for attacking him unfairly in their minds. ..."
"... People are making jokes about it, the puns are just too easy, but nobody seems to actually believe it. ..."
"... People don't talk about it like "did you hear trump did X" "oh yea" "yea there was a story". Its like "there was a very dubious story that trump did x" "". The way people talk about a Saturday Night Live sketch about Trump. ..."
"... "This is a huge embarrassment to Democrats, the mainstream media and those intelligence officials who have all been piling on Trump. It hurts their credibility, which can ill afford to take yet another hit." ..."
"... It's just partisan warfare. ..."
"... "Today Clapper denounced media leaks..." Is that the same Clapper who lied to Congress about how the NSA was spying on law-abiding citizens en mass? Yeah he's trustworthy. ..."
"... CNN was the first to report what Buzzfeed revealed. Trump was mad at them. Who else? ..."
"... Glenn Greenwald explains the whole vendetta against Trump based on sham data. https://theintercept.com/2017/01/11/the-deep-state-goes-to-war-with-president-elect-using-unverified-claims-as-dems-cheer/ ..."
"... With release of the buzz feed data, they overplayed their hand, destroyed their narrative, embarrassed themselves, and ultimately strengthened Trump. ..."
"... "they damn well better have the goods...and the goods need to PO the deplorables." nothing will change their minds. They just see it as cynical attacks on their man. ..."
"... The long knives will come out during the next recession ..."
"... This reminds me of how the Bush campaign got Dan Rather to release some bogus information about Bush43 as a draft dodger. ..."
"... In that case, I think the narrative of Bush as a draft dodger was correct, but its usefulness for Democrats got destroyed the moment Rather's source was revealed as bogus. ..."
"... In this case, Hillary's assertions of Trump as a Putin stooge have been highly suspect, though she made a big deal of them in her campaign. Now that narrative has been crippled by the buzz feed overreach. ..."
"... Exactly! "Democrats don't want to do a post-mortem about why they lost. It may prove that Bernie Sanders was right. They'd rather change the subject," which is where the 'everything is Putin's fault' narrative comes in. ..."
"... Reminds me of the 'everything is Republicans fault' narrative that Democrats used to justify Obama's failure to jail bankers, his austerity, and his proposals to cut Social Security. ..."
"... Democrats are masters of denial and victimization...just like Republicans. It's all very sick. ..."
"... There is, and always was, a better Putin narrative. Trump is an FSB mole is both too far and too specific. ..."
"... the election should never been about Putin. It should have been about swing state voters' economic anxieties, something that Hillary could never wrap here head around. ..."
"... Now it looks like the Trump-Putin narrative is blowing up in their faces---purveyors of fake news should not accuse others of purveying fake news. ..."
The thing about Trump is that people can imagine he's the kind of guy who would enjoy being urinated
on by Russian prostitutes, even if the allegations are untrue. He is so into gold and into women.
People who already dislike Trump will believe the allegations while people who like Trump
will hate the press and intelligence agencies (?) even more for attacking him unfairly in their
minds.
I know a lot of people who dislike Trump, and none of them seem to believe the buzzfeed story.
People are making jokes about it, the puns are just too easy, but nobody seems to actually believe
it.
People don't talk about it like "did you hear trump did X" "oh yea" "yea there was a story".
Its like "there was a very dubious story that trump did x" "". The way people talk about a Saturday
Night Live sketch about Trump.
"This is a huge embarrassment to Democrats, the mainstream media and those intelligence officials
who have all been piling on Trump. It hurts their credibility, which can ill afford to take yet
another hit."
Kind of like Comey was a huge embarrassment to Republicans? I don't think so. It's just
partisan warfare.
"Today Clapper denounced media leaks..." Is that the same Clapper who lied to Congress about
how the NSA was spying on law-abiding citizens en mass? Yeah he's trustworthy.
"This is a huge embarrassment to Democrats, the mainstream media and those intelligence officials
who have all been piling on Trump. It hurts their credibility, which can ill afford to take yet
another hit."
CNN was the first to report what Buzzfeed revealed. Trump was mad at them. Who else?
Like Trump doesn't use "sham data" and innuendo. Who cares? Poetic justice. Trump is just going
to waste his time pursuing vendettas against those who sullied his good name.
Maybe that drama will "crowd out" some of his plans to enact Paul Ryan's agenda. Maybe it will
cause a backlash among those Americans interested in a free press and democratic norms.
Like I said some of your ideas are good, but they are tarnished by some of the really stupid
things you say by association.
We already know that Trump has a Teflon shield. If the establishment is going to get him, they
damn well better have the goods...and the goods need to PO the deplorables. Trumped up charges
won't cut it.
Should-Read: Josh Marshall: What You Didn't See: "What may be the most significant news of
the day barely made a ripple...
...Donald Trump, ten days from becoming President, has an approval rating of 37%. Most presidents
seldom get so low. Some never do. For ten days away from inauguration it's totally unprecedented....
Each of the last three presidents had approval ratings of at least 65% during their presidential
transitions.... Curiously absent from press coverage [has been that] Trump, his agenda and his
party are deeply unpopular... [and have] gotten steadily more unpopular over the last four weeks..."
"they damn well better have the goods...and the goods need to PO the deplorables." nothing
will change their minds. They just see it as cynical attacks on their man.
The long knives will come out during the next recession, when Trump will have proven
his incompetence. Pretense for impeachment is unknowable, but it better be good!
This reminds me of how the Bush campaign got Dan Rather to release some bogus information
about Bush43 as a draft dodger.
In that case, I think the narrative of Bush as a draft dodger was correct, but its usefulness
for Democrats got destroyed the moment Rather's source was revealed as bogus.
In this case, Hillary's assertions of Trump as a Putin stooge have been highly suspect,
though she made a big deal of them in her campaign. Now that narrative has been crippled by the
buzz feed overreach.
Democrats should have focused on voters' economic concerns, not the Trump-Putin narrative.
There was an interesting movie about the Rather case staring Robert Redford and Cate Blanchette.
Trump is engaging in the same thuggish behavior as Republicans used against Rather and his producer
in that case. Or course CBS folded because they had regulatory changes about affiliate ownership
before the Bush administration.
We can expect the same cowardice from our corporate media regarding the Trump administration.
It would be interesting to know if Trump had something to do with release of the buzz feed report.
It would make Trump smarter than I think he really is. My understanding is that John McCain, who
hates Trump, was behind circulation of the report before buzz feed released it.
"My understanding is that John McCain, who hates Trump, was behind circulation of the report before
buzz feed released it." A lot of people knew about it. The eight leading congress people on the
intelligence committees knew about it. David Corn reported about it in October in Mother Jones.
"Democrats should have focused on voters' economic concerns, not the Trump-Putin narrative."
I'll agree with you on this. Obama went more positive in 2008 and 2012 than Hillary did in
2016 and was successful at the polls. Negative campaigning works but seems like too much of it
depresses turnout.
Part of it is that establishment Democrats don't want to do a post-mortem about why they lost.
It may prove that Bernie Sanders was right. They'd rather change the subject.
Exactly! "Democrats don't want to do a post-mortem about why they lost. It may prove that
Bernie Sanders was right. They'd rather change the subject," which is where the 'everything is
Putin's fault' narrative comes in.
Reminds me of the 'everything is Republicans fault' narrative that Democrats used to justify
Obama's failure to jail bankers, his austerity, and his proposals to cut Social Security.
Democrats are masters of denial and victimization...just like Republicans. It's all very
sick.
There is, and always was, a better Putin narrative. Trump is an FSB mole is both too far and
too specific.
The Republican's policy ideas are awful. Trump will be a terrible president. Putin wants us
weak, and the Republican party will deliver just as it did during the Bush presidency.
We will make little progress on our important problems, and make massive blunders that cost
us for decades.
Global warming will continue to improve the Russian Climate. Progress on renewable energy will
be slowed, improving the market for Russian oil and gas. The US will worsen its healthcare problems.
The US will exacerbate its inequality. The toxic republican attitude toward the institutions of
democracy will come from all three branches of the federal government, and most state governments.
Putin doesn't like Hillary. At the time, she said Putin's election was rigged. And they were pushing
Russia on all fronts. Trump is an isolationist who doesn't care about human rights or freedom
of the press.
Agreed. There were probably better Putin narratives, and the election should never been about
Putin. It should have been about swing state voters' economic anxieties, something that Hillary
could never wrap here head around.
Now it looks like the Trump-Putin narrative is blowing up in their faces---purveyors of
fake news should not accuse others of purveying fake news.
This Paul Wood. is very funny "I understand the CIA believes it is credible..." The document reads like "the gang that couldn't shoot straight." It's a joke. But
despite this Paul wood provided a
good (albeit very dirty) hatchet job. Looks like neocons declared the open war on Trump. And as
they are just a flavor of Trotskyites they are are capable of everything as they preach " the end justifies
the means"... with their global neoliberal revolution under threat they can do as low as gangsters.
Fake evidence is OK form in the best the "end justified the means" way.
Notable quotes:
"... Claims about a Russian blackmail tape were made in one of a series of reports written by a former British intelligence agent, understood to be Christopher Steele ..."
"... As a member of MI6, he had been posted to the UK's embassy in Moscow and now runs a consultancy giving advice on doing business in Russia. He spoke to a number of his old contacts in the FSB, the successor to the KGB, paying some of them for information. ..."
"... Mr Trump's supporters say this is a politically motivated attack. The president-elect himself, outraged, tweeted this morning: "Are we living in Nazi Germany?" ..."
"... He said the memo was written by "sick people [who] put that crap together". ..."
"... The opposition research firm that commissioned the report had worked first for an anti-Trump superpac - political action committee - during the Republican primaries. ..."
"... Then during the general election, it was funded by an anonymous Democratic Party supporter. ..."
"... At his news conference, Mr Trump said he warned his staff when they travelled: "Be very careful, because in your hotel rooms and no matter where you go you're going to probably have cameras." ..."
"Trump 'compromising' claims: How and why did we get here?"
By Paul Wood...BBC News...Washington...1-12-2017...47 minutes ago
"Donald Trump has described as "fake news" allegations published in some media that his election
team colluded with Russia - and that Russia held compromising material about his private life.
The BBC's Paul Wood saw the allegations before the election, and reports on the fallout now they
have come to light.
The significance of these allegations is that, if true, the president-elect of the United States
would be vulnerable to blackmail by the Russians.
I understand the CIA believes it is credible that the Kremlin has such kompromat - or compromising
material - on the next US commander in chief. At the same time a joint taskforce, which includes
the CIA and the FBI, has been investigating allegations that the Russians may have sent money
to Mr Trump's organisation or his election campaign.
Claims about a Russian blackmail tape were made in one of a series of reports written by
a former British intelligence agent, understood to be Christopher Steele.
As a member of MI6, he had been posted to the UK's embassy in Moscow and now runs a consultancy
giving advice on doing business in Russia. He spoke to a number of his old contacts in the FSB,
the successor to the KGB, paying some of them for information.
They told him that Mr Trump had been filmed with a group of prostitutes in the presidential
suite of Moscow's Ritz-Carlton hotel. I know this because the Washington political research company
that commissioned his report showed it to me during the final week of the election campaign.
The BBC decided not to use it then, for the very good reason that without seeing the tape -
if it exists - we could not know if the claims were true. The detail of the allegations were certainly
lurid. The entire series of reports has now been posted by BuzzFeed.
[Image of Trump's Tweet]
Mr Trump's supporters say this is a politically motivated attack. The president-elect himself,
outraged, tweeted this morning: "Are we living in Nazi Germany?" Later, at his much-awaited
news conference, he was unrestrained. "A thing like that should have never been written," he said,
"and certainly should never have been released."
He said the memo was written by "sick people [who] put that crap together".
The opposition research firm that commissioned the report had worked first for an anti-Trump
superpac - political action committee - during the Republican primaries.
Then during the general election, it was funded by an anonymous Democratic Party supporter.
But these are not political hacks - their usual line of work is country analysis and commercial
risk assessment, similar to the former MI6 agent's consultancy. He, apparently, gave his dossier
to the FBI against the firm's advice.
[Photo of Trump in Moscow, 2013 w/beauty contestants]
And the former MI6 agent is not the only source for the claim about Russian kompromat on the
president-elect. Back in August, a retired spy told me he had been informed of its existence by
"the head of an East European intelligence agency".
Later, I used an intermediary to pass some questions to active duty CIA officers dealing with
the case file - they would not speak to me directly. I got a message back that there was "more
than one tape", "audio and video", on "more than one date", in "more than one place" - in the
Ritz-Carlton in Moscow and also in St Petersburg - and that the material was "of a sexual nature".
'Be very careful'
The claims of Russian kompromat on Mr Trump were "credible", the CIA believed. That is why
- according to the New York Times and Washington Post - these claims ended up on President Barack
Obama's desk last week, a briefing document also given to Congressional leaders and to Mr Trump
himself.
Mr Trump did visit Moscow in November 2013, the date the main tape is supposed to have been
made. There is TV footage of him at the Miss Universe contest. Any visitor to a grand hotel in
Moscow would be wise to assume that their room comes equipped with hidden cameras and microphones
as well as a mini-bar.
At his news conference, Mr Trump said he warned his staff when they travelled: "Be very
careful, because in your hotel rooms and no matter where you go you're going to probably have
cameras." So the Russian security services have made obtaining kompromat an art form.
One Russian specialist told me that Vladimir Putin himself sometimes says there is kompromat
on him - though perhaps he is joking. The specialist went on to tell me that FSB officers are
prone to boasting about having tapes on public figures, and to be careful of any statements they
might make.
A former CIA officer told me he had spoken by phone to a serving FSB officer who talked about
the tapes. He concluded: "It's hokey as hell."
Mr Trump and his supporters are right to point out that these are unsubstantiated allegations.
But it is not just sex, it is money too. The former MI6 agent's report detailed alleged attempts
by the Kremlin to offer Mr Trump lucrative "sweetheart deals" in Russia that would buy his loyalty.
Mr Trump turned these down, and indeed has done little real business in Russia. But a joint
intelligence and law enforcement taskforce has been looking at allegations that the Kremlin paid
money to his campaign through his associates.
Legal applications
On 15 October, the US secret intelligence court issued a warrant to investigate two Russian
banks. This news was given to me by several sources and corroborated by someone I will identify
only as a senior member of the US intelligence community. He would never volunteer anything -
giving up classified information would be illegal - but he would confirm or deny what I had heard
from other sources.
"I'm going to write a story that says " I would say. "I don't have a problem with that," he
would reply, if my information was accurate. He confirmed the sequence of events below.
Last April, the CIA director was shown intelligence that worried him. It was - allegedly -
a tape recording of a conversation about money from the Kremlin going into the US presidential
campaign.
It was passed to the US by an intelligence agency of one of the Baltic States. The CIA cannot
act domestically against American citizens so a joint counter-intelligence taskforce was created.
The taskforce included six agencies or departments of government. Dealing with the domestic,
US, side of the inquiry, were the FBI, the Department of the Treasury, and the Department of Justice.
For the foreign and intelligence aspects of the investigation, there were another three agencies:
the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Agency,
responsible for electronic spying.
Lawyers from the National Security Division in the Department of Justice then drew up an application.
They took it to the secret US court that deals with intelligence, the Fisa court, named after
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They wanted permission to intercept the electronic
records from two Russian banks.
Their first application, in June, was rejected outright by the judge. They returned with a
more narrowly drawn order in July and were rejected again. Finally, before a new judge, the order
was granted, on 15 October, three weeks before election day.
Neither Mr Trump nor his associates are named in the Fisa order, which would only cover foreign
citizens or foreign entities - in this case the Russian banks. But ultimately, the investigation
is looking for transfers of money from Russia to the United States, each one, if proved, a felony
offence.
A lawyer- outside the Department of Justice but familiar with the case - told me that three
of Mr Trump's associates were the subject of the inquiry. "But it's clear this is about Trump,"
he said.
I spoke to all three of those identified by this source. All of them emphatically denied any
wrongdoing. "Hogwash," said one. "Bullshit," said another. Of the two Russian banks, one denied
any wrongdoing, while the other did not respond to a request for comment.
The investigation was active going into the election. During that period, the leader of the
Democrats in the Senate, Harry Reid, wrote to the director of the FBI, accusing him of holding
back "explosive information" about Mr Trump.
Mr Reid sent his letter after getting an intelligence briefing, along with other senior figures
in Congress. Only eight people were present: the chairs and ranking minority members of the House
and Senate intelligence committees, and the leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties in
Congress, the "gang of eight" as they are sometimes called. Normally, senior staff attend "gang
of eight" intelligence briefings, but not this time. The Congressional leaders were not even allowed
to take notes.
'Puppet'
In the letter to the FBI director, James Comey, Mr Reid said: "In my communications with you
and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess
explosive information about close ties and co-ordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers,
and the Russian government - a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Mr
Trump praises at every opportunity.
"The public has a right to know this information. I wrote to you months ago calling for this
information to be released to the public. There is no danger to American interests from releasing
it. And yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information."
The CIA, FBI, Justice and Treasury all refused to comment when I approached them after hearing
about the Fisa warrant.
It is not clear what will happen to the inter-agency investigation under President Trump -
or even if the taskforce is continuing its work now. The Russians have denied any attempt to influence
the president-elect - with either money or a blackmail tape.
If a tape exists, the Russians would hardly give it up, though some hope to encourage a disloyal
FSB officer who might want to make some serious money. Before the election, Larry Flynt, publisher
of the pornographic magazine Hustler, put up a million dollars for incriminating tape of Mr Trump.
Penthouse has now followed with its own offer of a million dollars for the Ritz-Carlton tape (if
it exists).
It is an extraordinary situation, 10 days before Mr Trump is sworn into office, but it was
foreshadowed during the campaign.
During the final presidential debate, Hillary Clinton called Donald Trump a "puppet" of Russia's
leader, Vladimir Putin. "No puppet. No puppet," Mr Trump interjected, talking over Mrs Clinton.
"You're the puppet. No, you're the puppet."
In a New York Times op-ed in August, the former director of the CIA, Michael Morell, wrote:
"In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr Putin had recruited Mr Trump as an unwitting
agent of the Russian Federation."
Agent; puppet - both terms imply some measure of influence or control by Moscow.
Michael Hayden, former head of both the CIA and the NSA, simply called Mr Trump a "polezni
durak" - a useful fool.
The background to those statements was information held - at the time - within the intelligence
community. Now all Americans have heard the claims. Little more than a week before his inauguration,
they will have to decide if their president-elect really was being blackmailed by Moscow."
Are we Remainers making a simple
mistake about Brexit?
What I mean is that we think of
Brexit in consequentialist terms – its effects upon
trade
, productivity
and
growth
. But many Brexiters instead regard Brexit as an
intrinsic good, something desirable in itself in which
consequences are of secondary importance.
Thinking of Brexit in this way
explains a lot of otherwise strange behaviour:
- Why the Tories have a big poll
lead even though voters
think
they're doing a lousy job of managing the Brexit
process. If you think Brexit is worth having for its own sake,
then you'll be pleased the Tories are getting on with it,
because a second-best Brexit is better than none.
- Why most Brexiters had no plan
for the process. They just weren't thinking in consequentialist
terms.
- Why Theresa May says "Brexit
means Brexit". To consequentialists, this is pure gibberish.
From the perspective of those who want Brexit as a matter of
principle, it's not: it's an assurance they'll get what they
want.
- Why
preparations
for
Brexit
are so
chaotic
. If you regard Brexit as an intrinsic good, then
it's not so important how we achieve it. Of course, there are
good and less good types of Brexit. But if you prefer to
satisfice than optimize, this isn't necessarily decisive.
= Why the government is
offering ad hoc support to businesses likely to be hit by
Brexit, be it handouts to
Nissan
or assurances to farmers that they'll still be able
to hire cheap foreign
labour
. There isn't a systematic plan here or conception of
what Brexit should look like, just one-by-one attempts to buy
off specific discontents.
- Why technocrats and Brexiters
have a mutual incomprehension and loathing. Technocrats haven't
grasped that because Brexit is a good in itself, the process of
achieving it is a secondary detail. And Brexiters have had
enough of experts because they are irrelevant as consequences
(up to a point) don't much matter.
Of course, Brexiters might well
be under-estimating those consequences. But if so, they are not
the first people whose wishful thinking causes them to
under-estimate the force of Isaiah Berlin's
point (pdf)
that "some among the great goods cannot live
together".
All this poses the question: what
is the nature of this intrinsic good? I suspect it's to do with
self-image. Brexiters want to think of themselves as independent
people free of the yoke of Brussels, an image that trumps
technocratic consequentialist considerations – or at least is
incommensurable with them. The fact that many cannot
say
what exactly they'll be free to do after Brexit isn't
important: freedom can be desired for its own sake.
In this sense, Brexit is another
form of identity politics. Remainers who complain about its
adverse effects might be making a point that satisfies
themselves, but not one that has much influence upon many of
their opponents. As with so much identity politics, we're left
with a rather futile dialogue of the deaf.
Blissex |
January 08, 2017 at 01:32 PM
Looking at it as to the long run, "Leave" is a reverberation of
the impact of England's (and France's) defeat in WW2. Losing
that war became undeniable (for some) and at the same time
insufferable (for others) with the strategic defeat at Suez.
My
usual humorous take on the "self-image" aspect is that if the EU
were merely renamed "The English Empire of Great Britain and the
Continent" and Her Majesty were appointed as its figurehead and
opened each year the proceedings of the Imperial Parliament in
Strasbourg or Brussels, with no substantial changes, a lot of
"Leavers" would stop objecting...
:-)
One would have also to rename the European Commission as
the "HM Imperial Civil Service" and the Council of EU ministers
as "HM Imperial Council" :-).
The Daily Mail would then have fawning articles like
"Imperial Lead Minister Angela Merkel attends HM's speech at the
Imperial Parliament's opening in Brussels" and "Boris Johnson,
Imperial Commissioner for Entertainment, reports to the English
Parliament the success of the Imperial Council's policy of
banana standardization that he has promoted". :-)
"May says "Brexit means Brexit". To consequentialists, this is
pure gibberish."
Well, maybe, but for my "Remain" and
mostly-consequentialist ears it clearly means "Article 50", that
is no second referendum, no fudging with a treaty revision. Then
once Article 50 is invoked, everything else is up for grabs, but
Article 50 is the point-of-no-return that "Leavers" want to be
reassured about.
The Leavers from all voting analysis were less educated, more
rural , less prosperous and definitely older voters. They
swallowed the Brexit Tabloid media which distorted all things EU
, immigrant and economic. Now as we exit 500 million other
consumers and undo 45 years we shall know the full consequences.
Is it that the English and Welsh are just politically,
economically and socially less educated than other Northern and
Western Europeans. I think so- our tabloid media and supplicant
'Daily Express on legs' BBC is likely the worst in EU.
Spot on. Sums up this leaver's position very well. EU membership
is a historic error for the island nation, and it is well worth
paying a price to correct that error.
it
is so interesting to note that Brexiteers and Remainers seem to
be living in parallel universes with regards to the Brexit
narrative. Here in the article again: Brexiteers DO NOT see the
brexit process as being chaotic at all. This is entirely a
remainer view, not shared by brexiteers (i.e. the majority of
voters).
Yes. This would also perhaps partly explain the dishonesty with
respect to campaigning by the Leavers. The truth (or at least,
rational good faith argument) to them is less important than the
act of leaving in itself.
They see it as a fight, they want to
have a sense of the UK gaining autonomy and control, and to hell
with the consequences. I suspect this 'us vs them' identity
politics has grown out of the financial crisis and austerity.
"
- Why most Brexiters had no plan for the process. They just
weren't thinking in consequentialist terms."
They were
absolutely thinking in consequential terms:
They believed £350M a week would go to NHS etc. They believed
the EU/Euro was about to collapse and UK was better to leave
asap. They believed 400-600K immigrants would arrive each year,
for ever, and housing, medical treatment etc. would be
impossible to achieve. Those in non-immigrant areas believed
they would be next in the migrant wave queue. They believed they
had the power to eject non-performing MPs at elections. They
believed that UK would thrive once free of the EU. The Tories
are delivering all that for them.
What they do not want to believe, so will not easily change
their minds, is that the Government only wants to control
migration - not reduce it. That no one will lose their jobs, and
jobs will become even more soul destroying. That housing will be
even scarcer and more costly. That proper training and career
progression is a thing of the past. That primacy will not be
revived and they will not be first in the queue for everything.
That neither the Conservative nor Labour parties will do a thing
for the left behind and JAMs.
Once they do realise they have been taken for a ride yet
again, the anger may flow over into extremes.
Many Brexiteers, when arguing for Brexit, flip backwards and
forwards between consequentialist arguments and arguments for
Brexit as an intrinsic good. As Dominic Cummings admits, "Leave"
would not have won if they hadn't lied about the money that
could be spent in the NHS and the status of Turkey - and,
apparently, the facts that these were lies doesn't bother him.
It's bizarre, though, how a newspaper like the Daily Mail
spent 10 years pre-1973 campaigning for entry to the Common
Market and now finds everything European to be suspect. Does it
really think that neighbouring countries in Europe, that share
many of our traditions and culture, are really less congenial
trading partners than other global trading states?
"Many Brexiteers, when arguing for Brexit, flip backwards and
forwards between consequentialist arguments and arguments for
Brexit as an intrinsic good."
They are addressing both of
their main constituencies...
"neighbouring countries in Europe, that share many of our
traditions and culture, are really less congenial trading
partners than other global trading states?"
For "self-image" based "Leavers", giving up a global empire
to be just one of many "neighbouring countries" in a mere
regional alliance is simply foolish or a betrayal; the economic
or trade aspect is not that important.
For consequentialist "Leavers" trade/immigration matters but
negatively, and they weren't given an opportunity to vote
against global trade/immigration making them poorer, only
against east european trade/immigration making them poorer. They
surely would have voted against too much trade/immigration with
the other "global trading states" though.
"They believed 400-600K immigrants would arrive each year, for
ever,"
That was the big hope of the rentier/neoliberal voters
and politicians in both New Labour and Conservatives: to replace
ever more the native "uppity, lazy, exploitative" low-income
classes with ever larger numbers of docile cheap non voting
servants.
"and housing, medical treatment etc. would be impossible to
achieve."
The rentier/neoliberal voters and politicians never had such
concerns: they would be very happy to pack immigrants 4-8 to a
room everywhere paying top rents and give them minimal access to
a cut-down NHS.
"Those in non-immigrant areas believed they would be next in
the migrant wave queue."
* Those in rich non-immigration areas are simply outraged
that foreigners can move and work to *their* England without
begging for a visa. They have the attitude of landlords who want
to make sure their tenants understand that they can throw them
out anytime.
* Those in poor non-immigration areas often do look for jobs
in rich immigration areas know very well how much of a
competition even poorer eastern europeans are for jobs in rich
immigration areas. Even many polish immigrants complain about
the romanians after all.
During his recent visit to Turkey our
darling Boris Johnson stated that the UK government supported
visa-free travel for turks and EU membership for Turkey.
Probably this was said a bit mischievously, but the prospect
of a mass immigration of millions of docile cheap turkish
servants and workers make the UK (and EU) property and business
owners very excited.
They know how much money the german property and business
owners made in the 1950-1970s from cheap docile turkish "guest
workers", and are envious of the potential massive profits
today's german property and business owners are going to make
from the "syrian" refugees.
Blissex: "That was the big hope of the rentier/neoliberal voters
and politicians in both New Labour and Conservatives: to replace
ever more the native "uppity, lazy, exploitative" low-income
classes with ever larger numbers of docile cheap non voting
servants."
Agreed, when we consider British anti-poor
political rhetoric, the above does really seem to follow quite
naturally.
And I'd agree it's vital in this analysis to explicitly
identify the political class as the rentier/neoliberal class.
And I'm not even remotely a Marxist btw. It's just fact.
"explicitly identify the political class as the
rentier/neoliberal class. And I'm not even remotely a Marxist
btw."
The irony is that instead many in that
"rentier/neoliberal class" are pretty much marxists, in the
sense that they have come to much the same analysis as Karl
himself, the difference being their point of view as
beneficiaries.
FORD CITY, Pa. - He is old and gray now, he struggles
sometimes to hear, but if he closes his eyes the burly man
can easily conjure that young boy again, a lad at work in a
bustling factory that for a century formed the strong,
straight economic backbone of this proud industrial borough.
"We were poor, but we didn't realize it because all our
neighbors were, too,'' Paul Hromadik said as he gazed across
a rainy town common here at what used to be the Pittsburgh
Plate Glass works.
In 1953, Hromadik was among thousands who flooded through
a pedestrian tunnel at the corner of Third Avenue and Ninth
Street and into the glassworks. He made rear windows for cars
and trucks before he left for a stint in the Army and then a
life as a power company supervisor, father, and grandfather.
"This town is dying now,'' the 81-year-old Hromadik said
softly. "All the young people are moving out.''
That Pittsburgh Plate Glass plant is long gone, an early
harbinger of an economic collapse that has decimated the
region's manufacturing base and fueled a resentment,
particularly acute among white working-class voters, that has
become an emblem of Donald Trump's America.
And that's why I am here along the banks of the Allegheny
River, talking to Hromadik and others like him. I have
cowered under the covers long enough. Denial does no one any
good. Donald Trump is going to put his left hand on the Bible
in a couple weeks and repeat the oath of office administered
by Chief Justice John Roberts.
I do not live in Donald Trump's America, but I aim to
learn from those who do. I've rented a sturdy car. I've
enlisted a wingman with serious driving chops. And I've
pointed myself west to the land Trump found so fertile and
tilled with such skill and in a rough-shod style all his own.
West beyond Hartford. West over the Hudson River. West
through snow-dusted farmlands and tree-studded mountains and
along the vast interstate highway system named for another
Republican and political newcomer, Dwight Eisenhower.
Trump lost the popular vote, but he won the land, 3
million square miles and 80 percent of the nation's counties.
This is one of them. Forty miles northeast of Pittsburgh,
Ford City's population of 3,000 is about half the number who
lived here a century ago, when John B. Ford built what was
said to be one of the planet's biggest plate-glass factories.
There is a statue of Ford in the central park where he
stands forever staring at the factory that once was a roaring
economic engine but is now a hulking and empty reminder that
this is a city whose glory days are in the rear-view mirror.
It's not difficult to understand the appeal here of Trump,
who shakes his fist at foreign economic interlopers and
pledges at every turn to make America great again.
Make Ford City great again? That's what has Sheri Humenik
animated these days.
I encountered her at the local library last week, where
she was replenishing the racks of magazines and periodicals
and evangelizing about the beauty and the allure of
small-town life.
"I believe in this community,'' said Humenik, a
40-something full-time mom and part-time pharmacist. "This
town is the best-kept secret. Where Pittsburgh Plate Glass
was would be the perfect place for some new high-tech
business. It would bring our town back to life.''
All of Armstrong County could certainly use a lift.
Downsizing bulletins from local employers are routine. The
economic decline has been paralleled by the fading fortunes
of the local Democratic Party, whose members outnumbered
Republicans until 12 years ago. Republicans now dominate,
20,600 to 15,880. "For every Armstrong County Republican that
became a Democrat since January, three Democrats have gone in
the opposite direction,'' the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
reported last spring.
That trend does not surprise people like Humenik, who grew
up here and intends to stay put. Trump's message, she said,
was a warm and welcome salve.
"I felt like that he wants to revitalize places just like
this,'' she told me. "He wants to invest in people. He brings
a fire that has reignited hope in people. We need investments
in the small towns, not just the big cities. The small towns
are suffering. We need to recognize the hidden gems and bring
them back. I'm upbeat. I'm encouraged. I'm looking forward.''
I nearly looked over my shoulder to see if someone from
the Trump communications office was getting all of this on
film. It was so perfectly rendered. And it all felt so
genuine, which is going to take some getting used to. Because
back where I live, there you don't run into many who would
say out loud what she just did, even if they think it. And
there are plenty of disbelievers who can't bear the thought
of a President Trump.
And, truth be told, you don't have to look very far to
find them here either. The Trump-is-a-snake-oil-salesman
caucus is alive and well on the steps of the county
courthouse, where attorney Chuck Pascal has sneaked outside
for a late-morning smoke as a soft rain falls over
Kittanning, the Armstrong County seat.
"These are dangerous times,'' said Pascal, a former
Leechburg mayor and a member of the Democratic State
Committee. "I don't think Trump knows anything and I don't
think he knows that he doesn't know anything.''
But Pascal understands the allure of Trump. Comfortable
blue-collar jobs are gone. There's been an exodus of the
professional class. People wanted change. They were willing
to roll the dice on Trump.
Pascal, a Bernie Sanders supporter and delegate, knows it
is now wasted breath to dissect and analyze what went so
wrong. Hillary Clinton "was such a horrible candidate, and
now we're all going to suffer for it,'' he said. "I've never
been scared before, but this is so scary to me.''
It's scary to me, too. But that's not why I'm here. I want
reassurance that everything is going to work out fine. I want
to understand why so many of my fellow Americans have
embraced a man whose every Cabinet appointment seems like a
middle finger fiercely extended to the non-adherents he calls
enemies.
It's time to jump back into the SUV. It's a big red
country out there.
"What do you think? Ohio? Michigan?" I ask my monosyllabic
wingman.
Donald Trump sure
seems like he's serious about starting some trade wars
Wall Street should take Trump more literally.
Updated by Matthew Yglesias
Jan 4, 2017, 8:30am EST
Many people are in the habit of not taking Donald Trump literally, and that appears to include
investors on Wall Street who have responded to Trump's election with the sort of stock price boom
you would have expected from the election of a completely orthodox free marketer like Jeb Bush or
Marco Rubio.
Trump has said, many times, that he favors a drastic revision of American trade policy aimed at
making it much more difficult for companies to manufacture products in foreign markets (especially
China) and then sell them to American consumers. This would, if he pulled it off, be a huge deal
for the American economy - dramatically boosting the fortunes of some companies, but potentially
crippling others, raising prices of many goods and inviting retaliatory measures that would harm
American exports.
As much as Wall Street appears to believe this is just talk, Trump is putting his words quietly
into action. Appointments to a range of lower-profile executive branch positions strongly suggest
that he is likely to pursue a fairly aggressive policy of trade protectionism.
He even appears to be thinking seriously about how to structure the policymaking process. In the
context of a Republican Party that remains mostly invested in a pro-business approach to trade policy,
this is exactly what Trump would need to do to unleash a protectionist agenda. Trade wars, in short,
are almost certainly coming soon - though the actual consequences are difficult to project.
"... The problem for US workers has not been that our trade negotiators are not smart; the problem is that they have a different agenda. ..."
"... This raises the question of the agenda that Donald Trump wants to pursue in trade deals. If his goal is first and foremost to regain manufacturing jobs by reducing the size of the trade deficit, then the top priority should be lowering the value of the dollar against the currencies of China and other trading partners. ..."
"... While it is not possible to get back the 5 million manufacturing jobs we have lost in the last two decades, plausible reductions in the trade deficit could bring back 1-2 million manufacturing jobs. This would have a noticeable impact on the labor market for workers without college degrees. ..."
"... While he railed about currency "manipulation" in the election campaign, he also complained that other countries didn't grant our companies adequate market access or respect the patents and copyrights of US companies. ..."
"... These are conflicting agendas, and it remains to be seen whether Trump pursues a trade agenda that will increase manufacturing jobs, or one that will further enrich corporate America. With the top two economic posts in the Trump administration going to Goldman Sachs alums, the money is betting on the corporate agenda.... ..."
What Does Donald Trump Actually Intend to Do About Trade?
By Dean Baker
Shortly after Donald Trump enters the White House, we should
get an answer to a key question from his campaign: What does
he actually intend to do about trade? Trade was one of his main
issues when he campaigned in the key industrial states that he
won in November.
Trump argued that past presidents of both parties had failed
the country's workers by signing bad trade deals. He said that
the negotiators were "stupid" and that he would instead appoint
"smart" negotiators who wouldn't let Mexico, China and other
trading partners beat us at the negotiating table.
Trump is correct in identifying trade as a force that has
caused enormous economic damage to millions of people in these
states, but he is wrong that the problem was "stupid" negotiators.
The vast majority of people who have been given the responsibility
for negotiating trade deals are smart, ambitious and hard-working.
The large trade deficits we have been running in the last
two decades are not due to negotiators. We run large trade deficits
because securing manufacturing jobs in the United States has
not been a priority for our negotiators.
When our trade negotiators sit down with Mexico, China and
other trading partners, they have a long list of items on their
agenda. For example, they want longer and stronger patent protection
for our drugs and copyright protection for Microsoft's software.
They also want better market access for our financial, telecommunications
and retail industries. Our trade negotiators have been quite
successful in these areas.
Furthermore, the trade deficit is not a bad thing for everyone
in the United States. Many of the items that we import from Mexico,
China and other developing countries were actually produced by
US companies. They wanted to take advantage of low cost labor
to get an edge on their domestic competition. Similarly, Walmart
and other major retailers are happy to have low-cost suppliers
in the developing world.
The US manufacturers that took their operations overseas and
the retailers that benefit from low-cost supply chains did not
lose from recent trade deals, they got rich.
The problem
for US workers has not been that our trade negotiators are not
smart; the problem is that they have a different agenda.
This raises the question of the agenda that Donald Trump
wants to pursue in trade deals. If his goal is first and foremost
to regain manufacturing jobs by reducing the size of the trade
deficit, then the top priority should be lowering the value of
the dollar against the currencies of China and other trading
partners.
A lower valued dollar will make US exports cheaper for people
living in other countries leading them to buy more of our exports.
It will also make imports more expensive for people in the United
States. That will cause US consumers to substitute domestically
produced items for imports. The net effect would be a smaller
trade deficit and more jobs in manufacturing.
While it is not possible to get back the 5 million manufacturing
jobs we have lost in the last two decades, plausible reductions
in the trade deficit could bring back 1-2 million manufacturing
jobs. This would have a noticeable impact on the labor market
for workers without college degrees.
However, it is not clear that Trump plans to pursue a trade
policy focused on getting back manufacturing jobs.
While
he railed about currency "manipulation" in the election campaign,
he also complained that other countries didn't grant our companies
adequate market access or respect the patents and copyrights
of US companies.
These are conflicting agendas, and it remains to be seen
whether Trump pursues a trade agenda that will increase manufacturing
jobs, or one that will further enrich corporate America. With
the top two economic posts in the Trump administration going
to Goldman Sachs alums, the money is betting on the corporate
agenda....
Last week we were
surprised to learn that demand for hotel rooms at the annual World Economic Forum meeting in
Davos, where the world's billionaires, CEOs, politicians, celebrities and oligarchs mingle every
year (while regaled by their public relations teams known as the "media", for whom getting an invite
to the DJ event du jour is more important than rocking the boat by asking unpleasant questions) was
so great, not only are hotel rooms running out, but local employees may be put up in
shipping containers in car parks to free up much needed accommodations.
This scramble to attend what has traditionally been perceived as the hangout for those who have
benefited the most from "peak globalization" was in some ways surprising: coming after a year in
which "populism" emerged as a dominant global force, while sending establishment politics, legacy
policies and even globalization reeling, the message - in terms of lessons learned from 2016 - sent
to the masses from the world's 0.1% was hardly enlightened.
However, while most Davos participants remain tone deaf, one person has gotten the message loud
and clear.
According to
Reuters
, German Chancellor Angela Merkel - who faces a crucial election this year as she runs for her
4th term as German chancellor amid sagging approval ratings - is steering clear of the World Economic
Forum in Davos, a meeting expected to be dominated by debate over the looming presidency of Donald
Trump "and rising public anger with elites and globalization", which is ironic because just two years
prior, the topic was rising wealth inequality which the world's billionaires blasted, lamented and,
well, got even richer as nothing at all changed. What is surprising about Merkel's absence in 2017
is that the Chancellor has been a regular at the annual gathering of political leaders, CEOs and
celebrities, traveling to the snowy resort in the Swiss Alps seven times since becoming chancellor
in 2005. But her spokesman told Reuters she had decided not to attend for a second straight year.
This year's conference runs from Jan. 17-20 under the banner "Responsive and Responsible Leadership".
Trump's inauguration coincides with the last day of the conference.
"It's true that a Davos trip was being considered, but we never confirmed it, so this is not a
cancellation," the spokesman said.
Reuters adds that this is the first time Merkel has missed Davos two years in a row since taking
office over 11 years ago and her absence may come as a disappointment to the organizers because her
reputation as a steady, principled leader fits well with the theme of this year's conference.
There was little additional information behind her continued absencea the government spokesman
declined to say what scheduling conflict was preventing her from attending, nor would it say whether
the decision might be linked to the truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market that killed 12 people
in mid-December.
The reason for her absence, however, may be far more prosaic: as Reuters echoes what we said previously,
"after the Brexit vote in Britain and the election of Trump were attributed to rising public anger
with the political establishment and globalization, leaders may be more reluctant than usual to travel
to a conference at a plush ski resort that has become synonymous with the global elite. "
Another potential complication is that this year's Davod event concludes just hours before Trump's
inauguration. As a result, one European official suggested to Reuters that "the prospect of having
to address questions about Trump days before he enters the White House might also have dissuaded
Merkel, whose politics is at odds with the president-elect on a broad range of issues, from immigration
and trade, to Russia and climate change."
During the U.S. election campaign, Trump described Merkel's refugee policies as "insane". Like
Merkel, French President Francois Hollande, who announced in early December that he would not seek
a second term next year, will not be in Davos.
Most other European political leaders are expected to be present, despite the furious changes
in Europe's political landscape in the past year: the Forum had hoped to lure Matteo Renzi, but he
resigned as Italian prime minister last month. European leaders that are expected include Mark Rutte
of the Netherlands and Enda Kenny of Ireland. British Prime Minister Theresa May could also be there.
German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, who was elected to the WEF board of trustees last
year, is expected to attend, as are senior ministers from a range of other European countries, as
well as top figures from the European Commission.
Members of Donald Trump's team, including Davos regulars like former Goldman Sachs president Gary
Cohn and fund manager Anthony Scaramucci, are also expected. Reuters reminds us that WEF Chairman
Klaus Schwab was invited to Trump Tower last month, although the purpose of the visit was unclear.
Although the WEF does not comment on which leaders it is expecting until roughly a week before
the meeting, the star attraction is expected to be Xi Jinping, the first Chinese president to attend.
Meanwhile, it is was highly unlikely that the one person everyone would like to seek answers from
at Davos, Russian president Vladimir Putin, will be present.
This is an interesting development. Despite the use of epithets like "cunt" and "bitch" in the
oh, so valuable discussion contributions above, the German head of state is quite astute and living
in the real world. She has decided that association with the most elite of global meetings is
a negative. Don't you consider that significant?
Hardly. There are "leaks" of German Govt cables to NDR revealing how far Juncker obstructed crackdown
on corporate tax evasion when PM of Luxembourg. Clear indication Germany wants Juncker gone before
BreXit negotiations start and Wilders gains votes in NL in March.
1st Quarter in Europe is dynamite.
Davos is fluff and irrelevant.
Once UK SC delivers opinion in Jan 2017 there is a 1-line Bill to go through both Houses of
Parliament. If the Lords blocks the Bill it will lead to a 1910 Constitutional Crisis and either
Election, or abolition of House of Lords. UK is especially volatile in 2017 especially if Queen
dies.
Merkel sees nothing but danger ahead. Ukraine will probably implode and set of a refugee wave
into Germany. Turkey could well crash and burn. UK is going to be a very difficult situation.
33% French farmers reportedly earning <350 Euros/month as exports to Russia collapsed. French
election could be volatile. Italy is heading for meltdown.
Merkel is going to burn - she has failed to head off any problem
Davos doesn't care about politicians. Politicians are merely banker's puppets. Look
no further than Trump. He gets to be POTUS and what is his first act of business?
To put Goldman Sachs in charge of his Treasury and put JP Morgan in charge of White House policy.
If anyone thinks a politician will change anything, you are wrong. The banks make the
orders and plans, everything else is theatre.
It's been said that the captain of the Titanic was drunk before the ship struck the iceberg.
Given the above, maybe the Davosians are also equally intoxicated as they helm an economic ship
that's about to go under. Whether it's by psychotropics or just plain hubris, they certainly
don't seem to understand the depth of the danger they are in.
While the presidential campaign was still in progress it was possible to think
that there might be some positive change in America's broken foreign policy.
Hillary Clinton was clearly the candidate of Washington Establishment
hawkishness, while Donald Trump was declaring his disinclination for democracy
and nation building overseas as well as promoting détente with Russia. Those of
us who considered the foreign policy debacle to be the most dangerous issue
confronting the country, particularly as it was also fueling domestic tyranny,
tended to vote on the basis of that one issue in favor of Trump.
On December
1
st
in Cincinnati, president-elect Donald Trump made
some interesting comments
about his post-electoral foreign policy plans.
There were a lot of good things in it, including his citing of $6 trillion
"wasted" in Mideast fights when "our goal is stability not chaos." And as for
dealing with real enemies, he promised to "partner with any nation that is
willing to join us in the effort to defeat ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism "
He called it a "new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the
past" adding that "We will stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow
governments, folks."
Regarding the apparent inability of governments to thoroughly check out new
immigrants prior to letting them inside the country, demonstrated most recently
in Nice, Ohio and Berlin, Trump
described how
"People are pouring in from regions of the Middle East - we
have no idea who they are, where they come from what they are thinking and we
are going to stop that dead cold. These are stupid refugee programs created
by stupid politicians." Exaggerated? For sure, but he has a point, and it all
is part and parcel of a foreign policy that serves no actual interest for
people who already live in the United States.
But, as so often with Trump, there was also the flip side. On the looney
fringe of the foreign and national security policy agenda, the president-elect
oddly believes that
"The United States must greatly strengthen and expand
its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses
regarding nukes." So to reduce the number of nukes we have to create more of
them and put them in more places. Pouring gasoline on a raging fire would be an
appropriate analogy and it certainly leads to questions regarding who is
advising The Donald with this kind of nonsense.
Trump has promised to "put America first," but there is inevitably a spanner
in the works. Now, with the New Year only six days away and the presidential
inauguration coming less than three weeks after that, it is possible to discern
that the new foreign policy will, more than under Barack Obama and George W.
Bush, be driven in significant part by Israeli interests.
At least Obama had the good sense to despise Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, but that will not be true of the White House after January 20
th
.
Trump's very first telephone conversation with a foreign head of government
after being elected was with Netanyahu and during the campaign, he promised to
invite Bibi to the White House immediately after the inauguration. The new
president's first naming of an Ambassador-designate to a foreign nation was of
his good friend and bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman to Israel. Friedman
had headed
Trump's Israel Advisory Committee and is a notable hard liner
who supports the Israeli settler movement, an extreme right-wing political
entity that is nominally opposed by existing U.S. government policy as both
illegal and damaging to Washington's interests. Beyond that, Friedman rejects
creation of a Palestinian state and supports Israel's actual annexation of the
West Bank.
U.S. Ambassadors are supposed to support American interests but Friedman
would actually be representing and endorsing a particularly noxious version of
Israeli fascism as the new normal in the relationship with Washington. Friedman
describes
Jerusalem as "the holy capital of the Jewish people and only the
Jewish people." Trump is already taking steps to move the U.S. Embassy there,
making the American government unique in having its chief diplomatic mission in
the legally disputed city. The move will also serve as a recruiting poster for
groups like ISIS and will inflame opinion against the U.S. among friendly Arab
states in the region. There is no possible gain and much to lose for the United
States and for American citizens in making the move, but it satisfies Israeli
hardliners and zealots like Friedman.
The Trump team's animosity towards Iran is also part of the broader Israeli
agenda. Iran does not threaten the United States and is a military midget
compared either to nuclear armed Israel or the U.S. Yet is has been singled out
as the enemy
du jour
in the Middle East even though it has invaded no
one since the seventeenth century. Israel would like to have the United States
do the heavy lifting to destroy Iran as a regional power. If Washington were to
attempt to do so it would be a catastrophe for all parties involved but that
has not stopped hardliners from demanding unrelenting military pressure on
Tehran.
Donald Trump is not even president yet but he advised Barack Obama to
exercise the U.S. veto for the resolution condemning Israeli settlements that
was voted on at the United Nations Security Council on Friday,
explaining that
"As the United States has long maintained, peace between
the Israelis and the Palestinians will only come through direct negotiations
between the parties, and not through the imposition of terms by the United
Nations. This puts Israel in a very poor negotiating position and is extremely
unfair to all Israelis."
This is a straight Israeli line that might even have been written by
Netanyahu himself. Or by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC),
which fumed "AIPAC is deeply disturbed by the failure of the Obama
Administration to exercise its veto to prevent a destructive, one-sided,
anti-Israel resolution from being enacted by the United Nations Security
Council (UNSC). In the past, this administration and past administrations have
rejected this type of biased resolution since it undermines prospects for
peace. It is particularly regrettable, in his last month in office, that the
president has taken an action at odds with the bipartisan consensus in Congress
and America's long history of standing with Israel at the United Nations."
Ah yes, the fabled negotiations for a two state solution, regularly employed
to enable Israelis to do nothing while expanding their theft of Arab land and
one wonders how Trump would define what is "fair to the Palestinians?" So we
are already well into Trump's adoption of the "always the victim argument" that
the Israelis have so cleverly exploited with U.S. politicians and the media.
Not content with advising Obama, Trump also reportedly took the Palestinian
issue one step further by directly pressuring the sponsoring Egyptians to
postpone any submission of the resolution. Expecting to have a friendly
president in the White House after January 20
th
, Egypt's president
Abdel Fattah al-Sisi
complied on Thursday
but the motion was reintroduced by New Zealand,
Venezuela, Senegal and Malaysia on the following day. The resolution passed
with 14 yes votes and a courageous U.S. abstention after Obama finally, after
eight long years, developed a backbone. But unfortunately, Trump's
interventions suggest that nothing critical of Israel will be allowed to emerge
from the U.N. during his term of office. Referring to the U.N. vote, he said
that "things will be different after January 20
th
."
The problem with Israel and its friends is that they are never satisfied and
never leave the rest of us Americans alone, pushing constantly at what is
essentially an open door. They have treated the United States like a doormat,
spying on us more than any ostensibly friendly nation while pocketing our $38
billion donation to their expanding state without so much as a thank you. They
are shameless. Israel's ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer has been all over
American television sputtering his rage over the United Nations settlements
vote. On CNN
he revealed
that Israel has "clear evidence" that President Obama was
"behind" the resolution and he announced his intention to share the information
with Donald Trump. Every American should be outraged by Israel's contempt for
us and our institutions. One has to wonder if the mainstream media will take a
rest from their pillorying of Russia to cover the story.
For many years now, Israel has sought to make the American people complicit
in its own crimes while also encouraging our country's feckless and corrupt
leadership to provide their government with political cover and even go to war
on its behalf. This has got to stop and, for a moment, it looked like Trump
might be the man to end it when he promised to be even-handed in negotiating
between the Arabs and Israelis. That was before he promised to be the best
friend Israel would ever have.
Israel's quarrels don't stay in Israel and they are not limited to the
foreign policy realm. I have
already discussed
the pending Anti-Semitism Awareness Act,
a bipartisan effort by Congress
to penalize and even potentially
criminalize any criticism of Israel by equating it to anti-Semitism. Whether
Israel itself wants to consider itself a democracy is up to Netanyahu and
Israeli voters but the denial of basic free speech rights to Americans in
deference to Israeli perceptions should be considered to be completely
outrageous.
And there's more. Israel's government funded lawfare organization Shurat
HaDin has long been using American courts to punish Palestinians and Iranians,
obtaining punitive damages linked to allegations regarding terrorist incidents
that have taken place in Israel. Now Shurat HaDin is using our courts to go
after American companies that do business with countries like Iran.
Last year's nuclear agreement with Iran included an end to restraints on the
Islamic Republic's ability to engage in normal banking and commercial activity.
As a high priority, Iran has sought to replace some of its aging
infrastructure, to include its passenger aircraft fleet. Seattle based Boeing
has sought to sell to Iran Air 80 airplanes at a cost of more than $16 billion
and has worked with the U.S. government to meet all licensing and technology
transfer requirements. The civilian-use planes are not in any way configurable
for military purposes, but Shurat HaDin on December 16
th
sought to block
the sale at a federal court in Illinois, demanding a lien
against Boeing for the monies alleged to be due to the claimed victims of
Iranian sponsored terrorism. Boeing, meanwhile, has stated that the Iran Air
order "support(s) tens of thousands of U.S. jobs."
So an agency of the Israeli government is taking steps to stop an American
company from doing something that is perfectly legal under U.S. law even though
it will cost thousands of jobs here at home. It is a prime example of how much
Israel truly cares about the United States and its people. And even more
pathetic, the Israel Lobby owned U.S. Congress has predictably bowed down and
kissed Netanyahu's ring on the issue,
passing a bill in November
that seeks to block Treasury Department licenses
to permit the financing of the airplane deal.
The New Year and the arrival of an administration with fresh ideas would
provide a great opportunity for the United States to finally distance itself
from a toxic Israel, but, unfortunately, it seems that everything is actually
moving in the opposite direction. Don't be too surprised if we see a shooting
war with Iran before the year is out as well as a shiny new U.S. Embassy in
Jerusalem (to be built
on land stolen from Palestinians
, incidentally). Trump might think he is
ushering in a new era of American policy based on American interests but it is
beginning to look a lot like same-old same-old but even worse, and Benjamin
Netanyahu will be very much in the driver's seat.
I wonder what facts you have to label Trump's team "globalist shills".
Robert W. Merry in his National Interest article disagrees with you
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/trump-vs-hillary-nationalism-vs-globalism-2016-16041
=== start of the quote ===
Globalists captured much of American society long ago by capturing the bulk of the nation's elite
institutions -- the media, academia, big corporations, big finance, Hollywood, think tanks, NGOs,
charitable foundations. So powerful are these institutions -- in themselves and, even more so,
collectively -- that the elites running them thought that their political victories were complete
and final. That's why we have witnessed in recent years a quantum expansion of social and political
arrogance on the part of these high-flyers.
Then along comes Donald Trump and upends the whole thing. Just about every major issue that this
super-rich political neophyte has thrown at the elites turns out to be anti-globalist and pro-nationalist.
And that is the single most significant factor in his unprecedented and totally unanticipated
rise. Consider some examples:
Immigration: Nationalists believe that any true nation must have clearly delineated and protected
borders, otherwise it isn't really a nation. They also believe that their nation's cultural heritage
is sacred and needs to be protected, whereas mass immigration from far-flung lands could undermine
the national commitment to that heritage.
Globalists don't care about borders. They believe the nation-state is obsolete, a relic of
the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which codified the recognition of co-existing nation states.
Globalists reject Westphalia in favor of an integrated world with information, money, goods
and people traversing the globe at accelerating speeds without much regard to traditional concepts
of nationhood or borders.
=== end of the quote ===
I wonder how "globalist shills" mantra correlates with the following Trump's statements:
=== start of quote ===
"Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very, very wealthy ... but
it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache," Trump told supporters
during a prepared speech targeting free trade in a nearly-shuttered former steel town in Pennsylvania.
In a speech devoted to what he called "How To Make America Wealthy Again," Trump offered a
series of familiar plans designed to deal with what he called [Obama] "failed trade policies"
- including rejection of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with Pacific Rim nations
and re-negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico,
withdrawing from it if necessary.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee also said he would pursue bilateral trade agreements
rather than multi-national deals like TPP and NAFTA.
In addition to appointing better trade negotiators and stepping up punishment of countries
that violate trade rules, Trump's plans would also target one specific economic competitor: China.
He vowed to label China a currency manipulator, bring it before the World Trade Organization and
consider slapping tariffs on Chinese imports coming into the U.S.
"... We have a dollar democracy that protects the economic interest of the elite class while more than willing to let working class families lose their homes and jobs on the back end of wide scale mortgage fraud. Then the fraud was perpetuated in the mortgage default process just to add insult to injury. ..."
"... One thing that Trump certainly got wrong that no one ever points out is that there is a lot more murder than rape crossing the Mexican-American border in the drug cartel operations ..."
"... The technocrats lied about how globalization would be great for everyone. People's actual experience in their lives has been different. ..."
"... Centrist Democrat partisans with their increasinly ineffectual defenses of the establishment say it's only about racism and xenophobia, but it's more than that. ..."
Assaults on democracy are working because our current political elites have no idea how to
defend it.
[There are certainly good points to this article, but the basic assumption that our electorally
representative form of republican government is the ideal incarnation of the democratic value
set is obviously incorrect. We have a dollar democracy that protects the economic interest of
the elite class while more than willing to let working class families lose their homes and jobs
on the back end of wide scale mortgage fraud. Then the fraud was perpetuated in the mortgage default
process just to add insult to injury.
One thing that Trump certainly got wrong that no one ever points out is that there is a lot
more murder than rape crossing the Mexican-American border in the drug cartel operations:<) ]
The author fails to mention the Sanders campaign. An elderly socialist Jew from Brooklyn was able
to win 23 primaries and caucuses and approximately 43% of pledged delegates to Clinton's 55%.
This despite a nasty, hostile campaign against him and his supporters by the Clinton campaign
and corporate media.
There's also Jeremy Corbyn in the UK. Podemos, Syriza, etc.
Italy's 5 Star movement demonstrates a hostility to technocrats as well.
The author doesn't really focus on how the technocrats have failed.
The technocrats lied about how globalization would be great for everyone. People's actual experience
in their lives has been different.
Trump scapegoated immigrants and trade, as did Brexit, but what he really did was channel hostility
and hatred at the elites and technocrats running the country.
Centrist Democrat partisans with their increasinly ineffectual defenses of the establishment
say it's only about racism and xenophobia, but it's more than that.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to Peter K.... , -1
"Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very, very wealthy ... but
it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache," Trump told supporters
during a prepared speech targeting free trade in a nearly-shuttered former steel town in Pennsylvania.
In a speech devoted to what he called "How To Make America Wealthy Again," Trump offered a series
of familiar plans designed to deal with what he called "failed trade policies" - including rejection
of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with Pacific Rim nations and re-negotiation of the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico, withdrawing from it if necessary.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee also said he would pursue bilateral trade agreements
rather than multi-national deals like TPP and NAFTA.
In addition to appointing better trade negotiators and stepping up punishment of countries that violate
trade rules, Trump's plans would also target one specific economic competitor: China. He vowed to
label China a currency manipulator, bring it before the World Trade Organization and consider slapping
tariffs on Chinese imports coming into the U.S.
Fred C. Dobbs -> Peter K....
December 26, 2016 at 07:15 AM neopopulism: A cultural and political movement, mainly in Latin
American countries, distinct from twentieth-century populism in radically combining classically opposed
left-wing and right-wing attitudes and using electronic media as a means of dissemination. (Wiktionary)
With the election of Donald Trump to
the presidency, the American public opted for change. A
new poll
from the Charles Koch Institute and Center for the National
Interest on America and foreign affairs indicates that the desire for a fresh
start may be particularly pronounced in the foreign policy sphere. In many
areas the responses align with what Donald Trump was saying during the
presidential campaign-and in other areas, there are a number of Americans who
don't have strong views. There may be a real opportunity for Trump to redefine
the foreign policy debate. He may have a ready-made base of support and find
that other Americans are persuadable.
Two key questions centering on whether U.S. foreign policy has made
Americans more or less safe and whether U.S. foreign policy has made the rest
of the world more or less safe show that a majority of the public is convinced
that-in both cases-the answer is that it has not. 51.9 percent say that
American foreign policy has not enhanced our security; 51.1 percent say that it
has also had a deleterious effect abroad. The responses indicate that the
successive wars in the Middle East, ranging from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya,
have not promoted but, rather, undermined a sense of security among Americans.
The poll results indicate that this sentiment has translated into nearly 35
percent of respondents wanted a decreased military footprint in the Middle
East, with about 30 percent simply wanting to keep things where they stand.
When it comes to America's key relationship with Saudi Arabia, 23.2 percent
indicate that they would favor weaker military ties, while 24 percent say they
are simply unsure. Over half of Americans do not want to deploy ground troops
to Syria. Overall, 45.4 percent say that they believe that it would enhance
American security to reduce our military presence abroad, while 30.9 percent
say that it should be increased.
That Americans are adopting a more equivocal approach overall towards other
countries seems clear. When provided with a list of adjectives to describe
relationship, very few Americans were prepared to choose the extremes of friend
or foe. The most popular term was the fairly neutral term "competitor." The
mood appears to be similarly ambivalent about NATO. When asked whether the U.S.
should automatically defend Latvia, Lithuania, or Estonia in a military
conflict with Russia, 26.1 percent say that they neither agree nor disagree. 22
percent say that they disagree and a mere 16.8 percent say that they agree.
Similarly, when queried about whether the inclusion of Montenegro makes America
safer, no less than 63.6 percent say that they don't know or are not sure.
About Russia itself, 37.8 percent indicate they see it as both an adversary and
a potential partner. That they still see it as a potential partner is
remarkable given the tenor of the current media climate.
The poll results underscore that Americans are uneasy with the status quo.
U.S. foreign policy in particular is perceived as a failure and Americans want
to see a change, endorsing views and stands that might previously have been
seen as existing on the fringe of debate about America's proper role abroad.
Instead of militarism and adventurism, Americans are more keen on a cooperative
world, in which trade and diplomacy are the principal means of engaging other
nations. 49 percent of the respondents indicate that they would prioritize
diplomacy over military power, while 26.3 percent argue for the reverse. 54
percent argue that the U.S. should work more through the United Nations to
improve its security. Moreover, a clear majority of those polled stated that
they believed that increasing trade would help to make the United States safer.
In a year that has been anything but normal, perhaps Trump is onto something
with his talk of burden sharing and a more critical look at the regnant
establishment foreign policy that has prevailed until now.
(cnbc.com)
416
Posted by msmash
on Tuesday December 06, 2016 @10:20AM
from the
aftermath
dept.
China is trying to capitalize on President-elect Donald Trump's hardline
immigration stance and vow to clamp down on a foreign worker visa program that
has been used to recruit thousands from overseas to Silicon Valley. From a
report on CNBC:
Leading tech entrepreneurs, including Robin Li, the
billionaire CEO of Baidu, China's largest search engine, see Trump's plans as
a huge potential opportunity to lure tech talent away from the United States
.
The country already offers incentives of up to $1 million as signing bonuses
for those deemed "outstanding" and generous subsidies for start-ups. Meanwhile,
the Washington Post last month reported on comments made by Steve Bannon, who
is now the president-elect's chief strategist, during a radio conversation with
Trump in Nov. 2015. Bannon, the former Breitbart.com publisher, indicated that
he didn't necessarily agree with the idea that foreign talent that goes to
school in America should stay in America. "When two-thirds or three-quarters of
the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think ...,"
Bannon said, trailing off. "A country is more than an economy. We're a civic
society."
(moneycontrol.com)
184 Posted by msmash on Monday November 28, 2016 @02:20PM from the meanwhile-in-India dept.
From a report on Reuters: Anticipating a more protectionist US technology visa programme under
a Donald Trump administration, India's $150 billion IT services sector will
speed up acquisitions in the United States and recruit more heavily from college campuses there
. Indian companies including Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, and Wipro have long used H1-B
skilled worker visas to fly computer engineers to the US, their largest overseas market, temporarily
to service clients. Staff from those three companies accounted for around 86,000 new H1-B workers
in 2005-14. The US currently issues close to that number of H1-B visas each year. President-elect
Trump's campaign rhetoric, and his pick for Attorney General of Senator Jeff Sessions, a long-time
critic of the visa programme, have many expecting a tighter regime.
Posted by EditorDavid
on Sunday November 27, 2016 @11:34AM
from the
making-campaign-promises-great-again
dept.
Monday president-elect Donald Trump sent "the strongest signal yet that the
H-1B visa program is going get real scrutiny once he takes office," according
to CIO.
During his presidential campaign, Trump was critical of the H-1B visa program
that has been widely criticized for displacing U.S. high-technology workers.
"Companies are importing low-wage workers on H-1B visas to take jobs from young
college-trained Americans," said Trump at an Ohio rally.
"... I think if you want to improve the economic inequality between countries, there are better ways than open borders. If the aim is to decrease economic inequality, you could make policies to reach this outcome that are more targeted than open borders, for example you could implement financial transfers between countries, or you could implement international minimum wages that could be phased in over 10-20-30 years, etc. ..."
"... If the other problem you want to address is mobility for people who want to immigrate for personal reasons, you can just improve the access to immigration within the normal migration system, and increase migration quotas in line with some sort of expectation of what a optimum maximum population would be within a set period. ..."
"... Another thing is infrastructure, it would be difficult to forecast infrastructure needs if migration is unregulated. It would take several decades to settle into a sort of equilibrium and until then you couldn't do very good projections of future infrastructure needs. In Victoria we already have had population growth that has outpaced infrastructure, and there are big problems particularly with transport but also with other infrastructure needs. ..."
"... The surcharge is supposed to be a payment towards the existing infrastructure, from which the new entrants benefit. But native-born citizens, who benefit from the infrastructure built up by previous generations get the same benefit as a free gift! That already presupposes some quite strong claims about who is entitled to what, and who is entitled to exclude whom from access. ..."
"... In a world with a rapidly increasing population and a resource base coming under increasing stress it acting merely to spread misery faster and to stop experiments in sustainability. ..."
"... It undermining social and democratic structures. ..."
"... Another issue with the tax is that it would make migration more difficult for lower income people who could't afford the tax. Countries like the UK are already targeting their migration intake to higher income earners where possible, and a tax would encourage that policy. ..."
"... What if there were a minimum tax per immigrant per year, equal to the average taxes paid by citizens? ..."
"... It is worth considering the world's economy as an engineering system that responds to forces placed upon it. One of the features of making migration difficult, through either bureaucratic or financial resistance, is that it dampens the response of the system to external forces. Open borders removes that damping and allows much faster response. Like most things in life, that has both good and bad consequences, but one of the consequences is the system becomes less stable. ..."
"... As for the productivity argument – as usual, political theorists underestimate the value of extended family and long term inter-family arrangements in creating 'social capital' for productivity and stability. ..."
"... Mobility has its place, and in a time when most Americans never went more than 25 miles from their birthplace during their entire lives an increase in mobility increased overall productivity. However, there are many reasons to believe that individual mobility is costing communities dearly in these present times; and that bad government and market oriented policies which are exacerbating the problem. ..."
"... So in addition to the problems of infrastructure and gentrification on the recieving end of these net flows, we have issues in the regions that are being left-behind. Our current reactionary politics seems to be one of the consequences of this difficult issue. ..."
"... I worry that "free movement of people" tends to have massive social costs that get swept under the rug when the issues are discussed in a purely economic framework. ..."
"... For most of human history, the vast majority of people lived in extended family groups in villages, towns, or temporary encampments where they knew their neighbors, had relatively small social worlds, and didn't travel more than a few days from home. Cities, as we know them, (and their accompanying social maladies) are really only two or three centuries old and post-industrial cities are an even newer phenomenon. ..."
"... What's worse, the rootless urban professionals have money, which means they can buy or rent homes anywhere, displacing the old residents. This has a double whammy effect, not only do the neighborhoods get new people who don't quite fit in, but the old "villagers" get forced out (and in many cases become rootless transplants in some other town), so communities enter a state of perpetual social flux where there aren't enough old timers left to assimilate the new arrivals and the social fabric disintegrates as natural communities are replaced by a massive web of voluntary ones that often don't (especially if there's a class or language barrier) and leave some people with no community at all. ..."
"... Think of the million Poles in the UK, for example, they will predictably have "close relationships" with people in Poland, and will British retirees in Spain with people in the UK, and Irish people in the UK with people living in Ireland . ..."
"... At this point I really, really have to emphasize the plug for John Smith's Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century because he addresses this kind of neoclassical boosterism more or less directly, from a leftist point of view. ..."
"... In Smith's telling the suppression of international labor mobility is actually central to explaining not just global wage differentials perceived to result from differences in productivity, but also the data by which labor productivity between countries is measured in the first place. The neoclassicals' trick here is to take the international division of labor that emerges from what Smith calls "global labor arbitrage" (e.g. outsourcing) and remove it from their conceptual category of production altogether, instead regarding it through the lens of international trade as if workers on a factory floor were constantly "trading" their partially-assembled products to others further down the assembly line. ..."
"... It's not exactly freedom of movement I'm arguing against so much as the notion that population centers have an essentially unlimited ability to absorb newcomers. From 18th Century Manchester to the American West to exploding Chinese industrial cities today, boom towns are notorious for their environmental devastation and social dysfunction. ..."
"... Many municipalities already do this through the use of building permits, but their efforts are compromised by an imperative to expand their tax base and competition between municipalities that gravely limits their effective bargaining power. In a free trade, open borders world, I can see the same thing happening at the national scale, forcing whole countries to compete with one another for jobs and labor and hastening the rate of neo-colonial resource plundering. ..."
"... Factor endowments equals they have poor people for cheap labor and we have rich people who create, consume and finance and the origins of the difference is like shrouded in mystery? ..."
"... John Smith of WLGR is Marxian. Apples profits are generated by the workers at Foxconn in China, not the designers in San Jose. The surplus accruing to intellectual property is mostly a product of past and present Imperialism. ..."
"... By the way, at least according to Wikipedia, there are 830,000 Poles in the UK_ so well south of a million still. It's a lot, but, lots less than, say, the 2.9 million Russian-born people in the US, a population I'm very familiar with, so I don't really need the lecture here. ..."
"... I'm not arguing against change, but rather change that comes so quickly it creates a schism between the past and the present. The Gold Rush changed California from predominantly Spanish-speaking to majority Anglo in just a few years (and also killed tens of thousands of Indians in the process), so even if a place still has the same name following migration, it might not be pronounced the same way. ..."
This is definitely approaching it from the right angle–large immigration flows act like globalization.
They improve overall average GDP but definitely hurt certain sectors of workers in ways that thus
far in the experiment suggests that they never recover.
I wonder about the effect of big city housing costs. They act as a barrier to moving to a better
job. Is this something that we should be worried about as part of the immigration issue?
ZM 12.21.16 at 6:15 am
I think if you want to improve the economic inequality between countries, there are better ways
than open borders. If the aim is to decrease economic inequality, you could make policies to reach
this outcome that are more targeted than open borders, for example you could implement financial
transfers between countries, or you could implement international minimum wages that could be
phased in over 10-20-30 years, etc.
If the other problem you want to address is mobility for people who want to immigrate for personal
reasons, you can just improve the access to immigration within the normal migration system, and
increase migration quotas in line with some sort of expectation of what a optimum maximum population
would be within a set period.
Also there is already a problem with gentrification in many cities, and associated issues of
people having to move further away from family and friends, and not enough affordable housing,
and homelessness - open borders would increase all these problems I would think as it would take
out all the regulations. And we already have problems with people from poor countries or poor
areas being under pressure to migrate for work and financial reasons, and open borders would exacerbate
that problem as well.
I think refugees need to be able to migrate the most urgently, but it would still be better
for them that there were specific policies for refugee migration that would allow the high numbers
of refugees to migrate to safety either temporarily or permanently, rather than open borders.
Most of the bloggers here are not in favour of laissez faire free trade, so I don't see why
open borders are favoured when "open trade" isn't?
Another thing is infrastructure, it would be difficult to forecast infrastructure needs if migration
is unregulated. It would take several decades to settle into a sort of equilibrium and until then
you couldn't do very good projections of future infrastructure needs. In Victoria we already have
had population growth that has outpaced infrastructure, and there are big problems particularly
with transport but also with other infrastructure needs.
I'm a bit suspicious that this sort of analysis suffers from large measurement biases.
As an environmentalist,
I'm concerned that we may be increasing a statistic (GDP) that is just a measure of an extent
of how much higher a proportion of consumer is now being captured in the market, and not a measure
of actual welfare. I remember very well as young economist wondering when I heard a more senior
economists complaining that Australians didn't want to work but just wanted to lie about on the
beach. And then I thought about how northern Europeans pay large amounts of money in order to
be able to lie about on the beach.
Maybe the beach occupying Australians were being rational and
the economist was not being rational. Having more crowded beaches does not show as a minus on
GDP as far as I know.
reason 12.21.16 at 9:20 am P.S.
GDP may also measure how rapidly our natural capital is being converted to perishable goods, but
not measure how rapidly it is being eroded.
On the immigration surcharge thing, I can see its attractions as a policy, but let me just comment
on it from the point of view of principle, not to advocate any particular solution but to notice
some things:
The surcharge is supposed to be a payment towards the existing infrastructure, from which the
new entrants benefit. But native-born citizens, who benefit from the infrastructure built up by
previous generations get the same benefit as a free gift! That already presupposes some quite
strong claims about who is entitled to what, and who is entitled to exclude whom from access.
(Adding in some plausible history, we might further note that the existing domestic infrastructure
hasn't, in many cases, been built up simply from the unaided efforts of the ancestors of the natives
but often reflects the efforts of the colonised or dominated ancestors of the would-be immigrants.)
Then notice also another asymmetry, that the proposal is to charge the incomers for the benefits
they derive from the infrastructure, whilst allowing the natives to benefit for free from human
capital that has been created elsewhere through educational and training programmes. That issue,
the so-called brain drain problem (I'm not a fan of the term or many of the associated claims
btw) forms the basis for a quite different set of proposals for taxing immigrants, the so-called
Bhagwati tax. So the poor migrants get hit by taxation proposals from both sides, as it were!
reason 12.21.16 at 9:35 am
P.P.S. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not totally against open borders in all circumstances (in
fact in a fairly equal world with a stable population I would be all for it), but I see a distinct
danger of very rapid immigration:
In a world with a rapidly increasing population and a resource base coming under increasing
stress it acting merely to spread misery faster and to stop experiments in sustainability.
"Chang, who opposes open borders" "Currently a reader in the Political Economy of Development
at the University of Cambridge"
Open borders for me but not for thee?
ZM 12.21.16 at 9:45 am Chris Bertram,
"So the poor migrants get hit by taxation proposals from both sides, as it were!"
Another issue with the tax is that it would make migration more difficult for lower income
people who could't afford the tax. Countries like the UK are already targeting their migration
intake to higher income earners where possible, and a tax would encourage that policy.
I would rather make improve inequality between countries, and then experiment with freer migration
after that. Since I think there would be less incentive to migrate if countries were more equal,
and then freer migration would be more likely to run smoother.
And (didn't see comment 7) - while yes, a surcharge isn't strictly fair, it is a far lesser evil
than not letting immigrants in at all.
I think it's plausible that remittances would more than make up for the investments home countries
had made in 'their' immigrants.
SamChevre 12.21.16 at 11:14 am
On a surcharge–I proposed one years ago in the context of the proposed "amnesty," that I think
avoids some of the problems Chris Bertram notes above.
What if there were a minimum tax per immigrant per year, equal to the average taxes paid by
citizens? This would be a "pay your share of current costs" tax, not an additional tax.
For the
US, it would be roughly $10,000 a year for the federal government (20% of per capita GDP)–and
any taxes paid to the federal government (FICA and income tax) would be credits against it.
It is worth considering the world's economy as an engineering system that responds to forces placed
upon it. One of the features of making migration difficult, through either bureaucratic or financial
resistance, is that it dampens the response of the system to external forces. Open borders removes
that damping and allows much faster response. Like most things in life, that has both good and
bad consequences, but one of the consequences is the system becomes less stable.
As an example, it is possible to get as many workers as you want into the UK within a few days.
If you have a warehouse that needs staff they can be here from anywhere in the EU, all well educated,
speaking English, with accommodation and ready to work. I'm not saying its a good or a bad thing.
But its a thing that has consequences.
One organisation that has resisted Open Borders is the Corbyn clique in the Labour Party. Entry
into the employment opportunities within that sector of the economy appears to be only open to
relatives, children of political allies, school mates and children of celebrity chums.
BenK 12.21.16 at 1:50 pm '
Not allowed to vote' is political smokescreen. If those people have for some reason not established
voting in the country they currently live in, then yes, they haven't paid the price for liberty
there. If they can, then they are voting – just not where they would apparently prefer to be voting.
As for the productivity argument – as usual, political theorists underestimate the value of
extended family and long term inter-family arrangements in creating 'social capital' for productivity
and stability.
Mobility has its place, and in a time when most Americans never went more than
25 miles from their birthplace during their entire lives an increase in mobility increased
overall productivity. However, there are many reasons to believe that individual mobility is costing
communities dearly in these present times; and that bad government and market oriented policies
which are exacerbating the problem.
A surcharge might be a useful approach. I will say, echoing Reason, that massive waves of immigration
into a region change a lot of things, and not necessarily in ways that the natives would view
as positive.
I've lived in L.A. for the past 35 years, and during that time millions of immigrants
have come into this metropolitan area. Traffic problems, noticeable in L.A. when I arrived in
1981 but something that could be reasonably dealt with, got much, worse.
The public school system
went from fair to actively problematic. In both cases, the problem was made much worse by lagging
public investment, particularly in transportation systems.
Maybe L.A. was uniquely dysfuntional
politically, but I would suspect that most regions would see degradations in public goods in times
of massive in-migration. The significant investment required for massive population growth will,
in all likelihood, not be made, especially in a timely way, and the sort of planning that would
actually be necessary for a pleasant transition to a more populous future seems likely to be beyond
the capabilities of most cities, at least the ones I've lived in.
The inevitable resulting problems
will not endear the newcomers to the natives, even if those problems are solely the fault of the
immigrants.
William Meyer 12.21.16 at 2:48 pm
Sorry, my mistake, the last sentence should read "even if those problems are NOT solely the fault
of the immigrants.
#7
Reminds one of the old story of the Capitalist who berates the local for quitting fishing after
catching enough for today's dinner so he can lay about playing guitar and drinking beer on the
beach.
"You should fish from dawn to dusk 7 days a week. Sell your surplus. Buy another fishing boat. Do
this for 30 years."
"What for?",asks the local.
"So you can retire and lay about, play guitar and drink beer on the beach!"
Omega Centauri 12.21.16 at 5:10 pm
I think its a very difficult sale politically. But, you already know that.
There also is the issue of potentially large scale population flows from less "productive"
areas to
more "productive" areas.
We have this same issue within countries, such as rust belt to coastal
cities in the US, and we've seen political consequences -Trump_vs_deep_state become ascendant.
So in addition
to the problems of infrastructure and gentrification on the recieving end of these net flows,
we have issues in the regions that are being left-behind. Our current reactionary politics seems
to be one of the consequences of this difficult issue.
@divelly it is from Adam Smith, Theory of the Moral Sentiments, part 3, ch. 3 :
"What the favourite of the king of Epirus said to his master, may be applied to men in all
the ordinary situations of human life. When the King had recounted to him, in their proper order,
all the conquests which he proposed to make, and had come to the last of them; And what does your
Majesty propose to do then? said the Favourite.-I propose then, said the King, to enjoy myself
with my friends, and endeavour to be good company over a bottle.-And what hinders your Majesty
from doing so now? replied the Favourite."
Stephen 12.21.16 at 8:10 pm
Moral sentiments of less desirable people: I propose to enjoy myself by being revenged on and
utterly destroying my enemies, and to be good company over the finest available bottle with those
who dare not contradict me.
I think we should be extra skeptical of any paper that claims that the "economics of open borders"
hasn't received "much" attention. Maybe not as much as many other things, and there may be some
hedging about what, exactly, fits, but the economics of migration has received _lots_ of attention.
In The US, the National Academy of Science did a huge study on it in the mid 80's, and updated
it again just recently.
Jagdish Bhagwati has written quite a bit on it, both popular and formal.
George Borjas has written a lot on it (most of it not good, in my opinion, but a lot on it.) Lots
and lots of people, including some very famous economist, have responded to Borjas. Paul Krugman
has written on it. One of my mentors, Howard Chang, a lawyer-economist at Penn Law, has written
a lot on it. Etc. So, already we know that there is something a bit fishy here.
Next, this sort of thing typically assumes, for its strong conclusions, that everyone will
move to where he or she will get the "highest" return for his or her skills. We know this is false,
because it doesn't even happen within any particular country, where there are no restrictions,
no "surcharge" to pay, and fewer cultural barriers. So, the gain will certainly be much smaller
than is projected.
I'd also suggest that this bit from John, Moreover, in a world where more than a billion
people travel internationally each year, it's inevitable that vast numbers of people are going
to have close relationships of all kinds with citizens of other countries. Restrictions on movements
across borders impose costs on all those people ranging from minor to calamitous.
Would need to be _much_ more rigorous to do any work. I travel quite a bit, yet unless "close
relationships" means "people I know somewhat", this isn't true for me. Is it true for "vast" numbers
of people? I'm not sure. It's too flabby to do work now. And, do we have in mind visits, temporary
residence, permanent residence (with or without access to full membership?) Etc. There are really
a huge number of details here, and the absolutely must be worked through, carefully, before you
can say anything useful. I'm in favor of reducing most barriers to movement. But, the arguments,
if they are to be any good, really do need some care.
I'm puzzled by your last paragraph Matt, given what I know about your work. I don't know how large
a number has to be to be "vast", but the spouses separated from one another and the children separated
from one parent by the UK's spousal visa income requirements already number in the 10s of 1000s.
Add to that elderly dependent relatives who are separated from children, lone refugee children
separated from family members in other countries. And then multiply all this separation by the
number of countries that make things difficult for people. I think that probably adds up to a
vast number of people in close relationships with others who are separated by border regimes and
who are currently incurring costs that are often calamitous. Don't you?
Hi Chris – yes, the cases you mention are interesting and important ones. It goes a little way
towards making John's too flabby to work statement a bit better. But even in these cases, it's
important to work through what's wrong with the different examples. (This is what I try to do
in my work, and it's why I'm annoyed by what seems to me to be handwaving that blurs and distorts
more than it helps.) I would insist that "making this difficult" for people, or causing them to
"incur costs" isn't a good way to think about these issues at all. (I will go see my parents for
the first time in over a year next week. It will be difficult and I will incur may costs to do
so. Nothing interesting follows from that at all, I think.) And, John's categories include may
more than those you mention. What follows for them? Why are borders, and not other types of boundaries
relevant here? (Suppose my best friend is admitted to Harvard and I am not. But I'd like to study
with him! Is it unfair that I'm not allowed to? Why not?) There are answers here, but we'll not
get at them from the approach in the post, I think, and especially not if we follow the approach
in this paragraph. The issues need to be dug in to, even though that take time.
(I might note that I've just finished a semi-popular short piece on thinking about immigration
post-Trump and post-Brexit. I started it by thinking about some of your discussion of Joe Carens'
book from a few years ago, and tried to think about reasonable strategies for working towards
fairer immigration policies in our dark times. One thing I suggested was fighting against needlessly
mean (in both senses of the word) restrictions like the too-high social support requirements for
family members in the UK. So, I see that as a real problem. But, I don't think that helps rehabilitate
the claims made, or suggested, in this paragraph. If and when the piece comes out, I'll send it
to you.)
John Quiggin 12.22.16 at 3:22 am
Matt @24 It was an aside of course, but one that I didn't think needed a detailed exposition.
The calamitous cases Chris mentions are well known, as is the fact that lots of people suffer
no, or only trivial, problems of this kind. Rather than multipy such trivial examples as you do
in @26, why not explain why you think the calamitous cases are rare, or need to be explained in
detail?
Matts response is to glib. My own family was driven into poverty by separation in the 1980s and
the long term pressures on all of us of that experience were huge. Yes nothing follows from that
if you're a wealthy academic, but quite a lot follows from it if you're not.
Dave 12.22.16 at 10:05 am
I worry that "free movement of people" tends to have massive social costs that get swept under
the rug when the issues are discussed in a purely economic framework.
For most of human history,
the vast majority of people lived in extended family groups in villages, towns, or temporary encampments
where they knew their neighbors, had relatively small social worlds, and didn't travel more than
a few days from home. Cities, as we know them, (and their accompanying social maladies) are really
only two or three centuries old and post-industrial cities are an even newer phenomenon.
What people in the urban professional class tend to forget, however, is that the old model
of village life never went away . In truly rural or otherwise undeveloped areas, it's mostly
stayed the same, and other cases it was remapped onto urban neighborhoods or desperately clung
to in "small towns" that are, in fact, larger than most Medieval cities.
Now, these people have a problem, which is that they'd very much like to maintain a traditional
village lifestyle (well, some of them just want to escape or move to the city and get rich, but
I'll get to that), but neither industrial nor post-industrial capitalism has had any patience
for people who want to stay put. Industries and opportunities have concentrated in large urban
agglomerations, but exactly which industries and which cities shifts every generation or two.
Plants close down or move to other countries, higher education pulls millions of people far from
home, entire fields of employment vanish or emerge from whole cloth and it's impossible to keep
up. So, we as individuals can, at any time, be forced into a terrible dilemma. Either move away
from the life you know and the people who keep you happy, healthy, safe, and sane, or forfeit
your "optimal" career and some share of prosperity and human capital.
Depending on what class you are, the values you hold, and what the costs and benefits of moving
away really are, there may be no choice at all. Really, there are two kinds of migrants. There
are the desperate, who migrate for negative reasons, and the ambitious, who do it for positive
ones (with plenty of overlap) and only the latter is really making a choice as such. The outcomes
are different too. Refugees and economic migrants occasionally become rich and successful, but
usually they're just looking for security. Whereas people who move around a lot to get the best
education and the best jobs, are often massively rewarded, but too many such people creates a
culture of anomy and alienation where no one knows their neighbors and everyone seems to be from
somewhere else.
What's worse, the rootless urban professionals have money, which means they can buy or rent
homes anywhere, displacing the old residents. This has a double whammy effect, not only do the
neighborhoods get new people who don't quite fit in, but the old "villagers" get forced out (and
in many cases become rootless transplants in some other town), so communities enter a state of
perpetual social flux where there aren't enough old timers left to assimilate the new arrivals
and the social fabric disintegrates as natural communities are replaced by a massive web of voluntary
ones that often don't (especially if there's a class or language barrier) and leave some people
with no community at all.
I grew up in the Southern California suburbs in wake of the Sunbelt migrations and massive
immigration from Latin America and had the utterly peculiar experience of being one of only a
tiny fraction of the population whose grandparents (well, two of them) also grew up there. Growing
up, it seemed like most of my teachers (and really a huge chunk of the professional class in general)
were from either the East Coast or the Midwest and many of them had strange notions about what
it meant to be Californian, having moved here for the sunshine or the surfing or the jobs or the
"vibe" and more able to see the place as an ideal than a reality.
People don't realize the extent to which generations of migration can isolate people from the
land, but I saw it. People that luxuriantly watered their lawns despite the climate and planted
gardens full of plants from all over the world while treating the native plants like weeds. The
tragedy of people in brushfire country not even realizing that having wooden shingles is a bad
idea. People mocking the native California accents, affecting them badly to fit in, or refusing
to acknowledge that we had one at all (we have several). Or, take the baffling experience millions
of California kids get this time of year where adults around them act like our Christmas is somehow
"wrong" because there's no snow and we don't have a "real" winter.
There was and is wanton disregard for tradition or the environment. The old growth oaks that
once covered much of SoCal were cut down for wood and cattle land and now most people have no
idea they were ever there, huge tracts of "empty" desert were flooded with saltwater when the
Salton Sea was created, the LA river was turned into a storm drain, massive population increases
and utterly unrestricted suburban sprawl has destroyed most of our wetlands and turned the Coastal
Sage Scrub into one of the most threatened ecosystems on Earth. All that and CalTrans still plants
invasive, flammable Eucalyptus by every freeway. These were largely the work of generations of
short sighted, greedy migrants who didn't understand or value the land, but will be borne by generations
to come. Our land is being paved, poisoned, and pumped dry and most people don't even see it because
there aren't enough people around who still remember when it was any different.
If open borders means that places all over the world start getting flooded with migrants and
disrespected and debased the way Southern California has been, then I have no choice but to oppose
it.
A small point: – instead of adding additional taxes, one way to get the same net effect is to
have a basic income with a long residency requirement for non-citizens.
John – there is a lot of space between "not rare" and "vast", isn't there? That space needs to
be looked at carefully, and not used as a hand-wave. That's my point.
Faustunotes – I'm sorry to hear that. In published work, I've argued for strong rights for
family migration schemes. Without knowing more about your situation (not that I'm asking for details
now) I can't say more about, but, for example, the sorts of public support systems I've argued
for (and that exist in many countries) can be easily met by lots of people – the US requires 125%
of the poverty level for a family of the appropriate size, for example. That is arguably a top
acceptable level.
That meant that I was able to sponsor my wife when I was a grad student making
$15,000 a year (in 2003), not at all a "wealthy academic". So, again, it's important to get the
details right, to criticize particular cases, and not draw strong conclusions from hand-waving
generalizations. Failing to do this won't lead to any good work.
Matt, I think your quibbling with John on "vast numbers" is pretty silly here. You are an American,
and the US is a continental power with a large population. Perhaps it is rare for Americans to
have close relationships (let's set the bar at good friendships) with people outside the borders
of their country. But many of us live in smaller countries and on continents with lots of borders.
I think you'll find that when you tot up all the Europeans and Latin Americans with cross border
relationships (to name but two continents) and add in all the people who belong to ethnicities
that stretch across many borders, you'll get to a pretty high number.
Think of the million Poles
in the UK, for example, they will predictably have "close relationships" with people in Poland,
and will British retirees in Spain with people in the UK, and Irish people in the UK with people
living in Ireland .
Alesis 12.22.16 at 8:55 pm
The ever present struggle with taking the empirical body of knowledge on gains from migration
and making it into policy is that the only salient objections to migration are decidedly non economic.
Sure they pretend at an economic basis with admirable dedication to the act but the bottom line
is even if you prove that net wages for every single individual would go up from migration it
would till have exactly the same opponents you started with.
At this point I really, really have to emphasize the plug for John Smith's Imperialism
in the Twenty-First Century because he addresses this kind of neoclassical boosterism more
or less directly, from a leftist point of view.
If he was reacting to this post Smith would zero
in on the key premise underlying Kennan's model: the idea that global wage differentials inherently
reflect global differences in the productivity of labor between nation-states, known as the Balassa-Samuelson
hypothesis. Kennan seems to handwave away the idea of actually defending it by deferring to "large
bodies of evidence", evidence whose interpretation within a more-or-less standard neoclassical
framework he takes as a given - although notice how he hedges his initial claims more carefully
("cross-country differences in income levels are associated with differences in productivity",
and "large differences [in productivity] remain after adjusting for differences in physical
and human capital endowments ", emphasis mine) before moving on to construct a model where
"relative wages are used below to measure cross-country differences in labor efficiency", plain
and simple. Nice trick!
In any case, here's Smith:
The North-South purchasing power anomaly is sometimes called the Penn effect, after the
Penn World Table, which has gathered comparative price data from most countries in the world
since 1950. This effect is inversely correlated with per-capita GDP; as Figure 5.2 (page 143)
clearly shows, the poorer the nation, the bigger the gap. Mainstream neoclassical economics
advances two chief explanations for this anomaly, the Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis, which hinges
on differences in labor productivity between rich and poor countries; and an alternative model,
proposed by Jagdish Bhagwati, Irving Kravis, Richard Lipsey, and others, which claims to circumvent
differences in labor productivity and accounts for the anomaly as the consequence of differences
in "factor endowments," that is, the relative abundance of capital and labor in the two countries.
Since their arguments are tautological, they arrive at the same conclusion. In the former approach,
the relative productivity of labor and capital determines the demand for these two factors
and, in conjunction with their supply, determines their equilibrium (market-clearing) prices.
In the second approach, different factor endowments affect the supply and demand in markets
for labor and capital, determining marginal productivities, so arriving at the other's starting
point.
According to both approaches, the purchasing power anomaly arises because of the low wages
of workers providing services (for example, a bus journey or a haircut), resulting in the prices
of these services being typically much lower in, say, Bangladesh than in Belgium. But equilibrium
exchange rates do equalize the prices of internationally tradable goods-in other words, they
assume that strong PPP holds in the tradable goods sector. Service sector wages are low in
Bangladesh because wage levels in the service sector are determined by wage levels in the tradable
goods sector. This occurs because labor is intersectorally mobile but not internationally mobile;
in other words, workers can freely move between the tradable and non-tradable sectors within
nations, equalizing wages between them, but cannot freely move across the borders between nations,
especially those between hard-currency and soft-currency nations. it therefore turns out that
the suppression of the free international movement of labor, the great exception to the principle
of globalization and whose cardinal importance is stressed in this book, is also at the heart
of the purchasing power anomaly.
In sum, the Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis says that the purchasing power anomaly results
from the lack of correspondence between the similar levels of productivity of service workers
in Belgium and Bangladesh and the vast differences in their wages. The contrary argument advanced
here is that it is the oversupply of labor, not its productivity, that is the prime determinant
of Southern wage levels. wages of service providers and incomes of petty entrepreneurs are
kept low not by the paltry productivity of workers in the tradable goods sector, as mainstream
theory has it, but by the destitution of a large part of the working population. This is why
a haircut or a bus journey in Dhaka is so much cheaper than in Amsterdam, even though a pair
of scissors or a bus may cost the same in both countries, and may even have come off the same
production line. Furthermore, local capitalists are not the prime beneficiaries of the super-profits
generated by this expanded employment of low-wage labor. Instead, intense competition among
Southern exporters leaves them with only a minor share of the proceeds, the rest passed on
to their Northern customers through ever-lower export prices. The purchasing power anomaly
results not only or mainly from conditions in goods and Forex markets but is fundamentally
the product of conditions in labor markets and in the sphere of production where this labor
is put to work. The enormous growth in the relative surplus population combines with suppression
of international labor mobility to exert a tremendous downward pressure on all wages and on
the incomes of small producers, maintaining or widening still further the distance between
real wages in the imperialist nations and in the Global South.
In Smith's telling the suppression of international labor mobility is actually central
to explaining not just global wage differentials perceived to result from differences in productivity,
but also the data by which labor productivity between countries is measured in the first place.
The neoclassicals' trick here is to take the international division of labor that emerges from
what Smith calls "global labor arbitrage" (e.g. outsourcing) and remove it from their conceptual
category of production altogether, instead regarding it through the lens of international
trade as if workers on a factory floor were constantly "trading" their partially-assembled
products to others further down the assembly line. Here's Smith again:
Statistics on labor productivity, obtained by dividing the value added of a firm, industrial
sector, or nation by its total workforce, are highly deceptive. Much of the alleged increase
in labor productivity in the imperialist nations is an artifact resulting from the outsourcing
of low value-added, labor-intensive production processes to low-wage countries. As Susan Houseman
has argued, "when manufacturers outsource or offshore work, labor productivity increases directly
because the outsourced or offshored labor used to produce the product is no longer employed
in the manufacturing sector and hence is not counted in the denominator of the labor productivity
equation." This is extremely important, because "the rate of productivity growth in U.S. manufacturing
increased in the mid-1990s, greatly outpacing that in the services sector and accounting for
most of the overall productivity growth in the U.S. economy." Thus she argues, "To the extent
that offshoring is an important source of measured productivity growth in the economy, productivity
statistics will, in part, be capturing cost savings or gains to trade but not improvements
in the output of American labor." Houseman believes this solves "one of the great puzzles of
the American economy in recent years the fact that large productivity gains have not broadly
benefited workers in the form of higher wages. Productivity improvements that result from
offshoring may largely measure cost savings, not improvements to output per hour worked by
American labor."
Thus, when a firm outsources labor-intensive production processes, the productivity of the
workers who remain in its employment rises, even though nothing about their specific labor
has changed. Outsourcing therefore has what might be called a "ventriloquist effect" on measures
of productivity. But this only scratches the surface of the productivity paradox. Labor-intensive
production processes are practically synonymous with low value-added production processes,
yet the more labor-intensive it is, that is, the larger living labor is relative to dead labor,
the greater is its contribution to value and surplus value-but much of this is captured by
capital-intensive capitals, showing up as a much higher value added per worker.
John Quiggin 12.22.16 at 11:17 pm
@Dave You are arguing against internal freedom of movement. Do you support systems of internal
passports, as in the Soviet Union or the hukou system in China?
John Quiggin 12.23.16 at 3:14 am
WLGR: I'll look for this book. But on an initial reading of your first quotation, it seems to
me that Smith is just restating the factor endowment model. What does "surplus labor" mean, if
not a high ratio of labor to capital? Does he spell out the distinction somewhere else?
ZM 12.23.16 at 3:26 am
John Quiggin,
China has a very large population, hukou is problematic and has some undesirable impacts, but
China needs to get all the provinces and cities more equal before they can change the hukou system.
At the moment the inequality between provinces and cities in China is very very great compared
to inequality between States and cities in Australia.
Although inequality has decreased as more people have been lifted out of poverty in the last 10-20
years.
Dave 12.23.16 at 6:06 am
@ John Quiggin 34
That's a very good question and it does show why one should always consider the full ramifications
of ones' arguments. I would say that policies against internal migration are not limited to Communist
dictatorships - that's what serfdom was, after all. I'm enough of a liberal to find that sort
of thing oppressive, but I do think it had a certain social utility (of course, letting people
move and travel has advantages too).
It's not exactly freedom of movement I'm arguing against so much as the notion that population
centers have an essentially unlimited ability to absorb newcomers. From 18th Century Manchester
to the American West to exploding Chinese industrial cities today, boom towns are notorious for
their environmental devastation and social dysfunction.
Even in a modern era where resource extraction and heavy industry are less dominant economic
drivers than they once were, the combination of free movement of capital and free movement of
labor is a consistent recipe for explosive, unplanned, and unsustainable growth in whatever areas
are deemed economically valuable. The boom bust cycle of capitalism maps onto the landscape itself
and the effects for both the natives and the newcomers can be devastating.
What I would argue though is that free movement of people is a problem only insofar as there
is free movement of capital. You won't have millions of people flood a region if that region hasn't
already been flooded with millions of jobs. This would require a new international regulatory
framework to put the brakes on massive industrial and commercial development and a rejection of
the current extreme growth bias in economic thought. In effect, I think that it should be businesses
that have to apply for those permits or internal passports, rather than individuals.
Many municipalities already do this through the use of building permits, but their efforts
are compromised by an imperative to expand their tax base and competition between municipalities
that gravely limits their effective bargaining power. In a free trade, open borders world, I can
see the same thing happening at the national scale, forcing whole countries to compete with one
another for jobs and labor and hastening the rate of neo-colonial resource plundering.
My worst case scenario is something like this. Lets say a fairly small - but not necessarily
tiny - country like Uruguay adopts global open borders. A little while later, they make the shocking
discovery that they're sitting on some of the largest reserves of, oh let's say, rare earth metals
in the world.
Now, these metals are incredibly valuable so getting the capital to open mines and ore processing
centers isn't a problem, the bigger issue is that Uruguay only has 3.4 million people, most of
whom already have jobs, so the tens of thousands of employees needed to build the new mining industry
will mostly be coming from elsewhere (or the mining companies will start by hiring Uruguayanos,
but then they'll need migrants to fill the jobs the natives vacated). It doesn't stop there though,
because the great new mining industry will produce secondary industries such as cell phone manufacturing,
service jobs for the growing population, construction jobs to expand the national infrastructure,
and on and on and on. These jobs bring in new migrants, who help grow the economy, and attract
new migrants in a feedback loop that only ends when the bubble bursts or wages collapse.
How big
does Uruguay get before the boom goes bust? Does it double in size? Triple? Does Montevideo become
one of the biggest cities in South America, with sprawling, polluted, slums to match? What happens
to the reasonably stable, reasonably prosperous, reasonably progressive little country that was
there before? Would Uruguay still be Uruguay at that point?
Poor former farmers that move to big cities typically wont drive cars, wont handle big industrial
manichery and will only heat /cool tiny living spaces. So they are probably not a significant
factor for the environmental issues in say big Chinese cities.
"Cities as we know them (and their accompanying social maladies) are really only two
or three centuries old".
No. Ancient Rome had a population of 750,000-1,000,000, based almost
entirely on migrants, and more than large enough to create any number of social maladies; at least
five other cities in Mediterranean with populations in the hundreds of thousands; series of cities
in China with populations similar to Rome.
Evidence suggests significant levels of mobility, not
just for elite. I don't think this necessarily has any bearing on the modern situation (capitalism,
technology, yadda yadda), but certainly the historical evidence doesn't support your implied "large-scale
migration is unnatural" thesis.
What a daft question. When did the 'model' Uruguay exist, the one that we are supposed to preserve
for all eternity? Now? Before the Uruguayan nation-state was formed? Before Columbus?
The irony is that the effort needed to prevent change would in all likelihood just lead to
other changes of a more dysfunctional nature.
engels 12.23.16 at 12:21 pm
OT and possibly an ignorant question but does anyone know of any meaningful national or cultural
difference between Uruguay and Argentina?
Factor endowments equals they have poor people for cheap labor and we have rich people who create,
consume and finance and the origins of the difference is like shrouded in mystery?
John Smith of WLGR is Marxian. Apples profits are generated by the workers at Foxconn in China,
not the designers in San Jose. The surplus accruing to intellectual property is mostly a product
of past and present Imperialism.
Chris – maybe it's silly, but, if my work on immigration has tried to show anything at all, it's
that to make a contribution on the subject, it's important to get the facts right, not make assumptions
about movement we know are not true (people will move to where they get the best return on their
skills, etc.), not assume away other difficulties, and not blur cases together through hand-waiving
("vast numbers", "relationships", etc.) All of that's done here, and even more so in the paper
under discussion. I find it really annoying. Maybe I shouldn't let it bother me, but it seems
to me to be typical "assume a can-opener" level of discussion, at the very best, and not helpful.
By the way, at least according to Wikipedia, there are 830,000 Poles in the UK_ so well south
of a million still. It's a lot, but, lots less than, say, the 2.9 million Russian-born people
in the US, a population I'm very familiar with, so I don't really need the lecture here.
You're right, of course. I recognize now that my argument was a bit fuzzy and verges into begging
the question ("Modern cities, as I've chosen to define them, only existed under capitalism,
therefore
urban dysfunction is all capitalism's fault, QED, etc."). "Bigger than Cleveland" is not a universal
definition of what a city is and I shouldn't have treated it as one.
I'm not trying to say massive migration was unnatural though. I'm of the opinion that anything
humans do is natural, if that helps. Nor do I think migration, even of the large-scale variety
is wrong , but rather that it can be immensely harmful if there are no systems in place
to mitigate its social and environmental effects. So discussing policy that would tear down all
political barriers to migration as if it were mainly an issue of wages and productivity struck
me as reductive. Even on purely economic terms, the way migration contributes to urban sprawl
outpacing infrastructure is a huge issue that I frequently see overlooked.
@Igor 41:
I'm not arguing against change, but rather change that comes so quickly it creates a schism between
the past and the present. The Gold Rush changed California from predominantly Spanish-speaking
to majority Anglo in just a few years (and also killed tens of thousands of Indians in the process),
so even if a place still has the same name following migration, it might not be pronounced the
same way.
engels 12.23.16 at 3:32 pm
Also would be interesting to see numbers on marriages to foreign nationals by country-a quick
google didn't turn it up.
@engels – pretty sure that this is because the stats don't exist for many countries. The British
government simply has no idea how many of its nationals are married to EU nationals (at least
for England and Wales, there may be some record-keeping in Scotland).
@47. The UK has no idea how many EU citizens are here full stop. Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia.
The 2001 UK Census recorded 36,555 Portuguese-born people resident in the UK. More recent
estimates by the Office for National Statistics put the figure at 107,000 in 2013. The 2011 Census
recorded 88,161 Portuguese-born residents in England and Wales. The censuses of Scotland and Northern
Ireland recorded 1,908 and 1,996 Portuguese-born residents respectively. Other sources estimate
the Portuguese community to be larger, with the editor of a Portuguese-language newspaper putting
the number of Portuguese passport holders in London alone at 350,000. According to academics José
Carlos Pina Almeida and David Corkill, writing in 2010, estimates of the Portuguese population
of the UK range from 80,000 to 700,000.
I mention it because informal information from someone at the embassy puts the number closer
to 1 million. Many of them well have been born here. But nevertheless the point is that the estimates
are all over the place.
Again, its not necessarily a good or a bad thing, but as a scientist with a bit of a measurement
fixation I find the fact that no-one has any idea to be quite disturbing.
engels 12.23.16 at 8:31 pm
E.g. on US vs Europe:
"4.6% of Americans were married to a foreigner in 2010, up from 2.4% in 1970"
"in France the proportion of international marriage rose from about 10% in 1996 to 16% in 2009.
In Germany, the rise is a little lower, from 11.3% in 1990 to 13.7% in 2010.
Some smaller countries
have much higher levels. Nearly half the marriages in Switzerland are international ones, up from
a third in 1990.
Around one in five marriages in Sweden, Belgium and Austria involves a foreign
partner"
"... Democratic party under Bill Clinton became yet another neoliberal party (soft neoliberals) and betrayed both organized labour and middle class in favour of financial oligarchy. ..."
"... The cynical calculation was that "they have nowhere to go" and will vote for Democrats anyway. And that was true up to and including election of "change we can believe in" guy. After this attempt of yet another Clinton-style "bait and switch" trick failed. ..."
"... Now it is clear that far right picked up large part of those votes. So in a way Bill Clinton is the godfather of the US far right renaissances. The same is true for Hillary: her "kick the can down the road" stance made victory of Trump possible (although it surprised me; I expected that neoliberals were still strong enough to push their candidate down the US people throat) ..."
"... Under "democrat" Obama the USA pursued imperial policy of creating global neoliberal empire. The foreign policy remained essentially unchanged. Neocons were partially replaced with "liberal interventionists" which is the same staff in a different bottle. This policy costs the US tremendous amount of money and it is probable that the US is going the way British empire went -- overextending itself. ..."
"... Regional currency blocks are now a reality and arrangements bypass the usage of US dollar if international trade are common. They are now in place between several large countries such as Russia and China and absolutely nothing can reverse this trend. So dollar became virtualized -- a kind of "conversion gauge" but without profits for real conversion national currency to dollars for major TBTF banks. ..."
This Washington Post article on Poland - where a right-wing, anti-intellectual, nativist party
now rules, and has garnered a lot of public support - is chilling for those of us who worry that
Trump_vs_deep_state may really be the end of the road for US democracy. The supporters of Law and Justice
clearly looked a lot like Trump's white working class enthusiasts; so are we headed down the same
path?
(In Poland, a window on what happens when
populists come to power http://wpo.st/aHJO2
Washington Post - Anthony Faiola - December 18)
Well, there's an important difference - a bit of American exceptionalism, if you like. Europe's
populist parties are actually populist; they pursue policies that really do help workers, as long
as those workers are the right color and ethnicity. As someone put it, they're selling a herrenvolk
welfare state. Law and Justice has raised minimum wages and reduced the retirement age; France's
National Front advocates the same things.
Trump, however, is different. He said lots of things on the campaign trail, but his personnel
choices indicate that in practice he's going to be a standard hard-line economic-right Republican.
His Congressional allies are revving up to dismantle Obamacare, privatize Medicare, and raise
the retirement age. His pick for Labor Secretary is a fast-food tycoon
who loathes minimum wage hikes. And his pick for top economic advisor is the king of trickle-down.
So in what sense is Trump a populist? Basically, he plays one on TV - he claims to stand for
the common man, disparages elites, trashes political correctness; but it's all for show. When
it comes to substance, he's pro-elite all the way.
It's infuriating and dismaying that he managed to get away with this in the election. But that
was all big talk. What happens when reality begins to hit? Repealing Obamacare will inflict huge
harm on precisely the people who were most enthusiastic Trump supporters - people who somehow
believed that their benefits would be left intact. What happens when they realize their mistake?
I wish I were confident in a coming moment of truth. I'm not. Given history, what we can count
on is a massive effort to spin the coming working-class devastation as somehow being the fault
of liberals, and for all I know it might work. (Think of how Britain's Tories managed to shift
blame for austerity onto Labour's mythical fiscal irresponsibility.) But there is certainly an
opportunity for Democrats coming.
And the indicated political strategy is clear: make Trump and company own all the hardship
they're about to inflict. No cooperation in devising an Obamacare replacement; no votes for Medicare
privatization and increasing the retirement age. No bipartisan cover for the end of the TV illusion
and the coming of plain old, ugly reality.
Democratic party under Bill Clinton became yet another neoliberal party (soft neoliberals)
and betrayed both organized labour and middle class in favour of financial oligarchy.
The cynical calculation was that "they have nowhere to go" and will vote for Democrats
anyway. And that was true up to and including election of "change we can believe in" guy. After
this attempt of yet another Clinton-style "bait and switch" trick failed.
Now it is clear that far right picked up large part of those votes. So in a way Bill Clinton
is the godfather of the US far right renaissances. The same is true for Hillary: her "kick the
can down the road" stance made victory of Trump possible (although it surprised me; I expected
that neoliberals were still strong enough to push their candidate down the US people throat)
Point 2:
Under "democrat" Obama the USA pursued imperial policy of creating global neoliberal empire.
The foreign policy remained essentially unchanged. Neocons were partially replaced with "liberal
interventionists" which is the same staff in a different bottle. This policy costs the US tremendous
amount of money and it is probable that the US is going the way British empire went -- overextending
itself.
Regional currency blocks are now a reality and arrangements bypass the usage of US dollar
if international trade are common. They are now in place between several large countries such
as Russia and China and absolutely nothing can reverse this trend. So dollar became virtualized
-- a kind of "conversion gauge" but without profits for real conversion national currency to dollars
for major TBTF banks.
So if we think about Iraq war as the way to prevent to use euro as alternative to dollar in
oil sales that goal was not achieved and all blood and treasure were wasted.
In this sense it would be difficult to Trump to continue with "bastard neoliberalism" both
in foreign policy and domestically and betray his election promises because they reflected real
problems facing the USA and are the cornerstone of his political support.
Also in this case neocons establishment will simply get rid of him one way or the other. I
hope that he understand this danger and will avoid trimming Social Security.
Returning to Democratic Party betrayal of interests of labour, Krugman hissy fit signifies
that he does not understand the current political situation. Neoliberal wing of Democratic Party
is now bankrupt both morally and politically. Trump election was the last nail into Bill Clinton
political legacy coffin.
Now we returned to essentially the same political process that took place after the Great Depression,
with much weaker political leaders, this time. So this is the time for stronger, more interventionist
in internal policy state and the suppression of financial oligarchy. If Trump does not understand
this he is probably doomed and will not last long.
That's why I think Trump inspired far right renaissance will continue and the political role
of military might dramatically increase. And politically Trump is the hostage of this renaissance.
Flint appointment in this sense is just the first swallow of increased role of military leaders
in government.
"... the newly elected US president, Donald Trump, is a big question mark, especially concerning the US foreign policy. First of all, we must not forget that Trump is part of the US plutocracy, therefore, he will seek to defend the interests of his class, no matter how much the Right-Wing fanatics want to present him as an 'anti-establishment' figure. ..."
"... The only hope we have, is that Trump will reject the neocon policy and try to build a different relation with the oncoming rival economic alliance of BRICS, based on mutual benefits for both the developing countries and the West. ..."
"... We have to assume, of course, a very ideal situation in which Trump will be capable to surpass the pressure of the warmongering neocons and the deep state who run the US empire for decades, in contrast with Hillary Clinton, who would be more than willing to apply their agenda. ..."
"... The US is using the dollar superiority to retain its vast military expenses, conduct wars and secure oil reserves. It feels that it must confront the Chinese economic expansionism, otherwise dollar monopoly will break and a vicious circle will start in which the US declining empire will be finding more and more difficult to be the number one global power. ..."
"... Well, it seems that Donald is following such an approach! He appears to be conciliatory concerning Putin, but continuously provokes the Chinese! ..."
As
John Pilger describes in his new
documentary
The
Coming War on China
,
the "threat of China" is becoming big
news. The media is beating the drums
of war, as the world is being primed
to regard China as the new enemy.
What is not news, is that China
itself is under threat. A quick look
at the map of the American military
bases in Asia-Pacific, is adequate
for someone to understand that they
form a giant noose, encircling China
with missiles, bombers, warships.
It is
quite clear that the Western
plutocracy is changing the agenda
because it sees that the Sino-Russian
alliance is trying to build an
independent block which could become
a serious threat against the dollar
domination, and therefore, the
neoliberal model, through which the
elites are hoping to establish their
global supremacy.
Many support that
the newly elected US president,
Donald Trump, is a big question mark,
especially concerning the US foreign
policy. First of all, we must not
forget that Trump is part of the US
plutocracy, therefore, he will seek
to defend the interests of his class,
no matter how much the Right-Wing
fanatics want to present him as an
'anti-establishment' figure.
You
don't need to go too far on this.
Just take a look at
those who has appointed in key
positions to run the economy
and you will understand that Trump
will not only do 'business as usual',
but indeed, he will seek to secure
the domination of the plutocracy, by
expanding the destructive neoliberal
agenda against the interests of the
US working class.
The only hope we have, is that Trump
will reject the neocon policy and try
to build a different relation with
the oncoming rival economic alliance
of BRICS, based on mutual benefits
for both the developing countries and
the West.
We have to assume, of course, a
very ideal situation in which Trump
will be capable to surpass the
pressure of the warmongering neocons
and the deep state who run the US
empire for decades, in contrast with
Hillary Clinton, who would be more
than willing to apply their agenda.
While
it seems that, he does want a smooth
re-approach with Russia, the signals
he sends concerning China, long
before he get elected, are not to be
taken as a conciliatory approach,
without doubt.
The US is using the dollar
superiority to retain its vast
military expenses, conduct wars and
secure oil reserves. It feels that it
must confront the Chinese economic
expansionism, otherwise dollar
monopoly will break and a vicious
circle will start in which the US
declining empire will be finding more
and more difficult to be the number
one global power.
What
would be the 'right approach' for the
neocons who are running out of time
in this brutal race? It would be,
probably, to focus primarily on
China, which is indeed the biggest
economic threat, but doesn't have the
military power (like Russia) to
confront the US. A scenario would be
that the US starts a war that ends
quickly, changes the regime in China,
put its puppet, and probably, break
China (as they want to do with
Russia), using disputed provinces as
a pretext (e.g. Tibet, Xinjiang).
Having also encircled Russia from
Europe, the US will bet on the fact
that the Russians will not react, as
they will be occupied to maintain
forces on their Western borders.
Well, it seems that Donald is
following such an approach! He
appears to be conciliatory concerning
Putin, but continuously provokes the
Chinese!
Everything shows that
Trump is determined to continue the
Obama 'Pivot to Asia' anti-China
legacy, but this would be also his
biggest mistake.
Forget for a moment that the Chinese
continuously upgrade their military
forces, as well as, their nuclear
arsenal, partly because of the stupid
neocon policy, adopted by Obama, that
makes them feel directly threatened
and quite nervous. Forget that in the
area there is a North Korea that no
one knows what it can do and how far
it will go with its nukes, if only
would "smell" a coalition of US-led
forces that are about to operate
close to its territory.
If
Trump thinks that Putin will sit back
and watch this happening, he is
completely mistaken. Apart from the
fact that Russia and China are
committed by the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO), which is
expanding on security and defence
issues
, Putin
knows that, if China falls, Russia
will be next. Therefore, it would be
a major mistake for Trump to obey to
the lunatic neocon plans because the
gates of hell towards WWIII will be
opened for good.
A leaked communication between the Trump transition team's Undersecretary of Defense for
policy Brian McKeon, and the Pentagon, has revealed the four biggest defense priorities for
the president-elect. Among the top four items listed in the memo from are: 1) developing a
strategy to defeat/destroy ISIS; 2) build a strong defense by eliminating budget caps/the
sequester, 3) develop a comprehensive cyber strategy, and 4) eliminate wasteful spending by
finding greater efficiencies.
The list was communicated to McKeon by Mira Ricardel, one
of the leaders of Trump's Pentagon transition team, according to the memo obtained by
Foreign Policy
magazine and published Tuesday.
One can only hope, based on the crumpled appearance of the leaked memo,
that it was smuggled out by this year's Fawn Hall stuffed in her
unmentionables.
"... Only John F. Kennedy directly challenged it, firing CIA Director Allen Dulles after the Bay of Pigs disaster. He was assassinated, and whether or not CIA involvement is ever conclusively proven, the allegations have been useful to the agency, keeping politicians in line. The Deep State also co-opted the media, keeping it in line with a combination of fear and favor. ..."
"... Why has the US been involved in long, costly, bloody, and inconclusive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? ..."
"... Why should the US get involved in similar conflicts in Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Iran, and other Middle Eastern and Northern African hotspots? ..."
"... Isn't such involvement responsible for blowback terrorism and refugee flows in both Europe and the US? ..."
"... Have "free trade" agreements and porous borders been a net benefit or detriment to the US? Why is the banking industry set up for periodic crises that inevitably require government bail-outs? ..."
"... How has encouraging debt and speculation at the expense of savings and investment helped the US economy? ..."
"... The shenanigans in the US after Trump's election-violent protests, hysterical outbursts, the vote recount effort, the proof-free Russian hacking allegations, "fake news," and the attempt to sway electoral college electors-are the desperate screams of those trapped inside. ..."
"... Regrettably, the building analogy is imperfect, because it implies that those inside are helpless and that the collapse will only harm them. In its desperation, incompetence, and corrupt nihilism, the Deep State can wreak all sorts of havoc, up to and including the destruction of humanity. Trump represents an opportunity to strike a blow against the Deep State, but the chances it will be lethal are minimal and the dangers obvious. ..."
The pathetic attempts to undo Donald Trump's victory are signs of desperation, not strength, in
the Deep State.
The post World War II consensus held that the USSR's long-term goal was world domination. That
assessment solidified after the Soviets detonated an atomic bomb in 1949. A nuclear arms race, a
space race, maintenance of a globe-spanning military, political, and economic confederation, and
a huge expansion of the size and power of the military and intelligence complex were justified by
the Soviet, and later, the Red Chinese threats. Countering those threats led the US to use many of
the same amoral tactics that it deplored when used by its enemies: espionage, subversion, bribery,
repression, assassination, regime change, and direct and proxy warfare.
Scorning principles of limited government, non-intervention in other nations' affairs, and individual
rights, the Deep State embraced the anti-freedom mindset of its purported enemies, not just towards
those enemies, but toward allies and the American people. The Deep State gradually assumed control
of the government and elected officials were expected to adhere to its policies and promote its propaganda.
Only John F. Kennedy directly challenged it, firing CIA Director Allen Dulles after the Bay of
Pigs disaster. He was assassinated, and whether or not CIA involvement is ever conclusively proven,
the allegations have been useful to the agency, keeping politicians in line. The Deep State also
co-opted the media, keeping it in line with a combination of fear and favor.
Since its ascension in the 1950s, the biggest threat to the Deep State has not been its many and
manifest failures, but rather what the naive would regard as its biggest success: the fall of the
Soviet Union in 1991. Much of the military-industrial complex was suddenly deprived of its reason
for existence-the threat was gone. However, a more subtle point was lost.
The Soviet Union has been the largest of statism's many failures to date. Because of the Deep
State's philosophical blinders, that outcome was generally unforeseen. The command and control philosophy
at the heart of Soviet communism was merely a variant on the same philosophy espoused and practiced
by the Deep State. Like the commissars, its members believe that "ordinary" people are unable to
handle freedom, and that their generalized superiority entitles them to wield the coercive power
of government.
With "irresponsible" elements talking of peace dividends and scaling back the military and the
intelligence agencies, the complex was sorely in need of a new enemy . Islam suffers the same critical
flaw as communism-command and control-and has numerous other deficiencies, including intolerance,
repression, and the legal subjugation of half its adherents. The Deep State had to focus on the world
conquest ideology of some Muslims to even conjure Islam as a plausible foe. However, unlike the USSR,
they couldn't claim that sect and faction-ridden Islam posed a monolithic threat, that the Islamic
nations were an empire or a federation united towards a common goal, or that their armaments (there
are under thirty nuclear weapons in the one Islamic nation, Pakistan, that has them) could destroy
the US or the entire planet.
There was too much money and power at stake for the complex to shrink. While on paper Islam appeared
far weaker than communism, the complex had one factor in their favor: terrorism is terrifying. In
the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Americans surrendered liberties and gave the Deep State carte blanche
to fight a war on terrorism that would span the globe, target all those whom the government identified
as terrorists, and never be conclusively won or lost. Funding for the complex ballooned, the military
was deployed on multiple fronts, and the surveillance state blossomed. Most of those who might have
objected were bought off with expanded welfare state funding and programs (e.g. George W. Bush's
prescription drug benefit, Obamacare).
What would prove to be the biggest challenge to the centralization and the power of the Deep State
came, unheralded, with the invention of the microchip in the late 1950s. The Deep State could not
have exercised the power it has without a powerful grip on information flow and popular perception.
The microchip led to widespread distribution of cheap computing power and dissemination of information
over the decentralized Internet. This dynamic, organically adaptive decentralization has been the
antithesis of the command-and-control Deep State, which now realizes the gravity of the threat. Fortunately,
countering these technologies has been like trying to eradicate hordes of locusts.
The gravest threat, however, to the Deep State is self-imposed: it's own incompetence. Even the
technologically illiterate can ask questions for which it has no answers.
Why has the US been involved in long, costly, bloody, and inconclusive wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq?
Why should the US get involved in similar conflicts in Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Iran,
and other Middle Eastern and Northern African hotspots?
Isn't such involvement responsible for blowback terrorism and refugee flows in both
Europe and the US?
Have "free trade" agreements and porous borders been a net benefit or detriment to the
US? Why is the banking industry set up for periodic crises that inevitably require government
bail-outs? (SLL claims no special insight into the nexus between the banking-financial sector
and the Deep State, other than to note that there is one.) Why does every debt crisis result in
more debt?
How has encouraging debt and speculation at the expense of savings and investment helped
the US economy?
The Deep State can't answer or even acknowledge these questions because they all touch on its
failures.
Brexit, Donald Trump, other populist, nationalist movements catching fire, and the rise of the
alternative media are wrecking balls aimed at an already structurally unsound and teetering building
that would eventually collapse on its own. The shenanigans in the US after Trump's election-violent
protests, hysterical outbursts, the vote recount effort, the proof-free Russian hacking allegations,
"fake news," and the attempt to sway electoral college electors-are the desperate screams of those
trapped inside.
Regrettably, the building analogy is imperfect, because it implies that those inside are helpless
and that the collapse will only harm them. In its desperation, incompetence, and corrupt nihilism,
the Deep State can wreak all sorts of havoc, up to and including the destruction of humanity. Trump
represents an opportunity to strike a blow against the Deep State, but the chances it will be lethal
are minimal and the dangers obvious.
The euphoria over his victory cannot obscure a potential consequence: it may hasten and amplify
the destruction and resultant chaos when the Deep State finally topples . Anyone who thinks Trump's
victory sounds an all clear is allowing hope to triumph over experience and what should have been
hard-won wisdom.
"War on Terror" + "Refugee Humanitarian Crisis" =European Clusterfuck
Or
"War on Drugs" + "Afghan Opium/Nicaraguan Cocaine" =Police State America
Both hands (Left/Right) to crush Liberty
Mano-A-Mano -> Cheka_Mate •Dec 22, 2016 8:54 PM
The DEEP STATE pretends they hate Trump, gets him in office, hoodwinks the sheeple into
believing they voted for him, while they still retain control.
Voila!
TeamDepends -> unrulian •Dec 22, 2016 8:55 PM
Remember the Maine! Remember the Lusitania! Remember the USS Liberty! Remember the Gulf of
Tonkin! Never forget.
Withdrawn Sanction •Dec 22, 2016 8:52 PM
"In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Americans surrendered liberties and gave the Deep State
carte blanche..."
What a load of crap. The Deep State CAUSED 9/11 and then STOLE Americans' liberties.
StraightLineLogic: Linear thinker, indeed.
WTFUD •Dec 22, 2016 8:56 PM
Shakespeare would have had a field-day with this Material; Comic Tragedy!
BadDog •Dec 22, 2016 9:00 PM
Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.
red1chief •Dec 22, 2016 9:09 PM
Funny how a guy loading up his administration with Vampire Squids is thought to be disliked
by the Deep State. Deep State psy ops never ceases to amaze.
"... Democracy is inevitably going to clash with the demands of Globalization as they are opposite. Globalization requires entrepreneurs to search cheaper means of production worldwide. ..."
"... In practice, this means moving capital out of the USA. ..."
"... To put it in Marxist terms the interests of American society to survive and prosper came into contradiction with the interests of capitalism as a system of production and with the capitalists as a class who has no homeland, and for whom homeland is where it is easier to make money. ..."
"... American capitalism from its very beginning was based on the assumption that what was good for business was good for America. Until 1929 it more or less worked. The robber barons were robbing other entrepreneurs and workers but at least they reinvested their ill gained profits in America. The crash of 1929 showed that the interests of Big Banks clashed with the interest of American society with devastating results. ..."
"... The decades after WWII have seen a slow and steady erosion of American superiority in technology and productivity and slow and steady flight of capital from the USA. Globalization has been undermining America. From the point of view of Global prosperity if it is cheaper to produce in China, production should relocate to China. From the point of view of American worker, this is treason, a policy destroying the United States as an industrial power, as a nation, and as a community of citizens. Donald Trump is the first top ranking politician who has realized this simple fact. The vote for Donald Trump has been a protest against Globalization, immigration, open borders, capital flight, multiculturalism, liberalism and all the values American Liberal establishment has been preaching for 60 years that are killing the USA. ..."
"... Donald Trump wants to arrest the assault of Globalization on America. He promised to reduce taxes, and to attract business back to the USA. However, reduced taxes are only one ingredient in incentives. For businesses to stay or come back to the US, companies must have educated labor force, steady supply of talented, well-educated young people, excellent schools, and safe neighborhoods, among other things. As of now most of these preconditions are missing. ..."
"... Dr. Brovkin is a historian, formerly a Harvard Professor of History. He has published several books and numerous articles on Russian History and Politics. Currently, Dr. Brovkin works and lives in Marrakech, Morocco. ..."
"... This is an interesting question: is it possible to contain neoliberal globalization by building walls, rejecting 'trade' agreement, and so on. I get the feeling that a direct attack may not work. Water will find a way, as they say. With a direct attack against globalization, what you're likely to face is major capital flight. ..."
In his election campaign Donald Trump has identified several key themes that defined American malaise.
He pointed to capital flight, bad trade deals, illegal immigration, and corruption of the government
and of the press. What is missing in Trump's diagnosis though is an explanation of this crisis. What
are the causes of American decline or as Ross Pero used to say: Let's look under the hood.
Most of the challenges America faces today have to do with two processes we call Globalization
and Sovietization. By Globalization we mean a process of externalizing American business thanks to
the doctrine of Free trade which has been up to now the Gospel of the establishment. By Sovietization
we mean a process of slow expansion of the role of the government in economy, education, business,
military, press, virtually any and every aspect of politics and society.
Let us start with Globalization.
Dani Rodrick (
The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy) has argued that
it is impossible to have democracy and globalization at the same time. Democracy is inevitably
going to clash with the demands of Globalization as they are opposite. Globalization requires entrepreneurs
to search cheaper means of production worldwide.
In practice, this means moving capital out of the USA. For fifty years economists have
been preaching Free trade, meaning that free unimpeded, no tariffs trade is good for America. And
it was in the 1950s, 60s and 1970s that American products were cheaper or better than those overseas.
Beginning with the 1970s, the process reversed. Globalization enriched the capitalists and impoverished
the rest of Americans. To put it in Marxist terms the interests of American society to survive
and prosper came into contradiction with the interests of capitalism as a system of production and
with the capitalists as a class who has no homeland, and for whom homeland is where it is easier
to make money.
American capitalism from its very beginning was based on the assumption that what was good
for business was good for America. Until 1929 it more or less worked. The robber barons were robbing
other entrepreneurs and workers but at least they reinvested their ill gained profits in America.
The crash of 1929 showed that the interests of Big Banks clashed with the interest of American society
with devastating results.
The decades after WWII have seen a slow and steady erosion of American superiority in technology
and productivity and slow and steady flight of capital from the USA. Globalization has been undermining
America. From the point of view of Global prosperity if it is cheaper to produce in China, production
should relocate to China. From the point of view of American worker, this is treason, a policy destroying
the United States as an industrial power, as a nation, and as a community of citizens. Donald Trump
is the first top ranking politician who has realized this simple fact. The vote for Donald Trump
has been a protest against Globalization, immigration, open borders, capital flight, multiculturalism,
liberalism and all the values American Liberal establishment has been preaching for 60 years that
are killing the USA.
Donald Trump wants to arrest the assault of Globalization on America. He promised to reduce
taxes, and to attract business back to the USA. However, reduced taxes are only one ingredient in
incentives. For businesses to stay or come back to the US, companies must have educated labor force,
steady supply of talented, well-educated young people, excellent schools, and safe neighborhoods,
among other things. As of now most of these preconditions are missing.
To fight Globalization Donald Trump announced in his agenda to drop or renegotiate NAFTA and TPP.
That is a step in the right direction. However, this will not be easy. There are powerful vested
interests in making money overseas that will put up great resistance to America first policy. They
have powerful lobbies and votes in the Congress and it is by far not certain if Trump will succeed
in overcoming their opposition.
Another step along these lines of fighting Globalization is the proposed building of the Wall
on Mexican border. That too may or may not work. Powerful agricultural interests in California have
a vested interest in easy and cheap labor force made up of illegal migrants. If their supply is cut
off they are going to hike up the prices on agricultural goods that may lead to inflation or higher
consumer prices for the American workers.
... ... ...
The Military: Americans are told they have a best military in the world. In fact, it is not the
best but the most expensive one in the world. According to the National priorities Project, in fiscal
2015 the military spending amounted to 54% of the discretionary spending in the
amount of 598.5 billion dollars . Of those almost 200 billion dollars goes for operations and
maintenance, 135 billion for military personnel and 90 billion for procurement (see
Here is How the US Military Spends its Billions )
American military industrial complex spends more that the next seven runners up combined. It is
a Sovietized, bureaucratic structure that exists and thrives on internal deals behind closed doors,
procurement process closed to public scrutiny, wasted funds on consultants, kickbacks, and outrageous
prices for military hardware. Specific investigations of fraud do not surface too often. Yet for
example, DoD Inspector General reported:
Why is it that an F35 fighter jet should cost 135 million apiece and the Russian SU 35 that can
do similar things is sold for 35 million dollars and produced for 15 million? The answer is that
the Congress operates on a principle that any price the military asks is good enough. The entire
system of military procurement has to be scrapped. It is a source of billions of stolen and wasted
dollars. The Pentagon budget of half a trillion a year is a drain on the economy that is unsustainable,
and what you get is not worth the money. The military industrial complex in America does not deliver
the best equipment or security it is supposed to.(on this see:
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/cutting-waste-isnt-enough-curb-pentagon-spending-18640
)
Donald Trump was the first to his credit who raised the issue: Do we need all these bases overseas?
Do they really enhance American security? Or are they a waste of money for the benefit of other countries
who take America for a free ride. Why indeed should the US pay for the defense of Japan? Is Japan
a poor country that cannot afford to defend itself? Defense commitments like those expose America
to unnecessary confrontations and risk of war over issues that have nothing to do with America's
interests. Is it worth it to fight China over some uninhabitable islands that Japan claims? (See
discussion:
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/should-the-us-continue-guarantee-the-security-wealthy-states-17720
)
Similarly, Trump is the first one to raise the question: What is the purpose of NATO? ( see discussion
of NATO utility:
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/will-president-trump-renegotiate-the-nato-treaty-18647
) Yes the Liberal pro-Clinton media answer is: to defend Europe from Russian aggression. But
really what aggression? If the Russians wanted to they could have taken Kiev in a day two years ago.
Instead, they put up with the most virulently hostile regime in Kiev. Let us ask ourselves would
we have put up with a virulently anti-American regime in Mexico, a regime that would have announced
its intention to conclude a military alliance with China or Russia? Were we not ready to go to nuclear
war over Soviet missiles in Cuba? If we would not have accepted such a regime in Mexico, why do we
complain that the Russians took action against the new regime in Ukraine. Oh yes, they took Crimea.
But the population there is Russian, and until 1954 it was Russian territory and after Ukrainian
independence the Russians did not raise the issue of Crimea as Ukrainian territory and paid rent
for their naval base there The Russians took it over only when a hostile regime clamoring for NATO
membership settled in Kiev. Does that constitute Russian aggression or actually Russian limited response
to a hostile act? (see on this Steven Cohen:
http://eastwestaccord.com/podcast-stephen-f-cohen-talks-russia-israel-middle-east-diplomacy-steele-unger/
) As I have argued elsewhere Putin has been under tremendous pressure to act more decisively
against the neo-Nazis in Kiev. (see Vlad Brovkin: On Russian Assertiveness in Foreign Policy. (
http://eastwestaccord.com/?s=brovkin&submit=Search
)
With a little bit of patience and good will a compromise is possible on Ukraine through Minsk
accords. Moreover, Ukraine is not in NATO and as long as it is not admitted to NATO, a deal with
the Russians on Ukraine is feasible. Just like so many other pro-American governments, Ukraine wants
to milk Uncle Sam for what it is worth. They expect to be paid for being anti/Russian. (See discussion
on need of enemy:
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/does-america-need-enemy-18106
) Would it not be a better policy to let Ukraine know that they are on their own: no more subsidies,
no more payments? Mend your relations with Russia yourselves. Then peace would immediately prevail.
If we admit that there is no Russian aggression and that this myth was propagated by the Neo/Cons
with the specific purpose to return to the paradigm of the cold war, i.e. more money for the military
industrial complex, if we start thinking boldly as Trump has begun, we should say to the Europeans:
go ahead, build your own European army to allay your fears of the Russians. Europe is strong enough,
rich enough and united enough to take care of its defense without American assistance. (See discussion
of Trumps agenda:
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/course-correction-18062
)
So, if Trump restructures procurement mess, reduces the number of military bases overseas, and
invests in high tech research and development for the military on the basis of real competition,
hundreds of billions of dollars could be saved and the defense capability of the country would increase.
... ... ...
Dr. Brovkin is a historian, formerly a Harvard Professor of History. He has published several
books and numerous articles on Russian History and Politics. Currently, Dr. Brovkin works and lives
in Marrakech, Morocco.
This is a bit too much, Volodya. Maybe you should've taken one subject – globalization, for
example – and stop there.
This is an interesting question: is it possible to contain neoliberal globalization by
building walls, rejecting 'trade' agreement, and so on. I get the feeling that a direct attack
may not work. Water will find a way, as they say. With a direct attack against globalization,
what you're likely to face is major capital flight.
You might be able to make neoliberal globalization work for you (for your population, that
is), like Germany and the Scandinavians do, but that's a struggle, constant struggle. And it's
a competition; it will have to be done at the expense of other nations (see Greece, Portugal,
Central (eastern) Europe). And having an anti-neoliberal president is not enough; this would require
a major change, almost a U turn, in the whole governing philosophy. Forget the sanctity of 'free
market', start worshiping the new god: national interest
What an INTERESTING article -- So much that is right, so much that is wrong. An article you
can get your teeth into.
On globalisation: pretty spot-on (although I believe he exaggerates the US weakness in what he
calls "preconditions": there are still many well educated Americans, still good neighborhoods
(yes, sure it could be a lot better). He's against NAFTA & other neoliberal Trade self indulgences.
But then we come to his concept of "Sovietization" of the US. Perhaps it's mere semantics, but
I find the concept incoherent & suspiciously adapted to deliberately agitate US conservatives.
Example: "huge sectors of American economy are not private at all, that in fact they have been
slowly taken over by an ever growing state ownership and control"
This is nonsense on its face: the government spews out trillions to private actors to provide
goods & services. It does so, in part, because it has systematically privatized every government
function capable of returning a profit. The author can't see the actor behind the mask: how much
legislation is now written by & for the benefit of private interests ? (Obama care, Bush pharmaceutical
laws ?)
Of course, the author is correct on the US military-industrial complex: it is a sump of crime
& corruption. Yet he seems not to grasp that the problem is regulative capture. How is the Fiasco
of the F35 & MacDonald Douglas merely an issue for the Legislature alone & how does this circus
resemble the Soviet Union, beyond the fact that BOTH systems (like most systems) are capable of
gross negligence & corruption ?
I like what the author says about NATO, Japan, bases etc. Although he's a little naive if he
thinks NATO for instance is about "protecting" Europe. Yes, that's a part of it: but primarily
NATO etc exist as a tool/mask behind which the US can exert it's imperial ambitions against friend
& for alike.
The author does go off against welfare well that's to be expected: sadly I don't think he quite
gets the connection between globalisation & welfare .He also legitimately goes after tertiary
education, but seems to be (again) confused as to cause & effect.
The author is completely spot on with his sovietization analogy when he comes to the US security
state. Only difference between the Soviets & the US on security totalitarianism ? The US is much
better at it (of course the US has technological advantages unimaginable to the Soviets)
• Replies:
@Randal I agree with you that it's a fascinating piece, and I also agree with many of the points
you agree with.
But then we come to his concept of "Sovietization" of the US. Perhaps it's mere semantics, but
I find the concept incoherent & suspiciously adapted to deliberately agitate US conservatives.
Example: "huge sectors of American economy are not private at all, that in fact they
have been slowly taken over by an ever growing state ownership and control"
This is nonsense on its face: the government spews out trillions to private actors to provide
goods & services. It does so, in part, because it has systematically privatized every government
function capable of returning a profit. The author can't see the actor behind the mask: how much
legislation is now written by & for the benefit of private interests ? (Obama care, Bush pharmaceutical
laws ?)
I think part of the problem here might be a mistaken focus on "the government" as an independent
actor, when in reality it is just a mechanism whereby the rulers (whether they are a dictator,
a political party or an oligarchy or whatever), and those with sufficient clout to influence them,
get things done the way they want to see them done.
As such there is really not much difference between the government directly employing the people
who do things (state socialism), and the government paying money to companies to get the same
things done. Either way, those who use the government to get things done, get to say what gets
done and how. There are differences of nuance, in terms of organizational strengths and weaknesses,
degrees of corruption and of efficiency, but fundamentally it's all big government.
A more interesting question might be - how really different are these big government variants
from the small government systems, in which the rulers pay people directly to get things done
the way they want them to be done?
An excellent article. The points that resonated the most were:
For businesses to stay or come back to the US, companies must have educated labor force,
steady supply of talented, well-educated young people, excellent schools, and safe neighborhoods,
among other things. As of now most of these preconditions are missing.
This is an enormously difficult problem that will take years to resolve, and it will need a
rethink of education from the ground up + the political will to fight the heart of Cultural Bolshevism
and the inevitable 24/7 Media assault.
Drain the swamp in Washington: ban the lobbyists, make it a crime to lobby for private interest
in a public place, restructure procurement, introduce real competition, restore capitalism,
phase out any government subsidies to Universities, force them to compete for students, force
hospitals to compete for patients. Cut cut cut expenditure everywhere possible, including welfare.
Banning lobbyists should be possible but draining the rest of the swamp looks really complicated.
Each area would need to be examined from the ground up from a value for money – efficiency viewpoint.
It doesn't matter which philosophy each one is run on – good value healthcare is desirable whichever
system produces it.
Could we have ever imagined in our worst dreams that a system of mass surveillance would
be created and perfected in the USA. (see discussion on this in: Surveillance State, in
http://www.americamagazine.org/issue/surveillance-state
This one should be easy. The Constitution guarantees a right to privacy so just shut down the
NSA. Also shut down the vast CIA mafia (it didn't exist prior to 1947) and the expensive and useless
FED (controlling the money supply isn't the business of a group of private banks – an office in
the Treasury could easily match the money supply to economic activity).
This one should be easy. The Constitution guarantees a right to privacy so just shut down the
NSA. Also shut down the vast CIA mafia (it didn't exist prior to 1947) and the expensive and useless
FED (controlling the money supply isn't the business of a group of private banks – an office in
the Treasury could easily match the money supply to economic activity).
From Unz, I have learned that the US actually has a four-part government: the "Deep State"
part which has no clear oversight from any of the other three branches.
To put it in Marxist terms the interests of American society to survive and prosper came
into contradiction with the interests of capitalism as a system of production and with the
capitalists as a class who has no homeland, and for whom homeland is where it is easier to
make money.
Another add-on contradiction, comrade, is that the selfsame capitalist class expect their host
nation to defend their interests whenever threatened abroad. This entails using the resources
derived from the masses to enforce this protection including using the little people as cannon
fodder when deemed useful.
Donald Trump is the first top ranking politician who has realized this simple fact.
Come now, do you really believe that all these politicians who have gone to these world-class
schools don't know this? They simply don't care. They're working on behalf of the .1% who are
their benefactors and who will make them rich. They did not go into politics to take vows of poverty.
They just realize the need to placate the masses with speeches written by professional speechwriters,
that's all.
Insofar as Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid goes, those are the most democratic institutions
of all. It's money spent on ourselves, internally, with money being cycled in and out at the grassroots
level. Doctors, nurses, home-care providers, etc etc, all local people get a piece of the action
unlike military spending which siphons money upwards to the upper classes.
I'd rather be employed in a government job than unemployed in the private sector. That's not
the kind of "freedom" I'm searching for comrade.
@animalogic What an INTERESTING article -- So much that is right, so much that is wrong. An
article you can get your teeth into.
On globalisation: pretty spot-on (although I believe he exaggerates the US weakness in what
he calls "preconditions": there are still many well educated Americans, still good neighborhoods
(yes, sure it could be a lot better). He's against NAFTA & other neoliberal Trade self indulgences.
But then we come to his concept of "Sovietization" of the US. Perhaps it's mere semantics, but
I find the concept... incoherent...& suspiciously adapted to deliberately agitate US conservatives.
Example: "huge sectors of American economy are not private at all, that in fact they
have been slowly taken over by an ever growing state ownership and control"
This is nonsense on its face: the government spews out trillions to private actors to provide
goods & services. It does so, in part, because it has systematically privatized every government
function capable of returning a profit. The author can't see the actor behind the mask: how much
legislation is now written by & for the benefit of private interests ? (Obama care, Bush pharmaceutical
laws ?)
Of course, the author is correct on the US military-industrial complex: it is a sump of crime
& corruption. Yet he seems not to grasp that the problem is regulative capture. How is the Fiasco
of the F35 & MacDonald Douglas merely an issue for the Legislature alone...& how does this circus
resemble the Soviet Union, beyond the fact that BOTH systems (like most systems) are capable of
gross negligence & corruption ?
I like what the author says about NATO, Japan, bases etc. Although he's a little naive if he
thinks NATO for instance is about "protecting" Europe. Yes, that's a part of it: but primarily
NATO etc exist as a tool/mask behind which the US can exert it's imperial ambitions ...against
friend & for alike.
The author does go off against welfare...well that's to be expected: sadly I don't think he quite
gets the connection between globalisation & welfare....He also legitimately goes after tertiary
education, but seems to be (again) confused as to cause & effect.
The author is completely spot on with his sovietization analogy when he comes to the US security
state. Only difference between the Soviets & the US on security totalitarianism ? The US is much
better at it (of course the US has technological advantages unimaginable to the Soviets)
I agree with you that it's a fascinating piece, and I also agree with many of the points you
agree with.
But then we come to his concept of "Sovietization" of the US. Perhaps it's mere semantics,
but I find the concept incoherent & suspiciously adapted to deliberately agitate US conservatives.
Example: "huge sectors of American economy are not private at all, that in fact they have been
slowly taken over by an ever growing state ownership and control"
This is nonsense on its face: the government spews out trillions to private actors to provide
goods & services. It does so, in part, because it has systematically privatized every government
function capable of returning a profit. The author can't see the actor behind the mask: how
much legislation is now written by & for the benefit of private interests ? (Obama care, Bush
pharmaceutical laws ?)
I think part of the problem here might be a mistaken focus on "the government" as an independent
actor, when in reality it is just a mechanism whereby the rulers (whether they are a dictator,
a political party or an oligarchy or whatever), and those with sufficient clout to influence them,
get things done the way they want to see them done.
As such there is really not much difference between the government directly employing the people
who do things (state socialism), and the government paying money to companies to get the same
things done. Either way, those who use the government to get things done, get to say what gets
done and how. There are differences of nuance, in terms of organisational strengths and weaknesses,
degrees of corruption and of efficiency, but fundamentally it's all big government.
A more interesting question might be – how really different are these big government variants
from the small government systems, in which the rulers pay people directly to get things done
the way they want them to be done?
"... Allegations aren't evidence but the media is treating them as such. And even if they Russia did hack Hillary's e-mails I haven't heard anyone claim the e-mails released by Wikileaks are untrue or fabrications. ..."
"... At minimum (((Carl Gershman))) should be questioned along with rogue CIA agents in their role in the anti-Putin demonstrations of 2011. ..."
"... Obama has ordered an investigation. The result will be the Russians did it. Then the lie will be official truth. You can't argue with official truth. It's official. ..."
"... I suspect John McBloodstain and Lindsey and Chucky are in denial, and haven't quite come to terms with the idea that Trump is going to be the man in power. With his hands on the levers and the bully pulpit at his fingertips. I hope they learn to regret their treasonous hubris, in presuming to undermine Trump as he takes the reins and then fastens the bit tightly on McCain's angry face. And then jerks them for effect. ..."
"... The era of neocon Eternal Wars is over. America is no longer going to be Israel's obedient, dutiful golem. ..."
"... Some say that objectively reality doesn't even exist, that is all just a matter of perception. Well Americans must be really lucky people, because they have government + MSM who are so vastly intellectually superior to any mere mortal, that they are able to interpret the reality to the ordinary Americans so it won't confuse them any longer. ..."
"... Actually, according to Karl Rove, the neocon intelligentsia (I know, a contradiction in terms) of whom he is a proud member, claims to possess even higher powers – they are able to create reality now, because why bother with only interpreting reality, when thanks to your superior intellect you can create it. Hillary is also one of those neocons possessing (or possessed by) higher power and proud owner of those magical abilities. ..."
"... One of those neocon moments when they were able to create reality out of thin air, occurred when they "discovered" the Russian hacking of the election process in USA. Some people will call that "creation" of reality for what it actually is – creation of propaganda, but those are just mean unpatriotic Americans or other nationals who don't have America's best interests at heart. ..."
"... Some who are even more critical of America's reality "creation" abilities, would call those realities nightmares – like the realities created in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine even, but as they say, maybe those are only interpretations of reality and according to US – wrong interpretations of reality. ..."
I think Trump is likely to follow this advice, which is excellent, and I don't think he'll
give way easily to the power structure. He knows he'll be neutered if he follows their dictates
and the demands of the lamestream media.
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The Obama Presidency began with predetermined success. After all, they gave him the Nobel Peace
Prize.
And we know how long that lasted.
Trump is the Republican's 'come to Jesus' moment. They have to get beyond their fetish for
'losing on principle' to winning.
The Russian Hacking was big news because it was the last gasp for a rationale to gum up the
Electoral College vote today. Russian hacking is a purely partisan, Democratic ploy. So lets have
big Congressional hearings on insecure computer servers and hacked emails of who was that? Hillary
Clinton. This will disappear in a New York minute as soon as anyone starts digging into the Democrat's
junk. Sample questions: Were Podesta's emails altered or faked? Or were they his actual emails?
Are we sure? How sure? He couldn't have actually said that, no? He REALLY said that? And on and
on.
The mere use of 'Hillary Clinton' and 'Email' in the same sentence will create a pavlovian
response and the next word is what? Even Nancy Pelosi will hear the word JAIL in some crevice
of her demented mind.
This isn't going anywhere.
Meanwhile, there is a taxcut to fight over. There won't be time to even consider it given the
rush to the trough for the various interests.
And anyway - Trump isn't going to cut military budgets. But he will gladly - along with congressional
whores of all parties - put more money into anti-terror cyber stuff. It's way more profitable
than building an airplane. Profit margins higher. And its impossible to determine if it works
or it doesn't work. An airplane has to fly, no? Cyber intelligence? I dunno - it can never be
proven one way or the other unless there is a massive failure, and then it can never be proven
who actually screwed up.
Trump isn't the sort to 'take one for the team' and will instinctively blame Obama and Bush
and Hillary and search for something that looks less like guaranteed failure. There is nothing
left in the Middle East to do that doesn't have failure written all over it.
And the last thing he will tolerate is Paul Ryan and Company trying to cram a big Russian sanctions
package down his throat. Plus - get real - anyone with any sense knows the smart play is the US
plus Russia vs China.
Plus - get real - anyone with any sense knows the smart play is the US plus Russia vs China.
Yes! This is exactly the smart play. It is essential.
Let's have a little triangular diplomacy in the other direction this time. We've paid a big price
for Nixon/Kissenger's three-way ploy. It's time to rotate their triangle. China is our enemy.
It is the enemy they birthed and our capital created. ,
@boogerbently " Plus - get real - anyone with any sense knows the smart play is the US plus
Russia vs China."
Russia didn't "hack" the election and anyone who believes they did is a low information American
searching for reasons to oppose Trump and rationalize Hillary's electoral loss.
After all Hildabeast won the popular vote (thanks to mass third world immigration) but was
rejected in key battleground states owing to Obamanomics and her treasonous call for admitting
hundreds of thousands of Syrian Muslim refugees as well as her support for amnesty. This was too
much for flyover country to stomach.
Allegations aren't evidence but the media is treating them as such. And even if they Russia
did hack Hillary's e-mails I haven't heard anyone claim the e-mails released by Wikileaks are
untrue or fabrications.
At minimum (((Carl Gershman))) should be questioned along with rogue CIA agents in their
role in the anti-Putin demonstrations of 2011. I think waterboarding would be a fitting form
of interrogation in this case.
@anon The Obama Presidency began with predetermined success. After all, they gave him the
Nobel Peace Prize.
And we know how long that lasted.
Trump is the Republican's 'come to Jesus' moment. They have to get beyond their fetish for 'losing
on principle' to winning.
The Russian Hacking was big news because it was the last gasp for a rationale to gum up the Electoral
College vote today. Russian hacking is a purely partisan, Democratic ploy. So lets have big Congressional
hearings on insecure computer servers and hacked emails of ... who was that? Hillary Clinton.
This will disappear in a New York minute as soon as anyone starts digging into the Democrat's
junk. Sample questions: Were Podesta's emails altered or faked? Or were they his actual emails?
Are we sure? How sure? He couldn't have actually said that, no? He REALLY said that? And on and
on.
The mere use of 'Hillary Clinton' and 'Email' in the same sentence will create a pavlovian response
and the next word is what? Even Nancy Pelosi will hear the word JAIL in some crevice of her demented
mind.
This isn't going anywhere.
Meanwhile, there is a taxcut to fight over. There won't be time to even consider it given the
rush to the trough for the various interests.
And anyway -- Trump isn't going to cut military budgets. But he will gladly -- along with congressional
whores of all parties -- put more money into anti-terror cyber stuff. It's way more profitable
than building an airplane. Profit margins higher. And its impossible to determine if it works
or it doesn't work. An airplane has to fly, no? Cyber intelligence? I dunno -- it can never be
proven one way or the other unless there is a massive failure, and then it can never be proven
who actually screwed up.
Trump isn't the sort to 'take one for the team' and will instinctively blame Obama and Bush and
Hillary and search for something that looks less like guaranteed failure. There is nothing left
in the Middle East to do that doesn't have failure written all over it.
And the last thing he will tolerate is Paul Ryan and Company trying to cram a big Russian sanctions
package down his throat. Plus -- get real -- anyone with any sense knows the smart play is the
US plus Russia vs China.
Plus - get real - anyone with any sense knows the smart play is the US plus Russia vs China.
Yes! This is exactly the smart play. It is essential.
Let's have a little triangular diplomacy in the other direction this time. We've paid a big
price for Nixon/Kissenger's three-way ploy. It's time to rotate their triangle. China is our enemy.
It is the enemy they birthed and our capital created.
Obama has ordered an investigation. The result will be the Russians did it. Then the lie
will be official truth. You can't argue with official truth. It's official.
He should also investigate which legislators leaked CIA "report" to press and have them held
accountable. Investigate why other agencies didn't push against the CIA's attempted coup. Ideally
the CIA would be abolished, but it will probably be hard to find enough support for that.
• Replies:
@Avery {Ideally the CIA would be abolished, but it will probably be hard to find enough
support for that.}
Abolishing CIA not a good idea, because some level of intelligence gathering (humint) on _foreign_
enemies/adversaries of US is needed. But Trump definitely can abolish entire departments that
are not purely humint intelligence related. And those who meddled in the presidential election
should be brought up on charges, if they can be identified.
Also, if Trump tries to completely abolish CIA, a massive terrorist attack might be organized
and Trump will be blamed for taking away US ability to detect it by abolishing CIA Frightened
American public will acquiesce to even more enslavement, just like after 9/11. US spooks who meddle
in American politics are evil and are experts at that sort of thing. And will do anything to survive.
Trump has to be very careful. Maybe have the Pentagon neuter them in a roundabout way.
But if there is to be an investigation of clandestine interference in the politics and
elections of foreign nations, let's get it all out onto the table.
yes, let's please do! as Hillary and the neocons and msm have all been demanding that "Assad
must go".. out of the other side of their lizard faces they're howling that 'Russia is trying
to meddle in our politics!!' How dare they?!'
$5 billion in the Ukraine for a putsch to undermine that democratically elected government,
and then get caught deciding on the phone who's going to be the next president in Kiev -- all
while screeching about the impropriety of Russia leaking the phone call. The hypocrisy is mind-numbing.
The only thing exceptional is the unilateral arrogance on steroids.
President-elect Trump should call in his new director of the CIA, Rep. Mike Pompeo, and
tell him to run down and remove, for criminal misconduct, any CIA agents or operatives leaking
secrets to discredit his election.
I suspect John McBloodstain and Lindsey and Chucky are in denial, and haven't quite come
to terms with the idea that Trump is going to be the man in power. With his hands on the
levers and the bully pulpit at his fingertips. I hope they learn to regret their treasonous hubris,
in presuming to undermine Trump as he takes the reins and then fastens the bit tightly on McCain's
angry face. And then jerks them for effect.
The era of neocon Eternal Wars is over. America is no longer going to be Israel's obedient,
dutiful golem. Spilling its blood and treasure to assuage the insatiable lust for death and
misery of the Zio-scum.
'America first!' is now the mantra, and little Chucky and the Stain and Lindsey are all just
traitorous little war pigs from the old order. Soon to join Mitt Romney in publically humiliated
repudiation.
• Replies:
@FLgeezer Keep them coming Rurik. Your posts are priceless.
Avery
says:
December 20, 2016 at 4:34 pm GMT • 200 Words
@Marcus He should also investigate which legislators leaked CIA "report" to press and have them
held accountable. Investigate why other agencies didn't push against the CIA's attempted coup. Ideally
the CIA would be abolished, but it will probably be hard to find enough support for that.
{Ideally the CIA would be abolished, but it will probably be hard to find enough support for
that.}
Abolishing CIA not a good idea, because some level of intelligence gathering (humint) on _foreign_
enemies/adversaries of US is needed. But Trump definitely can abolish entire departments that are
not purely humint intelligence related. And those who meddled in the presidential election should
be brought up on charges, if they can be identified.
Also, if Trump tries to completely abolish CIA, a massive terrorist attack might be organized
and Trump will be blamed for taking away US ability to detect it by abolishing CIA Frightened American
public will acquiesce to even more enslavement, just like after 9/11. US spooks who meddle in American
politics are evil and are experts at that sort of thing. And will do anything to survive. Trump has
to be very careful. Maybe have the Pentagon neuter them in a roundabout way.
But you are right: Trump can't let what CIA did slide.
Abolishing CIA not a good idea, because some level of intelligence gathering (humint) on _foreign_
enemies/adversaries of US is needed. But Trump definitely can abolish entire departments that
are not purely humint intelligence related. And those who meddled in the presidential election
should be brought up on charges, if they can be identified.
Also, if Trump tries to completely abolish CIA, a massive terrorist attack might be organized
and Trump will be blamed for taking away US ability to detect it by abolishing CIA Frightened
American public will acquiesce to even more enslavement, just like after 9/11. US spooks who meddle
in American politics are evil and are experts at that sort of thing. And will do anything to survive.
Trump has to be very careful. Maybe have the Pentagon neuter them in a roundabout way.
But you are right: Trump can't let what CIA did slide.
It can be replaced by something better, anyway it has been largely obsolete since a) collapse
of USSR and b) internet revolution.
Another perspective: in a secular era of declining industry, the next new technology is expected
to be cybersecurity. Companies like Palantir are clearing that path; others will follow. (Palantir
got its major boost thru CIA contracts; the company, created in Silicon Valley, established a
presence next door to the US anti-terrorism center in N Virginia - closer to the teat.) Money
men want US gov and other governments as well to put government funding behind these ventures.
Creating a scare to herd the flock this way or that is as old as Torah. Similarly, creating
a scapegoat - an unblemished ram caught in the thicket - is an age-old tactic.
Alex Karp, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and a few other innovator/entrepreneurs are not the folks
who are behind the Russkie scare, but the investors or would-be investors in the emerging industries
those folks created, and the politicians they depend on to ensure government support for their
investment/enterprise, are in it up to their third wive's plastic surgery bills, not to mention
the pool boy.
Some say that objectively reality doesn't even exist, that is all just a matter of perception.
Well Americans must be really lucky people, because they have government + MSM who are so vastly
intellectually superior to any mere mortal, that they are able to interpret the reality to the
ordinary Americans so it won't confuse them any longer.
Actually, according to Karl Rove, the neocon intelligentsia (I know, a contradiction in
terms) of whom he is a proud member, claims to possess even higher powers – they are able to create
reality now, because why bother with only interpreting reality, when thanks to your superior intellect
you can create it. Hillary is also one of those neocons possessing (or possessed by) higher power
and proud owner of those magical abilities.
One of those neocon moments when they were able to create reality out of thin air, occurred
when they "discovered" the Russian hacking of the election process in USA. Some people will call
that "creation" of reality for what it actually is – creation of propaganda, but those are just
mean unpatriotic Americans or other nationals who don't have America's best interests at heart.
Some who are even more critical of America's reality "creation" abilities, would call those
realities nightmares – like the realities created in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine even, but as
they say, maybe those are only interpretations of reality and according to US – wrong interpretations
of reality.
The propaganda broadcasts on behalf of the North Vietnamese by Tokyo Rose McCain are readily
available on the internet. It is well known in Wash DC that Dame Lindsey Graham is a closet case
overcompensating with campy militarism. The rest of the neocons .we all know who and what they
are, by now.
Plus - get real - anyone with any sense knows the smart play is the US plus Russia vs China.
Yes! This is exactly the smart play. It is essential.
Let's have a little triangular diplomacy in the other direction this time. We've paid a big price
for Nixon/Kissenger's three-way ploy. It's time to rotate their triangle. China is our enemy.
It is the enemy they birthed and our capital created.
"China is our enemy. "
Bollocks.
China is not my enemy.
My enemies are located in Washington DC and Sodom on Hudson.
The never-Trumpers are never going to surrender the myth that Russian President Vladimir Putin
ordered the hacking of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and the Democratic National
Committee to defeat Clinton and elect Donald Trump.
Their investment in the myth is just too huge.
For Clinton and her campaign, it is the only way to explain how they booted away a presidential
election even Trump thought he had lost in November. To the mainstream media, this is the smoking
gun in their Acela Corridor conspiracy to delegitimize Trump's presidency.
Incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer sees Russian hacking as a way to put a cloud over
the administration before it begins. But it is the uber-hawks hereabouts who are after the really
big game.
They seek to demonize Putin as the saboteur of democracy - someone who corrupted an American presidential
election to bring about victory for a "useful idiot" whom Clinton called Putin's "puppet."
If the War Party can convert this "fake story" into the real story of 2016, then they can scuttle
any Trump effort to attain the rapprochement with Russia that Trump promised to try to achieve.
If they can stigmatize Trump as "Putin's president" and Putin as America's implacable enemy, then
the Russophobes are back in business.
Nor is the War Party disguising its goal.
Over the weekend, Sen. John McCain called for a congressional select committee to investigate
Russian hacking into the Clinton campaign. The purpose of the investigations, said Sen. Lindsey Graham,
"is to put on President Trump's desk crippling sanctions against Russia."
"They need to pay a price," Graham chortled on Twitter.
"Crippling sanctions" would abort any modus vivendi, any deal with Russia, before Trump could
negotiate one. Trump would have to refuse to impose them - and face the firestorm to follow. The
War Party is out to dynamite any detente with Russia before it begins.
Among the reasons Trump won is that he promised to end U.S. involvement in the costly, bloody
and interminable wars in the Middle East the Bushites and President Barack Obama brought us - and
the neocons relish - and to reach a new understanding with Russia and Putin.
But to some in Washington, beating up on Russia is a conditioned reflex dating to the Cold War.
For others in the media and the front groups called think tanks, Russophobia is in their DNA.
Though Julian Assange says WikiLeaks did not get the emails from Russia, this has to be investigated.
Did Russia hack the DNC's email system and John Podesta's email account? Did Putin direct that the
emails be provided to WikiLeaks to disrupt democracy or defeat Clinton?
Clinton says Putin has had it in for her because he believes she was behind the anti-Putin demonstrations
in Moscow in 2011.
But if there is to be an investigation of clandestine interference in the politics and elections
of foreign nations, let's get it all out onto the table.
The CIA director and his deputies should be made to testify under oath, not only as to what they
know about Russia's role in the WikiLeaks email dumps but also about who inside the agency is behind
the leaks to The Washington Post designed to put a cloud over the Trump presidency before it begins.
Agents and operatives of the CIA should be subjected to lie detector tests to learn who is leaking
to the anti-Trump press.
Before any congressional investigation, President-elect Trump should call in his new director
of the CIA, Rep. Mike Pompeo, and tell him to run down and remove, for criminal misconduct, any CIA
agents or operatives leaking secrets to discredit his election.
Putin, after all, is not an American. The CIA saboteurs of the Trump presidency are. Will the
media investigate the leakers? Not likely, for they are the beneficiaries of the leaks and co-conspirators
of the leakers.
The top officials of the CIA and Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy,
should be called to testify under oath. Were they behind anti-Putin demonstrations during the Russian
elections of 2011?
Did the CIA or NED have a role in the "color-coded" revolutions to dump over pro-Russian governments
in Moscow's "near abroad"?
If Russia did intrude in our election, was it payback for our intrusions to bring about regime
change in its neighborhood?
What role did the CIA, the NED and John McCain play in the overthrow of the democratically elected
government of Ukraine in 2014? McCain was seen cheering on the crowds in Independence Square in Kiev.
Trump has promised a more hopeful foreign policy than that of the Republicans he denounced and
is succeeding. No more wars where vital interests are not imperiled. No more U.S. troops arriving
as first responders for freeloading allies.
The real saboteurs of his new foreign policy may not be inside the Ring Road in Moscow; rather,
they may be inside the Beltway around D.C.
The real danger may be that a new Trump foreign policy could be hijacked or scuttled by anti-Trump
Republicans, not only on Capitol Hill but inside the executive branch itself.
Donald Trump won the electoral college at least in part by promising to bring coal jobs
back to Appalachia and manufacturing jobs back to the Rust Belt. Neither promise can be honored
– for the most part we're talking about jobs lost, not to unfair foreign competition, but to
technological change. But a funny thing happens when people like me try to point that out:
we get enraged responses from economists who feel an affinity for the working people of the
afflicted regions – responses that assume that trying to do the numbers must reflect contempt
for regional cultures, or something.
Is this the right narrative? I am no longer comfortable with this line:
for the most part we're talking about jobs lost, not to unfair foreign competition, but
to technological change.
Try to place that line in context with this from
Noah Smith:
Then, in the 1990s and 2000s, the U.S opened its markets to Chinese goods, first with Most
Favored Nation trading status, and then by supporting China's accession to the WTO. The resulting
competition from cheap Chinese goods contributed to vast inequality in the United States, reversing
many of the employment gains of the 1990s and holding down U.S. wages. But this sacrifice on
the part of 90% of the American populace enabled China to lift its enormous population out
of abject poverty and become a middle-income country.
Was this "fair" trade? I think not. Let me suggest this narrative: Sometime during the
Clinton Administration, it was decided that an economically strong China was good for both the
globe and the U.S. Fair enough. To enable that outcome, U.S. policy deliberately sacrificed manufacturing
workers on the theory that a.) the marginal global benefit from the job gain to a Chinese worker
exceeded the marginal global cost from a lost US manufacturing job, b.) the U.S. was shifting
toward a service sector economy anyway and needed to reposition its workforce accordingly and
c.) the transition costs of shifting workers across sectors in the U.S. were minimal.
As a consequence – and through a succession of administrations – the US tolerated implicit
subsidies of Chinese industries, including national industrial policy designed to strip production
from the US.
And then there was the currency manipulation. I am always shocked when international economists
claim "fair trade," pretending that the financial side of the international accounts is irrelevant.
As if that wasn't a big, fat thumb on the scale. Sure, "currency manipulation" is running the
other way these days. After, of course, a portion of manufacturing was absorbed overseas. After
the damage is done.
Yes, technological change is happening. But the impact, and the costs, were certainly accelerated
by U.S. policy.
It was a great plan. On paper, at least. And I would argue that in fact points a and b above
were correct.
But point c. Point c was a bad call. Point c was a disastrous call. Point c helped deliver
Donald Trump to the Oval Office. To be sure, the FBI played its role, as did the Russians. But
even allowing for the poor choice of Hilary Clinton as the Democratic nominee (the lack of contact
with rural and semi-rural voters blinded the Democrats to the deep animosity toward their candidate),
it should never have come to this.
As the opioid epidemic sweeps through rural America, an ever-greater number of drug-dependent
newborns are straining hospital neonatal units and draining precious medical resources.
The problem has grown more quickly than realized and shows no signs of abating, researchers
reported on Monday. Their study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, concludes for the first time
that the increase in drug-dependent newborns has been disproportionately larger in rural areas.
The latest causalities in the opioid epidemic are newborns.
The transition costs were not minimal.
My take is that "fair trade" as practiced since the late 1990s created another disenfranchised
class of citizens. As if we hadn't done enough of that already. Then we weaponized those newly
disenfranchised citizens with the rhetoric of identity politics. That's coming back to bite us.
We didn't really need a white nationalist movement, did we?
Now comes the big challenge: What can we do to make amends? Can we change the narrative? And
here is where I agree with Paul Krugman:
Now, if we want to have a discussion of regional policies – an argument to the effect that
my pessimism is unwarranted – fine. As someone who is generally a supporter of government activism,
I'd actually like to be convinced that a judicious program of subsidies, relocating government
departments, whatever, really can sustain communities whose traditional industry has eroded.
The damage done is largely irreversible. In medium-size regions, lower relative housing
costs may help attract overflow from the east and west coast urban areas. And maybe a program
of guaranteed jobs for small- to medium-size regions combined with relocation subsidies for very
small-size regions could help. But it won't happen overnight, if ever. And even if you could reverse
the patterns of trade – which wouldn't be easy given the intertwining of global supply chains
– the winners wouldn't be the same current losers. Tough nut to crack.
Bottom Line: I don't know how to fix this either. But I don't absolve the policy community
from their role in this disaster. I think you can easily tell a story that this was one big policy
experiment gone terribly wrong.
Vladimir Putin's Valdai Speech at the XIII Meeting (Final Plenary Session) of the Valdai International
Discussion Club (Sochi, 27 October 2016)
As is his usual custom, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a speech at the final session
of the annual Valdai International Discussion Club's 13th meeting, held this year in Sochi, before
an audience that included the President of Finland Tarja Halonen and former President of South Africa
Thabo Mbeki. The theme for the 2016 meeting and its discussion forums was "The Future in Progress:
Shaping the World of Tomorrow" which as Putin noted was very topical and relevant to current developments
and trends in global politics, economic and social affairs.
Putin noted that the previous year's Valdai Club discussions centred on global problems and crises,
in particular the ongoing wars in the Middle East; this fact gave him the opportunity to summarise
global political developments over the past half-century, beginning with the United States' presumption
of having won the Cold War and subsequently reshaping the international political, economic and social
order to conform to its expectations based on neoliberal capitalist assumptions. To that end, the
US and its allies across western Europe, North America and the western Pacific have co-operated in
pressing economic and political restructuring including regime change in many parts of the world:
in eastern Europe and the Balkans, in western Asia (particularly Afghanistan and Iraq) and in northern
Africa (Libya). In achieving these goals, the West has either ignored at best or at worst exploited
international political, military and economic structures, agencies and alliances to the detriment
of these institutions' reputations and credibility around the world. The West also has not hesitated
to dredge and drum up imaginary threats to the security of the world, most notably the threat of
Russian aggression and desire to recreate the Soviet Union on former Soviet territories and beyond,
the supposed Russian meddling in the US Presidential elections, and apparent Russian hacking and
leaking of emails related to failed US Presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton's conduct as
US Secretary of State from 2008 to 2012.
After his observation of current world trends as they have developed since 1991, Putin queries
what kind of future we face if political elites in Washington and elsewhere focus on non-existent
problems and threats, or on problems of their own making, and ignore the very real issues and problems
affecting ordinary people everywhere: issues of stability, security and sustainable economic development.
The US alone has problems of police violence against minority groups, high levels of public and private
debt measured in trillions of dollars, failing transport infrastructure across most states, massive
unemployment that either goes undocumented or is deliberately under-reported, high prison incarceration
rates and other problems and issues indicative of a highly dysfunctional society. In societies that
are ostensibly liberal democracies where the public enjoys political freedoms, there is an ever-growing
and vast gap between what people perceive as major problems needing solutions and the political establishment's
perceptions of what the problems are, and all too often the public view and the elite view are at
polar opposites. The result is that when referenda and elections are held, predictions and assurances
of victory one way or another are smashed by actual results showing public preference for the other
way, and polling organisations, corporate media with their self-styled "pundits" and "analysts" and
governments are caught scrambling to make sense of what just happened.
Putin points out that the only way forward is for all countries to acknowledge and work together
on the problems that challenge all humans today, the resolution of which should make the world more
stable, more secure and more sustaining of human existence. Globalisation should not just benefit
a small plutocratic elite but should be demonstrated in concrete ways to benefit all. Only by adhering
to international law and legal arrangements, through the charter of the United Nations and its agencies,
can all countries hope to achieve security and stability and achieve a better future for their peoples.
To this end, the sovereignty of Middle Eastern countries like Iraq, Syria and Yemen should be
respected and the wars in those countries should be brought to an end, replaced by long-term plans
and programs of economic and social reconstruction and development. Global economic development and
progress that will reduce disparities between First World and Third World countries, eliminate notions
of "winning" and "losing", and end grinding poverty and the problems that go with it should be a
major priority. Economic co-operation should be mutually beneficial for all parties that engage in
it.
Putin also briefly mentioned in passing the development of human potential and creativity, environmental
protection and climate change, and global healthcare as important goals that all countries should
strive for.
While there's not much in Putin's speech that he hasn't said before, what he says is typical of
his worldview, the breadth and depth of his understanding of current world events (which very, very
few Western politicians can match), and his preferred approach of nations working together on common
problems and coming to solutions that benefit all and which don't advantage one party's interests
to the detriment of others and their needs. Putin's approach is a typically pragmatic and cautious
one, neutral with regards to political or economic ideology, but one focused on goals and results,
and the best way and methods to achieve those goals.
One interesting aspect of Putin's speech comes near the end where he says that only a world with
opportunities for everyone, with access to knowledge to all and many ways to realise creative potential,
can be considered truly free. Putin's understanding of freedom would appear to be very different
from what the West (and Americans in particular) understand to be "freedom", that is, being free
of restraints on one's behaviour. Putin's understanding of freedom would be closer to what 20th-century
Russian-born British philosopher Isaiah Berlin would consider to be "positive freedom", the freedom
that comes with self-mastery, being able to think and behave freely and being able to choose the
government of the society in which one lives.
The most outstanding point in Putin's speech, which unfortunately he does not elaborate on further,
given the context of the venue, is the disconnect between the political establishment and the public
in most developed countries, the role of the mass media industry in reducing or widening it, and
the dangers that this disconnect poses to societies if it continues. If elites continue to pursue
their own fantasies and lies, and neglect the needs of the public on whom they rely for support (yet
abuse by diminishing their security through offshoring jobs, weakening and eliminating worker protection,
privatising education, health and energy, and encouraging housing and other debt bubbles), the invisible
bonds of society – what might collectively be called "the social contract" between the ruler and
the ruled – will disintegrate and people may turn to violence or other extreme activities to get
what they want.
An English-language transcript of the speech can be found at
this link .
First of all; that Boeing deal was a condition of the Iran deal! Trump wants to tear up the
deal; it was one of his promises. Second, Republicans wanted more than that funding for Israel.
I never denied Obama was not a Zionist enabler -- can't you read??? Third, if Obama's an enabler;
Trump is in bed with Netanyahu and Zionists since he promised to tear up the Iran deal and move
the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem... whooooo does that??? Who promises sht like that? Only someone
who's even crazier than Nut job yahu!
"But he has also complained that American companies are shut out of post-deal economic opportunities
in Iran, and suggested that Washington will need to cooperate with Iran as well as Russia in
dealing with the Syrian civil war."
Here's what I predict short-term for the Middle East: The situation will settle down into something
like the Pakistan-India situation, with Iran and Syria on one side, and Saudi Arabia and Israel
on the other. That's just short-term, however. Israel and Saudi Arabia are not very viable long-term.
Eventually, I'm guessing the Gulf Arab monarchies will be replaced by parliamentary democracies,
as happened with the Shah of Iran, and Israel will have to accept a one-state solution in which
all Palestinians and Arabs get the same rights as Jewish citizens of Israel - which means, yes,
separation of church and state, something any American vassal/client state should be willing to
accept. IAEA inspections of the nuclear arsenal are also inevitable. But this will not "wipe Israel
off the map" any more than it resulted in genocide for white South Afrikaaners.
I have spent the better
part of the last 10 years working diligently to investigate and relate information on
economics and geopolitical discourse for the liberty movement. However, long before I
delved into these subjects my primary interests of study were the human mind and the
human "soul" (yes, I'm using a spiritual term).
My fascination with economics and sociopolitical events has always been rooted in the
human element.
That is to say, while economics is often treated as a
mathematical and statistical field, it is also driven by psychology.
To know
the behavior of man is to know the future of all his endeavors, good or evil.
Evil is what we are specifically here to discuss.
I have touched on
the issue in various articles in the past including
Are Globalists Evil Or Just Misunderstood
, but with extreme tensions taking shape
this year in light of the U.S. election as well as the exploding online community
investigation of "Pizzagate," I am compelled to examine it once again.
I will not be grappling with this issue from a particularly religious perspective.
Evil applies to everyone regardless of their belief system, or even their lack of
belief. Evil is secular in its influence.
The first and most important thing to understand is this - evil is NOT simply
a social or religious construct, it is an inherent element of the human psyche.
Carl Gustav Jung was one of the few psychologists in history to dare write extensively
on the issue of evil from a scientific perspective as well as a metaphysical
perspective. I highly recommend a book of his collected works on this subject titled
'Jung On Evil', edited by Murray Stein, for those who are interested in a deeper view.
To summarize, Jung found that much of the foundations of human behavior are rooted in
inborn psychological contents or "archetypes." Contrary to the position of Sigmund
Freud, Jung argued that while our environment may affect our behavior to a certain
extent, it does not make us who we are. Rather, we are born with our own individual
personality and grow into our inherent characteristics over time. Jung also found that
there are universally present elements of human psychology. That is to say, almost every
human being on the planet shares certain truths and certain natural predilections.
The concepts of good and evil, moral and immoral, are present in us from birth and
are mostly the same regardless of where we are born, what time in history we are born
and to what culture we are born. Good and evil are shared subjective experiences. It is
this observable psychological fact (among others) that leads me to believe in the idea
of a creative design - a god. Again, though, elaborating on god is beyond the scope of
this article.
To me, this should be rather comforting to people, even atheists. For if there is
observable evidence of creative design, then it would follow that there may every well
be a reason for all the trials and horrors that we experience as a species. Our lives,
our failures and our accomplishments are not random and meaningless. We are striving
toward something, whether we recognize it or not. It may be beyond our comprehension at
this time, but it is there.
Evil does not exist in a vacuum; with evil there is always good, if one looks
for it in the right places.
Most people are readily equipped to recognize evil when they see it
directly. What they are not equipped for and must learn from environment is how to
recognize evil disguised as righteousness.
The most heinous acts in
history are almost always presented as a moral obligation - a path towards some "greater
good." Inherent conscience, though, IS the greater good, and any ideology that steps
away from the boundaries of conscience will inevitably lead to disaster.
The concept of globalism is one of these ideologies that crosses the line of
conscience and pontificates to us about a "superior method" of living.
It
relies on taboo, rather than moral compass, and there is a big difference between the
two.
When we pursue a "greater good" as individuals or as a society, the means are just as
vital as the ends. The ends NEVER
justify the means. Never. For if we
abandon our core principles and commit atrocities in the name of "peace," safety or
survival, then we have forsaken the very things which make us worthy of peace and safety
and survival. A monster that devours in the name of peace is still a monster.
Globalism tells us that the collective is more important than the individual,
that the individual owes society a debt and that fealty to society in every respect is
the payment for that debt.
But inherent archetypes and conscience tell us
differently. They tell us that society is only ever as healthy as the individuals
within it, that society is only as free and vibrant as the participants. As the
individual is demeaned and enslaved, the collective crumbles into mediocrity.
Globalism also tells us that humanity's greatest potential cannot be reached without
collectivism and centralization. The assertion is that the more single-minded a society
is in its pursuits the more likely it is to effectively achieve its goals. To this end,
globalism seeks to erase all sovereignty. For now its proponents claim they only wish to
remove nations and borders from the social equation, but such collectivism never stops
there. Eventually, they will tell us that individualism represents another nefarious
"border" that prevents the group from becoming fully realized.
At the heart of collectivism is the idea that human beings are "blank
slates;" that we are born empty and are completely dependent on our environment in order
to learn what is right and wrong and how to be good people or good citizens. The
environment becomes the arbiter of decency, rather than conscience, and whoever controls
the environment, by extension, becomes god.
If the masses are convinced of this narrative then moral relativity is only a short
step away. It is the abandonment of inborn conscience that ultimately results in evil.
In my view, this is exactly why the so called "elites" are pressing for globalism in the
first place. Their end game is not just centralization of all power into a one world
edifice, but the suppression and eradication of conscience, and thus, all that is good.
To see where this leads we must look at the behaviors of the elites
themselves, which brings us to "Pizzagate."
The exposure by Wikileaks during the election cycle of what appear to be coded emails
sent between John Podesta and friends has created a burning undercurrent in the
alternative media. The emails consistently use odd and out of context "pizza"
references, and independent investigations have discovered a wide array connections
between political elites like Hillary Clinton and John Podesta to James Alefantis, the
owner of a pizza parlor in Washington D.C. called Comet Ping Pong. Alefantis, for
reasons that make little sense to me, is listed as number 49 on GQ's
Most Powerful People In Washington list
.
The assertion according to circumstantial evidence including the disturbing child and
cannibalism artwork collections of the Podestas has been that Comet Ping Pong is somehow
at the center of a child pedophilia network serving the politically connected. Both
Comet Ping Pong and a pizza establishment two doors down called Besta Pizza use symbols
in their logos and menus that are listed on the
FBI's
unclassified documentation on pedophilia symbolism
, which does not help matters.
Some of the best documentation of the Pizzagate scandal that I have seen so far has
been done by David Seaman, a former mainstream journalist gone rogue.
Here is his
YouTube page
.
I do recommend everyone at least look at the evidence he and others present. I went
into the issue rather skeptical, but was surprised by the sheer amount of weirdness and
evidence regarding Comet Pizza. There is a problem with Pizzagate that is difficult to
overcome, however; namely the fact that to my knowledge no victims have come forward.
This is not to say there has been no crime, but anyone hoping to convince the general
public of wrong-doing in this kind of scenario is going to have a very hard time without
a victim to reference.
The problem is doubly difficult now that an armed man was arrested on the premises of
Comet Ping Pong while "researching" the claims of child trafficking. Undoubtedly, the
mainstream media will declare the very investigation "dangerous conspiracy theory."
Whether this will persuade the public to ignore it, or compel them to look into it,
remains to be seen.
I fully realize the amount of confusion surrounding Pizzagate and the assertions by
some that it is a "pysop" designed to undermine the alternative media. This is a
foolish notion, in my view. The mainstream media is dying, this is unavoidable. The
alternative media is a network of sources based on the power of choice and cemented in
the concept of investigative research. The reader participates in the alternative media
by learning all available information and positions and deciding for himself what is the
most valid conclusion, if there is any conclusion to be had. The mainstream media
simply tells its readers what to think and feel based on cherry picked data.
The elites will never be able to deconstruct that kind of movement with something
like a faked "pizzagate"; rather, they would be more inclined to try to co-opt and
direct the alternative media as they do most institutions. And, if elitists are using
Pizzagate as fodder to trick the alternative media into looking ridiculous, then why
allow elitist run social media outlets like Facebook and Reddit to shut down discussion
on the issue?
The reason I am more convinced than skeptical at this stage is because this has
happened before; and in past scandals of pedophilia in Washington and other political
hotbeds, some victims DID come forward.
I would first reference the events of the Franklin Scandal between 1988 and 1991. The
Discovery Channel even produced a documentary on it complete with interviews of alleged
child victims peddled to Washington elites for the purpose of favors and blackmail.
Meant to air in 1994, the documentary was quashed before it was ever shown to the
public. The only reason it can now be found is because an original copy was released
without permission by parties unknown.
I would also reference the highly evidenced
Westminster Pedophile Ring in the U.K.
, in which the U.K. government lost or
destroyed at least 114 related files related to the investigation.
Finally, it is disconcerting to me that the criminal enterprises of former Bear
Sterns financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his "Lolita Express" are
mainstream knowledge, yet the public remains largely oblivious. Bill Clinton is
shown on flight logs
to have flown on Epstein's private jet at least a 26 times; the
same jet that he used to procure child victims as young as 12 to entertain celebrities
and billionaires on his 72 acre island called "Little Saint James". The fact that
Donald Trump was also close friends with Epstein should raise some eyebrows - funny how
the mainstream media attacked Trump on every cosmetic issue under the sun but for some
reason backed away from pursuing the Epstein angle.
Where is the vast federal investigation into the people who frequented Epstein's
wretched parties? There is none, and Epstein, though convicted of molesting a 14 year
old girl and selling her into prostitution, was only slapped on the wrist with a 13
month sentence.
Accusations of pedophilia seem to follow the globalists and elitist politicians
wherever they go. This does not surprise me. They often exhibit characteristics of
narcissism and psychopathy, but their ideology of moral relativity is what would lead to
such horrible crimes.
Evil often stems from people who are empty.
When one abandons
conscience, one also in many respects abandons empathy and love. Without these elements
of our psyche there is no happiness. Without them, there is nothing left but desire and
gluttony.
Narcissists in particular are prone to use other people as forms of
entertainment and fulfillment without concern for their humanity. They can be vicious
in nature, and when taken to the level of psychopathy, they are prone to target and
abuse the most helpless of victims in order to generate a feeling of personal power.
Add in sexual addiction and aggression and narcissists become predatory in the
extreme. Nothing ever truly satisfies them. When they grow tired of the normal, they
quickly turn to the abnormal and eventually the criminal. I would say that pedophilia
is a natural progression of the elitist mindset; for children are the easiest and most
innocent victim source, not to mention the most aberrant and forbidden, and thus the
most desirable for a psychopathic deviant embracing evil impulses.
Beyond this is the even more disturbing prospect of cultism.
It is
not that the globalists are simply evil as individuals; if that were the case then they
would present far less of a threat. The greater terror is that they are also organized.
When one confronts the problem of evil head on, one quickly realizes that evil is within
us all. There will always be an internal battle in every individual. Organized evil,
though, is in fact the ultimate danger, and it is organized evil that must be
eradicated.
For organized evil to be defeated, there must be organized good.
I believe the liberty movement in particular is that good; existing in early stages,
not yet complete, but good none the less. Our championing of the non-aggression
principle and individual liberty is conducive to respect for privacy, property and
life. Conscience is a core tenet of the liberty ideal, and the exact counter to
organized elitism based on moral relativity.
Recognize and take solace that though we live in dark times, and evil men
roam free, we are also here. We are the proper response to evil, and we have been placed
here at this time for a reason. Call it fate, call it destiny, call it coincidence, call
it god, call it whatever you want, but the answer to evil is us.
"Out of the temporary evil we are now compelled to commit will emerge the
good of an unshakable rule, which will restore the regular course of the
machinery of the national life, brought to naught by liberalism. The result
justifies the means. Let us, however, in our plans, direct our attention not
so much to what is good and moral as to what is necessary and useful."
I should also point out those alledgedly behind The Protocols
are not the people the article is referring ie: those people are
typically found in any liberal establishment.
A good article, but it fails to deliver on these key aspects of
the matter:
Everyone knows from the Godfather and its genre
that there is a connection between loyalty, criminality and
power: Once you witness someone engaging in a criminal act, you
have leverage over them and that ensures their loyalty. But what
follows from that - which healthy sane minds have trouble
contemplating - is that the greater the criminality the greater
the leverage, and that because murderous paedophilia places a
person utterly beyond any prospect of redemption in decent
society, there in NO GREATER LOYALTY than those desperate to
avoid being outed. These must be the three corners of the
triangle - Power:Loyalty:Depravity through which the evil eys
views the world.
I always beleived in an Illuminati of sorts, however they
care to self identify. Until Pizzagate, I never understood that
murderous paedophilia, luciferian in style to accentuate their
own depravity, is THE KEY TO RULING THE EARTH
And another thing. If pizzagate is 'fake news' then it it
inconceivably elaborate - they'd have had to fake Epstein 2008,
Silsby 2010, Breitbart 2011, the 2013 portugese release of
podestaesque mccann suspects, as well as the current run of
wikileaks and Alefantis' instagram account - which had an avatar
photo of the 13 yr old lover of a roman emperor.
Is that much fake news a possibility? Or has this smoke been
blowing for years and we've all been too distracted to stop and
look for fire?
What floors me about the whole pizzagate thing is the evil staring us
right in the face. And then to realize that the libtards don't even
believe in evil at all, only "mental illness"!
Lesson #1: Do not waste your time figuring some things out. Things like evil
people are probably beyond a decent persons ability to understand and let's be
honest I don't want to feel any sympathy for them anyway.
Read a book years ago by Dr. Karl Menninger, a psychiatrist, titled
'Whatever happened to Sin?'
In it he talks of murder and that it is not a natural thing for man to
do,. However, when the burden of guilt is spread over many shoulders and
government condones the action, it becomes easier to bear.
When observing the results, such as soldiers returning from war, unstable
mentally, it is evident that evil has occured. It has been decades since I
read the book, so the words I wrote may not be verbatim.
Lurked ZH for years, just started reading the comments. This is worse than
Reddit's echo chamber. Bible quotes? 3 guys 1 hammer on liveleak has more
productive comments. Why not mention methods you've used to help people reach
their own conclusion about Pizzagate?
I had two slices of pizza for dinner. I had to try not to think of the poor
children walking innocently about the store who may at any moment fall victim
to a pedo. My gf said pizza places all over now need to keep a keen eye out for
the Posdesta Brothers and their Gang after all the stuff that has come out from
WikiLeaks and other sources about them.
The bible says God created evil and loosed it on us. The correct reading of
Genesis 4;1 is from the dead sea scrolls stating :
"And Adam knew his
wife Eve,
who was pregnant by Sammael [Satan]
, and she conceived and
bare Cain,
and he was like the heavenly beings, and not like earthly
beings,
and
she
said, I have gotten a man from
the angel of
the Lord."
So in Isaiah 45:7 we have this:
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the
LORD do all these
things
.
So my research shows evil was "grafted" into humans through
the unholy alliance and 2 seedline of people resulted.
Good article but an exception: evil doesn't reside in all of us, sin does.
Evil is the expression of wanton and intentional deception, injury,
degradation, and destruction and rarely self-recognizes or admits to God as
supreme. It may be DNA encoded. Sociopathy certainly is.
But you're so
right about the organized nature of it all, and for thousands of years. The
newly formed EU didn't advertise itself as the New Babylonia for nothing on
publicty posters, heralding the coming age of one tongue out of many and
fashioning its parliament building after the Tower of Bablyon:
Secret societies are cannibalizing us, and themselves, but members won't
know till it's too late that they'll also be eaten fairly early on. Of all
"people", they should know those in the pyramid capstone won't have enough
elbow room if they let in every Tom, Dick and Harry Mason.
I am sympatico with Brandon. I have always had similar interests, about the
soul, about ethics, about human behavior.
The reality is that evil is extant
in other human beings. The thought that your property manager is going to piss
in your OJ or fuck their BFF in your bed is abhorrent to most people, but not
all. There was an article this week about a married couple that had concerns
about their rental unit manager. And what did they find? He was fucking his BFF
(yes, of course it was another dude) in their bed. The good news is they got it
on video and moved. The bad news? This kind of attitude is rampant. People
don't give a shit about other people. They think the rules don't apply to them.
That they are special. The result is renting from some asshat that fucks in
your bed or pisses in your OJ. Or parents that wonder why little Johnny or
little Janie never move out of the house and are stoned and play video games
all day.
Evil exists, in varying forms. Sadly too many people continue to make
excuses for not only bad behavior but evil behavior. I don't think that way and
I don't live my life that way but I am fully aware of all the morons stumbling
through the world that do.
I think people are misunderstanding the setup theory. Nobody believes, at
least I hope not, that all of this art and bizarre behavior on the part of
these freaks was staged for the purposes of taking down the last of our free
media, but rather, they just took advantage of a situation where they knew
people were making accusations that couldn't be sufficiently backed up or even
prosecuted, and yet caused proven or contrived damages to people. If this is
the case, their intention,
with the help of intelligence agencies
, is
to frame alt-media for starting vigilante violence and the destruction of
innocent people's lives through promoting defamation against others.
I have
no doubt that our entire system is riddled with pedophilia and likely much
worse. They have also been getting away with this forever, so when we go for
the takedown we better have our ducks in a row. To do otherwise will just give
these sickos complete immunity and more decades will pass with them continuing
to prey on our children. Not only is this at stake but the fate of all the
children of this nation is at stake if we lose our media. We are in very
dangerous and treacherous times. When you go toe to toe with the professional
trade crafters you have to play smart or they will have you every time.
Once people have had enough exposure to NPDs or psychopaths you will vibe
them after a while. I imagine this is likely the case for anyone who has
worked as a trader, finance, politics, big commodity booms are bad, etc. We
have all encountered them somewhere. People should pay attention to how they
feel (yeah I know, people hate that word) when they are around people. I have
to pretend that I don't notice them because it is so apparent to me and
immediately.
The last time I picked one out at work, a few months later the creepy
bastard walked past me at night during a -20 blizzard, with next to no
visibility, knowing that I had an hour drive, and told me in super spooky
whisper.. "Don't hit a deer on your way home now." I found out later that a
bunch of horses had mysteriously died in his care and a bunch of other things
that confirmed my suspicions. I had a long battle with him so I eventually got
to understand him pretty well. I didn't have to hear the guy state a single
sentence or watch any body language, I just knew immediately because I could
feel his malevolence and threat in my stomach where we have a large nerve
cluster. Pay attention and you will know. Also their eye contact is all wrong
and too intense.
Globalism, is designed to make you poorer slowly over decades by allowing wages
and conditions to be for ever slowly reduced under the guise of free market
competition to funnel wealth ever upwards to the 1%.
"... One of the sites PropOrNot cited as Russian-influenced was the Drudge Report. ..."
"... The piece's description of some sharers of bogus news as "useful idiots" could " theoretically include anyone on any social-media platform who shares news based on a click-bait headline ," Mathew Ingram wrote for Fortune. ..."
"... But the biggest issue was PropOrNot itself. As Adrian Chen wrote for the New Yorker , its methods were themselves suspect, hinting at counter-Russian propaganda - ostensibly with Ukrainian origins - and verification of its work was nearly impossible. Chen wrote "the prospect of legitimate dissenting voices being labeled fake news or Russian propaganda by mysterious groups of ex-government employees, with the help of a national newspaper, is even scarier." ..."
"... Now, at least, the "national newspaper" has taken some responsibility, however the key question remains: by admitting it never vetted its primary source, whose biased and conflicted "work" smeared hundreds of websites, this one included, just how is the Washington Post any different from the "fake news" it has been deriding on a daily basis ever since its endorsed presidential candidate lost the elections? ..."
In the latest example why the "mainstream media" is facing a historic crisis of confidence among
its readership, facing unprecedented blowback following Craig Timberg November 24 Washington Post
story "
Russian propaganda effort helped spread 'fake news' during election, experts say ", on Wednesday
a lengthy editor's note appeared on top of the original article in which the editor not only distances
the WaPo from the "experts" quoted in the original article whose "work" served as the basis for the
entire article (and which became the most read WaPo story the day it was published) but also admits
the Post could not " vouch for the validity of PropOrNot's finding regarding any individual media
outlet", in effect admitting the entire story may have been, drumroll "fake news" and conceding the
Bezos-owned publication may have engaged in defamation by smearing numerous websites - Zero Hedge
included - with patently false and unsubstantiated allegations.
It was the closest the Washington Post would come to formally retracting the story, which has
now been thoroughly discredited not only by outside commentators, but by its own editor.
Editor's Note: The Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four
sets of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda efforts to undermine
American democracy and interests. One of them was PropOrNot, a group that insists on public anonymity,
which issued a report identifying more than 200 websites that, in its view, wittingly or unwittingly
published or echoed Russian propaganda. A number of those sites have objected to being included
on PropOrNot's list, and some of the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged
the group's methodology and conclusions. The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not
itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot's findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor
did the article purport to do so. Since publication of The Post's story, PropOrNot has removed
some sites from its list.
As The
Washingtonian notes , the implicit concession follows intense and rising criticism of the article
over the past two weeks. It was "
rife with obviously reckless and unproven allegations, " Intercept reporters Glenn Greenwald
and Ben Norton wrote, noting that PropOrNot, one of the groups whose research was cited in Timberg's
piece, "anonymous cowards." One of the sites PropOrNot cited as Russian-influenced was the Drudge
Report.
But the biggest issue was PropOrNot itself. As Adrian Chen
wrote for the New Yorker , its methods were themselves suspect, hinting at counter-Russian propaganda
- ostensibly with Ukrainian origins - and verification of its work was nearly impossible. Chen wrote
"the prospect of legitimate dissenting voices being labeled fake news or Russian propaganda by mysterious
groups of ex-government employees, with the help of a national newspaper, is even scarier."
Now, at least, the "national newspaper" has taken some responsibility, however the key question
remains: by admitting it never vetted its primary source, whose biased and conflicted "work" smeared
hundreds of websites, this one included, just how is the Washington Post any different from the "fake
news" it has been deriding on a daily basis ever since its endorsed presidential candidate lost the
elections?
A friend on Facebook made the mistake of posting two declamatory articles on the
India financial apocalypse under Modi with the snark line 'this is what passes for
democracy (sic) in the world now' and was notified just a day later by FB that their
Profile was 'Determined to be an unauthorized Business Space', and would then be shut
down, without any recourse, if they didn't provide a confirmed birth name and confirmed
cell phone number. Nyet spasiba, ...so their profile went immediately 404.
This FB purge masks the truth for what Modi really is, the Menem of India, for
privatization of Indian gold wealth, for taxation of outsourced high-tech workers, and
covering up the 100,000s of Hindu HIBs flying into the USA by the 747-load, taking away,
by some estimates 98% of new high-tech jobs, and 56% of existing high-tech jobs, where
American workers are being forced to train their Hindu replacements, then given a pink
slip and six months of COBRA and booted out.
[ASIDE: I was walking off frustration with Trump's financial picks today, and by
sheer fate met an older guy who had just been terminated before he reached his
employee-share pension age, by a company moving their assembly operations to China. He's
hoping to move to Idaho or Montana, where there are so many unemployed meth heads,
anyone who is clean and straight can find some kind of job that the Monkey Boys can't
get their hooks into.]
Hindus flooded the MSM back-office journalist pool, cratering American journalism
careers. Forbes, Wall Street Journal, The Street, ...all use Hindus to write their news,
bloat their comment section, and with more 'legal' Hindu H1Bs in editorial positions
within the USA, which is why in the Big Feu-faw since 9/11 fussing over Mexicans,
Muslims, Deadbeat Students and UnInsurable Elders, ...even with 95,000,000 Americans
unemployed, you will NEVER, EVER hear a single word about Hindus.
Nadella, Ellison, McDermott, Gelsinger, Besos, Zuckerberg, and Trump and his Cabinet
are all 100% behind UNLIMITED H1B 'legal' immigration for USA. (Amazon even had to put
cones around a dead PT minimum-wage worker, so their robots wouldn't crush his body,
then the other day, an 'addlebrained' employee jumped off the roof). With all the jobs
going to H1Bs, Trump will have to make America Great Again with his YUUGE infrastructure
program :
The Few, The Proud, The
Brave!
Blast from the past. Bill Clinton position on illegal immegtation.
Notable quotes:
"... Today's Democratic Party also believes we must remain a nation of laws. We cannot tolerate illegal immigration and we must stop it. For years before Bill Clinton became President, Washington talked tough but failed to act. In 1992, our borders might as well not have existed. The border was under-patrolled, and what patrols there were, were under-equipped. Drugs flowed freely. Illegal immigration was rampant. Criminal immigrants, deported after committing crimes in America, returned the very next day to commit crimes again. ..."
"... President Clinton is making our border a place where the law is respected and drugs and illegal immigrants are turned away. We have increased the Border Patrol by over 40 percent; in El Paso, our Border Patrol agents are so close together they can see each other. Last year alone, the Clinton Administration removed thousands of illegal workers from jobs across the country. Just since January of 1995, we have arrested more than 1,700 criminal aliens and prosecuted them on federal felony charges because they returned to America after having been deported. ..."
"... However, as we work to stop illegal immigration, we call on all Americans to avoid the temptation to use this issue to divide people from each other. We deplore those who use the need to stop illegal immigration as a pretext for discrimination . And we applaud the wisdom of Republicans like Mayor Giuliani and Senator Domenici who oppose the mean-spirited and short-sighted effort of Republicans in Congress to bar the children of illegal immigrants from schools - it is wrong, and forcing children onto the streets is an invitation for them to join gangs and turn to crime. ..."
Democrats remember that we are a nation of immigrants. We recognize the extraordinary contribution
of immigrants to America throughout our history. We welcome legal immigrants to America. We support
a legal immigration policy that is pro-family, pro-work, pro-responsibility, and pro-citizenship
, and we deplore those who blame immigrants for economic and social problems.
We know that citizenship is the cornerstone of full participation in American life. We are
proud that the President launched Citizenship USA to help eligible immigrants become United States
citizens. The Immigration and Naturalization Service is streamlining procedures, cutting red tape,
and using new technology to make it easier for legal immigrants to accept the responsibilities
of citizenship and truly call America their home.
Today's Democratic Party also believes we must remain a nation of laws. We cannot tolerate
illegal immigration and we must stop it. For years before Bill Clinton became President, Washington
talked tough but failed to act. In 1992, our borders might as well not have existed. The border
was under-patrolled, and what patrols there were, were under-equipped. Drugs flowed freely. Illegal
immigration was rampant. Criminal immigrants, deported after committing crimes in America, returned
the very next day to commit crimes again.
President Clinton is making our border a place where the law is respected and drugs and
illegal immigrants are turned away. We have increased the Border Patrol by over 40 percent; in
El Paso, our Border Patrol agents are so close together they can see each other. Last year alone,
the Clinton Administration removed thousands of illegal workers from jobs across the country.
Just since January of 1995, we have arrested more than 1,700 criminal aliens and prosecuted them
on federal felony charges because they returned to America after having been deported.
However, as we work to stop illegal immigration, we call on all Americans to avoid the
temptation to use this issue to divide people from each other. We deplore those who use the need
to stop illegal immigration as a pretext for discrimination . And we applaud the wisdom of Republicans
like Mayor Giuliani and Senator Domenici who oppose the mean-spirited and short-sighted effort
of Republicans in Congress to bar the children of illegal immigrants from schools - it is wrong,
and forcing children onto the streets is an invitation for them to join gangs and turn to crime.
Democrats want to protect American jobs by increasing criminal and civil sanctions against
employers who hire illegal workers , but Republicans continue to favor inflammatory rhetoric over
real action. We will continue to enforce labor standards to protect workers in vulnerable industries.
We continue to firmly oppose welfare benefits for illegal immigrants. We believe family members
who sponsor immigrants into this country should take financial responsibility for them, and be
held legally responsible for supporting them.
"... It has been an absolute failure. Brexit has torpedoed TTIP and TPP has limited value - the largest economy in the partnership, Japan, has been largely integrated in to the US for the past 70 years. ..."
"... IMO the biggest failure of the US has been hating Russia too much. The Russians have just as much reason to be afraid of China ..."
"... It's old Cold War thinking that has seen America lose its hegemony -- similar to how the British were so focused on stopping German ascendancy they didn't see the Americans coming with the knife. ..."
The US grand strategy post-Bush was to reposition itself at the heart of a liberal economic system
excluding China through TTIP with the EU and TPP with Asia-Pac ex. China and Russia. The idea
was that this would enable the US to sustain its hegemony.
It has been an absolute failure. Brexit has torpedoed TTIP and TPP has limited value -
the largest economy in the partnership, Japan, has been largely integrated in to the US for the
past 70 years.
IMO the biggest failure of the US has been hating Russia too much. The Russians have just
as much reason to be afraid of China as the US do and have a pretty capable army.
If the US patched things up with the Russians, firstly it could redeploy forces and military
effort away from the Middle East towards Asia Pac and secondly it would give the US effective
leverage over China -- with the majority of the oil producing nations aligned with the US, China
would have difficulty in conducted a sustained conflict.
It's old Cold War thinking that has seen America lose its hegemony -- similar to how the
British were so focused on stopping German ascendancy they didn't see the Americans coming with
the knife.
"... The real problem is the Chinese do not believe in economic profits, just market rates of return on invested capital which to be honest is only about 2-5% depending on risk. ..."
No one disputes the need for more official infrastructure funding
:
What we find the most interesting is that the AIIB founders didn't ask
member countries to approve an expansion of either the World Bank or the
ADB. Instead, they opted for a new organization altogether.
Why? The problem is institutional legitimacy arising from issues of power
and governance :
-- Cecchetti & Schoenholtz
[ Why? Because when all is said and done the United States wants to be
able to control the Asian Development Bank, the IMF and World Bank and use
them to in turn "control" countries that it wishes to be subject to the
US but especially to control China as the New York Times editorial board
made clear today in supporting Japanese militarism. *
No one disputes the need for more official infrastructure funding
:
-- Cecchetti & Schoenholtz
[ Unless the word "official" suffices as an excuse, of course United
States and British policy makers in particular dispute the need for more
government supported infrastructure funding. Amartya Sen and Vijay Prashad
have made this entirely clear for India. *
The real problem is the Chinese do not believe in economic profits, just
market rates of return on invested capital which to be honest is only about
2-5% depending on risk.
Americans demand monopoly profits and ROIC so high that the price of
capital assets rapidly inflates.
Thus China's high speed rail plans are evil because China is advocating
high volumes of HSR construction that costs decline by economies of scale
leading to the replacement cost of any existing rail line being lower than
original cost so the result is capital depreciation lower the price of assets,
tangible and intangible, and the frantic pace of creating jobs and building
more capital - more rail - eliminates any monopoly power of any rail system,
thereby forcing revenues down to costs with the recovery of investment cost
stretched to decades, and ROIC forced toward zero.
And it's that policy of investing to eliminate profits that drives conservatives
insane. They scream, "it is bankrupt because those hundred year lifetime
assets are not paying for themselves and generating stock market gains in
seven years!"
Its like banking was from circa 1930 to 1980! It is like utility regulation
was from 1930 to 1980! How can wealth be created when monopoly power is
thwarted?!?
Just imagine how devastating if China uses the AIIB to build a rail network
speeding goods between China and the tip of Africa and every place in between!
Highly destructive of wealth.
Though I want to smooth the writing and terminology, I completely agree.
Again, a terrific thoroughly enlightening comment. ]
anne :
And :after failing to stop the AIIB, and refusing to participate as a
founding member, the United States should join the institution as soon as it
can, participating actively in holding it to the highest 21st century standards
:.
-- Cecchetti & Schoenholtz
[ Surely the IMF and the like are responsible for the "explosive" 38 year
growth in real per capita Gross Domestic Product and 35 year growth in total
factor productivity from Mexico, neighbor to the United States, to the Philippines,
to Kenya : ]
Total Factor Productivity at Constant National Prices for China, India, Brazil
and South Africa, 1976-2011
(Indexed to 1976)
anne -> anne :
Even supposing analysts short of an Amartya Sen wish to be judicious in actually
looking to the data of the last 38 years, as even Sen has found there is a price
for arguing about the obvious importance of soft (social welfare spending) and
hard institutional infrastructure spending in China:
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for China and Kenya, 1976-2014
(Indexed to 1976)
anne :
And :after failing to stop the AIIB, and refusing to participate
as a founding member, the United States should join the institution as soon
as it can, participating actively in holding it to the highest 21st century
standards :.
Total Factor Productivity at Constant National Prices for China,
United States and United Kingdom, 1976-2011
(Indexed to 1976)
anne :
No one disputes the need for more official infrastructure funding :
And :after failing to stop the AIIB, and refusing to participate as a
founding member, the United States should join the institution as soon as it
can, participating actively in holding it to the highest 21st century standards
:.
Total Factor Productivity at Constant National Prices for United States, United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Germany and China,
1976-2011
(Indexed to 1976)
anne :
No one disputes the need for more official infrastructure funding :
What we find the most interesting is that the AIIB founders didn't ask member
countries to approve an expansion of either the World Bank or the ADB. Instead,
they opted for a new organization altogether.
Why? The problem is institutional legitimacy arising from issues of power
and governance :
Total Factor Productivity at Constant National Prices for China, Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore, 1976-2011
(Indexed to 1976)
anne :
No one disputes the need for more official infrastructure funding
:
And :after failing to stop the AIIB, and refusing to participate
as a founding member, the United States should join the institution as soon
as it can, participating actively in holding it to the highest 21st century
standards :.
Total Factor Productivity at Constant National Prices for Sweden,
Denmark, Norway, Finland and China, 1976-2011
(Indexed to 1976)
anne :
No one disputes the need for more official infrastructure funding
:
And :after failing to stop the AIIB, and refusing to participate
as a founding member, the United States should join the institution as soon
as it can, participating actively in holding it to the highest 21st century
standards :.
Total Factor Productivity at Constant National Prices for Ireland,
Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece and China, 1976-2011
(Indexed to 1976)
anne :
No one disputes the need for more official infrastructure funding
:
And :after failing to stop the AIIB, and refusing to participate
as a founding member, the United States should join the institution as soon
as it can, participating actively in holding it to the highest 21st century
standards :.
Total Factor Productivity at Constant National Prices for China, Japan
and Korea, 1976-2011
(Indexed to 1976)
kthomas :
yawn
anne :
Yawn
[ When did the United States experience 38 years of 8.6% real per capita
GDP growth yearly? How about the United Kingdom? How about any other country?
I have just begun, go ahead choose another country to go with China. I am
waiting. Go ahead. I will include the astonishing total factor productivity
growth as well. ]
anne :
While most of the G20 nations, including the big European states, Australia,
and South Korea, are among the founding members, the United States, Japan,
and Canada are noticeably not :
-- Cecchetti & Schoenholtz
[ I found it startling and discouraging that Greece virtually alone in
Europe did not apply to be a founding member of the AIIB. ]
anne :
No one disputes the need for more official infrastructure funding
:
And :after failing to stop the AIIB, and refusing to participate
as a founding member, the United States should join the institution as soon
as it can, participating actively in holding it to the highest 21st century
standards :.
Total Factor Productivity at Constant National Prices for China,
United Kingdom, Australia and Canada, 1976-2011
(Indexed to 1976)
anne -> anne :
Yawn
[ I am still waiting, choose a country to go with China. ]
anne -> anne :
No one disputes the need for more official infrastructure funding
:
And :after failing to stop the AIIB, and refusing to participate
as a founding member, the United States should join the institution as soon
as it can, participating actively in holding it to the highest 21st century
standards :.
Total Factor Productivity at Constant National Prices for Indonesia,
Philippines, Thailand and China, 1976-2011
(Indexed to 1976)
anne -> anne :
Yawn
[ Still waiting, choose a country to go with China. ]
Bruce Webb :
As to why the AIIB decided to go alone (at least without the US) it may
have something to do with a fact that I stumbled on in relation to the Greece
crisis. I am sure that most people here knew the basic fact and perhaps
appreciate the irony but I didn't know whether to weep or laugh outright.
The U.S. only controls 17% of voting powers of the IMF. Why barely a
sixth! Yet any positive decision requires an 85% vote. Meaning that in operational
terms the U.S. might as well hold 51%.
You see similar things with NATO. It's a partnership that has high officers
rotating in from here or there. But which requires that the overall NATO
Commander be an American.
Nothing undemocratic or hegemonic here! Nope! Moving right along!
anne -> Bruce Webb :
The U.S. only controls 17% of voting powers of the IMF. Why barely a
sixth! Yet any positive decision requires an 85% vote. Meaning that in operational
terms the U.S. might as well hold 51%.
You see similar things with NATO. It's a partnership that has high officers
rotating in from here or there. But which requires that the overall NATO
Commander be an American.
Nothing undemocratic or hegemonic here! Nope! Moving right along!
[ Perfect and important. ]
anne -> Bruce Webb :
I am sure that most people here knew the basic fact and perhaps appreciate
the irony but I didn't know whether to weep or laugh outright :.
[ No, in continually whining about the need for Asian Infrastructure
Investment Bank to be transparent and democratic the United States was making
sure never ever to explain the historic lack of transparency and anti-democratic
nature of the IMF and World Bank and Asian Development Bank. ]
"... Bill Clinton: "The geopolitical reasons for [TPP], from America's point of view, are pretty clear. It's designed to make sure that the future of the Asia-Pacific region, economically, is not totally dominated by China" ..."
"... " The full 40-page paper (PDF) [from the Global Development And Environment Institute at Tufts University] goes into the details [of projected economic gains from trade deals]. Along the way, it provides a highly critical analysis of the underlying econometric model used for almost all of the official studies of CETA, TPP and TTIP - the so-called "computable general equilibrium" (CGE) approach. In particular, the authors find that using the CGE model to analyze a potential trade deal effectively guarantees that there will be a positive outcome ("net welfare gains") because of its unrealistic assumptions" [ TechDirt ]. ..."
Bill Clinton: "The geopolitical reasons for [TPP], from America's point of view, are pretty
clear. It's designed to make sure that the future of the Asia-Pacific region, economically, is not
totally dominated by China" [
CNBC ].
"However, he stopped short [by about an inch, right?] of supporting the TPP. He added that his
wife [who is running for President' has said provisions on currency manipulation must be enforced
and measures put in place in the United States to address any labor market dislocations that result
from trade deals." Oh. "Provisions enforced" sounds like executive authority, to me. And "measures
put in place" sounds like a side deal. In other words, Bill Clinton just floated Hillary's trial
balloon for passing TPP, if Obama can't get it done in the lame duck. Of course, if you parsed her
words, you knew she wasn't lying , exactly .
" The full 40-page
paper (PDF) [from the Global Development And Environment Institute at Tufts University] goes
into the details [of projected economic gains from trade deals]. Along the way, it provides a highly
critical analysis of the underlying econometric model used for almost all of the official studies
of CETA, TPP and TTIP - the so-called "computable general equilibrium" (CGE) approach. In particular,
the authors find that using the CGE model to analyze a potential trade deal effectively guarantees
that there will be a positive outcome ("net welfare gains") because of its unrealistic assumptions"
[
TechDirt ].
"Conservative lawmakers looking for a way to buck Donald Trump's populist message on trade may
have gotten a little more cover with more than 30 conservative and libertarian groups sending a letter
today to Congress expressing strong support for free trade" [
Politico ]. National
Taxpayers Union, Club for Growth, FreedomWorks
"France is set to arrive at the meeting with a proposal to suspend TTIP negotiations, our Pro
Trade colleagues in Brussels report. But for the deal's supporters, there's hop'e: 'France will not
win the day,' Alberto Mucci, Christian Oliver and Hans von der Burchard write. 'Britain [???], Italy,
Spain, Poland, the Nordic countries and the Baltics will thwart any attempt to end the Transatlantic
Trade and Investment Partnership in Bratislava'" [
Politico ].
"... Expressing his overall objections to the TPP, Stiglitz said "corporate interests... were at the table" when it was being crafted. He also condemned "the provisions on intellectual property that will drive up drug prices" and "the 'investment provisions' which will make it more difficult to regulate and actually harm trade." ..."
"... The Democratic candidate, for her part, supported the deal before coming out against it , but for TPP foes, uncertainty about her position remains, especially since she recently named former Colorado Senator and Interior Secretary-and " vehement advocate for the TPP "-Ken Salazar to be chair of her presidential transition team. ..."
"... Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said , "We have to make sure that bill never sees the light of day after this election," while Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) said at the American Postal Workers Union convention in Walt Disney World, "If this goes through, it's curtains for the middle class in this country." ..."
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has reiterated his opposition
to the Trans Pacific
Partnership (TPP), saying on Tuesday that President Barack Obama's push
to get the trade deal passed during the upcoming lame-duck session of Congress
is "outrageous" and "absolutely wrong."
Stiglitz, an economics professor at
Columbia University and chief economist of the Roosevelt Institute,
made the comments on CNN's "Quest Means Business."
His criticism comes as Obama aggressively
campaigns to get lawmakers to pass the TPP in the Nov. 9 to Jan. 3 window-even
as
resistance mounts against the 12-nation deal.
Echoing an
argument made by Center for Economic
and Policy Research co-director Mark Weisbrot, Stiglitz said, "At the lame-duck
session you have congressmen voting who know that they're not accountable anymore."
Lawmakers "who are not politically accountable because they're leaving may,
in response to promises of jobs or just subtle understandings, do things that
are not in the national interest," he said.
Expressing his overall objections to the TPP, Stiglitz said "corporate
interests... were at the table" when it was being crafted. He also condemned
"the provisions on intellectual property that will drive up drug prices" and
"the 'investment provisions' which will make it more difficult to regulate and
actually harm trade."
"The advocates of trade said it was going to benefit everyone,"
he added. "The evidence is it's benefited a few and left a lot behind."
Stiglitz has also been advising the
Hillary
Clinton presidential campaign. The Democratic candidate, for her part,
supported the deal before coming out
against it, but for TPP foes, uncertainty about her position remains, especially
since she recently
named former Colorado Senator and Interior Secretary-and "vehement
advocate for the TPP"-Ken Salazar to be chair of her presidential transition
team.
Opposition to the TPP also appeared Tuesday in Michigan and Florida, where
union members and lawmakers criticized what they foresee as the deal's impacts
on working families.
Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.)
said, "We have to make sure that bill never sees the light of day after
this election," while Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.)
said at the American Postal Workers Union convention in Walt Disney World,
"If this goes through, it's curtains for the middle class in this country."
We cannot allow this agreement to forsake the American middle class, while foreign governments
are allowed to devalue their currency and artificially prop-up their industries.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal is a bad deal for the American people. This historically
massive trade deal -- accounting for 40 percent of global trade -- would reduce restrictions on foreign
corporations operating within the U.S., limit our ability to protect our environment, and create
more incentives for U.S. businesses to outsource investments and jobs overseas to countries with
lower labor costs and standards.
Over and over we hear from TPP proponents how the TPP will boost our economy, help American workers,
and set the standards for global trade. The International Trade Commission report released last May
(https://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/pub4607.pdf)
confirms that the opposite is true. In exchange for just 0.15 percent boost in GDP by 2032, the TPP
would decimate American manufacturing capacity, increase our trade deficit, ship American jobs overseas,
and result in losses to 16 of the 25 U.S. economic sectors. These estimates don't even account for
the damaging effects of currency manipulation, environmental impacts, and the agreement's deeply
flawed Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) process.
There's no reason to believe the provisions of this deal relating to labor standards, preserving
American jobs, or protecting our environment, will be enforceable. Every trade agreement negotiated
in the past claimed to have strong enforceable provisions to protect American jobs -- yet no such
enforcement has occurred, and agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have
resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of American jobs. Former Secretary of Labor Robert
Reich has called TPP "NAFTA on steroids." The loss of U.S. jobs under the TPP would likely be unprecedented.
"... Existing "trade" agreements like NAFTA allow corporations to sue governments for passing laws and regulations that limit their profits. They set up special " corporate courts " in which corporate attorneys decide the cases. These corporate "super courts" sit above governments and their own court systems, and countries and their citizens cannot even appeal the rulings. ..."
"... Now, corporations are pushing two new "trade" agreements - one covering Pacific-are countries and one covering Atlantic-area countries - that expand these corporate rights and move governments out of their way. The Pacific agreement is called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Atlantic one is called the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). ..."
"... International corporations that want to intimidate countries have access to a private legal system designed just for them. And to unlock its power, sometimes all it takes is a threat. ..."
"... ISDS is so tilted and unpredictable, and the fines the arbitrators can impose are so catastrophically large, that bowing to a company's demands, however extreme they may be, can look like the prudent choice. ..."
BuzzFeed is running a very important investigative series called
"Secrets
of a Global Super Court." It describes what they call "a parallel legal
universe, open only to corporations and largely invisible to everyone else."
Existing "trade" agreements like NAFTA allow corporations to sue governments
for passing laws and regulations that limit their profits. They set up special
"corporate
courts" in which corporate attorneys decide the cases. These corporate "super
courts" sit above governments and their own court systems, and countries
and their citizens cannot even appeal the rulings.
Picture a poor "banana republic" country ruled by a dictator and his
cronies. A company might want to invest in a factory or railroad - things
that would help the people of that country as well as deliver a return to
the company. But the company worries that the dictator might decide to just
seize the factory and give it to his brother-in-law. Agreements to protect
investors, and allowing a tribunal not based in such countries (courts where
the judges are cronies of the dictator), make sense in such situations.
Here's the thing: Corporate investors see themselves as legitimate "makers"
and see citizens and voters and their governments - always demanding taxes and
fair pay and public safety - to be illegitimate "takers." Corporations are all
about "one-dollar-one-vote" top-down systems of governance. They consider "one-person-one-vote"
democracy to be an illegitimate, non-functional system that meddles with their
more-important profit interests. They consider any governmental legal or regulatory
system to be "burdensome." They consider taxes as "theft" of the money they
have "earned."
To them, any government anywhere is just another "banana republic"
from which they need special protection.
"Trade" Deals Bypass Borders
Investors and their corporations have set up a way to get around the borders
of these meddling governments, called "trade" deals. The trade deals elevate
global corporate interests above any national interest. When a country signs
a "trade" deal, that country is agreeing not to do things that protect the country's
own national interest - like impose tariffs to protect key industries or national
strategies, or pass laws and regulations - when those things interfere with
the larger, more important global corporate "trade" interests.
Now, corporations are pushing two new "trade" agreements - one covering
Pacific-are countries and one covering Atlantic-area countries - that expand
these corporate rights and move governments out of their way. The Pacific agreement
is called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Atlantic one is called
the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
Secrets of a Global Super Court
BuzzFeed's series on these corporate courts,
"Secrets
of a Global Super Court," explains the investor-state dispute settlement
(ISDS) provisions in the "trade" deals that have come to dominate the world
economy. These provisions set up "corporate
courts" that place corporate profits above the interests of governments
and set up a court system that sits above the court systems of the countries
in the "trade" deals.
In a little-noticed 2014 dissent, US Chief Justice John Roberts warned
that ISDS arbitration panels hold the alarming power to review a nation's
laws and "effectively annul the authoritative acts of its legislature, executive,
and judiciary." ISDS arbitrators, he continued, "can meet literally anywhere
in the world" and "sit in judgment" on a nation's "sovereign acts."
[. . .]
Reviewing publicly available information for about 300 claims filed during
the past five years, BuzzFeed News found more than 35 cases in which the
company or executive seeking protection in ISDS was accused of criminal
activity, including money laundering, embezzlement, stock manipulation,
bribery, war profiteering, and fraud.
Among them: a bank in Cyprus that the US government accused of
financing terrorism and organized crime, an oil company executive accused
of embezzling millions from the impoverished African nation of Burundi,
and the Russian oligarch known as "the
Kremlin's banker."
One lawyer who regularly represents governments said he's seen evidence
of corporate criminality that he "couldn't believe." Speaking on the condition
that he not be named because he's currently handling ISDS cases, he said,
"You have a lot of scuzzy sort-of thieves for whom this is a way to hit
the jackpot."
Part Two,
"The Billion-Dollar Ultimatum," looks at how "International corporations
that want to intimidate countries have access to a private legal system designed
just for them. And to unlock its power, sometimes all it takes is a threat."
Of all the ways in which ISDS is used, the most deeply hidden are the
threats, uttered in private meetings or ominous letters, that invoke those
courts. The threats are so powerful they often eliminate the need to actually
bring a lawsuit. Just the knowledge that it could happen is enough.
[. . .] ISDS is so tilted and unpredictable, and the fines the arbitrators
can impose are so catastrophically large, that bowing to a company's demands,
however extreme they may be, can look like the prudent choice. Especially
for nations struggling to emerge from corrupt dictatorships or to lift their
people from decades of poverty, the mere threat of an ISDS claim triggers
alarm. A single decision by a panel of three unaccountable, private lawyers,
meeting in a conference room on some other continent, could gut national
budgets and shake economies to the core.
Indeed, financiers and ISDS lawyers have created a whole new business:
prowling for ways to sue nations in ISDS and make their taxpayers fork over
huge sums, sometimes in retribution for enforcing basic laws or regulations.
The financial industry is pushing novel ISDS claims that countries
never could have anticipated - claims that, in some instances,
would be barred in US courts and those of other developed nations, or
that strike at emergency decisions nations make to cope with crises.
ISDS gives particular leverage to traders and speculators who chase
outsize profits in the developing world. They can buy into local disputes
that they have no connection to, then turn the disputes into costly international
showdowns. Standard Chartered, for example, bought the debt of a Tanzanian
company that was in dire financial straits and racked by scandal; now, the
bank has filed an ISDS claim demanding that the nation's taxpayers hand
over the full amount that the private company owed - more than $100 million.
Asked to comment, Standard Chartered said its claim is "valid."
But instead of helping companies resolve legitimate disputes over seized
assets, ISDS has increasingly become a way for rich investors to make money
by speculating on lawsuits, winning huge awards and forcing taxpayers to
foot the bill.
Here's how it works: Wealthy financiers with idle cash have purchased
companies that are well placed to bring an ISDS claim, seemingly for the
sole purpose of using that claim to make a buck. Sometimes, they set up
shell corporations to create the plaintiffs to bring ISDS cases.
And some hedge funds and private equity firms bankroll ISDS cases as third
parties - just like billionaire Peter Thiel bankrolled Hulk Hogan in his
lawsuit against Gawker Media.
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) released this statement
on the ISDS provisions in TPP:
"Under the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Wall Street would be allowed to
sue the government in extrajudicial, corporate-run tribunals over any regulation
and American taxpayers would be on the hook for damages. This is an outrage.
We need more accountability and fairness in our economy – not less. And
we need to preserve our ability to make our own rules.
"It's time for Obama to take notice of the widespread, bipartisan opposition
to the TPP and take this agreement off the table before he causes lasting
political harm to Democrats with voters."
"... "No TPP - a certainty in case Donald Trump is elected in November - means the end of US economic hegemony over Asia. Hillary Clinton knows it; and it's no accident President Obama is desperate to have TPP approved during a short window of opportunity, the lame-duck session of Congress from November 9 to January 3." ..."
"... To me, the key to our economic hegemony lies in our reserve currency hegemony. They will have to continue to supply us to get the currency. Unless we have injected too much already (no scholars have come forth to say how much trade deficits are necessary for the reserve currency to function as the reserve currency, and so, we have just kept buying – and I am wondering if we have bought too much and there is a need to starting running trade surpluses to soak up the excess money – just asking, I don't know the answer). ..."
A response to Hillary Clinton's America Exceptionalist Speech:
1. America Exceptionalist vs. the World..
2. Brezinski is extremely dejected.
3. Russia-China on the march.
4. "There will be blood. Hillary Clinton smells it already ."
"No TPP - a certainty in case Donald Trump is elected in November
- means the end of US economic hegemony over Asia. Hillary Clinton knows
it; and it's no accident President Obama is desperate to have TPP approved
during a short window of opportunity, the lame-duck session of Congress
from November 9 to January 3."
To me, the key to our economic hegemony lies in our reserve currency
hegemony. They will have to continue to supply us to get the currency. Unless
we have injected too much already (no scholars have come forth to say how
much trade deficits are necessary for the reserve currency to function as
the reserve currency, and so, we have just kept buying – and I am wondering
if we have bought too much and there is a need to starting running trade
surpluses to soak up the excess money – just asking, I don't know the answer).
Regarding the push to pass the TPP and TISA I've been needing to get
this off my chest and this seems to be as good a time as any:
In the face of public opposition to the TPP and TISA proponents have
trotted out a new argument: "we have come too far", "our national credibility
would be damaged if we stop now." The premise of which is that negotiations
have been going on so long, and have involved such effort that if the
U.S. were to back away now we would look bad and would lose significant
political capital.
On one level this argument is true. The negotiations have been long,
and many promises were made by the negotiators to secure to to this
point. Stepping back now would expose those promises as false and would
make that decade of effort a loss. It would also expose the politicians
who pushed for it in the face of public oppoosition to further loss
of status and to further opposition.
However, all of that is voided by one simple fact. The negotiations
were secret. All of that effort, all of the horse trading and the promise
making was done by a self-selected body of elites, for that same body,
and was hidden behind a wall of secrecy stronger than that afforded
to new weapons. The deals were hidden not just from the general public,
not from trade unions or environmental groups, but from the U.S. Congress
itself.
Therefore it has no public legitimacy. The promises made are not
"our" promises but Michael Froman's promises. They are not backed by
the full faith and credit of the U.S. government but only by the words
of a small body of appointees and the multinational corporations that
they serve. The corporations were invited to the table, Congress was
not.
What "elites" really mean when they say "America's credibility is
on the line" is that their credibility is on the line. If these deals
fail what will be lost is not America's stature but the premise that
a handful of appointees can cut deals in private and that the rest of
us will make good.
When that minor loss is laid against the far greater fact that the
terms of these deals are bad, that prior deals of this type have harmed
our real economies, and that the rules will further erode our national
sovreignity, there is no contest.
Michael Froman's reputation has no value. Our sovreignity, our economy,
our nation, does.
"What "elites" really mean when they say "America's credibility is on
the line" is that their credibility is on the line. If these deals fail
what will be lost is not America's stature but the premise that a handful
of appointees can cut deals in private and that the rest of us will make
good."
Yes! And the victory will taste so sweet when we bury this filthy, rotten,
piece of garbage. Obama's years of effort down the drain, his legacy tarnished
and unfinished.
I want TPP's defeat to send a clear message that the elites can't count
on their politicians to deliver for them. Let's make this thing their Stalingrad!
Leave deep scars so that they give up on TISA and stop trying to concoct
these absurd schemes like ISDS.
sorry but i don't see it that way at all. 'they' got a propaganda machine
to beat all 'they' make n break reps all the time. i do see a desperation
on a monetary/profit scale. widening the 'playing field' offers more profits
with less risk. for instance, our Pharams won't have to slash their prices
at the risk of sunshine laws, wish-washy politicians, competition, nor a
pissed off public. jmo tho')
LOL "America's credibility" LOL, these people need to get out more. In
the 60's you could hike high up into the Andes and the sheep herder had
two pics on the wall of his hut: Jesus and JFK. America retains its cachet
as a place to make money and be entertained, but as some kind of beacon
of morality and fair play in the world? Dead, buried, and long gone, the
hype-fest of slogans and taglines can only cover up so many massive, atrocious
and hypocritical actions and serial offenses.
Clinton Inc was mostly Bill helping Epstein get laid until after Kerry
lost. If this was the reelection of John Edwards, Kerry's running mate,
and a referendum on 12 years of Kerronomics, Bill and Hill would be opening
night speakers at the DNC and answers to trivia questions.
My guess is Obama is dropped swiftly and unceremoniously especially since
he doesn't have much of a presence in Washington.
"It looks as if we'll be firing Tomahawk cruise missiles at Syria in
the coming days, and critics are raising legitimate concerns:"
"Yet there is value in bolstering international norms against egregious
behavior like genocide or the use of chemical weapons. Since President Obama
established a "red line" about chemical weapons use, his credibility has
been at stake: he can't just whimper and back down."
Obama did back down.
NIcholas Kristof, vigilant protector of American credibility through
bombing Syria.
Ah yes the credibility of our élites. With their sterling record on Nafta's
benefits, Iraq's liberation, Greece's rebound, the IMF's rehabilitation
of countries
We must pass TPP or Tom Friedman will lose credibility, what?
"... pro-TPPers "consciously seek to weaken the national defense," that's exactly what's going on. Neoliberalism, through offshoring, weakens the national defense, because it puts our weaponry at the mercy of fragile and corruptible supply chains. ..."
"... Now, when we think about how corrupt the political class has become, it's not hard to see why Obama is confident that he will win. ..."
"... I think raising the ante rhetorically by framing a pro-TPP vote as treason could help sway a close vote; and if readers try that frame out, I'd like to hear the results ..."
There are two reasons: First, they consciously seek to weaken the national
defense. And second, the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system is
a
surrender of national sovereignty .
National Defense
This might be labeled the "Ghost Fleet" argument, since we're informed that
Paul Singer and Augustus Cole's techno-thriller has really caught the attention
of the national security class below the political appointee level, and that
this is a death blow for neoliberalism. Why? "The multi-billion dollar, next
generation F-35 aircraft, for instance, is rendered powerless after it is revealed
that Chinese microprocessor manufacturers had implanted malicious code into
products intended for the jet" (
Foreign Policy ). Clearly, we need, well, industrial policy, and we need
to bring a lot of manufacturing home.
From Brigadier General (Retired) John Adams :
In 2013, the Pentagon's Defense Science Board put forward a remarkable
report describing one of the most significant but little-recognized threats
to US security: deindustrialization. The report argued that the loss of
domestic U.S. manufacturing facilities has not only reduced U.S. living
standards but also compromised U.S. technology leadership "by enabling new
players to learn a technology and then gain the capability to improve on
it." The report explained that the offshoring of U.S. manufacturing presents
a particularly dangerous threat to U.S. military readiness through the "compromise
of the supply chain for key weapons systems components."
Our military is now shockingly vulnerable to major disruptions in the
supply chain, including from substandard manufacturing practices, natural
disasters, and price gouging by foreign nations. Poor manufacturing practices
in offshore factories lead to problem-plagued products, and foreign producers-acting
on the basis of their own military or economic interests-can sharply raise
prices or reduce or stop sales to the United States.
The link between TPP and this kind of offshoring has been well-established.
And, one might say, the link between neo-liberal economic policy "and this
kind of offshoring has been well-established" as well.
So, when I framed the issue as one where pro-TPPers "consciously seek
to weaken the national defense," that's exactly what's going on. Neoliberalism,
through offshoring, weakens the national defense, because it puts our weaponry
at the mercy of fragile and corruptible supply chains. Note that re-industrializing
America has positive appeal, too: For the right, on national security grounds;
and for the left, on labor's behalf (and maybe helping out the Rust Belt that
neoliberal policies of the last forty years did so much to destroy. Of course,
this framing would make Clinton a traitor, but you can't make an omelette without
breaking eggs. (Probably best to to let the right, in its refreshingly direct
fashion, use the actual "traitor" word, and the left, shocked, call for the
restoration of civility, using verbiage like "No, I wouldn't say she's a traitor.
She's certainly 'extremely careless' with our nation's security.")
ISDS
The Investor-State Dispute Settlement system is a hot mess (unless you represent
a corporation, or are one of tiny fraternity of international corporate lawyers
who can plead and/or judge ISDS cases).
Yves wrote :
What may have torched the latest Administration salvo is a well-timed
joint publication by Wikileaks and the New York Times of a recent version
of the so-called investment chapter. That section sets forth one of the
worst features of the agreement, the investor-state dispute settlement process
(ISDS). As we've described at length in earlier posts, the ISDS mechanism
strengthens the existing ISDS process. It allows for secret arbitration
panels to effectively overrule national regulations by allowing foreign
investors to sue governments over lost potential future profits in secret
arbitration panels. Those panels have been proved to be conflict-ridden
and arbitrary. And the grounds for appeal are limited and technical.
Here again we have a frame that appeals to both right and left. The very
thought of surrendering national sovereignty to an international organization
makes any good conservative's back teeth itch. And the left sees the "lost profits"
doctrine as a club to prevent future government programs they would like to
put in place (single payer, for example). And in both cases, the neoliberal
doctrine of putting markets before anything else makes pro-TPP-ers traitors.
To the right, because nationalism trumps internationalism; to the left, because
TPP prevents the State from looiking after the welfare of its people.
The Political State of Play
All I know is what I read in the papers, so what follows can only be speculation.
That said, there are two ways TPP could be passed: In the lame duck session,
by Obama, or after a new President is inaugurated, by Clinton (or possibly by
Trump[1]).
[OBAMA:] And hopefully, after the election is over and the dust settles,
there will be more attention to the actual facts behind the deal and it
won't just be a political symbol or a political football. And I will actually
sit down with people on both sides, on the right and on the left. I'll sit
down publicly with them and we'll go through the whole provisions. I would
enjoy that, because there's a lot of misinformation.
I'm really confident I can make the case this is good for American workers
and the American people. And people said we weren't going to be able to
get the trade authority to even present this before Congress, and somehow
we muddled through and got it done. And I intend to do the same with respect
to the actual agreement.
So it is looking like a very close vote. (For procedural and political
reasons, Obama will not bring it to a vote unless he is sure he has the
necessary votes). Now let's look at one special group of Representatives
who can swing this vote: the actual lame-ducks, i.e., those who will be
in office only until Jan. 3. It depends partly on how many lose their election
on Nov. 8, but the average number of representatives who left after the
last three elections was about 80.
Most of these people will be looking for a job, preferably one that can
pay them more than $1 million a year. From the data provided by OpenSecrets.org,
we can estimate that about a quarter of these people will become lobbyists.
(An additional number will work for firms that are clients of lobbyists).
So there you have it: It is all about corruption, and this is about as
unadulterated as corruption gets in our hallowed democracy, other than literal
cash under a literal table. These are the people whom Obama needs to pass
this agreement, and the window between Nov. 9 and Jan. 3 is the only time
that they are available to sell their votes to future employers without
any personal political consequences whatsoever. The only time that the electorate
can be rendered so completely irrelevant, if Obama can pull this off.
(The article doesn't talk about the Senate, but Fast Track passed the Senate
with a filibuster-proof super-majority, so the battle is in the House anyhow.
And although the text of TPP cannot be amended - that's what fast track means!
- there are still ways to affect the interpretation and enforcement of the text,
so Obama and his corporate allies have bargaining chips beyond Beltway sinecures.[2])
Now, when we think about how corrupt the political class has become,
it's not hard to see why Obama is confident that he will win. (
Remember , "[T]he preferences of economic elites have far more independent
impact upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do.") However,
if the anti-TPP-ers raise the rhetorical stakes from policy disagreement to
treason, maybe a few of those 80 representatives will do the right thing (or,
if you prefer, decide that the reputational damage to their future career makes
a pro-TPP vote not worth it. Who wants to play golf with a traitor?)
Passing TPP after the Inaugural
After the coronation inaugural, Clinton will have to use more
complicated tactics than dangling goodies before the snouts of representatives
leaving for K Street. (We've seen that Clinton's putative opposition to TPP
is based on lawyerly parsing; and her base supports it. So I assume a Clinton
administration would go full speed ahead with it.) My own thought has been that
she'd set up a "conversation" on trade, and then buy off the national unions
with "jobs for the boys," so that they sell their locals down the river. Conservative
Jennifer Rubin has a better proposal , which meets Clinton's supposed criterion
of not hurting workers even better:
Depending on the election results and how many pro-free-trade Republicans
lose, it still might not be sufficient. Here's a further suggestion: Couple
it with a substantial infrastructure project that Clinton wants, but with
substantial safeguards to make sure that the money is wisely spent. Clinton
gets a big jobs bill - popular with both sides - and a revised TPP gets
through.
What Clinton needs is a significant revision to TPP that she can tout
as a real reform to trade agreements, one that satisfies some of the TPP's
critics on the left. A minor tweak is unlikely to assuage anyone; this change
needs to be a major one. Fortunately, there is a TPP provision that fits
the bill perfectly: investor state dispute settlement (ISDS), the procedure
that allows foreign investors to sue governments in an international tribunal.
Removing ISDS could triangulate the TPP debate, allowing for enough support
to get it through Congress.
Obama can't have a conversation on trade, or propose a jobs program, let
alone jettison ISDS; all he's got going for him is corruption.[3] So, interestingly,
although Clinton can't take the simple road of bribing the 80 represenatives,
she does have more to bargain with on policy. Rubin's jobs bill could at least
be framed as a riposte to the "Ghost Fleet" argument, since both are about "jawbs,"
even if infrastructure programs and reindustrialization aren't identical in
intent. And while I don't think Clinton would allow ISDS to be removed (
her corporate donors love it ), at least somebody's thinking about how to
pander to the left. Nevertheless, what does a jobs program matter if the new
jobs leave the country anyhow? And suppose ISDS is removed, but the removal
of the precautionary principle remains? We'd still get corporate-friendly decisions,
bilaterally. And people would end up balancing the inevitable Clinton complexity
and mush against the simplicity of the message that a vote for TPP is a vote
against the United States.
Conclusion
I hope I've persuaded you that TPP is still very much alive, and that both
Obama in the lame duck, and Clinton (or even Trump) when inaugurated have reasonable
hopes of passing it. However, I think raising the ante rhetorically by framing
a pro-TPP vote as treason could help sway a close vote; and if readers try that
frame out, I'd like to hear the results (especially when the result comes
from a letter to your Congress critter). Interestingly, Buzzfeed just published
tonight the first in a four-part series, devoted to the idea that ISDS is what
we have said it is all along: A surrender of national sovereignty.
Here's
a great slab of it :
Imagine a private, global super court that empowers corporations to bend
countries to their will.
Say a nation tries to prosecute a corrupt CEO or ban dangerous pollution.
Imagine that a company could turn to this super court and sue the whole
country for daring to interfere with its profits, demanding hundreds of
millions or even billions of dollars as retribution.
Imagine that this court is so powerful that nations often must heed its
rulings as if they came from their own supreme courts, with no meaningful
way to appeal. That it operates unconstrained by precedent or any significant
public oversight, often keeping its proceedings and sometimes even its decisions
secret. That the people who decide its cases are largely elite Western corporate
attorneys who have a vested interest in expanding the court's authority
because they profit from it directly, arguing cases one day and then sitting
in judgment another. That some of them half-jokingly refer to themselves
as "The Club" or "The Mafia."
And imagine that the penalties this court has imposed have been so crushing
- and its decisions so unpredictable - that some nations dare not risk a
trial, responding to the mere threat of a lawsuit by offering vast concessions,
such as rolling back their own laws or even wiping away the punishments
of convicted criminals.
This system is already in place, operating behind closed doors in office
buildings and conference rooms in cities around the world. Known as investor-state
dispute settlement, or ISDS, it is written into a vast network of treaties
that govern international trade and investment, including NAFTA and the
Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Congress must soon decide whether to ratify.
That's the stuff to give the troops!
NOTE
[1] Trump:
"I pledge to never sign any trade agreement that hurts our workers." Lotta
wiggle room there, and the lawyerly parsing is just like Clinton's. I don't
think it's useful to discuss what Trump might do on TPP, because until there
are other parties to the deal, there's no deal to be had. Right now, we're just
looking at
Trump doing A-B testing - not that there's anything wrong with that - which
the press confuses with policy proposals. So I'm not considering Trump because
I don't think we have any data to go on.
To pacify [those to whom he will corrupt appeal], Obama will
have to convince them that what they want will anyway be achieved, even
if these are not legally part of the TPP because the TPP text cannot be
amended.
He can try to achieve this through bilateral side agreements on specific
issues. Or he can insist that some countries take on extra obligations beyond
what is required by the TPP as a condition for obtaining a U.S. certification
that they have fulfilled their TPP obligations.
This certification is required for the U.S. to provide the TPP's benefits
to its partners, and the U.S. has previously made use of this process to
get countries to take on additional obligations, which can then be shown
to Congress members that their objectives have been met.
In other words, side deals.
[3] This should not be taken to imply that Clinton does not have corruption
going for her, too. She can also make all the side deals Obama can.
"... One of the main concerns with TTIP is that it could allow multinational corporations to effectively "sue" governments for taking actions that might damage their businesses. Critics claim American companies might be able to avoid having to meet various EU health, safety and environment regulations by challenging them in a quasi-court set up to resolve disputes between investors and states. ..."
"... These developments take place against the background of another major free trade agreement - the Trans Pacific Partnership ( TPP ) - hitting snags on the way to being pushed through Congress. ..."
"... "US Faces Major Setback" Well, actually, US corporations face a major setback. Average US citizens face a reprieve. ..."
TTIP negotiations have been ongoing since 2013 in an effort to establish a massive
free trade zone that would eliminate many tariffs. After 14 rounds of talks
that have lasted three years not a single common item out of
the 27 chapters being discussed has been agreed on. The United States has
refused to agree on an equal playing field between European and American companies
in the sphere of public procurement sticking to the principle of "buy American".
The opponents of the deal believe that in its current guise the TTIP is too
friendly to US businesses. One of the main concerns with TTIP is that it
could allow multinational corporations to effectively "sue" governments for
taking actions that might damage their businesses. Critics claim American companies
might be able to avoid having to meet various EU health, safety and environment
regulations by challenging them in a quasi-court set up to resolve disputes
between investors and states.
In Europe thousands of people supported by society groups, trade unions and
activists take to the streets expressing protest against the deal. Three million
people have signed a petition calling for it to be scrapped. For instance, various
trade unions and other groups have called for protests against the TTIP across
Germany to take place on September 17. A trade agreement with Canada has also
come under attack.
These developments take place against the background of another major
free trade agreement - the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)
- hitting snags on the way to being pushed through Congress. The chances
are really slim.
silverer •Sep 5, 2016 9:51 AM
"US Faces Major Setback" Well, actually, US corporations face a major
setback. Average US citizens face a reprieve.
"... Speaking to a local radio station before the joint rally, Farage urged Americans to "go out and fight" against Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... "I am going to say to people in this country that the circumstances, the similarities, the parallels between the people who voted Brexit and the people who could beat Clinton in a few weeks time here in America are uncanny," Farage told Super Talk Mississippi. "If they want things to change they have get up out of their chairs and go out and fight for it. It can happen. We've just proved it." ..."
"... It's not for me as a foreign politician to say who you should vote for ... All I will say is that if you vote for Hillary Clinton, then nothing will change. She represents the very politics that we've just broken through the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom. ..."
...the British politician, who was invited by Mississippi governor Phil Bryant, will draw parallels
between what he sees as the inspirational story of Brexit and Trump's campaign. Farage will describe
the Republican's campaign as a similar crusade by grassroots activists against "big banks and global
political insiders" and how those who feel disaffected and disenfranchised can become involved in
populist, rightwing politics. With Trump lagging in the polls, just as Brexit did prior to the vote
on the referendum, Farage will also hearten supporters by insisting that they can prove pundits and
oddsmakers wrong as well.
This message resonates with the Trump campaign's efforts to reach out to blue collar voters who
have become disillusioned with American politics, while also adding a unique flair to Trump's never
staid campaign rallies.
The event will mark the first meeting between Farage and Trump.
Arron Banks, the businessman who backed Leave.EU, the Brexit campaign group associated with the
UK Independence party (Ukip), tweeted that he would be meeting Trump over dinner and was looking
forward to Farage's speech.
The appointment last week of Stephen Bannon, former chairman of the Breitbart website, as
"CEO" of Trump's campaign has seen the example of the Brexit vote, which Breitbart enthusiastically
advocated, rise to the fore in Trump's campaign narrative.
Speaking to a local radio station before the joint rally, Farage urged Americans to "go out
and fight" against Hillary Clinton.
"I am going to say to people in this country that the circumstances, the similarities, the
parallels between the people who voted Brexit and the people who could beat Clinton in a few weeks
time here in America are uncanny," Farage told Super Talk Mississippi. "If they want things to change
they have get up out of their chairs and go out and fight for it. It can happen. We've just proved
it."
"I am being careful," he added when asked if he supported the controversial Republican nominee.
"It's not for me as a foreign politician to say who you should vote for ... All I will say is
that if you vote for Hillary Clinton, then nothing will change. She represents the very politics
that we've just broken through the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom."
"... As Mr. Buffet so keenly said it, There is a war going on, and we are winning. ..."
"... Just type `TPP editorial' into news.google.com and watch a toxic sludge of straw men, misdirection, and historical revisionism flow across your screen. And the `objective' straight news reporting is no better. ..."
"... "Why is it afraid of us?" Because we the people are perceived to be the enemy of America the Corporation. Whistleblowers have already stated that the NSA info is used to blackmail politicians and military leaders, provide corporate espionage to the highest payers and more devious machinations than the mind can grasp from behind a single computer. 9/11 was a coup – I say that because looking around the results tell me that. ..."
"... The fourth estate (the media) has been purchased outright by the second estate (the nobility). I guess you could call this an 'estate sale'. All power to the markets! ..."
Free Trade," the banner of Globalization, has not only wrecked the world's economy, it has left Western
Democracy in shambles. Europe edges ever closer to deflation. The Fed dare not increase interest
rates, now poised at barely above zero. As China's stock market threatened collapse, China poured
billions to prop it up. It's export machine is collapsing. Not once, but twice, it recently manipulated
its currency to makes its goods cheaper on the world market. What is happening?
The following two
graphs tell most of the story. First, an overview of Free Trade.
Capital fled from developed countries to undeveloped countries with slave-cheap labor, countries
with no environmental standards, countries with no support for collective bargaining. Corporations,
like Apple, set up shop in China and other undeveloped countries. Some, like China, manipulated its
currency to make exported goods to the West even cheaper. Some, like China, gave preferential tax
treatment to Western firm over indigenous firms. Economists cheered as corporate efficiency unsurprisingly
rose. U.S. citizens became mere consumers.
Thanks to Bill Clinton and the Financial Modernization Act, banks, now unconstrained, could peddle
rigged financial services, offer insurance on its own investment products–in short, banks were free
to play with everyone's money–and simply too big to fail. Credit was easy and breezy. If nasty Arabs
bombed the Trade Center, why the solution was simple: Go to the shopping mall–and buy. That remarkable
piece of advice is just what freedom has been all about.
Next: China's export machine sputters.
China's problem is that there are not enough orders to keep the export machine going. There comes
a time when industrialized nations simply run out of cash–I mean the little people run out of cash.
CEOs and those just below them–along with slick Wall Street gauchos–made bundles on Free Trade, corporate
capital that could set up shop in any impoverished nation in the world.. No worries about labor–dirt
cheap–or environmental regulations–just bring your gas masks. At some point the Western consumer
well was bound to run dry. Credit was exhausted; the little guy could not buy anymore. Free trade
was on its last legs.
So what did China do then? As its markets crashed, it tried to revive its export model, a model
based on foreign firms exporting cheap goods to the West. China lowered its exchange rates, not once
but twice. Then China tried to rescue the markets with cash infusion of billions. Still its market
continued to crash. Manufacturing plants had closed–thousands of them. Free Trade and Globalization
had run its course.
And what has the Fed been doing? Why quantitative easy–increase the money supply and lower short
term interest rates. Like China's latest currency manipulation, both were merely stop-gap measures.
No one, least of all Obama and his corporate advisors, was ready to address corporate outsourcing
that has cost millions of jobs. Prime the pump a little, but never address the real problem.
The WTO sets the groundwork for trade among its member states. That groundwork is deeply flawed.
Trade between impoverished third world countries and sophisticated first world economies is not merely
a matter of regulating "dumping"-not allowing one country to flood the market with cheap goods-nor
is it a matter of insuring that the each country does not favor its indigenous firms over foreign
firms. Comparable labor and environmental standards are necessary. Does anyone think that a first
world worker can compete with virtual slave labor? Does anyone think that a first world nation with
excellent environmental regulations can compete with a third world nation that refuses to protect
its environment?
Only lately has Apple even mentioned that it might clean up its mess in China. The Apple miracle
has been on the backs of the Chinese poor and abysmal environmental wreckage that is China.
The WTO allows three forms of inequities-all of which encourage outsourcing: labor arbitrage,
tax arbitrage, and environmental arbitrage. For a fuller explanation of these inequities and the
"race to the bottom," see
here.
Of course now we have the mother of all Free Trade deals –the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)–
carefully wrapped in a black box so that none of us can see what finally is in store for us. Nothing
is ever "Free"–even trade. I suspect that China is becoming a bit too noxious and poisonous. It simply
has to deal with its massive environmental problems. Time to move the game to less despoiled and
maybe more impoverished countries. Meanwhile, newscasters are always careful to tout TPP.
Fast Tracking is a con man's game. Do it so fast that the marks never have a chance to watch their
wallets. In hiding negotiations from prying, public eyes, Obama, has given the con men a bigger edge:
A screen to hide the corporations making deals. Their interest is in profits, not in public good.
Consider the media. Our only defense is a strong independent media. At one time,
newsrooms were not required to be profitable. Reporting the news was considered a community service.
Corporate ownership provided the necessary funding for its newsrooms–and did not interfere.
But the 70′s and 80′s corporate ownership required its newsrooms to be profitable. Slowly but
surely, newsrooms focused on personality, entertainment, and wedge issues–always careful not to rock
the corporate boat, always careful not to tread on governmental policy. Whoever thought that one
major news service–Fox–would become a breeding ground for one particular party.
But consider CNN: It organizes endless GOP debates; then spends hours dissecting them. Create
the news; then sell it–and be sure to spin it in the direction you want.
Are matters of substance ever discussed? When has a serious foreign policy debate ever been allowed
occurred–without editorial interference from the media itself. When has trade and outsourcing been
seriously discussed–other than by peripheral news media?
Meanwhile, news media becomes more and more centralized. Murdoch now owns National Geographic!
Now, thanks to Bush and Obama, we have the chilling effect of the NSA. Just whom does the NSA
serve when it collects all of our digital information? Is it being used to ferret out the plans of
those exercising their right of dissent? Is it being used to increase the profits of favored corporations?
Why does it need all of your and my personal information–from bank accounts, to credit cards, to
travel plans, to friends with whom we chat .Why is it afraid of us?
jefemt, October 23, 2015 at 9:43 am
As Mr. Buffet so keenly said it, There is a war going on, and we are winning.
If 'they' are failing, I'd hate to see success!
Isn't it the un-collective WE who are failing?
failing to organize,
failing to come up with plausible, 90 degrees off present Lemming-to-Brink path alternative plans
and policies,
failing to agree on any of many plausible alternatives that might work
Divided- for now- hopefully not conquered ..
I gotta scoot and get back to Dancing with the Master Chefs
allan, October 23, 2015 at 10:03 am
Just type `TPP editorial' into news.google.com and watch a toxic sludge of straw men, misdirection,
and historical revisionism flow across your screen. And the `objective' straight news reporting
is no better.
Vatch, October 23, 2015 at 10:36 am
Don't just watch the toxic sludge; respond to it with a letter to the editor (LTE) of the offending
publication! For some of those toxic editorials, and contact information for LTEs, see:
A few of the editorials may now be obscured by paywalls or registration requirements, but most
should still be visible. Let them know that we see through their nonsense!
TedWa, October 23, 2015 at 10:38 am
"Why is it afraid of us?" Because we the people are perceived to be the enemy of America
the Corporation. Whistleblowers have already stated that the NSA info is used to blackmail politicians
and military leaders, provide corporate espionage to the highest payers and more devious machinations
than the mind can grasp from behind a single computer. 9/11 was a coup – I say that because looking
around the results tell me that.
TG, October 23, 2015 at 3:27 pm
The fourth estate (the media) has been purchased outright by the second estate (the nobility).
I guess you could call this an 'estate sale'. All power to the markets!
Pelham, October 23, 2015 at 8:32 pm
Even when newsrooms were more independent they probably would not, in general, have reported
on free trade with any degree of skepticism. The recent disappearance of the old firewall between
the news and corporate sides has made things worse, but at least since the "professionalization"
of newsrooms that began to really take hold in the '60s, journalists have tended to identify far
more with their sources in power than with their readers.
There have, of course, been notable exceptions. But even these sometimes serve more to obscure
the real day-to-day nature of journalism's fealty to the corporate world than to bring about any
significant change.
CHRIS HEDGES: We're going to be discussing a great Ponzi scheme that not only defines not only
the U.S. but the global economy, how we got there and where we're going. And with me to discuss this
issue is the economist Michael Hudson, author of
Killing
the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy. A professor of economics
who worked for many years on Wall Street, where you don't succeed if you don't grasp Marx's dictum
that capitalism is about exploitation. And he is also, I should mention, the godson of Leon Trotsky.
I want to open this discussion by reading a passage from your book, which I admire very much,
which I think gets to the core of what you discuss. You write,
"Adam Smith long ago remarked that profits often are highest in nations going fastest to
ruin. There are many ways to create economic suicide on a national level. The major way through
history has been through indebting the economy. Debt always expands to reach a point where it
cannot be paid by a large swathe of the economy. This is the point where austerity is imposed
and ownership of wealth polarizes between the One Percent and the 99 Percent. Today is not the
first time this has occurred in history. But it is the first time that running into debt has occurred
deliberately." Applauded. "As if most debtors can get rich by borrowing, not reduced to a condition
of debt peonage."
So let's start with the classical economists, who certainly understood this. They were reacting
of course to feudalism. And what happened to the study of economics so that it became gamed by ideologues?
HUDSON: The essence of classical economics was to reform industrial capitalism, to streamline
it, and to free the European economies from the legacy of feudalism. The legacy of feudalism was
landlords extracting land-rent, and living as a class that took income without producing anything.
Also, banks that were not funding industry. The leading industrialists from James Watt, with his
steam engine, to the railroads
HEDGES: From your book you make the point that banks almost never funded industry.
HUDSON: That's the point: They never have. By the time you got to Marx later in the 19th century,
you had a discussion, largely in Germany, over how to make banks do something they did not do under
feudalism. Right now we're having the economic surplus being drained not by the landlords
but also by banks and bondholders.
Adam Smith was very much against colonialism because that lead to wars, and wars led to public
debt. He said the solution to prevent this financial class of bondholders burdening the economy by
imposing more and more taxes on consumer goods every time they went to war was to finance wars on
a pay-as-you-go basis. Instead of borrowing, you'd tax the people. Then, he thought, if everybody
felt the burden of war in the form of paying taxes, they'd be against it. Well, it took all of the
19th century to fight for democracy and to extend the vote so that instead of landlords controlling
Parliament and its law-making and tax system through the House of Lords, you'd extend the vote to
labor, to women and everybody. The theory was that society as a whole would vote in its self-interest.
It would vote for the 99 Percent, not for the One Percent.
By the time Marx wrote in the 1870s, he could see what was happening in Germany. German banks
were trying to make money in conjunction with the government, by lending to heavy industry, largely
to the military-industrial complex.
HEDGES: This was Bismarck's kind of social – I don't know what we'd call it. It was a form
of capitalist socialism
HUDSON: They called it State Capitalism. There was a long discussion by Engels, saying, wait a
minute. We're for Socialism. State Capitalism isn't what we mean by socialism. There are two kinds
of state-oriented–.
HEDGES: I'm going to interject that there was a kind of brilliance behind Bismarck's policy
because he created state pensions, he provided health benefits, and he directed banking toward industry,
toward the industrialization of Germany which, as you point out, was very different in Britain and
the United States.
HUDSON: German banking was so successful that by the time World War I broke out, there were discussions
in English economic journals worrying that Germany and the Axis powers were going to win because
their banks were more suited to fund industry. Without industry you can't have really a military.
But British banks only lent for foreign trade and for speculation. Their stock market was a hit-and-run
operation. They wanted quick in-and-out profits, while German banks didn't insist that their clients
pay as much in dividends. German banks owned stocks as well as bonds, and there was much more of
a mutual partnership.
That's what most of the 19th century imagined was going to happen – that the world
was on the way to socializing banking. And toward moving capitalism beyond the feudal level, getting
rid of the landlord class, getting rid of the rent, getting rid of interest. It was going to be labor
and capital, profits and wages, with profits being reinvested in more capital. You'd have an expansion
of technology. By the early twentieth century most futurists imagined that we'd be living in a leisure
economy by now.
HEDGES: Including Karl Marx.
HUDSON: That's right. A ten-hour workweek. To Marx, socialism was to be an outgrowth of the reformed
state of capitalism, as seemed likely at the time – if labor organized in its self-interest.
HEDGES: Isn't what happened in large part because of the defeat of Germany in World War I?
But also, because we took the understanding of economists like Adam Smith and maybe Keynes. I don't
know who you would blame for this, whether Ricardo or others, but we created a fictitious economic
theory to praise a rentier or rent-derived, interest-derived capitalism that countered productive
forces within the economy. Perhaps you can address that.
HUDSON: Here's what happened. Marx traumatized classical economics by taking the concepts of Adam
Smith and John Stuart Mill and others, and pushing them to their logical conclusion.
Progressive
capitalist advocates – Ricardian socialists such as John Stuart Mill – wanted to tax away the land
or nationalize it. Marx wanted governments to take over heavy industry and build infrastructure to
provide low-cost and ultimately free basic services. This was traumatizing the landlord class and
the One Percent. And they fought back. They wanted to make everything part of "the market," which
functioned on credit supplied by them and paid rent to them.
None of the classical economists imagined how the feudal interests – these great vested interests
that had all the land and money – actually would fight back and succeed. They thought that the future
was going to belong to capital and labor. But by the late 19th century, certainly in America,
people like John Bates Clark came out with a completely different theory, rejecting the classical
economics of Adam Smith, the Physiocrats and John Stuart Mill.
HEDGES: Physiocrats are, you've tried to explain, the enlightened French economists.
HUDSON: The common denominator among all these classical economists was the distinction between
earned income and unearned income. Unearned income was rent and interest. Earned incomes were wages
and profits. But John Bates Clark came and said that there's no such thing as unearned income. He
said that the landlord actually earns his rent by taking the effort to provide a house and
land to renters, while banks provide credit to earn their interest. Every kind of income is thus
"earned," and everybody earns their income. So everybody who accumulates wealth, by definition, according
to his formulas, get rich by adding to what is now called Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
HEDGES: One of the points you make in
Killing
the Host which I liked was that in almost all cases, those who had the capacity to make money
parasitically off interest and rent had either – if you go back to the origins – looted and seized
the land by force, or inherited it.
HUDSON: That's correct. In other words, their income is unearned. The result of this anti-classical
revolution you had just before World War I was that today, almost all the economic growth in the
last decade has gone to the One Percent. It's gone to Wall Street, to real estate
HEDGES: But you blame this on what you call Junk Economics.
HUDSON: Junk Economics is the anti-classical reaction.
HEDGES: Explain a little bit how, in essence, it's a fictitious form of measuring the economy.
HUDSON: Well, some time ago I went to a bank, a block away from here – a Chase Manhattan bank
– and I took out money from the teller. As I turned around and took a few steps, there were two pickpockets.
One pushed me over and the other grabbed the money and ran out. The guard stood there and saw it.
So I asked for the money back. I said, look, I was robbed in your bank, right inside. And they said,
"Well, we don't arm our guards because if they shot someone, the thief could sue us and we don't
want that." They gave me an equivalent amount of money back.
Well, imagine if you count all this crime, all the money that's taken, as an addition to GDP.
Because now the crook has provided the service of not stabbing me. Or suppose somebody's held up
at an ATM machine and the robber says, "Your money or your life." You say, "Okay, here's my money."
The crook has given you the choice of your life. In a way that's how the Gross National Product accounts
are put up. It's not so different from how Wall Street extracts money from the economy. Then also
you have landlords extracting
HEDGES: Let's go back. They're extracting money from the economy by debt peonage. By raising
HUDSON: By not playing a productive role, basically.
HEDGES: Right. So it's credit card interest, mortgage interest, car loans, student loans. That's
how they make their funds.
HUDSON: That's right. Money is not a factor of production. But in order to have access to credit,
in order to get money, in order to get an education, you have to pay the banks. At New York University
here, for instance, they have Citibank. I think Citibank people were on the board of directors at
NYU. You get the students, when they come here, to start at the local bank. And once you are in a
bank and have monthly funds taken out of your account for electric utilities, or whatever, it's very
cumbersome to change.
So basically you have what the classical economists called the rentier class. The class
that lives on economic rents. Landlords, monopolists charging more, and the banks. If you have a
pharmaceutical company that raises the price of a drug from $12 a shot to $200 all of a sudden, their
profits go up. Their increased price for the drug is counted in the national income accounts as if
the economy is producing more. So all this presumed economic growth that has all been taken by the
One Percent in the last ten years, and people say the economy is growing. But the economy isn't growing
HEDGES: Because it's not reinvested.
HUDSON: That's right. It's not production, it's not consumption. The wealth of the One Percent
is obtained essentially by lending money to the 99 Percent and then charging interest on it, and
recycling this interest at an exponentially growing rate.
HEDGES: And why is it important, as I think you point out in your book, that economic theory
counts this rentier income as productive income? Explain why that's important.
HUDSON: If you're a rentier, you want to say that you earned your income by
HEDGES: We're talking about Goldman Sachs, by the way.
HUDSON: Yes, Goldman Sachs. The head of Goldman Sachs came out and said that Goldman Sachs workers
are the most productive in the world. That's why they're paid what they are. The concept of productivity
in America is income divided by labor. So if you're Goldman Sachs and you pay yourself $20 million
a year in salary and bonuses, you're considered to have added $20 million to GDP, and that's enormously
productive. So we're talking in a tautology. We're talking with circular reasoning here.
So the issue is whether Goldman Sachs, Wall Street and predatory pharmaceutical firms, actually
add "product" or whether they're just exploiting other people. That's why I used the word parasitism
in my book's title. People think of a parasite as simply taking money, taking blood out of a host
or taking money out of the economy. But in nature it's much more complicated. The parasite can't
simply come in and take something. First of all, it needs to numb the host. It has an enzyme so that
the host doesn't realize the parasite's there. And then the parasites have another enzyme that takes
over the host's brain. It makes the host imagine that the parasite is part of its own body, actually
part of itself and hence to be protected.
That's basically what Wall Street has done. It depicts itself as part of the economy. Not as a
wrapping around it, not as external to it, but actually the part that's helping the body grow, and
that actually is responsible for most of the growth. But in fact it's the parasite that is taking
over the growth.
The result is an inversion of classical economics. It turns Adam Smith upside down. It says what
the classical economists said was unproductive – parasitism – actually is the real economy. And that
the parasites are labor and industry that get in the way of what the parasite wants – which is to
reproduce itself, not help the host, that is, labor and capital.
HEDGES: And then the classical economists like Adam Smith were quite clear that unless that
rentier income, you know, the money made by things like hedge funds, was heavily taxed and put back
into the economy, the economy would ultimately go into a kind of tailspin. And I think the example
of that, which you point out in your book, is what's happened in terms of large corporations with
stock dividends and buybacks. And maybe you can explain that.
HUDSON: There's an idea in superficial textbooks and the public media that if companies make a
large profit, they make it by being productive. And with
HEDGES: Which is still in textbooks, isn't it?
HUDSON: Yes. And also that if a stock price goes up, you're just capitalizing the profits – and
the stock price reflects the productive role of the company. But that's not what's been happening
in the last ten years. Just in the last two years, 92 percent of corporate profits in America have
been spent either on buying back their own stock, or paid out as dividends to raise the price of
the stock.
HEDGES: Explain why they do this.
HUDSON: About 15 years ago at Harvard, Professor Jensen said that the way to ensure that corporations
are run most efficiently is to make the managers increase the price of the stock. So if you give
the managers stock options, and you pay them not according to how much they're producing or making
the company bigger, or expanding production, but the price of the stock, then you'll have the corporation
run efficiently, financial style.
So the corporate managers find there are two ways that they can increase the price of the stock.
The first thing is to cut back long-term investment, and use the money instead to buy back their
own stock. But when you buy your own stock, that means you're not putting the money into capital
formation. You're not building new factories. You're not hiring more labor. You can actually increase
the stock price by firing labor.
HEDGES: That strategy only works temporarily.
HUDSON: Temporarily. By using the income from past investments just to buy back stock, fire the
labor force if you can, and work it more intensively. Pay it out as dividends. That basically is
the corporate raider's model. You use the money to pay off the junk bond holders at high interest.
And of course, this gets the company in trouble after a while, because there is no new investment.
So markets shrink. You then go to the labor unions and say, gee, this company's near bankruptcy,
and we don't want to have to fire you. The way that you can keep your job is if we downgrade your
pensions. Instead of giving you what we promised, the defined benefit pension, we'll turn it into
a defined contribution plan. You know what you pay every month, but you don't know what's going to
come out. Or, you wipe out the pension fund, push it on to the government's Pension Benefit Guarantee
Corporation, and use the money that you were going to pay for pensions to pay stock dividends. By
then the whole economy is turning down. It's hollowed out. It shrinks and collapses. But by that
time the managers will have left the company. They will have taken their bonuses and salaries and
run.
HEDGES: I want to read this quote from your book, written by David Harvey, in
A Brief
History of Neoliberalism, and have you comment on it.
"The main substantive achievement of neoliberalism has been to redistribute rather than
to generate wealth and income. [By] 'accumulation by dispossession' I mean the commodification
and privatization of land, and the forceful expulsion of peasant populations; conversion of various
forms of property rights (common collective state, etc.) into exclusive private property rights;
suppression of rights to the commons; colonial, neocolonial, and the imperial processes of appropriation
of assets (including natural resources); and usury, the national debt and, most devastating
at all, the use of the credit system as a radical means of accumulation by dispossession. To
this list of mechanisms, we may now add a raft of techniques such as the extraction of rents from
patents, and intellectual property rights (such as the diminution or erasure of various forms
of common property rights, such as state pensions, paid vacations, and access to education, health
care) one through a generation or more of class struggle. The proposal to privatize all state
pension rights, pioneered in Chile under the dictatorship is, for example, one of the cherished
objectives of the Republicans in the US."
This explains the denouement. The final end result you speak about in your book is, in essence,
allowing what you call the rentier or the speculative class to cannibalize the entire society until
it collapses.
HUDSON: A property right is not a factor of production. Look at what happened in Chicago, the
city where I grew up. Chicago didn't want to raise taxes on real estate, especially on its expensive
commercial real estate. So its budget ran a deficit. They needed money to pay the bondholders, so
they sold off the parking rights to have meters – you know, along the curbs. The result is that they
sold to Goldman Sachs 75 years of the right to put up parking meters. So now the cost of living and
doing business in Chicago is raised by having to pay the parking meters. If Chicago is going to have
a parade and block off traffic, it has to pay Goldman Sachs what the firm would have made
if the streets wouldn't have been closed off for a parade. All of a sudden it's much more expensive
to live in Chicago because of this.
But this added expense of having to pay parking rights to Goldman Sachs – to pay out interest
to its bondholders – is counted as an increase in GDP, because you've created more product simply
by charging more. If you sell off a road, a government or local road, and you put up a toll booth
and make it into a toll road, all of a sudden GDP goes up.
If you go to war abroad, and you spend more money on the military-industrial complex, all this
is counted as increased production. None of this is really part of the production system of the capital
and labor building more factories and producing more things that people need to live and do business.
All of this is overhead. But there's no distinction between wealth and overhead.
Failing to draw that distinction means that the host doesn't realize that there is a parasite
there. The host economy, the industrial economy, doesn't realize what the industrialists realized
in the 19th century: If you want to be an efficient economy and be low-priced and under-sell
competitors, you have to cut your prices by having the public sector provide roads freely. Medical
care freely. Education freely.
If you charge for all of these, you get to the point that the U.S. economy is in today. What if
American factory workers were to get all of their consumer goods for nothing. All their food,
transportation, clothing, furniture, everything for nothing. They still couldn't compete with
Asians or other producers, because they have to pay up to 43% of their income for rent or mortgage
interest, 10% or more of their income for student loans, credit card debt. 15% of their paycheck
is automatic withholding to pay Social Security, to cut taxes on the rich or to pay for medical care.
So Americans built into the economy all this overhead. There's no distinction between growth and
overhead. It's all made America so high-priced that we're priced out of the market, regardless of
what trade policy we have.
HEDGES: We should add that under this predatory form of economics, you game the system. So
you privatize pension funds, you force them into the stock market, an overinflated stock market.
But because of the way companies go public, it's the hedge fund managers who profit. And it's those
citizens whose retirement savings are tied to the stock market who lose. Maybe we can just conclude
by talking about how the system is fixed, not only in terms of burdening the citizen with debt peonage,
but by forcing them into the market to fleece them again.
HUDSON: Well, we talk about an innovation economy as if that makes money. Suppose you have an
innovation and a company goes public. They go to Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street investment banks
to underwrite the stock to issue it at $40 a share. What's considered a successful float is when,
immediately, Goldman and the others will go to their insiders and tell them to buy this stock and
make a quick killing. A "successful" flotation doubles the price in one day, so that at the end of
the day the stock's selling for $80.
HEDGES: They have the option to buy it before anyone else, knowing that by the end of the day
it'll be inflated, and then they sell it off.
HUDSON: That's exactly right.
HEDGES: So the pension funds come in and buy it at an inflated price, and then it goes back
down.
HUDSON: It may go back down, or it may be that the company just was shortchanged from the very
beginning. The important thing is that the Wall Street underwriting firm, and the speculators it
rounds up, get more in a single day than all the years it took to put the company together. The company
gets $40. And the banks and their crony speculators also get $40.
So basically you have the financial sector ending up with much more of the gains. The name of
the game if you're on Wall Street isn't profits. It's capital gains. And that's something that wasn't
even part of classical economics. They didn't anticipate that the price of assets would go up for
any other reason than earning more money and capitalizing on income. But what you have had in the
last 50 years – really since World War II – has been asset-price inflation. Most middle-class families
have gotten the wealth that they've got since 1945 not really by saving what they've earned by working,
but by the price of their house going up. They've benefited by the price of the house. And they think
that that's made them rich and the whole economy rich.
The reason the price of housing has gone up is that a house is worth whatever a bank is going
to lend against it. If banks made easier and easier credit, lower down payments, then you're going
to have a financial bubble. And now, you have real estate having gone up as high as it can. I don't
think it can take more than 43% of somebody's income to buy it. But now, imagine if you're joining
the labor force. You're not going to be able to buy a house at today's prices, putting down a little
bit of your money, and then somehow end up getting rich just on the house investment. All of this
money you pay the bank is now going to be subtracted from the amount of money that you have available
to spend on goods and services.
So we've turned the post-war economy that made America prosperous and rich inside out. Somehow
most people believed they could get rich by going into debt to borrow assets that were going to rise
in price. But you can't get rich, ultimately, by going into debt. In the end the creditors always
win. That's why every society since Sumer and Babylonia have had to either cancel the debts, or you
come to a society like Rome that didn't cancel the debts, and then you have a dark age. Everything
collapses.
"... Furthermore, as Mark Kleiman sagely observes , the conventional case for trade liberalization relies on the assertion that the government could redistribute income to ensure that everyone wins - but we now have an ideology utterly opposed to such redistribution in full control of one party, and with blocking power against anything but a minor move in that direction by the other. ..."
A Protectionist Moment? : ... if Sanders were to make it to the White House, he would find
it very hard to do anything much about globalization - not because it's technically or economically
impossible, but because the moment he looked into actually tearing up existing trade agreements
the diplomatic, foreign-policy costs would be overwhelmingly obvious. ...
But it's also true
that much of the elite defense of globalization is basically dishonest: false claims of inevitability,
scare tactics (
protectionism causes depressions !), vastly exaggerated claims for the benefits of trade liberalization
and the costs of protection, hand-waving away the large distributional effects that are what standard
models actually predict. I hope, by the way, that I haven't done any of that...
Furthermore, as Mark Kleiman
sagely observes , the conventional case for trade liberalization relies on the assertion that
the government could redistribute income to ensure that everyone wins - but we now have an ideology
utterly opposed to such redistribution in full control of one party, and with blocking power against
anything but a minor move in that direction by the other.
So the elite case for ever-freer trade is largely a scam, which voters probably sense even
if they don't know exactly what form it's taking.
Ripping up the trade agreements we already have would, again, be a mess, and I would say that
Sanders is engaged in a bit of a scam himself in even hinting that he could do such a thing. Trump
might actually do it, but only as part of a reign of destruction on many fronts.
But it is fair to say that the case for more trade agreements - including TPP, which hasn't
happened yet - is very, very weak. And if a progressive makes it to the White House, she should
devote no political capital whatsoever to such things.
Again, just because automation has been a major factor in job loss doesn't mean "off shoring"
(using the term broadly and perhaps somewhat inaccurately) is not a factor.
The "free" trade deals suck. They are correctly diagnosed as part of the problem.
What would you propose to fix the problems caused by automation?
Automation frees labor to do more productive and less onerous tasks. We should expand our solar
production and our mass transit. We need to start re-engineering our urban areas. This will not
bring back the number of jobs it would take to make cities like Flint thrive once again.
Flint and Detroit have severe economic problems because they were mismanaged by road building
and suburbanization in the 1950s and 1960s. Money that should have been spent on maintaining and
improving urban infrastructure was instead plowed into suburban development that is not dense
enough to sustain the infrastructure required to support it. People moved to the suburbs, abandoned
the built infrastructure of the cities and kissed them goodbye.
Big roads polluted the cities with lead, noise, diesel particles and ozone and smog. Stroads
created pedestrian kill zones making urban areas, unwalkable, unpleasant- an urban blights to
drive through rather than destinations to drive to.
Government subsidized the white flight to the suburbs that has left both the suburbs and the
urban cores with too low revenue to infrastructure ratio. The inner suburbs have aged into net
losers, their infrastructure must be subsidized. Big Roads were built on the Big Idea that people
would drive to the city to work and play and then drive home. That Big idea has a big problem.
Urban areas are only sustainable when they have a high resident density. The future of cities
like Flint and Detroit will be tearing out the roads and replacing them with streets and houses
and renewing the housing stock that has been abandoned. It needs to be done by infill, revitalizing
inner neighborhoods and working outward. Cities like Portland have managed to protect much of
their core, but even they are challenged by demands for suburban sprawl.
Slash and burn development, creating new suburbs and abandoning the old is not a sustainable
model. Not only should we put people to work replacing the Flint lead pipes, but much of the city
should be rebuilt from the inside out. Flint is the leading edge of this problem that requires
fundamental changes in our built environment to fix. I recommend studying Flint as an object lesson
of what bad development policy could do to all of our cities.
An Interview with Frank Popper about Shrinking Cities, Buffalo Commons, and the Future of Flint
How does America's approach shrinking cities compare to the rest of the world?
I think the American way is to do nothing until it's too late, then throw everything at it
and improvise and hope everything works. And somehow, insofar as the country's still here, it
has worked. But the European or the Japanese way would involve much more thought, much more foresight,
much more central planning, and much less improvising. They would implement a more, shall we say,
sustained effort. The American way is different. Europeans have wondered for years and years why
cities like Detroit or Cleveland are left to rot on the vine. There's a lot of this French hauteur
when they ask "How'd you let this happen?"
Do shrinking cities have any advantages over agricultural regions as they face declining populations?
The urban areas have this huge advantage over all these larger American regions that are going
through this. They have actual governments with real jurisdiction. Corrupt as Detroit or Philadelphia
or Camden may be, they have actual governments that are supposed to be in charge of them. Who's
in charge of western Kansas? Who's in charge of the Great Plains? Who is in charge of the lower
Mississippi Delta or central Appalachia? All they've got are these distant federal agencies whose
past performance is not exactly encouraging.
Why wasn't there a greater outcry as the agricultural economy and the industrial economy collapsed?
One reason for the rest of the country not to care is that there's no shortage of the consumer
goods that these places once produced. All this decline of agriculture doesn't mean we're running
out of food. We've got food coming out of our ears. Likewise, Flint has suffered through all this,
but it's not like it's hard to buy a car in this country. It's not as if Flint can behave like
a child and say "I'm going to hold my nose and stop you from getting cars until you do the right
thing." Flint died and you can get zero A.P.R. financing. Western Kansas is on its last legs and,
gee, cereal is cheaper than ever.
In some sense that's the genius of capitalism - it's heartless. But if you look at the local
results and the cultural results and the environmental results you shake your head. But I don't
see America getting away from what I would call a little sarcastically the "wisdom" of the market.
I don't think it's going to change.
So is there any large-scale economic fallout from these monumental changes?
Probably not, and it hurts to say so. And the only way I can feel good about saying that is
to immediately point to the non-economic losses, the cultural losses. The losses of ways of life.
The notion of the factory worker working for his or her children. The notion of the farmer working
to build up the country and supply the rest of the world with food. We're losing distinctive ways
of life. When we lose that we lose something important, but it's not like The Wall Street Journal
cares. And I feel uncomfortable saying that. From a purely economic point of view, it's just the
price of getting more efficient. It's a classic example of Schumpeter's theory of creative destruction,
which is no fun if you're on the destruction end.
Does the decline of cities like Flint mirror the death of the middle class in the United States?
I think it's more the decline of the lower-middle class in the United States. Even when those
jobs in the auto factories paid very high wages they were still for socially lower-middle-class
people. I think there was always the notion in immigrant families and working-class families who
worked in those situations that the current generation would work hard so that the children could
go off and not have to do those kind of jobs. And when those jobs paid well that was a perfectly
reasonable ambition. It's the cutting off of that ambition that really hurts now. The same thing
has been true on farms and ranches in rural parts of the united states.
It is a much different thing to be small minded about trade than it is to be large minded about
everything else. The short story that it is all about automation and not trade will always get
a bad reception because it is small minded. When you add in the large minded story about everything
else then it becomes something entirely different from the short story. We all agree with you
about everything else. You are wrong about globalization though. Both financialization and globalization
suck and even if we paper over them with tax and transfer then they will still suck. One must
forget what it is to be a created equal human to miss that. Have you never felt the job of accomplishment?
Does not pride and self-confidence matter in your life?
While automation is part of the story, offshoring is just as important. Even when there is not
net loss in the numbers of jobs in aggregate, there is significant loss in better paying jobs
in manufacturing. It is important to look at the distributional effects within countries, as well
as between them
It would probably be cheaper and easier to just fix them. We don't need to withdraw from trade.
We just need to fix the terms of trade that cause large trade deficits and cross border capital
flows and also fix the FOREX system rigging.
What would it take to ignore trade agreements? They shouldn't be any more difficult to ignore
than the Geneva Conventions, which the US routinely flaunts.
In order to import we must export and in order to export we must import. The two are tied together.
Suppressing imports means we export less.
What free trade does is lower the price level relative to wages. It doesn't uniformly lower
the price level but rather lowers the cost of goods that are capable of being traded internationally.
It lowers the price on those goods that are disproportionately purchased by those with low incomes.
Free trade causes a progressive decline in the price level while protectionism causes a regressive
increase in the price level.
Funny rebuttal! Bhagwati probably has a model that says the opposite! But then he grew up in India
and should one day get a Nobel Prize for his contributions to international economics.
Our media needs to copy France 24, ... and have real debates about real issues. What we get is
along the lines of ignoring the problem then attacking any effort to correct. for example, the
media stayed away from the healthcare crisis, too complicated, but damn they are good at criticizing.
A seriously shameful article. Krugman has been a booster of trade & globalization for 30 years:
marginally more nuanced than the establishment, but still a booster.
Now, the establishment has what it wanted and the effects have been disastrous for those not
in the top 20 percent of the income distribution.
At this stage, comes insult to injury. Establishment economists (like Mr. Krugman) can reinvent
themselves with "brilliant new studies" showing the costs and damage of globalization. They pay
no professional costs for the grievous injuries inflicted; there is no mention of the fact that
critical outsider economists have been predicting and writing about these injuries and were right;
and they blithely say we must stay the course because we are locked-in and have few options.
Krugman is not Greg Mankiw. Most people who actually get international economics (Mankiw does
not) are not of the free trade benefits all types. Paul Samuelson certainly does not buy into
Mankiw's spin. Funny thing - Mankiw recently cited an excellent piece from Samuelson only to dishonestly
suggest Samuelson did not believe in what he wrote.
Why are you mischaracterizing what Krugman has written? That's my point. Oh wait - you misrepresent
what people write so you can "win" a "debate". Never mind. Please proceed with the serial dishonesty.
"The truth is that if Sanders were to make it to the White House, he would find it very hard to
do anything much about globalization - not because it's technically or economically impossible,
but because the moment he looked into actually tearing up existing trade agreements the diplomatic,
foreign-policy costs would be overwhelmingly obvious. In this, as in many other things, Sanders
currently benefits from the luxury of irresponsibility: he's never been anywhere close to the
levers of power, so he could take principled-sounding but arguably feckless stances in a way that
Clinton couldn't and can't."
As Dean Baker says, we need to confront Walmart and Goldman Sachs at home, who like these policies,
more than the Chinese.
The Chinese want access to our consumer market. They'd also like if we did't invade countries
like Iraq.
"so he could take principled-sounding but arguably feckless stances in a way that Clinton couldn't"
And what is that? Tear up trade deals? It is Krugman who is engaging in straw man arguments.
Krugman does indeed misrepresent Sanders' positions on trade. Sander is not against trade, he
merely insists on *Fair Trade*, which incorporates human rights and environmental protections.
His opposition is to the kinds of deals, like NAFTA and TPP, which effectively gut those (a central
element in Kruman's own critique of the latter).
Krugman has definitely backed off his (much) earlier boosterism and publicly said so. This is
an excellent piece by him, though it does rather downplay his earlier stances a bit. This is one
of the things I especially like about him.
I can get the idea that some people win, some people lose from liberalized trade. But what really
bugs me about the neoliberal trade agenda is that it has been part of a larger set of economically
conservative, laissez faire policies that have exacerbated the damages from trade rather than
offsetting them.
At the same time they were exposing US workers to greater competition from abroad and destroying
and offshoring working class jobs via both trade and liberalized capital flows, the neoliberals
were also doing things like "reinventing government" - that is, shrinking structural government
spending and public investment - and ending welfare. They have done nothing serious about steering
capital and job development efforts toward the communities devastated by the liberalization.
The neoliberal position has seem to come down to "We can't make bourgeois progress without
breaking a few working class eggs."
Agreed! "Krugman has been a booster of trade & globalization for 30 years: marginally more nuanced
than the establishment, but still a booster.'
Now he claims that he saw the light all along! "much of the elite defense of globalization
is basically dishonest: false claims of inevitability, scare tactics (protectionism causes depressions!),
vastly exaggerated claims for the benefits of trade liberalization and the costs of protection,
hand-waving away the large distributional effects that are what standard models actually predict.
I hope, by the way, that I haven't done any of that..."
You would be hard pressed to find any Krugman clips that cited any of those problems in the
past. Far from being an impartial economist, he was always an avid booster of free trade, overlooking
those very downsides that he suddenly decides to confess.
As far as I know, Sanders has not proposed ripping up the existing trade deals. His information
page on trade emphasizes (i) his opposition to these deals when they were first negotiated and
enacted, and (ii) the principles he will apply to the consideration of future trade deals. Much
of his argumentation concerning past deals is put forward to motivate his present opposition to
TPP.
Note also that Sanders connects his discussion of the harms of past trade policy to the Rebuild
America Act. That is, his approach is forward facing. We can't undo most of the past damage by
recreating the old working class economy we wrecked, but we can be aggressive about using government-directed
national investment programs to create new, high-paying jobs in the US.
You could have said the same about the 1920s
We can't undo most of the past damage by recreating the old agrarian class economy we wrecked,
but we can be aggressive about using government-directed national investment programs to create
new, high-paying jobs in the US.
The march of progress:
Mechanization of agriculture with displacement of large numbers of Ag workers.
The rise of factory work and large numbers employed in manufacturing.
Automation of Manufacturing with large displacement of workers engaged in manufacturing.
What do we want our workers to do? This question must be answered at the highest level of society
and requires much government facilitation. The absence of government facilitation is THE problem.
Memo to Paul Krugman - lead with the economics and stay with the economics. His need to get into
the dirty business of politics dilutes what he ends up sensibly writes later on.
""The truth is that if Sanders were to make it to the White House, he would find it very hard
to do anything much about globalization - not because it's technically or economically impossible,
but because the moment he looked into actually tearing up existing trade agreements the diplomatic,
foreign-policy costs would be overwhelmingly obvious. In this, as in many other things, Sanders
currently benefits from the luxury of irresponsibility: he's never been anywhere close to the
levers of power, so he could take principled-sounding but arguably feckless stances in a way that
Clinton couldn't and can't."
Yeah, it's pretty dishonest for Krugman to pretend that Sanders' position is "ripping up the trade
agreements we already have" and then say Sanders is "engaged in a bit of a scam" because he can't
do that. Sanders actual position (trying to stop new trade deals like the TPP) is something the
president has a lot of influence over (they can veto the deal). Hard to tell what Krugman is doing
here other than deliberately spreading misinformation.
Also worth noting that he decides to compare Sanders' opposition to trade deals with Trump,
and ignore the fact that Clinton has come out against the TPP as well .
Busy with real life, but yes, I know what happened in the primaries yesterday. Triumph for
Trump, and big upset for Sanders - although it's still very hard to see how he can catch Clinton.
Anyway, a few thoughts, not about the horserace but about some deeper currents.
The Sanders win defied all the polls, and nobody really knows why. But a widespread guess is
that his attacks on trade agreements resonated with a broader audience than his attacks on Wall
Street; and this message was especially powerful in Michigan, the former auto superpower. And
while I hate attempts to claim symmetry between the parties - Trump is trying to become America's
Mussolini, Sanders at worst America's Michael Foot * - Trump has been tilling some of the same
ground. So here's the question: is the backlash against globalization finally getting real political
traction?
You do want to be careful about announcing a political moment, given how many such proclamations
turn out to be ludicrous. Remember the libertarian moment? The reformocon moment? Still, a protectionist
backlash, like an immigration backlash, is one of those things where the puzzle has been how long
it was in coming. And maybe the time is now.
The truth is that if Sanders were to make it to the White House, he would find it very hard
to do anything much about globalization - not because it's technically or economically impossible,
but because the moment he looked into actually tearing up existing trade agreements the diplomatic,
foreign-policy costs would be overwhelmingly obvious. In this, as in many other things, Sanders
currently benefits from the luxury of irresponsibility: he's never been anywhere close to the
levers of power, so he could take principled-sounding but arguably feckless stances in a way that
Clinton couldn't and can't.
But it's also true that much of the elite defense of globalization is basically dishonest:
false claims of inevitability, scare tactics (protectionism causes depressions! ** ), vastly exaggerated
claims for the benefits of trade liberalization and the costs of protection, hand-waving away
the large distributional effects that are what standard models actually predict. I hope, by the
way, that I haven't done any of that; I think I've always been clear that the gains from globalization
aren't all that (here's a back-of-the-envelope on the gains from hyperglobalization *** - only
part of which can be attributed to policy - that is less than 5 percent of world GDP over a generation);
and I think I've never assumed away the income distribution effects.
Furthermore, as Mark Kleiman sagely observes, **** the conventional case for trade liberalization
relies on the assertion that the government could redistribute income to ensure that everyone
wins - but we now have an ideology utterly opposed to such redistribution in full control of one
party, and with blocking power against anything but a minor move in that direction by the other.
So the elite case for ever-freer trade is largely a scam, which voters probably sense even
if they don't know exactly what form it's taking.
Ripping up the trade agreements we already have would, again, be a mess, and I would say that
Sanders is engaged in a bit of a scam himself in even hinting that he could do such a thing. Trump
might actually do it, but only as part of a reign of destruction on many fronts.
But it is fair to say that the case for more trade agreements - including Trans-Pacific Partnership,
which hasn't happened yet - is very, very weak. And if a progressive makes it to the White House,
she should devote no political capital whatsoever to such things.
Michael Mackintosh Foot (1913 – 2010) was a British Labour Party politician and man of letters
who was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1945 to 1955 and from 1960 until 1992. He was Deputy
Leader of the Labour Party from 1976 to 1980, and later the Leader of the Labour Party and Leader
of the Opposition from 1980 to 1983.
Associated with the left of the Labour Party for most of his career, Foot was an ardent supporter
of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and British withdrawal from the European Economic Community.
He was appointed to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Employment under Harold Wilson in 1974,
and he later served as Leader of the House of Commons under James Callaghan. A passionate orator,
he led Labour through the 1983 general election, when the party obtained its lowest share of the
vote at a general election since 1918 and the fewest parliamentary seats it had had at any time
since before 1945.
There was so much wrong with Mitt Romney's Trump-is-a-disaster-whom-I-will-support-in-the-general
* speech that it may seem odd to call him out for bad international macroeconomics. But this is
a pet peeve of mine, in an area where I really, truly know what I'm talking about. So here goes.
In warning about Trumponomics, Romney declared:
"If Donald Trump's plans were ever implemented, the country would sink into prolonged recession.
A few examples. His proposed 35 percent tariff-like penalties would instigate a trade war and
that would raise prices for consumers, kill our export jobs and lead entrepreneurs and businesses
of all stripes to flee America."
After all, doesn't everyone know that protectionism causes recessions? Actually, no. There
are reasons to be against protectionism, but that's not one of them.
Think about the arithmetic (which has a well-known liberal bias). Total final spending on domestically
produced goods and services is
Total domestic spending + Exports – Imports = GDP
Now suppose we have a trade war. This will cut exports, which other things equal depresses
the economy. But it will also cut imports, which other things equal is expansionary. For the world
as a whole, the cuts in exports and imports will by definition be equal, so as far as world demand
is concerned, trade wars are a wash.
OK, I'm sure some people will start shouting "Krugman says protectionism does no harm." But
no: protectionism in general should reduce efficiency, and hence the economy's potential output.
But that's not at all the same as saying that it causes recessions.
But didn't the Smoot-Hawley tariff cause the Great Depression? No. There's no evidence at all
that it did. Yes, trade fell a lot between 1929 and 1933, but that was almost entirely a consequence
of the Depression, not a cause. (Trade actually fell faster ** during the early stages of the
2008 Great Recession than it did after 1929.) And while trade barriers were higher in the 1930s
than before, this was partly a response to the Depression, partly a consequence of deflation,
which made specific tariffs (i.e. tariffs that are stated in dollars per unit, not as a percentage
of value) loom larger.
Again, not the thing most people will remember about Romney's speech. But, you know, protectionism
was the only reason he gave for believing that Trump would cause a recession, which I think is
kind of telling: the GOP's supposedly well-informed, responsible adult, trying to save the party,
can't get basic economics right at the one place where economics is central to his argument.
The Gains From Hyperglobalization (Wonkish)
By Paul Krugman
Still taking kind of an emotional vacation from current political madness. Following up on
my skeptical post on worries about slowing trade growth, * I wondered what a state-of-the-art
model would say.
The natural model to use, at least for me, is Eaton-Kortum, ** which is a very ingenious approach
to thinking about multilateral trade flows. The basic model is Ricardian - wine and cloth and
labor productivity and all that - except that there are many goods and many countries, transportation
costs, and countries are assumed to gain productivity in any particular industry through a random
process. They make some funny assumptions about distributions - hey, that's kind of the price
of entry for this kind of work - and in return get a tractable model that yields gravity-type
equations for international trade flows. This is a good thing, because gravity models *** of trade
- purely empirical exercises, with no real theory behind them - are known to work pretty well.
Their model also yields a simple expression for the welfare gains from trade:
Real income = A*(1-import share)^(-1/theta)
where A is national productivity and theta is a parameter of their assumed random process (don't
ask); they suggest that theta=4 provides the best match to available data.
Now, what I wanted to do was apply this to the rapid growth of trade that has taken place since
around 1990, what Subramanian **** calls "hyperglobalization". According to Subramanian's estimates,
overall trade in goods and services has risen from about 19 percent of world GDP in the early
1990s to 33 percent now, bringing us to a level of integration that really is historically unprecedented.
There are some conceptual difficulties with using this rise directly in the Eaton-Kortum framework,
because much of it has taken the form of trade in intermediate goods, and the framework isn't
designed to handle that. Still, let me ignore that, and plug Subramanian's numbers into the equation
above; I get a 4.9 percent rise in real incomes due to increased globalization.
That's by no means small change, but it's only a fairly small fraction of global growth. The
Maddison database ***** gives us a 45 percent rise in global GDP per capita over the same period,
so this calculation suggests that rising trade was responsible for around 10 percent of overall
global growth. My guess is that most people who imagine themselves well-informed would give a
bigger number.
By the way, for those critical of globalization, let me hasten to concede that by its nature
the Eaton-Kortum model doesn't let us talk about income distribution, and it also makes no room
for the possible role of globalization in causing secular stagnation. ******
Still, I thought this was an interesting calculation to make - which may show more about my
warped sense of what's interesting than it does about anything else.
General Equilibrium Analysis of the Eaton-Kortum Model of International Trade
By Fernando Alvarez and Robert E. Lucas
We study a variation of the Eaton-Kortum model, a competitive, constant-returns-to-scale multicountry
Ricardian model of trade. We establish existence and uniqueness of an equilibrium with balanced
trade where each country imposes an import tariff. We analyze the determinants of the cross-country
distribution of trade volumes, such as size, tariffs and distance, and compare a calibrated version
of the model with data for the largest 60 economies. We use the calibrated model to estimate the
gains of a world-wide trade elimination of tariffs, using the theory to explain the magnitude
of the gains as well as the differential effect arising from cross-country differences in pre-liberalization
of tariffs levels and country size.
The gravity model of international trade in international economics, similar to other gravity
models in social science, predicts bilateral trade flows based on the economic sizes (often using
GDP measurements) and distance between two units. The model was first used by Jan Tinbergen in
1962.
The Hyperglobalization of Trade and Its Future
By Arvind Subramanian and Martin Kessler
Abstract
The open, rules-based trading system has delivered immense benefits-for the world, for individual
countries, and for average citizens in these countries. It can continue to do so, helping today's
low-income countries make the transition to middle-income status. Three challenges must be met
to preserve this system. Rich countries must sustain the social consensus in favor of open markets
and globalization at a time of considerable economic uncertainty and weakness; China and other
middle-income countries must remain open; and mega-regionalism must be prevented from leading
to discrimination and trade conflicts. Collective action should help strengthen the institutional
underpinnings of globalization. The world should move beyond the Doha Round dead to more meaningful
multilateral negotiations to address emerging challenges, including possible threats from new
mega-regional agreements. The rising powers, especially China, will have a key role to play in
resuscitating multilateralism.
"Furthermore, as Mark Kleiman sagely observes, the conventional case for trade liberalization
relies on the assertion that the government could redistribute income to ensure that everyone
wins"
That was never the conventional case for trade. Plus it's kind of odd that you have to add
"plus have the government redistribute" to the case your making.
Tom Pally above is correct. Krugman has been on the wrong side of this issue. He's gotten better,
but the timing is he's gotten better as the Democratic Party has moved to the left and pushed
back against corporate trade deals. Even Hillary came out late against Obama's TPP.
Sanders has nothing about ripping up trade deals. He has said he won't do any more.
As cawley predicted, once Sanders won Michigan, Krugman started hitting him again at his blog.
With cheap shots I might add. He's ruining his brand.
Tell Morning Edition: It's Not "Free Trade" Folks
by Dean Baker
Published: 10 March 2016
Hey, can an experienced doctor from Germany show up and start practicing in New York next week?
Since the answer is no, we can say that we don't have free trade. It's not an immigration issue,
if the doctor wants to work in a restaurant kitchen, she would probably get away with it. We have
protectionist measures that limit the number of foreign doctors in order to keep their pay high.
These protectionist measures have actually been strengthened in the last two decades.
We also have strengthened patent and copyright protections, making drugs and other affected
items far more expensive. These protections are also forms of protectionism.
This is why Morning Edition seriously misled its listeners in an interview with ice cream barons
Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield over their support of Senator Bernie Sanders. The interviewer repeatedly
referred to "free trade" agreements and Sanders' opposition to them. While these deals are all
called "free trade" deals to make them sound more palatable ("selective protectionism to redistribute
income upward" doesn't sound very appealing), that doesn't mean they are actually about free trade.
Morning Edition should not have used the term employed by promoters to push their trade agenda.
This has been Dean Baker's excellent theme for a very long time. And if you actually paid attention
to what Krugman said about TPP - he agreed with Dean's excellent points. But do continue to set
up straw man arguments so you can dishonestly attack Krugman.
No. That is not a sign of a faulty memory, quite the contrary.
Krugman writes column after column praising trade pacts and criticizing (rightly, I might add)
the yahoos who object for the wrong reasons.
But he omits a few salient facts like
- the gains are small,
- the government MUST intervene with redistribution for this to work socially,
- there are no (or minimal) provisions for that requirement in the pacts.
I would say his omissions speak volumes and are worth remembering.
Krugman initially wrote a confused column about the TPP, treating it as a simple free trade deal
which he said would have little impact because tariffs were already so low. But he did eventually
look into the matter further and wound up agreeing with Baker's take.
"That was never the conventional case for trade". Actually it was. Of course Greg Mankiw never
got the memo so his free trade benefits all BS confuses a lot of people. Mankiw sucks at international
trade.
David Glasner attacks Krugman from the right, but he doesn't whitewash the past as you do.
He remembers Gore versus Perot:
"Indeed, Romney didn't even mention the Smoot-Hawley tariff, but Krugman evidently forgot the
classic exchange between Al Gore and the previous incarnation of protectionist populist outrage
in an anti-establishment billionaire candidate for President:
GORE I've heard Mr. Perot say in the past that, as the carpenters says, measure twice and cut
once. We've measured twice on this. We have had a test of our theory and we've had a test of his
theory. Over the last five years, Mexico's tariffs have begun to come down because they've made
a unilateral decision to bring them down some, and as a result there has been a surge of exports
from the United States into Mexico, creating an additional 400,000 jobs, and we can create hundreds
of thousands of more if we continue this trend. We know this works. If it doesn't work, you know,
we give six months notice and we're out of it. But we've also had a test of his theory.
PEROT When?
GORE In 1930, when the proposal by Mr. Smoot and Mr. Hawley was to raise tariffs across the
board to protect our workers. And I brought some pictures, too.
[Larry] KING You're saying Ross is a protectionist?
GORE This is, this is a picture of Mr. Smoot and Mr. Hawley. They look like pretty good fellows.
They sounded reasonable at the time; a lot of people believed them. The Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley
Protection Bill. He wants to raise tariffs on Mexico. They raised tariffs, and it was one of the
principal causes, many economists say the principal cause, of the Great Depression in this country
and around the world. Now, I framed this so you can put it on your wall if you want to.
You obviously have not read Krugman. Here is from his 1997 Slate piece:
But putting Greenspan (or his successor) into the picture restores much of the classical vision
of the macroeconomy. Instead of an invisible hand pushing the economy toward full employment in
some unspecified long run, we have the visible hand of the Fed pushing us toward its estimate
of the noninflationary unemployment rate over the course of two or three years. To accomplish
this, the board must raise or lower interest rates to bring savings and investment at that target
unemployment rate in line with each other.
And so all the paradoxes of thrift, widow's cruses, and so on become irrelevant. In particular,
an increase in the savings rate will translate into higher investment after all, because the Fed
will make sure that it does.
To me, at least, the idea that changes in demand will normally be offset by Fed policy--so
that they will, on average, have no effect on employment--seems both simple and entirely reasonable.
Yet it is clear that very few people outside the world of academic economics think about things
that way. For example, the debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement was conducted almost
entirely in terms of supposed job creation or destruction. The obvious (to me) point that the
average unemployment rate over the next 10 years will be what the Fed wants it to be, regardless
of the U.S.-Mexico trade balance, never made it into the public consciousness. (In fact, when
I made that argument at one panel discussion in 1993, a fellow panelist--a NAFTA advocate, as
it happens--exploded in rage: "It's remarks like that that make people hate economists!")
Yes. But please do not interrupt PeterK with reality. He has important work do with his bash all
things Krugman agenda. BTW - it is a riot that he cites Ross Perot on NAFTA. Perot has a self
centered agenda there which Gore exposed. Never trust a corrupt business person whether it is
Perot or Trump.
Yes the model PeterK is using is unclear. He doesn't seem to have a grasp on the economics of
the issues. He seems to think that Sanders is a font of economic wisdom who is not to be questioned.
I would hate to see the left try to make a flawed candidate into the larger than life icon that
the GOP has made out of Reagan.
"Yes the model PeterK is using is unclear. He doesn't seem to have a grasp on the economics of
the issues."
Dean Baker and Jared Bernstein. Like you I want full employment and rising wages. And like
Krugman I am very much an internationalist. I want us to deal fairly with the rest of the world.
We need to cooperate especially in the face of global warming.
1. My first, best solution would be fiscal action. Like everyone else. I prefer Sanders's unicorn
plan of $1 trillion over five years rather than Hillary's plan which is one quarter of the size.
Her plan puts more pressure on the Fed and monetary policy.
a. My preference would be to pay for it with Pigouvian taxes on the rich, corporations, and
the financial sector.
b. if not a, then deficit spending like Trudeau in Canada
C. if the deficit hawks block that, then monetary-financing would be the way around them.
2. close the trade deficit. Dean Baker and Bernstein have written about this a lot. Write currency
agreements into trade deals. If we close the trade deficit and are at full employment, then we
can import more from the rest of the world.
3. If powerful interests block 1. and 2. then lean on monetary policy. Reduce the price of
credit to boost demand. It works as a last resort.
"I would hate to see the left try to make a flawed candidate into the larger than life icon
that the GOP has made out of Reagan.'
I haven't seen any evidence of this. It would be funny if the left made an old Jewish codger
from Brooklyn into an icon. Feel the Bern!!!
Sanders regularly points out it's not about him as President fixing everything, it's about
creating a movement. It's about getting people involved. He can't do it by himself. Obama would
say this too. Elizabeth Warren become popular by saying the same things Sanders is saying.
However to say that the conventional case for trade liberalization relies on the Compensation
Principle isn't quite accurate. The conventional case has traditionally relied on the assertion
that "we" are better off with trade since we could *theoretically* distribute the gains. However,
free trade boosters never seem to get around to worrying about distributing the gains *in practice*.
In practice, free trade is typically justified simply by the net aggregate gain, regardless of
how these gains are distributed or who is hurt in the process.
To my mind, before considering some trade liberalization deal we should FIRST agree to and
implement the redistribution mechanisms and only then reduce barriers. Implementing trade deals
in a backward, half-assed way as has typically been the case often makes "us" worse off than autarky.
"Krugman has at times advocated free markets in contexts where they are often viewed as controversial.
He has ... likened the opposition against free trade and globalization to the opposition against
evolution via natural selection (1996),[167]
(In fact, when I made that argument at one panel discussion in 1993, a fellow panelist--a NAFTA
advocate, as it happens--exploded in rage: "It's remarks like that that make people hate economists!")
[Thanks to electoral politics, we're all fellow panelists now.]
"To me, at least, the idea that changes in demand will normally be offset by Fed policy--so that
they will, on average, have no effect on employment--seems both simple and entirely reasonable.
Yet it is clear that very few people outside the world of academic economics think about things
that way."
As we've seen the Fed is overly fearful of inflation, so the Fed doesn't offset the trade deficit
as quickly as it should. Instead we suffer hysteresis and reduction of potential output.
"The truth is that if Sanders were to make it to the White House, he would find it very hard to
do anything much about globalization - not because it's technically or economically impossible,
but because the moment he looked into actually tearing up existing trade agreements the diplomatic,
foreign-policy costs would be overwhelmingly obvious."
Here Krugman is more honest. We're basically buying off the Chinese, etc. The cost for stopping
this would be less cooperation from the Chinese, etc.
This is new. He never used to say this kind of thing. Instead he'd go after "protectionists"
as luddites.
"This is new. He never used to say this kind of thing. Instead he'd go after "protectionists"
as luddites."
You have Krugman confused with Greg Mankiw. Most real international economics (Mankiw is not
one) recognize the distributional consequences of free trade v. protectionism. Then again - putting
forth the Mankiw uninformed spin is a prerequisite for being on Team Republican. Of course Republicans
will go protectionist whenever it is politically expedient as in that temporary set of steel tariffs.
Helped Bush-Cheney in 2004 and right after that - no tariffs. Funny how that worked.
Where is the "redistribution from government" in the TPP. There isn't any.
Even the NAFTA side agreements on labor and the environment are toothless. The point of these
corporate trade deals is to profit from the lower labor and environmental standards of poorer
countries.
The fact that you resort to calling me a professional Krugman hater means you're not interested
in an actual debate about actual ideas. You've lost the debate and I'm not participating.
One is not allowed to criticize Krugman lest one be labeled a professional Krugman hater?
Your resort to name calling just weakens the case you're making.
You of late have wasted so much space misrepresenting what Krugman has said. Maybe you don't hate
him - maybe you just want to get his attention. For a date maybe. Lord - the troll in you is truly
out of control.
Sandwichman may think Krugman changed his views but if one actually read what he has written over
the years (as opposed to your cherry picking quotes), you might have noticed otherwise. But of
course you want Krugman to look bad. It is what you do.
Sizeable numbers of Americans have seen wages decline in real terms for nearly 20 years. Many/most
parents in many communities do not see a better future before them, or for their children.
Notable quotes:
"... Democracy demands that ballot access rules be selected by referendum, not by the very legacy parties that maintain legislative control by effectively denying ballot access to parties that will pose a challenge to their continued rule. ..."
"... I think the U.S. Party system, in the political science sense, shifted to a new state during George W Bush's administration as, in Kevin Phillip's terms the Republican Party was taken over by Theocrats and Bad Money. ..."
"... My understanding is trumps support disproportionately comes from the small business owning classes, Ie a demographic similar to the petite bourgeoisie who have often been heavily involved in reactionary movements. This gets oversold as "working class" when class is defined by education level rather than income. ..."
"... Racism serves as an organizing principle. Politically, in an oppressive and stultifying hierarchy like the plantation South, racism not incidentally buys the loyalty of subalterns with ersatz status. ..."
"... For a time, the balkanization of American political communities by race, religion and ethnicity was an effective means to the dominance of an tiny elite with ties to an hegemonic community, but it backfired. Dismantling that balkanization has left the country with a very low level of social affiliation and thus a low capacity to organize resistance to elite depredations. ..."
"... Watching Clinton scoop up bankster money, welcome Republicans neocons to the ranks of her supporters does not fill me with hope. ..."
Legislators affiliated with the duopoly parties should not write the rules governing the ballot
access of third parties. This exclusionary rule making amounts to preserving a self-dealing duopoly.
Elections are the interest of the people who vote and those elected should not be able to subvert
the democratic process by acting as a cartel.
Democracy demands that ballot access rules be selected by referendum, not by the very legacy
parties that maintain legislative control by effectively denying ballot access to parties that
will pose a challenge to their continued rule.
Of course any meaningful change would require a voluntary diminishment of power of the duopoly
that now has dictatorial control over ballot access, and who will prevent any Constitutional Amendment
that would enhance the democratic nature of the process.
bruce wilder 08.02.16 at 8:02 pm
I think the U.S. Party system, in the political science sense, shifted to a new state during
George W Bush's administration as, in Kevin Phillip's terms the Republican Party was taken over
by Theocrats and Bad Money.
Ronan(rf) 08.04.16 at 10:35 pm
"I generally don't give a shit about polls so I have no "data" to evidence this claim,
but my guess is the majority of Trump's support comes from this broad middle"
My understanding is trumps support disproportionately comes from the small business owning
classes, Ie a demographic similar to the petite bourgeoisie who have often been heavily involved
in reactionary movements. This gets oversold as "working class" when class is defined by education
level rather than income.
This would make some sense as they are generally in economically unstable jobs, they tend to
be hostile to both big govt (regulations, freeloaders) and big business (unfair competition),
and while they (rhetorically at least) tend to value personal autonomy and self sufficiency ,
they generally sell into smaller, local markets, and so are particularly affected by local demographic
and cultural change , and decline. That's my speculation anyway.
bruce wilder 08.06.16 at 4:28 pm
I am somewhat suspicious of leaving dominating elites out of these stories of racism as an
organizing principle for political economy or (cultural) community.
Racism served the purposes of a slaveholding elite that organized political communities to
serve their own interests. (Or, vis a vis the Indians a land-grab or genocide.)
Racism serves as an organizing principle. Politically, in an oppressive and stultifying
hierarchy like the plantation South, racism not incidentally buys the loyalty of subalterns with
ersatz status. The ugly prejudices and resentful arrogance of working class whites is thus
a component of how racism works to organize a political community to serve a hegemonic master
class. The business end of racism, though, is the autarkic poverty imposed on the working communities:
slaves, sharecroppers, poor blacks, poor whites - bad schools, bad roads, politically disabled
communities, predatory institutions and authoritarian governments.
For a time, the balkanization of American political communities by race, religion and ethnicity
was an effective means to the dominance of an tiny elite with ties to an hegemonic community,
but it backfired. Dismantling that balkanization has left the country with a very low level of
social affiliation and thus a low capacity to organize resistance to elite depredations.
bruce wilder 08.06.16 at 4:31 pm
Watching Clinton scoop up bankster money, welcome Republicans neocons to the ranks of her
supporters does not fill me with hope.
Trump and the other illiberal populists have been benefiting from three overlapping backlashes.
The first is cultural. Movements for civil liberties have been remarkably successful over the
last 40 years. Women, ethnic and religious minorities, and the LGBTQ community have secured important
gains at a legal and cultural level. It is remarkable, for instance, how quickly same-sex marriage
has become legal in more than 20 countries when no country recognized it before 2001.
Resistance has always existed to these movements to expand the realm of civil liberties. But this
backlash increasingly has a political face. Thus the rise of parties that challenge multiculturalism
and immigration in Europe, the movements throughout Africa and Asia that support the majority over
the minorities, and the Trump/Tea Party takeover of the Republican Party with their appeals to primarily
white men.
The second backlash is economic. The globalization of the economy has created a class of enormously
wealthy individuals (in the financial, technology, and communications sectors). But globalization
has left behind huge numbers of low-wage workers and those who have watched their jobs relocate to
other countries.
Illiberal populists have directed all that anger on the part of people left behind by the world
economy at a series of targets: bankers who make billions, corporations that are constantly looking
for even lower-wage workers, immigrants who "take away our jobs," and sometimes ethnic minorities
who function as convenient scapegoats. The targets, in other words, include both the very powerful
and the very weak.
The third backlash, and perhaps the most consequential, is political. It's not just that people
living in democracies are disgusted with their leaders and the parties they represent. Rather, as
political scientists Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk
write in the Journal of Democracy , "they have also become more cynical about the value
of democracy as a political system, less hopeful that anything they do might influence public policy,
and more willing to express support for authoritarian alternatives."
Foa and Mounk are using 20 years of data collected from surveys of citizens in Western Europe
and North America – the democracies with the greatest longevity. And they have found that support
for illiberal alternatives is greater among the younger generation than the older one. In other countries
outside Europe and North America, the disillusionment with democratic institutions often takes the
form of a preference for a powerful leader who can break the rules if necessary to preserve order
and stability – like Putin in Russia or Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Egypt or Prayuth Chan-ocha in Thailand.
These three backlashes – cultural, economic, political – are also anti-internationalist because
international institutions have become associated with the promotion of civil liberties and human
rights, the greater globalization of the economy, and the constraint of the sovereignty of nations
(for instance, through the European Union or the UN's "responsibility to protect" doctrine).
... ... ....
The current political order is coming apart. If we don't come up with a fair, Green, and internationalist
alternative, the illiberal populists will keep winning. John Feffer is the director of Foreign
Policy In Focus.
"... if neo-liberalism is partly defined by the free flow of goods, labor and capital - and that has been the Republican agenda since at least Reagan - how is Trump a continuation of the same tradition?" ..."
"... Trump is a conservative (or right populist, or whatever), and draws on that tradition. He's not a neoliberal. ..."
"... Trump is too incoherent to really represent the populist view. He's consistent w/the trade and immigration views but (assuming you can actually figure him out) wrong on banks, taxes, etc. ..."
"... But the next populists we see might be more full bore. When that happens, you'll see much more overlap w/Sanders economic plans for the middle class. ..."
"... There's always tension along the lead running between the politician and his constituents. The thing that seems most salient to me at the present moment is the sense of betrayal pervading our politics. At least since the GFC of 2008, it has been hard to deny that the two Parties worked together to set up an economic betrayal. And, the long-running saga of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also speak to elite failure, as well as betrayal. ..."
"... Trump is a novelty act. He represents a chance for people who feel resentful without knowing much of anything about anything to cast a middle-finger vote. They wouldn't be willing to do that, if times were really bad, instead of just disappointing and distressing. ..."
"... There's also the fact Reagan tapped a fair number of Nixon people, as did W years later. Reagan went after Nixon in the sense of running against him, and taking the party in a much more hard-right direction, sure. But he was repudiated largely because he got caught doing dirty tricks with his pants down. ..."
"... From what I can tell - the 1972 election gave the centrists in the democratic party power to discredit and marginalize the anti-war left, and with it, the left in general. ..."
"... Ready even now to whine that she's a victim and that the whole community is at fault and that people are picking on her because she's a woman, rather than because she has a habit of making accusations like this every time she comments. ..."
"... That is a perfect example of predatory "solidarity". Val is looking for dupes to support her ..."
"Once again, if neo-liberalism is partly defined by the free flow of goods, labor and capital
- and that has been the Republican agenda since at least Reagan - how is Trump a continuation
of the same tradition?"
You have to be willing to see neoliberalism as something different
from conservatism to have the answer make any sense. John Quiggin has written a good deal here
about a model of U.S. politics as being divided into left, neoliberal, and conservative. Trump
is a conservative (or right populist, or whatever), and draws on that tradition. He's not a neoliberal.
... ... ...
T 08.12.16 at 5:52 pm
RP @683
That's a bit of my point. I think Corey has defined the Republican tradition solely
in response to the Southern Strategy that sees a line from Nixon (or Goldwater) to Trump. But
that gets the economics wrong and the foreign policy too - the repub foreign policy view has not
been consistent across administrations and Trump's economic pans (to the extent he has a plan)
are antithetical to the Nixon – W tradition. I have viewed post-80 Dem administrations as neoliberals
w/transfers and Repub as neoliberals w/o transfers.
Trump is too incoherent to really represent the populist view. He's consistent w/the trade
and immigration views but (assuming you can actually figure him out) wrong on banks, taxes, etc.
But the next populists we see might be more full bore. When that happens, you'll see much
more overlap w/Sanders economic plans for the middle class. Populists have nothing against
gov't programs like SS and Medicare and were always for things like the TVA and infrastructure
spending. Policies aimed at the poor and minorities not so much.
T @ 685: Trump is too incoherent to really represent the populist view.
There's always tension along the lead running between the politician and his constituents.
The thing that seems most salient to me at the present moment is the sense of betrayal pervading
our politics. At least since the GFC of 2008, it has been hard to deny that the two Parties worked
together to set up an economic betrayal. And, the long-running saga of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
also speak to elite failure, as well as betrayal.
These are the two most unpopular candidates in living memory. That is different.
I am not a believer in "the fire next time". Trump is a novelty act. He represents a chance
for people who feel resentful without knowing much of anything about anything to cast a middle-finger
vote. They wouldn't be willing to do that, if times were really bad, instead of just disappointing
and distressing.
Nor will Sanders be back. His was a last New Deal coda. There may be second acts in American
life, but there aren't 7th acts.
If there's a populist politics in our future, it will have to have a much sharper edge. It
can talk about growth, but it has to mean smashing the rich and taking their stuff. There's very
rapidly going to come a point where there's no other option, other than just accepting cramdown
by the authoritarian surveillance state built by the neoliberals. that's a much taller order than
Sanders or Trump have been offering.<
Corey, you write: "It's not just that the Dems went after Nixon, it's also that Nixon had so few
allies. People on the right were furious with him because they felt after this huge ratification
that the country had moved to the right, Nixon was still governing as if the New Deal were the
consensus. So when the time came, he had very few defenders, except for loyalists like Leonard
Garment and G. Gordon Liddy. And Al Haig, God bless him."
You've studied this more than I have,
but this is at least somewhat at odds with my memory. I recall some prominent attackers of Nixon
from the Republican party that were moderates, at least one of whom was essentially kicked out
of the party for being too liberal in later years. There's also the fact Reagan tapped a fair
number of Nixon people, as did W years later. Reagan went after Nixon in the sense of running
against him, and taking the party in a much more hard-right direction, sure. But he was repudiated
largely because he got caught doing dirty tricks with his pants down.
To think that something similar would happen to Clinton (watergate like scandal) that would
actually have a large portion of the left in support of impeachment, she would have to be as dirty
as Nixon was, *and* the evidence to really put the screws to her would have to be out, as it was
against Nixon during watergate.
OTOH, my actual *hope* would be that a similar left-liberal sea change comparable to 1980 from
the right would be plausible. I don't think a 1976-like interlude is plausible though, that would
require the existence of a moderate republican with enough support within their own party to win
the nomination. I suppose its possible that such a beast could come to exist if Trump loses a
landslide, but most of the plausible candidates have already left or been kicked out of the party.
From what I can tell - the 1972 election gave the centrists in the democratic party power
to discredit and marginalize the anti-war left, and with it, the left in general. A comparable
election from the other side would give republican centrists/moderates the ability to discredit
and marginalize the right wing base. But unlike Democrats in 1972, there aren't any moderates
left in the Republican party by my lights. I'm much more concerned that this will simply re-empower
the hard-core conservatives with plausbly-deniable dog-whistle racism who are now the "moderates",
and enable them to whitewash their history.
Unfortunately, unlike you, I'm not convinced that a landslide is possible without an appeal
to Reagan/Bush republicans. I don't think we're going to see a meaningful turn toward a real left
until Democrats can win a majority of statehouses and clean up the ridiculous gerrymandering.
Val: "Similarly with your comments on "identity politics" where you could almost be seen
by MRAs and white supremacists as an ally, from the tone of your rhetoric."
That is 100% perfect Val. Insinuates that BW is a sort-of-ally of white supremacists - an infuriating
insinuation. Does this insinuation based on a misreading of what he wrote. Completely resistant
to any sort of suggestion that what she dishes out so expansively to others had better be something
she should be willing to accept herself, or that she shouldn't do it. Ready even now to whine
that she's a victim and that the whole community is at fault and that people are picking on her
because she's a woman, rather than because she has a habit of making accusations like this every
time she comments.
That is a perfect example of predatory "solidarity". Val is looking for dupes to support
her - for people to jump in saying "Why are you being hostile to women?" in response to people's
response to her comment.
"... More than a dozen Republican rivals, described as the strongest GOP field since 1980, were sent packing. This was the year Americans rose up to pull down the establishment in a peaceful storming of the American Bastille. ..."
"... If 2016 taught us anything, it is that if the establishment's hegemony is imperiled, it will come together in ferocious solidarity - for the preservation of their perks, privileges and power. All the elements of that establishment - corporate, cultural, political, media - are today issuing an ultimatum to Middle America: Trump is unacceptable. Instructions are going out to Republican leaders that either they dump Trump, or they will cease to be seen as morally fit partners in power. ..."
"... Our CIA, NGOs and National Endowment for Democracy all beaver away for "regime change" in faraway lands whose rulers displease us. How do we effect "regime change" here at home? ..."
"... Donald Trump's success, despite the near-universal hostility of the media, even much of the conservative media, was due in large part to the public's response to the issues he raised. ..."
"I'm afraid the election is going to be rigged," Donald Trump told voters
in Ohio and Sean Hannity on Fox News. And that hit a nerve.
"Dangerous," "toxic," came the recoil from the media.
Trump is threatening to "delegitimize" the election results of 2016.
Well, if that is what Trump is trying to do, he has no small point. For consider
what 2016 promised and what it appears about to deliver.
This longest of election cycles has rightly been called the Year of the Outsider.
It was a year that saw a mighty surge of economic populism and patriotism, a
year when a 74-year-old Socialist senator set primaries ablaze with mammoth
crowds that dwarfed those of Hillary Clinton.
It was the year that a non-politician, Donald Trump, swept Republican primaries
in an historic turnout, with his nearest rival an ostracized maverick in his
own Republican caucus, Senator Ted Cruz.
More than a dozen Republican rivals, described as the strongest GOP field
since 1980, were sent packing. This was the year Americans rose up to pull down
the establishment in a peaceful storming of the American Bastille.
But if it ends with a Clintonite restoration and a ratification of the same
old Beltway policies, would that not suggest there is something fraudulent about
American democracy, something rotten in the state?
If 2016 taught us anything, it is that if the establishment's hegemony
is imperiled, it will come together in ferocious solidarity - for the preservation
of their perks, privileges and power. All the elements of that establishment
- corporate, cultural, political, media - are today issuing an ultimatum to
Middle America: Trump is unacceptable. Instructions are going out to Republican
leaders that either they dump Trump, or they will cease to be seen as morally
fit partners in power.
It testifies to the character of Republican elites that some are seeking
ways to carry out these instructions, though this would mean invalidating and
aborting the democratic process that produced Trump.
But what is a repudiated establishment doing issuing orders to anyone?
Why is it not Middle America issuing the demands, rather than the other way
around?
Specifically, the Republican electorate should tell its discredited and rejected
ruling class: If we cannot get rid of you at the ballot box, then tell us how,
peacefully and democratically, we can be rid of you?
You want Trump out? How do we get you out? The Czechs had their Prague Spring.
The Tunisians and Egyptians their Arab Spring. When do we have our American
Spring? The Brits had their "Brexit," and declared independence of an arrogant
superstate in Brussels. How do we liberate ourselves from a Beltway superstate
that is more powerful and resistant to democratic change?
Our CIA, NGOs and National Endowment for Democracy all beaver away for
"regime change" in faraway lands whose rulers displease us. How do we effect
"regime change" here at home?
Donald Trump's success, despite the near-universal hostility of the media,
even much of the conservative media, was due in large part to the public's response
to the issues he raised.
He called for sending illegal immigrants back home, for securing America's
borders, for no amnesty. He called for an America First foreign policy to
keep us out of wars that have done little but bleed and bankrupt us.
He called for an economic policy where the Americanism of the people
replaces the globalism of the transnational elites and their K Street lobbyists
and congressional water carriers.
He denounced NAFTA, and the trade deals and trade deficits with China,
and called for rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
By campaign's end, he had won the argument on trade, as Hillary Clinton was
agreeing on TPP and confessing to second thoughts on NAFTA.
But if TPP is revived at the insistence of the oligarchs of Wall Street,
the Business Roundtable, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce - backed by conscript
editorial writers for newspapers that rely on ad dollars - what do elections
really mean anymore?
And if, as the polls show we might, we get Clinton - and TPP, and amnesty,
and endless migrations of Third World peoples who consume more tax dollars than
they generate, and who will soon swamp the Republicans' coalition - what was
2016 all about?
Would this really be what a majority of Americans voted for in this most
exciting of presidential races?
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution
inevitable," said John F. Kennedy.
The 1960s and early 1970s were a time of social revolution in America, and
President Nixon, by ending the draft and ending the Vietnam war, presided over
what one columnist called the "cooling of America."
But if Hillary Clinton takes power, and continues America on her present
course, which a majority of Americans rejected in the primaries, there is going
to be a bad moon rising.
And the new protesters in the streets will not be overprivileged children
from Ivy League campuses.
"... the capitalist economy is more and more an asset driven one. This article does not even begin to address the issue of asset valuations, the explicit CB support for asset inflation and the effect on inequality, and especially generational plunder. ..."
"... the problem of living standards is obviously a Malthusian one. despite all the progress of social media tricks, we cannot fool nature. the rate of ecological degradation is alarming, and now irreversible. "the market" is now moving rapidly to real assets. This will eventually lead to war as all war is eventually for resources. ..."
No matter what central banks do, their actions will not be able to create the same level of
economic growth that we have become used to over the past seven decades.
Economic growth does not come from the central banks; if government sought to provide the basics
for all its citizens, including health care, education, a home, and proper food and all the infrastructure
needed to give people the basics, then you could have something akin to "growth" while at the
same time making life more pleasant for the less fortunate. There seems to be no definition of
economic growth that includes everyone.
This seems a very elaborate way of stating a simple problem, that can be summarised in three
points.
The living standards of most people have fallen over the last thirty years or so because of
the impact of neoliberal economic policies. Conventional politicians are promising only more
of the same. Therefore people are increasingly voting for non-conventional politicians.
Neoliberalism has only exacerbated falling living standards. Living standards would be falling
even without it, albeit more gradually.
Neoliberalism itself may even be nothing more than a standard type response of species that
have expanded beyond the capacity of their environment to support them. What we see as an evil
ideology is only the expression of a mechanism that apportions declining resources to the elites,
like shutting shutting down the periphery so the core can survive as in hypothermia.
I really don't have problem with this. Let the financial sector run the world into the ground
and get it over with.
In defference to a great many knowledgable commentors here that work in the FIRE sector, I
don't want to create a damning screed on the cost of servicing money, but at some point even the
most considered opinions have to acknowledge that that finance is flooded with *talent* which
creates a number of problems; one being a waste of intellect and education in a field that doesn't
offer much of a return when viewed in an egalitarian sense, secondly; as the field grows due to,
the technical advances, the rise in globilization, and the security a financial occuptaion offers
in an advanced first world country nowadays, it requires substantially more income to be devoted
to it's function.
This income has to be derived somewhere, and the required sacrifices on every facet of a global
economy to bolster positions and maintain asset prices has precipitated this decline in the well
being of peoples not plugged-in to the consumer capitalist regime and dogma.
Something has to give here, and I honestly couldn't care about your 401k or home resale value,
you did this to yourself as much as those day-traders who got clobbered in the dot-com crash.
the capitalist economy is more and more an asset driven one. This article does not even
begin to address the issue of asset valuations, the explicit CB support for asset inflation and
the effect on inequality, and especially generational plunder.
the problem of living standards is obviously a Malthusian one. despite all the progress
of social media tricks, we cannot fool nature. the rate of ecological degradation is alarming,
and now irreversible. "the market" is now moving rapidly to real assets. This will eventually
lead to war as all war is eventually for resources.
We have just witnessed one of the most significant steps toward a one world
economic system that we have ever seen. Negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership
have been completed, and if approved it will create the largest trading bloc
on the planet. But this is not just a trade agreement. In this treaty, Barack
Obama has thrown in all sorts of things that he never would have been able to
get through Congress otherwise. And once this treaty is approved, it will be
exceedingly difficult to ever make changes to it. So essentially what is happening
is that the Obama agenda is being permanently locked in for 40 percent of the
global economy.
The United States, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Australia, Brunei,
Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam all intend to sign
on to this insidious plan. Collectively, these nations have a total population
of about 800 million people and a combined GDP of approximately 28 trillion
dollars.
In hailing the agreement, Obama said, "Congress and the American people
will have months to read every word" before he signs the deal that he described
as a win for all sides.
"If we can get this agreement to my desk, then we can help our businesses
sell more Made in America goods and services around the world, and we can
help more American workers compete and win," Obama said.
Sadly, just like with every other "free trade" agreement that the U.S. has
entered into since World War II, the exact opposite is what will actually happen.
Our trade deficit will get even larger, and we will see even more jobs and even
more businesses go overseas.
But the mainstream media will never tell you this. Instead, they are just
falling all over themselves as they heap praise on this new trade pact. Just
check out a couple of the headlines that we saw on Monday…
Overseas it is a different story. Many journalists over there fully recognize
that this treaty greatly benefits many of the big corporations that played a
key role in drafting it. For example, the following comes
from a newspaper in Thailand…
You will hear much about the importance of the TPP for "free trade".
The reality is that this is an agreement to manage its members' trade
and investment relations - and to do so on behalf of each country's most
powerful business lobbies.
Packaged as a gift to the American people that will renew industry and
make us more competitive, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a Trojan horse.
It's a coup by multinational corporations who want global subservience to
their agenda. Buyer beware. Citizens beware.
The gigantic corporations that dominate our economy don't care about the
little guy. If they can save a few cents on the manufacturing of an item by
moving production to Timbuktu they will do it.
Over the past couple of decades, the United States has lost tens of thousands
of manufacturing facilities and millions of good paying jobs due to these "free
trade agreements". As we merge our economy with the economies of nations where
it is legal to pay slave labor wages, it is inevitable that corporations will
shift jobs to places where labor is much cheaper. Our economic infrastructure
is being absolutely eviscerated in the process, and very few of our politicians
seem to care.
Once upon a time, the city of Detroit was the greatest manufacturing city
on the planet and it had the highest per capita income in the entire nation.
But today it is a rotting, decaying hellhole that the rest of the world laughs
at. What has happened to the city of Detroit is happening to the entire nation
as a whole, but our politicians just keep pushing us even farther down the road
to oblivion.
Just consider what has happened since NAFTA was implemented. In the year
before NAFTA was approved, the United States actually had a trade surplus
with Mexico and our trade deficit with Canada was only 29.6 billion dollars.
But now things are very different. In one recent year, the U.S. had a combined
trade deficit with Mexico and Canada of
177 billion dollars.
And these trade deficits are not just numbers. They represent real jobs that
are being lost. It has been estimated that the U.S. economy loses
approximately 9,000 jobs for every 1 billion dollars of goods that are imported
from overseas, and one professor has estimated that cutting our trade deficit
in half would create
5 million more jobs in the United States.
Just yesterday, I wrote about how there are
102.6 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now. Once
upon a time, if you were honest, dependable and hard working it was easy to
get a good paying job in this country. But now things are completely different.
Why aren't more people alarmed by numbers like this?
And of course the Trans-Pacific Partnership is not just about "free trade".
In one of my
previous articles, I explained that Obama is using this as an opportunity
to permanently impose much of his agenda on a large portion of the globe…
It is basically a gigantic end run around Congress.
Thanks to leaks, we have learned that so many of the things that Obama has
deeply wanted for years are in this treaty. If adopted, this treaty
will fundamentally change our laws regarding Internet freedom, healthcare,
copyright and patent protection, food safety, environmental standards, civil
liberties and so much more. This treaty includes many of the rules
that alarmed Internet activists so much
when SOPA was being debated, it would essentially ban all "Buy American"
laws, it would give Wall Street banks much more freedom to trade risky
derivatives and it would force even more domestic manufacturing offshore.
The Republicans in Congress foolishly gave Obama
fast track negotiating authority, and so Congress will not be able to change
this treaty in any way. They will only have the opportunity for an up or down
vote.
I would love to see Congress reject this deal, but we all know that is extremely
unlikely to happen. When big votes like this come up, immense pressure is put
on key politicians. Yes, there are a few members of Congress that still have
backbones, but most of them are absolutely spineless. When push comes to shove,
the globalist agenda always seems to advance.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media will be telling the American people about
all of the wonderful things that this new treaty will do for them. You would
think that after how badly past "free trade" treaties have turned out that we
would learn something, but somehow that never seems to happen.
The agenda of the globalists is moving forward, and very few Americans seem
to care.
First of all, because NAFTA means jobs. American jobs, and good-paying
American jobs. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't support this agreement.
Freddie
Many of those NeoCon Bibi lovers and Jonathan Pollard conservatives love
TPP and H1B Ted Cruz. Ted is also a Goldman Sachs boy.
Squids_In
That giant sucking sound just got gianter.
MrTouchdown
Probably, but here's a thought:
It might be a blowing sound of all things USA deflating down (in USD
terms) to what they are actually worth when compared to the rest of the
world. For example, a GM assembly line worker will make what an assembly
line worker in Vietnam makes.
This will, of course, panic Old Yellen, who will promptly fill her diaper
and begin subsidizing wages with Quantitative Pleasing (QP1).
Buckaroo Banzai
If this gets through congress, the Republican Party better not bother
asking for my vote ever again.
Chupacabra-322
Vote? You seem to think "voting" will actually influence actions / Globalists
plans which have been decades in the making amoungst thse Criminal Pure
Evil Lucerferian Psychopaths hell bent on Total Complete Full Spectrum World
Domination.
Yea, keep voting. I'll be out hunting down these Evil doers like the
dogs that they are.
Buckaroo Banzai
I have no illusions regarding the efficacy of voting. It is indeed a
waste of time.
What I said was, they better not dare even ASK for my vote.
Ignatius
Doesn't matter. Diebold is so good at counting that you don't even need
to show up at the polls anymore. It's like a miracle of modern technology.
Peter Pan
Did the article say 40%?
I imagine they meant 40% of whatever is left after we all go to hell
in a hand basket.
Great day for the multinationals and in particular the pharmaceutical
companies.
But those politicians lucky enough to win discover -- if they did not know already -- that their
capacity to affect even their own domestic environment is constrained by forces beyond their control.
Notable quotes:
"... But those politicians lucky enough to win discover -- if they did not know already -- that their capacity to affect even their own domestic environment is constrained by forces beyond their control. ..."
"... In the case of Britain, the once-powerful centralized governments of that country are now multiply constrained. As the power of Britain in international affairs has declined, so has the British government's power within its own domain. Membership of the European Union constrains British governments' ability to determine everything from the quantities of fish British fishermen can legally catch to the amount in fees that British universities can charge students from other EU countries. ..."
"... Not least, the EU's insistence on the free movement of labor caused the Conservative-dominated coalition that came to power in 2010 to renege on the Tories' spectacularly ill-judged pledge to reduce to "tens of thousands a year" the number of migrants coming to Britain. The number admitted in 2014 alone was nearer 300,000. ..."
"... On top of all that, British governments -- even more than those of some other predominantly capitalist economies -- are open to being buffeted by market forces, whose winds can acquire gale force. In a world of substantially free trade, imports and exports of goods and services are largely beyond any government's control, and the Bank of England's influence over the external value of sterling is negligible. During the present election campaign, HSBC, one of the world's largest banks, indicated that it was contemplating shifting its headquarters from the City of London to Hong Kong. For good or ill, Britain's government was, and is, effectively helpless to intervene. ..."
"... That's why we need a federal Europe. Local governments for local issues and elected by the local people and a European government for European issues elected by all Europeans. ..."
Once upon a time, national elections were -- or seemed to be -- overwhelmingly domestic affairs,
affecting only the peoples of the countries taking part in them. If that was ever true, it is so
no longer. Angela Merkel negotiates with Greece's government with Germany's voters looming in the
background. David Cameron currently fights an election campaign in the UK holding fast to the belief
that a false move on his part regarding Britain's relationship with the EU could cost his Conservative
Party seats, votes and possibly the entire election.
Britain provides a good illustration of a general proposition. It used to be claimed, plausibly,
that "all politics is local." In 2015, electoral politics may still be mostly local, but the post-electoral
business of government is anything but local. There is a misfit between the two. Voters are mainly
swayed by domestic issues. Vote-seeking politicians campaign accordingly. But those politicians
lucky enough to win discover -- if they did not know already -- that their capacity to affect even
their own domestic environment is constrained by forces beyond their control.
Anyone viewing the UK election campaign from afar could be forgiven for thinking that British
voters and politicians alike imagined they were living on some kind of self-sufficient sea-girt island.
The opinion polls indicate that a large majority of voters are preoccupied -- politically as well
as in other ways -- with their own financial situation, tax rates, welfare spending and the future
of the National Health Service. Immigration is an issue for many voters, but mostly in domestic terms
(and often as a surrogate for generalized discontent with Britain's political class). The fact that
migrants from Eastern Europe and elsewhere make a positive net contribution to both the UK's economy
and its social services scarcely features in the campaign.
... ... ...
After polling day, all that will change -- probably to millions of voters' dismay. One American
presidential candidate famously said that politicians campaign in poetry, but govern in prose. Politicians
in democracies, not just in Britain, campaign as though they can move mountains, then find that most
mountains are hard or impossible to move.
In the case of Britain, the once-powerful centralized governments of that country are now
multiply constrained. As the power of Britain in international affairs has declined, so has the British
government's power within its own domain. Membership of the European Union constrains British governments'
ability to determine everything from the quantities of fish British fishermen can legally catch to
the amount in fees that British universities can charge students from other EU countries.
Not least, the EU's insistence on the free movement of labor caused the Conservative-dominated
coalition that came to power in 2010 to renege on the Tories' spectacularly ill-judged pledge to
reduce to "tens of thousands a year" the number of migrants coming to Britain. The number admitted
in 2014 alone was nearer 300,000.
The UK's courts are also far more active than they were. The British parliament in 1998 incorporated
the European Convention on Human Rights into British domestic law, and British judges have determinedly
enforced those rights. During the 1970s, they had already been handed responsibility for enforcing
the full range of EU law within the UK.
Also, Britain's judges have, on their own initiative, exercised increasingly frequently their
long-standing power of "judicial review," invalidating ministerial decisions that violated due process
or seemed to them to be wholly unreasonable. Devolution of substantial powers to semi-independent
governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has also meant that the jurisdiction of many
so-called UK government ministers is effectively confined to the purely English component part.
On top of all that, British governments -- even more than those of some other predominantly
capitalist economies -- are open to being buffeted by market forces, whose winds can acquire gale
force. In a world of substantially free trade, imports and exports of goods and services are largely
beyond any government's control, and the Bank of England's influence over the external value of sterling
is negligible. During the present election campaign, HSBC, one of the world's largest banks, indicated
that it was contemplating shifting its headquarters from the City of London to Hong Kong. For good
or ill, Britain's government was, and is, effectively helpless to intervene.
The heirs of Gladstone, Disraeli, Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, Britain's political leaders
are understandably still tempted to talk big. But their effective real-world influence is small.
No wonder a lot of voters in Britain feel they are being conned.
ItsJustTim
That's globalization. And it won't go away, even if you vote nationalist. The issues are increasingly
international, while the voters still have a mostly local perspective. That's why we need
a federal Europe. Local governments for local issues and elected by the local people and a European
government for European issues elected by all Europeans.
"... it seems fair to say: Globalism isn't quite the Wave of the Future that most observers thought it was, even just a year ago. And so before we attempt to divide the true intentions of Clinton and Trump, we might first step back and consider how we got to this point. ..."
"... An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations . ..."
"... Clinton will say anything then she'll sell you out. I hope we never get a chance to see how she will sell us out on TPP ..."
"... What we would be headed for under Hillary Clinton is fascism--Mussolini's shorthand definition of fascism was the marriage of industry and commerce with the power of the State. That is what the plutocrats who run the big banks (to whom she owes her soul) aim to do. President, Thomas Jefferson knew the dangers of large European-style central banks. ..."
On the surface, it appears that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, for all their mutual antipathy,
are united on one big issue: opposition to new trade deals. Here's a recent headline in
The Guardian: "Trump and Clinton's free trade retreat: a pivotal moment for the world's
economic future."
And the subhead continues in that vein:
Never before have both main presidential candidates broken so completely with Washington orthodoxy
on globalization, even as the White House refuses to give up. The problem, however, goes much
deeper than trade deals.
In the above quote, we can note the deliberate use of the loaded word, "problem." As in, it's
a problem that free trade is unpopular-a problem, perhaps, that the MSM can fix. Yet in the
meantime, the newspaper sighed, the two biggest trade deals on the horizon, the well-known
Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), and the lesser-known
Trans Atlantic Trade Investment
Partnership (TTIP), aimed at further linking the U.S. and European Union (EU), are both in jeopardy.
So now we must ask broader questions: What does this mean for trade treaties overall? And what
are the implications for globalism?
More specifically, we can ask: Are we sure that the two main White House hopefuls, Clinton and
Trump, are truly sincere in their opposition to those deals? After all, as has been
widely reported, President Obama still has plans to push TPP through to enactment in the "lame
duck" session of Congress after the November elections. Of course, Obama wouldn't seek to do that
if the president-elect opposed it-or would he?
Yet on August 30, Politico reminded its Beltway readership, "How
Trump or Clinton could kill Pacific trade deal." In other words, even if Obama were to move TPP
forward in his last two months in office, the 45th president could still block its implementation
in 2017 and beyond. If, that is, she or he really wanted to.
Indeed, as we think about Clinton and Trump, we realize that there's "opposition" that's for show
and there's opposition that's for real.
Still, given what's been said on the presidential campaign trail this year, it seems fair
to say: Globalism isn't quite the Wave of the Future that most observers thought it was, even just
a year ago. And so before we attempt to divide the true intentions of Clinton and Trump, we might
first step back and consider how we got to this point.
2. The Free Trade Orthodoxy
It's poignant that the headline, "Trump and Clinton's free trade retreat", lamenting the decay
of free trade, appeared in The Guardian. Until recently, the newspaper was known as The
Manchester Guardian, as in Manchester, England. And Manchester is not only a big city, population
2.5 million, it is also a city with a fabled past: You see, Manchester was the cradle of the Industrial
Revolution, which transformed England and the world. It was that city that helped create the free
trade orthodoxy that is now crumbling.
Yes, in the 18th and 19th centuries, Manchester was the leading manufacturing city in the world,
especially for textiles. It was known as "Cottonopolis."
Indeed, back then, Manchester was so much more efficient and effective at mass production that
it led the world in exports. That is, it could produce its goods at such low cost that it could send
them across vast oceans and still undercut local producers on price and quality.
Over time, this economic reality congealed into a school of thought: As Manchester grew rich from
exports, its business leaders easily found economists, journalists, and propagandists who would help
advance their cause in the press and among the intelligentsia.
The resulting school of thought became known, in the 19th century, as "Manchester
Liberalism." And so, to this day, long after Manchester has lost its economic preeminence to
rivals elsewhere in the world, the phrase "Manchester Liberalism" is a well-known in the history
of economics, bespeaking ardent support for free markets and free trade.
More recently, the hub for free-trade enthusiasm has been the United States. In particular, the
University of Chicago, home to the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, became free trade's
academic citadel; hence the "Chicago
School" has displaced Manchesterism.
And just as it made sense for Manchester Liberalism to exalt free trade and exports when Manchester
and England were on top, so, too, did the Chicago School exalt free trade when the U.S. was unquestionably
the top dog.
So back in the 40s and 50s, when the rest of the world was either bombed flat or still under the
yoke of colonialism, it made perfect sense that the U.S., as the only intact industrial power, would
celebrate industrial exports: We were Number One, and it was perfectly rational to make the most
of that first-place status. And if scribblers and scholars could help make the case for this new
status quo, well, bring 'em aboard. Thus the Chicago School gained ascendancy in the late 20th century.
And of course, the Chicagoans drew inspiration from a period even earlier than Manchesterism,
3. On the Origins of the Orthodoxy: Adam Smith and David Ricardo
One passage in that volume considers how individuals might optimize their own production and consumption:
It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family never to attempt to make at home what it
will cost him more to make than to buy.
Smith is right, of course; everyone should always be calculating, however informally, whether
or not it's cheaper to make it at home or buy it from someone else.
We can quickly see: If each family must make its own clothes and grow its own food, it's likely
to be worse off than if it can buy its necessities from a large-scale producer. Why? Because, to
be blunt about it, most of us don't really know how to make clothes and grow food, and it's expensive
and difficult-if not downright impossible-to learn how. So we can conclude that self-sufficiency,
however rustic and charming, is almost always a recipe for poverty.
Smith had a better idea: specialization. That is, people would specialize in one line of
work, gain skills, earn more money, and then use that money in the marketplace, buying what they
needed from other kinds of specialists.
Moreover, the even better news, in Smith's mind, was that this kind of specialization came naturally
to people-that is, if they were free to scheme out their own advancement. As Smith argued, the ideal
system would allow "every man to pursue his own interest his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality,
liberty and justice."
That is, men (and women) would do that which they did best, and then they would all come together
in the free marketplace-each person being inspired to do better, thanks to, as Smith so memorably
put it, the "invisible hand." Thus Smith articulated a key insight that undergirds the whole of modern
economics-and, of course, modern-day prosperity.
A few decades later, in the early 19th century, Smith's pioneering work was expanded upon by another
remarkable British economist, David Ricardo.
Ricardo's big idea built on Smithian specialization; Ricardo called it "comparative advantage."
That is, just as each individual should do what he or she does best, so should each country.
In Ricardo's well-known illustration, he explained that the warm and sunny climate of Portugal
made that country ideal for growing the grapes needed for wine, while the factories of England made
that country ideal for spinning the fibers needed for apparel and other finished fabrics.
Thus, in Ricardo's view, we could see the makings of a beautiful economic friendship: The Portuguese
would utilize their comparative advantage (climate) and export their surplus wine to England, while
the English would utilize their comparative advantage (manufacturing) and export apparel to Portugal.
Thus each would benefit from the exchange of efficiently-produced products, as each export paid for
the other.
Furthermore, in Ricardo's telling, if tariffs and other barriers were eliminated, then both countries,
Portugal and England, would enjoy the maximum free-trading win-win.
Actually, in point of fact-and Ricardo knew this-the relationship was much more of a win for England,
because manufacture is more lucrative than agriculture. That is, a factory in Manchester could crank
out garments a lot faster than a vineyard in Portugal could ferment wine.
And as we all know, the richer, stronger countries are industrial, not agricultural. Food is essential-and
alcohol is pleasurable-but the real money is made in making things. After all, crops can be grown
easily enough in many places, and so prices stay low. By contrast, manufacturing requires a lot of
know-how and a huge upfront investment. Yet with enough powerful manufacturing, a nation is always
guaranteed to be able to afford to import food. And also, it can make military weapons, and so, if
necessary, take foreign food and croplands by force.
We can also observe that Ricardo, smart fellow that he was, nevertheless was describing the economy
at a certain point in time-the era of horse-drawn carriages and sailing ships. Ricardo realized that
transportation was, in fact, a key business variable. He wrote that it was possible for a company
to seek economic advantage by moving a factory from one part of England to another. And yet in his
view, writing from the perspective of the year 1817, it was impossible to imagine
moving a factory from England to another country:
It would not follow that capital and population would necessarily move from England to Holland,
or Spain, or Russia.
Why this presumed immobility of capital and people? Because, from Ricardo's early 19th-century
perspective, transportation was inevitably slow and creaky; he didn't foresee steamships and airplanes.
In his day, relying on the technology of the time, it wasn't realistic to think that factories, and
their workers, could relocate from one country to another.
Moreover, in Ricardo's era, many countries were actively hostile to industrialization, because
change would upset the aristocratic rhythms of the old order. That is, industrialization could turn
docile or fatalistic peasants, spread out thinly across the countryside, into angry and self-aware
proletarians, concentrated in the big cities-and that was a formula for unrest, even revolution.
Indeed, it was not until the 20th century that every country-including China, a great civilization,
long asleep under decadent imperial misrule-figured out that it had no choice other than to industrialize.
So we can see that the ideas of Smith and Ricardo, enduringly powerful as they have been, were
nonetheless products of their time-that is, a time when England mostly had the advantages of industrialism
to itself. In particular, Ricardo's celebration of comparative advantage can be seen as an artifact
of his own era, when England enjoyed a massive first-mover advantage in the industrial-export game.
Smith died in 1790, and Ricardo died in 1823; a lot has changed since then. And yet the two economists
were so lucid in their writings that their work is studied and admired to this day.
Unfortunately, we can also observe that their ideas have been frozen in a kind of intellectual
amber; even in the 21st century, free trade and old-fashioned comparative advantage are unquestioningly
regarded as the keys to the wealth of nations-at least in the U.S.-even if they are so no longer.
4. Nationalist Alternatives to Free Trade Orthodoxy
As we have seen, Smith and Ricardo were pushing an idea, free trade, that was advantageous to
Britain.
So perhaps not surprisingly, rival countries-notably the United States and Germany-soon developed
different ideas. Leaders in Washington, D.C., and Berlin didn't want their respective nations to
be mere dependent receptacles for English goods; they wanted real independence. And so they wanted
factories of their own.
In the late 18th century, Alexander Hamilton, the visionary American patriot, could see that both
economic wealth and military power flowed from domestic industry. As the nation's first Treasury
Secretary, he persuaded President George Washington and the Congress to support a system of protective
tariffs and "internal improvements" (what today we would call infrastructure) to foster US manufacturing
and exporting.
And in the 19th century, Germany, under the much heavier-handed leadership of Otto von Bismarck,
had the same idea: Make a concerted effort to make the nation stronger.
In both countries, this industrial policymaking succeeded. So whereas at the beginning of the
19th century, England had led the world in steel production, by the beginning of the 20th century
century, the U.S. and Germany had moved well ahead. Yes, the "invisible hand" of individual self-interest
is always a powerful economic force, but sometimes, the "visible hand" of national purpose, animated
by patriotism, is even more powerful.
Thus by 1914, at the onset of World War One, we could see the results of the Smith/Ricardo model,
on the one hand, and the Hamilton/Bismarck model, on the other. All three countries-Britain, the
US, and Germany, were rich-but only the latter two had genuine industrial mojo. Indeed, during World
War One, English weakness became glaringly apparent in the 1915
shell crisis-as
in, artillery shells. It was only the massive importing of made-in-USA ammunition that saved Britain
from looming defeat.
Yet as always, times change, as do economic circumstances, as do prevailing ideas.
As we have seen, at the end of World War II, the U.S. was the only industrial power left standing.
And so it made sense for America to shift from a policy of Hamiltonian protection to a policy of
Smith-Ricardian export-minded free trade. Indeed, beginning in around 1945, both major political
parties, Democrats and Republicans, solidly embraced the new line: The U.S. would be the factory
for the world.
Yet if times, circumstances, and ideas change, they can always change again.
5. The Contemporary Crack-Up
As we have seen, in the 19th century, not every country wanted to be on the passive receiving
end of England's exports. And this was true, too, in the 20th century; Japan, notably, had its own
ideas.
If Japan had followed the Ricardian doctrine of comparative advantage, it would have focused on
exporting rice and tuna. Instead, by dint of hard work, ingenuity, and more than a little national
strategizing, Japan grew itself into a great and prosperous industrial power. Its exports, we might
note, were such high-value-adds as automobiles and electronics, not mere crops and fish.
Moreover, according to the same theory of comparative advantage, South Korea should have been
exporting parasols and kimchi, and China should have settled for exporting fortune cookies and pandas.
Yet as the South Korean economist
Ha-Joon Chang has chronicled,
these Asian nations resolved, in their no-nonsense neo-Confucian way, to launch state-guided private
industries-and the theory of comparative advantage be damned.
Yes, their efforts violated Western economic orthodoxy, but as the philosopher Kant once observed,
the actual proves the possible. Indeed, today, as we all know, the Asian tigers are among the richest
and fastest-growing economies in the world.
China is not only the world's largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP), but
also the world's largest manufacturing nation-producing 52 percent of color televisions, 75 percent
of mobile phones and 87 percent of the world's personal computers. The Chinese automobile industry
is the world's largest, twice the size of America's. China leads the world in foreign exchange
reserves. The United States is the main trading partner for seventy-six countries. China is the
main trading partner for 124.
In particular, we might pause over one item in that impressive litany: China makes 87 percent
of the world's personal computers.
Indeed, if it's true, as ZDNet reports, that
the Chinese have built "backdoors" into almost all the electronic equipment that they sell-that
is to say, the equipment that we buy-then we can assume that we face a serious military challenge,
as well as a serious economic challenge.
Yes, it's a safe bet that the People's Liberation Army has a good handle on our defense establishment,
especially now that the Pentagon has fully equipped itself with
Chinese-made iPhones and iPads.
Of course, we can safely predict that Defense Department bureaucrats will always say that there's
nothing to worry about, that they have the potential hacking/sabotage matter under control (although
just to be sure, the Pentagon might say, give us more money).
Yet we might note that this is the same defense establishment that couldn't keep track of lone
internal rogues such as Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden. Therefore, should we really believe that
this same DOD knows how to stop the determined efforts of a nation of 1.3 billion people, seeking
to hack machines-machines that they made in the first place?
Yes, the single strongest argument against the blind application of free- trade dogma is the doctrine
of self defense. That is, all the wealth in the world doesn't matter if you're conquered. Even Adam
Smith understood that; as he wrote, "Defense
. . . is of much more importance than opulence."
Yet today we can readily see: If we are grossly dependent on China for vital wares, then we can't
be truly independent of China. In fact, we should be downright fearful.
Still, despite these deep strategic threats, directly the result of careless importing, the Smith-Ricardo
orthodoxy remains powerful, even hegemonistic-at least in the English-speaking world.
Why is this so? Yes, economists are typically seen as cold and nerdy, even bloodless, and yet,
in fact, they are actual human beings. And as such, they are susceptible to the giddy-happy feeling
that comes from the hope of building a new utopia, the dream of ushering in an era of world harmony,
based on untrammeled international trade. Indeed, this woozy idealism among economists goes way back;
it was the British free trader Richard Cobden who declared in 1857,
Free trade is God's diplomacy. There is no other certain way of uniting people in the bonds
of peace.
And lo, so many wars later, many economists still believe that.
Indeed, economists today are still monolithically pro-fee trade; a
recent survey of economists found that 83 percent supported eliminating all tariffs and other
barriers; just 10 percent disagreed.
We might further note that others, too, in the financial and intellectual elite are fully on board
the free-trade train, including most corporate officers and their lobbyists, journalists, academics,
and, of course, the mostly for-hire think-tankers.
To be sure, there are always exceptions: As that Guardian article, the one lamenting the
sharp decrease in support for free trade as a "problem," noted, not all of corporate America is on
board, particularly those companies in the manufacturing sector:
Ford openly opposes TPP because it fears the deal does nothing to stop Japan manipulating its
currency at the expense of US rivals.
Indeed, we might note that the same Guardian story included an even more cautionary note,
asserting that support for free trade, overall, is remarkably rickety:
Some suggest a "bicycle theory" of trade deals: that the international bandwagon has to keep
rolling forward or else it all wobbles and falls down.
So what has happened? How could virtually the entire elite be united in enthusiasm for free trade,
and yet, even so, the free trade juggernaut is no steadier than a mere two-wheeled bike? Moreover,
free traders will ask: Why aren't the leaders leading? More to the point, why aren't the followers
following?
To answer those questions, we might start by noting the four-decade phenomenon of
wage stagnation-that's
taken a toll on support for free trade. But of course, it's in the heartland that wages have been
stagnating; by contrast,
incomes for
the bicoastal elites have been soaring.
We might also note that some expert predictions have been way off, thus undermining confidence
in their expertise. Remember, this spring, when all the experts were saying that the United Kingdom
would fall into recession, or worse, if it voted to leave the EU? Well, just the other day came this
New York Post headline: "Brexit
actually boosting the UK economy."
Thus from the Wall Street-ish perspective of the urban chattering classes, things are going well-so
what's the problem?
Yet the folks on Main Street have known a different story. They have seen, with their own eyes,
what has happened to them, and no fusillade of op-eds or think-tank monographs will persuade them
to change their mind.
However, because the two parties have been so united on the issues of trade and globalization-the
"Uniparty," it's sometimes called-the folks in the boonies have had no political alternative. And
as they say, the only power you have in this world is the power of an alternative. And so, lacking
an alternative, the working/middle class has just had to accept its fate.
Indeed, it has been a bitter fate, particularly bitter in the former industrial heartland. In
a 2013 paper, the
Economic Policy Institute (EPI) came to some startling conclusions:
Growing trade with less-developed countries lowered wages in 2011 by 5.5 percent-or by roughly
$1,800-for a full-time, full-year worker earning the average wage for workers without a four-year
college degree.
The paper added, "One-third of this total effect is due to growing trade with just China."
Continuing, EPI found that even as trade with low-wage countries caused a decrease in the incomes
for lower-end workers, it had caused an increase in the incomes of high-end workers-so no
wonder the high-end thinks globalism in great.
To be sure, some in the elite are bothered by what's been happening.
Peggy Noonan, writing earlier this year in The Wall Street Journal-a piece that must have
raised the hackles of her doctrinaire colleagues-put the matter succinctly: There's a wide, and widening,
gap between the "protected" and the "unprotected":
The protected make public policy. The unprotected live in it. The unprotected are starting
to push back, powerfully.
Of course, Noonan was alluding to the Trump candidacy-and also to the candidacy of Sen. Bernie
Sanders. Those two insurgents, in different parties, have been propelled by the pushing from all
the unprotected folks across America.
We might pause to note that free traders have arguments which undoubtedly deserve a fuller airing.
Okay. However, we can still see the limits. For example, the familiar gambit of outsourcing jobs
to China, or Mexico-or 50 other countries-and calling that "free trade" is now socially unacceptable,
and politically unsustainable.
Still, the broader vision of planetary freedom, including the free flow of peoples and their ideas,
is always enormously appealing. The United States, as well as the world, undoubtedly benefits from
competition, from social and economic mobility-and yes, from new blood.
As
Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, notes, "77
percent of the full-time graduate students in electrical engineering and 71 percent in computer science
at U.S. universities are international students." That's a statistic that should give every American
pause to ask: Why aren't we producing more engineers here at home?
We can say, with admiration, that Silicon Valley is the latest Manchester; as such, it's a powerful
magnet for the best and the brightest from overseas, and from a purely dollars-and-cents point of
view, there's a lot to be said for welcoming them.
So yes, it would be nice if we could retain this international mobility that benefits the U.S.-but
only if the economic benefits can be broadly shared, and patriotic assimilation of immigrants can
be truly achieved, such that all Americans can feel good about welcoming newcomers.
The further enrichment of Silicon Valley won't do much good for the country unless those riches
are somehow widely shared. In fact, amidst the ongoing outsourcing of mass-production jobs,
total employment in such boomtowns as San Francisco and San Jose has barely budged. That is,
new software billionaires are being minted every day, but their workforces tend to be tiny-or located
overseas. If that past pattern is the future pattern, well, something will have to give.
We can say: If America is to be
one nation-something Mitt "47 percent" Romney never worried about, although it cost him in the
end-then we will have to figure out a way to turn the genius of the few into good jobs for the many.
The goal isn't socialism, or anything like that; instead, the goal is the widespread distribution
of private property, facilitated, by conscious national economic development, as
I argued at the tail end of this piece.
If we can't, or won't, find a way to expand private ownership nationwide, then the populist upsurges
of the Trump and Sanders campaigns will be remembered as mere overtures to a starkly divergent future.
6. Clinton and Trump Say They Are Trade Hawks: But Are They Sincere?
So now we come to a mega-question for 2016: How should we judge the sincerity of the two major-party
candidates, Clinton or Trump, when they affirm their opposition to TPP? And how do we assess their
attitude toward globalization, including immigration, overall?
The future is, of course, unknown, but we can make a couple of points.
First, it is true that
many have questioned the sincerity of Hillary's new anti-TPP stance, especially given the presence
of such prominent free-traders as vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine and presidential transition-planning
chief Ken Salazar. Moreover, there's also Hillary's own decades-long association with open-borders
immigration policies, as well as past support for such trade bills as NAFTA, PNTR, and, of course,
TPP. And oh yes, there's the Clinton Foundation, that global laundromat for every overseas fortune;
most of those billionaires are globalists par excellence-would a President Hillary really
cross them?
Second, since there's still no way to see inside another person's mind, the best we can
do is look for external clues-by which we mean, external pressures. And so we might ask a basic question:
Would the 45th president, whoever she or he is, feel compelled by those external pressures to keep
their stated commitment to the voters? Or would they feel that they owe more to their elite friends,
allies, and benefactors?
As we have seen, Clinton has long chosen to surround herself with free traders and globalists.
Moreover, she has raised money from virtually every bicoastal billionaire in America.
So we must wonder: Will a new President Clinton really betray her own class-all those
Davos Men and Davos Women-for the sake of middle-class folks she has never met, except maybe
on a rope line? Would Clinton 45, who has spent her life courting the powerful, really stick her
neck out for unnamed strangers-who never gave a dime to the Clinton Foundation?
Okay, so what to make of Trump? He, too, is a fat-cat-even more of fat-cat, in fact, than Clinton.
And yet for more than a year now, he has based his campaign on opposition to globalism in all its
forms; it's been the basis of his campaign-indeed, the basis of his base. And his campaign policy
advisers are emphatic. According to Politico, as recently as August 30, Trump trade adviser
Peter Navarro reiterated Trump's opposition to TPP, declaring,
Any deal must increase the GDP growth rate, reduce the trade deficit, and strengthen the manufacturing
base.
So, were Trump to win the White House, he would come in with a much more solid anti-globalist
mandate.
Thus we can ask: Would a President Trump really cross his own populist-nationalist base by going
over to the other side-to the globalists who voted, and donated, against him? If he did-if he repudiated
his central platform plank-he would implode his presidency, the way that Bush 41 imploded his presidency
in 1990 when he went back on his "read my lips, no new taxes" pledge.
Surely Trump remembers that moment of political calamity well, and so surely, whatever mistakes
he might make, he won't make that one.
To be sure, the future is unknowable. However, as we have seen, the past, both recent and historical,
is rich with valuable clues.
Clinton will say anything then she'll sell you out. I hope we never get a chance to see
how she will sell us out on TPP
Ellen Bell -> HoosierMilitia
You really do not understand the primitive form of capitalism that the moneyed elites are trying
to impose on us. That system is mercantilism and two of its major tenets are to only give the
workers subsistence level wages (what they are doing to poor people abroad and attempting to do
here) and monopolistic control of everything that is possible to monopolize. The large multi-nationals
have already done that. What we would be headed for under Hillary Clinton is fascism--Mussolini's
shorthand definition of fascism was the marriage of industry and commerce with the power of the
State. That is what the plutocrats who run the big banks (to whom she owes her soul) aim to do.
President, Thomas Jefferson knew the dangers of large European-style central banks. He said:
"...The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the
Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes
for anything but Coin. If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of
their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will
grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will
wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered..."
The power to create money was given to the private banking system of the Federal Reserve in
1913. Nearly every bit of our enormous debt has been incurred since then. The American people
have become debt-slaves. In the Constitution, only Congress has the right to issue currency. That's
why the plutocrats want to do away with it--among other reasons.
"... Donald Trump is challenging the very fabric of the institutional elites in this country on both sides that have, quite frankly, just straight up screwed this country up and made the world a mess. ..."
Tom Coyne, a lifelong Democrat and the mayor of Brook Park, Ohio, spoke
about his endorsement of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump with Breitbart
News Daily SiriusXM host Matt Boyle.
Coyne said:
The parties are blurred. What's the difference? They say the same things
in different tones. At the end of the day, they accomplish nothing.
Donald Trump is challenging the very fabric of the institutional elites
in this country on both sides that have, quite frankly, just straight up
screwed this country up and made the world a mess.
Regarding the GOP establishment's so-called Never Trumpers, Coyne stated,
"If it's their expertise that people are relying upon as to advice to vote,
people should go the opposite."
In an interview last week, Coyne said that Democrats and Republicans
have failed the city through inaction and bad trade policies, key themes
Trump often trumpets.
"He understands us," Coyne said of Trump. "He is saying what we feel,
and therefore, let him shake the bedevils out of everyone in the canyons
of Washington D.C. The American people are responding to him."
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00
a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
"... Donald Trump isn't a politician -- he's a one-man wrecking ball against our dysfunctional and corrupt establishment. We're about to see the deluxe version of the left's favorite theme: Vote for us or we'll call you stupid. It's the working class against the smirking class. ..."
"... He understands that if we're ever going to get our economy back on its feet the wage-earning middle class will have to prosper along with investors ..."
"... Trump that really "gets" the idea that the economy is suffering because the middle class can't find employment at livable wages ..."
"... Ms. Coulter says it more eloquently: "The Republican establishment has no idea how much ordinary voters hate both parties." Like me, she's especially annoyed with Republicans, because we think of the Republican Party as being our political "family" that has turned against us: ..."
"... The RNC has been forcing Republican candidates to take suicidal positions forever They were happy to get 100 percent of the Business Roundtable vote and 20 percent of the regular vote. ..."
"... American companies used free trade with low-wage countries as an opportunity to close their American factories and relocate the jobs to lower-paying foreign workers. Instead of creating product and exporting it to other countries, our American companies EXPORTED American JOBS to other countries and IMPORTED foreign-made PRODUCTS into America! Our exports have actually DECLINED during the last five years with most of the 20 countries we signed free trade with. Even our exports to Canada, our oldest free trade partner, are less than what they were five years ago. ..."
"... Trade with Japan, China, and South Korea is even more imbalanced, because those countries actively restrict imports of American-made products. We run a 4x trade imbalance with China, which cost us $367 billion last year. We lost $69 billion to Japan and $28 billion to South Korea. Our exports to these countries are actually DECLINING, even while our imports soar! ..."
"... Why do Establishment Republicans join with Democrats in wanting to diminish the future with the WRONG kind of "free trade" that removes jobs and wealth from the USA? As Ms. Coulter reminds us, it is because Republican Establishment, like the Democrat establishment, is PAID by the money and jobs they receive from big corporations to believe it. ..."
"... The donor class doesn't care. The rich are like locusts: once they've picked America dry, they'll move on to the next country. A hedge fund executive quoted in The Atlantic a few years ago said, "If the transformation of the world economy lifts four people in China and India out of poverty and into the middle class, and meanwhile [that] means one American drops out of the middle class, that's not such a bad trade." ..."
"... The corporate 1% who believe that the global labor market should be tapped in order to beat American workers out of their jobs; and that corporations and the 1% who own them should be come tax-exempt organizations that profit by using cheap overseas labor to product product that is sold in the USA, and without paying taxes on the profit. Ms. Coulter calls this group of Republican Estblishmentarians "locusts: once they've picked America dry, they'll move on to the next country." ..."
"... Pretending to care about the interests of minorities. Of course, the Republican Establishment has even less appeal to minorities than to the White Middle Class (WMC) they abandoned. Minorities are no more interested in losing their jobs to foreigners or to suffer economic stagnation while the rich have their increasing wealth (most of which is earned at the expense of the middle class) tax-sheltered, than do the WMC. ..."
"... Trump has given Republicans a new lease on life. The Establishment doesn't like having to take a back seat to him, but perhaps they should understand that having a back seat in a popular production is so much better than standing outside alone in the cold. ..."
Donald Trump isn't a politician -- he's a one-man wrecking ball against our dysfunctional
and corrupt establishment. We're about to see the deluxe version of the left's favorite theme: Vote
for us or we'll call you stupid. It's the working class against the smirking class.
No pandering! The essence of Trump in personality and issues , August 23, 2016
Ms. Coulter explains the journey of myself and so many other voters into Trump's camp. It captures
the essence of Trump as a personality and Trump on the issues. If I had to sum Ms. Coulter's view
of the reason for Trump's success in two words, I'd say "No Pandering!" I've heard many people,
including a Liberal tell me, "Trump says what needs to be said."
I've voted Republican in every election going back to Reagan in 1980, except for 2012 when
I supported President Obama's re-election. I've either voted for, or financially supported many
"Establishment Republicans" like Mitt Romney and John McCain in 2008. I've also supported some
Conservative ones like Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani. In this election I'd been planning to
vote for Jeb Bush, a superb governor when I lived in Florida.
Then Trump announced his candidacy. I had seen hints of that happening as far back as 2012.
In my Amazon reviews in 2012 I said that many voters weren't pleased with Obama or the Republican
Establishment. So the question became: "Who do you vote for if you don't favor the agendas of
either party's legacy candidates?" In November 2013 I commented on the book DOUBLE DOWN: GAME
CHANGE 2012 by Mark Halperin and John Heileman:
=====
Mr. Trump occupies an important place in the political spectrum --- that of being a Republican
Populist.
He understands that if we're ever going to get our economy back on its feet the wage-earning
middle class will have to prosper along with investors, who are recovering our fortunes in
the stock market.
IMO whichever party nominates a candidate like Trump that really "gets" the idea that the
economy is suffering because the middle class can't find employment at livable wages, will
be the party that rises to dominance.
Mr. Trump, despite his flakiness, at least understood that essential fact of American economic
life.
November 7, 2013
=====
Ms. Coulter says it more eloquently: "The Republican establishment has no idea how much
ordinary voters hate both parties." Like me, she's especially annoyed with Republicans, because
we think of the Republican Party as being our political "family" that has turned against us:
===== The RNC has been forcing Republican candidates to take suicidal positions forever They were
happy to get 100 percent of the Business Roundtable vote and 20 percent of the regular vote.
when the GOP wins an election, there is no corresponding "win" for the unemployed blue-collar
voter in North Carolina. He still loses his job to a foreign worker or a closed manufacturing
plant, his kids are still boxed out of college by affirmative action for immigrants, his community
is still plagued with high taxes and high crime brought in with all that cheap foreign labor.
There's no question but that the country is heading toward being Brazil. One doesn't have to
agree with the reason to see that the very rich have gotten much richer, placing them well beyond
the concerns of ordinary people, and the middle class is disappearing. America doesn't make anything
anymore, except Hollywood movies and Facebook. At the same time, we're importing a huge peasant
class, which is impoverishing what remains of the middle class, whose taxes support cheap labor
for the rich.
With Trump, Americans finally have the opportunity to vote for something that's popular.
=====
That explains how Trump won my vote --- and held on to it through a myriad of early blunders
and controversies that almost made me switch my support to other candidates.
I'm no "xenophobe isolationist" stereotype. My first employer was an immigrant from Eastern
Europe. What I learned working for him launched me on my successful career. I've developed and
sold computer systems to subsidiaries of American companies in Europe and Asia. My business partners
have been English and Canadian immigrants. My family are all foreign-born Hispanics. Three of
my college roommates were from Ecuador, Germany, and Syria.
BECAUSE of this international experience I agree with the issues of trade and immigration that
Ms. Coulter talks about that have prompted Trump's rising popularity.
First, there is the false promise that free trade with low-wage countries would "create millions
of high-paying jobs for American workers, who will be busy making high-value products for export."
NAFTA was signed in 1994. GATT with China was signed in 2001. Since then we've signed free trade
with 20 countries. It was said that besides creating jobs for Americans, that free trade would
prosper the global economy. In truth the opposite happened:
American companies used free trade with low-wage countries as an opportunity to close their
American factories and relocate the jobs to lower-paying foreign workers. Instead of creating
product and exporting it to other countries, our American companies EXPORTED American JOBS to
other countries and IMPORTED foreign-made PRODUCTS into America! Our exports have actually DECLINED
during the last five years with most of the 20 countries we signed free trade with. Even our exports
to Canada, our oldest free trade partner, are less than what they were five years ago.
We ran trade SURPLUSES with Mexico until 1994, when NAFTA was signed. The very next year the
surplus turned to deficit, now $60 billion a year. Given that each American worker produces an
average of $64,000 in value per year, that is a loss of 937,000 American jobs to Mexico alone.
The problem is A) that Mexicans are not wealthy enough to be able to afford much in the way of
American-made product and B) there isn't much in the way of American-made product left to buy,
since so much of former American-made product is now made in Mexico or China.
Trade with Japan, China, and South Korea is even more imbalanced, because those countries
actively restrict imports of American-made products. We run a 4x trade imbalance with China, which
cost us $367 billion last year. We lost $69 billion to Japan and $28 billion to South Korea. Our
exports to these countries are actually DECLINING, even while our imports soar!
Thus, free trade, except with a few fair-trading countries like Canada, Australia, and possibly
Britain, has been a losing proposition. Is it coincidence that our economy has weakened with each
trade deal we have signed? Our peak year of labor force participation was 1999. Then we had the
Y2K collapse and the Great Recession, followed by the weakest "recovery" since WWII? As Trump
would say, free trade has been a "disaster."
Why do Establishment Republicans join with Democrats in wanting to diminish the future
with the WRONG kind of "free trade" that removes jobs and wealth from the USA? As Ms. Coulter
reminds us, it is because Republican Establishment, like the Democrat establishment, is PAID by
the money and jobs they receive from big corporations to believe it. Ms. Coulter says:
===== The donor class doesn't care. The rich are like locusts: once they've picked America dry,
they'll move on to the next country. A hedge fund executive quoted in The Atlantic a few years
ago said, "If the transformation of the world economy lifts four people in China and India
out of poverty and into the middle class, and meanwhile [that] means one American drops out
of the middle class, that's not such a bad trade."
=====
Then there is immigration. My wife, son, and extended family legally immigrated to the USA
from Latin America. The first family members were recruited by our government during the labor
shortage of the Korean War. Some fought for the United States in Korea. Some of their children
fought for us in Vietnam, and some grandchildren are fighting in the Middle East. Most have
become successful professionals and business owners. They came here LEGALLY, some waiting in
queue for up to 12 years. They were supported by the family already in America until they were
on their feet.
Illegal immigration has been less happy. Illegals are here because the Democrats want new voters
and the Republicans want cheap labor. Contrary to business propaganda, illegals cost Americans
their jobs. A colleague just old me, "My son returned home from California after five years, because
he couldn't get construction work any longer. All those jobs are now done off the books by illegals."
It's the same in technology. Even while our high-tech companies are laying off 260,000 American
employees in 2016 alone, they are banging the drums to expand the importation of FOREIGN tech
workers from 85,000 to 195,000 to replace the Americans they let go. Although the H1-B program
is billed as bringing in only the most exceptional, high-value foreign engineers, in truth most
visas are issued to replace American workers with young foreigners of mediocre ability who'll
work for much less money than the American family bread-winners they replaced.
Both parties express their "reverse racism" against the White Middle Class. Democrats don't
like them because they tend to vote Republican. The Republican Establishment doesn't like them
because they cost more to employ than overseas workers and illegal aliens. According to them the
WMC is too technologically out of date and overpaid to allow our benighted business leaders to
"compete internationally."
Ms. Coulter says "Americans are homesick" for our country that is being lost to illegal immigration
and the removal of our livelihoods overseas. We are sick of Republican and Democrat Party hidden
agendas, reverse-racism, and economic genocide against the American people. That's why the Establishment
candidates who started out so theoretically strong, like Jeb Bush, collapsed like waterlogged
houses of cards when they met Donald Trump. As Ms. Coulter explains, Trump knows their hidden
agendas, and knows they are working against the best interests of the American Middle Class.
Coulter keeps coming back to Mr. Trump's "Alpha Male" personality that speaks to Americans
as nation without pandering to specific voter identity groups. She contrasts his style to the
self-serving "Republican (Establishment) Brain Trust that is mostly composed of comfortable, well-paid
mediocrities who, by getting a gig in politics, earn salaries higher than a capitalist system
would ever value their talents." She explains what she sees as the idiocy of those Republican
Establishment political consultants who wrecked the campaigns of Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz by micromanaging
with pandering.
She says the Republican Establishment lost because it served itself --- becoming wealthy by
serving the moneyed interests of Wall Street. Trump won because he is speaking to the disfranchised
American Middle Class who loves our country, is proud of our traditions, and believes that Americans
have as much right to feed our families through gainful employment as do overseas workers and
illegal aliens.
"I am YOUR voice," says Trump to the Middle Class that until now has been ignored and even
sneered at by both parties' establishments.
I've given an overview of the book here. The real delight is in the details, told as only Anne
Coulter can tell them. I've quoted a few snippets of her words, that relate most specifically
to my views on Trump and the issues. I wish there were space to quote many more. Alas, you'll
need to read the book to glean them all!
Bruce, I would also add that the Republican Establishment chose not to represent the interests
of the White Middle Class on trade, immigration, and other issues that matter to us. They chose
to represent the narrow interests of:
1. The corporate 1% who believe that the global labor market should be tapped in order
to beat American workers out of their jobs; and that corporations and the 1% who own them should
be come tax-exempt organizations that profit by using cheap overseas labor to product product
that is sold in the USA, and without paying taxes on the profit. Ms. Coulter calls this group
of Republican Estblishmentarians "locusts: once they've picked America dry, they'll move on to
the next country."
2. Pretending to care about the interests of minorities. Of course, the Republican Establishment
has even less appeal to minorities than to the White Middle Class (WMC) they abandoned. Minorities
are no more interested in losing their jobs to foreigners or to suffer economic stagnation while
the rich have their increasing wealth (most of which is earned at the expense of the middle class)
tax-sheltered, than do the WMC.
The Republican Establishment is in a snit because Trump beat them by picking up the WMC votes
that the Establishment abandoned. What would have happened if Trump had not come on the scene?
The probable result is that the Establishment would have nominated a ticket of Jeb Bush and John
Kasich. These candidates had much to recommend them as popular governors of key swing states.
But they would have gone into the election fighting the campaign with Republican Establishment
issues that only matter to the 1%. They would have lost much of the WMC vote that ultimately rallied
around Trump, while gaining no more than the usual 6% of minorities who vote Republican. It would
have resulted in a severe loss for the Republican Party, perhaps making it the minority party
for the rest of the century.
Trump has given Republicans a new lease on life. The Establishment doesn't like having
to take a back seat to him, but perhaps they should understand that having a back seat in a popular
production is so much better than standing outside alone in the cold.
It's funny how White Men are supposed to be angry. But I've never seen any White men:
1. Running amok, looting and burning down their neighborhood, shooting police and other "angry
White men." There were 50 people shot in Chicago last weekend alone. How many of those do you
think were "angry white men?" Hint: they were every color EXCEPT white.
2. Running around complaining that they aren't allowed into the other gender's bathroom, then
when they barge their way in there complain about being sexually assaulted. No, it's only "angry
females" (of any ethnicity) who barge their way into the men's room and then complain that somebody
in there offended them.
Those "angry white men" are as legendary as "Bigfoot." They are alleged to exist everywhere,
but are never seen. Maybe that's because they mostly hang out in the quiet neighborhoods of cookie-cutter
homes in suburbia, go to the lake or bar-be-que on weekends, and take their allotment of Viagra
in hopes of occassionally "getting lucky" with their wives. If they're "angry" then at least they
don't take their angry frustrations out on others, as so many other militant, "in-your-face" activist
groups do!
"... I've tuned out Warren-she has become the "red meat" surrogate for Clinton. Just because Taibbi was excellent on exposing Wall St. doesn't mean he really knows s**t about politics. I find the depiction of Trump as some kind of monster-buffoon to be simply boring and not very helpful. ..."
"... (might be the Trump Chaos bc Hillary will strategically turn our war machine on us can't believe this is as good as it gets, sighed out) ..."
"... Having the establishment, the military-industrial complex and Wall Street against him helps Trump a lot. ..."
"... You can fool part of the people all the time, and all people part of the time, but Brexit won, so will Trump, politician extraordinaire ..."
"... Given his family, a Trump presidency may look more like JFK's, where Bobby had more power than LBJ. Also, given Trump's negotiating expertise, I would certainly not believe any assertion of support he proclaims for the VP. I expect he had little choice in the matter, and that he also plans to send the VP to the hinterlands at the first opportunity. I'm unclear why so many appear to believe the VP has any influence whatsoever; I believe GWB was the only post-WW2 president who let the VP have any power. ..."
"... What is a populist? Somebody that tries to do what the majority want. Current examples: Less wars and military spending. More infrastructure spending. Less support for banks and corps (imagine how many votes trump would gain if he said 'as pres I will jail bankers that break the law' And how that repudiates Obama and both parties.) Gun control (but not possible from within the rep party) ..."
"... What is a fascist? Somebody that supports corporations, military, and military adventures. ..."
"... Actually, it sounds a whole lot like a different candidate from a different party, doesn't it? ..."
"... Neoliberal "Goodthink" flag. What this means when neoliberals say it is not let's build a better global society for all it means Corporations and our military should be able to run roughshod over the world and the people's of other countries. Exploit their citizens for cheap Labor, destroy their environment and move on. These are the exact policies of Hillary Clinton (see TPP, increase foreign wars etc.). Hillary globalism is not about global Brotherhood it's about global economic and military exploitation. Trump is nationalist non – interventionist, which leads to less global military destruction than hillary and less global exploitation. So who is a better for those outside the US, hillary the interventionist OR trump the non-interventionist? ..."
"... Look, the Clintons are criminals, and their affiliate entities, including the DNC, could be considered criminal enterprises or co-conspirators at this point. ..."
"... The very fact that Establishment, Wall St and Koch bros are behind HRC is evidence that the current 'status quo' will be continued! I cannot stand another 4 years of Hilabama. ..."
"... The striving for American empire has so totally confused the political order of the country that up is down and down is up. The idea of government for and by the people is a distant memory. Covering for lies and contradictions of beliefs has blurred any notion of principles informing public action. ..."
"... If there is any principle that matters today, it is the pursuit of money and profit reigns supreme. Trump is populist in the sense he is talking about bringing money and wealth back to the working classes. Not by giving it directly, but by forcing businesses to turn their sights back to the US proper and return to making their profits at home. In the end, it is all nostalgia and probably impossible, but working class people remember those days so it rings true. That is hope and change in action. People also could care less if he cheats on his taxes or is found out lying about how much he is worth. Once again, fudging your net worth is something working people care little about. Having their share of the pie is all that matters and Trump is tapping into that. ..."
"... The only crime Trump has committed so far is his language. Liberals like Clinton, Blair and Obama drip blood. ..."
"... The 2016 election cannot be looked at in isolation. The wars for profit are spreading from Nigeria through Syria to Ukraine. Turkey was just lost to the Islamists and is on the road to being a failed state. The EU is in an existential crisis due to Brexit, the refugee crisis and austerity. Western leadership is utterly incompetent and failing to protect its citizens. Globalization is failing. Its Losers are tipping over the apple cart. Humans are returning to their tribal roots for safety. The drums for war with Russia are beating. Clinton / Kaine are 100% Status Quo Globalists. Trump / Pence are candidates of change to who knows what. Currently I am planning on voting for the Green Party in the hope it becomes viable and praying that the chaos avoids Maryland. ..."
I've tuned out Warren-she has become the "red meat" surrogate for Clinton. Just because
Taibbi was excellent on exposing Wall St. doesn't mean he really knows s**t about politics. I
find the depiction of Trump as some kind of monster-buffoon to be simply boring and not very helpful.
for all the run around Hillary, Trump's chosen circle of allies are Wall Street and Austerity
enablers. actually, Trump chaos could boost the enablers as easily as Hillary's direct mongering.
War is Money low hanging fruit in this cash strapped era and either directly or indirectly neither
candidate will disappoint.
So I Ask Myself which candidate will the majority manage sustainability while assembling to create
different outcomes? (might be the Trump Chaos bc Hillary will strategically turn our war machine
on us can't believe this is as good as it gets, sighed out)
War is only good for the profiteers when it can be undertaken in another territory. Bringing
the chaos home cannot be good for business. Endless calls for confidence and stability in markets
must reflect the fact that disorder effects more business that the few corporations that benefit
directly from spreading chaos. A split in the business community seems to be underway or at least
a possible leverage point to bring about positive change.
Even the splits in the political class reflect this. Those that benefit from spreading chaos are
loosing strength because they have lost control of where that chaos takes place and who is directly
effected from its implementation. Blowback and collateral damage are finally registering.
Trump may be a disaster. Clinton will be a disaster. One of these two will win. I won't vote
for either, but if you put a gun to my head and forced me to choose, I'd take Trump. He's certainly
not a fascist (I think it was either Vice or Vox that had an article where they asked a bunch
of historians of fascism if he was, the answer was a resounding no), he's a populist in the Andrew
Jackson style. If nothing else Trump will (probably) not start WW3 with Russia.
And war with Russia doesn't depend just on Hillary, it depends on us in Western Europe agreeing
with it.
A laughable proposition. The official US policy, as you may recall, is
fuck the EU .
Where was Europe when we toppled the Ukrainian govt? Get back to me when you can actually spend
2% GDP on your military. At the moment you can't even control your illegal immigrants.
The political parties that survive display adaptability, and ideological consistency isn't
a requirement for that. Look at the party of Lincoln. Or look at the party of FDR.
If the Democrats decapitate the Republican party by bringing in the Kagans of this world and
Republican suburbanites in swing states, then the Republicans will go where the votes are; the
Iron Law of Institutions will drive them to do it, and the purge of the party after Trump will
open the positions in the party for people with that goal.
In a way, what we're seeing now is what should have happened to the Republicans in
2008. The Democrats had the Republicans down on the ground with Obama's boot on their neck. The
Republicans had organized and lost a disastrous war, they had lost the legislative and executive
branches, they were completely discredited ideologically, and they were thoroughly discredited
in the political class and in the press.
Instead, Obama, with his strategy of bipartisanship - good faith or not - gave them a hand
up, dusted them off, and let them right back in the game, by treating them as a legitimate opposition
party. So the Republican day of reckoning was postponed. We got various bids for power by factions
- the Tea Party, now the Liberty Caucus - but none of them came anywhere near taking real power,
despite (click-driven money-raising) Democrat hysteria.
And now the day of reckoning has arrived. Trump went through the hollow institutional shell
of the Republican Party like the German panzers through the French in 1939. And here we are!
(Needless to say, anybody - ***cough*** Ted Cruz ***cough*** - yammering about "conservative
principles" is part of the problem, dead weight, part of the dead past.) I don't know if the Republicans
can remake themselves after Trump; what he's doing is necessary for that, but may not be sufficient.
Republicans won Congress and the states because the Democrats handed them to them on a silver
platter. To Obama and his fan club meaningful power is a hot potato, to be discarded as soon as
plausible.
Having the establishment, the military-industrial complex and Wall Street against him helps
Trump a lot.
Pro-Sanders folks, blacks, and hispanics will mostly vote for Trump.
Having Gov. Pence on the ticket, core Republicans and the silent majority will vote for Trump.
Women deep inside know Trump will help their true interests better than the Clinton-Obama rinse
repeat
Young people, sick and tired of the current obviously rigged system, will vote for change.
You can fool part of the people all the time, and all people part of the time, but Brexit
won, so will Trump, politician extraordinaire
Even Michael Moore gets it
Trump has intimated that he is not going to deal with the nuts and bolts of government,
that will be Pence's job.
Given his family, a Trump presidency may look more like JFK's, where Bobby had more power
than LBJ.
Also, given Trump's negotiating expertise, I would certainly not believe any assertion of support
he proclaims for the VP. I expect he had little choice in the matter, and that he also plans to
send the VP to the hinterlands at the first opportunity. I'm unclear why so many appear to believe
the VP has any influence whatsoever; I believe GWB was the only post-WW2 president who let the
VP have any power.
Minorities will benefit at least as much as whites with infrastructure spending, which trump
says he wants to do It would make him popular, which he likes, why not believe him? And if pres
he would be able to get enough rep votes to get it passed. No chance with Hillary, who anyway
would rather spend on wars, which are mostly fought by minorities.
What is a populist? Somebody that tries to do what the majority want. Current examples:
Less wars and military spending. More infrastructure spending. Less support for banks and corps
(imagine how many votes trump would gain if he said 'as pres I will jail bankers that break the
law' And how that repudiates Obama and both parties.) Gun control (but not possible from within
the rep party)
What is a fascist? Somebody that supports corporations, military, and military adventures.
I'm saying you have a much better chance to pressure Clinton
Sorry, but this argues from facts not in evidence and closely resembles the Correct the Record
troll line (now substantiated through the Wikileaks dump) that Clinton "has to be elected" because
she is at least responsive to progressive concerns.
Except she isn't, and the degree to which the DNC clearly has been trying to pander to disillusioned
Republicans and the amount of bile they spew every time they lament how HRC has had to "veer left"
shows quite conclusively to my mind that, in fact, the opposite of what you say is true.
Also, when NAFTA was being debated in the '90s, the Clintons showed themselves to be remarkably
unresponsive both to the concerns of organized labor (who opposed it) as well as the majority
of the members of their own party, who voted against it. NAFTA was passed only with a majority
of Republican votes.
I have no way of knowing whether you're a troll or sincerely believe this, but either way,
it needs to be pointed out that the historical record actually contradicts your premise. If you
do really believe this, try not to be so easily taken in by crafty rhetoric.
BTW, I'll take Trump's record as a husband over HRC's record as a wife. He loves a woman, then
they break up, and he finds another one. This is not unusual in the US. Hillary, OTOH, "stood
by her man" through multiple publicly humiliating infidelities, including having to settle out
of court for more than $800,000, and rape charges. No problem with her if her husband was flying
many times on the "Lolita Express" with a child molester. Could be she had no idea where her "loved
one" was at the time. Do they in fact sleep in the same bed, or even live in the same house? I
don't know.
RE: calling Donald Trump a "sociopath"-this is another one of those words that is thrown around
carelessly, like "nazi" and "fascist". In the Psychology Today article "How to Spot a Sociopath",
they list 16 key behavioral characteristics. I can't see them in Trump-you could make a case for
a few of them, but not all. For example: "failure to follow any life plan", "sex life impersonal,
trivial, and poorly integrated", "poor judgment and failure to learn by experience", "incapacity
for love"-–you can't reasonably attach these characteristics to The Donald, who, indeed, has a
more impressive and loving progeny than any other prez candidate I can think of.
"I have a sense of international identity as well: we are all brothers and sisters."
Neoliberal "Goodthink" flag. What this means when neoliberals say it is not let's build
a better global society for all it means Corporations and our military should be able to run roughshod
over the world and the people's of other countries. Exploit their citizens for cheap Labor, destroy
their environment and move on. These are the exact policies of Hillary Clinton (see TPP, increase
foreign wars etc.). Hillary globalism is not about global Brotherhood it's about global economic
and military exploitation. Trump is nationalist non – interventionist, which leads to less global
military destruction than hillary and less global exploitation. So who is a better for those outside
the US, hillary the interventionist OR trump the non-interventionist?
"And not everyone feels the same way, but for most voters there is either a strong tribal loyalty
(Dem or Repub) or a weaker sense of "us" guiding the voter on that day.
Mad as I am about the Blue Dogs, I strongly identify with the Dems."
So you recognize you are a tribalist, and assume all the baggage and irrationality that tribalism
often fosters, but instead of addressing your tribalism you embrace it. What you seem to be saying
(to me)is that we should leave critical thinking at the door and become dem tribalists like you.
"But the Repubs and Dems see Wall Street issues through different cultural prisms. Republican
are more reflexively pro-business. It matters."
Hillary Clinton's biggest donors are Wallstreet and her dem. Husband destroyed glass-steagall.
Trump wants to reinstate glass-steagall, so who is more business friendly again?
"He is racist, and so he knows how to push ugly buttons."
This identity politics trope is getting so old. Both are racist just in different ways, Trump
says in your face racist things, which ensure the injustice cannot be ignored, where hillary has
and does support racist policies, that use stealth racism to incrementaly increase the misery
of minorities, while allowing the majority to pretend it's not happening.
"First, he will govern with the Republicans. Republican judges, TPP, military spending, environmental
rollbacks, etc. Trump will not overrule Repubs in Congress."
These are literally hillarys policies not trumps.
Trump: anti TPP, stop foreign interventions, close bases use money for infrastructure.
Hillary :Pro TPP, more interventions and military spending
"And no, no great Left populist party will ride to the rescue. The populist tradition (identity)
is mostly rightwing and racist in our society.
People do not change political identity like their clothes. The left tradition in the US, such
as it is, is in the Dem party."
So what you are saying is quit being stupid, populism is bad and you should vote for hillarys
neoliberalism. The democrats were once left so even if they are no longer left, we must continue
to support them if another party or candidate that is to the left isn't a democrat? Your logic
hurts my head.
Look, the Clintons are criminals, and their affiliate entities, including the DNC, could
be considered criminal enterprises or co-conspirators at this point. Those who haven't realized
that, or worse, who shill for them are willfully ignorant, amoral, or unethical. The fact that
that includes a large chunk of the population doesn't change that. I don't vote for criminals.
The very fact that Establishment, Wall St and Koch bros are behind HRC is evidence that
the current 'status quo' will be continued! I cannot stand another 4 years of Hilabama.
I hate Hillary more than Trump. I want to protest at the Establishment, which at this represented
by Hillary.
Populism (support for popular issues) is, well, popular.
Fascism (support for corps and military adventures) is, at least after our ME adventures, unpopular.
Commenters are expressing support for the person expressing popular views, such as infrastructure
spending, and expressing little support for the candidate they believe is most fascist.
Btw, Most on this site are liberals, few are reps, so to support him they have had to buck
some of their long held antipathy regarding reps.
Right, what is changing with Trump is the Republicans are going back to, say, the Eisenhower
era, when Ike started the interstate highway system, a socialist program if there ever was one.
It's a good article; this is a general observation. Sorry!
"Hate" seems to be a continuing Democrat meme, and heck, who can be for hate? So it makes sense
rhetorically, but in policy terms it's about as sensible as being against @ssh0les (since as the
good book says, ye have the @ssh0les always with you). So we're really looking at virtue signaling
as a mode of reinforcing tribalism, and to be taken seriously only for that reason. If you look
at the political class writing about the working class - modulo writers like Chris Arnade - the
hate is plain as day, though it's covered up with the rhetoric of meritocracy, taking care of
losers, etc.
Strategic hate management is a great concept. It's like hate can never be created or destroyed,
and is there as a resource to be mined or extracted. The Clinton campaign is doing a great job
of strategic hate management right now, by linking Putin and Trump, capitalizing on all the good
work done in the press over the last year or so.
For years we have been told that government should be run like a business. In truth that statement
was used as a cudgel to avoid having the government provide any kind of a safety net to its citizenry
because there was little or no profit in it for the people who think that government largess should
only be for them.
Here's the thing, if government had been run like a business, we the people would own huge
portions of Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Chase today. We wouldn't have bailed them out without
an equity stake in them. Most cities would have a share of the gate for every stadium that was
built. And rather than paying nothing to the community Walmart would have been paying a share
of their profits (much as those have dropped over the years).
I do not like Trump's business, but he truly does approach his brand and his relationships
as a business. When he says he doesn't like the trade deals because they are bad business and
bad deals he is correct. IF the well being of the United states and his populace are what you
are interested in regarding trade deals, ours are failures. Now most of us here know that was
not the point of the trade deals. They have been a spectacular success for many of our largest
businesses and richest people, but for America as a whole they have increased our trade deficit
and devastated our job base. When he says he won't go there, this is one I believe him on.
I also believe him on NATO and on the whole Russian thing. Why, because of the same reasons
I believe him on Trade. They are not winners for America as a whole. They are bad deals. Europe
is NOT living up to their contractual agreement regarding NATO. For someone who is a believer
in getting the better of the deal that is downright disgusting. And he sees no benefit in getting
into a war with Russia. The whole reserve currency thing vs. nukes is not going to work for him
as a cost benefit analysis of doing it. He is not going to front this because it is a business
loser.
We truly have the worst choices from the main parties in my lifetime. There are many reasons
Trump is a bad candidate. But on these two, he is far more credible and on the better side of
things than the Democratic nominee. And on the few where she might reasonably considered to have
a better position, unfortunately I do not for a moment believe her to be doing more than giving
lip service based on both her record and her character.
Is it your opinion that to have globalisation we must marginalize russia to the extent that
they realize they can't have utopia and make the practical choice of allowing finance capitalism
to guide them to realistic incrementally achieved debt bondage?
The Democratic Party has been inching further and further to the right. Bernie tried to arrest
this drift, but his internal populist rebellion was successfully thwarted by party elite corruption.
The Democratic position is now so far to the right that the Republicans will marginalize themselves
if they try to keep to the right of the Democrats.
But, despite party loyalty or PC slogans, the Democrat's rightward position is now so obvious
that it can be longer disguised by spin. The Trump campaign has demonstrated, the best electoral
strategy for the Republican Party is to leapfrog leftward and campaign from a less corporate position.
This has given space for the re-evaluation of party positions that Trump is enunciating, and the
result is that the Trump is running to the
left of Hillary. How weird is this?
I meant to use right and left to refer generally to elite vs popular. The issue is too big
to discuss without some simplification, and I'm sorry it has distracted from the main issue. On
the face of it, judging from the primaries, the Republican candidates who represented continued
rightward drift were rejected. (Indications are that the same thing happened in the Democratic
Party, but party control was stronger there, and democratic primary numbers will never be known).
The main point I was trying to make is that the Democratic party has been stretching credulity
to the breaking point in claiming to be democratic in any sense, and finally the contradiction
between their statements and actions has outpaced the capabilities of their propaganda. Their
Orwellian program overextended itself. Popular recognition of the disparity has caused a kind
of political "snap" that's initiated a radical reorganization of what used to be the party of
the right (or corporations, or elites, or finance, or "your description here".)
Besides confusion between which issues are right or left for Republicans or Democrats on the
national level, internationally, the breakdown of popular trust in the elites, and the failure
of their propaganda on that scale, is leading to a related worldwide distrust and rejection of
elite policies. This distrust has been percolating in pockets for some time, but it seems it's
now become so widespread that it's practically become a movement.
I suspect, however, there's a Plan B for this situation to restore the proper order. Will be
interesting to see how this plays out.
The striving for American empire has so totally confused the political order of the country
that up is down and down is up. The idea of government for and by the people is a distant memory.
Covering for lies and contradictions of beliefs has blurred any notion of principles informing
public action.
If there is any principle that matters today, it is the pursuit of money and profit reigns
supreme. Trump is populist in the sense he is talking about bringing money and wealth back to
the working classes. Not by giving it directly, but by forcing businesses to turn their sights
back to the US proper and return to making their profits at home. In the end, it is all nostalgia
and probably impossible, but working class people remember those days so it rings true. That is
hope and change in action. People also could care less if he cheats on his taxes or is found out
lying about how much he is worth. Once again, fudging your net worth is something working people
care little about. Having their share of the pie is all that matters and Trump is tapping into
that.
Clintons arrogance is worse because the transcripts probably clearly show her secretly conspiring
with bankers to screw the working people of this country. Trumps misdeeds effect his relationship
to other elites while Clintons directly effect working people.
Such a sorry state of affairs. When all that matters is the pursuit of money and profit, moving
forward will be difficult and full of moral contradictions. Populism needs a new goal. The political
machinery that gives us two pro-business hacks and an ineffectual third party has fundamentally
failed.
The business of America must be redefined, not somehow brought back to a mythical past greatness.
Talk about insanity.
"Bill Clinton has been a disaster for the Democratic Party. Send him packing."
"There's not much the Democrats can do about Mrs. Clinton. She's got a Senate seat for six
years. But there is no need for the party to look to her for leadership. The Democrats need to
regroup, re-establish their strong links to middle-class and working-class Americans, and move
on."
"You can't lead a nation if you are ashamed of the leadership of your party. The Clintons are
a terminally unethical and vulgar couple, and they've betrayed everyone who has ever believed
in them."
"As neither Clinton has the grace to retire from the scene, the Democrats have no choice but
to turn their backs on them. It won't be easy, but the Democrats need to try. If they succeed
they'll deserve the compliment Bill Clinton offered Gennifer Flowers after she lied under oath:
"Good for you." "
Amazing how the New York Times has "evolved" from Herbert's editorial stance of 15 years ago
to their unified editorial/news support for HRC's candacy,
In my view, it is not as if HRC has done anything to redeem herself in the intervening years.
It takes liberals to create a refugee crisis.
What country are we going to bomb back into the stone age this week?
We are very squeamish about offensive language.
We don't mind dropping bombs and ripping people apart with red hot shrapnel.
We are liberals.
Liberal sensibilities were on display in the film "Apocalypse Now".
No writing four letter words on the side of aircraft.
Napalm, white phosphorous and agent orange – no problem.
Liberals are like the English upper class – outward sophistication hiding the psychopath underneath.
They were renowned for their brutality towards slaves, the colonies and the English working class
(men, women and children) but terribly sophisticated when with their own.
Are you a bad language sort of person – Trump
Or a liberal, psychopath, empire builder – Clinton
The only crime Trump has committed so far is his language. Liberals like Clinton, Blair
and Obama drip blood.
Lambert strether said: my view is that the democrat party cannot be saved, but it can be seized.
Absolutely correct.
That is why Trump must be elected. Only then through the broken remains of both Parties can the
frangible Democrat Party be seized and restored.
The 2016 election cannot be looked at in isolation. The wars for profit are spreading from
Nigeria through Syria to Ukraine. Turkey was just lost to the Islamists and is on the road to
being a failed state. The EU is in an existential crisis due to Brexit, the refugee crisis and
austerity. Western leadership is utterly incompetent and failing to protect its citizens. Globalization
is failing. Its Losers are tipping over the apple cart. Humans are returning to their tribal roots
for safety. The drums for war with Russia are beating. Clinton / Kaine are 100% Status Quo Globalists.
Trump / Pence are candidates of change to who knows what. Currently I am planning on voting for
the Green Party in the hope it becomes viable and praying that the chaos avoids Maryland.
"... Because we interpreted the end of the Cold War as the ultimate vindication of America's economic system, we intensified our push toward the next level of capitalism, called globalization. It was presented as a project that would benefit everyone. Instead it has turned out to be a nightmare for many working people. Thanks to "disruption" and the "global supply chain," many American workers who could once support families with secure, decent-paying jobs must now hope they can be hired as greeters at Walmart. Meanwhile, a handful of super-rich financiers manipulate our political system to cement their hold on the nation's wealth. ..."
"... Rather than shifting to a less assertive and more cooperative foreign policy, we continued to insist that America must reign supreme. When we declared that we would not tolerate the emergence of another "peer power," we expected that other countries would blithely obey. Instead they ignore us. We interpret this as defiance and seek to punish the offenders. That has greatly intensified tensions between the United States and the countries we are told to consider our chief adversaries, Russia and China. ..."
Because we interpreted the end of the Cold War as the ultimate vindication
of America's economic system, we intensified our push toward the next level
of capitalism, called globalization. It was presented as a project that
would benefit everyone. Instead it has turned out to be a nightmare for
many working people. Thanks to "disruption" and the "global supply chain,"
many American workers who could once support families with secure, decent-paying
jobs must now hope they can be hired as greeters at Walmart. Meanwhile,
a handful of super-rich financiers manipulate our political system to cement
their hold on the nation's wealth.
Enrique Ferro's insight:
Moments of change require adaptation, but the United States is not good
at adapting. We are used to being in charge. This blinded us to the reality
that as other countries began rising, our relative power would inevitably
decline. Rather than shifting to a less assertive and more cooperative
foreign policy, we continued to insist that America must reign supreme.
When we declared that we would not tolerate the emergence of another "peer
power," we expected that other countries would blithely obey. Instead they
ignore us. We interpret this as defiance and seek to punish the offenders.
That has greatly intensified tensions between the United States and the
countries we are told to consider our chief adversaries, Russia and China.
This is downright sickening and the people who are voting for Hillary will not even care what will
happen with the USA iif she is elected.
By attacking Trump using "Khan gambit" she risks a violent backlash (And not only via Wikileaks,
which already promised to release information about her before the elections)
People also start to understand that she is like Trump. He destroyed several hundred American lifes
by robbing them, exploiting their vanity (standard practice in the USA those days) via Trump University
scam. She destroyed the whole country -- Libya and is complicit in killing Khaddafi (who, while not
a nice guy, was keeping the country together and providing be highest standard of living in Africa for
his people).
In other words she is a monster and sociopath. He probably is a narcissist too. So there is no much
phychological difference between them. And we need tight proportions to judge this situation if we are
talking about Hillary vs Trump.
As for people voting for Trump -- yes they will. I think if Hillary goes aganst Trump, the female
neoliberal monster will be trumped. She has little chances even taking into account the level of brainwashing
in the USA (which actually is close to those that existed in the USSR).
Notable quotes:
"... The reason Trump and Sanders are doing well in the US while fascists are doing well in Europe is the same reason: neoliberalism has gutted, or is in the process of gutting, societies. Workers and other formerly "safe" white collar workers are seeing their job security, income security, retirement security all go up in smoke. Neoliberals are trying to snip and cut labor protections, healthcare, environmental regulations all for corporate profit. In Europe this is all in addition to a massive refugee crisis itself brought on by neoliberalism (neocon foreign policy is required for neoliberal social policy, they go hand-in-hand). The US and NATO destabilize countries with the intent of stealing their resources and protecting their markets, cause massive refugee flows which strain social structures in Europe (which falls right into the hands of the gutters and cutters of neoliberalism). Of course the people will lean fascist. ..."
"... U.S. Government Tried to Tackle Gun Violence in 1960s ..."
"... Another key feature of fascism is territorial expansionism. As far as I am aware, none of the nationalist parties advocate invading other countries or retaking former colonies. Once again, contemporary neoliberalism is far closer to fascism. But you are correct about both Israel and Turkey – our allies. They are much closer to the genuine article. But you won't hear those complaining about the rise of fascism in Europe complaining too much about them. ..."
"... The only way they have avoided complete revolt has been endless borrowing to fund entitlements, once that one-time fix plays out the consequences will be apparent. The funding mechanism itself (The Fed) has even morphed into a neo-liberal tool designed to enrich Capital while enslaving Labor with the consequences. ..."
"... "Every society chooses how resources are allocated between capital and labor." More specifically, isn't it a struggle between various political/economic/cultural movements within a society which chooses how resources are allocated between capital and labor. ..."
"... My objection to imprecise language here isn't merely pedantic. The leftist dismissal of right wing populists like Trump (or increasingly influential European movements like Ukip, AfD, and the Front national) as "fascist" is a reductionist rhetorical device intended to marginalize them by implying their politics are so far outside of the mainstream that they do not need to be taken seriously. ..."
"... " the gutters and cutters of neoliberalism" ..."
"... The neoliberals are all too aware that the clock is ticking. In this morning's NYT, yet more talk of ramming TPP through in the lame duck. ..."
"... The roads here are deteriorating FAST. In Price County, the road commissioner said last night that their budget allows for resurfacing all the roads on a 200 year basis. ..."
"... This Trump support seems like a form of political vandalism with Trump as the spray paint. People generally feel frustrated with government, utterly powerless and totally left out as the ranks of the precariat continue to grow. Trump appeals to the nihilistic tendencies of some people who, like frustrated teens, have decided to just smashed things up for the hell of it. They think a presidency mix of Caligula with Earl Scheib would be a funny hoot. ..."
"... Someone at American Conservative, when trying to get at why it's pointless to tell people Trump will wreck the place, described him as a "hand grenade" lobbed into the heart of government. You can't scare people with his crass-ness and destructive tendencies, because that's precisely what his voters are counting on when/if he gets into government. ..."
"... In other words, the MSM's fear is the clearest sign to these voters that their ..."
"... Your phrase "Trump is political vandalism" is great. I don't think I've seen a better description. NPR this morning was discussing Trump and his relationship with the press and the issues some GOP leaders have with him. When his followers were discussed, the speakers closely circled your vandalism point. Basically they said that his voters are angry with the power brokers and leaders in DC and regardless of whether they think Trump's statements are heartfelt or just rhetoric, they DO know he will stick it to those power brokers so that's good. Vandalism by a longer phrase. ..."
"... Meritocracy was ALWAYS a delusional fraud. What you invariably get, after a couple of generations, is a clique of elitists who define merit as themselves and reproduce it ad nauseam. Who still believes in such laughable kiddie stories? ..."
"... Campaign Finance Reform: If you can't walk into a voting booth you cannot contribute, or make all elections financed solely by government funds and make private contributions of any kind to any politician illegal. ..."
"... Re-institute Glass-Steagall but even more so. Limit the number of states a bank can operate in. Make the Fed publicly owned, not privately owned by banks. Completely revise corporate law, doing away with the legal person hood of corporations and limit of liability for corporate officers and shareholders. ..."
"... Single payer health care for everyone. Allow private health plans but do away with health insurance as a deductible for business. Remove the AMA's hold on licensing of medical schools which restricts the number of doctors. ..."
"... Do away with the cap on Social Security wages and make all income, wages, capital gains, interest, and dividends subject to taxation. Impose tariffs to compensate for lower labor costs overseas and revise industry. ..."
"... Cut the Defense budget by 50% and use that money for intensive infrastructure development. ..."
"... Raise the national minimum wage to $15 and hour. ..."
"... Severely curtail the revolving door from government to private industry with a 10 year restriction on working for an industry you dealt with in any way as a government official. ..."
"... Free public education including college (4 year degree). ..."
"... Obama and Holder, allowing the banks to be above the law have them demi-gods, many of whom are psychopaths and kleptocrats, and with their newly granted status, they are now re-shaping the world in their own image. Prosecute these demi-gods and restore sanity. Don't and their greed for our things will never end until nothings left. ..."
"... This is why Hillary is so much more dangerous than trump, because she and the demi gods are all on the same page. The TPP is their holy grail so I expect heaven and earth to be moved, especially if it looks like some trade traitors are going to get knocked off in the election, scoundrels like patty murray (dino, WA) will push to get it through then line up at the feed trough to gorge on k street dough. I plan to vote stein if it's not Bernie, but am reserving commitment until I see what kind of betrayals the dems have for me, if it's bad enough I'll go with the trump hand grenade. ..."
"... Totally agree tegnost, no more democratic neoliberals -- ..."
"... "they are now re-shaping the world in their own image" Isn't this intrinsic to bourgeois liberalism? ..."
"... Two things are driving our troubles: over-population and globalization. The plutocrats and kleptocrats have all the leverage over the rest of us laborers when the population of human beings has increased seven-fold in the last 70 years, from a little over a billion to seven billions (and growing) today. They are happy to let us freeze to death behind gas stations in order for them to compete with other oligarchs in excess consumption. ..."
"... Thank you for mentioning the third rail of overpopulation. Too often, this giant category of problems is ignored, because it makes people uncomfortable. The planet is finite, resources on the planet are finite, yet the number of people keeps growing. We need to strive for a higher quality of life, not a higher quantity of people. ..."
"... The issue goes beyond "current neoliberals up for election", it is most of our political establishment that has been corrupted by a system that provides for the best politicians money can buy. ..."
"... America has always been a country where a majority of the population has been poor. With the exception of a fifty five year(1950-2005) year period where access to large quantities of consumer debt by households was deployed to first to provide a wealth illusion to keep socialism at bay, followed by a mortgage debt boom to both keep the system afloat and strip the accumulated capital of the working class, i.e. home equity, the history of the US has been one of poverty for the masses. ..."
"... Further debt was foisted on the working class in the form of military Keynesianism, generating massive fiscal deficits which are to be paid for via austerity in a neo-feudal economy. ..."
The first comment gives a window into the hidden desperation in America that is showing up in statistics
like increasing opioid addiction and suicides, rather than in accounts of how and why so many people
are suffering. I hope readers will add their own observations in comments.
We recently took three months to travel the southern US from coast to coast. As an expat for
the past twenty years, beyond the eye opening experience it left us in a state of shock. From
a homeless man convulsing in the last throes of hypothermia (been there) behind a fuel station
in Houston (the couldn't care less attendant's only preoccupation getting our RV off his premises),
to the general squalor of near-homelessness such as the emergence of "American favelas" a block
away from gated communities or affluent ran areas, to transformation of RV parks into permanent
residencies for the foreclosed who have but their trailer or RV left, to social study one can
engage while queuing at the cash registers of a Walmart before beneficiaries of SNAP.
Stopping to take the time to talk and attempt to understand their predicament and their beliefs
as to the cause of their plight is a dizzying experience in and of itself. For a moment I felt
transposed to the times of the Cold War, when the Iron Curtain dialectics fuzzed the perception
of that other world to the west with a structured set of beliefs designed to blacken that horizon
as well as establish a righteous belief in their own existential paradigm.
What does that have to do with education? Everything if one considers the elitist trend that
is slowly setting the framework of tomorrow's society. For years I have felt there is a silent
"un-avowed conspiracy", why the seeming redundancy, because it is empirically driven as a by-product
of capitalism's surge and like a self-redeeming discount on a store shelf crystalizes a group
identity of think-alike know-little or nothing frustrated citizens easily corralled by a Fox or
Trump piper. We have re-rcreated the conditions or rather the reality of "Poverty In America"
barely half a century after its first diagnostic with one major difference : we are now feeding
the growth of the "underclass" by lifting ever higher and out of reach the upward mobility ladder,
once the banner of opportunity now fallen behind the supposedly sclerotic welfare states of Europe.
So Richard Cohen now fears American voters because of Trump. Well, on Diane Reem today (NPR)
was a discussion on why fascist parties are growing in Europe. Both Cohen and the clowns on NPR
missed the forest for the trees. The reason Trump and Sanders are doing well in the US while
fascists are doing well in Europe is the same reason: neoliberalism has gutted, or is in the process
of gutting, societies. Workers and other formerly "safe" white collar workers are seeing their
job security, income security, retirement security all go up in smoke. Neoliberals are trying
to snip and cut labor protections, healthcare, environmental regulations all for corporate profit.
In Europe this is all in addition to a massive refugee crisis itself brought on by neoliberalism
(neocon foreign policy is required for neoliberal social policy, they go hand-in-hand). The US
and NATO destabilize countries with the intent of stealing their resources and protecting their
markets, cause massive refugee flows which strain social structures in Europe (which falls right
into the hands of the gutters and cutters of neoliberalism). Of course the people will lean fascist.
In the US we don't have the refugees, but the neoliberalism is further along and more damaging.
There's no mystery here or in Europe, just the natural effects of governments failing to represent
real people in favor of useless eater rich.
Make the people into commodities, endanger their washes and job security, impose austerity,
and tale in floods of refugees. Of COURSE Europeans stay leaning fascist.
According to NPR's experts, many or most of those parties are "fascist". The fascist label
is getting tossed around a LOT right now. It is slung at Trump, at UKIP, or any others. Fascist
is what you call the opposition party to the right that you oppose. Now I don't call Trump a fascist.
A buffoon, yes, even a charlatan (I still rather doubt he really originally thought he would become
the GOP nominee. Perhaps I'm wrong but, like me, many seemed to think that he was pushing his
"brand" – a term usage of which I HATE because it IS like we are all commodities or businesses
rather than PEOPLE – and that he would drop by the wayside and profit from his publicity).
Be that as it may, NPR and Co were discussing the rise of fascist/neofascist parties and wondering
why there were doing so well. Easy answer: neoliberalism + refugee hoards = what you see in Europe.
I've also blamed a large part of today's gun violence in the USA on the fruits of neoliberalism.
Why? Same reason that ugly right-wing groups (fascist or not) are gaining ground around the Western
world. Neoliberalism destroys societies. It destroys the connections within societies (the USA
in this case). Because we have guns handy, the result is mass shootings and flashes of murder-suicides.
This didn't happen BEFORE neoliberalism got its hooks into American society. The guns were there,
always have been (when I was a teen I recall seeing gun mags advertising various "assault weapons"
for sale this was BEFORE Reagan and this was BEFORE mass shootings, etc). Machine guns were much
easier to come by BEFORE the 1980s yet we didn't have mass killings with machine guns, handguns,
or shotguns. ALL that stuff is a NEW disease. A disease rooted in neoliberalism. Neoliberalism
steals your job security, your healthcare security, your home, your retirement security, your
ability to provide for your family, your ability to send your kids to college, your ability to
BUY FOOD. Neoliberalism means you don't get to work for a company for 20 years and then see the
company pay you back for that long, good service with a pension. You'll be lucky to hold a job
at any company from month-to-month now and FORGET about benefits! Healthcare? Going by the wayside
too. Workers in the past felt a bond with each other, especially within a company. Neoliberalism
has turned all workers against each other because they have to fight to gain any of the scraps
being tossed out by the rich overlords. You can't work TOGETHER to gain mutual benefit, you need
to fight each other in a zero sum game. For ME to win you have to lose. You are a commodity. A
disposable and irrelevant widget. THAT combines with guns (that have always been available!) and
you get desperate acting out: mass shootings, murder suicides, etc.
There are actual fascist parties in Europe. To name a few in one country I've followed, Ukraine,
there's Right Sector, Svoboda, and others, and that's just one country. I don't think anyone calls
UKIP fascist.
@Praedor – Your comment that Yves posted and this one are excellent. One of the most succinct
statements of neoliberalism and its worst effects that I have seen.
As to the cause of recent mass gun violence, I think you have truly nailed it. If one thinks
at all about the ways in which the middle class and lower have been squeezed and abused, it's
no wonder that a few of them would turn to violence. It's the same despair and frustration that
leads to higher suicide rates, higher rates of opiate addiction and even decreased life expectancy.
"Machine guns were much easier to come by BEFORE the 1980s yet we didn't have mass killings
with machine guns, handguns, or shotguns. ALL that stuff is a NEW disease. A disease rooted in
neoliberalism."
Easy availability of guns was seen as a serious problem long before the advent of neoliberalism.
For one example of articles about this, see U.S. Government Tried to Tackle Gun Violence in
1960s . Other examples include 1920s and 1930s gangster and mob violence that were a consequence
of Prohibition (of alcohol). While gun violence per-capita might be increasing, the population
is far larger today, and the news media select incidents of violence to make them seem like they're
happening everywhere and that everyone needs to be afraid. That, of course, instills a sense of
insecurity and fear into the public mind; thus, a fearful public want a strong leader and are
willing to accept the inconvenience and dangers of a police state for protection.
America has plenty of refugees, from Latin America
Neo-liberal goes back to the Monroe Doctrine. We used to tame our native workers with immigrants,
and we still do, but we also tame them by globalism in trade. So many rationalizations for this,
based on political and economic propaganda. All problems caused by the same cause American predatory
behavior. And our great political choice iron fist with our without velvet glove.
Germany, Belgium, France, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Turkey, Israel, Australia come to mind
(if one is allowed to participate in a European song contest, one is supposed to be part of Europe
:) They all have more or less fascist governments.
Once you realize that the ECB creates something like 60 billion euros a month, and gives nothing
to its citizens nor its nation-states, that means the money goes to corporations, which means
that the ECB, and by extension the whole EU, is a fascist construct (fascism being defined as
a government running on behalf of the corporations).
That's a fallacy. Corporatism is a feature of fascism, not the other way around.
None of the governments you mention, with the possible exception of Israel and Turkey, can
be called fascist in any meaningful sense.
Even the anti-immigration parties in the Western European countries you mention – AfD, Front
National, Vlaams Belang – only share their nationalism with fascist movements. And they are decidedly
anti-corporatist.
The problem here is one of semantics, really. You're using "fascist" interchangeably with "authoritarian",
which is a misnomer for these groups. The EU is absolutely anti-democratic, authoritarian, and
technocratic in a lot of respects, but it's not fascist. Both have corporatist tendencies, but
fascist corporatism was much more radical, much more anti-capitalist (in the sense that the capitalist
class was expected to subordinate itself to the State as the embodiment of the will of the Nation
or People, as were the other classes/corporate units). EU technocratic corporatism has none of
the militarism, the active fiscal policy, the drive for government supported social cohesion,
the ethno-nationalism, or millenarianism of Fascism.
The emergent Right parties like UKIP, FNP, etc. share far more with the Fascists, thought I'd
say they generally aren't yet what Fascists would have recognized as other Fascists in the way
that the NSDAP and Italian Fascists recognized each other -perhaps they're more like fellow travelers.
True, I posted a few minutes ago saying roughly the same thing – but it seems to have gone
to moderation.
Another key feature of fascism is territorial expansionism. As far as I am aware, none
of the nationalist parties advocate invading other countries or retaking former colonies. Once
again, contemporary neoliberalism is far closer to fascism. But you are correct about both Israel
and Turkey – our allies. They are much closer to the genuine article. But you won't hear those
complaining about the rise of fascism in Europe complaining too much about them.
When I was young, there were 4 divisions:
* who owned the means of production (public or private entities)
* who decided what those means were used for.
If it is a 'public entity' (aka government or regime) that decides what is built, we have a totalitarian
state, which can be 'communist' (if the means also belong the public entities like the government
or regional fractions of it) or 'fascist' (if the factories are still in private hands).
If it is the private owner of the production capacity who decides what is built, you get capitalism.
I don't recall any examples of private entities deciding what to do with public means of production
(mafia perhaps).
Sheldon Wolin
introduced
us to inverted totalitarism. While it is no longer the government that decides what must be
done, the private 'owners' just buy the government, the judiciary, the press, or whatever is needed
to achieve their means.
When I cite Germany, it is not so much AfD, but the 2€/hour jobs I am worried about. When I cite
Belgium, it is not the fools of Vlaams Belang, but rather the un-taxing of corporations and the
tear-down of social justice that worries me.
But Jeff, is Wolin accurate in using the term "inverted totalitarianism" to try to capture
the nature of our modern extractive bureaucratic monolith that apparently functions in an environment
where "it is no longer the government that decides what must be done..simply.."private owners
just buy the government, the judiciary, the press, or whatever is needed to achieve their means."
Mirowski argues quite persuasively that the neoliberal ascendency does not represent the retreat
of the State but its remaking to strongly support a particular conception of a market society
that is imposed with the help of the State on our society.
For Mirowski, neoliberalism is definitely not politically libertarian or opposed to strong
state intervention in the economy and society.
Inverted totalitarianism is the mirror image of fascism, which is why so many are confused.
Fascism is just a easier term to use and more understandable by all. There is not a strict adherence
to fascism going on, but it's still totalitarian just the same.
Hi
I live in Europe as well, and what to think of Germany's AfD, Greece's Golden Dawn, the Wilder's
party in the Netherlands etc. Most of them subscribe to the freeloading, sorry free trading economic
policies of neoliberalism.
There's LePen in France and the far-right, fascist leaning party nearly won in Austria. The
far right in Greece as well. There's clearly a move to the far right in Europe. And then there's
the totalitarian mess that is Turkey. How much further this turn to a fascist leaning right goes
and how widespread remains to be seen, but it's clearly underway.
Searched 'current fascist movements europe' and got these active groups from wiki.
National Bolshevik Party-Belarus
Parti Communautaire National-Européen Belgium
Bulgarian National Alliance Bulgaria
Nova Hrvatska Desnica Croatia
Ustaše Croatia
National Socialist Movement of Denmark
La Cagoule France
National Democratic Party of Germany
Fascism and Freedom Movement – Italy
Fiamma Tricolore Italy
Forza Nuova Italy
Fronte Sociale Nazionale Italy
Movimento Fascismo e Libertà Italy
Pērkonkrusts Latvia
Norges Nasjonalsosialistiske Bevegelse Norway
National Radical Camp (ONR) Poland
National Revival of Poland (NOP)
Polish National Community-Polish National Party (PWN-PSN)
Noua Dreaptă Romania
Russian National Socialist Party(formerly Russian National Union)
Barkashov's Guards Russia
National Socialist Society Russia
Nacionalni stroj Serbia
Otačastveni pokret Obraz Serbia
Slovenska Pospolitost Slovakia
España 2000 Spain
Falange Española Spain
Nordic Realm Party Sweden
National Alliance Sweden
Swedish Resistance Movement Sweden
National Youth Sweden
Legion Wasa Sweden
SPAS Ukraine
Blood and Honour UK
British National Front UK
Combat 18 UK
League of St. George UK
National Socialist Movement UK
Nationalist Alliance UK
November 9th Society UK
Racial Volunteer Force UK
"Fascism" has become the prefered term of abuse applied indiscriminately by the right thinking
to any person or movement which they want to tar as inherently objectionable, and which can therefore
be dismissed without the tedium of actually engaging with them at the level of ideas.
Most of the people who like to throw this word around couldn't give you a coherant definition
of what exactly they understand it to signify, beyond "yuck!!"
In fairness even students of political ideology have trouble teasing out a cosistent system
of beliefs, to the point where some doubt fascism is even a coherent ideology. That hardly excuses
the intellectual vacuity of those who use it as a term of abuse, however.
Precisely 3,248 angels can fit on the head of a pin. Parsing the true definition of "fascism"
is a waste of time, broadly, fascism is an alliance of the state, the corporation, and the military,
anyone who doesn't see that today needs to go back to their textbooks.
As far as the definition "neo-liberalism" goes, yes it's a useful label. But let's keep it
simple: every society chooses how resources are allocated between Capital and Labor. The needle
has been pegged over on the Capital side for quite some time, my "start date" is when Reagan busted
the air traffic union. The hideous Republicans managed to sell their base that policies that were
designed to let companies be "competitive" were somehow good for them, not just for the owners
of the means of production.
The only way they have avoided complete revolt has been endless borrowing to fund entitlements,
once that one-time fix plays out the consequences will be apparent. The funding mechanism itself
(The Fed) has even morphed into a neo-liberal tool designed to enrich Capital while enslaving
Labor with the consequences.
"Every society chooses how resources are allocated between capital and labor." More specifically,
isn't it a struggle between various political/economic/cultural movements within a society which
chooses how resources are allocated between capital and labor.
Take, for example, the late 1880s-1890s in the U.S. During that time-frame there were powerful
agrarian populists movements and the beginnings of some labor/socialist movements from below,
while from above the property-production system was modified by a powerful political movement
advocating for more corporate administered markets over the competitive small-firm capitalism
of an earlier age.
It was this movement for corporate administered markets which won the battle and defeated/absorbed
the agrarian populists.
What are the array of such forces in 2016? What type of movement doe Trump represent? Sanders?
Clinton?
fascism is an alliance of the state, the corporation, and the military, anyone who doesn't
see that today needs to go back to their textbooks
Which textbooks specifically?
The article I cited above in Vox canvasses the opinion of five serious students of fascism,
and none of them believe Trump is a fascist. I'd be most interested in knowing what you
have been reading.
As for your definition of "fascism", it's obviously so vague and broad that it really doesn't
explain anything. To the extent it contains any insight it is that public institutions (the state),
private businesses (the corporation) and the armed forces all exert significant influence on public
policy. That and a buck and and a half will get you a cup of coffee. If anything it is merely
a very crude descriptive model of the political process. It doesn't define fascism as a particular
set of beliefs that make it a distinct political ideology that can be differentiated from other
ideologies (again, see the Vox article for a discussion of some of the beliefs that are arguably
characteristic of fascist movements). Indeed by your standard virtually every state that has ever
existed has to a greater or lesser extent been "fascist".
My objection to imprecise language here isn't merely pedantic. The leftist dismissal of
right wing populists like Trump (or increasingly influential European movements like Ukip, AfD,
and the Front national) as "fascist" is a reductionist rhetorical device intended to marginalize
them by implying their politics are so far outside of the mainstream that they do not need to
be taken seriously. Given that these movements are only growing in strength as faith in traditional
political movements and elites evaporate this is likely to produce exactly the opposite result.
Right wing populism isn't going to disappear just because the left keeps trying to wish it away.
Refusing to accept this basic political fact risks condemning the left rather than "the fascists"
to political irrelevance.
I moved to a small city/town in Iowa almost 20 years ago. Then, it still had something of a
Norman Rockwell quality to it, particularly in a sense of egalitarianism, and also some small
factory jobs which still paid something beyond a bare existence.
Since 2000, many of those jobs have left, and the population of the county has declined by
about 10%. Kmart, Penney's, and Sears have left as payday/title loan outfits, pawnshops, smoke
shops, and used car dealers have all proliferated.
Parts of the town now resemble a combination of Appalachia and Detroit. Sanders easily won
the caucuses here and, no, his supporters were hardly the latte sippers of someone's imagination,
but blue collar folks of all ages.
My tale is similar to yours. About 2 years ago, I accepted a transfer from Chicagoland to north
central Wisconsin. JC Penney left a year and a half ago, and Sears is leaving in about 3-4 months.
Kmart is long gone.
I was back at the old homestead over Memorial Day, and it's as if time has stood still. Home
prices still going up; people out for dinner like crazy; new & expensive automobiles everywhere.
But driving out of Chicagoland, and back through rural Wisconsin it is unmistakeable.
2 things that are new: The roads here are deteriorating FAST. In Price County, the road
commissioner said last night that their budget allows for resurfacing all the roads on a 200 year
basis. (Yes, that means there is only enough money to resurface all the county roads if spread
out over 200 years.) 2nd, there are dead deer everywhere on the side of the road. In years past,
they were promptly cleaned up by the highway department. Not any more. Gross, but somebody has
to do the dead animal clean up. (Or not. Don't tell Snotty Walker though.)
Anyway, not everything is gloom and doom. People seem outwardly happy. But if you're paying
attention, signs of stress and deterioration are certainly out there.
This Trump support seems like a form of political vandalism with Trump as the spray paint.
People generally feel frustrated with government, utterly powerless and totally left out as the
ranks of the precariat continue to grow. Trump appeals to the nihilistic tendencies of some people
who, like frustrated teens, have decided to just smashed things up for the hell of it. They think
a presidency mix of Caligula with Earl Scheib would be a funny hoot.
You also have the more gullible fundis who have actually deluded themselves into thinking the
man who is ultimate symbol of hedonism will deliver them from secularism because he says he will.
Authoritarians who seek solutions through strong leaders are usually the easiest to con because
they desperately want to believe in their eminent deliverance by a human deus ex machina. Plus
he is ostentatiously rich in a comfortably tacky way and a TV celebrity beats a Harvard law degree.
And why not the thinking goes the highly vaunted elite college Acela crowd has pretty much made
a pig's breakfast out of things. So much for meritocracy. Professor Harold Hill is going to give
River City a boys band.
Someone at American Conservative, when trying to get at why it's pointless to tell people
Trump will wreck the place, described him as a "hand grenade" lobbed into the heart of government.
You can't scare people with his crass-ness and destructive tendencies, because that's precisely
what his voters are counting on when/if he gets into government.
In other words, the MSM's fear is the clearest sign to these voters that their
political revolution is working. Since TPTB decided peaceful change (i.e. Sanders) was a non-starter,
then they get to reap the whirlwind.
Your phrase "Trump is political vandalism" is great. I don't think I've seen a better description.
NPR this morning was discussing Trump and his relationship with the press and the issues some
GOP leaders have with him. When his followers were discussed, the speakers closely circled your
vandalism point. Basically they said that his voters are angry with the power brokers and leaders
in DC and regardless of whether they think Trump's statements are heartfelt or just rhetoric,
they DO know he will stick it to those power brokers so that's good. Vandalism by a longer phrase.
Meritocracy was ALWAYS a delusional fraud. What you invariably get, after a couple of generations,
is a clique of elitists who define merit as themselves and reproduce it ad nauseam. Who still
believes in such laughable kiddie stories?
Besides, consumers need to learn to play the long game and suck up the "scurrilous attacks"
on their personal consumption habits for the next four years. The end of abortion for four years
is not important - lern2hand and lern2agency, and lern2cutyourrapist if it comes to that. What
is important is that the Democratic Party's bourgeois yuppie constituents are forced to defend
against GOP attacks on their personal and cultural interests with wherewithal that would have
been ordinarily spent to attend to their sister act with their captive constituencies.
If bourgeois Democrats hadn't herded us into a situation where individuals mean nothing outside
of their assigned identity groups and their corporate coalition duopoly, they wouldn't be reaping
the whirlwind today. Why, exactly, should I be sympathetic to exploitative parasites such as the
middle class?
There are all good ideas. However, population growth undermines almost all of them. Population
growth in America is immigrant based. Reverse immigration influxes and you are at least doing
something to reduce population growth.
How to "reverse immigration influxes"?
Stop accepting refugees. It's outrageous that refugees from for example, Somalia,
get small business loans, housing assistance, food stamps and lifetime SSI benefits while some
of our veterans are living on the street.
No more immigration amnesties of any kind.
Deport all illegal alien criminals.
Practice "immigrant family unification" in the country of origin. Even if you have
to pay them to leave. It's less expensive in the end.
Eliminate tax subsidies to American corn growers who then undercut Mexican farmers'
incomes through NAFTA, driving them into poverty and immigration north. Throw Hillary Clinton
out on her ass and practice political and economic justice to Central America.
I too am a lifetime registered Democrat and I will vote for Trump if Clinton gets the crown.
If the Democrats want my vote, my continuing party registration and my until recently sizeable
donations in local, state and national races, they will nominate Bernie. If not, then I'm an Independent
forevermore. They will just become the Demowhig Party.
Campaign Finance Reform: If you can't walk into a voting booth you cannot contribute,
or make all elections financed solely by government funds and make private contributions of
any kind to any politician illegal.
Re-institute Glass-Steagall but even more so. Limit the number of states a bank can
operate in. Make the Fed publicly owned, not privately owned by banks.
Completely revise corporate law, doing away with the legal person hood of corporations
and limit of liability for corporate officers and shareholders.
Single payer health care for everyone. Allow private health plans but do away with
health insurance as a deductible for business. Remove the AMA's hold on licensing of medical
schools which restricts the number of doctors.
Do away with the cap on Social Security wages and make all income, wages, capital gains,
interest, and dividends subject to taxation.
Impose tariffs to compensate for lower labor costs overseas and revise industry.
Cut the Defense budget by 50% and use that money for intensive infrastructure development.
Raise the national minimum wage to $15 and hour.
Severely curtail the revolving door from government to private industry with a 10 year
restriction on working for an industry you dealt with in any way as a government official.
Free public education including college (4 year degree).
Obama and Holder, allowing the banks to be above the law have them demi-gods, many of whom
are psychopaths and kleptocrats, and with their newly granted status, they are now re-shaping
the world in their own image. Prosecute these demi-gods and restore sanity. Don't and their greed
for our things will never end until nothings left.
This is why Hillary is so much more dangerous than trump, because she and the demi gods
are all on the same page. The TPP is their holy grail so I expect heaven and earth to be moved,
especially if it looks like some trade traitors are going to get knocked off in the election,
scoundrels like patty murray (dino, WA) will push to get it through then line up at the feed trough
to gorge on k street dough. I plan to vote stein if it's not Bernie, but am reserving commitment
until I see what kind of betrayals the dems have for me, if it's bad enough I'll go with the trump
hand grenade.
Totally agree tegnost, no more democratic neoliberals -- Patty Murray (up for re-election)
and Cantwell are both trade traitors and got fast track passed.
Two things are driving our troubles: over-population and globalization. The plutocrats
and kleptocrats have all the leverage over the rest of us laborers when the population of human
beings has increased seven-fold in the last 70 years, from a little over a billion to seven billions
(and growing) today. They are happy to let us freeze to death behind gas stations in order for
them to compete with other oligarchs in excess consumption.
This deserves a longer and more thoughtful comment, but I don't have the time this morning.
I have to fight commute traffic, because the population of my home state of California has doubled
from 19M in 1970 to an estimated 43M today (if you count the Latin American refugees and H1B's).
Thank you for mentioning the third rail of overpopulation. Too often, this giant category
of problems is ignored, because it makes people uncomfortable. The planet is finite, resources
on the planet are finite, yet the number of people keeps growing. We need to strive for a higher
quality of life, not a higher quantity of people.
The issue goes beyond "current neoliberals up for election", it is most of our political
establishment that has been corrupted by a system that provides for the best politicians money
can buy.
In the 1980's I worked inside the beltway witnessing the new cadre of apparatchiks that drove
into town on the Reagan coattails full of moral a righteousness that became deviant, parochial,
absolutist and for whom bi-partisan approaches to policy were scorned prodded on by new power
brokers promoting their gospels in early morning downtown power breakfasts. Sadly our politicians
no longer serve but seek a career path in our growing meritocratic plutocracy.
America has always been a country where a majority of the population has been poor. With
the exception of a fifty five year(1950-2005) year period where access to large quantities of
consumer debt by households was deployed to first to provide a wealth illusion to keep socialism
at bay, followed by a mortgage debt boom to both keep the system afloat and strip the accumulated
capital of the working class, i.e. home equity, the history of the US has been one of poverty
for the masses.
Further debt was foisted on the working class in the form of military Keynesianism, generating
massive fiscal deficits which are to be paid for via austerity in a neo-feudal economy.
"... Money, it seems to him, has somehow changed its role. It has "increased" (is that possible, he asks?) while at the same time it has become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. It appears to seek to become an autonomous and dominating sector of economic life, functionally separated from production of real things, almost all of which seem to come from faraway places. "Real" actually begins to change its meaning, another topic more interesting still. This devotion to the world of money-making-money seems to have obsessed the lives of many of the most "important" Americans. Entire TV networks are devoted to it. They talk about esoteric financial instruments that to the ordinary citizen look more like exotically placed bets-on-credit in the casino than genuine ways to grow real-world business, jobs, wages, and family income. The few who are in position to master the game live material lives that were beyond what almost any formerly "wealthy" man or woman in Rip's prior life could even imagine ..."
"... children gone away and lost to either the relentless rootlessness of the trans-national economy or the virtual hell-world of meth and opioids and heroin and unending underemployed hopelessness. ..."
"... "If public life can suffer a metaphysical blow, the death of the labor question was that blow. For millions of working people, it amputated the will to resist." ..."
"... It's a Wonderful Life ..."
"... as educators ..."
"... OK, so I hear some of you saying, corporate America will never let this Civic Media get off the ground. My short answer to this is that corporations do what makes money for them, and in today's despairing political climate there's money to be made in sponsoring something truly positive, patriotic and constructive. ..."
"... I am paying an exorbitant subscription for the UK Financial Times at the moment. Anyway, the good news is that very regular articles are appearing where you can almost feel the panic at the populist uprisings. ..."
"... The kernel of Neoliberal Ideology: "There is no such a thing as society." (Margaret Thatcher). ..."
"... "In this postindustrial world not only is the labor question no longer asked, not only is proletarian revolution passé, but the proletariat itself seems passé. And the invisibles who nonetheless do indeed live there have internalized their nonexistence, grown demoralized, resentful, and hopeless; if they are noticed at all, it is as objects of public disdain. What were once called "blue-collar aristocrats"-skilled workers in the construction trades, for example-have long felt the contempt of the whole white-collar world. ..."
"... Or, we could replace Western liberal culture, with its tradition to consume and expand by force an unbroken chain from the Garden of Eden to Friedrich von Hayek, with the notion of maintenance and "enough". Bourgeois make-work holds no interest to me. ..."
"... My understanding of the data is that living standards increased around the world during the so-called golden age, not just in the U.S. (and Western Europe and Japan and Australia ). It could be that it was still imperialism at work, but the link between imperialism and the creation of the middle class is not straightforward. ..."
"... I thought neoliberalism was just the pogrom to make everyone – rational agents – as subscribed by our genetic / heraldic betters .. putting this orbs humans and resources in the correct "natural" order . ..."
"... Disheveled Marsupial for those thinking neoliberalism is not associated with libertarianism one only has to observe the decades of think tanks and their mouth organs roaming the planet . especially in the late 80s and 90s . bringing the might and wonders of the – market – to the great unwashed globally here libertarian priests rang in the good news to the great unwashed ..."
"... I would argue that neoliberalism is a program to define markets as primarily engaged in information processing and to make everyone into non-agents ( as not important at all to the proper functioning of markets). ..."
"... It also appears that neoliberals want to restrict democracy to the greatest extent possible and to view markets as the only foundation for truth without any need for input from the average individual. ..."
I am almost 70 years old, born and raised in New York City, still living in a near suburb.
Somehow, somewhere along the road to my 70th year I feel as if I have been gradually transported
to an almost entirely different country than the land of my younger years. I live painfully now
in an alien land, a place whose habits and sensibilities I sometimes hardly recognize, while unable
to escape from memories of a place that no longer exists. There are days I feel as I imagine a
Russian pensioner must feel, lost in an unrecognizable alien land of unimagined wealth, power,
privilege, and hyper-glitz in the middle of a country slipping further and further into hopelessness,
alienation, and despair.
I am not particularly nostalgic. Nor am I confusing recollection with sentimental yearnings
for a youth that is no more. But if I were a contemporary Rip Van Winkle, having just awakened
after, say, 30-40 years, I would not recognize my beloved New York City. It would be not just
the disappearance of the old buildings, Penn Station, of course, Madison Square Garden and its
incandescent bulb marquee on 50th and 8th announcing NYU vs. St. John's, and the WTC, although
I always thought of the latter as "new" until it went down. Nor would it be the disappearance
of all the factories, foundries, and manufacturing plants, the iconic Domino Sugar on the East
River, the Wonder Bread factory with its huge neon sign, the Swingline Staples building in Long
Island City that marked passage to and from the East River tunnel on the railroad, and my beloved
Schaeffer Beer plant in Williamsburg, that along with Rheingold, Knickerbocker, and a score of
others, made beer from New York taste a little bit different.
It wouldn't be the ubiquitous new buildings either, the Third Avenue ghostly glass erected
in the 70's and 80's replacing what once was the most concentrated collection of Irish gin mills
anywhere. Or the fortress-like castles built more recently, with elaborate high-ceilinged lobbies
decorated like a kind of gross, filthy-wealthy Versailles, an aesthetically repulsive style that
shrieks "power" in a way the neo-classical edifices of our Roman-loving founders never did. Nor
would it even be the 100-story residential sticks, those narrow ground-to-clouds skyscraper condominiums
proclaiming the triumph of globalized capitalism with prices as high as their penthouses, driven
ever upward by the foreign billionaires and their obsession with burying their wealth in Manhattan
real estate.
It is not just the presence of new buildings and the absence of the old ones that have this
contemporary Van Winkle feeling dyslexic and light-headed. The old neighborhoods have disintegrated
along with the factories, replaced by income segregated swatches of homogenous "real estate" that
have consumed space, air, and sunlight while sucking the distinctiveness out of the City. What
once was the multi-generational home turf for Jewish, Afro-American, Puerto Rican, Italian, Polak
and Bohunk families is now treated as simply another kind of investment, stocks and bonds in steel
and concrete. Mom's Sunday dinners, clothes lines hanging with newly bleached sheets after Monday
morning wash, stickball games played among parked cars, and evenings of sitting on the stoop with
friends and a transistor radio listening to Mel Allen call Mantle's home runs or Alan Freed and
Murray the K on WINS 1010 playing Elvis, Buddy Holly, and The Drifters, all gone like last night's
dreams.
Do you desire to see the new New York? Look no further than gentrifying Harlem for an almost
perfect microcosm of the city's metamorphosis, full of multi-million condos, luxury apartment
renovations, and Maclaren strollers pushed by white yuppie wife stay-at-homes in Marcus Garvey
Park. Or consider the "new" Lower East Side, once the refuge of those with little material means,
artists, musicians, bums, drug addicts, losers and the physically and spiritually broken - my
kind of people. Now its tenements are "retrofitted" and remodeled into $4000 a month apartments
and the new residents are Sunday brunching where we used to score some Mary Jane.
There is the "Brooklyn brand", synonymous with "hip", and old Brooklyn neighborhoods like Red
Hook and South Brooklyn (now absorbed into so desirable Park Slope), and Bushwick, another former
outpost of the poor and the last place I ever imagined would be gentrified, full of artists and
hipsters driving up the price of everything. Even large sections of my own Queens and the Bronx
are affected (infected?). Check out Astoria, for example, neighborhood of my father's family,
with more of the old ways than most but with rents beginning to skyrocket and starting to drive
out the remaining working class to who knows where.
Gone is almost every mom and pop store, candy stores with their egg creams and bubble gum cards
and the Woolworth's and McCrory's with their wooden floors and aisles containing ordinary blue
collar urgencies like thread and yarn, ironing boards and liquid bleach, stainless steel utensils
of every size and shape. Where are the locally owned toy and hobby stores like Jason's in Woodhaven
under the el, with Santa's surprises available for lay-away beginning in October? No more luncheonettes,
cheap eats like Nedicks with hot dogs and paper cones of orange drink, real Kosher delis with
vats of warm pastrami and corned beef cut by hand, and the sacred neighborhood "bar and grill",
that alas has been replaced by what the kids who don't know better call "dive bars", the detestable
simulacra of the real thing, slick rooms of long slick polished mahogany, a half-dozen wide screen
TV's blaring mindless sports contests from all over the world, over-priced micro-brews, and not
a single old rummy in sight?
Old Rip searches for these and many more remembered haunts, what Ray Oldenburg called the "great
good places" of his sleepy past, only to find store windows full of branded, high-priced, got-to-have
luxury-necessities (necessary if he/she is to be certified cool, hip, and successful), ridiculously
overpriced "food emporia", high and higher-end restaurants, and apparel boutiques featuring hardened
smiles and obsequious service reserved for those recognized by celebrity or status.
Rip notices too that the visible demographic has shifted, and walking the streets of Manhattan
and large parts of Brooklyn, he feels like what walking in Boston Back Bay always felt like, a
journey among an undifferentiated mass of privilege, preppy or 'metro-sexed' 20 and 30-somethings
jogging or riding bicycles like lean, buff gods and goddesses on expense accounts supplemented
by investments enriched by yearly holiday bonuses worth more than Rip earned in a lifetime.
Sitting alone on a park bench by the river, Rip reflects that more than all of these individual
things, however, he despairs of a city that seems to have been reimagined as a disneyfied playground
of the privileged, offering endless ways to self-gratify and philistinize in a clean, safe (safest
big city in U.S., he heard someone say), slick, smiley, center-of-the-world urban paradise, protected
by the new centurions (is it just his paranoia or do battle-ready police seem to be everywhere?).
Old ethnic neighborhoods are filled with apartment buildings that seem more like post-college
"dorms", tiny studios and junior twos packed with three or four "singles" roommates pooling their
entry level resources in order to pay for the right to live in "The City". Meanwhile the newer
immigrants find what place they can in Kingsbridge, Corona, Jamaica, and Cambria Heights, far
from the city center, even there paying far too much to the landlord for what they receive.
New York has become an unrecognizable place to Rip, who can't understand why the accent-less
youngsters keep asking him to repeat something in order to hear his quaint "Brooklyn" accent,
something like the King's English still spoken on remote Smith Island in the Chesapeake, he guesses
.
Rip suspects that this "great transformation" (apologies to Polanyi) has coincided, and is somehow
causally related, to the transformation of New York from a real living city into, as the former
Mayor proclaimed, the "World Capital" of financialized commerce and all that goes with it.
"Financialization", he thinks, is not the expression of an old man's disapproval but a way
of naming a transformed economic and social world. Rip is not an economist. He reads voraciously
but, as an erstwhile philosopher trained to think about the meaning of things, he often can't
get his head around the mathematical model-making explanations of the economists that seem to
dominate the more erudite political and social analyses these days. He has learned, however, that
the phenomenon of "capitalism" has changed along with his city and his life.
Money, it seems to him, has somehow changed its role. It has "increased" (is that possible,
he asks?) while at the same time it has become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. It appears
to seek to become an autonomous and dominating sector of economic life, functionally separated
from production of real things, almost all of which seem to come from faraway places. "Real" actually
begins to change its meaning, another topic more interesting still. This devotion to the world
of money-making-money seems to have obsessed the lives of many of the most "important" Americans.
Entire TV networks are devoted to it. They talk about esoteric financial instruments that to the
ordinary citizen look more like exotically placed bets-on-credit in the casino than genuine ways
to grow real-world business, jobs, wages, and family income. The few who are in position to master
the game live material lives that were beyond what almost any formerly "wealthy" man or woman
in Rip's prior life could even imagine
.
Above all else is the astronomical rise in wealth and income inequality. Rip recalls that growing
up in the 1950's, the kids on his block included, along with firemen, cops, and insurance men
dads (these were virtually all one-parent income households), someone had a dad who worked as
a stock broker. Yea, living on the same block was a "Wall Streeter". Amazingly democratic, no?
Imagine, people of today, a finance guy drinking at the same corner bar with the sanitation guy.
Rip recalls that Aristotle had some wise and cautionary words in his Politics concerning the stability
of oligarchic regimes.
Last year I drove across America on blue highways mostly. I stayed in small towns and cities,
Zanesville, St. Charles, Wichita, Pratt, Dalhart, Clayton, El Paso, Abilene, Clarksdale, and many
more. I dined for the most part in local taverns, sitting at the bar so as to talk with the local
bartender and patrons who are almost always friendly and talkative in these spaces. Always and
everywhere I heard similar stories as my story of my home town. Not so much the specifics (there
are no "disneyfied" Lubbocks or Galaxes out there, although Oxford, MS comes close) but in the
sadness of men and women roughly my age as they recounted a place and time – a way of life – taken
out from under them, so that now their years are filled with decayed and dead downtowns, children
gone away and lost to either the relentless rootlessness of the trans-national economy or the
virtual hell-world of meth and opioids and heroin and unending underemployed hopelessness.
I am not a trained economist. My graduate degrees were in philosophy. My old friends call me
an "Eric Hoffer", who back in the day was known as the "longshoreman philosopher". I have been
trying for a long time now to understand the silent revolution that has been pulled off right
under my nose, the replacement of a world that certainly had its flaws (how could I forget the
civil rights struggle and the crime of Viet Nam; I was a part of these things) but was, let us
say, different. Among you or your informed readers, is there anyone who can suggest a book or
books or author(s) who can help me understand how all of this came about, with no public debate,
no argument, no protest, no nothing? I would be very much appreciative.
I'll just highlight this line for emphasis
"there are no "disneyfied" Lubbocks or Galaxes out there, although Oxford, MS comes close) but
in the sadness of men and women roughly my age as they recounted a place and time – a way of life
– taken out from under them, so that now their years are filled with decayed and dead downtowns,
children gone away and lost to either the relentless rootlessness of the trans-national economy
or the virtual hell-world of meth and opioids and heroin and unending underemployed hopelessness."
my best friend pretty much weeps every day.
I don't have a book to recommend. I do think you identify a really underemphasized central
fact of recent times: the joint processes by which real places have been converted into "real
estate" and real, messy lives replaced by safe, manufactured "experiences." This affects wealthy
and poor neighborhoods alike, in different ways but in neither case for the better.
I live in a very desirable neighborhood in one of those places that makes a lot of "Best of"
lists. I met a new neighbor last night who told me how he and his wife had plotted for years to
get out of the Chicago burbs, not only to our city but to this specific neighborhood, which they
had decided is "the one." (This sentiment is not atypical.) Unsurprisingly, property values in
the neighborhood have gone through the roof. Which, as far as I can tell, most everyone here sees
as an unmitigated good thing.
At the same time, several families I got to know because they moved into the neighborhood about
the same time we did 15-20 years ago, are cashing out and moving away, kids off to or out of college,
parents ready (and financed) to get on to the next phase and the next place. Of course, even though
our children are all Lake Woebegoners, there are no next generations staying in the neighborhood,
except of course the ones still living, or back, at "home." (Those families won't be going anywhere
for awhile!)
I can't argue that new money in the hood hasn't improved some things. Our formerly struggling
food co-op just finished a major expansion and upgrade. Good coffee is 5 minutes closer than it
used to be. But to my wife and me, the overwhelming feeling is that we are now outsiders here
in this neighborhood where we know all the houses and the old trees but not what motivates our
new neighbors. So I made up a word for it: unsettling (adj., verb, noun).
"If public life can suffer a metaphysical blow, the death of the labor question was that
blow. For millions of working people, it amputated the will to resist."
Christopher Lash in "Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy" mentions Ray Oldenburg's
"The Great Good Places: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores,
Bars, Hangouts and How they Got You through the Day."
He argued that the decline of democracy is directly related to the disappearance of what he
called third places:,
"As neighborhood hangouts give way to suburban shopping malls, or, on the other hand private
cocktail parties, the essentially political art of conversation is replaced by shoptalk or personal
gossip.
Increasingly, conversation literally has no place in American society. In its absence how–or
better, where–can political habits be acquired and polished?
Lasch finished he essay by noting that Oldenburg's book helps to identify what is missing from
our then newly emerging world (which you have concisely updated):
"urban amenities, conviviality, conversation, politics–almost everything in part that makes
life worth living."
The best explainer of our modern situation that I have read is Wendell Berry. I suggest that
you start with "The Unsettling of America," quoted below.
"Let me outline briefly as I can what seem to me the characteristics of these opposite kinds
of mind. I conceive a strip-miner to be a model exploiter, and as a model nurturer I take the
old-fashioned idea or ideal of a farmer. The exploiter is a specialist, an expert; the nurturer
is not. The standard of the exploiter is efficiency; the standard of the nurturer is care. The
exploiter's goal is money, profit; the nurturer's goal is health - his land's health, his own,
his family's, his community's, his country's. Whereas the exploiter asks of a piece of land only
how much and how quickly it can be made to produce, the nurturer asks a question that is much
more complex and difficult: What is its carrying capacity? (That is: How much can be taken from
it without diminishing it? What can it produce dependably for an indefinite time?) The exploiter
wishes to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible; the nurturer expects, certainly,
to have a decent living from his work, but his characteristic wish is to work as well as possible.
The competence of the exploiter is in organization; that of the nurturer is in order - a human
order, that is, that accommodates itself both to other order and to mystery. The exploiter typically
serves an institution or organization; the nurturer serves land, household, community, place.
The exploiter thinks in terms of numbers, quantities, "hard facts"; the nurturer in terms of character,
condition, quality, kind."
I also think Prof. Patrick Deneen works to explain the roots (and progression) of decline.
I'll quote him at length here describing the modern college student.
"[T]he one overarching lesson that students receive is the true end of education: the only
essential knowledge is that know ourselves to be radically autonomous selves within a comprehensive
global system with a common commitment to mutual indifference. Our commitment to mutual indifference
is what binds us together as a global people. Any remnant of a common culture would interfere
with this prime directive: a common culture would imply that we share something thicker, an inheritance
that we did not create, and a set of commitments that imply limits and particular devotions.
Ancient philosophy and practice praised as an excellent form of government a res publica –
a devotion to public things, things we share together. We have instead created the world's first
Res Idiotica – from the Greek word idiotes, meaning "private individual." Our education system
produces solipsistic, self-contained selves whose only public commitment is an absence of commitment
to a public, a common culture, a shared history. They are perfectly hollowed vessels, receptive
and obedient, without any real obligations or devotions.
They won't fight against anyone, because that's not seemly, but they won't fight for anyone
or anything either. They are living in a perpetual Truman Show, a world constructed yesterday
that is nothing more than a set for their solipsism, without any history or trajectory."
Wow. Did this hit a nerve. You have eloquently described what was the city of hope for several
generations of outsiders, for young gay men and women, and for real artists, not just from other
places in America, but from all over the world. In New York, once upon a time, bumping up against
the more than 50% of the population who were immigrants from other countries, you could learn
a thing or two about the world. You could, for a while, make a living there at a job that was
all about helping other people. You could find other folks, lots of them, who were honest, well-meaning,
curious about the world. Then something changed. As you said, you started to see it in those hideous
80's buildings. But New York always seemed somehow as close or closer to Europe than to the U.S.,
and thus out of the reach of mediocrity and dumbing down. New York would mold you into somebody
tough and smart, if you weren't already – if it didn't, you wouldn't make it there.
Now, it seems, this dream is dreamt. Poseurs are not artists, and the greedy and smug drive
out creativity, kindness, real humor, hope.
It ain't fair. I don't know where in this world an aspiring creative person should go now,
but it probably is not there.
Americans cannot begin to reasonably demand a living wage, benefits and job security when there
is an unending human ant-line of illegals and legal immigrants willing to under bid them.
Only when there is a parity or shortage of workers can wage demands succeed, along with other
factors.
From 1925 to 1965 this country accepted hardly any immigrants, legal or illegal. We had the
bracero program where Mexican males were brought in to pick crops and were then sent home to collect
paychecks in Mexico. American blacks were hired from the deep south to work defense plants in
the north and west.
Is it any coincidence that the 1965 Great Society program, initiated by Ted Kennedy to primarily
benefit the Irish immigrants, then co-opted by LBJ to include practically everyone, started this
process of Middle Class destruction?
1973 was the peak year of American Society as measured by energy use per capita, expansion
of jobs and unionization and other factors, such as an environment not yet destroyed, nicely measured
by the The Real Progress Indicator.
Solution? Stop importing uneducated people. That's real "immigration reform".
Now explain to me why voters shouldn't favor Trump's radical immigration stands?
Maybe, but OTOH, who is it, exactly, who is recruiting, importing, hiring and training undocumented
workers to downgrade pay scales??
Do some homework, please. If businesses didn't actively go to Central and South America to
recruit, pay to bring here, hire and employ undocumented workers, then the things you discuss
would be great.
When ICE comes a-knocking at some meat processing plant or mega-chicken farm, what happens?
The undocumented workers get shipped back to wherever, but the big business owner doesn't even
get a tap on the wrist. The undocumented worker – hired to work in unregulated unsafe unhealthy
conditions – often goes without their last paycheck.
It's the business owners who manage and support this system of undocumented workers because
it's CHEAP, and they don't get busted for it.
Come back when the USA actually enforces the laws that are on the books today and goes after
big and small business owners who knowingly recruit, import, hire, train and employee undocumented
workers you know, like Donald Trump has all across his career.
This is the mechanism by which the gov't has assisted biz in destroying the worker, competition
for thee, but none for me. For instance I can't go work in canada or mexico, they don't allow
it. Policy made it, policy can change it, go bernie. While I favor immigration, in it's current
form it is primarily conducted on these lines of destroying workers (H1b etc and illegals combined)
Lucky for the mexicans they can see the american dream is bs and can go home. I wonder who the
latinos that have gained citizenship will vote for. Unlikely it'll be trump, but they can be pretty
conservative, and the people they work for are pretty conservative so no guarantee there, hillary
is in san diego at the tony balboa park where her supporters will feel comfortable, not a huge
venue I think they must be hoping for a crowd, and if she can't get one in san diego while giving
a "if we don't rule the world someone else will" speech, she can't get one anywhere. Defense contractors
and military advisors and globalist biotech (who needs free money more than biotech? they are
desperate for hillary) are thick in san diego.
I live part-time in San Diego. It is very conservative. The military, who are constantly screwed
by the GOP, always vote Republican. They make up a big cohort of San Diego county.
Hillary may not get a big crowd at the speech, but that, in itself, doesn't mean that much
to me. There is a segment of San Diego that is somewhat more progressive-ish, but it's a pretty
conservative county with parts of eastern SD county having had active John Birch Society members
until recently or maybe even ongoing.
There's a big push in the Latino community to GOTV, and it's mostly not for Trump. It's possible
this cohort, esp the younger Latino/as, will vote for Sanders in the primary, but if Clinton gets
the nomination, they'll likely vote for her (v. Trump).
I was unlucky enough to be stuck for an hour in a commuter train last Friday after Trump's
rally there. Hate to sound rude, but Trump's fans were everything we've seen. Loud, rude, discourteous
and an incessant litany of rightwing talking points (same old, same old). All pretty ignorant.
Saying how Trump will "make us great again." I don't bother asking how. A lot of ugly comments
about Obama and how Obama has been "so racially divisive and polarizing." Well, No. No, Obama
has not been or done that, but the rightwing noise machine has sure ginned up your hatreds, angers
and fears. It was most unpleasant. The only instructive thing about it was confirming my worst
fears about this group. Sorry to say but pretty loutish and very uninformed. Sigh.
part timer in sd as well, family for hillary except for nephew and niece .I keep telling my
mom she should vote bernie for their sake but it never goes over very well
Re Methland, we live in rural US and we got a not-very-well hidden population of homeless children.
I don't mean homeless families with children, I mean homeless children. Sleeping in parks in good
weather, couch-surfing with friends, etc. I think related.
Fascism is a system of political and social order intended to reinforce the unity, energy and
purity of communities in which liberal democracy stand(s) accused of producing division and decline.
. . . George Orwell reminded us, clad in the mainstream patriotic dress of their own place and
time, . . . an authentically popular fascism in the United States would be pious and anti-Black;
in Western Europe, secular and antisemitic, or more probably, these days anti-Islamic; in Russia
and Eastern Europe, religious, antisemitic, and slavophile.
Robert O. Paxton
In The Five Stages of Faschism
" that eternal enemy: the conservative manipulators of privilege who damn as 'dangerous agitators'
any man who menaces their fortunes" (maybe 'power and celebrity' should be added to fortunes)
Sinclair Lewis
It Can't Happen Here page 141
On the Boots To Ribs Front: Anyone hereabouts notice that Captain America has just been revealed
to be a Nazi? Maybe this is what R. Cohen was alluding to but I doubt it.
The four horse men are, political , social, economic and environmental collapse . Any one remember
the original Mad Max movie. A book I recommend is the Crash Of 2016 By Thom Hartmann.
From the comment, I agree with the problems, not the cause. We've increased the size and scope
of the safety net over the last decade. We've increased government spending versus GDP. I'm not
blaming government but its not neoliberal/capitalist policy either.
1. Globalization clearly helps the poor in other countries at the expense of workers in the
U.S. But at the same time it brings down the cost of goods domestically. So jobs are not great
but Walmart/Amazon can sell cheap needs.
2. Inequality started rising the day after Bretton Woods – the rich got richer everyday after
"Nixon Shock"
Hi rfam : To point 1 : Why is there a need to bring down the cost of goods? Is it because of
past outsourcing and trade agreements and FR policies? I think there's a chicken and egg thing
going on, ie.. which came first. Globalization is a way to bring down wages while supplying Americans
with less and less quality goods supplied at the hand of global corporations like Walmart that
need welfare in the form of food stamps and the ACA for their workers for them to stay viable
(?). Viable in this case means ridiculously wealthy CEO's and the conglomerate growing bigger
constantly. Now they have to get rid of COOL's because the WTO says it violates trade agreements
so we can't trace where our food comes from in case of an epidemic. It's all downhill. Wages should
have risen with costs so we could afford high quality American goods, but haven't for a long,
long time.
Globalization helps the rich here way more than the poor there. The elites get more money for
nothing (see QE before you respond, if you do, that's where the money for globalization came from)
the workers get the husk. Also the elite gets to say "you made your choices" and other moralistic
crap. The funny(?) thing is they generally claim to be atheists, which I translate into "I am
God, there doesn't need to be any other" Amazon sells cheap stuff by cheating on taxes, and barely
makes money, mostly just driving people out of business. WalMart has cheap stuff because they
subsidise their workers with food stamps and medicaid. Bringing up bretton woods means you don't
know much about money creation, so google "randy wray/bananas/naked capitalism" and you'll find
a quick primer.
The Walmart loathsome spawn and Jeff Bezos are the biggest welfare drains in our nation – or
among the biggest. They woefully underpay their workers, all while training them on how to apply
for various welfare benefits. Just so that their slaves, uh, workers can manage to eat enough
to enable them to work.
It slays me when US citizens – and it happens across the voting spectrum these days; I hear
just as often from Democratic voters as I do from GOP voters – bitch, vetch, whine & cry about
welfare abuse. And if I start to point out the insane ABUSE of welfare by the Waltons and Jeff
Bezos, I'm immediately greeted with random TRUE stories about someone who knew someone who somehow
made out like a bandit on welfare.
Hey, I'm totally sure and in agreement that there are likely a small percentage of real welfare
cheats who manage to do well enough somehow. But seriously? That's like a drop in the bucket.
Get the eff over it!!!
Those cheats are not worth discussing. It's the big fraud cheats like Bezos & the Waltons and
their ilk, who don't need to underpay their workers, but they DO because the CAN and they get
away with it because those of us the rapidly dwindling middle/working classes are footing the
bill for it.
Citizens who INSIST on focusing on a teeny tiny minority of real welfare cheats, whilst studiously
ignoring the Waltons and the Bezos' of the corporate world, are enabling this behavior. It's one
of my bugabears bc it's so damn frustrating when citizens refuse to see how they are really being
ripped off by the 1%. Get a clue.
That doesn't even touch on all the other tax breaks, tax loopholes, tax incentives and just
general all-around tax cheating and off-shore money hiding that the Waltons and Bezos get/do.
Sheesh.
"I'm immediately greeted with random TRUE stories about someone who knew someone who somehow
made out like a bandit on welfare."
is the key and a v. long term result of the application of Bernays' to political life. Its
local and hits at the gut interpersonal level 'cos the "someones" form a kind of chain of trust
esp. if the the first one on the list is a friend or a credentialed media pundit. Utterly spurious
I know but countering this with a *merely* rational analysis of how Walmart, Amazon abuse the
welfare system to gouge profits from the rest of us just won't ever, for the large majority, get
through this kind emotional wall.
I don't know what any kind of solution might look like but, somehow, we need to find a way
of seriously demonising the corporate parasites that resonates at the same emotional level as
the "welfare cheat" meme that Bill Clinton and the rest of the DLC sanctified back in the '90s.
Something like "Walmart's stealing your taxes" might work but how to get it out there in a
viral way ??
What a comment from seanseamour. And the "hoisting" of it to high visibility at the site is
a testament to the worth of Naked Capitalism.
seanseamour asks "What does that have to do with education?" and answers "Everything if one
considers the elitist trend " This question & answer all but brings tears to my eyes. It is so
utterly on point. My own experience of it, if I may say so, comes from inside the belly of the
beast. As a child and a product of America's elite universities (I have degrees from Harvard and
Yale, and my dad, Richard B. Sewall, was a beloved English prof at Yale for 42 years), I could
spend all morning detailing the shameful roles played by America's torchbearing universities –
Harvard, Yale, Stanford etc – in utterly abandoning their historic responsibility as educators
to maintaining the health of the nation's public school system.*
And as I suspect seanseymour would agree, when a nation loses public education, it loses everything.
But I don't want to spend all morning doing that because I'm convinced that it's not too late
for America to rescue itself from maelstrom in which it finds itself today. (Poe's "Maelstrom"
story, cherished by Marshall McLuhan, is supremely relevant today.)
To turn America around, I don't look to education – that system is too far gone to save itself,
let alone the rest of the country – but rather to the nation's media: to the all-powerful public
communication system that certainly has the interactive technical capabilities to put citizens
and governments in touch with each other on the government decisions that shape the futures of
communities large and small.
For this to happen, however, people like the us – readers of Naked Capitalism – need to stop
moaning and groaning about the damage done by the neoliberals and start building an issue-centered,
citizen-participatory, non-partisan, prime-time Civic Media strong enough to give all Americans
an informed voice in the government decisions that affect their lives. This Civic media would
exist to make citizens and governments responsive and accountable to each other in shaping futures
of all three communities – local, state and national – of which every one of us is a member.
Pie in the sky? Not when you think hard about it. A huge majority of Americans would welcome
this Civic Media. Many yearn for it. This means that a market exists for it: a Market of the Whole
of all members of any community, local, state and national. This audience is large enough to rival
those generated by media coverage of pro sports teams, and believe it or not much of the growth
of this Civic media could be productively modeled on the growth of media coverage of pro sports
teams. This Civic Media would attract the interest of major advertisers, especially those who
see value in non-partisan programming dedicated to getting America moving forward again. Dynamic,
issue-centered, problem-solving public forums, some modeled on voter-driven reality TV contests
like The Voice or Dancing with the Stars, could be underwritten by a "rainbow" spectrum of funders,
commericial, public, personal and even government sources.
So people take hope! Be positive! Love is all we need, etc. The need for for a saving alternative
to the money-driven personality contests into which our politics has descended this election year
is literally staring us all in the face from our TV, cellphone and computer screens. This is no
time to sit back and complain, it's a time to start working to build a new way of connecting ourselves
so we can reverse America's rapid decline.
OK, so I hear some of you saying, corporate America will never let this Civic Media get
off the ground. My short answer to this is that corporations do what makes money for them, and
in today's despairing political climate there's money to be made in sponsoring something truly
positive, patriotic and constructive. And I hear a few others saying that Americans are too
dumbed down, too busy, too polarized or too just plain stupid to make intelligent, constructive
use of a non-partisan, problem-solving Civic Media. But I would not underestimate the intelligence
of Americans when they can give their considered input – by vote, by comment or by active participation
– in public forums that are as exciting and well managed as an NFL game or a Word Series final.
I am paying an exorbitant subscription for the UK Financial Times at the moment. Anyway,
the good news is that very regular articles are appearing where you can almost feel the panic
at the populist uprisings.
Whatever system is put in place the human race will find a way to undermine it. I believe in
capitalism because fair competition means the best and most efficient succeed.
I send my children to private schools and universities because I want my own children at the
top and not the best. Crony capitalism is inevitable, self-interest undermines any larger system
that we try and impose.
Can we design a system that can beat human self-interest? It's going to be tricky.
"If that's the system, how can I take advantage of it?" human nature at work. "If that's the
system, is it working for me or not?" those at the top.
If not, it's time to change the system.
If so, how can I tweak it to get more out of it?
Neo-Liberalism
Academics, who are not known for being street-wise, probably thought they had come up with
the ultimate system using markets and numeric performance measures to create a system free from
human self-interest.
They had already missed that markets don't just work for price discovery, but are frequently
used for capital gains by riding bubbles and hoping there is a "bigger fool" out there than you,
so you can cash out with a handsome profit.
(I am not sure if the Chinese realise markets are supposed to be for price discovery at all).
Hence, numerous bubbles during this time, with housing bubbles being the global favourite for
those looking for capital gains.
If we are being governed by the markets, how do we rig the markets?
A question successfully solved by the bankers.
Inflation figures, that were supposed to ensure the cost of living didn't rise too quickly,
were somehow manipulated to produce low inflation figures with roaring house price inflation raising
the cost of living.
What unemployment measure will best suit the story I am trying to tell?
U3 – everything great
U6 – it's not so good
Labour participation rate – it hasn't been this bad since the 1970s
Anything missing from the theory has been ruthlessly exploited, e.g. market bubbles ridden
for capital gains, money creation by private banks, the difference between "earned" and "unearned"
income and the fact that Capitalism trickles up through the following mechanism:
1) Those with excess capital collect rent and interest.
2) Those with insufficient capital pay rent and interest.
I just went on a rant last week. (Not only because the judge actually LIED in court)
I left the courthouse in downtown Seattle, to cross the street to find the vultures selling
more foreclosures on the steps of the King County Administration Building, while above them, there
were tents pitched on the building's perimeter. And people were walking by just like this scene
was normal.
Because the people at the entrance of the courthouse could view this, I went over there and
began to rant. I asked (loudly) "Do you guys see that over there? Vultures selling homes rendering
more people homeless and then the homeless encampment with tents pitched on the perimeter above
them? In what world is this normal?" One guy replied, "Ironic, isn't it?" After that comment,
the Marshall protecting the judicial crooks in the building came over and tried to calm me down.
He insisted that the scene across the street was "normal" and that none of his friends or neighbors
have been foreclosed on. I soon found out that that lying Marshall was from Pierce County, the
epicenter of Washington foreclosures.
"In this postindustrial world not only is the labor question no longer asked, not only
is proletarian revolution passé, but the proletariat itself seems passé. And the invisibles who
nonetheless do indeed live there have internalized their nonexistence, grown demoralized, resentful,
and hopeless; if they are noticed at all, it is as objects of public disdain. What were once called
"blue-collar aristocrats"-skilled workers in the construction trades, for example-have long felt
the contempt of the whole white-collar world.
For these people, already skeptical about who runs things and to what end, and who are now
undergoing their own eviction from the middle class, skepticism sours into a passive cynicism.
Or it rears up in a kind of vengeful chauvinism directed at alien others at home and abroad, emotional
compensation for the wounds that come with social decline If public life can suffer a metaphysical
blow, the death of the labor question was that blow. For millions of working people, it amputated
the will to resist."
One thing I don't think I have seen addressed on this site (apologies if I have missed it!)
in all the commentary about the destruction of the middle class is the role of US imperialism
in creating that middle class in the first place and what it is that we want to save from destruction
by neo-liberalism. The US is rich because we rob the rest of the world's resources and have been
doing so in a huge way since 1945, same as Britain before us. I don't think it's a coincidence
that the US post-war domination of the world economy and the middle class golden age happened
at the same time. Obviously there was enormous value created by US manufacturers, inventors, government
scientists, etc but imperialism is the basic starting point for all of this. The US sets the world
terms of trade to its own advantage. How do we save the middle class without this level of control?
Within the US elites are robbing everyone else but they are taking what we use our military power
to appropriate from the rest of the world.
Second, if Bernie or whoever saves the middle class, is that so that everyone can have a tract
house and two cars and continue with a massively wasteful and unsustainable lifestyle based on
consumption? Or are we talking about basic security like shelter, real health care, quality education
for all, etc? Most of the stories I see seem to be nostalgic for a time when lots of people could
afford to buy lots of stuff and don't 1) reflect on origin of that stuff (imperialism) and 2)
consider whether that lifestyle should be the goal in the first place.
I went to the electronics recycling facility in Seattle yesterday. The guy at customer service
told me that they receive 20 million pounds per month. PER MONTH. Just from Seattle. I went home
and threw up.
It doesn't have to be that way. You can replace military conquest (overt and covert) with space
exploration and science expansion. Also, instead of pushing consumerism, push contentment. Don't
setup and goose a system of "gotta keep up with the Joneses!"
In the 50s(!!!) there was a plan, proven in tests and studies, that would have had humans on
the mars by 1965, out to Saturn by 72. Project Orion. Later, the British Project Daedalus was
envisioned which WOULD have put space probes at the next star system within 20 years of launch.
It was born of the atomic age and, as originally envisioned, would have been an ecological disaster
BUT it was reworked to avoid this and would have worked. Spacecraft capable of comfortably holding
100 personnel, no need to build with paper-thin aluminum skin or skimp on amenities. A huge ship
built like a large sea vessel (heavy iron/steel) accelerated at 1g (or more or slightly less as
desired) so no prolonged weightlessness and concomitant loss of bone and muscle mass. It was all
in out hands but the Cold War got in the way, as did the many agreements and treaties of the Cold
War to avoid annihilation. It didn't need to be that way. Check it out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)
All that with 1950s and 60s era technology. It could be done better today and for less than
your wars in the Middle East. Encourage science, math, exploration instead of consumption, getting
mine before you can get yours, etc.
Or, we could replace Western liberal culture, with its tradition to consume and expand
by force an unbroken chain from the Garden of Eden to Friedrich von Hayek, with the notion of
maintenance and "enough". Bourgeois make-work holds no interest to me.
My understanding of the data is that living standards increased around the world during
the so-called golden age, not just in the U.S. (and Western Europe and Japan and Australia ).
It could be that it was still imperialism at work, but the link between imperialism and the creation
of the middle class is not straightforward.
Likewise, US elites are clearly NOT robbing the manufacturing firms that have set up in China
and other low-wage locations, so it is an oversimplification to say they are "robbing everyone
else."
Nostalgia is overrated but I don't sense the current malaise as a desire for more stuff. (I
grew up in the 60s and 70s and I don't remember it as a time where people had, or craved, a lot
of stuff. That period would be now, and I find it infects Sanders' supporters less than most.)
If anything, it is nostalgia for more (free) time and more community, for a time when (many but
not all) people had time to socialize and enjoy civic life.
those things would be nice as would just a tiny bit of hope for the future, our own and the
planet's and not an expectation of things getting more and more difficult and sometimes for entirely
unnecessary reasons like imposed austerity. But being we can't have "nice things" like free time,
community and hope for the future, we just "buy stuff".
I live on the south side, in the formerly affluent south shore neighborhood. A teenager was
killed, shot in the head in a drive by shooting, at 5 pm yesterday right around the corner from
my residence. A white coworker of mine who lives in a rich northwest side neighborhood once commented
to me how black people always say goodbye by saying "be safe". More easily said than done.
I thought neoliberalism was just the pogrom to make everyone – rational agents – as subscribed
by our genetic / heraldic betters .. putting this orbs humans and resources in the correct "natural"
order .
Disheveled Marsupial for those thinking neoliberalism is not associated with libertarianism
one only has to observe the decades of think tanks and their mouth organs roaming the planet .
especially in the late 80s and 90s . bringing the might and wonders of the – market – to the great
unwashed globally here libertarian priests rang in the good news to the great unwashed
I would argue that neoliberalism is a program to define markets as primarily engaged in
information processing and to make everyone into non-agents ( as not important at all to the proper
functioning of markets).
It also appears that neoliberals want to restrict democracy to the greatest extent possible
and to view markets as the only foundation for truth without any need for input from the average
individual.
But as Mirowski argues–carrying their analysis this far begins to undermine their own neoliberal
assumptions about markets always promoting social welfare.
When I mean – agents – I'm not referring to agency, like you say the market gawd/computer does
that. I was referencing the – rational agent – that 'ascribes' the markets the right at defining
facts or truth as neoliberalism defines rational thought/behavior.
Disheveled Marsupial yes democracy is a direct threat to Hayekian et al [MPS and Friends]
paranoia due to claims of irrationality vs rationally
I have trouble understanding the focus on an emergence of fascism in Europe, focus that seems
to dominate this entire thread when, put in perspective such splinter groups bear little weight
on the European political spectrum.
As an expat living in France, in my perception the Front National is a threat to the political
establishments that occupy the center left and right and whose historically broad constituencies
have been brutalized by the financial crisis borne of unbridled anglo-saxon runaway capitalism,
coined neoliberalism. The resulting disaffection has allowed the growth of the FN but it is also
fueled by a transfer of reactionary constituencies that have historically found identity in far
left parties (communist, anti-capitalist, anarchist ), political expressions the institutions
of the Republic allow and enable in the name of plurality, a healthy exultury in a democratic
society.
To consider that the FN in France, UKIP in the UK and others are a threat to democratic values
any more that the far left is non-sensical, and I dare say insignificant compared to the "anchluss"
our conservative right seeks to impose upon the executive, legislative and judicial branches of
government.
The reality in Europe as in America is economic. The post WWII era of reconstruction, investment
and growth is behind us, the French call these years the "Trente Glorieuses" (30 glorious years)
when prosperity was felt through all societal strats, consumerism for all became the panacea for
a just society, where injustice prevailed welfare formulas provided a new panacea.
As the perspective of an unravelling of this golden era began to emerge elites sought and conspired
to consolidate power and wealth, under the aegis of greed is good culture by further corrupting
government to serve the few, ensuring impunity for the ruling class, attempting societal cohesiveness
with brash hubristic dialectics (America, the greatest this or that) and adventurism (Irak, mission
accomplished), conspiring to co-opt and control institutions and the media (to understand the
depth of this deception a must read is Jane Mayer in The Dark Side and in Dark Money).
The difference between America and Europe is that latter bears of brunt of our excess.
The 2008 Wall St / City meltdown eviscerated much of America' middle class and de-facto stalled,
perhaps definitively, the vehicle of upward mobility in an increasingly wealth-ranked class structured
society – the Trump phenomena feeds off the fatalistic resilience and "good book" mythologies
remnant of the "go west" culture.
In Europe where to varying degrees managed capitalism prevails the welfare state(s) provided the
shock absorbers to offset the brunt of the crisis, but those who locked-in on neoliberal fiscal
conservatism have cut off their nose in spite leaving scant resources to spur growth. If social
mobility survives, more vibrantly than the US, unemployment and the cost thereof remains steadfast
and crippling.
The second crisis borne of American hubris is the human tidal wave resulting from the Irak adventure;
it has unleashed mayhem upon the Middle East, Sub Saharan Africa and beyond. The current migrational
wave Europe can not absorb is but the beginning of much deeper problem – as ISIS, Boko Haram and
so many others terrorist groups destabilize the nation-states of a continent whose population
is on the path to explode in the next half century.
The icing on the cake provided by a Trump election will be a world wave of climate change refugees
as the neoliberal establishment seeks to optimize wealth and power through continued climate change
denial.
Fascism is not the issue, nationalism resulting from a self serving bully culture will decimate
the multilateral infrastructure responsible nation-states need to address today's problems.
Broadly, Trump Presidency capping the neoliberal experience will likely signal the end of the
US' dominant role on the world scene (and of course the immense benefits derived for the US).
As he has articulated his intent to discard the art of diplomacy, from soft to institutional,
in favor of an agressive approach in which the President seeks to "rattle" allies (NATO, Japan
and S. Korea for example) as well as his opponents (in other words anyone who does not profess
blind allegiance), expect that such modus operandi will create a deep schism accompanied by a
loss of trust, already felt vis-a-vis our legislature' behavior over the last seven years.
The US's newfound respect among friends and foes generated by President Obama' presidency, has
already been undermined by the GOP primaries, if Trump is elected it will dissipate for good as
other nations and groups thereof focus upon new, no-longer necessarily aligned strategic relationships,
some will form as part as a means of taking distance, or protection from the US, others more opportunist
with the risk of opponents such as Putin filling the void – in Europe for example.
Neoliberalism isn't helping, but it's a population/resource ratio thing. Impacts on social
orders occur well before raw supply factors kick in (and there is more than food supply to basic
rations). The world population has more than doubled in the last 50 years, one doesn't get that
kind of accelerated growth without profound impacts to every aspect of societies. Some of the
most significant impacts are consequent to the acceleration of technological changes (skill expirations,
automations) that are driven in no small part by the needs of a vast + growing population.
I don't suggest population as a pat simplistic answer. And neoliberalism accelerates the declining
performance of institutions (as in the CUNY article and that's been going on for decades already,
neoliberalism just picked up where neoconservatism petered out), but we would be facing issues
like homelessness, service degradation, population displacements, etc regardless of poor policies.
One could argue (I do) that neoliberalism has undertaken to accelerate existing entropies for
profit.
Thanks for soliciting reader comments on socioeconomic desperation. It's encouraging to know
that I'm not the only failure to launch in this country.
I'm a seasonal farm worker with a liberal arts degree in geology and history. I barely held
on for six months as a junior environmental consultant at a dysfunctional firm that tacitly encouraged
unethical and incompetent behavior at all levels. From what I could gather, it was one of the
better-run firms in the industry. Even so, I was watching mid-level and senior staff wander into
extended mid-life crises while our entire service line was terrorized by a badly out-of-shape,
morbidly obese, erratic, vicious PG who had alienated almost the entire office but was untouchable
no matter how many firing offenses she committed. Meanwhile I was watching peers in other industries
(especially marketing and FIRE) sell their souls in real time. I'm still watching them do so a
decade later.
It's hard to exaggerate how atrociously I've been treated by bougie conformists for having
failed/dropped out of the rat race. A family friend who got into trouble with the state of Hawaii
for misclassifying direct employees of his timeshare boiler room as 1099's gave me a panic attack
after getting stoned and berating me for hours about how I'd wake up someday and wonder what the
fuck I'd done with my life. At the time, I had successfully completed a summer job as the de facto
lead on a vineyard maintenance crew and was about to get called back for the harvest, again as
the de facto lead picker.
Much of my social life is basically my humiliation at the hands of amoral sleazeballs who presume
themselves my superiors. No matter how strong an objective case I have for these people being
morally bankrupt, it's impossible to really dismiss their insults. Another big component is concern-trolling
from bourgeois supremacists who will do awfully little for me when I ask them for specific help.
I don't know what they're trying to accomplish, and they probably don't, either. A lot of it is
cognitive dissonance and incoherence.
Some of the worst aggression has come from a Type A social climber friend who sells life insurance.
He's a top producer in a company that's about a third normal, a third Willy Loman, and a third
Glengarry Glen Ross. This dude is clearly troubled, but in ways that neither of us can really
figure out, and a number of those around him are, too. He once admitted, unbidden, to having hazed
me for years.
The bigger problem is that he's surrounded by an entire social infrastructure that enables
and rewards noxious, predatory behavior. When college men feel like treating the struggling like
garbage, they have backup and social proof from their peers. It's disgusting. Many of these people
have no idea of how to relate appropriately to the poor or the unemployed and no interest in learning.
They want to lecture and humiliate us, not listen to us.
Dude recently told me that our alma mater, Dickinson College, is a "grad school preparatory
institution." I was floored that anyone would ever think to talk like that. In point of fact,
we're constantly lectured about how versatile our degrees are, with or without additional education.
I've apparently annoyed a number of Dickinsonians by bitterly complaining that Dickinson's nonacademic
operations are a sleazy racket and that President Emeritus Bill Durden is a shyster who brainwashed
my classmates with crude propaganda. If anything, I'm probably measured in my criticism, because
I don't think I know the full extent of the fraud and sleaze. What I have seen and heard is damning.
I believe that Dickinson is run by people with totalitarian impulses that are restrained only
by a handful of nonconformists who came for the academics and are fed up with the propaganda.
Meanwhile, I've been warm homeless for most of the past four years. It's absurd to get pledge
drive pitches from a well-endowed school on the premise that my degree is golden when I'm regularly
sleeping in my car and financially dependent on my parents. It's absurd to hear stories about
how Dickinson's alumni job placement network is top-notch when I've never gotten a viable lead
from anyone I know from school. It's absurd to explain my circumstances in detail to people who,
afterwards, still can't understand why I'm cynical.
While my classmates preen about their degrees, I'm dealing with stuff that would make them
vomit. A relative whose farm I've been tending has dozens of rats infesting his winery building,
causing such a stench that I'm just about the only person willing to set foot inside it. This
relative is a deadbeat presiding over a feudal slumlord manor, circumstances that he usually justifies
by saying that he's broke and just trying to make ends meet. He has rent-paying tenants living
on the property with nothing but a pit outhouse and a filthy, disused shower room for facilities.
He doesn't care that it's illegal. One of his tenants left behind a twenty-gallon trash can full
to the brim with his own feces. Another was seen throwing newspaper-wrapped turds out of her trailer
into the weeds. They probably found more dignity in this than in using the outhouse.
When I was staying in Rancho Cordova, a rough suburb of Sacramento, I saw my next-door neighbor
nearly come to blows with a man at the light rail station before apologizing profusely to me,
calling me "sir," "man," "boss," and "dog." He told me that he was angry at the other guy for
selling meth to his kid sister. Eureka is even worse: its west side is swarming with tweakers,
its low-end apartment stock is terrible, no one brings the slumlords to heel, and it has a string
of truly filthy residential motels along Broadway that should have been demolished years ago.
A colleague who lives in Sweet Home, Oregon, told me that his hometown is swarming with druggies
who try to extract opiates from local poppies and live for the next arriving shipment of garbage
drugs. The berry farm where we worked had ten- and twelve-year-olds working under the table to
supplement their families' incomes. A Canadian friend told me that he worked for a crackhead in
Lillooet who made his own supply at home using freebase that he bought from a meathead dealer
with ties to the Boston mob. Apparently all the failing mill towns in rural BC have a crack problem
because there's not much to do other than go on welfare and cocaine. An RCMP sergeant in Kamloops
was recently indicted for selling coke on the side.
Uahsenaa's comment about the invisible homeless is spot on. I think I blend in pretty well.
I've often stunned people by mentioning that I'm homeless. Some of them have been assholes about
it, but not all. There are several cars that I recognize as regular overnighters at my usual rest
area. Thank God we don't get hassled much. Oregon is about as safe a place as there is to be homeless.
Some of the rest areas in California, including the ones at Kingsburg and the Sacramento Airport,
end up at or beyond capacity overnight due to the homeless. CalTrans has signs reminding drivers
that it's rude to hog a space that someone else will need. This austerity does not, of course,
apply to stadium construction for the Kings.
Another thing that almost slipped my mind (and is relevant to Trump's popularity): I've encountered
entrenched, systemic discrimination against Americans when I've tried to find and hold menial
jobs, and I've talked to other Americans who have also encountered it. There is an extreme bias
in favor of Mexican peasants and against Americans in the fields and increasingly in off-farm
jobs. The top quintile will be lucky not to reap the whirlwind on account of this prejudice.
"... The number one issue fueling the leave vote was immigration – a lot like Trump's wall against Mexico. The number two issue was lack of accountability of government: Leavers believe that the EU government in Brussels is unaccountable to voters. For Trump supporters, resentment towards a distant and unaccountable Washington government ranks high as well. The Brexit constituency and the Trump constituency are both motivated by the same sense of loss and vulnerability. ..."
"... In both the U.S. and the U.K., a large and growing segment of voters has not prospered in today's complex, technology-driven global economy. Their wages have stagnated and in many cases fallen. Too few good-paying jobs exist for people lacking a college degree, or even people with a college degree, if the degree is not in the right field. These people are angry, frustrated, and afraid -- and with very good reason. Both countries' governments have done little to help them adapt, and little to soothe the sting of globalization. The voter's concerns in both places are mostly the same even though these concerns have coalesced around a policy issue ("leave") in the U.K. whereas here in the U.S. they have coalesced around a candidate (Trump). ..."
"... Similarly, the elite insiders of the Republican Party and their business allies badly underestimated Trump. Establishment candidates like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush failed terribly. Now the Republican political insiders are trying to make sense of a presumptive nominee who trashes free trade, one of the fundamental principles of the party, and openly taunts one of most important emerging voting blocks. ..."
"... Perhaps the biggest reason for the impotence of today's political elites is that elites have trashed the very idea of competent and effective government for 35 years now, and the public has taken the message to heart. Ever since Reagan identified government as the problem, conservative elites have attacked the idea of government itself – rather than respecting the idea of government itself while criticizing the particular policies of a particular government. This is a crucial (and dangerous) distinction. In 1986, Reagan went on to say "the nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" ..."
In addition, the issues are similar between the two campaigns: The number
one issue fueling the leave vote was immigration – a lot like Trump's wall against
Mexico. The number two issue was lack of accountability of government: Leavers
believe that the EU government in Brussels is unaccountable to voters. For Trump
supporters, resentment towards a distant and unaccountable Washington government
ranks high as well. The Brexit constituency and the Trump constituency are both
motivated by the same sense of loss and vulnerability.
In both the U.S. and the U.K., a large and growing segment of voters
has not prospered in today's complex, technology-driven global economy. Their
wages have stagnated and in many cases fallen. Too few good-paying jobs exist
for people lacking a college degree, or even people with a college degree, if
the degree is not in the right field. These people are angry, frustrated, and
afraid -- and with very good reason. Both countries' governments have done little
to help them adapt, and little to soothe the sting of globalization. The voter's
concerns in both places are mostly the same even though these concerns have
coalesced around a policy issue ("leave") in the U.K. whereas here in the U.S.
they have coalesced around a candidate (Trump).
In both countries, political elites were caught flat-footed. Elites lost
control over the narrative and lost credibility and persuasiveness with angry,
frustrated and fearful voters. The British elites badly underestimated the intensity
of public frustration with immigration and with the EU. Most expected the vote
would end on the side of "remain," up to the very last moment. Now they are
trying to plot their way out of something they never expected would actually
happen, and never prepared for.
Similarly, the elite insiders of the Republican Party and their business
allies badly underestimated Trump. Establishment candidates like former Florida
Gov. Jeb Bush failed terribly. Now the Republican political insiders are trying
to make sense of a presumptive nominee who trashes free trade, one of the fundamental
principles of the party, and openly taunts one of most important emerging voting
blocks.
How did the elites lose control? There are many reasons: With social media
so pervasive, advertising dollars no longer controls what the public sees and
hears. With unrestricted campaign spending, the party can no longer "pinch the
air hose" of a candidate who strays from party orthodoxy.
Perhaps the biggest reason for the impotence of today's political elites
is that elites have trashed the very idea of competent and effective government
for 35 years now, and the public has taken the message to heart. Ever since
Reagan identified government as the problem, conservative elites have attacked
the idea of government itself – rather than respecting the idea
of government itself while criticizing the particular policies of a particular
government. This is a crucial (and dangerous) distinction. In 1986, Reagan went
on to say "the nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from
the government and I'm here to help.'"
Reagan booster Grover Norquist is known for saying, "I don't want to abolish
government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into
the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." Countless candidates and elected
officials slam "Washington bureaucrats" even though these "bureaucrats" were
none other than themselves. It's not a great way to build respect. Then the
attack escalated, with the aim of destroying parts of government that were actually
mostly working. This was done to advance the narrative that government itself
is the problem, and pave the way for privatization. Take the Transportation
Security Administration for example. TSA has actually done its job. No terrorist
attacks have succeeded on U.S. airplanes since it was established. But by
systematically underfunding it , Congress has made the lines painfully long,
so people hate it. Take the Post Office. Here Congress manufactured a crisis
to force service cuts, making the public believe the institution is incompetent.
But the so-called "problem" is
due almost entirely to a requirement, imposed by Congress, forcing the Postal
Service to prepay retiree's health care to an absurd level, far beyond what
a similar private sector business would have to do. A similar dynamic now threatens
Social Security. Thirty-five years have passed since Reagan first mocked the
potential for competent and effective government. Years of unrelenting attack
have sunk in. Many Americans now distrust government leaders and think it's
pointless to demand or expect wisdom and statesmanship. Today's American voters
(and their British counterparts), well-schooled in skepticism, disdain and dismiss
leaders of all parties and they are ready to burn things down out of sheer frustration.
The moment of blowback has arrived.
PK has nearly lost all of his ability to see things objectively. Ambition got him, I suppose,
or maybe he has always longed to be popular. He was probably teased and ridiculed too much in
his youth. He is something of a whinny sniveler after-all.
Then too, I doubt if PK has ever used a public restroom in the Southwest, or taken his kids
to a public park in one of the thousands of small towns where non-English speaking throngs take
over all of the facilities and parking.Or had his children bullied at school by a gang of dark-skinned
kids whose parents believe that whites took their land, or abused or enslaved their distant ansestors.
It might be germane here too... to point out that some of this anti-white sentiment gets support
and validation from the very rhetoric that Democrats have made integral to their campaigns.
As for not knowing why crime rates have been falling, the incarceration rates rose in step,
so duh, if you lock up those with propensities for crime, well, how could crime rates not fall?
And while I'm on the subject of crime, the statistical analysis that is commonly used focuses
too much on violent crime and convictions. Thus, crimes of a less serious nature, that being the
type of crimes committed by poor folks, is routinely ignored. Then too, those who are here illegally
are often transient and using assumed names, and so they are, presumably, more difficult to catch.
So, statistics are all too often not as telling as claimed.
And, though I'm not a Trump supporter, I fully understand his appeal. As would PK if he were
more travelled and in touch with those who have seen their schools, parks, towns, and everything
else turn tawdry and dysfunctional. But of course the nation that most of us live in is much different
than the one that PK knows.
> And, though I'm not a Trump supporter, I fully understand his appeal
I wonder why everybody is thinking about this problem only in terms of identity politics.
This is a wrong, self-defeating framework to approach the problem. which is pushed by neoliberal
MSM and which we should resist in this forum as this translates the problems that the nation faces
into term of pure war-style propaganda ("us vs. them" mentality). To which many posters here already
succumbed
IMHO the November elections will be more of the referendum on neoliberal globalization (with
two key issues on the ballot -- jobs and immigration) than anything else.
If so, then the key question is whether the anger of population at neoliberal elite that stole
their jobs and well-being reached the boiling point or not. The level of this anger might decide
the result of elections, not all those petty slurs that neoliberal MSM so diligently use as a
smoke screen.
All those valiant efforts in outsourcing and replacing permanent jobs with temporary to increase
profit margin at the end have the propensity to produce some externalities. And not only in the
form "over 50 and unemployed" but also by a much more dangerous "globalization of indifference"
to human beings in general.
JK Galbraith once gave the following definition of neoliberal economics: "trickle down economics
is the idea that if you feed the horse enough oats eventually some will pass through to the road
for the sparrows." This is what neoliberalism is about. Lower 80% even in so-called rich countries
are forced to live in "fear and desperation", forced to work "with precious little dignity".
Human beings are now considered consumer goods in "job market" to be used and then discarded.
As a consequence, a lot of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: "without work, without
possibilities, without any means of escape" (pope Francis).
And that inevitably produces a reaction. Which in extreme forms we saw during French and Bolsheviks
revolutions. And in less extremist forms (not involving lampposts as the placeholders for the
"Masters of the Universe" (aka financial oligarchy) and the most obnoxious part of the "creative
class" aka intelligentsia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligentsia
) in Brexit vote.
Hillary and Trump are just symbols here. The issue matters, not personalities.
An interesting warning about possible return of neocons in Hillary administration. Looks like not
much changed in Washington from 2005 and Obama more and more looks like Bush III. Both Hillary and Trump
are jingoistic toward Iran. Paradoxically Trump is even more jingoistic then Hillary.
Notable quotes:
"... That no one yet claims actually exists, has begun. Once again we seem to be heading down a highway marked "counterproliferation war." What makes this bizarre is that the Middle East today, for all its catastrophic problems, is actually a nuclear-free zone except for one country, Israel, which has a staggeringly outsized, semi-secret nuclear arsenal. ..."
"... And not much has changed since. I recommend as well a piece written even earlier by Ira Chernus on a graphic about the Israeli nuclear arsenal tucked away at the MSNBC website (and still viewable ). ..."
"... Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst and one of the founders of the group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, considers the Iranian and Israeli bombs, and Bush administration policy in relation to both below in a piece that, he writes, emerged from "an informal colloquium which has sprung up in the Washington, DC area involving people with experience at senior policy levels of government, others who examine foreign policy and defense issues primarily out of a faith perspective, and still others with a foot in each camp. We are trying to deal directly with the moral -- as well as the practical -- implications of various policy alternatives. One of our group recently was invited to talk with senior staffers in the House of Representatives about Iran, its nuclear plans, its support for terrorists, and U.S. military options. Toward the end of that conversation, a House staffer was emboldened to ask, 'What would be a moral solution?' This question gave new energy to our colloquium, generating a number of informal papers, including this one. I am grateful to my colloquium colleagues for their insights and suggestions." ..."
"... What about post-attack "Day Two?" Not to worry. Well-briefed pundits are telling us about a wellspring of Western-oriented I find myself thinking: Right; just like all those Iraqis who welcomed invading American and British troops with open arms and cut flowers. ..."
"... In 2001, the new President Bush brought the neocons back and put them in top policymaking positions. Even former Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams, convicted in October 1991 of lying to Congress and then pardoned by George H. W. Bush, was called back and put in charge of Middle East policy in the White House. In January, he was promoted to the influential post (once occupied by Robert Gates) of deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs. From that senior position Abrams will once again be dealing closely with John Negroponte, an old colleague from rogue-elephant Contra War days, who has now been picked to be the first director of national intelligence. ..."
"... Those of us who -- like Colin Powell -- had front-row seats during the 1980s are far too concerned to dismiss the re-emergence of the neocons as a simple case of déjà vu . They are much more dangerous now. Unlike in the eighties, they are the ones crafting the adventurous policies our sons and daughters are being called on to implement. ..."
"... So why would Iran think it has to acquire nuclear weapons? Sen. Richard Lugar, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was asked this on a Sunday talk show a few months ago. Apparently having a senior moment, he failed to give the normal answer. Instead, he replied, "Well, you know, Israel has..." At that point, he caught himself and abruptly stopped. ..."
That no one yet claims actually exists, has begun. Once again we seem to be heading down a highway
marked "counterproliferation war." What makes this bizarre is that the Middle East today, for all
its catastrophic problems, is actually a nuclear-free zone except for one country, Israel, which
has a staggeringly outsized, semi-secret nuclear arsenal.
As Los Angeles Times reporter Douglas Frantz wrote at one point, "Though Israel is a democracy,
debating the nuclear program is taboo A military censor guards Israel's nuclear secrets." And this
"taboo" has largely extended to American reporting on the subject. Imagine, to offer a very partial
analogy, if we all had had to consider the Cold War nuclear issue with the Soviet, but almost never
the American nuclear arsenal, in the news. Of course, that would have been absurd and yet it's the
case in the Middle East today, making most strategic discussions of the region exercises in absurdity.
I wrote about this subject under the title,
Nuclear Israel
, back in October 2003, because of a brief break, thanks to Frantz, in the media blackout on the
subject. I began then, "Nuclear North Korea, nuclear Iraq, nuclear Iran - of these our media has
been full for the last year or more, though they either don't exist or hardly yet exist. North Korea
now probably has a couple of crude nuclear weapons, which it may still be incapable of delivering.
But nuclear Israel, little endangered Israel? It's hard even to get your head around the concept,
though that country has either the fifth or sixth largest nuclear arsenal in the world." And
not much has changed since. I recommend as well a piece written even earlier
by Ira Chernus on a
graphic about the Israeli nuclear arsenal tucked away at the MSNBC website (and
still viewable
).
Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst and one of the founders of the group, Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity, considers the Iranian and Israeli bombs, and Bush administration policy
in relation to both below in a piece that, he writes, emerged from "an informal colloquium which
has sprung up in the Washington, DC area involving people with experience at senior policy levels
of government, others who examine foreign policy and defense issues primarily out of a faith perspective,
and still others with a foot in each camp. We are trying to deal directly with the moral -- as well
as the practical -- implications of various policy alternatives. One of our group recently was invited
to talk with senior staffers in the House of Representatives about Iran, its nuclear plans, its support
for terrorists, and U.S. military options. Toward the end of that conversation, a House staffer was
emboldened to ask, 'What would be a moral solution?' This question gave new energy to our colloquium,
generating a number of informal papers, including this one. I am grateful to my colloquium colleagues
for their insights and suggestions." Now, read on. ~ Tom
Attacking Iran: I Know It Sounds Crazy, But...
By Ray McGovern
"'This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous.'
"(Short pause)
"'And having said that, all options are on the table.'
"Even the White House stenographers felt obliged to note the result: '(Laughter).'"
For a host of good reasons -- the huge and draining commitment of U.S. forces to Iraq and Iran's
ability to stir the Iraqi pot to boiling, for starters -- the notion that the Bush administration
would mount a "preemptive" air attack on Iran seems insane. And still more insane if the objective
includes overthrowing Iran's government again, as in 1953 -- this time under the rubric of "regime
change."
But Bush administration policy toward the Middle East is being run by men -- yes, only men
-- who were routinely referred to in high circles in Washington during the 1980s as "the crazies."
I can attest to that personally, but one need not take my word for it.
According to James Naughtie, author of The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency
, former Secretary of State Colin Powell added an old soldier's adjective to the "crazies"
sobriquet in referring to the same officials. Powell, who was military aide to Defense Secretary
Casper Weinberger in the early eighties, was overheard calling them "the f---ing crazies" during
a phone call with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw before the war in Iraq. At the time, Powell
was reportedly deeply concerned over their determination to attack -- with or without UN approval.
Small wonder that they got rid of Powell after the election, as soon as they had no more use for
him.
If further proof of insanity were needed, one could simply look at the unnecessary carnage
in Iraq since the invasion in March 2003. That unprovoked attack was, in my view, the most fateful
foreign policy blunder in our nation's history...so far.
It Can Get Worse
"The crazies" are not finished. And we do well not to let their ultimate folly obscure
their current ambition, and the further trouble that ambition is bound to bring in the four years
ahead. In an immediate sense, with U.S. military power unrivaled, they can be seen as "crazy like
a fox," with a value system in which "might makes right." Operating out of that value system,
and now sporting the more respectable misnomer/moniker "neoconservative," they are convinced that
they know exactly what they are doing. They have a clear ideology and a geopolitical strategy,
which leap from papers they put out at the
Project for the New American Century
over recent years.
The very same men who, acting out of that paradigm, brought us the war in Iraq are now focusing
on Iran, which they view as the only remaining obstacle to American domination of the entire oil-rich
Middle East. They calculate that, with a docile, corporate-owned press, a co-opted mainstream
church, and a still-trusting populace, the United States and/or the Israelis can launch a successful
air offensive to disrupt any Iranian nuclear weapons programs -- with the added bonus of possibly
causing the regime in power in Iran to crumble.
But why now? After all, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency has just told Congress
that Iran is not likely to have a nuclear weapon until "early in the next decade?" The answer,
according to some defense experts, is that several of the Iranian facilities are still under construction
and there is only a narrow "window of opportunity" to destroy them without causing huge environmental
problems. That window, they say, will begin to close this year.
Other analysts attribute the sense of urgency to worry in Washington that the Iranians may
have secretly gained access to technology that would facilitate a leap forward into the nuclear
club much sooner than now anticipated. And it is, of course, neoconservative doctrine that it
is best to nip -- the word in current fashion is "preempt" -- any conceivable threats in the bud.
One reason the Israelis are pressing hard for early action may simply be out of a desire to ensure
that George W. Bush will have a few more years as president after an attack on Iran, so that they
will have him to stand with Israel when bedlam breaks out in the Middle East.
What about post-attack "Day Two?" Not to worry. Well-briefed pundits are telling us about
a wellspring of Western-oriented I find myself thinking: Right; just like all those Iraqis who
welcomed invading American and British troops with open arms and cut flowers. For me, this
evokes a painful flashback to the early eighties when "intelligence," pointing to "moderates"
within the Iranian leadership, was conjured up to help justify the imaginative but illegal arms-for-hostages-and-proceeds-to-Nicaraguan-Contras
caper. The fact that the conjurer-in-chief of that spurious "evidence" on Iranian "moderates,"
former chief CIA analyst, later director Robert Gates, was recently offered the newly created
position of director of national intelligence makes the flashback more eerie -- and alarming.
George H. W. Bush Saw Through "The Crazies"
During his term in office, George H. W. Bush, with the practical advice of his national security
adviser Gen. Brent Scowcroft and Secretary of State James Baker, was able to keep "the crazies"
at arms length, preventing them from getting the country into serious trouble. They were kept
well below the level of "principal" -- that is, below the level of secretary of state or defense.
Even so, heady in the afterglow of victory in the Gulf War of 1990, "the crazies" stirred up
considerable controversy when they articulated their radical views. Their vision, for instance,
became the centerpiece of the draft "Defense Planning Guidance" that Paul Wolfowitz, de facto
dean of the neoconservatives, prepared in 1992 for then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. It dismissed
deterrence as an outdated relic of the Cold War and argued that the United States must maintain
military strength beyond conceivable challenge -- and use it in preemptive ways in dealing with
those who might acquire "weapons of mass destruction." Sound familiar?
Aghast at this radical imperial strategy for the post-Cold War world, someone with access to
the draft leaked it to the New York Times , forcing President George H. W. Bush either
to endorse or disavow it. Disavow it he did -- and quickly, on the cooler-head recommendations
of Scowcroft and Baker, who proved themselves a bulwark against the hubris and megalomania of
"the crazies." Unfortunately, their vision did not die. No less unfortunately, there is method
to their madness -- even if it threatens to spell eventual disaster for our country. Empires always
overreach and fall.
The Return of the Neocons
In 2001, the new President Bush brought the neocons back and put them in top policymaking
positions. Even former Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams, convicted in October 1991 of
lying to Congress and then pardoned by George H. W. Bush, was called back and put in charge of
Middle East policy in the White House. In January, he was promoted to the influential post (once
occupied by Robert Gates) of deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs.
From that senior position Abrams will once again be dealing closely with John Negroponte, an old
colleague from rogue-elephant Contra War days, who has now been picked to be the first director
of national intelligence.
Those of us who -- like Colin Powell -- had front-row seats during the 1980s are far too
concerned to dismiss the re-emergence of the neocons as a simple case of déjà vu . They
are much more dangerous now. Unlike in the eighties, they are the ones crafting the adventurous
policies our sons and daughters are being called on to implement.
Why dwell on this? Because it is second in importance only to the portentous reality that the
earth is running out of readily accessible oil – something of which they are all too aware. Not
surprisingly then, disguised beneath the weapons-of-mass-destruction smokescreen they laid down
as they prepared to invade Iraq lay an unspoken but bedrock reason for the war -- oil. In any
case, the neocons seem to believe that, in the wake of the November election, they now have a
carte-blanche "mandate." And with the president's new "capital to spend," they appear determined
to spend it, sooner rather than later.
Next Stop, Iran
When a Special Forces platoon leader just back from Iraq matter-of-factly tells a close friend
of mine, as happened last week, that he and his unit are now training their sights (literally)
on Iran, we need to take that seriously. It provides us with a glimpse of reality as seen at ground
level. For me, it brought to mind an unsolicited email I received from the father of a young soldier
training at Fort Benning in the spring of 2002, soon after I wrote an op-ed discussing the timing
of George W. Bush's decision to make war on Iraq. The father informed me that, during the spring
of 2002, his son kept writing home saying his unit was training to go into Iraq. No, said the
father; you mean Afghanistan... that's where the war is, not Iraq. In his next email, the son
said, "No, Dad, they keep saying Iraq. I asked them and that's what they mean."
Now, apparently, they keep saying Iran ; and that appears to be what they mean.
Anecdotal evidence like this is hardly conclusive. Put it together with administration rhetoric
and a preponderance of other "dots," though, and everything points in the direction of an air
attack on Iran, possibly also involving some ground forces. Indeed, from the
New Yorker reports
of Seymour Hersh to
Washington Post articles , accounts of small-scale American intrusions on the ground as well
as into Iranian airspace are appearing with increasing frequency. In a speech given on February
18, former UN arms inspector and Marine officer Scott Ritter (who was totally on target before
the Iraq War on that country's lack of weapons of mass destruction) claimed that the president
has already "signed off" on plans to bomb Iran in June in order to destroy its alleged nuclear
weapons program and eventually bring about "regime change." This does not necessarily mean an
automatic green light for a large attack in June, but it may signal the president's seriousness
about this option.
So, again, against the background of what we have witnessed over the past four years, and the
troubling fact that the circle of second-term presidential advisers has become even tighter, we
do well to inject a strong note of urgency into any discussion of the "Iranian option."
Why Would Iran Want Nukes?
So why would Iran think it has to acquire nuclear weapons? Sen. Richard Lugar, chair of
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was asked this on a Sunday talk show a few months ago.
Apparently having a senior moment, he failed to give the normal answer. Instead, he replied, "Well,
you know, Israel has..." At that point, he caught himself and abruptly stopped.
Recovering quickly and realizing that he could not just leave the word "Israel" hanging there,
Lugar began again: "Well, Israel is alleged to have a nuclear capability."
Is alleged to
have ? Lugar is chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and yet he doesn't know that
Israel has, by most estimates, a major nuclear arsenal, consisting of several hundred nuclear
weapons? (Mainstream newspapers are allergic to dwelling on this topic, but it is mentioned every
now and then, usually buried in obscurity on an inside page.)
Just imagine how the Iranians and Syrians would react to Lugar's disingenuousness. Small wonder
our highest officials and lawmakers -- and Lugar, remember, is one of the most decent among them
-- are widely seen abroad as hypocritical. Our media, of course, ignore the hypocrisy. This is
standard operating procedure when the word "Israel" is spoken in this or other unflattering contexts.
And the objections of those appealing for a more balanced approach are quashed.
If the truth be told, Iran fears Israel at least as much as Israel fears the internal security
threat posed by the thugs supported by Tehran. Iran's apprehension is partly fear that Israel
(with at least tacit support from the Bush administration) will send its aircraft to bomb Iranian
nuclear facilities, just as American-built Israeli bombers destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor
at Osirak in 1981. As part of the current war of nerves, recent statements by the president and
vice president can be
read as giving a green light to Israel to do just that; while Israeli Air Force commander Major
General Eliezer Shakedi told reporters on February 21 that Israel must be prepared for an air
strike on Iran "in light of its nuclear activity."
US-Israel Nexus
The Iranians also remember how Israel was able to acquire and keep its nuclear technology.
Much of it was stolen from the United States by spies for Israel. As early as the late-1950s,
Washington knew Israel was building the bomb and could have aborted the project. Instead, American
officials decided to turn a blind eye and let the Israelis go ahead. Now Israel's nuclear capability
is truly formidable. Still, it is a fact of strategic life that a formidable nuclear arsenal can
be deterred by a far more modest one, if an adversary has the means to deliver it. (Look at North
Korea's success with, at best, a few nuclear weapons and questionable means of delivery in deterring
the "sole remaining superpower in the world.") And Iran already has missiles with the range to
hit Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Sharon has for some time appeared eager to enlist Washington's support
for an early "pre-emptive" strike on Iran. Indeed,
American
defense officials have told reporters that visiting Israeli officials have been pressing the
issue for the past year and a half. And the Israelis are now claiming publicly that Iran could
have a nuclear weapon within six months -- years earlier than the Defense Intelligence Agency
estimate mentioned above.
In the past, President Bush has chosen to dismiss unwelcome intelligence estimates as "guesses"
-- especially when they threatened to complicate decisions to implement the neoconservative agenda.
It is worth noting that several of the leading neocons – Richard Perle, chair of the Defense Policy
Board (2001-03); Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; and David Wurmser, Middle
East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney -- actually wrote policy papers for the Israeli government
during the 1990s. They have consistently had great difficulty distinguishing between the strategic
interests of Israel and those of the US -- at least as they imagine them.
As for President Bush, over the past four years he has amply demonstrated his preference for
the counsel of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who,
as Gen. Scowcroft said publicly , has the president "wrapped around his little finger." (As
Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board until he was unceremoniously removed
at the turn of the year, Scowcroft was in a position to know.) If Scowcroft is correct in also
saying that the president has been "mesmerized" by Sharon, it seems possible that the Israelis
already have successfully argued for an attack on Iran.
When "Regime Change" Meant Overthrow For Oil
To remember why the United States is no favorite in Tehran, one needs to go back at least to
1953 when the U.S. and Great Britain overthrew Iran's democratically elected Premier Mohammad
Mossadeq as part of a plan to insure access to Iranian oil. They then emplaced the young Shah
in power who, with his notorious secret police, proved second to none in cruelty. The Shah ruled
from 1953 to 1979. Much resentment can build up over a whole generation. His regime fell like
a house of cards, when supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini rose up to do some regime change of their
own.
Iranians also remember Washington's strong support for Saddam Hussein's Iraq after it decided
to make war on Iran in 1980. U.S. support for Iraq (which included crucial intelligence support
for the war and an implicit condoning of Saddam's use of chemical weapons) was perhaps the crucial
factor in staving off an Iranian victory. Imagine then, the threat Iranians see, should the Bush
administration succeed in establishing up to 14 permanent military bases in neighboring Iraq.
Any Iranian can look at a map of the Middle East (including occupied Iraq) and conclude that this
administration might indeed be willing to pay the necessary price in blood and treasure to influence
what happens to the black gold under Iranian as well as Iraqi sands. And with four more years
to play with, a lot can be done along those lines. The obvious question is: How to deter it? Well,
once again, Iran can hardly be blind to the fact that a small nation like North Korea has so far
deterred U.S. action by producing, or at least claiming to have produced, nuclear weapons.
Nuclear Is the Nub
The nuclear issue is indeed paramount, and we would do well to imagine and craft fresh approaches
to the nub of the problem. As a start, I'll bet if you made a survey, only 20% of Americans would
answer "yes" to the question, "Does Israel have nuclear weapons?" That is key, it seems to me,
because at their core Americans are still fair-minded people.
On the other hand, I'll bet that 95% of the Iranian population would answer, "Of course Israel
has nuclear weapons; that's why we Iranians need them" -- which was, of course, the unmentionable
calculation that Senator Lugar almost conceded. "And we also need them," many Iranians would probably
say, "in order to deter 'the crazies' in Washington. It seems to be working for the North Koreans,
who, after all, are the other remaining point on President Bush's 'axis of evil.'"
The ideal approach would, of course, be to destroy all nuclear weapons in the world
and ban them for the future, with a very intrusive global inspection regime to verify compliance.
A total ban is worth holding up as an ideal, and I think we must. But this approach seems unlikely
to bear fruit over the next four years. So what then?
A Nuclear-Free Middle East
How about a nuclear-free Middle East? Could the US make that happen? We could if we had moral
clarity -- the underpinning necessary to bring it about. Each time this proposal is raised, the
Syrians, for example, clap their hands in feigned joyful anticipation, saying, "Of course such
a pact would include Israel, right?" The issue is then dropped from all discussion by U.S. policymakers.
Required: not only moral clarity but also what Thomas Aquinas labeled the precondition for all
virtue, courage. In this context, courage would include a refusal to be intimidated by inevitable
charges of anti-Semitism.
The reality is that, except for Israel, the Middle East is nuclear free. But the discussion
cannot stop there. It is not difficult to understand why the first leaders of Israel, with the
Holocaust experience written indelibly on their hearts and minds, and feeling surrounded by perceived
threats to the fledgling state's existence, wanted the bomb. And so, before the Syrians or Iranians,
for example, get carried away with self-serving applause for the nuclear-free Middle East proposal,
they will have to understand that for any such negotiation to succeed it must have as a concomitant
aim the guarantee of an Israel able to live in peace and protect itself behind secure borders.
That guarantee has got to be part of the deal.
That the obstacles to any such agreement are formidable is no excuse not trying. But the approach
would have to be new and everything would have to be on the table. Persisting in a state of denial
about Israel's nuclear weapons is dangerously shortsighted; it does nothing but aggravate fears
among the Arabs and create further incentive for them to acquire nuclear weapons of their own.
A sensible approach would also have to include a willingness to engage the Iranians directly,
attempt to understand their perspective, and discern what the United States and Israel could do
to alleviate their concerns.
Preaching to Iran and others about not acquiring nuclear weapons is, indeed, like the village
drunk preaching sobriety -- the more so as our government keeps developing new genres of nuclear
weapons and keeps looking the other way as Israel enhances its own nuclear arsenal. Not a pretty
moral picture, that. Indeed, it reminds me of the Scripture passage about taking the plank out
of your own eye before insisting that the speck be removed from another's.
Lessons from the Past...Like Mutual Deterrence
Has everyone forgotten that deterrence worked for some 40 years, while for most of those years
the U.S. and the USSR had not by any means lost their lust for ever-enhanced nuclear weapons?
The point is simply that, while engaging the Iranians bilaterally and searching for more imaginative
nuclear-free proposals, the U.S. might adopt a more patient interim attitude regarding the striving
of other nation states to acquire nuclear weapons -- bearing in mind that the Bush administration's
policies of "preemption" and "regime change" themselves create powerful incentives for exactly
such striving. As was the case with Iraq two years ago, there is no imminent Iranian strategic
threat to Americans -- or, in reality, to anyone. Even if Iran acquired a nuclear capability,
there is no reason to believe that it would risk a suicidal first strike on Israel. That, after
all, is what mutual deterrence is all about; it works both ways.
It is nonetheless clear that the Israelis' sense of insecurity -- however exaggerated it may
seem to those of us thousands of miles away -- is not synthetic but real. The Sharon government
appears to regard its nuclear monopoly in the region as the only effective "deterrence insurance"
it can buy. It is determined to prevent its neighbors from acquiring the kind of capability that
could infringe on the freedom it now enjoys to carry out military and other actions in the area.
Government officials have said that Israel will not let Iran acquire a nuclear weapon; it would
be folly to dismiss this as bravado. The Israelis have laid down a marker and mean to follow through
-- unless the Bush administration assumes the attitude that "preemption" is an acceptable course
for the United States but not for Israel. It seems unlikely that the neoconservatives would take
that line. Rather
"Israel Is Our Ally."
Or so
said
our president before the cameras on February 17, 2005. But I didn't think we had a treaty
of alliance with Israel; I don't remember the Senate approving one. Did I miss something?
Clearly, the longstanding U.S.-Israeli friendship and the ideals we share dictate continuing
support for Israel's defense and security. It is quite another thing, though, to suggest the existence
of formal treaty obligations that our country does not have. To all intents and purposes, our
policymakers -- from the president on down -- seem to speak and behave on the assumption that
we do have such obligations toward Israel. A former colleague CIA analyst, Michael Scheuer, author
of Imperial Hubris , has put it this way: "The Israelis have succeeded in lacing tight
the ropes binding the American Gulliver to Israel and its policies."
An earlier American warned:
"A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for
the favorite nation facilitates the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where
no real common interest exists, infuses into one the enmities of the other, and betrays the
former into participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement
or justification.... It also gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens, who devote
themselves to the favorite nation, facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own
country." ( George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796 )
In my view, our first president's words apply only too aptly to this administration's lash-up
with the Sharon government. As responsible citizens we need to overcome our timidity about addressing
this issue, lest our fellow Americans continue to be denied important information neglected or
distorted in our domesticated media.
Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst for 27 years -- from the administration of John
F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. During the early 1980s, he was one of the writers/editors
of the President's Daily Brief and briefed it one-on-one to the president's most senior advisers.
He also chaired National Intelligence Estimates. In January 2003, he and four former colleagues
founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
I have written a number of posts, some using data and some not, on immigrstion. Some of those
posts attracted vitriol in comments, including from some who keep accusing me of hiding my punchline.
Personally I find myself repeating myself, or trying to restate a point yet a different way so it
will sink in. I figured it is probably time to put everything in one place, so here it is:
1. Some cultures prepare their people to function well in the US, some don't.
2. Ability to function well in the US is not the same thing as intelligence. As an example,
consider me. I lived almost a third of my life in South America. I have never been to Central Asia.
All else being equal, I can hit the ground running more easily in Argentina than in Iran. In Argentina
I know how to behave in a seamless way that won't raise eyebrows. In Iran, I would need to put effort
into day to day activities. Additionally, my communication skills wouldn't work as well. It isn't
just a matter of not speaking Farsi, but also being unable to unconsciously read and display the
myriad of social signals Iranian society uses. Therefore, my productivity will be greater in Argentina
than Iran (again, all things being equal). And yet my traits – the degree to which I am or am not
intelligent, creative, diligent, sane, honest, etc. – will be the same whether I am in Buenos Aires
or in Teheran. Most of my work related skills (less those involving communication) will also be the
same in both places. The difference between my productivity in Argentina v Iran will be due entirely
to differences in cultural compatibility.
3. Cultural compatibility runs the other way too. Arriving in the US doesn't automatically
confer respect for Western values. In many countries, anti-Christian or anti-Semitic attitudes are
common. In the West people argue about gay marriage. In some countries, the debate is whether gay
people should be stoned or thrown off tall buildings. Similarly, the treatment of women and children
in some countries would be criminal in the US. Think honor killings, child's marriages, FGM or bacha
bazi. (And yes, we are seeing those things happening here now.). Writing again from the role of someone
who was a guest in other peoples' countries for a third of his life, it should be the responsibility
of the newcomer to adapt to his/her new home, and not of the residents of his/her new home to adapt
to the newcomer.
4. In Western countries, immigrants who don't manage to bridge cultural gaps are more likely
to end up dependent on the taxpayer. Immigrants are disproportionate users of welfare. In general,
it seems (at a minimum) to be bad form to request entry into another society only to become a burden
on its people. It is one thing for refugees with no other option to do it, but most immigrants to
the US are not refugees.
5. Being overwhelmingly reliant on government largesse in a foreign society built by strangers
has got to be dispiriting to most thinking adults. It can only add to a person's feeling of alienation.
That in turn can lead to various dysfunctions – vices, crime, anti-social behavior and even terrorism.
It is no surprise that some of these issues exist disproportionately in some immigrant communities.
6. Countries whose emigrants do well in the US also tend to be countries with Western values
and strong economies. More precisely, countries whose immigrants do well in the West have economies
which thrive from the skills of its people, and not countries whose economies is based mostly on
raw material extraction directed by foreigners or on financial transfers from wealthier nations.
7. Countries whose emigrants function well in the US also function well in other Western countries.
Conversely, countries whose emigrants don't function well in the US also don't function well in other
Western countries.
8. Within any society, there are some who are more able to function in the US and some who
are less able to function in the US. To be blunt, some people have attitudes that allow them
to function well in the West. Typically they are dissidents in non Western countries. Place of origin
shouldn't be enough to, by itself, weed out one potential immigrant or guarantee entry to another
to another.
9. The fact that there is homegrown dysfunction isn't a good argument for importing more dysfunction.
The fact that there is need and poverty in this country that doesn't receive sufficient aid is an
argument against importing more need and poverty from abroad.
10. There are far more people who would like to immigrate to the US than we allow into the
US. Given that, it makes sense to be selective, both for our sake and the sake of those who are
unlikely to function well and would become alienated and unable to fend for themselves in the US.
I note that none of these points are new. I have stated them all before, but not all in one place.
The reasons for the election of Donald Trump as President of the U.S. will be analyzed and argued
about for many years to come. Undoubtedly there are U.S.-specific factors that are relevant, such
as racial divisions in voting patterns. But the election took place after the British vote to withdraw
from the European Union and the rise to power of conservative politicians in continental Europe,
so it is reasonable to ask whether globalization bears any responsibility.
Have foreign workers taken the jobs of U.S. workers? Increased trade does lead to a reallocation
of resources, as a country increases its output in those sectors where it has an advantage while
cutting back production in other sectors. Resources should flow from the latter to the former, but
in reality it can be difficult to switch employment across sectors.
Daron Acemoglu and David Autor of MIT,
David Dorn of the University of Zurich, Gordon Hanson of UC-San Diego and Brendan Price of MIT
have found that import competition from China after 2000 contributed to reductions in U.S. manufacturing
employment and weak U.S. job growth. They estimated manufacturing job losses due to Chinese competition
of 2.0 – 2.4 million.
Other studies
find similar results for workers who do not have high school degrees.
Moreover, multinational firms do shift production across borders in response to lower wages, among
other factors.
Ann E. Harrison of UC-Berkeley and Margaret S. McMillan of Tufts University looked at the hiring
practices of the foreign affiliates of U.S. firms during the period of 1977 to 1999. They found that
lower wages in affiliate countries where the employees were substitutes for U.S. workers led to more
employment in those countries but reductions in employment in the U.S. However, when employment across
geographical locations is complementary for firms that do significantly different work at home and
abroad, domestic and foreign employment rise and fall together.
Imports and foreign production, therefore, have had an impact on manufacturing employment in the
U.S. But several caveats should be raised. First, as
Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of MIT and others have pointed out, technology has had a
much larger effect on jobs. The U.S. is the second largest global producer of manufactured goods,
but these products are being made in plants that employ fewer workers than they did in the past.
Many of the lost jobs simply do not exist any more. Second, the U.S. exports goods and services as
well as purchases them. Among the manufactured goods that account for significant shares of U.S.
exports are
machines
and engines, electronic equipment and aircraft . Third, there is inward FDI as well as outward,
and the foreign-based firms hire U.S. workers. A 2013
Congressional Research Service
study by James V. Jackson reported that by year-end 2011 foreign firms employed 6.1 million Americans,
and 37% of this employment-2.3 million jobs-was in the manufacturing sector.
More recent data
shows that employment by the U.S. affiliates of multinational companies rose to 6.4 million in
2014. Mr. Trump will find himself in a difficult position if he threatens to shut down trade and
investment with countries that both import from the U.S. and invest here.
The other form of globalization that drew Trump's derision was immigration. Most of his ire focused
on those who had entered the U.S. illegally. However, in a speech in Arizona he said that he would
set up a commission that would
roll back the number of legal migrants to "historic norms."
The
current number of immigrants (42 million) represents around 13% of the U.S. population, and 16%
of the labor force. An increase in the number of foreign-born workers depresses the wages of some
native-born workers, principally high-school dropouts, as well as other migrants who arrived earlier.
But there are other, more significant reasons for the
stagnation in
working-class wages . In addition, a reduction in the number of migrant laborers would raise
the ratio of young and retired people to workers-the dependency ratio-and endanger the financing
of Social Security and Medicare. And by increasing the size of the U.S. economy,
these workers induce expansions in investment expenditures and hiring in areas that are complementary.
The one form of globalization that Trump has not criticized, with the exception of outward FDI,
is financial. This is a curious omission, as the crisis of 2008-09 arose from the financial implosion
that followed the collapse of the housing bubble in the U.S. International financial flows exacerbated
the magnitude of the crisis. But
Trump has pledged
to dismantle the Dodd-Frank legislation, which was enacted to implement financial regulatory
reform and lower the probability of another crisis. While
Trump has criticized China for undervaluing its currency in order to increase its exports to
the U.S., most economists believe that the
Chinese currency is no longer undervalued vis-à-vis the U.S. dollar.
Did globalization produce Trump, or lead to the circumstances that resulted in
46.7% of the electorate voting
for him? A score sheet of the impact of globalization within the U.S. would record pluses and minuses.
Among those who have benefitted are consumers who purchase items made abroad at cheaper prices, workers
who produce export goods, and firms that hire migrants. Those who have been adversely affected include
workers who no longer have manufacturing jobs and domestic workers who compete with migrants for
low-paying jobs. Overall, most studies find evidence of
positive net benefits from trade . Similarly,
studies of the cost and benefits of immigration indicate that overall foreign workers make a
positive contribution to the U.S. economy.
Other trends have exerted equal or greater consequences for our economic welfare. First, as pointed
out above, advances in automation have had an enormous impact on the number and nature of jobs, and
advances in artificial intelligence wii further change the nature of work. The launch of driverless
cars and trucks, for example, will affect the economy in unforeseen ways, and more workers will lose
their livelihoods. Second, income inequality has been on the increase in the U.S. and elsewhere for
several decades. While those in the upper-income classes have benefitted most from increased trade
and finance, inequality reflects many factors besides globalization.
Why, then, is globalization the focus of so much discontent? Trump had the insight that demonizing
foreigners and U.S.-based multinationals would allow him to offer simple solutions-ripping up trade
deals, strong-arming CEOs to relocate facilities-to complex problems. Moreover, it allows him to
draw a line between his supporters and everyone else, with Trump as the one who will protect workers
against the crafty foreigners and corrupt elite who conspire to steal American jobs. Blaming the
foreign "other" is a well-trod route for those who aspire to power in times of economic and social
upheaval.
Globalization, therefore, should not be held responsible for the election of Donald Trump and
those in other countries who offer similar simplistic solutions to challenging trends. But globalization's
advocates did indirectly lead to his rise when they oversold the benefits of globalization and neglected
the downside. Lower prices at Wal-Mart are scarce consolation to those who have lost their jobs.
Moreover, the proponents of globalization failed to strengthen the safety networks and redistributive
mechanisms that allow those who had to compete with foreign goods and workers to share in the broader
benefits.
Dani Rodrik of Harvard's Kennedy School has described how the policy priorities were changed:
"The new model of globalization stood priorities on their head, effectively putting democracy to
work for the global economy, instead of the other way around. The elimination of barriers to trade
and finance became an end in itself, rather than a means toward more fundamental economic and social
goals."
The battle over globalization is not finished, and there will be future opportunities to adapt
it to benefit a wider section of society. The goal should be to place it within in a framework that
allows a more egalitarian distribution of the benefits and payment of the costs. This is not a new
task. After World War II, the Allied planners sought to revive international trade while allowing
national governments to use their policy tools to foster full employment. Political scientist
John
Ruggie of the Kennedy School called the hybrid system based on fixed exchange rates, regulated
capital accounts and government programs "
embedded liberalism
," and it prevailed until it was swept aside by the wave of neoliberal policies in the 1980s
and 1990s.
What would today's version of "embedded liberalism" look like? In the financial sector, the pendulum
has already swung back from unregulated capital flows and towards the use of capital control measures
as part of macroprudential policies designed to address systemic risk in the financial sector. In
addition,
Thomas Piketty of the École des hautes etudes en sciences (EHESS) and associate chair at the Paris
School of Economics , and author of Capital in the Twenty-first Century, has called
for a new focus in discussions over the next stage of globalization: " trade is a good thing, but
fair and sustainable development also demands public services, infrastructure, health and education
systems. In turn, these themselves demand fair taxation systems."
The current political environment is not conducive toward the expansion of public goods. But it
is unlikely that our new President's policies will deliver on their promise to return to a past when
U.S. workers could operate without concern for foreign competition or automation. We will certainly
revisit these issues, and we need to redefine what a successful globalization looks like. And if
we don't? Thomas Piketty warns of the consequences of not enacting the necessary domestic policies
and institutions: "If we fail to deliver these, Trump_vs_deep_state will prevail."
Since 1980, US manufacturing output has approximately doubled while manufacturing employment
fell by about a third.
Yes, globalization impacts the composition of output and it is a contributing factor in the
weaker growth of manufacturing output. but overall it has accounted for a very minor share of
the weakness in manufacturing employment since 1980. Productivity has been the dominant factor
driving manufacturing employment down.
JimH November 29, 2016 11:11 am
"Overall, most studies find evidence of positive net benefits from trade."
Of course they do! And in your world, studies always Trump real world experience.
Studies on trade can ignore the unemployed workers with a high school education or less. How
were they supposed to get an equivalent paying job? EDUCATION they say! A local public university
has a five year freshman graduation rate of 25%. Are those older students to eat dirt while attempting
to accumulate that education!
Studies on trade can ignore that illegal immigration increases competition for the those under
educated employees. Since 1990 there has been a rising demand that education must be improved!
That potential high school drop outs should be discouraged by draconian means if necessary. YET
we allow immigrants to enter this country and STAY with less than the equivalent of an American
high school education! Why are we spending so much on secondary education if it is not necessary!
"In Mexico, 34% of adults aged 25-64 have completed upper secondary education, much lower than
the OECD average of 76% the lowest rate amongst OECD countries."
See: http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/mexico/
Trade studies can ignore the fate of a small town when its major employer shuts down and leaves.
Trade studies can assume that we are one contiguous job market. They can assume that an unemployed
worker in Pennsylvania will learn of a good paying job in Washington state, submit an application,
and move within 2 weeks. Or assume that the Washington state employer will hold a factory job
open for a month! And they can assume that moving expenses are trivial for an unemployed person.
Our trade partners have not attempted anything remotely resembling balanced trade with us.
Here are the trade deficits since 1992.
Year__________US Trade Balance with the world
1992__________-39,212
1993__________-70,311
1994__________-98,493
1995__________-96,384
1996__________-104,065
1997__________-108,273
1998__________-166,140
1999__________-258,617
2000__________-372,517
2001__________-361,511
2002__________-418,955
2003__________-493,890
2004__________-609,883
2005__________-714,245
2006__________-761,716
2007__________-705,375
2008__________-708,726
2009__________-383,774
2010__________-494,658
2011__________-548,625
2012__________-536,773
2013__________-461,876
2014__________-490,176
2015__________-500,361
From:
https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/historical/gands.pdf
AND there is the loss of the income from tariffs which had been going to the federal government!
How has that effected our national debt?
"However, when employment across geographical locations is complementary for firms that do
significantly different work at home and abroad, domestic and foreign employment rise and fall
together."
And exactly how do you think that the US government could guarantee that complementary work
at home and abroad. Corporations are profit seeking, amoral entities, which will seek profit any
way they can. (Legal or illegal)
The logical conclusion of your argument is that we could produce nothing and still have a thriving
economy. How would American consumers earn an income?
Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are RUST BELT states. Were the voters
there merely ignorant or demented? You should never ever run for elected office.
Beverly Mann November 29, 2016 12:30 pm
Meanwhile, Trump today chose non-swampy Elaine Chao, Mitch McConnell's current wife and GWBush's
former Labor Secretary, as Transportation Secretary, to privatize roads, bridges, etc.
JimH November 29, 2016 12:36 pm
The trade balances are in millions of dollars in the table in my last comment.
Global trade had a chance of success beginning in 1992. But that required a mechanism which
was very difficult to game. A mechanism like the one that the Obama administration advocated in
October 2010.
"At the meeting in South Korea's southern city of Gyeongju, U.S. officials sought to set a
cap for each country's deficit or surplus at 4% of its economic output by 2015.
The idea drew support from Britain, Australia, Canada and France, all of which are running trade
deficits, as well as South Korea, which is hosting the G-20 meetings and hoping for a compromise
among the parties.
But the proposal got a cool reception from export powerhouses such as China, which has a current
account surplus of 4.7% of its gross domestic product; Germany, with a surplus of 6.1%; and Russia,
with a surplus of 4.7%, according to IMF statistics."
See:
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/24/business/la-fi-g20-summit-20101024
That cap was probably too high. But at least the Obama administration showed some realization
that global trade was exhibiting serious unpredicted problems. Too bad that Hillary Clinton could
not have internalized that realization enough to campaign on revamping problematic trade treaties.
(And persuaded a few more of the voters in the RUST BELT to vote for her.) Elections have consequences
and voters understand that, but what choice did they have?
In your world, while American corporations act out in ways that would be diagnosed as antisocial
personality disorder in a human being, American human beings are expected to wait patiently for
decades while global trade is slowly adjusted into some practical system. (As one shortcoming
after another is addressed.)
The article states almost exactly what you 'add' in your comment:
"Imports and foreign production, therefore, have had an impact on manufacturing employment
in the U.S. But several caveats should be raised. First, as Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
of MIT and others have pointed out, technology has had a much larger effect on jobs".
So, what gives? Is there an award today for who ever gets the biggest DUH??? If there is anything
worth adding, it would be a mention of the Ball St study that supports the author's claim but
is somehow overlooked. But your comment, well, DUH!!
=================================================
JimH,
Some good stuff there, your assessment of Economics and its penchant for ignoring variables,
and your insight which states that "studies can assume that we are one contiguous job market",
is all very true, and especially when it comes to immigration issues. I've lived most of my life
near the Southern border and when economists claim that undocumented workers are good for our
economy I can only chuckle and shake my head. I suppose I could also list all of the variables
which those economists ignore, and there are many to choose from, but, there is that quote by
Upton Sinclair: "You can't get a man to understand what his salary depends on his not understanding".
In all fairness though, The Dept. of Labor does of course have its JOLTS data, and so not all
such studies are based on broad assumptions, but Economics does have its blind spots, generally
speaking. And of course economists apply far too much effort and energy serving their political
and financial masters.
As for your comment in regards to the the trade deficit, you might want to read up a little
on the Triffin Dilemma. The essence of globalization has a lot to do with the US leadership choosing
to maintain the reserve-currency status and Triffin showed that an increasing amount of dollars
must supply the world's demand for dollars, or, global growth would falter. So, the trade deficit
since 1975 has been intentional, for that reason, and others. Of course the cost of labor in the
US was a factor too, and shipping and standards and so on. But, it is wise also, to remember that
these choices were made at time, during and just after the Viet Nam war, when military recruitment
was a very troubling issue for the leadership. And the option of good paying jobs for the working-class
was very probably seen as in conflict with military recruitment. Accordingly, the working-class
has been left with fewer options. This being accomplished in part with the historical anomaly
of high immigration quotas, (and by the tolerance for illegal immigration), during periods with
high unemployment, a falling participation-rate, inadequate infrastructure, and etc.
Ray LaPan-Love November 29, 2016 2:18 pm
JimH,
After posting my earlier comment it occurred to me that I should have recommended an article
by Tim Taylor that has some good info on the Triffin dilemma.
Also, it might be worth mentioning that you are making the common mistake of assigning blame
to an international undertaking that would be more accurately assigned to national shortcomings.
I'm referring here to what you quoted and said:
""Overall, most studies find evidence of positive net benefits from trade.""
"Of course they do! And in your world, studies always Trump real world experience".
My point being that "positive net benefits from trade" are based on just another half-baked
measurement as you suggest, but the problems which result from trade-related displacements are
not necessarily the fault of trade itself. There are in fact political options, for example, immigration
could have been curtailed about 40 years ago and we would now have about 40 million fewer citizens,
and thus there would almost certainly be more jobs available. Or, the laws pertaining to illegal
immigration could have been enforced, or the 'Employee Free Choice Act could have been passed,
or whatever, and then trade issues may have had much different impact.
Ray LaPan-Love November 29, 2016 3:12 pm
It seems worth mentioning here, that there are other more important goals that make globalization
valuable than just matters of money or employment or who is getting what. Let us not forget the
famous words of Immanuel Kant:
"the spirit of commerce . . . sooner or later takes hold of every nation, and is incompatible
with war."
coberly November 29, 2016 6:33 pm
Ray
the spirit of commerce did not prevent WW1 or WW2.
otherwise, thank you, and Jim H and Joseph Joyce for the first Post and Comments for grownups
we've had around here in some time.
Ray LaPan-Love November 29, 2016 7:03 pm
Hey Coberly, long time no see.
And yes, you are right, 'the spirit of commerce' theory has had some ups and downs. But, one
could easily and accurately argue that the effort which began with the League of Nations, and
loosely connects back to Kant's claim, has gained some ground since WW2. There has not, after-all,
been a major war since.
So, when discussing the pros and cons of globalization, that factor, as I said, is worthy of
mention. And it was a key consideration in the formation of the Bretton Woods institutions, and
in the globalization effort in general. This suggesting then that there are larger concerns than
the unemployment-rate, or the wage levels, of the working-class folks who may, or may not, have
been at the losing end of 'free-trade'.
I've been a 'labor-lefty' since the 1970s, but I am still capable of understanding that things
could have been much worse for the American working-class. Plus, if anyone must give up a job,
who better than those with a fairly well-constructed safety-net. History always has its winners
and losers, and progress rarely, if ever, comes in an even flow.
Meanwhile, those living in extreme poverty, worldwide, have dropped from 40% in 1981, to about
10% in 2015 (World Bank), so, progress is occurring. But of course much of that is now being ignored
by the din which has drowned out so many considerations that really do matter, and a great deal.
coberly November 29, 2016 8:25 pm
Ray
I am inclined to agree with you, but sometimes it's hard to see the forest for the trees. Especially
if one of those trees has fallen on you.
In general I am more interested in stopping predatory business models that really hurt people
than in creating cosmic justice.
as for the relative lack of big wars since WW2, I always thought that was because of mutual
assured destruction. I am sure Vietnam looked like a big enough war to the Vietnamese.
"... Moreover, the use of labels such as "populist right" are not really helping. Populism is not an ideology. The widespread use of the term by the majority of commentators distracts from the true nature of far-right parties. ..."
"... Are we then really sure that these movements moderated their agenda? In fact, they promote a narrow concept of community, that excludes all the "different" and foreigners. ..."
"... "Our European cultures, our values and our freedom are under attack. They are threatened by the crushing and dictatorial powers of the European Union. They are threatened by mass immigration, by open borders and by a single European currency," ..."
"... The Austrian Freedom Party , on a similar line, "supports the interests of all German native speakers from the territories of the former Habsburg monarchy" and the "right of self-determination" of the German-speaking Italian bordering region of South Tyrol. ..."
"... On the other hand, Marine Le Pen, president of the French National Front, promotes a principle of "national priority" for French citizens in many areas, from welfare to jobs in the public sector. ..."
Around a decade ago, Columbia University historian Robert Paxton rightly pointed out how "a fascism
of the future - an emergency response to some still unimagined crisis - need not resemble classical
fascism perfectly in its outward signs and symbols ... the enemy would not necessarily be Jews.
An authentically popular fascism in America would be pious, anti-black, and, since September 11,
2001, anti-Islamic as well; in Western Europe it would be secular and, these days, more likely anti-Islamic
than anti-Semitic; and in Russia and Eastern Europe it would be religious, anti-Semitic, Slavophile,
and anti- Western.
New fascisms would probably prefer the mainstream patriotic dress of their own place and time."
Does any of this sound familiar across the Atlantic?
Moreover, the use of labels such as "populist right" are not really helping. Populism is not
an ideology. The widespread use of the term by the majority of commentators distracts from the true
nature of far-right parties.
Are we then really sure that these movements moderated their agenda? In fact, they promote
a narrow concept of community, that excludes all the "different" and foreigners.
There is also a sense of decline and threat that was widely exploited by interwar fascism, and
by these extreme-right parties, which - after 1945 - resisted immigration on the grounds of defending
the so-called "European civilization".
The future of Europe?
The future of European societies could, however, follow these specific lines: "Our European
cultures, our values and our freedom are under attack. They are threatened by the crushing and dictatorial
powers of the European Union. They are threatened by mass immigration, by open borders and by a single
European currency," as Marcel de Graaff, co-president of the Europe of Nations and Freedom group
in the European Parliament, declared.
Another fellow party, the Belgian
Vlaams Belang , calls for an opposition to multiculturalism. It "defends the interests of the
Dutch-speaking people wherever this is necessary", and would "dissolve Belgium and establish an independent
Flemish state. This state ... will include Brussels", the current capital of the EU institutions.
The Austrian
Freedom Party , on a similar line, "supports the interests of all German native speakers from
the territories of the former Habsburg monarchy" and the "right of self-determination" of the German-speaking
Italian bordering region of South Tyrol.
On the other hand, Marine Le Pen, president of the French National Front, promotes a principle
of "national priority" for French citizens in many areas, from welfare to jobs in the public sector.
She also wants to renegotiate the European treaties and establish a "
pan-European Union " including Russia.
At the end of these inward-looking changes, there will be no free movement of Europeans across
Europe, and this will be replaced with a reconsolidation of the sovereignty of nation states.
Resentments among regional powers might rise again, while privileges will be based on ethnic origins
- and their alleged purity. In sum, this is how Europe will probably look if one follows the "moderate"
far-right policies. The dream of building the United States of Europe will become an obsolete memory
of the past. And the old continent will be surely less similar to the post-national one which guaranteed
peace and - relative - prosperity after the disaster of World War II.
Andrea Mammone is a historian of modern Europe at Royal Holloway, University of London.
He is the author of "Transnational Neofascism in France and Italy". He is currently writing a book
on the recent nationalist turn in Europe.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect
Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Exception of course are refugees (which one could say we have some moral responsibility to
rescue since our 15 year war in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Syria (since we are
bombing quite a bit in Syria), and many other places has more than done or bit fan disorder and
violence from which the refugees flee rather than die, ditto the children fleeing Mexico and Central
America where our war on (some people) who use drugs has created both right wing Governments and
drug gangs and associated violence.)
I think it is bad form when left wing sites repeat right-wing memes (falsehoods and half-truths),
particularly when the new right-wing authoritarian kleptocrats who are taking over the Government
are talking about rounding up, placing in concentration camps, and deporting millions of people,
citizens and non-citizens alike..
rickstersherpa, November 30, 2016 11:46 am
Just out curiosity, since Mr. Kimel used the example of Iran, there was a huge Iranian immigration
to the U.S. In sense they both support (since many of the these people were high skill immigrants)
and rebut his point (since they came from a culture he marks as particularly "foreign" to U.S.
culture.
http://xpatnation.com/a-look-at-the-history-of-iranian-immigrants-in-the-u-s/ It has actually
been an amazingly successful immigration, with many now millionaires (a mark of "success" that
I find rather reflects the worse part of America, the presumption by Americans, Rich, Middle,
or poor, that if you are not rich, you are nothing, a loser; but still it appears to be a marker
that Mr. Kimel is using.
Beverly Mann, November 30, 2016 3:47 pm
To add to Rickstersherpa's comments, I'll also point out that among the Muslim immigrants who've
committed acts of terrorism in this country, none to my knowledge was on welfare nor were their
parents on welfare, None.
This post is just the latest in what is now many-months-long series of white supremacist/ white
nationalist posts by Kimel, whose original bailiwick at this blog was standard left-of-center
economics but obviously is something close to the opposite now. He left the blog for two or three
years, and came back earlier this year unrecognizable and with a vengeance. Literally.
I was a blogger here for six-and-a-half years until earlier this month, and was among regulars
who comment in the Comments threads who repeatedly expressed dismay. Kimel's last few posts, lik
this one, are published directly under his name. Before that Dan Crawford and run75441 were posting
them for him and crediting him with the posts.
In my comments int those threads, I've suggested as you did here that this blogger belongs
at Breitbart, or more accurately, you say that this blog is providing the same type of voice as
Breitbart.
But at least Breitbart hasn't been known as left-of-center blog. Allowing these posts on a
blog that has misleads readers into thinking, if only for a moment, that maybe this guy's saying
something that you're missing, or not saying something that you think he's saying. It's really
jarring.
The Rage November 30, 2016 3:49 pm
Sorry, but leftists were the originators of anti-immigration. They blasted classical
liberals and their "open borders" to buy talent on the market rather than "building within"
and using the state to develop talent.
"right wing" Christians are some of the worst people in terms of helping the underground
railroad for immigrants in the US.
The Rage November 30, 2016 3:54 pm
Beverly, Breitbart loves illegal immigration and wants it to stay, indeed quite illegal.
You represent the problem of modern politics. Anyone you don't agree with, you start
making dialectical points rather than going under the hood to find out the point.
Jack November 30, 2016 4:24 pm
Kimel,
Your points leave out any consideration of the cultural variabilities of this host country.
Given that the USofA is a country made up of immigrants from a wide variety of places across
the globe I would think that there is some benefit to varying the sources of immigration
in the present given the past. Some of the cultural distinctions that you suggest as different
from our own are not homogeneous within our own culture. For example, I wouldn't choose
to live in some parts of the US because of the degree of antisemitism that I might find
even though I am what one might call an agnostic Jew. There are many Americans that don't
make that distinction.
Face it Mike, there is probably a place for just about anyone from any place that would
be suitable for their emigration within the US. We don't all have to share the same values
with the new comer. We don't share values amongst ourselves as it is. We've got large numbers
of immigrants and their off spring from the Far East, South East Asia, Africa, South America
and the middle East. We even have many Europeans. Keep in mind that that last category is
made up of people who have spent the past two thousand years trying as hard as possible
to kill one another. So who is to say what immigrant group is best for the US? We've been
moving backwards for the past several decades. Maybe we need some new blood to get thinks
going forward again.
Beverly Mann November 30, 2016 4:27 pm
Apparently you aren't able to distinguish between racist proclamations and fears unrelated
to racism and ethnicity bias masquerading as "cultural" differences, on the one hand, and immigrants
willing to work for lower wages irrespective of their race and ethnicity, on the other hand,
The Rage. Even when the writer is extremely open, clear, and repetitive about his claims.
Rickstersherpa and I are able to make that distinction, and have done so.
Beverly Mann November 30, 2016 4:34 pm
CORRECTED COMMENT: Apparently, The Rage, you aren't able to distinguish between racist proclamations
masquerading as "cultural" differences, on the one hand, and fears unrelated to racism and
ethnicity bias, that immigrants willing to work for lower wages will put downward pressure
on wages in this country, irrespective of the race and ethnicity or the immigrant willing to
work for the low wages. Even when the writer is extremely open, clear, and repetitive about
his claims.
Rickstersherpa and I are able to make that distinction, and have done so.
(Definitely a cut-and-paste issue there with that first comment, which I accidentally clicked
"Post Comment" for before it was ready for posting.)
Jack, November 30, 2016 4:45 pm
I will accept one category of immigrant for exclusion. No identifiable criminals allowed.
We haven't always done so well on that trait. So let's do a better job of excluding those seeking
admission who can be shown to be actively involved with any form of criminal behavior. That
goes for Euros, Russians, Chinese, South Americans, etc. That also includes very wealthy criminals
whose wealth is the result of their positions of authority in their home country.
"The fact that there is homegrown dysfunction isn't a good argument for importing more dysfunction."
What manner of dysfunction beyond criminality did you have in mind?
" it makes sense to be selective, both for our sake and the sake of those who are unlikely
to function well and would become alienated and unable to fend for themselves in the US." Please
define "unlikely to function well" more precisely. Remember that the goal of our immigration
quotas is to allow a reasonable balance of people from varying countries to achieve admission.
"To be blunt, some people have attitudes that allow them to function well in the West. Typically
they are dissidents in non Western countries." That statement is generally problematic. What
measure of attitude do we use here? Is it the rabble rousers that you want to give preference
to? Then why only from non Western countries?
President-elect Donald Trump recently had an 'off the record' meeting with members of the American
press, aka mainstream media. Such events are not unusual for presidents and future presidents, but
according to a variety anonymous sources, Donald Trump has not extended an olive branch to media
figures who displayed their open bias against him throughout the campaign. >
According to The Hill, Trump said that being in front of the mainstream media was like, "Being
in front of a fucking firing squad". Other sources claim he repeatedly said that he was in a
"room full of liars". If he indeed said either of those things, it is difficult to disagree
with such an assessment. He also claimed that he "hated" CNN, feelings which seem self-evidently
mutual.
According to the generally anti-Trump Politico, the President-elect blasted NBC for using unflattering
photographs of him throughout their coverage.
Whether or not these reports are fully accurate is beside the point. Frankly, why would one trust
off the record comments from people who publicly slandered Trump on the record and did so without
a hint of shame.
What is more significant is what Trump said about his use of social media during his lengthy interview
on CBS's 60 Minutes. Here, Trump said that social media is an effective way to bypass big-media
and speak directly to the public. He also stated that it is a quick, cheap and effective way to clarify
misstatements made by the mainstream media.
This is unequivocally true and it is heartening. To think that a small smartphone has the ability
to reach as many and at times even more people than the mainstream media with their millions of dollars
worth of cameras, microphones, lights, sets, drivers, vehicles, offices and staff, is a sign that
the world is no longer beholden to the arrogant gatekeepers of news, perhaps better referred to as
"fake news".
Donald Trump was indeed given a very unfair time by the media and he has no reason to forget nor
forgive. He also has no reason to placate them, and frankly due to the power of new-media, online
media and his own highly effective use of social media, he doesn't need them.
They are relics of the past and he is a symbol of the future.
Steven Barry
The alt-media is the samizdat (google it) of the internet age. The genie is out of the
bottle and there is no putting it back.
Simon
Excellent. Yet even 'IF' the reports of this meeting are exaggerated, there is a fact that
is undeniable; The new President is holding Court in his own palace, on top of his own castle,
in New York.
All the supplicants are coming to him. Even the Japanese Prime minister. He sits there in the
economic capital of the USA rather than being in Washington - where presumably something like
the HQ of the Republican Party would be the more normal venue for a president-elect.
Far away in the DC Swamp (which voted 94% Hillary) the politicians, the hacks, the lobbyists
the 'professionals' are in panic - there's no way to meet him, no way to do lunch at 30mins
notice. All they have is the tragic ghost of BHO wandering around the White House, but the
glitz the zeitgeist the locus is now at Trump Tower. Every day we see its lobby and the golden
lift in the news.
Many believe nothing will change, but so far there are plenty signs that it has.
tom > Simon
Let's hope the Trump Tower doesn't get 9/11'd.
le-DeplorableFroggy > tom
As long as the Mossad terrorists are kept OUT of the US from now on, and every zionist
stooge is either locked up or thrown OUT of this country, NO more israHell/Mossad false flags
in the US.
● How Ehud Barak Pulled Off 9-11 - (bollyn dot com/how-ehud-barak-pulled-off-9-11-2)
● MADE IN ISRAEL - 9-11 and the Jewish Plot Against America PDF - (shop.americanfreepress dot
net/store/c/25-Israel.html)
● 9-11 EVIL - Israel's Central Role in the September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attacks - (shop.americanfreepress
dot net/store/c/25-Israel.html)
● Get the Hell Out of Our Country! Parts 1 to 5 - (veteranstoday dot
com/2015/02/05/get-the-hell-out-of-our-country/)
● Israel a cornered rat - "In 10 years there will be no more Israel" - Henry 'Balloonie'
Kizzinger - (darkmoon dot me/2014/israel-a-cornered-rat/)
● Netanyahu tells ministers not to talk to Trump's people - (theuglytruth.wordpress dot
com/2016/11/21/netanyahu-tells-ministers-not-to-talk-to-trumps-people/#more-162166)
7.62x54r • 3 days ago
US media ( and other NATO media ) are propagandists. The US Big 6 should have their
licenses yanked for putting forth a flawed and wholly dishonest product. Screw them.
"... Judging by the people who Trump has appointed, it is looking like an ugly situation for the US. If he actually hires people like John Bolton, we will know that a betrayal was certain. While I think that it is probable that he is the lesser evil, he was supposed to avoid neoconservatives and Wall Street types (that Clinton associates herself with). ..."
"... I think it would be a mistake to attribute too much "genius" to Trump and Kushner. It sounds like Kushner exhibited competence, and that's great. But Trump won in great measure because Democratic Party governance eviscerated those communities. ..."
"... This is akin to how Obama got WAY too much credit for being a brilliant orator. People wanted change in '08 and voted for it. That change agent betrayed them, so they voted for change again this time. Or, more accurately, a lot of Obama voters stayed home, the Republican base held together, and Trump's team found necessary little pockets of ignored voters to energize. But that strategy would never have worked if not for Obama's and Clinton's malfeasance and incompetence. Honestly, Hillary got closer to a win that she had a right to. That ought to be the real story. ..."
Does anyone else get the overwhelming impression that the US is heading for an impending collapse
or serious decline at least, unless it puts a fight it against the status quo?
Judging by the people who Trump has appointed, it is looking like an ugly situation for
the US. If he actually hires people like John Bolton, we will know that a betrayal was certain.
While I think that it is probable that he is the lesser evil, he was supposed to avoid neoconservatives
and Wall Street types (that Clinton associates herself with).
I find it amazing how tone deaf the Clinton campaign and Democratic Establishment are. Trump
and apparently his son in law, no matter what else, are political campaigning geniuses given their
accomplishments. For months people were criticizing their lack of experience in politics like
a fatal mistake..
I think that no real change is going to happen until someone authentically left wing takes
power or if the US collapses.
I think it would be a mistake to attribute too much "genius" to Trump and Kushner. It sounds
like Kushner exhibited competence, and that's great. But Trump won in great measure because Democratic
Party governance eviscerated those communities.
This is akin to how Obama got WAY too much credit for being a brilliant orator. People
wanted change in '08 and voted for it. That change agent betrayed them, so they voted for change
again this time. Or, more accurately, a lot of Obama voters stayed home, the Republican base held
together, and Trump's team found necessary little pockets of ignored voters to energize. But that
strategy would never have worked if not for Obama's and Clinton's malfeasance and incompetence.
Honestly, Hillary got closer to a win that she had a right to. That ought to be the real story.
It is not clear to me what exactly a collapse entails. The US doesn't have obvious lines to
fracture across, like say the USSR did. (I suppose an argument could be made for "cultural regions"
like the South, Cascadia etc separating out, but it seems far less likely to happen, even in the
case of continuing extreme economic duress and breakdown of democracy/civil rights).
The US is and has been in a serious decline, and will probably continue.
The Imperial Presidency of the United States has evolved over the last century to the point that
the executive holds certain powers that can be considered dictatorial. Arguably, the most consequential
decision in politics is to wage war. The Constitution specifically reserves this right for Congress.
The President, as Commander-in-Chief, directs the wars that Congress declares. However, starting
with Truman's intervention in the Korean War in 1950 and continuing with invasions of Vietnam, Grenada,
Iraq and Afghanistan and the bombings of dozens more countries, the President's ability to unilaterally
initiate war with a sovereign nation has been normalized. Congress has not declared war since 1941
despite the fact the U.S. military has intervened in nearly every corner of the world in the years
since.
In recent years, George W. Bush assumed the power to kidnap, torture, and assassinate any
individual, anywhere in the world, at any time, without even a pretense of due process. Upon replacing
Bush, Barack Obama legitimized Bush's kidnapping and torture (by refusing to prosecute the perpetrators
or provide recourse to the victims) while enthusiastically embracing the power to assassinate at
will. Noam Chomsky has said this represents Obama trashing the 800-year-old Magna Carta, which King
John of England would have approved of.
Can there be anything more dictatorial than the power of a single individual to kill and make
war at will? While American presidents thankfully do not have the power to unilaterally impose taxes,
pass legislation, or incarcerate without charges inside U.S. borders, the illegitimate authority
they do possess to carry out unrestrained violence across the world is unquestionably a dictatorial
feature.
There has not been a single American president since World War II that has not exceeded his constitutional
authority by committing crimes that would meet the standard by which officials were convicted and
executed at the Nuremberg trials.
Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 to imprison Japanese Americans in concentration camps was a flagrant
violation of the Fifth Amendment right not to be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without
due process of law.
Truman's firebombing of Tokyo, nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and invasion of Korea
violated provisions of multiple treaties that are considered the "supreme law of the land" per Article
VI of the U.S. Constitution.
Eisenhower's use of the CIA to overthrow democratically elected presidents in Iran and Guatemala,
as well as the initiation of a terrorist campaign against Cuba, violated the UN Charter, another
international treaty that the Constitution regards as the supreme law of the land.
Kennedy was guilty of approving the creation of a mercenary army to invade Cuba, as well as covert
warfare in Vietnam. Johnson massively escalated U.S. military involvement in Vietnam with the introduction
of ground troops, which he fraudulently justified through misrepresentation of the Gulf of Tonkin
incident.
Succeeding Johnson, Nixon waged a nearly genocidal air campaign against not only Vietnam but Cambodia
and Laos, killing hundreds of thousands of people, destroying ecosystems across Indochina, and leaving
an unfathomable amount of unexploded ordnance, which continues to kill and maim hundreds of people
each year.
Ford covertly supported the South African invasion of Angola and overtly supported the Indonesian
invasion of East Timor. Carter continued supporting the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, as well
as providing financial and military support to military dictatorships in Guatemala and El Salvador.
Reagan oversaw the creation and operation of a terrorist army in Nicaragua, sponsored military dictatorships
throughout Central America, and directly invaded Grenada.
Bush the Elder invaded Panama and Iraq. Clinton oversaw sanctions in Iraq that killed as many
as 1 million people, carried out an air war that indiscriminately pulverized civilian targets from
15,000 feet in Serbia, and bombed a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that produced medications for half
the country. Bush the Lesser invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq. Obama continued both of those
wars, as well as dramatically expanding the drone assassination program in as many as seven countries.
So I beg to differ with Blow and anyone else who claims the presidency deserves respect. Any institution
or position that permits such illegal and immoral actions unchecked should be eradicated and replaced
with some alternative that does not.
Liberal Clinton defender Matt Yglesias argues that from a historical perspective, Trump is uniquely
dangerous. "(P)ast presidents," Yglesias writes, "have simply been restrained by restraint. By a
belief that there are certain things one simply cannot try or do."
It is hard to take such vacuous proclamations with a straight face. As we have seen, every single
American president since at least WWII has engaged in serious violations of international and domestic
law to cause death, destruction and misery across the world, from murdering individuals without due
process to unleashing two nuclear bombs on civilian populations in a defeated country that was seeking
to surrender.
When Trump assumes the presidency, he will inherit a frightening surveillance/military/incarceration
apparatus that includes a targeted killing program; a vast NSA domestic and international spying
network; a death squad (the Joint Special Operations Command); and an extralegal system for indefinite
kidnapping and imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay.
Partisans see a problem only when the presidency is in the "wrong" hands. If Obama is at the helm,
liberals are fine with unconstitutional mass surveillance or killing an American citizen without
charge or trial every now and then. Conservatives trusted Bush to warrantlessly surveill Americans,
but were outraged at the Snowden revelations.
Principled opponents recognize that no one should be trusted with illegitimate authority. The
hand-wringing and hyperventilation by liberals about the dangers of a Trump presidency ring hollow
and hypocritical.
American presidents long ago became the equivalent of elected monarchs, beyond the democratic
control of the those they purportedly serve. The occupant of the office is able to substitute his
own judgments and whims for a universally applicable set of laws and limits on the exercise of power.
It is what Dolores Vek describes as "actually existing fascism." Both parties have contributed to
it, the media has normalized it, and the public has accepted its creation and continued existence
without rebelling against it. It's time to stop treating the presidency itself with respect and start
actively delegitimizing it.
There have been two constants in his campaign: "stomp the weaker" and "lovin' Putin". That's
it.
"lovin' Putin" is a propaganda trick which enforces a certain judgment on the US-Russia relations.
You should better stay above this level in this blog.
Putin was and remains an obstacle on building global neoliberal empire governed by the USA. So
hate toward him by Washington establishment is quite natural. Nothing personal, just business. In
other words, demonization of Putin and hysterical anti-Russian campaign (including Hillary attempt
to convert Democratic Party into a War party) is just a sign of disapproval of Washington his lack
of desire to convert Russia into yet another vassal state.
The key question here is not whether Trump will be able to pursue isolationist agenda and improve
the US relationship with Russia. The key question is whether he will allowed to do that and resist
strong attempts to co-opt him into the standard set of neocon policies, which Washington pursued
for several decades.
His "Contract with America" does not cover foreign policy issues except rejection of TPP, NAFTA
and like.
The hypothesis that he will pursue isolationist agenda is undermined by the amount of Iran hawks
in his close circle.
My impression is that his administration will try to bait Russia in order to prevent any strengthening
of China-Russia alliance which was the main blowback of Obama policies toward Russia.
Also under Trump the USA might be more selective as running six concurrent conflicts (Afghanistan,
Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Ukraine) which during Obama administration proved to be pretty expensive.
Libya is now a failed state. In Ukraine the standard of living dropped to the level of $2 per day
for the majority of population and the country became yet another debt slave, always balancing on
the wedge of bankruptcy. And costs for the USA are continuing to mount in at least three of the six
countries mentioned ( profits extracted in Ukraine and Iraq partially offset that). It is unclear
whether Trump administration will continue this Obama policy of multiple unilateral engagements but
I think is that during Trump administration the resistance to the USA unilateral interventionism
will be stronger as neoliberalism itself became much less attractive ideology. Which is more difficult
to "export". Similar to the fact that "communism" was more difficult to export after 60th by the
USSR. In a way, after 2008 it is a "damaged good" notwithstanding its recent victories in Brazil
and Argentina. See for example discussion at: http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/22/does-clintons-defeat-mean-the-decline-of-us-interventionism/
The South has understood where the North has not: the selective nature of humanitarian interventions
reflects their punitive nature; sanctions go to non-client regimes; interventions seem to be a
new excuse for the hegemonic ambitions of the United States and its allies; they are a new rationale
for NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union; they are a way to suppress Russia and deprive
it of its zones of influence. (3)
What a far-sighted motion was that of the coalition of the countries of the Third World (G77)
at the Havana Summit in 2000! It declared its rejection of any intervention, including humanitarian,
which did not respect the sovereignty of the states concerned. (4) This was nothing other than
a rejection of the Clinton Doctrine, announced in 1999, in the wake of the war of Kosovo, which
made "humanitarian intervention" the new bedrock, or perhaps the new facade, of the foreign policy
of the United States. It was the same policy followed and developed by Hillary Clinton during
her tenure as secretary of state. (5)
But, of course, we can only guess how Trump administration will behave.
"... Did the United States not know that intervening in "the lands of Islam" would act as a catalyst for Jihad? Was it
by chance that the United States intervened only in secular states, turning them into manholes of religious extremism? Is
it a coincidence that these interventions were and are often supported by regimes that sponsor political Islam? Conspiracy
theory, you say? No, these are historical facts. ..."
"... The South has understood where the North has not: the selective nature of humanitarian interventions reflects their
punitive nature; sanctions go to non-client regimes; interventions seem to be a new excuse for the hegemonic ambitions of
the United States and its allies; they are a new rationale for NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union; they are a way
to suppress Russia and deprive it of its zones of influence. (3) ..."
"... What a far-sighted motion was that of the coalition of the countries of the Third World (G77) at the Havana Summit
in 2000! It declared its rejection of any intervention, including humanitarian, which did not respect the sovereignty of
the states concerned. (4) This was nothing other than a rejection of the Clinton Doctrine, announced in 1999, in the wake
of the war of Kosovo, which made "humanitarian intervention" the new bedrock, or perhaps the new facade, of the foreign policy
of the United States. It was the same policy followed and developed by Hillary Clinton during her tenure as secretary of
state. (5) ..."
"... At the moment of this writing, any speculation as to the policy choices of Trump's foreign policy is premature.
..."
"... Like Donald Trump, George W. Bush was a conservative Republican non-interventionist. He advocated "America First,"
called for a more subdued foreign policy and adopted Colin Powell's realism "to attend without stress" (7) with regard to
the Near and Middle East. But his policy shifted to become the most aggressive and most brutal in the history of the United
States. Many international observers argue that this shift came as a response to the September 11 attacks, but they fail
to note that the aggressive germs already existed within Bush's cabinet and advisers: the neo-conservatives occupied key
functions in his administration. ..."
"... Up until now, Trump's links with the neo-cons remain unclear. The best-known neo-cons, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol,
and Robert Kagan, appear to have lost their bet by supporting Hillary Clinton's candidacy. But others, less prominent or
influential, seem to have won it by supporting Trump: Dick Cheney, Norman Podhoretz, and James Woolsey, his adviser and one
of the architects of the wars in the Middle East. ..."
"... it is more realistic to suppose that as long as the United States has interests in the countries of the South and
the Near and Middle East, so long it will not hesitate to intervene. ..."
"... In this context, Trump's defeat and Clinton's accession are not sufficient reasons to declare the decline of interventionism
-- the end of an era and the beginning of another. ..."
"... (Translated from the French by Luciana Bohne) ..."
If the discourse of humanitarianism seduced the North, it has not been so in the South, even less in the Near and Middle
East, which no longer believe in it. The patent humanitarian disasters in Kosovo, Iraq, Libya, and Syria have disillusioned
them.
It is in this sense that Trump's victory is felt as a release, a hope for change, and a rupture from the policy of Clinton,
Bush, and Obama. This policy, in the name of edifying nations ("nation building"), has destroyed some of the oldest nations
and civilizations on earth; in the name of delivering well-being, it has delivered misery; in the name of liberal values,
it has galvanized religious zeal; in the name of democracy and human rights, it has installed autocracies and Sharia law.
Who is to blame?
Did the United States not know that intervening in "the lands of Islam" would act as a catalyst for Jihad? Was it
by chance that the United States intervened only in secular states, turning them into manholes of religious extremism?
Is it a coincidence that these interventions were and are often supported by regimes that sponsor political Islam? Conspiracy
theory, you say? No, these are historical facts.
Can the United States not learn from history, or does it just doom itself to repeat it? Does it not pose itself the
question of how al-Qaeda and Daesh originated? How did they organize themselves? Who trained them? What is their mobilizing
discourse? (1) Why is the US their target? None of this seems to matter to the US: all it cares about is
projecting its own idealism. (2)
The death of thousands of people in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya or Syria, has it contributed to the well being of these
peoples? Or does the United States perhaps respond to this question in the manner of Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton's
Secretary of State, who regretted the death of five-hundred-thousand Iraqi children, deprived of medications by the American
embargo, to conclude with the infamous sentence, "[But] it was worth it "?
Was it worth it that people came to perceive humanitarian intervention as the new crusades? Was it worth it that they
now perceive democracy as a pagan, pre-Islamic model, abjured by their belief? Was it worth it that they now perceive modernity
as deviating believers from the "true" path? Was it worth that they now perceive human rights as human standards as contrary
to the divine will? Was it worth it that people now perceive secularism as atheism whose defenders are punishable by beheading?
Have universal values become a problem rather than a solution? What then to think of making war in their name? Has humanitarian
intervention become punishment rather than help?
The South has understood where the North has not: the selective nature of humanitarian interventions reflects their
punitive nature; sanctions go to non-client regimes; interventions seem to be a new excuse for the hegemonic ambitions
of the United States and its allies; they are a new rationale for NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union; they are
a way to suppress Russia and deprive it of its zones of influence. (3)
What a far-sighted motion was that of the coalition of the countries of the Third World (G77) at the Havana Summit
in 2000! It declared its rejection of any intervention, including humanitarian, which did not respect the sovereignty of
the states concerned. (4) This was nothing other than a rejection of the Clinton Doctrine, announced in 1999, in the wake
of the war of Kosovo, which made "humanitarian intervention" the new bedrock, or perhaps the new facade, of the foreign
policy of the United States. It was the same policy followed and developed by Hillary Clinton during her tenure as secretary
of state. (5)
The end of interventionism?
But are Clinton's defeat and Trump's accession to power sufficient reasons to declare the decline of interventionism?
Donald Trump is a nationalist, whose rise has been the result of a coalition of anti-interventionists within the Republican
Party. They professe a foreign policy that Trump has summarized in these words: "We will use military force only in cases
of vital necessity to the national security of the United States. We will put an end to attempts of imposing democracy
and overthrowing regimes abroad, as well as involving ourselves in situations in which we have no right to intervene."
(6)
But drawing conclusions about the foreign policy of the United States from unofficial statements seems simplistic.
At the moment of this writing, any speculation as to the policy choices of Trump's foreign policy is premature.
One can't predict his policy with regard to the Near and Middle East, since he has not yet even formed his cabinet.
Moreover, presidents in office can change their tune in the course of their tenure. The case of George W. Bush provides
an excellent example.
Like Donald Trump, George W. Bush was a conservative Republican non-interventionist. He advocated "America First,"
called for a more subdued foreign policy and adopted Colin Powell's realism "to attend without stress" (7) with regard
to the Near and Middle East. But his policy shifted to become the most aggressive and most brutal in the history of the
United States. Many international observers argue that this shift came as a response to the September 11 attacks, but they
fail to note that the aggressive germs already existed within Bush's cabinet and advisers: the neo-conservatives occupied
key functions in his administration. (8)
Up until now, Trump's links with the neo-cons remain unclear. The best-known neo-cons, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol,
and Robert Kagan, appear to have lost their bet by supporting Hillary Clinton's candidacy. But others, less prominent or
influential, seem to have won it by supporting Trump: Dick Cheney, Norman Podhoretz, and James Woolsey, his adviser and
one of the architects of the wars in the Middle East.
These indices show that nothing seems to have been gained by the South, still less by the Near and Middle East. There
appears to be no guarantee that the situation will improve.
The non-interventionism promised by Trump may not necessarily equate to a policy of isolationism. A non-interventionist
policy does not automatically mean that the United States will stop protecting their interests abroad, strategic or otherwise.
Rather, it could mean that the United States will not intervene abroad except to defend their own interests,
unilaterally -- and perhaps even more aggressively. Such a potential is implied in Trump's promise to increase
the budget for the army and the military-industrial complex. Thus, it is more realistic to suppose that as long as
the United States has interests in the countries of the South and the Near and Middle East, so long it will not hesitate
to intervene.
In this context, Trump's defeat and Clinton's accession are not sufficient reasons to declare the decline of interventionism
-- the end of an era and the beginning of another. The political reality is too complex to be reduced to statements
by a presidential candidate campaigning for election, by an elected president, or even by a president in the course of
performing his office.
No one knows what the future will bring.
Marwen Bouassida is a researcher in international law at North African-European relations, University of Carthage,
Tunisia. He regularly contributes to the online magazine Kapitalis.
Michael Flynn, expected to advise Donald Trump on counterproductive killing operations misleading
labeled "national security," is generally depicted as a lawless
torturer and assassin. But, whether for partisan reasons or otherwise, he's a lawless torturer
and assassin who has blurted out some truths he shouldn't be allowed to forget.
"Lt. Gen. Flynn, who since leaving the DIA has become an outspoken critic of the Obama administration,
charges that the White House relies heavily on drone strikes for reasons of expediency, rather
than effectiveness. 'We've tended to say, drop another bomb via a drone and put out a headline
that "we killed Abu Bag of Doughnuts" and it makes us all feel good for 24 hours,' Flynn said.
'And you know what? It doesn't matter. It just made them a martyr, it just created a new reason
to fight us even harder.'"
"When you drop a bomb from a drone you are going to cause more damage than you are going to
cause good. The more weapons we give, the more bombs we drop, that just fuels the conflict."
Will Flynn then advise Trump to cease dropping bombs from drones? Or will he go ahead and advise
drone murders, knowing full well that this is counterproductive from the point of view of anyone
other than war profiteers?
From the same report:
"Asked . . . if drone strikes tend to create more terrorists than they kill, Flynn . . . replied:
'I don't disagree with that,' adding: 'I think as an overarching strategy, it is a failed strategy.'"
So Trump's almost inevitable string of drone murders will be conducted under the guidance of a
man who knows they produce terrorism rather than reducing it, that they endanger the United States
rather than protecting it. In that assessment, he agrees with the vast majority of Americans who
believe that the wars of the past
15 years have made the United States less safe, which is the view of numerous other
experts as well.
Flynn, too, expanded his comments from drones to the wars as a whole:
"What we have is this continued investment in conflict. The more weapons we give, the more
bombs we drop, that just fuels the conflict. Some of that has to be done but I am looking for
the other solutions."
Flynn also, like Trump, accurately cites the criminal 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq as critical to
the creation of ISIS:
"Commenting on the rise of ISIL in Iraq, Flynn acknowledged the role played by the US invasion
and occupation of Iraq. 'We definitely put fuel on a fire,' he told Hasan. 'Absolutely there
is no doubt, history will not be kind to the decisions that were made certainly in 2003. Going
into Iraq, definitely it was a strategic mistake."
So there will be no advice to make similar strategic mistakes that are highly profitable to the
weapons industry?
Flynn, despite perhaps being a leading advocate of lawless imprisonment and torture, also admits
to the counterproductive nature of those crimes:
"The former lieutenant general denied any involvement in the litany of abuses carried out by
JSOC interrogators at Camp Nama in Iraq, as revealed by the
New York Times and
Human Rights Watch, but admitted the US prison system in Iraq in the post-war period 'absolutely'
helped radicalise Iraqis who later joined Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and its successor organisation,
ISIL."
Recently the International Criminal Court teased the world with the news that it might possible
consider indicting US and other war criminals for their actions in Afghanistan. One might expect
all-out resistance to such a proposal from Trump and his gang of hyper-nationalist war mongers, except
that . . .
"Flynn also called for greater accountability for US soldiers involved in abuses against Iraqi
detainees: 'You know I hope that as more and more information comes out that people are held accountable
History is not going to look kind on those actions and we will be held, we should be held, accountable
for many, many years to come.'"
Let's not let Flynn forget any of these words. On Syria he has blurted out some similar facts
to those Trump has also articulated:
"Publicly commenting for the first time on a previously-classified August 2012
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) memo,
which had predicted 'the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality
in Eastern Syria ( ) this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want' and confirmed
that 'the Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and [Al Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving
the insurgency in Syria,' the former DIA chief told Head to Head that 'the [Obama] Administration'
didn't 'listen' to these warnings issued by his agency's analysts. 'I don't know if they turned
a blind eye,' he said. 'I think it was a decision, I think it was a willful decision.'"
Let that sink in. Flynn is taking credit for having predicted that backing fighters in Syria could
lead to something like ISIS. And he's suggesting that Obama received this information and chose to
ignore it.
Now, here's a question: What impact will "bombing the hell" out of people have? What good will
"killing their families" do? Spreading nukes around? "Stealing their oil"? Making lists of and banning
Muslims? Is it Flynn's turn to willfully ignore key facts and common sense in order to "advise" against
his better judgment a new president who prefers to be advised to do what he was going to do anyway?
Or can Flynn be convinced to apply lessons learned at huge human cost to similar situations going
forward even with a president of a different party, race, and IQ?
"... The good news is that Hillary Clinton won't be starting World War III. Also, at least for now and probably forever, we are rid of the two most noxious political families in recent American history, the Bushes and the Clintons. ..."
"... For this, thank Donald Trump. Remember him on Thanksgiving Day. ..."
"... The Clintons didn't do the Bushes in; Trump did. Then, a few months later, he took care of the Clintons. Three cheers to him for that! ..."
"... Will any more good come from the Donald's doings? The prospects are dimming. But if he does try to deliver on some of the positions he took during the campaign, there is a chance. ..."
"... And his views on relations with Russia and China, regime change wars, and imperial overreach, as best they can be ascertained, are a lot wiser and less lethal than hers. These are not so much left-right issues as matters of common sense. ..."
"... Clinton's overriding concern was and always has been to maintain and expand American world domination - in the face of economic decline, and at no matter what cost. Trump wants, or says he wants, to do business with other countries in the way that he did with sleaze ball real estate moguls and network executives, people like himself. He wants to make deals. ..."
"... Better that, though, than a foreign policy dedicated to keeping America the world's hegemon. That is the foreign policy establishment's aim; it is therefore Clinton's too. It is the way of perpetual war. Trump's way is far from ideal, but it is less wasteful, less onerous and less reckless. ..."
"... During the campaign, Trump would sometimes speak out against banksters and financiers, especially the too-big-to-fail and too-big-to-jail kind. For some time, though, the "populist" billionaire has been signaling to his class brothers and sisters in the financial "industry" that he is more likely to deregulate than to regulate their machinations. ..."
"... Many of the rich and heinous were skeptical of Trump's candidacy at first; because he is such a loose cannon. But now that he has won, the bastards are sucking up; and glee is returning to Wall Street. ..."
"... Trump is now starting too to allay the fears of the movers and shakers of the National Security State. He still has a way to go, however. We can therefore still hope that they are right to worry. What is bad for them is good for the country. ..."
"... Clinton's defeat also seems to have unnerved their counterparts in European capitals, at NATO headquarters in Brussels, and in Japan, South Korea and other countries where the presence of the American military has been very very good for the few at the top, and disastrous for ordinary people. ..."
"... Trump may not be quite the "isolationist" that some people think, but he has said repeatedly that the countries America "protects" should pay their own way. ..."
"... Then there is Israel. Trump thinks that the blank check the ethnocratic settler state already gets from the United States isn't nearly enough. So much for allies paying their own way! ..."
"... However, even if Trump leaves America's perpetual war regime and its military alliances intact, some good could come just from him being at the helm – not so much because, as a wheeler and dealer, he would be less inclined actually to start wars than has become the norm, but because he is vile enough, and enough of an embarrassment, to undermine America's prestige, hastening the day when the hegemon is a hegemon no more. ..."
"... This is "exceptional," all right, but not in the way that exponents of "American exceptionalism" like Obama and Clinton have in mind. Perhaps their commitment to that illusion has something to do with the zeal with which those two, along with many others, are now promoting a fallback position. ..."
"... Obama especially has been trumpeting the claim that, in the Land of the Free, when an election is over and the incumbent – or, as in this case, the continuator of his "legacy" - is out, we Americans transfer power not just peacefully but also cordially. Since this is the norm in much of the world these days, since there is nothing "exceptional" about it, it is not clear how this makes our "democracy" a model for the world. But leave that aside. ..."
"... Whatever the explanation, it was remarkable how he had taken it upon himself to make nice with Trump even before the dust had settled. What a feat of moral and psychological abasement! ..."
"... After all, the Donald has never had a kind word to say about the President; indeed, his line, from Day One, has been that Obama's presidency is illegitimate. ..."
"... As it turned out, Hillary, the role model, is teaching a less edifying lesson: that when you flub badly, blame everybody but yourself. What a piece of work that woman is! If FBI Director James Comey had done nothing that she could blame her failure on, it would be Jill Stein or Julian Assange, or most likely (and most far-fetched) of all, Vladimir Putin - anybody but her or her husband or the corporate-infested rotting hulk that the Democratic Party has become. ..."
"... The neoliberal world order that the Clintons did so much to fashion, and that Hillary was poised to take over and extend, is heading for a crash. Americans had better watch out. There are no soft landings for hegemons that insist on continuing to dominate the world after their time has passed. ..."
"... A soft landing would be a blessing, though – for the peoples of the world and for the American people. It would spare a lot of people a lot of grief. ..."
"... Until its Clintonism is expunged that opposition is not the Democratic Party. Far too many liberals, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren among them, thought that it was – and look where that got us. ..."
The good news is that Hillary Clinton won't be starting World War III. Also, at least for now
and probably forever, we are rid of the two most noxious political families in recent American history,
the Bushes and the Clintons.
For this, thank Donald Trump. Remember him on Thanksgiving Day.
Thank corporate media too. They loved Hillary, but they loved advertising revenue more; and the
Donald was a godsend for their bottom lines. They showered him with enough free publicity to elect
a dozen buffoons.
Not long ago, when only the tabloids were reporting on Trump, it looked like the 2016 election
would be a Hillary versus Jeb Bush affair that would do in one or the other of their respective dynasties,
but not both.
It didn't work out that way, however. The Clintons didn't do the Bushes in; Trump did. Then, a
few months later, he took care of the Clintons. Three cheers to him for that!
***
Will any more good come from the Donald's doings? The prospects are dimming. But if he does try
to deliver on some of the positions he took during the campaign, there is a chance.
... ... ...
On trade policy, though, job creation, and infrastructure development, the positions Trump took
during the campaign beat anything Hillary promised. Trump outflanked her from the left.
And his views on relations with Russia and China, regime change wars, and imperial overreach,
as best they can be ascertained, are a lot wiser and less lethal than hers. These are not so much
left-right issues as matters of common sense.
Clinton's overriding concern was and always has been to maintain and expand American world domination
- in the face of economic decline, and at no matter what cost. Trump wants, or says he wants, to
do business with other countries in the way that he did with sleaze ball real estate moguls and network
executives, people like himself. He wants to make deals.
The Trump way is, as they say, "transactional." The idea is to wheel and deal on a case-by-case
basis, with no further, non-pecuniary end in view.
In the real estate world and in network television, that would mean wringing as much money out
of each transaction as possible. What it would mean in world affairs is unclear – except perhaps
to those who think that "making America great again" isn't meaningless cant.
Better that, though, than a foreign policy dedicated to keeping America the world's hegemon. That
is the foreign policy establishment's aim; it is therefore Clinton's too. It is the way of perpetual
war. Trump's way is far from ideal, but it is less wasteful, less onerous and less reckless.
During the campaign, Trump would sometimes speak out against banksters and financiers, especially
the too-big-to-fail and too-big-to-jail kind. For some time, though, the "populist" billionaire has
been signaling to his class brothers and sisters in the financial "industry" that he is more likely
to deregulate than to regulate their machinations.
This will become even clearer once Trump settles on key Cabinet posts and on his economic advisors.
It is already plain, though, that the modern day counterparts of Theodore Roosevelt's "malefactors
of great wealth" have little to fear; they and Trump are joined by indissoluble bonds of class-consciousness
and solidarity.
Many of the rich and heinous were skeptical of Trump's candidacy at first; because he is such
a loose cannon. But now that he has won, the bastards are sucking up; and glee is returning to Wall
Street.
There is no doubt about it: whoever voted for the Donald for "populist" reasons is an out and
out chump.
Trump is now starting too to allay the fears of the movers and shakers of the National Security
State. He still has a way to go, however. We can therefore still hope that they are right to worry.
What is bad for them is good for the country.
Clinton's defeat also seems to have unnerved their counterparts in European capitals, at NATO
headquarters in Brussels, and in Japan, South Korea and other countries where the presence of the
American military has been very very good for the few at the top, and disastrous for ordinary people.
Trump may not be quite the "isolationist" that some people think, but he has said repeatedly that
the countries America "protects" should pay their own way.
If he means it, then more power to him. The United States and the rest of the world would be well
rid of the American dominated military alliances now in place; NATO most of all. However, having
talked with him, Obama is now telling the Europeans that Trump is fine with NATO. Time will tell.
Then there is Israel. Trump thinks that the blank check the ethnocratic settler state already
gets from the United States isn't nearly enough. So much for allies paying their own way!
However, even if Trump leaves America's perpetual war regime and its military alliances intact,
some good could come just from him being at the helm – not so much because, as a wheeler and dealer,
he would be less inclined actually to start wars than has become the norm, but because he is vile
enough, and enough of an embarrassment, to undermine America's prestige, hastening the day when the
hegemon is a hegemon no more.
This would be good for most Americans, and good for the world.
The election he won has already done a lot to explode the idea, more widely believed at home than
abroad, that American "democracy" is somehow a model for the world.
What an odd idea! Leaving aside the inordinate influence of private money - political corruption
that a "conservative" Supreme Court regards as Constitutionally protected free speech - and the fact
our two major parties have concocted an electoral duopoly system that stifles even mildly reformist
political expression, in what kind of model can Clinton garner at least two million more votes than
Trump yet still lose the election?
More glaringly undemocratic yet, Democrats routinely garner more votes than Republicans in House
and Senate races, but only sometimes control either chamber. In the final years of the Obama presidency,
Democrats controlled neither one. A fine model indeed!
When he, like everyone else, was sure that he would lose, Trump would rail against how the system
is "rigged." It was rigged – by Clinton and Company against Bernie Sanders. It was hardly rigged
against Trump; at least not in any way that mattered. Quite to the contrary, the system worked to
Trump's advantage to such an extent that, unlike Hillary, he didn't need to cheat.
And what a system it is! After wasting prodigious quantities of money, time, and effort over more
than a year and a half, it produced a contest between two of the most appalling and unpopular candidates
ever to disgrace the political scene.
This is "exceptional," all right, but not in the way that exponents of "American exceptionalism"
like Obama and Clinton have in mind. Perhaps their commitment to that illusion has something to do
with the zeal with which those two, along with many others, are now promoting a fallback position.
Obama especially has been trumpeting the claim that, in the Land of the Free, when an election
is over and the incumbent – or, as in this case, the continuator of his "legacy" - is out, we Americans
transfer power not just peacefully but also cordially. Since this is the norm in much of the world
these days, since there is nothing "exceptional" about it, it is not clear how this makes our "democracy"
a model for the world. But leave that aside.
Perhaps Obama had no overriding propaganda purpose in mind, and was only being gracious. Whatever
the explanation, it was remarkable how he had taken it upon himself to make nice with Trump even
before the dust had settled. What a feat of moral and psychological abasement!
After all, the Donald has never had a kind word to say about the President; indeed, his line,
from Day One, has been that Obama's presidency is illegitimate. Trump launched his campaign for the
White House by championing birther nonsense, and it has been all downhill from there.
Nevertheless, if Obama wants to take the high ground, he should go for it. As Hillary's campaign
ads made clear, children need role models who are as unlike Trump as can be. Obama won't be fooling
anybody about the "exceptional" magnanimity of American democracy; that ship sailed long ago. But
a class act on his part now might at least be good for the kids.
Obama is better positioned for that than Hillary, even though one of the few remotely plausible
arguments for voting for her was that a woman President would be good for little girls – because
it would show them that, like little boys, they could someday achieve the highest office in the land.
Trump cut the ground out from that argument too - by devaluing the office.
As it turned out, Hillary, the role model, is teaching a less edifying lesson: that when you flub
badly, blame everybody but yourself. What a piece of work that woman is! If FBI Director James Comey
had done nothing that she could blame her failure on, it would be Jill Stein or Julian Assange, or
most likely (and most far-fetched) of all, Vladimir Putin - anybody but her or her husband or the
corporate-infested rotting hulk that the Democratic Party has become.
***
The neoliberal world order that the Clintons did so much to fashion, and that Hillary was poised
to take over and extend, is heading for a crash. Americans had better watch out. There are no soft
landings for hegemons that insist on continuing to dominate the world after their time has passed.
A soft landing would be a blessing, though – for the peoples of the world and for the American
people. It would spare a lot of people a lot of grief.
Is it possible that, through sheer inadvertence, Trump could get us there? It is too soon, at
this point to say what the chances are, but, by Inauguration Day, if not before, we should have a
good idea.
Since Trump knows little and cares less about governance, and since he is unfit for the job the
Electoral College will bestow upon him, it will be up to the people he appoints to do, or not do,
what he said he wanted to do during the campaign.
On that score, the news so far has been, to say the least, troubling.
Being as sure as everyone else that Trump would lose and therefore that they were not harming
their careers by dissing the Donald – that they were instead making a cost free political statement
that would benefit their careers in the long run - nearly all the usual suspects that a Republican
President-elect might call upon when setting up a new administration rejected Trump a long time ago.
Predictably, many of them want back in now, but the Donald is nothing if not vengeful.
Therefore Trump's "transition team" will have no choice but to scrape the very bottom of the barrel.
Even Sarah Palin has been mentioned. Even John Bolton.
We already now that Reince Priebus of the RNC, the Republican National Committee, will be Trump's
Chief of Staff and that Stephen Bannon, of Breitbart News, champion of the white nationalist "alt-right,"
will be his "chief strategist and senior counselor" - one mainstream mediocrity and one shameless
epigone of "the darker angels of our nature," as a later-day Lincoln might call them.
Eight years ago, when Obama's appointments also seemed hard to make sense of, pop historians would
go on about how, like Lincoln, Obama, in his infinite wisdom, was assembling "a team of rivals."
So far, no one has found anything similarly complimentary to say about what Trump and his inner circle
are up to. The news oozing out of Trump Tower is too repugnant to spin.
And the reasons for this are too evident to hide. They stem from Trump's egomania and insecurity.
He is therefore now doing what others like him in similar circumstances have done before: making
loyalty not just the main thing, but the only thing.
***
Too bad for the Donald that governments are bigger and more multi-faceted than real estate operations.
The "deep state" must be fed, and there aren't nearly enough people around who have a clue about
what needs to be done whose loyalty Trump doesn't doubt.
The evidence suggests too that Trump considers himself too important to worry about anything but
the "commanding heights" of his administration; and that he is eager to delegate the authority to
pick and choose underlings. If that authority can be delegated to someone he so far trusts, and whose
office carries an air of political legitimacy, then so much the better.
Enter Mike Pence.
In recent years, it has become practically an axiom of American presidential politics that by
their choices of Vice Presidents, ye shall know them.
Anyone who is not quite sure what a dodo John McCain is, should reflect on Sarah Palin. And as
if the support Obama got from Wall Street and corporate media wasn't enough to show which side he
was on, his choice of Joe Biden for a running mate ought to have sealed the deal.
Did Hillary really take a progressive turn, as she and her handlers wanted people to think when
they still feared the wrath of Sanders' supporters? By picking Tim Kaine to run with her, she settled
that question. How more eloquently could she have expressed contempt not just for people feeling
the Bern, but also for everyone less retrograde than she!
The best that can be said of the Vice President-elect, who famously described himself as "a Christian,
a conservative, and a Republican in that order," is that he is a rock solid reactionary - in the
Dick Cheney mold, with a little of Scott Walker, Wisconsin's union busting Governor, thrown in.
That, after kicking Chris Christie out, Trump chose him to head his transition-team, suggests
that the Trump administration will be less disruptive of ordinary Republican imbecility than those
of us who are looking for silver linings in Trump's victory would like.
We who underestimated the enormity of Hillary Clinton's ineptitude, and who still can't quite
understand how any Democrat, even she, could lose to Donald Trump, were, and are, of one mind with
Trump voters on that: many of them too were hoping that Trump would destroy or mortally wound the
GOP. We will have to wait a while longer for that now.
Ironically, the silver lining is that now the onus will be on Trump – for having given the Republican
Party new life. That should teach those Trump voters who thought they were sending a message to the
GOP establishment. It should also cause them to turn on Trump sooner than Clinton voters would have
turned on her, and a lot sooner than millions of Obama supporters came to realize how wrong-headed
Obamaphilia was.
By winning, Trump has placed himself in an untenable situation.
He cannot even begin to implement the agenda his base thought he would while relying only on his
children and the handful of Republicans he knows and doesn't have it in for. But neither can he throw
himself on the mercy of the establishment Republicans he ran against. That would go against his every
instinct; and, as a man without principles or convictions, instincts are all he has.
Also, it would cost him his base.
He therefore has no choice but to muddle on as best he can, disappointing everyone.
Obama ended up disappointing a lot of people too. When he ran in 2008, the people who voted for
"hope" and "change" found that what they got was the same old same old.
Now many Trump voters want change. They have fewer illusions; they don't expect their candidate
to usher in a Golden Age; few of them even like the Donald. All they wanted was not Hillary and in
her stead something, anything, different from what Democrats and Republicans have been handing them
for as long as they could remember. They too will find that what they voted into office was what
they thought they were voting out.
Therefore, they too will despair and, when the time comes, revolt. But it will be worse this time
because the President they voted into office is dangerously unhinged. Whatever else he may be, Obama
is cautious, thoughtful, and emotionally mature; Trump, though shrewd and adept at self-promotion,
is an ignoramus with the emotional maturity of a teenage boy.
When the people who put him in office realize this, as they very soon will, watch out!
Don't feel sorry for him, though. Whether or not his villainy is heartfelt or only a huckster-politician's
gimmick, he merits all the condemnation his detractors can muster.
And although many of the people who voted for him felt that there was no other way to tell the
political class how justifiably pissed off they are, don't feel sorry for them either.
Corporate media and the Commission on Presidential Debates and the National Committees of the
Democratic and Republic Parties saw to it that most voters wouldn't take third party alternatives
seriously, even if they somehow found out about them at all.
But to express contempt for Hillary, they didn't have to vote for Trump. For example, they could
have voted only in down-ticket contests, and not for President; or they could have not voted at all.
Better that than voting for someone associated, fairly or not, with nativism, racism and Islamophobia.
***
The tragic fact is that our democracy, or lack of it, made "deplorables" of us all. Trump enthusiasts
are the worst, though, for different and less reprehensible reasons, Clinton enthusiasts too have
a lot to answer for too. So do all the lesser evil and faute de mieux voters on both sides.
And so do those who didn't bother to vote, whether out of conviction, indifference or laziness, and
those of use who put integrity above efficacy by voting, as I did, for Jill Stein, or for Gary Johnson.
Once it became clear that the election would be between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, all
was lost. Even trying to jack up the Stein vote to the point where the Greens could get federal funding
next time around was a fool's errand. This was clear from the moment Bernie Sanders made good on
his pledge to support the Democratic ticket. Those of us who thought otherwise were deceiving ourselves.
In the circumstances, is there anything to do now except put it all behind us and move on?
The answer is emphatically Yes.
The first order of business now is to do all we can to protect the people whose vulnerability
Trump exploits and endangers: Muslims and undocumented Latinos, above all; to fight back in solidarity
with them – against Trump and his minions and against the miscreants in the larger society whose
nativism, racism, Islamophobia, homophobia and sexism Trump has unleashed.
If Trump starts deporting people, the deportations must do all we can to stop him - by any means
necessary. If he starts registering Muslims, we must insist on being registered too.
We must never lose sight, however, of the underlying cause of the Trump phenomenon – the Clintonite
(neoliberal, liberal imperialist, anti-working class) turn in American, especially Democratic Party,
politics.
Without making the mistake of going over to the opposite extreme, by forsaking the progressive
side of identity politics, the Clintonite turn must be reversed, as quickly and definitively as possible.
And so, the struggles ahead must be waged simultaneously on two fronts: in the first instance,
against reactionaries of the Trumpian sort and against reactionary Trumpian initiatives, but also
against the politics of Hillary and Bill and those who think like them.
Each day brings news of opposition in the streets; and plans are afoot for massive demonstrations
around Inauguration Day. This is all well and good. But it must not be forgotten that when there
are no effective means for achieving political ends, actions become merely expressive, and often
turn out badly. Even when the level of repression is minimal, there is always a backlash; and, when
militant energies are exhausted, quiescence generally follows.
Therefore act, but also think! And learn not just from experience, but also from the enemy.
House and Senate Republicans are, as a rule, more loathsome than their Democratic Party counterparts,
and they are not the brightest bulbs on the tree. But, through sheer obstinacy, they were able to
prevail over a popular, albeit weak, President, and to block all but his most timid initiatives.
The emerging anti-Trump resistance can learn a lot from their example.
Needless to say, House and Senate Democrats are ill equipped to do anything of the sort; they
are worse than useless. Many, maybe most, of them are no less politically retrograde than their Republican
counterparts, and they are all a lot less capable of keeping a President at bay through obstinacy
alone.
But if they will not, or cannot, follow the lead of their Republican colleagues, "we, the people"
can.
We can obstruct, obstruct, and obstruct some more.
But with a difference! House and Senate Republicans wanted only to cause Obama's presidency to
fail. We can do better than that.
Insofar as his administration actually does do some of the comparatively progressive things that
Trump promised it would, "we, the people" should support it, even as we do our best to keep Trump
and his followers from succumbing to their nefarious, quasi-fascist inclinations.
There is no time to lose. It is very likely that Trump's team, once it takes shape, will start
off with some spectacularly execrable displays of malice – intended to show that the Donald is indeed
a man of his word.
Trump has already said that he intends, right off, to deport some two to three million "illegal"
aliens.
Had Deporter-in-Chief Obama been taken on in the past, stopping Trump now would be a less daunting
task. But it can still be done – if the opposition is sufficiently militant and united.
Until its Clintonism is expunged that opposition is not the Democratic Party. Far too many liberals,
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren among them, thought that it was – and look where that got us.
The opposition now, though huge, has no party – except perhaps the Greens, and they are still
too marginal to count. Rectifying this situation is a matter of the utmost urgency, nearly as important,
even in the short run, as defending the victims of the new order that the failed, Clintonized Democratic
Party has foisted upon us.
Join the
debate on Facebook
ANDREW LEVINE is a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, the author most recently
of THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGY (Routledge) and
POLITICAL
KEY WORDS (Blackwell) as well as of many other books and articles in political philosophy. His
most recent book is
In Bad
Faith: What's Wrong With the Opium of the People . He was a Professor (philosophy) at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison and a Research Professor (philosophy) at the University of Maryland-College
Park. He is a contributor to
Hopeless:
Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). More articles by:
Andrew Levine
"... Thank you for this very good link. The swamp cant be drained with an election, the society has been infested and corrupt beyond redemption. There can't be a revolution either, because no charismatic figure could lead it, and the majority of the people prefer to bury their head in the sand. ..."
"... It'd be nice to think that the coming devolution won't be an exact repeat, e.g. a neo-Dark Age for hundreds of years, but who can say? Maybe science and philosophy won't be entirely lost this time around. But of course all speculation is rendered nul and void IF we have WW3 ..."
"... If Trump appoints any vetted neocons to high positions in his administration, he runs the risk of synchronized resignations if he decides to move closer to Russia. ..."
"... Fake Libertarians need to understand that Radical islam is a problem not because of America's wars in the Middle East or NATO. Radical islam is inherently violent. India has been a victim of this virus since the 8th century! India never invaded any country. ..."
Thank you for this very good link. The swamp cant be drained with an election, the society has
been infested and corrupt beyond redemption. There can't be a revolution either, because no charismatic
figure could lead it, and the majority of the people prefer to bury their head in the sand.
What will eventually happen is an economic implosion and chaos. The "elite" won't be able to
finance a repressive force since their "electronic money" will not be trusted, and everything
will fall apart.
And years after, small communities will gradually re-emerge since there will
be a need to protect the people with a local police force. But the notion of a super-state or
even more of a NWO will not survive, after an initial depopulation we'll have something similar
than what you had at the begining of the middle age, a life organized around small independant
comunities of 3,000 or 5,000 people.
Very close to my thinking ... and a precedent is the demize of the Roman Empire, when Europe devolved
into numerous small feudal regions, such as in England for over a thousand years, i.e after numerous
internal wars, such as the Wars of the Roses and the reign of Henry VIII, it wasn't until the
1600s and the so-called "Enlightenment" that England was unified ... and it wasn't until the 1700s
that Scotland was conquered and "Great Britain" existed, also having incorporated Wales and Ireland,
with at least Eire having gained independence during the 1920s, Wales never being really integrated,
nor Scotland now moving away from the centre of the whole shebang ... London always.
It'd be nice to think that the coming devolution won't be an exact repeat, e.g. a neo-Dark
Age for hundreds of years, but who can say? Maybe science and philosophy won't be entirely lost
this time around. But of course all speculation is rendered nul and void IF we have WW3 despite,
or because(?) of Trump and similar phenonema in the West.
If Trump appoints any vetted neocons to high positions in his administration, he runs the risk
of synchronized resignations if he decides to move closer to Russia.
And when that is picked up by the arch deceivers at the WaPo, NYT, WSJ etc, it will be embarrassing
for Mr Trump and for the foreign policy he campaigned on.
Mr. Trump, please move closer to Russia - Putin has longed for sane dialogue with the US for the
last 8 or more years and has gotten the cold shoulder.
Fake Libertarians need to understand that Radical islam is a problem not because of America's
wars in the Middle East or NATO. Radical islam is inherently violent. India has been a victim
of this virus since the 8th century! India never invaded any country.
Islam fundamentally is incompatible with a modern society.
With well-known blogger Jennifer Rubin Trump also raises red flags with his Flynn pick. She
writes :
Flynn's personal testiness, unhinged zealousness, rash judgment and anti-Muslim hysteria
echo Trump's deficiencies.
As far as I remember Jennifer Rubin was always a great friend of Muslims, wasn't she?
So, what's going on? Maybe with his statement that the creation of an ISIS caliphate in Syria
and Iraq happened due to a "willful decision" in Washington he hasn't made himself not only friends?
I think that he wants to talk with Russia couldn't be it, because virtually nobody I know would
prefer throwing nuclear missiles at each other instead.
For people not familiar with Flynn I think an interview with Flynn by Sophie Shevardnadze from
about a year ago can give some answers on what kind of worldview Flynn holds:
Trumps pick of Flynn not only raised red föags with Jennifer Rubin, but with the Washington Post
"Editorial Board" aka Fred Hiatt, too. The Post's View it's called, the title is "
Trump has made some dangerous appointments ," under the title is a picture of Flynn and then
the Washington Post states:
Mr. Flynn has attracted attention with his rhetorical assaults on Islam and Muslims. He
has described Islam as not a religion but a "political ideology" that hides "behind what we
call freedom of religion." He once tweeted that "Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL." the appointments
of Mr. Flynn and Mr. Pompeo suggest a turn toward policies that could deeply alienate U.S.
Muslim allies, including Sunni states whose assistance is critically needed to forge political
alternatives to the terrorists in Iraq and Syria The general has accepted payment from
the Russian propaganda network RT, and his consulting firm has lobbied for a businessman close
to Turkey's autocratic president.
So, if I may summarize that stance of the Washiongton Post. Mike Flynn is so anti-islamic,
that he "could deeply alienate U.S. Muslim allies, including Sunni states whose assistance is
critically needed to forge political alternatives to the terrorists in Iraq and Syria" – and his
biggest sins are being on RT and lobbying for Erdogan – who happens to be the president of the
most important U.S. Muslim ally, and of course Turkey is a Sunni majority state.
The Washington Post can't decide: is Flynn ugly because he's anti-muslim or is he ugly because
he's too cozy with muslim president Erdogan. It seems to me proof that the neocon Washington Post
is hiding why they are really against Flynn.
Whether it is criminal to aid Al Qaeda terrorists – who also happen to be the enemy in the
war on terror – may be a decision for courts. But I remember well the chants of "Lock her up"
and it looks to me some people are scared it could happen – and not only to her.
'The End of Political Judaism and the Israel Lobby/Jewish Lobby Alt Right Movement' – The Israel Lobby's famous 'Islamophobia Cottage Industry' IS the 'Alt Right' birthplace – and
Steve Bannon is a poster child for a 'Alt Right Pro-Israel' fascist
Why do Steve Bannon and Frank Gaffney and other Israeli Firsters/Kahanists/Neocons get along
so famously? Because they are both 'Alt Right' everybody clear? 'Alt Right Pro-Israel' targets
MUSLIMS not Jews. Everybody got it?
'Alt Right Pro-Israel' IS the Islamophobia cottage industry of the Israeli Lobby/Jewish Lobby/Neocons
in the US – they promote racism TOWARDS Muslims, not Jews
Dermer is having to explain Bannon to the rest of the Diaspora and America because they don't
get it – Bannon ain't anti-semitic, he's 'Alt Right Pro-Israel' – in fact he LOVES Israel – just
like Breivik Anders Breivik or Mike Huckabee or Gaffney or John Bolton or Pam Geller or Chuck
Krauthammer or Naftali Bennett or Yvet Lieberman etc, etc
Time to break America's trance SNAP! SNAP!
Israel itself is 'Alt Right' – as well as all the Neocons
David Horowitz, Pam Geller, Frank Gaffney, Cliff May, Anders Breivik, Charles Krauthammer,
Geert Wilders, and Neocons writ large are all part of it and they have one thing in common – they
target Muslims NOT Jews and love Israel
The Islamophobia industry is worldwide now and heavily promoted by the Israeli Lobby and Israel.
(David Horowitz donated $20K to Geert Wilder's party in 2014, Anders Breivik blogged at Pam Gellers
site/Gates of Vienna and admired Avigdor Lieberman and Israel)
The 'Alt Right' movement is a part of the Islamophobia Cottage industry of the Israel Lobby
of the US and they identify with extreme Right Wing Israel (Bibi, Bennett, Lieberman and the rest
of the true blue Kahanists)
This new fascism is CREATED by the Jewish Lobby/Israel Lobby/Neocons (and Israel) and targets
Muslims NOT Jews.
Yes Virigina, it's Israeli Lobby-CREATED fascism towards Muslims, NOT Jews. The Israeli Lobby
is famous for it – Gaffney is a poster child for it.
International 'Alt Right' fascists like Wilders and Breivik hate Muslims NOT Jews
Israel is 'Alt Right' – they hate Muslims NOT Jews
Neocons like Frank Gaffney are 'Alt Right' – they hate Muslims not Jews
Why do Steve Bannon and Frank Gaffney get along? Because they are both 'Alt Right'
.
'Alt Righters' LOVE 'Neocons', these are INTERCHANGEABLE TERMS in my mind, or perhaps even clearer,
Alt Right is synonymous with 'Kahanist'
Why is the Trump appointments/campaign getting stuffed with 'Alt Right' type and 'extreme right
wing Pro-Israel' appointments? Yep, you got it
The American Israel Lobby/Jewish Lobby/Neocons target Muslims (Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Palestine)
NOT Jews
The Israelis target Muslims (Iraq, Iran, Syria, Palestine, the rest of their Clean Break targets)
NOT Jews
The International Islamophobes (LePen, Geert Wilders, Breivik, etc) target Muslims NOT Jews
Trump appointments are STUFFED with both the 'Alt Right' Gen Flynn, Mike Pompeo, Bannon – as
well as the Kahanist/extreme Right Wing Israeli Kahanist-type picks like David Friedman, Greenblatt,
maybe Frank Gaffney, etc.
They all get along and they all go watch 'Homeland' together to get their 'Alt Right Kahanist'
rocks off (Pompeo just met the 'Homeland' producers at Mike Rodger's house this week- can't make
it up)
Time to get this one fact clear – these new fascists ALL target Muslims, not Jews. The targets
of the Alt Right are MUSLIMS not Jews, and it's promoted by the Jewish Lobby/Israel Lobby
The collapse of Political Judaism in Israel (Zionism as practiced by it's Israeli enthusiasts,
which is Apartheid) and in America (the 'Alt Right Movement and it's Israeli Lobby/Jewish Lobby/Neocon
supporters') is in motion
When America's High Schoolers find out Trump and his 'Alt Right are really the 'Kahanist Alt
Right' it's gonna happen even faster.
"... The fundamental problem seems to be that the left / liberals are playing the game of the right for them and not being intelligent enough to realise it. ..."
"... Mass immigration is the case in point. The main beneficiaries from the movement of labour are the corporations and the capitalists. The losers are the incumbent population and the local workers. ..."
"... Mass low-skilled immigration (legal/illegal) is bad for working class people who are citizens of the US/UK. The "liberal" left are the ones who'd in the past naturally come to their defense. ..."
"... Multinational businesses love this mentality, because it allows them to indirectly harm billions of people, and get away with it. They push free trade (a very liberal concept) which cuts their taxes and makes them stronger than most national governments, so they wield vast, unaccountable power, and get away with massive levels of pollution. ..."
"... Mass immigration is the case in point. The main beneficiaries from the movement of labour are the corporations and the capitalists. The losers are the incumbent population and the local workers. ..."
The fundamental problem seems to be that the left / liberals are playing the game of the right
for them and not being intelligent enough to realise it.
Mass immigration is the case in point. The main beneficiaries from the movement of labour are
the corporations and the capitalists. The losers are the incumbent population and the local workers.
The liberal left are confusing the cries of alarm from those losing out with racism and bigotry,
which have been ingrained in their psyche due to identity politics.
Well put. Mass low-skilled immigration (legal/illegal) is bad for working class people
who are citizens of the US/UK. The "liberal" left are the ones who'd in the past naturally come
to their defense.
Instead, they've labelled them racists and islamphobes etc. because they are
not driven by (classical) liberalism but rather divisive identity politics focused on minority
groups (e.g. transgender issues, which is not going to win many votes.)
I think the liberals' horror at Jeremy Corbyn demonstrates this, as did the way liberals torpedoed
Bernie Sanders in favour of Hillary Clinton.
To be liberal is to let people do whatever they want, so long as they don't directly
harm other people.
Multinational businesses love this mentality, because it allows them to indirectly harm billions
of people, and get away with it. They push free trade (a very liberal concept) which cuts their
taxes and makes them stronger than most national governments, so they wield vast, unaccountable
power, and get away with massive levels of pollution.
Mass immigration is the case in point. The main beneficiaries from the movement of labour are
the corporations and the capitalists. The losers are the incumbent population and the local workers.
you might be putting the cart before the horse a little bit there. the problem isn't freedom of
movement (let's try not to use emotive terms like mass migration) is employers seeking cheap labour.
better wages would attract more local labour, instead employers actively seek cheap labour from abroad.
and that's a result of economic liberalism, which is very different to classical liberalism. classical
liberals built houses for their workers to live in, rather than not paying them enough to live in
their own house.
It is the end of neoliberalism and the start of the era of authoritarian nationalism, and we all
need to come together to stamp out the authoritarian part.
Notable quotes:
"... Neoliberalism has been disastrous for the Rust Belt, and I think we need to envision a new future for what was once the country's industrial heartland, now little more than its wasteland ..."
"... The question of what the many millions of often-unionized factory workers, SMEs which supplied them, family farmers (now fully industrialized and owned by corporations), and all those in secondary production and services who once supported them are to actually do in future to earn a decent living is what I believe should really be the subject of debate. ..."
"... two factors (or three, I guess) have contributed to this state of despair: offshoring and outsourcing, and technology. ..."
"... Medicaid, the CHIP program, the SNAP program and others (including NGOs and private charitable giving) may alleviate some of the suffering, but there is currently no substitute for jobs that would enable men and women to live lives of dignity – a decent place to live, good educations for their children, and a reasonable, secure pension in old age. Near-, at-, and below-minimum wage jobs devoid of any benefits don't allow any of these – at most, they make possible a subsistence life, one which requires continued reliance on public assistance throughout one's lifetime. ..."
"... In the U.S. (a neoliberal pioneer), poverty is closely linked with inequality and thus, a high GINI coefficient (near that of Turkey); where there is both poverty and a very unequal distribution of resources, this inevitably affects women (and children) and racial (and ethnic) minorities disproportionately. The economic system, racism, sexism, and xenophobia are not separate, stand-alone issues; they are profoundly intertwined. ..."
"... But really, if you think about it, slavery was defined as ownership, ownership of human capital (which was convertible into cash), and women in many societies throughout history were acquired as part of a financial transaction (either through purchase or through sale), and control of their capital (land, property [farmland, herds], valuables and later, money) often entrusted to a spouse or male guardian. All of these practices were economically-driven, even if the driver wasn't 21st-century capitalism. ..."
"... Let it be said at once: Trump's victory is primarily due to the explosion in economic and geographic inequality in the United States over several decades and the inability of successive governments to deal with this. ..."
"... Both the Clinton and the Obama administrations frequently went along with the market liberalization launched under Reagan and both Bush presidencies. At times they even outdid them: the financial and commercial deregulation carried out under Clinton is an example. What sealed the deal, though, was the suspicion that the Democrats were too close to Wall Street – and the inability of the Democratic media elite to learn the lessons from the Sanders vote. ..."
"... Regional inequality and globalization are the principal drivers in Japanese politics, too, along with a number of social drivers. ..."
"... The tsunami/nuclear meltdown combined with the Japanese government's uneven response is an apt metaphor for the impact of neo-liberalism/globalization on Japan; and on the US. I then explained that the income inequality in the US was far more severe than that of Japan and that many Americans did not support the export of jobs to China/Mexico. ..."
"... I contend that in some hypothetical universe the DNC and corrupt Clinton machine could have been torn out, root and branch, within months. As I noted, however, the decision to run HRC effectively unopposed was made several years, at least, before the stark evidence of the consequences of such a decision appeared in sharp relief with Brexit. ..."
"... Just as the decline of Virginia coal is due to global forces and corporate stupidity, so the decline of the rust belt is due to long (30 year plus) global forces and corporate decisions that predate the emergence of identity politics. ..."
"... It's interesting that the clear headed thinkers of the Marxist left, who pride themselves on not being distracted by identity, don't want to talk about these factors when discussing the plight of their cherished white working class. ..."
"... The construction 'white working class' is a useful governing tool that splits poor people and possible coalitions against the violence of capital. Now, discussion focuses on how some of the least powerful, most vulnerable people in the United States are the perpetrators of a great injustice against racialised and minoritised groups. Such commentary colludes in the pathologisation of the working class, of poor people. Victims are inculpated as the vectors of noxious, atavistic vices while the perpetrators get off with impunity, showing off their multihued, cosmopolitan C-suites and even proposing that their free trade agreements are a form of anti-racist solidarity. Most crucially, such analysis ignores the continuities between a Trumpian dystopia and our satisfactory present. ..."
"... Race-thinking forecloses the possibility of the coalitions that you imagine, and reproduces ideas of difference in ways that always, always privilege 'whiteness'. ..."
"... Historical examples of ethnic groups becoming 'white', how it was legal and political decision-making that defined the present racial taxonomy, suggest that groups can also lose or have their 'whiteness' threatened. CB has written here about how, in the UK at least, Eastern and Southern Europeans are racialised, and so refused 'whiteness'. JQ has written about southern white minoritisation. Many commentators have pointed that the 'white working class' vote this year looked a lot like a minority vote. ..."
"... Given the subordination of groups presently defined as 'white working class', I wonder if we could think beyond ethnic and epidermal definition to consider that the impossibility of the American Dream refuses these groups whiteness; i.e the hoped for privileges of racial superiority, much in the same way that African Americans, Latin Americans and other racialised minorities are denied whiteness. Can a poor West Virginian living in a toxified drugged out impoverished landscape really be defined as a carrier of 'white privilege'? ..."
"... I was first pointed at this by the juxtapositions of racialised working class and immigrants in Imogen Tyler's Revolting Subjects – Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain but this below is a useful short article that takes a historical perspective. ..."
"... In a 1990 essay, the late Yale political scientist Juan Linz observed that "aside from the United States, only Chile has managed a century and a half of relatively undisturbed constitutional continuity under presidential government - but Chilean democracy broke down in the 1970s." ..."
"... Linz offered several reasons why presidential systems are so prone to crisis. One particularly important one is the nature of the checks and balances system. Since both the president and the Congress are directly elected by the people, they can both claim to speak for the people. When they have a serious disagreement, according to Linz, "there is no democratic principle on the basis of which it can be resolved." The constitution offers no help in these cases, he wrote: "the mechanisms the constitution might provide are likely to prove too complicated and aridly legalistic to be of much force in the eyes of the electorate." ..."
"... In a parliamentary system, deadlocks get resolved. A prime minister who lacks the backing of a parliamentary majority is replaced by a new one who has it. If no such majority can be found, a new election is held and the new parliament picks a leader. It can get a little messy for a period of weeks, but there's simply no possibility of a years-long spell in which the legislative and executive branches glare at each other unproductively.' ..."
"... In any case, as I pointed out before, given that the US is increasingly an urbanised country, and the Electoral College was created to protect rural (slave) states, the grotesque electoral result we have just seen is likely to recur, which means more and more Presidents with dubious democratic legitimacy. Thanks to Bush (and Obama) these Presidents will have, at the same time, more and more power. ..."
"... To return to my original question and answer it myself: I'm forced to conclude that the Democrats did not specifically address the revitalization – rebirth of the Rust Belt in their 2016 platform. Its failure to do so carried a heavy cost that (nearly) all of us will be forced to pay. ..."
"... This sub seems to have largely fallen into the psychologically comfortable trap of declaring that everyone who voted against their preferred candidate is racist. It's a view pushed by the neoliberals, who want to maintain he stranglehold of identity politics over the DNC, and it makes upper-class 'intellectuals' feel better about themselves and their betrayal of the filthy, subhuman white underclass (or so they see it). ..."
"... You can scream 'those jobs are never coming back!' all you want, but people are never going to accept it. So either you come up with a genuine solution (instead of simply complaining that your opponents solutions won't work; you're partisan and biased, most voters won't believe you), you may as well resign yourself to fascism. Because whining that you don't know what to do won't stop people from lining up behind someone who says that they do have one, whether it'll work or not. Nobody trusts the elite enough to believe them when they say that jobs are never coming back. Nobody trusts the elite at all. ..."
"... You sound just like the Wiemar elite. No will to solve the problem, but filled with terror at the inevitable result of failing to solve the problem. ..."
"... One brutal fact tells us everything we need to know about the Democratic party in 2016: the American Nazi party is running on a platform of free health care to working class people. This means that the American Nazi Party is now running to the left of the Democratic party. ..."
"... Back in the 1930s, when the economy collapsed, fascists appeared and took power. Racists also came out of the woodwork, ditto misogynists. Fast forward 80 years, and the same thing has happened all over again. The global economy melted down in 2008 and fascists appeared promising to fix the problems that the pols in power wouldn't because they were too closely tied to the existing (failed) system. Along with the fascists, racists gained power because they were able to scapegoat minorities as the alleged cause of everyone's misery. ..."
"... None of this is surprising. We have seen it before. Whenever you get a depression in a modern industrial economy, you get scapegoating, racism, and fascists. We know what to do. The problem is that the current Democratic party isn't doing it. ..."
"... . It is the end of neoliberalism and the start of the era of authoritarian nationalism, and we all need to come together to stamp out the authoritarian part. ..."
"... This hammered people on the bottom, disproportionately African Americans and especially single AA mothers in America. It crushed the blue collar workers. It is wiping out the savings and careers of college-educated white collar workers now, at least, the ones who didn't go to the Ivy League, which is 90% of them. ..."
"... Calling Hillary an "imperfect candidate" is like calling what happened to the Titanic a "boating accident." Trump was an imperfect candidate. Why did he win? ..."
"... "The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang. The political triumph of Donald Trump shattered the establishments in the Democratic and Republican parties – both wedded to the rule of Big Money and to the reign of meretricious politicians." ..."
"... "It is not an exaggeration to say that the Democratic Party is in shambles as a political force. Not only did it just lose the White House to a wildly unpopular farce of a candidate despite a virtually unified establishment behind it, and not only is it the minority party in both the Senate and the House, but it is getting crushed at historical record rates on the state and local levels as well. Surveying this wreckage last week, party stalwart Matthew Yglesias of Vox minced no words: `the Obama years have created a Democratic Party that's essentially a smoking pile of rubble.' ..."
"... "One would assume that the operatives and loyalists of such a weak, defeated and wrecked political party would be eager to engage in some introspection and self-critique, and to produce a frank accounting of what they did wrong so as to alter their plight. In the case of 2016 Democrats, one would be quite mistaken." ..."
"... Foreign Affairs ..."
"... "At the end of World War II, the United States and its allies decided that sustained mass unemployment was an existential threat to capitalism and had to be avoided at all costs. In response, governments everywhere targeted full employment as the master policy variable-trying to get to, and sustain, an unemployment rate of roughly four percent. The problem with doing so, over time, is that targeting any variable long enough undermines the value of the variable itself-a phenomenon known as Goodhart's law. (..) ..."
"... " what we see [today] is a reversal of power between creditors and debtors as the anti-inflationary regime of the past 30 years undermines itself-what we might call "Goodhart's revenge." In this world, yields compress and creditors fret about their earnings, demanding repayment of debt at all costs. Macro-economically, this makes the situation worse: the debtors can't pay-but politically, and this is crucial-it empowers debtors since they can't pay, won't pay, and still have the right to vote. ..."
"... "The traditional parties of the center-left and center-right, the builders of this anti-inflationary order, get clobbered in such a world, since they are correctly identified by these debtors as the political backers of those demanding repayment in an already unequal system, and all from those with the least assets. This produces anti-creditor, pro-debtor coalitions-in-waiting that are ripe for the picking by insurgents of the left and the right, which is exactly what has happened. ..."
"... "The global revolt against elites is not just driven by revulsion and loss and racism. It's also driven by the global economy itself. This is a global phenomenon that marks one thing above all. The era of neoliberalism is over. The era of neonationalism has just begun." ..."
"... They want what their families have had which is secure, paid, benefits rich, blue collar work. ..."
"... trump's campaign empathized with that feeling just by focusing on the factory jobs as jobs and not as anachronisms that are slowly fading away for whatever reason. Clinton might have been "correct", but these voters didn't want to hear "the truth". And as much as you can complain about how stupid they are for wanting to be lied to, that is the unfortunate reality you, and the Democratic party, have to accept. ..."
"... trump was offering a "bailout" writ large. Clinton had no (good) counteroffer. It was like the tables were turned. Romney was the one talking about "change" and "restructuring" while Obama was defending keeping what was already there. ..."
"... "Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course - the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19romney.html ..."
"... Clinton toward the end offered tariffs. But the trump campaign hit back with what turned out to be a pretty strong counter attack – ""How's she going to get tough on China?" said Trump economic advisor Peter Navarro on CNN's Quest Means Business. He notes that some of Clinton's economic advisors have supported TPP or even worked on it. "" ..."
The question is no longer her neoliberalism, but yours. Keep it or throw it away?
I wish this issue was being seriously discussed. Neoliberalism has been disastrous for
the Rust Belt, and I think we need to envision a new future for what was once the country's industrial
heartland, now little more than its wasteland (cf. "flyover zone" – a pejorative term which
inhabitants of the zone are not too stupid to understand perfectly, btw).
The question of what the many millions of often-unionized factory workers, SMEs which supplied
them, family farmers (now fully industrialized and owned by corporations), and all those in secondary
production and services who once supported them are to actually do in future to earn a decent
living is what I believe should really be the subject of debate.
As noted upthread, two factors (or three, I guess) have contributed to this state of despair:
offshoring and outsourcing, and technology. The jobs that have been lost will not return,
and indeed will be lost in ever greater numbers – just consider what will happen to the trucking
sector when self-driving trucks hit the roads sometime in the next 10-20 years (3.5 million truckers;
8.7 in allied jobs).
Medicaid, the CHIP program, the SNAP program and others (including NGOs and private charitable
giving) may alleviate some of the suffering, but there is currently no substitute for jobs that
would enable men and women to live lives of dignity – a decent place to live, good educations
for their children, and a reasonable, secure pension in old age. Near-, at-, and below-minimum
wage jobs devoid of any benefits don't allow any of these – at most, they make possible a subsistence
life, one which requires continued reliance on public assistance throughout one's lifetime.
In the U.S. (a neoliberal pioneer), poverty is closely linked with inequality and thus,
a high GINI coefficient (near that of Turkey); where there is both poverty and a very unequal
distribution of resources, this inevitably affects women (and children) and racial (and ethnic)
minorities disproportionately. The economic system, racism, sexism, and xenophobia are not separate,
stand-alone issues; they are profoundly intertwined.
I appreciate and espouse the goals of identity politics in all their multiplicity, and also
understand that the institutions of slavery and sexism predated modern capitalist economies.
But really, if you think about it, slavery was defined as ownership, ownership of human capital
(which was convertible into cash), and women in many societies throughout history were acquired
as part of a financial transaction (either through purchase or through sale), and control of their
capital (land, property [farmland, herds], valuables and later, money) often entrusted to a spouse
or male guardian. All of these practices were economically-driven, even if the driver wasn't 21st-century
capitalism.
Also: Faustusnotes@100
For example Indiana took the ACA Medicaid expansion but did so with additional conditions that
make it worse than in neighboring states run by democratic governors.
And what states would those be? IL, IA, MI, OH, WI, KY, and TN have Republican governors. Were
you thinking pre-2014? pre-2012?
To conclude and return to my original point: what's to become of the Rust Belt in future? Did
the Democratic platform include a New New Deal for PA, OH, MI, WI, and IA (to name only the five
Rust Belt states Trump flipped)?
" Let it be said at once: Trump's victory is primarily due to the explosion in economic
and geographic inequality in the United States over several decades and the inability of successive
governments to deal with this.
Both the Clinton and the Obama administrations frequently went along with the market liberalization
launched under Reagan and both Bush presidencies. At times they even outdid them: the financial
and commercial deregulation carried out under Clinton is an example. What sealed the deal, though,
was the suspicion that the Democrats were too close to Wall Street – and the inability of the
Democratic media elite to learn the lessons from the Sanders vote. "
What should have been one comment came out as 4, so apologies on that front.
I spent the last week explaining the US election to my students in Japan in pretty much the
terms outlined by Lilla and PIketty, so I was delighted to discover these two articles.
Regional inequality and globalization are the principal drivers in Japanese politics, too,
along with a number of social drivers. It was therefore very easy to call for a show of hands
to identify students studying here in Tokyo who are trying to decide whether or not to return
to areas such as Tohoku to build their lives; or remain in Kanto/Tokyo – the NY/Washington/LA
of Japan put crudely.
I asked students from regions close to Tohoku how they might feel if the Japanese prime minister
decided not to visit the region following Fukushima after the disaster, or preceding an election.
The tsunami/nuclear meltdown combined with the Japanese government's uneven response is an
apt metaphor for the impact of neo-liberalism/globalization on Japan; and on the US. I then explained
that the income inequality in the US was far more severe than that of Japan and that many Americans
did not support the export of jobs to China/Mexico.
I then asked the students, particularly those from outlying regions whether they believe Japan
needed a leader who would 'bring back Japanese jobs' from Viet Nam and China, etc. Many/most agreed
wholeheartedly. I then asked whether they believed Tokyo people treated those outside Kanto as
'inferiors.' Many do.
Piketty may be right regarding Trump's long-term effects on income inequality. He is wrong,
I suggest, to argue that Democrats failed to respond to Sanders' support. I contend that in
some hypothetical universe the DNC and corrupt Clinton machine could have been torn out, root
and branch, within months. As I noted, however, the decision to run HRC effectively unopposed
was made several years, at least, before the stark evidence of the consequences of such a decision
appeared in sharp relief with Brexit.
Also worth noting is that the rust belts problems are as old as Reagan – even the term dates
from the 80s, the issue is so uncool that there is a dire straits song about it. Some portion
of the decline of manufacturing there is due to manufacturers shifting to the south, where the
anti Union states have an advantage. Also there has been new investment – there were no Japanese
car companies in the us in the 1980s, so they are new job creators, yet insufficient to make up
the losses. Just as the decline of Virginia coal is due to global forces and corporate stupidity,
so the decline of the rust belt is due to long (30 year plus) global forces and corporate decisions
that predate the emergence of identity politics.
It's interesting that the clear headed thinkers of the Marxist left, who pride themselves
on not being distracted by identity, don't want to talk about these factors when discussing the
plight of their cherished white working class. Suddenly it's not the forces of capital and
the objective facts of history, but a bunch of whiny black trannies demanding safe spaces and
protesting police violence, that drove those towns to ruin.
And what solutions do they think the dems should have proposed? It can't be welfare, since
we got the ACA (watered down by representatives of the rust belt states). Is it, seriously, tariffs?
Short of going to an election promising w revolution, what should the dems have done? Give us
a clear answer so we can see what the alternative to identity politics is.
basil 11.19.16 at 5:11 am
Did this go through?
Thinking with WLGR @15, Yan @81, engels variously above,
The construction 'white working class' is a useful governing tool that splits poor people
and possible coalitions against the violence of capital. Now, discussion focuses on how some of
the least powerful, most vulnerable people in the United States are the perpetrators of a great
injustice against racialised and minoritised groups. Such commentary colludes in the pathologisation
of the working class, of poor people. Victims are inculpated as the vectors of noxious, atavistic
vices while the perpetrators get off with impunity, showing off their multihued, cosmopolitan
C-suites and even proposing that their free trade agreements are a form of anti-racist solidarity.
Most crucially, such analysis ignores the continuities between a Trumpian dystopia and our satisfactory
present.
I get that the tropes around race are easy, and super-available. Privilege confessing is very
in vogue as a prophylactic against charges of racism. But does it threaten the structures that
produce this abjection – either as embittered, immiserated 'white working class' or as threatened
minority group? It is always *those* 'white' people, the South, the Working Class, and never the
accusers some of whom are themselves happy to vote for a party that drowns out anti-war protesters
with chants of USA! USA!
Race-thinking forecloses the possibility of the coalitions that you imagine, and reproduces
ideas of difference in ways that always, always privilege 'whiteness'.
--
Historical examples of ethnic groups becoming 'white', how it was legal and political decision-making
that defined the present racial taxonomy, suggest that groups can also lose or have their 'whiteness'
threatened. CB has written here about how, in the UK at least, Eastern and Southern Europeans
are racialised, and so refused 'whiteness'. JQ has written about southern white minoritisation.
Many commentators have pointed that the 'white working class' vote this year looked a lot like
a minority vote.
Given the subordination of groups presently defined as 'white working class', I wonder
if we could think beyond ethnic and epidermal definition to consider that the impossibility of
the American Dream refuses these groups whiteness; i.e the hoped for privileges of racial superiority,
much in the same way that African Americans, Latin Americans and other racialised minorities are
denied whiteness. Can a poor West Virginian living in a toxified drugged out impoverished landscape
really be defined as a carrier of 'white privilege'?
I was first pointed at this by the juxtapositions of racialised working class and immigrants
in Imogen Tyler's Revolting Subjects – Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain but
this below is a useful short article that takes a historical perspective.
The 'racialisation' of class in Britain has been a consequence of the weakening of 'class'
as a political idea since the 1970s – it is a new construction, not an historic one.
.
This is not to deny the existence of working-class racism, or to suggest that racism is
somehow acceptable if rooted in perceived socio-economic grievances. But it is to suggest that
the concept of a 'white working class' needs problematizing, as does the claim that the British
working-class was strongly committed to a post-war vision of 'White Britain' analogous to the
politics which sustained the idea of a 'White Australia' until the 1960s.
Yes, old, settled neighbourhoods could be profoundly distrustful of outsiders – all outsiders,
including the researchers seeking to study them – but, when it came to race, they were internally
divided. We certainly hear working-class racist voices – often echoing stock racist complaints
about over-crowding, welfare dependency or exploitative landlords and small businessmen, but
we don't hear the deep pathological racial fears laid bare in the letters sent to Enoch Powell
after his so-called 'Rivers of Blood' speech in 1968 (Whipple, 2009).
But more importantly, we also hear strong anti-racist voices loudly and clearly. At Wallsend
on Tyneside, where the researchers were gathering their data just as Powell shot to notoriety,
we find workers expressing casual racism, but we also find eloquent expressions of an internationalist,
solidaristic perspective in which, crucially, black and white are seen as sharing the same
working-class interests.
Racism is denounced as a deliberate capitalist strategy to divide workers against themselves,
weakening their ability to challenge those with power over their lives (shipbuilding had long
been a very fractious industry and its workers had plenty of experience of the dangers of internal
sectarian battles).
To be able to mobilize across across racialised divisions, to have race wither away entirely
would, for me, be the beginning of a politics that allowed humanity to deal with the inescapable
violence of climate change and corporate power.
*To add to the bibliography – David R. Roediger, Elizabeth D. Esch – The Production of Difference
– Race and the Management of Labour, and Denise Ferreira da Silva – Toward a Global Idea of Race.
And I have just been pointed at Ian Haney-López, White By Law – The Legal Construction of Race.
FWIW 'merica's constitutional democracy is going to collapse.
Some day - not tomorrow, not next year, but probably sometime before runaway climate change
forces us to seek a new life in outer-space colonies - there is going to be a collapse of the
legal and political order and its replacement by something else. If we're lucky, it won't be violent.
If we're very lucky, it will lead us to tackle the underlying problems and result in a better,
more robust, political system. If we're less lucky, well, then, something worse will happen .
In a 1990 essay, the late Yale political scientist Juan Linz observed that "aside from
the United States, only Chile has managed a century and a half of relatively undisturbed constitutional
continuity under presidential government - but Chilean democracy broke down in the 1970s."
Linz offered several reasons why presidential systems are so prone to crisis. One particularly
important one is the nature of the checks and balances system. Since both the president and the
Congress are directly elected by the people, they can both claim to speak for the people. When
they have a serious disagreement, according to Linz, "there is no democratic principle on the
basis of which it can be resolved." The constitution offers no help in these cases, he wrote:
"the mechanisms the constitution might provide are likely to prove too complicated and aridly
legalistic to be of much force in the eyes of the electorate."
In a parliamentary system, deadlocks get resolved. A prime minister who lacks the backing
of a parliamentary majority is replaced by a new one who has it. If no such majority can be found,
a new election is held and the new parliament picks a leader. It can get a little messy for a
period of weeks, but there's simply no possibility of a years-long spell in which the legislative
and executive branches glare at each other unproductively.'
Given that the basic point is polarisation (i.e. that both the President and Congress have
equally strong arguments to be the the 'voice of the people') and that under the US appalling
constitutional set up, there is no way to decide between them, one can easily imagine the so to
speak 'hyperpolarisation' of a Trump Presidency as being the straw (or anvil) that breaks the
camel's back.
In any case, as I pointed out before, given that the US is increasingly an urbanised country,
and the Electoral College was created to protect rural (slave) states, the grotesque electoral
result we have just seen is likely to recur, which means more and more Presidents with dubious
democratic legitimacy. Thanks to Bush (and Obama) these Presidents will have, at the same time,
more and more power.
nastywoman @ 150
Just study the program of the 'Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschland' or the Program of 'Die
Grünen' in Germany (take it through google translate) and you get all the answers you are looking
for.
No need to run it through google translate, it's available in English on their site. [Or one
could refer to the Green Party of the U.S. site/platform, which is very similar in scope and overall
philosophy. (www.gp.org).]
I looked at several of their topic areas (Agricultural, Global, Health, Rural) and yes, these
are general theses I would support. But they're hardly policy/project proposals for specific regions
or communities – the Greens espouse "think global, act local", so programs and projects must be
tailored to individual communities and regions.
To return to my original question and answer it myself: I'm forced to conclude that the
Democrats did not specifically address the revitalization – rebirth of the Rust Belt in their
2016 platform. Its failure to do so carried a heavy cost that (nearly) all of us will be forced
to pay.
This sub seems to have largely fallen into the psychologically comfortable trap of declaring
that everyone who voted against their preferred candidate is racist. It's a view pushed by the
neoliberals, who want to maintain he stranglehold of identity politics over the DNC, and it makes
upper-class 'intellectuals' feel better about themselves and their betrayal of the filthy, subhuman
white underclass (or so they see it).
I expect at this point that Trump will be reelected comfortably. If not only the party itself,
but also most of its activists, refuse to actually change, it's more or less inevitable.
You can scream 'those jobs are never coming back!' all you want, but people are never going
to accept it. So either you come up with a genuine solution (instead of simply complaining that
your opponents solutions won't work; you're partisan and biased, most voters won't believe you),
you may as well resign yourself to fascism. Because whining that you don't know what to do won't
stop people from lining up behind someone who says that they do have one, whether it'll work or
not. Nobody trusts the elite enough to believe them when they say that jobs are never coming back.
Nobody trusts the elite at all.
You sound just like the Wiemar elite. No will to solve the problem, but filled with terror
at the inevitable result of failing to solve the problem.
One brutal fact tells us everything we need to know about the Democratic party in 2016:
the American Nazi party is running on a platform of free health care to working class people.
This means that the American Nazi Party is now running to the left of the Democratic party.
Folks, we have seen this before. Let's not descend in backbiting and recriminations, okay?
We've got some commenters charging that other commenters are "mansplaining," meanwhile we've got
other commenters claiming that it's economics and not racism/misogyny. It's all of the above.
Back in the 1930s, when the economy collapsed, fascists appeared and took power. Racists
also came out of the woodwork, ditto misogynists. Fast forward 80 years, and the same thing has
happened all over again. The global economy melted down in 2008 and fascists appeared promising
to fix the problems that the pols in power wouldn't because they were too closely tied to the
existing (failed) system. Along with the fascists, racists gained power because they were able
to scapegoat minorities as the alleged cause of everyone's misery.
None of this is surprising. We have seen it before. Whenever you get a depression in a
modern industrial economy, you get scapegoating, racism, and fascists. We know what to do. The
problem is that the current Democratic party isn't doing it.
Instead, what we're seeing is a whirlwind of finger-pointing from the Democratic leadership
that lost this election and probably let the entire New Deal get rolled back and wiped out. Putin
is to blame! Julian Assange is to blame! The biased media are to blame! Voter suppression is to
blame! Bernie Sanders is to blame! Jill Stein is to blame! Everyone and anyone except the current
out-of-touch influence-peddling elites who currently have run the Democratic party into the ground.
We need the feminists and the black lives matter groups and we also need the green party people
and the Bernie Sanders activists. But everyone has to understand that this is not an isolated
event. Trump did not just happen by accident. First there was Greece, then there was Brexit, then
there was Trump, next it'll be Renzi losing the referendum in Italy and a constitutional crisis
there, and after that, Marine Le Pen in France is going to win the first round of elections. (Probably
not the presidency, since all the other French parties will band together to stop her, but the
National Front is currently polling at 40% of all registered French voters.) And Marine LePen
is the real deal, a genuine full-on out-and-out fascist. Not a closet fascist like Steve Bannon,
LePen is the full monty with everything but a Hugo Boss suit and the death's heads on the cap.
Does anyone notice a pattern here?
This is an international movement. It is sweeping the world . It is the end of neoliberalism
and the start of the era of authoritarian nationalism, and we all need to come together to stamp
out the authoritarian part.
Feminists, BLM, black bloc anarchiest anti-globalists, Sandernistas, and, yes, the former Hillary
supporters. Because it not just a coincidence that all these things are happening in all these
countries at the same time. The bottom 90% of the population in the developed world has been ripped
off by a managerial and financial and political class for the last 30 years and they have all
noticed that while the world GDP was skyrocketing and international trade agreements were getting
signed with zero input from the average citizen, a few people were getting very very rich but
nobody else was getting anything.
This hammered people on the bottom, disproportionately African Americans and especially
single AA mothers in America. It crushed the blue collar workers. It is wiping out the savings
and careers of college-educated white collar workers now, at least, the ones who didn't go to
the Ivy League, which is 90% of them.
And the Democratic party is so helpless and so hopeless that it is letting the American Nazi
Party run to the left of them on health care, fer cripes sake! We are now in a situation
where the American Nazi Party is advocating single-payer nationalized health care, while the former
Democratic presidential nominee who just got defeated assured everyone that single-payer "will
never, ever happen."
C'mon! Is anyone surprised that Hillary lost? Let's cut the crap with the "Hillary
was a flawed candidate" arguments. The plain fact of the matter is that Hillary was running mainly
on getting rid of the problems she and her husband created 25 years ago. Hillary promised criminal
justice reform and Black Lives Matter-friendly policing policies - and guess who started the mass
incarceration trend and gave speeches calling black kids "superpredators" 20 years ago? Hillary
promised to fix the problems with the wretched mandate law forcing everyone to buy unaffordable
for-profit private insurance with no cost controls - and guess who originally ran for president
in 2008 on a policy of health care mandates with no cost controls? Yes, Hillary (ironically, Obama's
big surge in popularity as a candidate came when he ran against Hillary from the left, ridiculing
helath care mandates). Hillary promises to reform an out-of-control deregulated financial system
run amok - and guess who signed all those laws revoking Glass-Steagal and setting up the Securities
Trading Modernization Act? Yes, Bill Clinton, and Hillary was right there with him cheering the
whole process on.
So pardon me and lots of other folks for being less than impressed by Hillary's trustworthiness
and honesty. Run for president by promising to undo the damage you did to the country 25 years
ago is (let say) a suboptimal campaign strategy, and a distinctly suboptimal choice of presidential
candidate for a party in the same sense that the Hiroshima air defense was suboptimal in 1945.
Calling Hillary an "imperfect candidate" is like calling what happened to the Titanic a
"boating accident." Trump was an imperfect candidate. Why did he win?
Because we're back in the 1930s again, the economy has crashed hard and still hasn't recovered
(maybe because we still haven't convened a Pecora Commission and jailed a bunch of the thieves,
and we also haven't set up any alphabet government job programs like the CCC) so fascists and
racists and all kinds of other bottom-feeders are crawling out of the political woodwork to promise
to fix the problems that the Democratic party establishment won't.
Rule of thumb: any social or political or economic writer virulently hated by the current Democratic
party establishment is someone we should listen to closely right now.
Cornel West is at the top of the current Democratic establishment's hate list, and he has got
a great article in The Guardian that I think is spot-on:
"The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang. The political triumph
of Donald Trump shattered the establishments in the Democratic and Republican parties – both wedded
to the rule of Big Money and to the reign of meretricious politicians."
Glenn Greenwald is another writer who has been showered with more hate by the Democratic establishment
recently than even Trump or Steve Bannon, so you know Greenwald is saying something important.
He has a great piece in The Intercept on the head-in-the-ground attitude of Democratic
elites toward their recent loss:
"It is not an exaggeration to say that the Democratic Party is in shambles as a political
force. Not only did it just lose the White House to a wildly unpopular farce of a candidate despite
a virtually unified establishment behind it, and not only is it the minority party in both the
Senate and the House, but it is getting crushed at historical record rates on the state and local
levels as well. Surveying this wreckage last week, party stalwart Matthew Yglesias of Vox minced
no words: `the Obama years have created a Democratic Party that's essentially a smoking pile of
rubble.'
"One would assume that the operatives and loyalists of such a weak, defeated and wrecked
political party would be eager to engage in some introspection and self-critique, and to produce
a frank accounting of what they did wrong so as to alter their plight. In the case of 2016 Democrats,
one would be quite mistaken."
Last but far from least, Scottish economist Mark Blyth has what looks to me like the single
best analysis of the entire global Trump_vs_deep_state tidal wave in Foreign Affairs magazine:
"At the end of World War II, the United States and its allies decided that sustained mass
unemployment was an existential threat to capitalism and had to be avoided at all costs. In response,
governments everywhere targeted full employment as the master policy variable-trying to get to,
and sustain, an unemployment rate of roughly four percent. The problem with doing so, over time,
is that targeting any variable long enough undermines the value of the variable itself-a phenomenon
known as Goodhart's law. (..)
" what we see [today] is a reversal of power between creditors and debtors as the anti-inflationary
regime of the past 30 years undermines itself-what we might call "Goodhart's revenge." In this
world, yields compress and creditors fret about their earnings, demanding repayment of debt at
all costs. Macro-economically, this makes the situation worse: the debtors can't pay-but politically,
and this is crucial-it empowers debtors since they can't pay, won't pay, and still have the right
to vote.
"The traditional parties of the center-left and center-right, the builders of this anti-inflationary
order, get clobbered in such a world, since they are correctly identified by these debtors as
the political backers of those demanding repayment in an already unequal system, and all from
those with the least assets. This produces anti-creditor, pro-debtor coalitions-in-waiting that
are ripe for the picking by insurgents of the left and the right, which is exactly what has happened.
"In short, to understand the election of Donald Trump we need to listen to the trumpets blowing
everywhere in the highly indebted developed countries and the people who vote for them.
"The global revolt against elites is not just driven by revulsion and loss and racism.
It's also driven by the global economy itself. This is a global phenomenon that marks one thing
above all. The era of neoliberalism is over. The era of neonationalism has just begun."
You don't live here, do you? I'm really asking a genuine question because the way you are framing
the question ("SPECIFICS!!!!!!) suggests you don't. (Just to show my background, born and raised
in Australia (In the electoral division of Kooyong, home of Menzies) but I've lived in the US
since 2000 in the midwest (MO, OH) and currently in the south (GA))
If this election has taught us anything it's no one cared about "specifics". It was a mood,
a feeling which brought trump over the top (and I'm not talking about the "average" trump voter
because that is meaningless. The average trunp voter was a republican voter in the south who the
Dems will never get so examining their motivations is immaterial to future strategy. I'm talking
about the voters in the Upper Midwest from places which voted for Obama twice then switched to
trump this year to give him his margin of victory).
trump voters have been pretty clear they don't actually care about the way trump does (or even
doesn't) do what he said he would do during the campaign. It was important to them he showed he
was "with" people like them. They way he did that was partially racialized (law and order, islamophobia)
but also a particular emphasis on blue collar work that focused on the work. Unfortunately these
voters, however much you tell them they should suck it up and accept their generations of familial
experience as relatively highly paid industrial workers (even if it is something only their fathers
and grandfathers experienced because the factories were closing when the voters came of age in
the 80s and 90s) is never coming back and they should be happy to retrain as something else, don't
want it. They want what their families have had which is secure, paid, benefits rich, blue
collar work.
trump's campaign empathized with that feeling just by focusing on the factory jobs as jobs
and not as anachronisms that are slowly fading away for whatever reason. Clinton might have been
"correct", but these voters didn't want to hear "the truth". And as much as you can complain about
how stupid they are for wanting to be lied to, that is the unfortunate reality you, and the Democratic
party, have to accept.
The idea they don't want "government help" is ridiculous. They love the government. They just
want the government to do things for them and not for other people (which unfortunately includes
blah people but also "the coasts", "sillicon valley", etc.). Obama won in 2008 and 2012 in part
due to the auto bailout.
trump was offering a "bailout" writ large. Clinton had no (good) counteroffer. It was like
the tables were turned. Romney was the one talking about "change" and "restructuring" while Obama
was defending keeping what was already there.
"Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the
automakers will stay the course - the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable
labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses.
Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19romney.html
So yes. Clinton needed vague promises. She needed something more than retraining and "jobs
of the future" and "restructuring". She needed to show she was committed to their way of life,
however those voters saw it, and would do something, anything, to keep it alive. trump did that
even though his plan won't work. And maybe he'll be punished for it. In 4 years. But in the interim
the gop will destroy so many things we need and rely on as well as entrench their power for generations
through the Supreme Court.
But really, it was hard for Clinton to be trusted to act like she cared about these peoples'
way of life because she (through her husband fairly or unfairly) was associated with some of the
larger actions and choices which helped usher in the decline.
Clinton toward the end offered tariffs. But the trump campaign hit back with what turned
out to be a pretty strong counter attack – ""How's she going to get tough on China?" said Trump
economic advisor Peter Navarro on CNN's Quest Means Business. He notes that some of Clinton's
economic advisors have supported TPP or even worked on it. ""
"... Another tactic is to discourage international companies from doing business with Iran, an effort coordinated by the Iran Project of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a premier anti-JCPOA lobbying center supported by Sheldon Adelson, a prominent donor to the Republicans and Trump. For instance, the FDD took a lead in denouncing the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for easing controls on dollar transactions between Iran and foreign banks and companies. ..."
"... With so much at stake, Iranians followed the American election with great interest. The Hezb-e Etedal va Toseh (Moderation and Development Party) of President Hassan Rouhani and Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has the most to lose from the Trump presidency. ..."
"... Rouhani came to power in 2013 with a promise to fix the Iranian economy broken by years of mismanagement and sanctions. He managed to push through the JCPOA with assurances that the economic benefits would outweigh the cost of giving up the nuclear project-so much so that the Moderation and Development Party gained a majority in the 2016 parliamentary election. ..."
"... Even a cursory perusal of the Rouhani-affiliated media, such as Iran, Etemad and Arman newspapers, among others, indicates more than a passing level of anxiety about his chances in the wake of Trump's election. ..."
"... Rouhani's normalization plan, more than the JCPOA, puts the moderates on a collision course with the Revolutionary Guards and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The former are incensed about Rouhani's new banking regulations, while the latter opposes the type of broad opening to the world that the moderates are pushing. The supreme leader is known to worry that liberalization and Westernization would further undermine the corroding legitimacy of the theocratic state. Not surprisingly, hard-liners have reacted to Trump's victory with glee. Depicting Trump's election as "a victory of the insane over the liar," Kayhan, representing the Supreme Leader, called Trump "a shredder of the JCPOA, an agreement which had zero benefit for Iran." Javan, a mouthpiece for the Revolutionary Guards, wrote that Trump is better for Iran because he would undermine the credibility of the moderates. ..."
"... The hotly disputed ballistic-missile tests conducted by the Revolutionary Guards in the past year would also come under a review by the new administration; Congress is already crafting legislation that would further sanction implicated countries, companies and individuals. Even small infringements-like the recent incident in which the IAEA reported Iran exceeding the amount of heavy water allowed under the deal-can trigger more measures. ..."
"... Under Obama, such disputes were resolved by a special team of State Department and National Security Council officials, working with the IAEA. Whether the Trump administration would retain the team is doubtful, especially as such a move would be opposed by Bolton or other hard-liners, should they join the administration. Bolton, who accused the IAEA of covering up for Iran, would be most likely press for a more vigilant oversight of Iran's compliance, creating additional friction. This, in turn, can trigger potentially damaging developments. Under the JCPOA terms, Iran is not due additional sanction relief until 2023, but the president is required to sign periodical waivers on sanctions that are on the books if Iran is judged to be in compliance. By refusing to issue the waivers, the Trump administration would essentially abrogate American participation in the accord. ..."
Overlooked in the speculations about Trump's future decisions is the dominant role that Congress
would play in shaping American policy toward the JCPOA. In 2015, in conjunction with the government
of Israel and the Israel lobby in Washington, congressional Republicans mounted an unprecedented
but ultimately an unsuccessful campaign to derail the deal. Still, the lobby and its congressional
patrons have not abandoned their effort to limit the economic benefits of the deal to Iran. One effective
tool is new sanctions-generating legislation. Lawmakers from the House Republican Israel Caucus introduced
several bills which would, among others provisions, extend the Iran Sanctions Act due to expire in
December 2016, block the sale of eighty Boeing planes to Iran and prohibit the Export-Import Bank
from financing business with Iran. Unlike President Obama, President-elect Trump is not expected
to veto the anti-Iran legislation, setting a relatively low bar for its passage.
... ... ...
Another tactic is to discourage international companies from doing business with Iran, an
effort coordinated by the Iran Project of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a premier
anti-JCPOA lobbying center supported by Sheldon Adelson, a prominent donor to the Republicans and
Trump. For instance, the FDD took a lead in denouncing the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign
Assets Control (OFAC) for easing controls on dollar transactions between Iran and foreign banks and
companies.
After initially banning all dollar-denominated transactions, OFAC reversed itself authorizing
such dealings provided they are not processed by the American financial system. In yet another effort
to spur international business with Iran, OFAC declared that foreign companies could transact business
with non-sanctioned Iranian companies even if a sanctioned entity held a minority share of its assets.
The Treasury also relaxed the requirement that foreign companies contracting with Iranian counterparts
do automatic due intelligence. Since the Revolutionary Guards have operated numerous ventures with
legitimate entities, the FDD decried this step as "green-lighting" business with the Guards.
... ... ...
With so much at stake, Iranians followed the American election with great interest. The Hezb-e
Etedal va Toseh (Moderation and Development Party) of President Hassan Rouhani and Ayatollah Akbar
Hashemi Rafsanjani has the most to lose from the Trump presidency.
Rouhani came to power in 2013 with a promise to fix the Iranian economy broken by years of
mismanagement and sanctions. He managed to push through the JCPOA with assurances that the economic
benefits would outweigh the cost of giving up the nuclear project-so much so that the Moderation
and Development Party gained a majority in the 2016 parliamentary election. There is little
doubt that a serious reduction of the economic benefits accruing from the deal would hurt Rouhani's
chances in the 2017 presidential election. Even a cursory perusal of the Rouhani-affiliated media,
such as Iran, Etemad and Arman newspapers, among others, indicates more than a passing level of anxiety
about his chances in the wake of Trump's election.
... ... ...
Under Obama, such disputes were resolved by a special team of State Department and National Security
Council officials, working with the IAEA. Whether the Trump administration would retain the team
is doubtful, especially as such a move would be opposed by Bolton or other hard-liners, should they
join the administration. Bolton, who accused the IAEA of covering up for Iran, would be most likely
press for a more vigilant oversight of Iran's compliance, creating additional friction. This, in
turn, can trigger potentially damaging developments. Under the JCPOA terms, Iran is not due additional
sanction relief until 2023, but the president is required to sign periodical waivers on sanctions
that are on the books if Iran is judged to be in compliance. By refusing to issue the waivers, the
Trump administration would essentially abrogate American participation in the accord.
Even without a formal abrogation, an aggressive American policy would make it hard for Rouhani
to protect all the aspects of JCPOA-mandated compliance. Hard-liners may be encouraged by the fact
that the EU, Russia and China are not likely to agree on snapping back sanctions, because they would
hold the Trump administration responsible for disrupting flourishing trade with Tehran. It is virtually
impossible to predict whether Iran, under a hard-line leadership, would resume its nuclear project.
It is equally difficult to foresee whether an Obama-type coalition behind the JCPOA could be recreated
in the future, should the need arise.
A Trump administration could let Tehran's hard-liners sabotage the JCPOA.
Farhad Rezaei
November 16, 2016
Rouhani's normalization plan, more than the JCPOA, puts the moderates on a collision course
with the Revolutionary Guards and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The former are incensed about Rouhani's
new banking regulations, while the latter opposes the type of broad opening to the world that the
moderates are pushing. The supreme leader is known to worry that liberalization and Westernization
would further undermine the corroding legitimacy of the theocratic state. Not surprisingly, hard-liners
have reacted to Trump's victory with glee. Depicting Trump's election as "a victory of the insane
over the liar," Kayhan, representing the Supreme Leader, called Trump "a shredder of the JCPOA, an
agreement which had zero benefit for Iran." Javan, a mouthpiece for the Revolutionary Guards, wrote
that Trump is better for Iran because he would undermine the credibility of the moderates.
... ... ...
The hotly disputed ballistic-missile tests conducted by the Revolutionary Guards in the past
year would also come under a review by the new administration; Congress is already crafting legislation
that would further sanction implicated countries, companies and individuals. Even small infringements-like
the recent incident in which the IAEA reported Iran exceeding the amount of heavy water allowed under
the deal-can trigger more measures.
Under Obama, such disputes were resolved by a special team of State Department and National
Security Council officials, working with the IAEA. Whether the Trump administration would retain
the team is doubtful, especially as such a move would be opposed by Bolton or other hard-liners,
should they join the administration. Bolton, who accused the IAEA of covering up for Iran, would
be most likely press for a more vigilant oversight of Iran's compliance, creating additional friction.
This, in turn, can trigger potentially damaging developments. Under the JCPOA terms, Iran is not
due additional sanction relief until 2023, but the president is required to sign periodical waivers
on sanctions that are on the books if Iran is judged to be in compliance. By refusing to issue the
waivers, the Trump administration would essentially abrogate American participation in the accord.
Even without a formal abrogation, an aggressive American policy would make it hard for Rouhani
to protect all the aspects of JCPOA-mandated compliance. Hard-liners may be encouraged by the fact
that the EU, Russia and China are not likely to agree on snapping back sanctions, because they would
hold the Trump administration responsible for disrupting flourishing trade with Tehran. It is virtually
impossible to predict whether Iran, under a hard-line leadership, would resume its nuclear project.
It is equally difficult to foresee whether an Obama-type coalition behind the JCPOA could be recreated
in the future, should the need arise.
Dr. Farhad Rezaei is a research fellow at Middle East Institute, Sakarya University, Turkey.
He is the author of the forthcoming Iran's Nuclear Program: A Study in Nuclear Proliferation and
Rollback (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
"... " Like [Andrew] Jackson's populism, we're going to build an entirely new political movement ," he says. "It's everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I'm the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it's the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We're just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks . It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution - conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement." ..."
"... Nobody in the Democratic party listened to his speeches, so they had no idea he was delivering such a compelling and powerful economic message. He shows up 3.5 hours late in Michigan at 1 in the morning and has 35,000 people waiting in the cold. When they got [Clinton] off the donor circuit she went to Temple University and they drew 300 or 400 kids." ..."
"... Bannon on Murdoch: "Rupert is a globalist and never understood Trump" ..."
"... " The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f-ed over . If we deliver-" by "we" he means the Trump White House "-we'll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we'll govern for 50 years. That's what the Democrats missed, they were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people. It's not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about ." ..."
"... ... I'd say, IMO, Steve Bannon is more than an excellent choice for President Trump's team ... Bannon's education, business, work and military experience speaks highly of his abilities ... I wish the MSM would stop labelling him a white nationalist and concentrate on his successful accomplishments and what he could contribute to Trump's cabinet. ..."
Bannon next discusses the "battle line" inside America's great divide.
He absolutely - mockingly - rejects the idea that this is a racial line. "I'm not a white nationalist,
I'm a nationalist. I'm an economic nationalist, " he tells me. " The globalists gutted the American
working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to
not get f-ed over . If we deliver-" by "we" he means the Trump White House "-we'll get 60 percent
of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we'll govern for 50 years.
That's what the Democrats missed, they were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion
market cap employing nine people. It's not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about
."
Bannon's vision: an "entirely new political movement", one which drives the conservatives crazy.
As to how monetary policy will coexist with fiscal stimulus, Bannon has a simple explanation: he
plans to "rebuild everything" courtesy of negative interest rates and cheap debt throughout the world.
Those rates may not be negative for too long.
" Like [Andrew] Jackson's populism, we're going to build an entirely new political movement
," he says. "It's everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I'm the
guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the
world, it's the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all
jacked up. We're just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks . It will be
as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution - conservatives, plus populists,
in an economic nationalist movement."
How Bannon describes Trump: " an ideal vessel"
It is less than obvious how Bannon, now the official strategic brains of the Trump operation,
syncs with his boss, famously not too strategic. When Bannon took over the campaign from Paul
Manafort, there were many in the Trump circle who had resigned themselves to the inevitability
of the candidate listening to no one . But here too was a Bannon insight: When the campaign seemed
most in free fall or disarray, it was perhaps most on target. While Clinton was largely absent
from the campaign trail and concentrating on courting her donors, Trump - even after the leak
of the grab-them-by-the-pussy audio - was speaking to ever-growing crowds of thirty-five or forty
thousand. "He gets it, he gets it intuitively," says Bannon, perhaps still surprised he has found
such an ideal vessel. "You have probably the greatest orator since William Jennings Bryan, coupled
with an economic populist message and two political parties that are so owned by the donors that
they don't speak to their audience. But he speaks in a non-political vernacular, he communicates
with these people in a very visceral way. Nobody in the Democratic party listened to his speeches,
so they had no idea he was delivering such a compelling and powerful economic message. He shows
up 3.5 hours late in Michigan at 1 in the morning and has 35,000 people waiting in the cold. When
they got [Clinton] off the donor circuit she went to Temple University and they drew 300 or 400
kids."
Bannon on Murdoch: "Rupert is a globalist and never understood Trump"
At that moment, as we talk, there's a knock on the door of Bannon's office, a temporary, impersonal,
middle-level executive space with a hodgepodge of chairs for constant impromptu meetings. Sen.
Ted Cruz, once the Republican firebrand, now quite a small and unassuming figure, has been waiting
patiently for a chat and Bannon excuses himself for a short while. It is clear when we return
to our conversation that it is not just the liberal establishment that Bannon feels he has triumphed
over, but the conservative one too - not least of all Fox News and its owners, the Murdochs. "They
got it more wrong than anybody," he says. " Rupert is a globalist and never understood Trump.
To him, Trump is a radical. Now they'll go centrist and build the network around Megyn Kelly."
Bannon recounts, with no small irony, that when Breitbart attacked Kelly after her challenges
to Trump in the initial Republican debate, Fox News chief Roger Ailes - whom Bannon describes
as an important mentor, and who Kelly's accusations of sexual harassment would help topple in
July - called to defend her. Bannon says he warned Ailes that Kelly would be out to get him too
.
Finally, Bannon on how he sees himself in the administration:
Bannon now becomes part of a two-headed White House political structure, with Reince Priebus
- in and out of Bannon's office as we talk - as chief of staff, in charge of making the trains
run on time, reporting to the president, and Bannon as chief strategist, in charge of vision,
goals, narrative and plan of attack, reporting to the president too. Add to this the ambitions
and whims of the president himself, and the novel circumstance of one who has never held elective
office, the agenda of his highly influential family and the end runs of a party significant parts
of which were opposed to him, and you have quite a complex court that Bannon will have to finesse
to realize his reign of the working man and a trillion dollars in new spending.
"I am," he says, with relish, "Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors."
" The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia.
The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f-ed over . If we deliver-" by "we" he
means the Trump White House "-we'll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the
black and Hispanic vote and we'll govern for 50 years. That's what the Democrats missed, they
were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people.
It's not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about ."
... I'd say, IMO, Steve Bannon is more than an excellent choice for President Trump's team
... Bannon's education, business, work and military experience speaks highly of his abilities
... I wish the MSM would stop labelling him a white nationalist and concentrate on his successful
accomplishments and what he could contribute to Trump's cabinet.
........ from wiki ...
Stephen Kevin Bannon was born on November 27, 1953, in Norfolk, Virginia into a working-class,
Irish Catholic, pro-Kennedy, pro-union family of Democrats. He graduated from Virginia Tech in
1976 and holds a master's degree in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. In 1983,
Bannon received an M.B.A. degree with honors from Harvard Business School.
Bannon was an officer in the United States Navy, serving on the destroyer USS Paul F. Foster
as a Surface Warfare Officer in the Pacific Fleet and stateside as a special assistant to the
Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon.
After his military service, Bannon worked at Goldman Sachs as an investment banker in the Mergers
& Acquisitions Department. In 1990, Bannon and several colleagues from Goldman Sachs launched
Bannon & Co., a boutique investment bank specializing in media. Through Bannon & Co., Bannon negotiated
the sale of Castle Rock Entertainment to Ted Turner. As payment, Bannon & Co. accepted a financial
stake in five television shows, including Seinfeld. Société Générale purchased Bannon & Co. in
1998.
In 1993, while still managing Bannon & Co., Bannon was made acting director of Earth-science
research project Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Arizona. Under Bannon, the project shifted emphasis from
researching space exploration and colonization towards pollution and global warming. He left the
project in 1995.
After the sale of Bannon & Co., Bannon became an executive producer in the film and media industry
in Hollywood, California. He was executive producer for Julie Taymor's 1999 film Titus. Bannon
became a partner with entertainment industry executive Jeff Kwatinetz at The Firm, Inc., a film
and television management company. In 2004, Bannon made a documentary about Ronald Reagan titled
In the Face of Evil. Through the making and screening of this film, Bannon was introduced to Peter
Schweizer and publisher Andrew Breitbart. He was involved in the financing and production of a
number of films, including Fire from the Heartland: The Awakening of the Conservative Woman, The
Undefeated (on Sarah Palin), and Occupy Unmasked. Bannon also hosts a radio show (Breitbart News
Daily) on a Sirius XM satellite radio channel.
Bannon is also executive chairman and co-founder of the Government Accountability Institute,
where he helped orchestrate the publication of the book Clinton Cash. In 2015, Bannon was ranked
No. 19 on Mediaite's list of the "25 Most Influential in Political News Media 2015".
Bannon convinced Goldman Sachs to invest in a company known as Internet Gaming Entertainment.
Following a lawsuit, the company rebranded as Affinity Media and Bannon took over as CEO. From
2007 through 2011, Bannon was chairman and CEO of Affinity Media.
Bannon became a member of the board of Breitbart News. In March 2012, after founder Andrew
Breitbart's death, Bannon became executive chairman of Breitbart News LLC, the parent company
of Breitbart News. Under his leadership, Breitbart took a more alt-right and nationalistic approach
towards its agenda. Bannon declared the website "the platform for the alt-right" in 2016. Bannon
identifies as a conservative. Speaking about his role at Breitbart, Bannon said: "We think of
ourselves as virulently anti-establishment, particularly 'anti-' the permanent political class."
The New York Times described Breitbart News under Bannon's leadership as a "curiosity of the
fringe right wing", with "ideologically driven journalists", that is a source of controversy "over
material that has been called misogynist, xenophobic and racist." The newspaper also noted how
Breitbart was now a "potent voice" for Donald Trump's presidential campaign.
Bannon: " The globalists gutted the American working class ..the Democrats were talking
to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people. It's not reality.
They lost sight of what the world is about ."
Well said. Couldn't agree more.
Bannon: " Like [Andrew] Jackson's populism, we're going to build an entirely new political
movement I'm the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan.
Dear Mr. Bannon, it has to be way more than $1trillion in 10 years. Obama's $831 billion American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) didn't make up the difference for all the job lost
in 2007/08. Manufacturing alone lost about 9 million jobs since 1979, when it peaked.
Trump needs to go Ronald Reagan 180% deficit spending. If Trump runs 100% like Obama, Trump
will fail as well.
Speaking to foreign heads of state without briefing papers from neocon bottom feeders from the State
Department might be a wise move.
And meaningful contact with such the nation's foreign policy professionals as
Samantha Paul or Victoria Nuland
is probably impossible ;-).
"...turning a blind eye to Russia's designs on Ukraine and its support for the Assad regime
in Syria." might be what is really needed for the USA foreigh policy.
Like his new boss, Flynn appears very comfortable with the current Russian regime, working with
Russia Today , the Kremlin's propaganda TV network. He apparently
received classified intelligence briefings while running a lobbying firm for foreign clients.
He seems to favor working with Russia to combat Islamist terrorists while turning a blind eye
to Russia's designs on Ukraine and its support for the Assad regime in Syria.
... ... ..
In the brief time since he won the election, Trump's first call with a world leader was not
with a trusted US ally but with the Egyptian dictator President al-Sisi. He sat with prime minister
Abe of Japan this week, but his aides told the Japanese
not
to believe every word Trump said.
He met with the populist right wing British politician Nigel Farage before meeting the British
prime minister Theresa May. But he somehow found time to meet with several Indian
real estate developers to discuss his property interests with them, and the Trump Organization
signed a
Kolkata deal on Friday.
Amid his many interactions with foreign powers, Trump is speaking without briefing papers from
the State Department because his transition team is in such chaos that they have yet to establish
meaningful contact with the nation's foreign policy professionals.
Stillgrizzly
3d ago
85
86
The fundamental problem seems to be that the left /
liberals are playing the game of the right for them and
not being intelligent enough to realise it.
Mass immigration is the case in point. The main
beneficiaries from the movement of labour are the
corporations and the capitalists. The losers are the
incumbent population and the local workers.
The liberal left are confusing the cries of alarm from
those losing out with racism and bigotry, which have been
ingrained in their psyche due to identity politics.
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RJB73
Stillgrizzly
3d ago
48
49
Well put. Mass low-skilled immigration (legal/illegal)
is bad for working class people who are citizens of the
US/UK. The "liberal" left are the ones who'd in the
past naturally come to their defense. Instead, they've
labelled them racists and islamphobes etc. because they
are not driven by (classical) liberalism but rather
divisive identity politics focused on minority groups
(e.g. transgender issues, which is not going to win
many votes.)
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greenwichite
Stillgrizzly
3d ago
22
23
Liberals and the Left are not the same thing, though.
I think the liberals' horror at Jeremy Corbyn
demonstrates this, as did the way liberals torpedoed
Bernie Sanders in favour of Hillary Clinton.
To be liberal is to let people do whatever they
want, so long as they don't
directly
harm other
people.
Multinational businesses love this mentality,
because it allows them to indirectly harm billions of
people, and get away with it. They push free trade (a
very liberal concept) which cuts their taxes and makes
them stronger than most national governments, so they
wield vast, unaccountable power, and get away with
massive levels of pollution.
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Stillgrizzly
greenwichite
3d ago
9
10
The liberals "horror" at Corbyn is because he is
bringing out reactionary "hard" left elements amongst
other things, which are destroying what was a kind of
consensus.
This is fracturing the opposition and driving people
towards the right or "protest" parties. Corbyn is the
best recruiting tool UKIP never had.
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icansee
Stillgrizzly
3d ago
6
7
If you think that this was a universal backlash to the
effects of immigration on jobs , then you are missing
the point .
My advise is for you to check the archives of mother
jones and other blogs to find out how this faux rage
developed .
Trump's primary voters have an average income of
$70,000. They are not affected by mass migration .
This is a rage against Marriage equality ,Seperation of
the church and state ,continuation of the war against
affirmative action ,environmental protection ,union etc
.
The faux rage was engineered by l
1 Remnants of Koch brothers tea party
2 Fox news
3 Alt right
4 Evangelicals
5 Gun manufacturers
They created an hurricane and carried other
unwilling groups like blue collar democrats with them .
However , they wouldn't have stand any chance if
progressives had turned up .
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Jaisans
Stillgrizzly
3d ago
0
1
Mass immigration is the case in point. The main
beneficiaries from the movement of labour are the
corporations and the capitalists. The losers are the
incumbent population and the local workers.
you might
be putting the cart before the horse a little bit
there. the problem isn't freedom of movement (let's try
not to use emotive terms like mass migration) is
employers seeking cheap labour. better wages would
attract more local labour, instead employers actively
seek cheap labour from abroad. and that's a result of
economic liberalism, which is very different to
classical liberalism. classical liberals built houses
for their workers to live in, rather than not paying
them enough to live in their own house.
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Stillgrizzly
icansee
3d ago
2
3
Trump is allied with the Republican party, people seem
to have overlooked that. Therefore, shock horror, a lot
of Republican voters voted for him.
Also in the US, the level of non voting is huge,
suggesting a level of ignorance / disillusionment with
either of the choices.
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Stillgrizzly
Jaisans
3d ago
3
4
You're arguing for protectionism, just like Trump,
effectively state subsidy of the incumbent population
via tarriffs / subsidies / buy British / American
campaigns / increased welfare etc, the net effect is
the same.
isn't controlled
immigration also protectionism? employers exploiting
foreign workers at the expense of local labour is just
plain wrong, it's not market forces. and it's not the
fault of freedom of movement. and it causes
trouble...even keir hardie saw that
better welfare would be a good idea. a better one
would universal credit.
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Its_me
Stillgrizzly
2d ago
3
4
Yep, they hate Corbyn because he's rocking their cosy
boat where they could wear Red while having Blue
policies. The people who hate Corbyn are the same ones
who were vociferous against UKIP, for the same reasons
- they threatened to disrupt their LibLabCon club and
the opportunities they think they deserve.
"... "How many people sleep better knowing that the Baltics are part of NATO? They don't make us
safer, in fact, quite the opposite. We need to think really hard about these commitments," said William
Ruger, vice president of research and policy at the Charles Koch Institute. ..."
"... Bolton has come under criticism from Sen. Rand Paul Rand Paul Battle brews over Trump's foreign
policy Steve Bannon - what do you actually know about him? America's public servants: Our last, best
hope MORE (R-Ky.), who was a skeptic of Bush's foreign policy. ..."
"... Paul on Tuesday blasted Bolton in an op-ed in Rare as "a longtime member of the failed Washington
elite that Trump vowed to oppose." ..."
... The outsider group sees things differently. They want to revamp American foreign policy in
a different direction from the last two administrations. The second camp is also more in line
with Trump's views questioning the value of NATO, a position that horrified many in the establishment
camp.
"How many people sleep better knowing that the Baltics are part of NATO? They don't make
us safer, in fact, quite the opposite. We need to think really hard about these commitments,"
said William Ruger, vice president of research and policy at the Charles Koch Institute.
Paul on Tuesday blasted Bolton in an op-ed in
Rare as "a longtime member of the failed Washington elite that Trump vowed to oppose."
...military historian and Retired Amy Col. Andrew Bacevich said there needs to be a rethink
of American foreign policy. He said the U.S. must consider whether Saudi Arabia and Pakistan qualify
as U.S. allies, and the growing divergence between the U.S. and Israel.
"The establishment doesn't want to touch questions like these with a ten foot pole," he said
at a conference on Tuesday hosted by The American Conservative, the Charles Koch Institute, and
the George Washington University Department of Political Science.
With some Trump advisers, it's not clear which camp they fall into. One example is retired
Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who may become Trump's
national security adviser.
Flynn is a "curious case," said Daniel Larison, senior editor at The American Conservative.
The retired Army general has said he wants to work with Russia, but also expressed contrary views
in his book "Field of Fight."
According to Larison, Flynn writes of an "enemy alliance" against the U.S. that includes Russia,
North Korea, China, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, al-Qaida, Hezbollah, and
the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
It's also not crystal clear which camp Giuliani falls into. The former mayor is known as a
fierce critic of Islamic extremism but has scant foreign policy experience.
Most say what is likely is change.
"Change is coming to American grand strategy whether we like it or not,' said Christopher Layne,
Robert M. Gates Chair in National Security at Texas A&M University.
"I think we are overdue for American retrenchment. Americans are beginning to suffer from hegemony
fatigue," he said.
Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make
the Rich Richer
By Dean Baker
Introduction: Trading in Myths
In winter 2016, near the peak of Bernie Sanders' bid for the Democratic presidential
nomination, a new line became popular among the nation's policy elite: Bernie Sanders is
the enemy of the world's poor. Their argument was that Sanders, by pushing trade policies
to help U.S. workers, specifically manufacturing workers, risked undermining the well-being
of the world's poor because exporting manufactured goods to the United States and other
wealthy countries is their path out of poverty. The role model was China, which by
exporting has largely eliminated extreme poverty and drastically reduced poverty among its
population. Sanders and his supporters would block the rest of the developing world from
following the same course.
This line, in its Sanders-bashing permutation, appeared early on in Vox, the
millennial-oriented media upstart, and was quickly picked up elsewhere (Beauchamp 2016).
After all, it was pretty irresistible. The ally of the downtrodden and enemy of the rich
was pushing policies that would condemn much of the world to poverty.
The story made a nice contribution to preserving the status quo, but it was less
valuable if you respect honesty in public debate.
The problem in the logic of this argument should be apparent to anyone who has taken an
introductory economics course. It assumes that the basic problem of manufacturing workers
in the developing world is the need for someone who will buy their stuff. If people in the
United States don't buy it, then the workers will be out on the street and growth in the
developing world will grind to a halt. In this story, the problem is that we don't have
enough people in the world to buy stuff. In other words, there is a shortage of demand. But
is it really true that no one else in the world would buy the stuff produced by
manufacturing workers in the developing world if they couldn't sell it to consumers in the
United States? Suppose people in the developing world bought the stuff they produced
raising their living standards by raising their own consumption.
That is how the economics is supposed to work. In the standard theory, general shortages
of demand are not a problem. Economists have traditionally assumed that economies tended
toward full employment. The basic economic constraint was a lack of supply. The problem was
that we couldn't produce enough goods and services, not that we were producing too much and
couldn't find anyone to buy them. In fact, this is why all the standard models used to
analyze trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership assume trade doesn't affect
total employment. Economies adjust so that shortages of demand are not a problem.
In this standard story (and the Sanders critics are people who care about textbook
economics), capital flows from slow-growing rich countries, where it is relatively
plentiful and so gets a low rate of return, to fast-growing poor countries, where it is
scarce and gets a high rate of return.
[Figure 1-1] Theoretical and actual capital flows.
So the United States, Japan, and the European Union should be running large trade
surpluses, which is what an outflow of capital means. Rich countries like ours should be
lending money to developing countries, providing them with the means to build up their
capital stock and infrastructure while they use their own resources to meet their people's
basic needs.
This wasn't just theory. That story accurately described much of the developing world,
especially Asia, through the 1990s. Countries like Indonesia and Malaysia were experiencing
rapid annual growth of 7.8 percent and 9.6 percent, respectively, even as they ran large
trade deficits, just over 2 percent of GDP each year in Indonesia and almost 5 percent in
Malaysia.
These trade deficits probably were excessive, and a crisis of confidence hit East Asia
and much of the developing world in the summer of 1997. The inflow of capital from rich
countries slowed or reversed, making it impossible for the developing countries to sustain
the fixed exchange rates most had at the time. One after another, they were forced to
abandon their fixed exchange rates and turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for
help.
Rather than promulgating policies that would allow developing countries to continue the
textbook development path of growth driven by importing capital and running trade deficits,
the IMF made debt repayment a top priority. The bailout, under the direction of the Clinton
administration Treasury Department, required developing countries to switch to large trade
surpluses (Radelet and Sachs 2000, O'Neil 1999).
The countries of East Asia would be far richer today had they been allowed to continue
on the growth path of the early and mid-1990s, when they had large trade deficits. Four of
the five would be more than twice as rich, and the fifth, Vietnam, would be almost 50
percent richer. South Korea and Malaysia would have higher per capita incomes today than
the United States.
[Figure 1-2] Per capita income of East Asian countries, actual vs. continuing on 1990s
growth path.
In the wake of the East Asia bailout, countries throughout the developing world decided
they had to build up reserves of foreign exchange, primarily dollars, in order to avoid
ever facing the same harsh bailout terms as the countries of East Asia. Building up
reserves meant running large trade surpluses, and it is no coincidence that the U.S. trade
deficit has exploded, rising from just over 1 percent of GDP in 1996 to almost 6 percent in
2005. The rise has coincided with the loss of more than 3 million manufacturing jobs,
roughly 20 percent of employment in the sector.
There was no reason the textbook growth pattern of the 1990s could not have continued.
It wasn't the laws of economics that forced developing countries to take a different path,
it was the failed bailout and the international financial system. It would seem that the
enemy of the world's poor is not Bernie Sanders but rather the engineers of our current
globalization policies.
There is a further point in this story that is generally missed: it is not only the
volume of trade flows that is determined by policy, but also the content. A major push in
recent trade deals has been to require stronger and longer patent and copyright protection.
Paying the fees imposed by these terms, especially for prescription drugs, is a huge burden
on the developing world. Bill Clinton would have much less need to fly around the world for
the Clinton Foundation had he not inserted the TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual
Property Rights) provisions in the World Trade Organization (WTO) that require developing
countries to adopt U.S.-style patent protections. Generic drugs are almost always cheap -
patent protection makes drugs expensive. The cancer and hepatitis drugs that sell for tens
or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year would sell for a few hundred dollars in a free
market. Cheap drugs would be more widely available had the developed world not forced TRIPS
on the developing world.
Of course, we have to pay for the research to develop new drugs or any innovation. We
also have to compensate creative workers who produce music, movies, and books. But there
are efficient alternatives to patents and copyrights, and the efforts by the elites in the
United States and other wealthy countries to impose these relics on the developing world is
just a mechanism for redistributing income from the world's poor to Pfizer, Microsoft, and
Disney. Stronger and longer patent and copyright protection is not a necessary feature of a
21st century economy.
In textbook trade theory, if a country has a larger trade surplus on payments for
royalties and patent licensing fees, it will have a larger trade deficit in manufactured
goods and other areas. The reason is that, in theory, the trade balance is fixed by
national savings and investment, not by the ability of a country to export in a particular
area. If the trade deficit is effectively fixed by these macroeconomic factors, then more
exports in one area mean fewer exports in other areas. Put another way, income gains for
Pfizer and Disney translate into lost jobs for workers in the steel and auto industries....
It includes this interesting piece on international trade:
"I'll start with my favorite, the complaint that the trade policy advocating by Warren
and Sanders would hurt the poor in the developing world, or to use their words:
"And their ostensible protection of American workers leaves no room to consider the welfare
of poor people elsewhere in the world."
I like this one because it turns standard economic theory on its head to advance the
interests of the rich and powerful. In the economic textbooks, rich countries like the
United States are supposed to be exporting capital to the developing world. This provides
them the means to build up their capital stock and infrastructure, while maintaining the
living standards of their populations. This is the standard economic story where the
problem is scarcity.
But to justify trade policies that have harmed tens of millions of U.S. workers, either
by costing them jobs or depressing their wages, the Post discards standard economics and
tells us the problem facing people in the developing world is that there is too much stuff.
If we didn't buy the goods produced in the developing world then there would just be a
massive glut of unsold products.
In the standard theory the people in the developing world buy their own stuff, with rich
countries like the U.S. providing the financing. It actually did work this way in the
1990s, up until the East Asian financial crisis in 1997. In that period, countries like
Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia were growing very rapidly while running large trade
deficits. This pattern of growth was ended by the terms of the bailout imposed on these
countries by the U.S. Treasury Department through the International Monetary Fund.
The harsh terms of the bailout forced these and other developing countries to reverse
the standard textbook path and start running large trade surpluses. This post-bailout
period was associated with slower growth for these countries. In other words, the poor of
the developing world suffered from the pattern of trade the Post advocates. If they had
continued on the pre-bailout path they would be much richer today. In fact, South Korea and
Malaysia would be richer than the United States if they had maintained their pre-bailout
growth rate over the last two decades. (This is the topic of the introduction to my new
book, Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make
the Rich Richer, it's free.)"
Not sure that I fully agree with him, but I do agree that trade imbalances and
mercantilism is a large part of the problem.
The Washington Post editorial page decided to lecture readers * on the meaning of
progressivism. Okay, that is nowhere near as bad as a Trump presidency, but really, did we
need this?
The editorial gives us a potpourri of neo-liberal (yes, the term is appropriate here)
platitudes, all of which we have heard many times before and are best half true. For
framing, the villains are Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren who it tells us "are
embracing principles that are not genuinely progressive."
I'll start with my favorite, the complaint that the trade policy advocating by Warren
and Sanders would hurt the poor in the developing world, or to use their words:
"And their ostensible protection of American workers leaves no room to consider the
welfare of poor people elsewhere in the world."
I like this one because it turns standard economic theory on its head to advance the
interests of the rich and powerful. In the economic textbooks, rich countries like the
United States are supposed to be exporting capital to the developing world. This provides
them the means to build up their capital stock and infrastructure, while maintaining the
living standards of their populations. This is the standard economic story where the
problem is scarcity.
But to justify trade policies that have harmed tens of millions of U.S. workers, either
by costing them jobs or depressing their wages, the Post discards standard economics and
tells us the problem facing people in the developing world is that there is too much stuff.
If we didn't buy the goods produced in the developing world then there would just be a
massive glut of unsold products.
In the standard theory the people in the developing world buy their own stuff, with rich
countries like the U.S. providing the financing. It actually did work this way in the
1990s, up until the East Asian financial crisis in 1997. In that period, countries like
Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia were growing very rapidly while running large trade
deficits. This pattern of growth was ended by the terms of the bailout imposed on these
countries by the U.S. Treasury Department through the International Monetary Fund.
The harsh terms of the bailout forced these and other developing countries to reverse
the standard textbook path and start running large trade surpluses. This post-bailout
period was associated with slower growth for these countries. In other words, the poor of
the developing world suffered from the pattern of trade the Post advocates. If they had
continued on the pre-bailout path they would be much richer today. In fact, South Korea and
Malaysia would be richer than the United States if they had maintained their pre-bailout
growth rate over the last two decades. (This is the topic of the introduction to my new
book, "Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to
Make the Rich Richer," ** it's free.)
It is also important to note that the Post is only bothered by forms of protection that
might help working class people. The United States prohibits foreign doctors from
practicing in the United States unless they complete a U.S. residency program. (The total
number of slots are tightly restricted with only a small fraction open to foreign trained
doctors.) This is a classic protectionist measure. No serious person can believe that the
only way for a person to be a competent doctor is to complete a U.S. residency program. It
costs the United States around $100 billion a year ($700 per family) in higher medical
expenses. Yet, we never hear a word about this or other barriers that protect the most
highly paid professionals from the same sort of international competition faced by
steelworkers and textile workers.
Moving on, we get yet another Post tirade on Social Security.
"You can expand benefits for everyone, as Ms. Warren favors. Prosperous retirees who
live mostly off their well-padded 401(k)s will appreciate what to them will feel like a
small bonus, if they notice it. But spreading wealth that way will make it harder to find
the resources for the vulnerable elderly who truly depend on Social Security.
"But demographics - the aging of the population - cannot be wished away. In the 1960s,
about five taxpayers were helping to support each Social Security recipient, and the
economy was growing about 6 percent annually. Today there are fewer than three workers for
each pensioner, and the growth rate even following the 2008 recession has averaged about 2
percent . On current trends, 10 years from now the federal government will be spending
almost all its money on Medicare, Social Security and other entitlements and on interest
payments on the debt, leaving less and less for schools, housing and job training. There is
nothing progressive about that."
There are all sorts of misleading or wrong claims here. First, the economy did not grow
"about 6 percent annually" in the 1960s. There were three years in which growth did exceed
6.0 percent, and it was a very prosperous decade, but growth only averaged 4.6 percent from
1960 to 1970.
I suppose we should be happy that the Post is at least getting closer to the mark. A
2007 editorial *** praising The North American Free Trade Agreement told readers that
Mexico's GDP "has more than quadrupled since 1987." The International Monetary Fund data
**** put the gain at 83 percent. So by comparison, they are doing pretty good with the 6
percent growth number for the sixties.
But getting to the demographics, we did go from more than five workers for every retiree
to less than three today, and this number is projected to fall further to around 2.0
workers per retiree in the next fifteen years. This raises the obvious question, so what?
The economy did not collapse even as we saw the fall from 5 workers per retiree to less
than 3, so something really really bad happens when it falls further? We did raise taxes to
cover the additional cost and we will probably have to raise taxes in the future.
We get that the Post doesn't like tax increases (no one does), but this hardly seems
like the end of the world. The Social Security Trustees project ***** that real wages will
rise on average by more than 34 percent over the next two decades. Suppose we took back
5–10 percent of these projected wage gains through tax increases (still leaving workers
with wages that are more than 30 percent higher than they are today), what is the big
problem?
Of course most workers have not seen their wages rise in step with the economy's growth
over the last four decades. This is a huge issue which is the sort of thing that
progressives should be and are focusing on. But the Post would rather distract us with the
possibility that at some point in the future we may be paying a somewhat higher Social
Security tax.
The Post's route for savings is also classic misdirection. It tells how about
high-living seniors who get so much money from their 401(k)s they don't even notice their
Social Security checks. Only a bit more than 4.0 percent of the over 65 population has
non-Social Security income of more than $80,000 a year. If the point is to have substantial
savings from means-testing it would be necessary to hit people with incomes around $40,000
a year or even lower. That is not what most people consider wealthy.
We could have substantial savings on Medicare by pushing down the pay of doctors and
reducing the prices of drugs and medical equipment. The latter could be done by
substituting public financing for research and development for government granted patent
monopolies (also discussed in Rigged). These items would almost invariably be cheap in a
free market. But the Post seems uninterested in ways to save money that could affect the
incomes of the rich.
One can quibble with whether the current benefits for middle income people are right or
should be somewhat higher or lower, but it is ridiculous to argue that raising them $50 a
month, as proposed by Senator Warren, will break the bank.
Then we have the issue of free college. The Post raises the issue, pushed by Senator
Sanders in his presidential campaign, and then tells readers:
"Our answer - we would argue, the progressive answer - is that there are people in
society with far greater needs than that upper-middle-class family in Fairfax County that
would be relieved of its tuition burden at the College of William & Mary if Mr. Sanders got
his wish."
There are two points to be made here. First there is extensive research ****** showing
that many children from low- and moderate-income families hugely over-estimate the cost of
college, failing to realize that they would be eligible for financial aid that would make
it free or nearly free. This means that the current structure is preventing many relatively
disadvantaged children from attending college. Arguably better education on the
opportunities to get aid would solve this problem, but the problem has existed for a long
time and better education has not done much to change the picture thus far.
The second point is that the process of determining eligibility for aid is itself
costly. Many children have divorced parents, with a non-custodial parent often not anxious
to pay for their children's college. Perhaps it is appropriate that they should pay, but
forcing payment is not an easy task and it doesn't make sense to make the children in such
situations suffer.
In many ways, the free college solution is likely to be the easiest, with the tax coming
out of the income of higher earners, the vast majority of whom will be the beneficiaries of
this policy. There are ways to save on paying for college. My favorite is limiting the pay
of anyone at a public school to the salary of the president of the United States ($400,000
a year). We can also deny the privilege of tax exempt status to private universities or
other non-profits that don't accept a similar salary cap. These folks can pay their top
executives whatever they want, but they shouldn't ask the taxpayers to subsidize their
exorbitant pay packages.
There is one final issue in the column worth noting. At one point it makes a pitch for
the virtues of economic growth then tells readers:
"It's not in conflict with the goal of redistribution."
At least some of us progressive types are not particularly focused on "redistribution."
The focus of my book and much of my other writing is on the way that the market has been
structured to redistribute income upward, compared with the structures in place in the
quarter century after World War II. Is understandable that people who are basically very
satisfied with this upward redistribution of market income would not want this rigging of
the market even to be discussed, but serious progressives do.
Although I like much of what
Dean Baker, I don't like his term "loser liberalism", nor do I think his de-emphasis on
redistribution useful. Au contraire, I think talking about redistribution is absolutely
essential if we are to move to sustainable world. We can no longer be certain that per
person GDP growth will be sufficient to be able to ignore distribution or to rely on
"predistribution".
The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive
By Dean Baker
Upward Redistribution of Income: It Didn't Just Happen
Money does not fall up. Yet the United States has experienced a massive upward
redistribution of income over the last three decades, leaving the bulk of the workforce
with little to show from the economic growth since 1980. This upward redistribution was not
the result of the natural workings of the market. Rather, it was the result of deliberate
policy, most of which had the support of the leadership of both the Republican and
Democratic parties.
Unfortunately, the public and even experienced progressive political figures are not
well informed about the key policies responsible for this upward redistribution, even
though they are not exactly secrets. The policies are so well established as conventional
economic policy that we tend to think of them as incontrovertibly virtuous things, but each
has a dark side. An anti-inflation policy by the Federal Reserve Board, which relies on
high interest rates, slows growth and throws people out of work. Major trade deals hurt
manufacturing workers by putting them in direct competition with low-paid workers in the
developing world. A high dollar makes U.S. goods uncompetitive in world markets.
Almost any economist would acknowledge these facts, but few economists have explored
their implications and explained them to the general public. As a result, most of us have
little understanding of the economic policies that have the largest impact on our jobs, our
homes, and our lives. Instead, public debate and the most hotly contested legislation in
Congress tend to be about issues that will have relatively little impact.
This lack of focus on crucial economic issues is a serious problem from the standpoint
of advancing a progressive agenda....
The Defense Department
reports
that as of Aug. 31, the total cost of operations related to defeating ISIS is $9.3 billion and
the average daily cost is $12.3 million.
Printer-friendly version
Even if ISIS loses Mosul and Raqqa, and Trump increases resources for the fight against the group,
the terrorist danger won't go away, experts say. Indeed, like it or not, Trump will have to confront
a complex "day after" scenario that has proved stubbornly enduring.
"ISIS is not the problem, but a symptom of the problem," said Kenneth Pollack, a Middle East policy
expert at the Brookings Institution, in an interview with The Daily Signal. "If you've learned anything
over recent time, you can't get rid of terrorism by just killing terrorists, if you don't address
the underlying grievances. Even if you kill them all, they will come back the next day."
2. Afghanistan War:
...The U.S. continued military efforts in Afghanistan were underscored this weekend, when a suicide
bomber snuck into the main American military base in the country, killing four Americans. The Taliban,
the long-running Islamic group waging war against Afghanistan's government, took credit for the attack.
Indeed, this grinding 15-year war, and the U.S. contribution to it, shows no signs of ending anytime
soon.
3. Ukraine-Russia War:
... ... ..
Trump has not criticized Russia for its action in Ukraine, and has hinted he would accept the
annexation of Crimea.
The Republican-led House, meanwhile, approved a resolution for the U.S. to provide lethal arms
to the Ukrainian government, but the White House has resisted, saying that it would only encourage
more violence.
Based on his public comments, it seems unlikely Trump will escalate the U.S. involvement in Ukraine,
and perhaps back off from its current role.
4. Saudi Arabia-Yemen War:
... ... ...
The Houthis ousted Yemen's government and forced its U.S.-backed president, Abed Mansour Hadi,
to flee to Saudi Arabia. The Houthis receive support from Iran, Saudi Arabia's rival in the Middle
East.
Obama decided to intervene in the fight because he wanted to reassure the U.S.' commitment to
Saudi Arabia, a longtime ally that was troubled by the nuclear deal with Iran. In addition, the U.S.
is concerned the chaos in Yemen could benefit the country's al-Qaeda affiliate.
About 10,000 people, nearly half civilians, have been killed in the war, most of them by the Saudi
military coalition, according to the United Nations.
5. Campaigns Against Terrorists in Africa:
What's Happening Now:
Obama has described his efforts to destroy al-Qaeda's core leadership as one of the successes
of his national security policy. But the terrorist threat has spread to new regions in recent years,
prompting a U.S. military response, and Trump will have to decide how to proceed.
Unrelated campaigns in Libya and Somalia are prime examples of the diffuse threat.
In Libya, the U.S. has conducted more than 360 airstrikes in support of pro-government forces
trying to expel ISIS from the coastal Libyan city, Sirte. A small number of U.S. special operations
forces are also providing on-the-ground support.
President Barack Obama said Wednesday that America's election of Donald Trump and the U.K.'s
vote to leave the European Union reflect a political uprising in the West over economic
inequities spawned by leaders' mishandling of globalization.
"... Already, motor-vehicle manufacturers ship an automotive transmission back and forth across the US-Mexican border several times in the course of production. At some point, unpacking that production process still further will reach the point of diminishing returns. ..."
"... The story for cross-border flows of financial capital is even more dramatic. Gross capital flows – the sum of inflows and outflows – are not just growing more slowly; they are down significantly in absolute terms from 2009 levels. ..."
"... ... cross-border bank lending and borrowing that have fallen. Foreign direct investment – financial flows to build foreign factories and acquire foreign companies – remains at pre-crisis levels. ..."
"... This difference reflects regulation. Having concluded, rightly, that cross-border bank lending is especially risky, regulators clamped down on banks' international operations. ..."
Does Donald Trump's election as United States president mean that globalization is dead, or are
reports of the process' demise greatly exaggerated? If globalization is only partly incapacitated,
not terminally ill, should we worry? How much will slower trade growth, now in the offing, matter
for the global economy?
World trade growth would be slowing down, even without Trump in office. Its growth was already
flat in the first quarter of 2016, and it fell
by nearly 1% in the second quarter. This continues a prior trend: since 2010, global trade has
grown at an annual rate of barely 2%. Together with the fact that worldwide production of goods and
services has been rising by more than 3%, this means that the trade-to-GDP ratio has been falling,
in contrast to its steady upward march in earlier years.
... the resurgent protectionism manifest in popular opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership
(TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP),
Causality in economics may be elusive, but in this case it is clear. So far, slower trade growth
has been the result of slower GDP growth, not the other way around.
This is particularly evident in the case of investment spending, which has
fallen sharply since
the global financial crisis. Investment spending is trade-intensive, because countries rely disproportionately
on a relatively small handful of producers, like Germany, for technologically sophisticated capital
goods.
In addition, slower trade growth reflects China's economic deceleration. Until 2011 China was
growing at double-digit rates, and Chinese exports and imports were growing even faster. China's
growth has now slowed by a third, leading to slower growth of Chinese trade.
China's growth miracle, benefiting a fifth of the earth's population, is the most important economic
event of the last quarter-century. But it can happen only once. And now that the phase of catch-up
growth is over for China, this engine of global trade will slow.
The other engine of world trade has been global supply chains. Trade in parts and components has
benefited from falling transport costs, reflecting containerization and related advances in logistics.
But efficiency in shipping is unlikely to continue to improve faster than efficiency in the production
of what is being shipped. Already, motor-vehicle manufacturers ship an automotive transmission
back and forth across the US-Mexican border several times in the course of production. At some point,
unpacking that production process still further will reach the point of diminishing returns.
The story for cross-border flows of financial capital is even more dramatic. Gross capital
flows – the sum of inflows and outflows – are not just growing more slowly; they are down significantly
in absolute terms from 2009 levels.
... cross-border bank lending and borrowing that have fallen. Foreign direct investment –
financial flows to build foreign factories and acquire foreign companies – remains at pre-crisis
levels.
This difference reflects regulation. Having concluded, rightly, that cross-border bank lending
is especially risky, regulators clamped down on banks' international operations.
In response, many banks curtailed their cross-border business. But, rather than alarming anyone,
this should be seen as reassuring, because the riskiest forms of international finance have been
curtailed without disrupting more stable and productive forms of foreign investment.
We now face the prospect of the US government revoking the Dodd-Frank Act and rolling back the
financial reforms of recent years. Less stringent financial regulation may make for the recovery
of international capital flows. But we should be careful what we wish for.
"... Now you are worried about yourselves, but there are only the dead and their survivors left
for whom you didn't speak up for. Give me one reason why anybody should worry about you, who seem to
believe that only you count because you are Americans. My very best wishes for your precious safety
and comfort and may you continue to look in the mirror and see no one there. Trust me, a mirror does
not lie. ..."
"... https://youtu.be/G0R09YzyuCI Collapse of Complex Societies by Dr. Joseph Tainter ..."
"... Eliminate the social cancer of private finance and unfettered inheritance or continue to repeat
history to assured extinction. ..."
I understand some of you are very worried about the election of Donald Trump. But I want you
think about this:
First they went for Yugoslavia, and you didn't worry: a country died
Then they went for Afghanistan and you didn't worry: 220,000 Afghans have died.
Then, they went for Iraq, and you didn't worry: 1 million Iraqis died.
Then they went for Libya, and you didn't worry: 30,000 to 50,000 people died. Did you worry
when Qaddafi was murdered with a bayonet up his rectum? No. And someone even laughed.
Then they went for Ukraine, and you didn't worry: 10,000 people died and are dying.
Then they went for Syria, and you didn't worry: 250,000 people died
Then they went for Yemen: over 6,000 Yemenis have been killed and another 27,000 wounded.
According to the UN, most of them are civilians. Ten million Yemenis don't have enough to eat,
and 13 million have no access to clean water. Yemen is highly dependent on imported food, but
a U.S.-Saudi blockade has choked off most imports. The war is ongoing.
Then there is Somalia , and you don't worry
Then there are the countries that reaped the fallout from the collapse of Libya. Weapons looted
after the fall of Gaddafi fuel the wars in Mali, Niger, and the Central African Republic.
Now you are worried about yourselves, but there are only the dead and their survivors left
for whom you didn't speak up for. Give me one reason why anybody should worry about you, who seem
to believe that only you count because you are Americans. My very best wishes for your precious
safety and comfort and may you continue to look in the mirror and see no one there. Trust me,
a mirror does not lie.
Sincerely,
One who does not worry about you.
PS By the way the butcher bill I am here presenting is very conservative on the body count
and does not include the wounded, the homeless, the refugees, or the cost of the wars to you,
who continue to believe that before Trump the world was a nice and comfortable place--for you.
@ 33 Great comment, but remember the tribe. French revolution, Marxism, Russian revolution, Israel,
neoliberalism. I am from the hard "Grapes of Wrath" left. Marxism was a brilliant Jewish ploy
to split the left, then identity politics. Oh, they are so clever and we are so dumb...
Nice continuation of the Killary Pac comment. I want to take it further.
Since the Marxism ploy to split the left the folks that own private finance have developed/implemented
another ploy to redirect criticism of themselves/their tools by adding goyim to the fringes of
private finance to make it look like a respectable cornerstone of our "civilization".
Oh, they are so clever and we are so dumb...
Eliminate the social cancer of private finance and unfettered inheritance or continue to
repeat history to assured extinction.
"... The New Deal did not seek to overthrow the plutocracy, but it did seek to side-step and disable
their dominance. ..."
"... It seems to me that while neoliberalism on the right was much the same old same old, the neoliberal
turn on the left was marked by a measured abandonment of this struggle over the distribution of income
between the classes. In the U.S., the Democrats gradually abandoned their populist commitments. In Europe,
the labour and socialist parties gradually abandoned class struggle. ..."
"... When Obama came in, in 2008 amid the unfolding GFC, one of the most remarkable features of
his economic team was the extent to which it conceded control of policy entirely to the leading money
center banks. Geithner and Bernanke continued in power with Geithner moving from the New York Federal
Reserve (where he served as I recall under a Chair from Goldman Sachs) to Treasury in the Obama Administration,
but Geithner's Treasury was staffed from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Citibank. The crisis served
to concentrate banking assets in the hands of the top five banks, but it seemed also to transfer political
power entirely into their hands as well. Simon Johnson called it a coup. ..."
"... Here's the thing: the globalization and financialization of the economy from roughly 1980 drove
both increasingly extreme distribution of income and de-industrialization. ..."
"... It was characteristic of neoliberalism that the policy, policy intention and policy consequences
were hidden behind a rhetoric of markets and technological inevitability. Matt Stoller has identified
this as the statecraft of neoliberalism: the elimination of political agency and responsibility for
economic performance and outcomes. Globalization and financialization were just "forces" that just happened,
in a meteorological economics. ..."
"... This was not your grandfather's Democratic Party and it was a Democratic Party that could aid
the working class and the Rust Belt only within fairly severe and sometimes sharply conflicting constraints.
..."
"... No one in the Democratic Party had much institutional incentive to connect the dots, and draw
attention to the acute conflicts over the distribution of income and wealth involved in financialization
of the economy (including financialization as a driver of health care costs). And, that makes the political
problem that much harder, because there are no resources for rhetorical and informational clarity or
coherence. ..."
"... If Obama could not get a very big stimulus indeed thru a Democratic Congress long out of power,
Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen spending on pork barrel projects is popular and gets Congressional
critters re-elected. So, again, if the stimulus is small and the Democratic Congress doesn't get re-elected,
Obama isn't really trying. ..."
"... Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism, because
it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference. ..."
At the center of Great Depression politics was a political struggle over the distribution of
income, a struggle that was only decisively resolved during the War, by the Great Compression.
It was at center of farm policy where policymakers struggled to find ways to support farm incomes.
It was at the center of industrial relations politics, where rapidly expanding unions were seeking
higher industrial wages. It was at the center of banking policy, where predatory financial practices
were under attack. It was at the center of efforts to regulate electric utility rates and establish
public power projects. And, everywhere, the clear subtext was a struggle between rich and poor,
the economic royalists as FDR once called them and everyone else.
FDR, an unmistakeable patrician in manner and pedigree, was leading a not-quite-revolutionary
politics, which was nevertheless hostile to and suspicious of business elites, as a source of
economic pathology. The New Deal did not seek to overthrow the plutocracy, but it did seek
to side-step and disable their dominance.
It seems to me that while neoliberalism on the right was much the same old same old, the
neoliberal turn on the left was marked by a measured abandonment of this struggle over the distribution
of income between the classes. In the U.S., the Democrats gradually abandoned their populist commitments.
In Europe, the labour and socialist parties gradually abandoned class struggle.
In retrospect, though the New Deal did use direct employment as a means of relief to good effect
economically and politically, it never undertook anything like a Keynesian stimulus on a Keynesian
scale - at least until the War.
Where the New Deal witnessed the institution of an elaborate system of financial repression,
accomplished in large part by imposing on the financial sector an explicitly mandated structure,
with types of firms and effective limits on firm size and scope, a series of regulatory reforms
and financial crises beginning with Carter and Reagan served to wipe this structure away.
When Obama came in, in 2008 amid the unfolding GFC, one of the most remarkable features
of his economic team was the extent to which it conceded control of policy entirely to the leading
money center banks. Geithner and Bernanke continued in power with Geithner moving from the New
York Federal Reserve (where he served as I recall under a Chair from Goldman Sachs) to Treasury
in the Obama Administration, but Geithner's Treasury was staffed from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan
Chase and Citibank. The crisis served to concentrate banking assets in the hands of the top five
banks, but it seemed also to transfer political power entirely into their hands as well. Simon
Johnson called it a coup.
I don't know what considerations guided Obama in choosing the size of the stimulus or its composition
(as spending and tax cuts). Larry Summers was identified at the time as a voice of caution, not
"gambling", but not much is known about his detailed reasoning in severely trimming Christina
Romer's entirely conventional calculations. (One consideration might well have been worldwide
resource shortages, which had made themselves felt in 2007-8 as an inflationary spike in commodity
prices.) I do not see a case for connecting stimulus size policy to the health care reform. At
the time the stimulus was proposed, the Administration had also been considering whether various
big banks and other financial institutions should be nationalized, forced to insolvency or otherwise
restructured as part of a regulatory reform.
Here's the thing: the globalization and financialization of the economy from roughly 1980
drove both increasingly extreme distribution of income and de-industrialization. Accelerating
the financialization of the economy from 1999 on made New York and Washington rich, but the same
economic policies and process were devastating the Rust Belt as de-industrialization. They were
two aspects of the same complex of economic trends and policies. The rise of China as a manufacturing
center was, in critical respects, a financial operation within the context of globalized trade
that made investment in new manufacturing plant in China, as part of globalized supply chains
and global brand management, (arguably artificially) low-risk and high-profit, while reinvestment
in manufacturing in the American mid-west became unattractive, except as a game of extracting
tax subsidies or ripping off workers.
It was characteristic of neoliberalism that the policy, policy intention and policy consequences
were hidden behind a rhetoric of markets and technological inevitability. Matt Stoller has identified
this as the statecraft of neoliberalism: the elimination of political agency and responsibility
for economic performance and outcomes. Globalization and financialization were just "forces" that
just happened, in a meteorological economics.
It is conceding too many good intentions to the Obama Administration to tie an inadequate stimulus
to a Rube Goldberg health care reform as the origin story for the final debacle of Democratic
neoliberal politics. There was a delicate balancing act going on, but they were not balancing
the recovery of the economy in general so much as they were balancing the recovery from insolvency
of a highly inefficient and arguably predatory financial sector, which was also not incidentally
financing the institutional core of the Democratic Party and staffing many key positions in the
Administration and in the regulatory apparatus.
This was not your grandfather's Democratic Party and it was a Democratic Party that could
aid the working class and the Rust Belt only within fairly severe and sometimes sharply conflicting
constraints.
No one in the Democratic Party had much institutional incentive to connect the dots, and
draw attention to the acute conflicts over the distribution of income and wealth involved in financialization
of the economy (including financialization as a driver of health care costs). And, that makes
the political problem that much harder, because there are no resources for rhetorical and informational
clarity or coherence.
The short version of my thinking on the Obama stimulus is this: Keynesian stimulus spending is
a free lunch; it doesn't really matter what you spend money on up to a very generous point, so
it seems ready-made for legislative log-rolling. If Obama could not get a very big stimulus
indeed thru a Democratic Congress long out of power, Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen
spending on pork barrel projects is popular and gets Congressional critters re-elected. So, again,
if the stimulus is small and the Democratic Congress doesn't get re-elected, Obama isn't really
trying.
Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism,
because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference.
Great comment. Simply great. Hat tip to the author !
Notable quotes:
"… The New Deal did not seek to overthrow the plutocracy, but it did seek to side-step and
disable their dominance. …"
"… It seems to me that while neoliberalism on the right was much the same old same old, the
neoliberal turn on the left was marked by a measured abandonment of this struggle over the distribution
of income between the classes. In the U.S., the Democrats gradually abandoned their populist
commitments. In Europe, the labour and socialist parties gradually abandoned class struggle. …"
"… When Obama came in, in 2008 amid the unfolding GFC, one of the most remarkable features
of his economic team was the extent to which it conceded control of policy entirely to the leading
money center banks. Geithner and Bernanke continued in power with Geithner moving from the
New York Federal Reserve (where he served as I recall under a Chair from Goldman Sachs) to Treasury
in the Obama Administration, but Geithner's Treasury was staffed from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan
Chase and Citibank. The crisis served to concentrate banking assets in the hands of the top
five banks, but it seemed also to transfer political power entirely into their hands as well.
Simon Johnson called it a coup. … "
"… Here's the thing: the globalization and financialization of the economy from roughly 1980
drove both increasingly extreme distribution of income and de-industrialization. …"
"… It was characteristic of neoliberalism that the policy, policy intention and policy consequences
were hidden behind a rhetoric of markets and technological inevitability. Matt Stoller has identified
this as the statecraft of neoliberalism: the elimination of political agency and responsibility
for economic performance and outcomes. Globalization and financialization were just "forces"
that just happened, in a meteorological economics. …"
"… This was not your grandfather's Democratic Party and it was a Democratic Party that could
aid the working class and the Rust Belt only within fairly severe and sometimes sharply conflicting
constraints. …"
"… No one in the Democratic Party had much institutional incentive to connect the dots, and
draw attention to the acute conflicts over the distribution of income and wealth involved in financialization
of the economy (including financialization as a driver of health care costs). And, that makes
the political problem that much harder, because there are no resources for rhetorical and informational
clarity or coherence. …"
"… If Obama could not get a very big stimulus indeed thru a Democratic Congress long out of
power, Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen spending on pork barrel projects is popular
and gets Congressional critters re-elected. So, again, if the stimulus is small and the Democratic
Congress doesn't get re-elected, Obama isn't really trying. …"
"… Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism,
because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference.
…"
"President-elect Donald Trump has named retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn as his new
national security adviser, according to a close source. The former DIA chief has been criticized
in US circles for refusing to take an anti-Russian stance."
Ethnically divided population is easier to control. This is what identity politics is about...
Notable quotes:
"... In the year 1915 America was over 85% white, and a half-century later in 1965, that same 85% ratio still nearly applied. But partly due to the passage of the Immigration Reform Act of that year, America's demographics changed very rapidly over the following five decades. By 2015 there had been a 700% increase in the total number of Hispanics and Asians and the black population was nearly 100% larger, while the number of (non-Hispanic) whites had grown less than 25%, with much of even that small increase due to the huge influx of Middle Easterners, North Africans, and other non-European Caucasians officially classified by our U.S. Census as "white." As a consequence of these sharply divergent demographic trends, American whites have fallen to little more than 60% of the total, and are now projected to become a minority within just another generation or two, already reduced to representing barely half of all children under the age of 10. ..."
"... The answer is that for various pragmatic and ideological reasons, the ruling elites of both our major parties have largely either ignored or publicly welcomed the demographic changes transforming the nation they jointly control. Continuous heavy immigration has long been seen as an unabashed positive both by open borders libertarians of the economically-focused Right and also by open borders multiculturalists of the socially-focused Left, and these ideological positions permeate the community of policy experts, staffers, donors, and media pundits who constitute our political ecosphere. ..."
"... Earlier this year, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, an elderly individual with unabashed socialistic views, was interviewed by Vox ..."
"... These notions scandalized his neoliberal interlocutor, and the following day another Vox ..."
I think this one short paragraph provides a better clue to the unexpected political rise of Donald
Trump than would a hundred footnoted academic articles.
In the year 1915 America was over 85%
white, and a half-century later in 1965, that same 85% ratio still nearly applied. But partly due
to the passage of the Immigration Reform Act of that year, America's demographics
changed very rapidly over the following five decades. By 2015 there had been a 700% increase
in the total number of Hispanics and Asians and the black population was nearly 100% larger, while
the number of (non-Hispanic) whites had grown less than 25%, with much of even that small increase
due to the huge influx of Middle Easterners, North Africans, and other non-European Caucasians officially
classified by our U.S. Census as "white." As a consequence of these sharply divergent demographic
trends, American whites have fallen to little more than 60% of the total, and are now projected to
become a minority within just another generation or two, already reduced to representing
barely half of all children under the age of 10.
Demographic changes so enormous and rapid on a continental scale are probably unprecedented in
all human history, and our political establishment was remarkably blind for having failed to anticipate
the possible popular reaction. Over the last twelve months, Donald Trump, a socially liberal New
Yorker, has utilized the immigration issue to seize the GOP presidential nomination against the vehement
opposition of nearly the entire Republican establishment, conservative and moderate alike, and at
times his campaign has enjoyed a lead in the national polls, placing him within possible reach of
the White House. Instead of wondering how a candidate came to take advantage of that particular issue,
perhaps we should instead ask ourselves why it hadn't happened sooner.
The answer is that for various pragmatic and ideological reasons, the ruling elites of both our
major parties have largely either ignored or publicly welcomed the demographic changes transforming
the nation they jointly control. Continuous heavy immigration has long been seen as an unabashed
positive both by open borders libertarians of the economically-focused Right and also by open borders
multiculturalists of the socially-focused Left, and these ideological positions permeate the community
of policy experts, staffers, donors, and media pundits who constitute our political ecosphere.
Earlier this year, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, an elderly individual with
unabashed socialistic views,
was interviewed by Vox's Ezra Klein, and explained that "of course" heavy foreign immigration-let
alone "open borders"-represented the economic dream of extreme free market libertarians such as the
Koch brothers, since that policy would obviously drive down the wages of workers and greatly advantage
Capital at the expense of Labor.
These notions scandalized his neoliberal interlocutor, and the following
day another Vox colleague
joined in the attack, harshly denouncing the candidate's views as "ugly" and "wrongheaded," while
instead pointing to the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal as the proper font of
progressive economic doctrine. Faced with such sharp attacks by young and influential Democratic
pundits less than half his age, Sanders soon retreated from his simple statement of fact, and henceforth
avoided raising the immigration issue during the remainder of his campaign.
"... Because I was critical of the George W. Bush regime, the liberal-progressive-leftwing and homosexual/transgendered rights groups have me on their mailing lists. ..."
"... Unless they provoke him beyond reason, Trump is not going to bother any of these people. Trump wants to bring middle class jobs back to Americans, including for all those paid to protest him. In order to avoid nuclear war, Trump wants to restore normal relations between the major nuclear powers. When there are no jobs for Americans that pay enough to support an independent existence, Trump doesn't see the point of massive legal and illegal immigration. This is only common sense. ..."
I guess we have all noticed that the holier-than-thou groups who whined that Trump wasn't going to
accept the outcome of the election refuse to accept it themselves.
Because I was critical of the George W. Bush regime, the liberal-progressive-leftwing and
homosexual/transgendered rights groups have me on their mailing lists.
And it is unbelievable. The entirety of "the other America" refuses to accept the people's decision.
They think that their concerns are more important than the concerns of the American people, who they
regard as nothing but a collection of racist homophobic rednecks.
Unless they provoke him beyond reason, Trump is not going to bother any of these people. Trump
wants to bring middle class jobs back to Americans, including for all those paid to protest him.
In order to avoid nuclear war, Trump wants to restore normal relations between the major nuclear
powers. When there are no jobs for Americans that pay enough to support an independent existence,
Trump doesn't see the point of massive legal and illegal immigration. This is only common sense.
Yet "the threatened people" see it as fascism. Who are "the threatened people?" As always, the
most powerful. Tell me, what lobby is more powerful than the Israel Lobby? You can't. But the Jewish
Lobby, J Street, has sent me a hysterical email at 5:11pm on 14 November. Unless "we all come together
and oppose Trump's appointment of Breitbart editor Stephan Bannon as chief strategist and senior
counselor" a "wave of hate will sweep across the land," consuming "Jews, Muslims, African-Americans,
LGBT peoople (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered), immigrants, Hispanics, women and other groups."
Really now! So is Trump's chief strategist, whatever position that is, going to attack the Jews
and those with unusual sexual impulses with drones and cluster bombs, like the Zionist neoconservatives
who controlled the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes did to millions of slaughtered and
displaced peoples in 7 countries, and like Israel does to Palestinians? Or is the former Breitbart
editor going to round them all up and torture them in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo like Bush and Obama
did. And like Netanyahu does in Israel?
Or will Trump simply shoot them down in the streets like Netanyahu does to the Palestinian women
and children.
How come J Street and the Oligarchy-funded fronts are only concerned with nonexistent threats
and ignore all of the real threats?
... ... ...
We must hope that Donald Trump understands the state of moral, cultural, legal, and political
collapse that America is in. Two years ago at the Valdai International Discussion Club, Russian President
Vladimir Putin said:
"Many of the Euro-Atlantic countries are actually rejecting their roots, including the Christian
values that constitute the basis of Western civilization. They are denying moral principles and
all traditional identities, national, cultural, religious, and even secular. They are implementing
policies that equate families with same-sex partnerships, worship of God with worship of Satan.
I am convinced that this opens a direct path to degradation and primitivism, resulting in a profound
demographic and moral crisis."
Ordinary Americans know what he means. They are forced to accept blasphemous films about Jesus Christ
and shameless newspaper caricatures of the Virgin Mary, but if one of them calls a homosexual a pervert,
he has committed a hate crime.
America is a country without an honest media. A country without an honest judiciary. Without an
honest government. Without an honest legislature. Without honest schools and universities. A country
whose morals are confused by propaganda. A country whose elites believe that they are entitled to
all the income and wealth and that normal American people are the "deplorables," to use Hillary's
term for ordinary Americans.
"... So remember, if Iraqis die by the hundreds of thousands – Birthpangs of Democracy. By pure coincidence, the top three donors to McCain's Campaigns: Defense Electronics, For-profit Education, Misc Defense ..."
He graduated at the bottom of his class, successfully got shot down in the Nam, and lobbied
for Iraq, a war that cost thousands of American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and
trillions of dollars, and now he's back to promote his favorite activity when he's not involved
it in: warfare. Johnny "Rotten Judgement" McCain:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/us/politics/donald-trump-transition.html?_r=0
"Senator John McCain issued a blunt warning on Tuesday to President-elect Trump and his emerging
foreign policy team: Don't try another "reset" with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. During
the campaign, Mr. Trump described Mr. Putin as a strong leader and suggested that the United States
and Russia might join forces in fighting the Islamic State. Mr. Putin congratulated Mr. Trump
on his election in a phone call on Monday and discussed working together to combat terrorism and
resolve the crisis in Syria, according to the Kremlin's account. That was too much for Mr. McCain,
the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who cautioned the incoming administration
not to be taken in by "a former K.G.B. agent." "When America has been at its best, it's when
we've stood w/ those fighting tyranny- that's where we must stand again" McCain tweeted "The
Obama administration's last attempt at resetting relations with Russia culminated in Putin's invasion
of Ukraine and military intervention in the Middle East," Mr. McCain, the newly re-elected Arizona
Republican, said in a statement."
Got it everyone? Obama's reset in 2008 caused Ukraine in 2014. Because as we all know, nothing
really happened between 2008 and 2014. There was coup in Ukraine, no Arab Spring, nothing.
"At the very least, the price of another 'reset' would be complicity in Putin and Assad's butchery
of the Syrian people," he added. "This is an unacceptable price for a great nation. When America
has been at its greatest, it is when we have stood on the side of those fighting tyranny. That
is where we must stand again."
So remember, if Iraqis die by the hundreds of thousands – Birthpangs of Democracy. By pure
coincidence, the top three donors to McCain's Campaigns: Defense Electronics, For-profit Education,
Misc Defense
"... Clinton's defeat is more than anything else a rejection of Obama. Obama descended into the fray to bolster her campaign and witnessed the rejection of his own presidency. Conquered, in the 2008 electoral campaign, with a pledge of support not only for Wall Street but also "Main Street", that is, the ordinary citizen. Since then, the middle class has witnessed its conditions deteriorate, the rate of poverty has increased while the rich have become even richer. Now, marketing himself as the champion of the middle class, the billionaire outsider, Donald Trump, has won the presidency. ..."
"... As her e-mails make clear, when she was Secretary of State, she convinced President Obama to engage in war to demolish Libya and to roll out the same operation against Syria. She was the one to promote the internal destabilization of Venezuela and Brazil and the US "Pivot to Asia" – an anti-Chinese manoeuvre. And yet again, she also used the Clinton Foundation as a vehicle to prepare the terrain in Ukraine for the Maidan Square putsch which paved the way for Usa/Nato escalation against Russia. ..."
"... Given that all this has not prevented the relative decline of US power, it is up to the Trump Administration to correct its shot, while keeping its gaze fixed on the same target. There is no air of reality to the hypothesis that Trump intends to abandon the system of alliances centered around US-led Nato. ..."
"... Trump could seek an agreement with Russia, an additional objective of which would be to pull it away from China. China: against which Trump announces economic measures, accompanied by an additional strengthening of US military presence in the Asia-Pacific region. ..."
"... Here you have the colossal financial groups that dominate the economy (the share value alone of the companies listed on Wall Street is higher than the entire US national income). ..."
"... Then you have the multinationals whose economic dimensions exceed those of entire states and which delocalize production to countries offering cheap labour. The knock-on effect? Domestically, factories will close and unemployment will increase, which will in turn lead to the conditions of the US middle class becoming even worse. ..."
"... It is 21st century capitalism, which the USA expresses in its most extreme form, that increasingly polarizes the rich and poor. 1% of the global population has more than the other 99%. The President[-elect], Trump, belongs to the class of the superrich. ..."
Clinton's defeat is more than anything else a rejection of Obama. Obama descended into the
fray to bolster her campaign and witnessed the rejection of his own presidency. Conquered, in the
2008 electoral campaign, with a pledge of support not only for Wall Street but also "Main Street",
that is, the ordinary citizen. Since then, the middle class has witnessed its conditions deteriorate,
the rate of poverty has increased while the rich have become even richer. Now, marketing himself
as the champion of the middle class, the billionaire outsider, Donald Trump, has won the presidency.
How will this change of guard at the White House change US foreign policy? Certainly, the core
objective of remaining the dominant global power will remain untouched. [Yet] this position is increasing
fragile. The USA is losing ground both within the economic and the political domains, [ceding] it
to China, Russia and other "emerging countries". This is why it is throwing the sword onto the scale.
This is followed by a series of wars where Hillary Clinton played the [lead] protagonist.
As her authorized biography reveals, she was the one as First Lady, to convince the President,
her consort, to engage in war to destroy Yugoslavia, initiating a series of "humanitarian interventions"
against "dictators" charged with "genocide".
As her e-mails make clear, when she was Secretary of State, she convinced President Obama
to engage in war to demolish Libya and to roll out the same operation against Syria. She was the
one to promote the internal destabilization of Venezuela and Brazil and the US "Pivot to Asia" –
an anti-Chinese manoeuvre. And yet again, she also used the Clinton Foundation as a vehicle to prepare
the terrain in Ukraine for the Maidan Square putsch which paved the way for Usa/Nato escalation against
Russia.
Given that all this has not prevented the relative decline of US power, it is up to the Trump
Administration to correct its shot, while keeping its gaze fixed on the same target. There is no
air of reality to the hypothesis that Trump intends to abandon the system of alliances centered around
US-led Nato. But he will of course thump his fists on the table to secure a deeper commitment,
particularly on military expenditure from the allies.
Trump could seek an agreement with Russia, an additional objective of which would be to pull
it away from China. China: against which Trump announces economic measures, accompanied by an additional
strengthening of US military presence in the Asia-Pacific region.
Such decisions, that will surely open the door for further wars, do not depend on Trump's warrior-like
temperament, but on centres of power wherein lies the matrix of command on which the White House
itself depends.
Here you have the colossal financial groups that dominate the economy (the share value alone
of the companies listed on Wall Street is higher than the entire US national income).
Then you have the multinationals whose economic dimensions exceed those of entire states and
which delocalize production to countries offering cheap labour. The knock-on effect? Domestically,
factories will close and unemployment will increase, which will in turn lead to the conditions of
the US middle class becoming even worse.
Then you have the giants of the war industry that extract profit from war.
It is 21st century capitalism, which the USA expresses in its most extreme form, that increasingly
polarizes the rich and poor. 1% of the global population has more than the other 99%. The President[-elect],
Trump, belongs to the class of the superrich.
"... Liberal democracy has always depended on its relationships with an illiberal Other of one sort or another, and all too often "liberal progressivism" merely means responding to such relationships in one's own society, the capitalist exploitation of a domestic proletariat, by "outsourcing" our illiberal tendencies to consist largely of the imperial domination and subjugation of foreigners. ..."
"... demand that we stop hiding our society's illiberal underbelly and acknowledge/celebrate it for what it is, a demand that may be the single most authentic marker of the transition from liberalism to fascism. ..."
"... They very likely in our current regimes will not show up in the same places. Neoliberalism and neoimperialism show pretty much the contradictions of the older globalist orders (late 19th c), they are just now distributed so as re-intensify the differences, the combined etc, and concentrate the accumulation. ..."
"... And elites are fighting over the spoils. ..."
"... But there are also people who either liked Trump's economic rhetoric and just disregarded the racism/sexism stuff the same way Clinton voters like me disregarded her warmongering (Republicans:domestic minorities::Democrats:foreigners), and other people who didn't have their resentments channeled at all and just stayed home. ..."
The economic case for immigration may be attractive-and, for the moment at least, persuasive-but
it is essentially a conservative argument, suggesting that human beings ought to be treated
in a certain manner because it generates economic benefit, and not necessarily because it is morally
required. Of course, liberals don't really want to look a gift horse in the mouth: with the political
climate hostile to the humanitarian plight of even the most sympathetic of migrants, liberals
are thrilled to have statistics and pie charts and suchlike to lay before a skittish American
public. It isn't every day that the right thing to do is also the rationally self-interested thing
to do, and we should certainly celebrate those joyous occasions when they arise. However, it's
important not to lose sight of the moral dimension of the argument, and in that context there
are a few questions worth asking.
…
The left has something to learn from the moral clarity of the libertarian case for immigration,
which asserts that human beings simply have a natural right to migrate freely. The moral argument
is far more robust than the economic one, because it is true universally regardless of changing
economic conditions. One doesn't need to prove that immigrants grow the GDP or that they will
never compete for the same jobs as Americans. The better point is that there is no good moral
reason for putting up walls and keeping people out. And just as Americans feel entitled to the
freedom to go anywhere in the world they please (and would be surprised to be turned away at a
border), so everyone else should be granted the same basic entitlement. It's also worth emphasizing
the inherent arbitrariness of global inequality. Given that the earth's resources are unevenly
apportioned, and people's life circumstances depend on the geographic accident of their birth,
shouldn't we understand this to be a moral evil, and strive to correct it where we can? Perhaps
such arguments will fail to persuade. But they are far more sound, and ultimately, far more honest.
Increased immigration should be allowed because it is morally right, not because it is in our
narrow economic self-interest.
Point being, Dipper @ 108 has hit the nail quite squarely on the head.
Liberal democracy has always depended on its relationships with an illiberal Other of one
sort or another, and all too often "liberal progressivism" merely means responding to such relationships
in one's own society, the capitalist exploitation of a domestic proletariat, by "outsourcing" our
illiberal tendencies to consist largely of the imperial domination and subjugation of foreigners.
(Which can even happen inside one's own borders, as long as it remains suitably "illegal"; notice
how much less ideologically problematic it is to document the presence and labor of the most brutally
exploited migrant workers in e.g. China or the Gulf Arab states than in more liberal societies like
the US or EU.)
It's the height of either hypocrisy or obliviousness for those who consider themselves liberal
progressives to then act surprised when the people charged with carrying out this domination and
subjugation on our behalf - our Colonel Jessups, if you will
- demand that we stop hiding our society's illiberal underbelly
and acknowledge/celebrate it for what it is, a demand that may be the single most authentic marker
of the transition from liberalism to fascism. Is that easier to understand?
bob mcmanus 11.15.16 at 4:31 pm
I liked WLGR's at 115 a little better than Dipper, but there are many comments coming
better than anything I can do.
It may be that global manufacturing jobs are declining due to automation, but my recent reading
has convinced me that capital is now able to move low wage low skill manufacturing jobs so fast
that it is hard for analysis to keep up. LTV says that as long as the profits and wealth and accumulation
(and political power) are showing up, somewhere there is superexploited labor. They very likely
in our current regimes will not show up in the same places. Neoliberalism and neoimperialism
show pretty much the contradictions of the older globalist orders (late 19th c), they are just
now distributed so as re-intensify the differences, the combined etc, and concentrate the accumulation.
And elites are fighting over the spoils.
Consumatopia 11.15.16 at 3:54 pm
There's a weird disconnect between the debate among online leftists/liberals and the debate among
Democratic politicians now. Online it's socialists saying "they hate neoliberalism, reach out
to them!", social justice activists saying "they're racists, screw them!" In party institutions,
it's the same except the second group is saying "they're racists, we must avoid antagonizing them!"
Seriously, they're arguing that Bernie would have lost because he's Jewish and his ally Keith
Ellison shouldn't lead the DNC because he's Muslim.
So I just hope the people saying "they're racists!" understand that if the Democratic party
comes to agree with you then the party will move to the right on race–or at least it will pull
back from some of the rhetoric Chris (merian) described at 76.
Anyway, from the OP, "These have indeed failed people, and policies of austerity coupled with
bailouts for the banks have enraged the voters, so that many people, nostalgic for a more equal
and more functional society but confused about who to blame, have channelled their resentments
against immigrants and minorities. "
I think this is almost but not quite correct. There definitely exist some people for whom this
is true. But there are also people who either liked Trump's economic rhetoric and just disregarded
the racism/sexism stuff the same way Clinton voters like me disregarded her warmongering (Republicans:domestic
minorities::Democrats:foreigners), and other people who didn't have their resentments channeled
at all and just stayed home.
More that that, I just don't think anyone has a good understanding of what moves the white
working class to the right. It isn't just racism and sexism, and it ends up playing out
differently in different regions. It's not necessarily true that they're ready for Sanders–look
at Kentucky voting for a governor promising to end Medicaid expansion in 2015. This is a poor
but very white state. Lower middle class whites turned against further downscale whites. Poor
whites didn't show up. It wasn't racism that drove this, but it wasn't hatred of neoliberalism
either–it may be a response to pain neoliberalism caused, but they haven't been prepared to point
the finger there.
@WLGR: I do not believe that the case for free movement depends on economic arguments; I do believe
that when its opponents advance bogus economic arguments they should be rebutted.
"... Do you think Trump was serious when he called for a Russia détente? ..."
"... PC: He might be. It's not so stupid. To some degree, that's what we already have had: negotiations
and an attempted ceasefire with the Russians. You can justify that by saying that if there is going
to be any peace agreement in Syria, it has to be negotiated by the biggest players which are the U.S.
and Russia. They may not be enough to do it, they may not be able to control allies or proxies or something.
[But] that's sort of feasible. ..."
"... it's evident that within the U.S. government, different parts of the government have different
policies; you know, the CIA arming various rebel factions, the Pentagon tried this. But the idea of
arming factions that were supposedly moderate not only hasn't worked but it's been disastrous, it's
been a joke. Whatever the state of the Syrian political opposition, the armed opposition is dominated
by Islamists and has been a long time. So that might continue but I don't think it'll make much difference.
When it comes to troops, soldiers, on the ground cooperating with the U.S., of course, the Pentagon
did find people but it was the Kurds and various proxies supported by the Kurds. ..."
"... I don't think it works that way at the moment because they tend to think of Americans, Europeans,
not just non-Muslims but non-believers in that sort of Wahhabi variant of Islam that they believe in.
So to them all the world's an enemy, whether it's a Shia Muslim who's worthy of immediate death or Yazidis,
who many are enslaved. ..."
"... Now we're getting to-the fighting is in East Mosul and that's full of people. This is an important
question that's going to come up now in the next few weeks. The Iraqi army isn't making that much progress
over the last week in those areas, so what'll they do? One option is much more bombing and disregard
the civilian casualties. If that happens then the number of civilian casualties will soar vastly from
what it is now. ..."
Above all, what's the relationship to Iran? That's one thing Trump is very committed to, was denouncing
the Iran deal. Now, does that fall apart? Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies would be very pleased
if it did fall apart. If that falls apart then that further destabilizes the region and gives an
incentive to the Iranians to maybe increase their intervention [in Iraq] and Syria. It has all sorts
of repercussions.
That's probably the most menacing thing, is whether the deal Obama did with the Iranians is dropped
by Trump, which would probably delight the Israelis, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies. That's
the most destabilizing thing that could happen and is perhaps the most likely thing that could happen.
KK: What effect would killing the Iran deal have on the war against ISIS?
PC: There has always been this funny mixture particularly in Iraq, of public rivalry and private
cooperation between the Iranian army and the U.S. because for a long time they had the same enemies-initially
in Saddam Hussein and then al-Qaeda in Iraq. You had a Shia government [in Iraq] supported by the
U.S. after 2005 but it was also supported by Iran. They wanted to increase their influence and limit
that of America but they had the same friends and the same enemies. The degree of cooperation would
depend somewhat on this nuclear deal and has increased because of this nuclear deal.
Also the current government of Iran that is committed to this deal could fall apart. It's all
very negative if that goes.
KK: If Trump tears up the agreement, will there be a government more like Ahmadinejad's in
Iran?
PC: That's one thing that could happen…a tougher U.S. line on Iran provokes the whole Shia coalition
against the U.S., makes them look more towards war than diplomacy.
KK: Do you think Trump was serious when he called for a Russia détente?
PC: He might be. It's not so stupid. To some degree, that's what we already have had: negotiations
and an attempted ceasefire with the Russians. You can justify that by saying that if there is going
to be any peace agreement in Syria, it has to be negotiated by the biggest players which are the
U.S. and Russia. They may not be enough to do it, they may not be able to control allies or proxies
or something. [But] that's sort of feasible.
It's also true that policies such as Hillary Clinton's -- or just the people around her who were
talking about fighting Islamic State and fighting, getting rid of Assad-were never feasible. There
isn't a moderate opposition faction that could've fought both. It barely exists. The problem about
this is, what Trump has said, these are not defined policies. We don't know who the guys who are
meant to implement them are. So it's pretty incoherent.
KK: Do you think these attempts to arm the rebels will continue to happen?
PC: Yeah, it's evident that within the U.S. government, different parts of the government
have different policies; you know, the CIA arming various rebel factions, the Pentagon tried this.
But the idea of arming factions that were supposedly moderate not only hasn't worked but it's been
disastrous, it's been a joke. Whatever the state of the Syrian political opposition, the armed opposition
is dominated by Islamists and has been a long time. So that might continue but I don't think it'll
make much difference. When it comes to troops, soldiers, on the ground cooperating with the U.S.,
of course, the Pentagon did find people but it was the Kurds and various proxies supported by the
Kurds.
KK: Has Trump's victory helped jihadis in Syria in Iraq?
PC: Potentially it could, but I don't think it works that way at the moment because they tend
to think of Americans, Europeans, not just non-Muslims but non-believers in that sort of Wahhabi
variant of Islam that they believe in. So to them all the world's an enemy, whether it's a Shia Muslim
who's worthy of immediate death or Yazidis, who many are enslaved. One of the things about the
siege of Mosul, down the road from where I am, is that there are different armies-all of whom are
enemies of the Islamic state and all hate each other -- besieging the place at the moment.
Now potentially, [if] Muslims start getting kicked out, if some people get killed and so forth,
yeah that would play to their advantage. Any sort of communal punishment of Muslims anywhere is something
that they can take advantage of in their propaganda. The degree to which that's successful and helps
them of course depends on the degree of the communal punishment to which Muslims are subject.
KK: Do you think the numbers we're seeing are vastly understated with respect to civilian casualties
arising from the coalition airstrikes on ISIS territory?
PC: They're probably understated; whether they're vastly understated I don't know. Areas I've
been to between here and Mosul, most of the villages were uninhabited ever since ISIS took them over
in 2014. There weren't many people living there, so they could bomb these ISIS positions without
killing many civilians.
Now we're getting to-the fighting is in East Mosul and that's full of people. This is an important
question that's going to come up now in the next few weeks. The Iraqi army isn't making that much
progress over the last week in those areas, so what'll they do? One option is much more bombing and
disregard the civilian casualties. If that happens then the number of civilian casualties will soar
vastly from what it is now.
KK: Could Trump pursue that option?
PC: Potentially, yeah, they could up the bombing, particularly in places like Mosul. But it's
too early to say.
"... What Is Lost by Burying the Trans-Pacific Partnership? – The New York Times : "The Americans will have to explain their failure on the trade agreement to foreign leaders gathered in Lima, Peru, while China's leader, Xi Jinping, is there seeking progress toward an emerging alternative to the Trans-Pacific Partnership - the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, known as R.C.E.P., which includes China, Japan and 14 other Asian countries but excludes the United States. ..."
"... 'In the absence of T.P.P., countries have already made it clear that they will move forward in negotiating their own trade agreements that exclude the United States,' Mr. Obama's Council of Economic Advisers wrote days before the election. 'These agreements would improve market access and trading opportunities for member countries while U.S. businesses would continue to face existing trade barriers.'" ..."
"... Foreign leaders and foreign populations hated the TPP because it wasn't a trade deal; it was a giveaways-to-big-corporations deal full of stuff about extending copyrights for Mickey Mouse and so on. ..."
I don't know enough about the finer points of the TPP to be for or against it.
But this article suggests that there are plans to exclude the US if it doesn't choose to be
a factor in world affairs.
What Is Lost by Burying the Trans-Pacific Partnership? – The New York Times : "The Americans
will have to explain their failure on the trade agreement to foreign leaders gathered in Lima,
Peru, while China's leader, Xi Jinping, is there seeking progress toward an emerging alternative
to the Trans-Pacific Partnership - the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, known as R.C.E.P.,
which includes China, Japan and 14 other Asian countries but excludes the United States.
'In the absence of T.P.P., countries have already made it clear that they will move forward
in negotiating their own trade agreements that exclude the United States,' Mr. Obama's Council
of Economic Advisers wrote days before the election. 'These agreements would improve market access
and trading opportunities for member countries while U.S. businesses would continue to face existing
trade barriers.'"
Foreign leaders and foreign populations hated the TPP because it wasn't a trade deal; it was a
giveaways-to-big-corporations deal full of stuff about extending copyrights for Mickey Mouse and
so on.
China's trade deal is an *actual* trade deal and as such much more popular. We could join *it*.
"... Outgoing representative Randy Forbes of Virginia, a contender to be secretary of the Navy in
the new administration, recently said that the president elect would employ "an international defense
strategy that is driven by the Pentagon and not by the political National Security Council… Because
if you look around the globe, over the last eight years, the National Security Council has been writing
that. And find one country anywhere that we are better off than we were eight years [ago], you cannot
find it." ..."
"... Such a plan might actually blunt armed adventurism, since it was war-weary military officials
who reportedly pushed back against President Obama's plans to escalate Iraq War 3.0. ..."
"... Under President Obama, the U.S. has waged war in or carried out attacks on at least eight nations
- Afghanistan, Iran , Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, and Syria. A Clinton presidency promised
more, perhaps markedly more, of the same - an attitude summed up in her infamous comment about the late
Libyan autocrat Muammar Gaddafi: " We came, we saw, he died ." ..."
"... "Trump does not believe in war. He sees war as bad, destructive, death and a wealth destruction."...
..."
As Clinton's future in the Oval Office evaporated, leaving only a whiff of her stale dreams, I saw
all the foreign-policy certainties, all the hawkish policies and military interventions, all the
would-be bin Laden raids and drone strikes she'd preside over as commander-in-chief similarly vanish
into the ether.
With her failed candidacy went the
no-fly
escalation in Syria that she was sure to pursue as president with the vigor she had applied to
the disastrous
Libyan intervention of 2011 while secretary of state. So, too, went her continued pursuit of
the now-nameless war on terror, the attendant "
gray-zone " conflicts - marked by small contingents of U.S. troops, drone strikes, and
bombing campaigns - and all those
munitions she would ship to
Saudi Arabia
for its war in Yemen.
As the life drained from Clinton's candidacy, I saw her rabid pursuit of a
new Cold War start to wither and Russo-phobic comparisons of Putin's rickety Russian petro-state
to Stalin's Soviet Union begin to die. I saw the end, too, of her Iron Curtain-clouded vision of
NATO, of her blind faith in an alliance more in line with 1957 than 2017.
As Clinton's political fortunes collapsed, so did her Israel-Palestine policy - rooted in the
fiction that American and Israeli security interests overlap - and her commitment to what was clearly
an unworkable "peace process." Just as, for domestic considerations, she would blindly support that
Middle Eastern nuclear power, so was she likely to follow President Obama's
trillion-dollar path to modernizing America's nuclear arsenal. All that, along with her sure-to-be-gargantuan
military budget requests, were scattered to the winds by her ringing defeat.
... ... ....
...would he follow the dictum of candidate Trump who
said , "The current strategy of toppling regimes, with no plan for what to do the day after,
only produces power vacuums that are filled by terrorists."
Outgoing representative Randy Forbes of Virginia, a contender to be secretary of the Navy
in the new administration, recently said that the president elect would
employ
"an international defense strategy that is driven by the Pentagon and not by the political National
Security Council… Because if you look around the globe, over the last eight years, the National Security
Council has been writing that. And find one country anywhere that we are better off than we were
eight years [ago], you cannot find it."
Such a plan might actually blunt armed adventurism, since it was war-weary military officials
who reportedly
pushed back against President Obama's plans to escalate Iraq War 3.0.
According to some Pentagon-watchers, a potentially hostile bureaucracy might also put the brakes
on even fielding a national security team in a timely fashion.
While Wall Street investors seemed convinced that the president elect would be good for defense
industry giants like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, whose stocks
surged in the wake of Trump's win, it's unclear whether that indicates a belief in more armed
conflicts or simply more bloated military spending.
Under President Obama, the U.S. has waged war in or carried out attacks on at least eight
nations - Afghanistan,
Iran , Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, and Syria. A Clinton presidency promised more,
perhaps markedly more, of the same - an attitude summed up in her infamous comment about the late
Libyan autocrat Muammar Gaddafi: "
We came, we saw, he died ."
Trump advisor Senator Jeff Sessions
said
, "Trump does not believe in war. He sees war as bad, destructive, death and a wealth destruction."...
"... Trump has blamed George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for helping to create ISIS - but should add John Bolton to that list, who essentially agreed with all three on our regime change debacles. ..."
"... In 2011, Bolton bashed Obama "for his refusal to directly target Gaddafi" and declared, "there is a strategic interest in toppling Gaddafi… But Obama missed it." In fact, Obama actually took Bolton's advice and bombed the Libyan dictator into the next world. Secretary of State Clinton bragged , "We came, we saw, he died." ..."
"... All nuance is lost on the man. The fact that Russia has had a base in Syria for 50 years doesn't deter Bolton from calling for all out, no holds barred war in Syria. Bolton criticized the current administration for offering only a tepid war. For Bolton, only a hot-blooded war to create democracy across the globe is demanded. ..."
"... Bolton would not understand this because, like many of his generation, he used every privilege to avoid serving himself. Bolton said, with the threat of the Vietnam draft over his head, that "he had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy." ..."
"... But he's seems to be okay with your son or daughter dying wherever his neoconservative impulse leads us ..."
Bolton was one of the loudest advocates of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and still stupefyingly insists
it was the right call 13 years later. "I still think the decision to overthrow Saddam was correct,"
Bolton
said
just last year.
Trump, rightly, believes that decision was a colossal mistake that destabilized the region. "Iraq
used to be no terrorists," Trump said in 2015. "(N)ow it's the Harvard of terrorism."
"If you look at Iraq from years ago, I'm not saying he was a nice guy, he was a horrible guy,"
Trump said of Saddam Hussein, "but it was a lot better than it is right now."
Trump has said U.S. intervention in Iraq in 2003 "helped to throw the region into chaos and gave
ISIS the space it needs to grow and prosper." In contrast, Bolton has
said explicitly that he wants to repeat Iraq-style regime change in Syrian and Iran.
You can't learn from mistakes if you don't see mistakes.
Trump has blamed George W. Bush,
Barack
Obama and Hillary Clinton for helping to create ISIS - but should add John Bolton to that list,
who essentially agreed with all three on our regime change debacles.
In 2011, Bolton
bashed Obama "for his refusal to directly target Gaddafi" and declared, "there is a strategic
interest in toppling Gaddafi… But Obama missed it." In fact, Obama actually took Bolton's advice
and bombed the Libyan dictator into the next world. Secretary of State Clinton
bragged , "We came, we saw, he died."
When Trump was asked last year if Libya and the region would be more stable today with Gaddafi
in power, he
replied "100 percent." Mr. Trump is
100 percent right .
No man is more out of touch with the situation in the Middle East or more dangerous to our national
security than Bolton.
All nuance is lost on the man. The fact that Russia has had a base in Syria for 50 years doesn't
deter Bolton from calling for all out, no holds barred war in Syria. Bolton criticized the current
administration for offering only a tepid war. For Bolton, only a hot-blooded war to create democracy
across the globe is demanded.
Woodrow Wilson would be proud, but the parents of our soldiers should be mortified. War should
be the last resort, never the first. War should be understood to be a hell no one wishes for. Dwight
Eisenhower
understood
this when he wrote, "I hate war like only a soldier can, the stupidity, the banality, the futility."
Bolton would not understand this because, like many of his generation, he used every privilege
to avoid serving himself. Bolton said, with the threat of the Vietnam draft over his head, that "he
had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy."
But he's seems to be okay with your son or
daughter dying wherever his neoconservative impulse leads us: "Even before the Iraq War, John Bolton
was a leading brain behind the neoconservatives' war-and-conquest agenda," notes
The American Conservative's Jon Utley.
At a time when Americans thirst for change and new thinking, Bolton is an old hand at failed foreign
policy.
"... Instead, by some accounts, we will quite possibly be getting Newt Gingrich, Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani, John Bolton, Sarah Palin, Jose Rodriguez, Michael Ledeen, and Michael Flynn. Bolton, who is being tagged as a possible secretary of state, would be a one-man reactionary horror show, making one long for the good old days of Condi Rice and Madeleine Albright. ..."
"... It is reported that associates from the conservative Heritage Foundation have been tasked with the search for suitable national-security candidates as part of the transition team. One candidate to head the CIA is Jose Rodriguez, who back under W headed the agency's torture program. ..."
"... The White House could, however, de facto scuttle the agreement by imposing new sanctions on Iran and continuing to apply pressure on Iranian banks and credit through Washington's influence over international financial markets. ..."
"... Someone has to try to convince Trump that the Iranian agreement is good for everyone involved, including Israel and the United States. ..."
"... The president-elect is largely ignorant of the world and its leaders, so he has relied on a mixed bag of foreign-policy advisors. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, appears to be the most prominent. Flynn is associated with arch-neocon Michael Ledeen, and both are rabid about Iran, with Flynn suggesting that nearly all the unrest in the Middle East should be laid at Tehran's door. Ledeen is, of course, a prominent Israel-firster who has long had Iran in his sights. Their solution to the Iran problem would undoubtedly entail the use of military force against the Islamic Republic. Given what is at stake in terms of yet another Middle Eastern war and possible nuclear proliferation, it is essential that Donald Trump hear some alternative views. ..."
"... There are other foreign-policy areas as well where Trump will undoubtedly be receiving bad advice and would benefit from a broader vision. ..."
"... The Trump Asia policy, meanwhile, consists largely of uninformed and reactionary positions that would benefit from a bit of fresh air provided through access to alternative viewpoints. ..."
I would very much like to see the White House revert to a George Marshall type of foreign policy,
in which the United States would use its vast power wisely rather than punitively. As Donald Trump
knows little of what makes the world go round, senior officials and cabinet secretaries will play
a key role in framing and executing policy. One would like to see people like Jim Webb, Chas Freeman,
Andrew Bacevich, or even TAC 's own Daniel Larison in key government positions, as one might
thereby rely on their cool judgment and natural restraint to guide the ship of state. But that is
unfortunately unlikely to happen.
Instead, by some accounts, we will quite possibly be getting Newt Gingrich, Chris Christie, Rudy
Giuliani, John Bolton, Sarah Palin, Jose Rodriguez, Michael Ledeen, and Michael Flynn. Bolton, who
is being tagged as a possible secretary of state, would be a one-man reactionary horror show, making
one long for the good old days of Condi Rice and Madeleine Albright. There are also lesser, mostly
neocon luminaries lining up for supporting roles, résumés ready at hand. To be sure, we won't be
seeing the Kagans, Eliot Cohen, Eric Edelman, or Michael Hayden, who defected to Hillary in dramatic
fashion, but there are plenty of others who are polishing up their credentials and hoping to let
bygones be bygones. They are eager to return to power and regain the emoluments that go with high
office, so they will now claim to be adaptable enough to work for someone they once described as
unfit to be president.
It is
reported that associates from the conservative Heritage Foundation have been tasked with the
search for suitable national-security candidates as part of the transition team. One candidate to
head the CIA
is Jose Rodriguez, who back under W headed the agency's torture program. Another
former CIA officer who is a particularly polarizing figure and is apparently being looked at
for high office is Clare Lopez, who has claimed that the Obama White House is infiltrated by the
Muslim Brotherhood. Lopez is regarded by the Trump team as "one of the intellectual thought leaders
about why we have to fight back against radical Islam." She has long been associated with the
Center for Security
Policy , headed by Frank Gaffney, a fanatical hardliner who
believes that Saddam Hussein
was involved in both the 1993 World Trade Center attack and the Oklahoma City bombing, that Americans
for Tax Reform head Grover Norquist is a secret agent of the Muslim Brotherhood, that Gen. David
Petraeus has "submitted to Sharia," and that the logo of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency reveals
"official U.S. submission to Islam" because it "appears ominously to reflect a morphing of the Islamic
crescent and star."
But if Rodriguez and Lopez and others like them can be either discarded or kept in a closet somewhere,
let us hope for the best. If Trump appoints competent senior officials, they might actually undertake
a serious review of what America does around the world. Such an examination would be appropriate,
as Trump has more or less promised to shake things up. He has indicated that he would abandon the
policy of humanitarian intervention so loved by President Barack Obama and his advisors, and has
signaled that he will not be pursuing regime change in Syria. He will also seek détente with Russia,
a major shift from the increasingly confrontational policy of the past eight years.
Donald Trump rejects arming rebels as in Syria because we know little about whom we are dealing
with and increasingly find that we cannot control what develops from the relationship. He is against
foreign aid in principle, particularly to countries like Pakistan where the U.S. is strongly disliked.
These are all positive steps, and the new administration should be encouraged to pursue them. The
White House might also want to consider easing the United States out of Afghanistan through something
like the negotiated Paris Peace talks arrangement that ended Vietnam. Fifteen years of conflict with
no end in sight: Afghanistan is a war that is unwinnable.
Apart from several easy-to-identify major issues,
Trump's
foreign policy is admittedly quite sketchy, and he has not always been consistent in explaining
it. He has been slammed, appropriately enough, for being simple minded in saying that he would "bomb
the [crap] out of ISIS" and that he is willing to put 30,000 soldiers on the ground if necessary
to destroy the terrorist group, but he has also taken on the Republican establishment by specifically
condemning the George W. Bush invasion of Iraq. He has more than once indicated that he is not interested
in being either the world's policeman or a participant in new wars in the Middle East. He has repeatedly
stated that he supports NATO, but not as a blunt instrument designed to irritate Russia. He would
work with Putin to address concerns over Syria and Eastern Europe. He would demand that NATO countries
spend more for their own defense and also help pay for the maintenance of U.S. bases, which many
argue to be long overdue.
Trump's controversial call to stop all Muslim immigration has been rightly condemned, but he has
somewhat moderated that stance to focus on travelers and immigrants from countries that have been
substantially radicalized or where anti-American sentiment is strong. And the demand to take a second
look at some potential visitors or residents is not unreasonable in that the current process for
vetting new arrivals in this country is far from transparent and apparently not very effective.
Beyond platitudes, the Obama administration has not been very forthcoming on what might be done
to fix the entire immigration process, but Trump is promising to put national security and border
control first. If Trump were to receive good advice on the issue, he would indeed tighten border
security and gradually move to repatriate most illegal immigrants, but he would also look at the
investigative procedures used to examine the backgrounds and intentions of refugees and asylum seekers
who come in through other resettlement programs. The United States has an obligation to help genuine
refugees from countries that have been shattered through Washington's military interventions, but
it also has a duty to know exactly whom it is letting in.
Trump is also critical of the Iran nuclear agreement and the steps to normalize relations with
Cuba, the two most notable foreign-policy successes of the Obama administration. Any change in the
latter would have relatively little impact on the United States, but the Iran deal is important as
it stopped potential proliferation by Iran, which likely would have produced a nuclear arms race
in the Middle East. Trump has called the agreement "horrible" because it stopped short of total capitulation
by Tehran and has pledged to "renegotiate it," which might prove impossible given that the pact had
five other signatories. Iran would in any event refuse to make further concessions, particularly
as it would no longer be prepared to accept assurances that Washington would comply with any agreement.
The White House could, however, de facto scuttle the agreement by imposing new sanctions
on Iran and continuing to apply pressure on Iranian banks and credit through Washington's influence
over international financial markets. If enough pressure were applied, Iran could rightly claim that
the U.S. had failed to comply with the agreement and withdraw from it, possibly leading to an accelerated
nuclear-weapons program justified on the basis of self-defense. It is precisely the outcome that
many hardliners both in Washington and Iran would like to see, as it would invite a harsh response
from the White House, ending any possibility of an accord over proliferation.
Someone has to try to convince Trump that the Iranian agreement is good for everyone involved,
including Israel and the United States. Even though such a suggestion is unlikely to come from the
current group of advisors, who are strongly anti-Iranian, a good argument might be made based on
what Trump himself has been urging vis-à-vis Syria, stressing that ISIS is America's real enemy and
Iran is a major partner in the coalition that is actively fighting the terrorist group. As in the
case of Russia, it makes sense to cooperate with Iran when it is in our interest, and it also is
desirable to prolong the process, delaying Iran's possible decision to acquire a nuclear capability.
Working with Iran might even make the country's leadership less paranoid and would reduce the motivation
to acquire a weapon in the first place, an argument analogous to Trump's observations about dealing
with Russia.
But it all comes down to the type of "expert" advice Trump gets. The president-elect is largely
ignorant of the world and its leaders, so he has relied on a mixed bag of foreign-policy advisors.
Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, appears to be the most prominent.
Flynn is associated with arch-neocon Michael Ledeen, and both are rabid about Iran, with Flynn suggesting
that nearly all the unrest in the Middle East should be laid at Tehran's door. Ledeen is, of course,
a prominent Israel-firster who has long had Iran in his sights. Their solution to the Iran problem
would undoubtedly entail the use of military force against the Islamic Republic. Given what is at
stake in terms of yet another Middle Eastern war and possible nuclear proliferation, it is essential
that Donald Trump hear some alternative views.
There are other foreign-policy areas as well where Trump will undoubtedly be receiving bad advice
and would benefit from a broader vision. He has said that he would be an even-handed negotiator between
Israel and the Palestinians, but he has also declared that he is strongly pro-Israel and would move
the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem-which is a bad idea, not in America's interest, even if Benjamin Netanyahu
would like it. It would produce serious blowback from the Arab world and would inspire a new wave
of terrorism directed against the U.S. Someone should explain to Mr. Trump that there are real consequences
to pledges made in the midst of an acrimonious electoral campaign.
The Trump Asia policy, meanwhile, consists largely of uninformed and reactionary positions that
would benefit from a bit of fresh air provided through access to alternative viewpoints. In East
Asia, Trump has said he would encourage Japan and South Korea to develop their own nuclear arsenals
to deter North Korea. That is a very bad idea, a proliferation nightmare, but Trump evidently eased
away from that position during
a recent phone call to the president of South Korea. Trump would also prefer that China intervene
in North Korea and make Kim Jong Un "step down." He would put pressure on China to stop devaluing
its currency because it is "bilking us of billions of dollars" and would also increase U.S. military
presence in the region to limit Beijing's expansion in the South China Sea.
It is to be hoped that Donald Trump and his transition team will be good listeners over the next
60 days. Positions staked out during a heated campaign do not equate to policy and should be regarded
with considerable skepticism. American foreign policy, and by extension U.S. interests, have suffered
for 16 years under the establishment-centric but nevertheless quite different groupthinks prevailing
in the Bush and Obama White Houses. It is time for a little fresh advice.
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National
Interest.
"... Well, I will say this about President-Elect Trump, so far so good. Media justifiably discredited, neocons sucking air, Democratic Party doubling down on the stupid and self-destructing by selling out to Soros, what's not to like? ..."
"... I was happy to hear that the old liberal Trump still exists. ..."
"... I still have not heard any rumors about Lt. Gen. Flynn. I am very interested to know where he is assigned. I thought he would have 2nd pick after Sessions so either DoD, CIA or Head of the NSC. ..."
"... As a lifelong liberal who voted for Trump primarily to keep to the warmongering wackjob Clinton out of power the early moves by Trump are promising. ..."
... co-founded the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which was a center for prominent
neoconservatives. He has been a member of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, a committee
of civilians and retired military officers that the U.S. Secretary of Defense may call upon for
advice, that was instituted during the administration of President George W. Bush. He was put
on the board after acquaintance Richard Perle put forward his name. Cohen has referred to the
War on Terrorism as "World War IV". In the run-up to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, he was a member
of Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a group of prominent persons who pressed for an invasion.
It's over. Donald Trump, a man utterly unfit for the position by temperament, values and policy
preferences, will be the Republican nominee for president. He will run against Hillary Clinton,
who is easily the lesser evil ...
Mr. Trump's temperament, his proclivity for insult and deceit and his advocacy of unpredictability
would make him a presidential disaster - especially in the conduct of foreign policy, where clarity
and consistency matter.
...
Hillary Clinton is far better: She believes in the old consensus and will take tough lines on
China and, increasingly, Russia.
Cohen
in
The American Interest on November 10 2016 (immediately after Trump won):
Trump may be better than we think. He does not have strong principles about much, which means
he can shift. He is clearly willing to delegate legislation to Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.
And even abroad, his instincts incline him to increase U.S. strength-and to push back even against
Russia if, as will surely happen, Putin double-crosses him. My guess is that sequester gets rolled
back, as do lots of stupid regulations, and experiments in nudging and nagging Americans to behave
the way progressives think they should.
Cohen on Twitter November 15 2016
Eliot A Cohen @EliotACohen
After exchange w Trump transition team, changed my recommendation: stay away. They're angry,
arrogant, screaming "you LOST!" Will be ugly.
Retweets 3,719 Likes 3,204
5:07 AM - 15 Nov 2016
I find the above very funny. How could that turncoat think he would be greeted by the Trump organization
with anything but derision? Cohen believed he and his ilk would be welcome with candies and roses
after insulting Trump in all major media? Who is the arrogant one in the above?
While the papers are full of (badly) informed rumors about who will get this or that position
in a Trump administration let's keep in mind that 90% of such rumors are just self promotions by
people like Cohen who shill for the rumored job. That is why I will not write about John Bolton or
Rudy Giuliani as coming Secretary of State. Both are possible (unqualified) candidates. But others
are just as likely to get that position. We will only know who it is after the official release.
Meanwhile Trump yesterday had a
phonecall with the Russian President Putin. They discussed bilateral relations, Syria and fighting
terrorism. Today the Russian and Syrian military started the long expected big campaign against the
"moderate" al-Qaeda in east-Aleppo city and Idleb governate. Air strikes on east-Aleppo had been
held back for 28 days. Today missiles and cruise missiles were launched against fixed targets and
dozens of carrier and land launched airplanes
attacked Nusra position on the various front and in its rear. Long range bombers flown from Russia
joined the campaign. Trump seems to have voiced no objections to this offensive.
The Russian military has upped its air defense in Syria. Additional to the S-400 system around
its airport in Latakia seven S-300 systems were deployed as a screen against U.S. cruise missile
attacks. These are joined by rehabilitated Syrian S-200 system and Pantsyr S-1 short range systems
for point defense. This should be enough to deter any stupid idea the Pentagon hawks, or dumb neocons
like Eliot Cohen, might have.
Posted by b on November 15, 2016 at 12:13 PM |
Permalink
Well, I will say this about President-Elect Trump, so far so good. Media justifiably discredited,
neocons sucking air, Democratic Party doubling down on the stupid and self-destructing by selling
out to Soros, what's not to like?
A lot sure to come, no doubt. But for now, go Donald!
I've never known a president-elect to have such an effect right after an election. It's like a
house of cards falling.
Hell, at this rate, Trump may be able to declare 'mission accomplished' before even taking
office!!! j/k :)
Thank you for this summary. Trump will be a mixed bag especially in domestic politics. I was happy
to hear that the old liberal Trump still exists. He may appoint an openly gay man to a Cabinet
position (I do not know if this is tokenism or not). If his appointments follow policy then I
think a lot of Clinton crybabies in the streets will have a harder time gaining traction with
the social justice warriors.
I sometimes used Cohen's WWIV statement to see how strongly a person held their neo-conservative
positions. Only a few knew what I was talking about during the 2nd Iraq War. I'm glad that is
he gone. I hope Trump can pull in some realists but I do not know where these people exist anymore.
People like that are typically weeded out at lower levels.
I still have not heard any rumors about Lt. Gen. Flynn. I am very interested to know where
he is assigned. I thought he would have 2nd pick after Sessions so either DoD, CIA or Head of
the NSC.
Ironic, shifting the balance of power over Syria means denial of both a successful coalition air
campaign as well as opportunity for stupid bait operation to create pretext for retaliation. Queen
against wall of pawns.
1
Timelines are the most valuable tool of all in outing ponderous idiots. Thanks, b.
Here's one for idiot Paul Krugman.
Nov09 (day after election) – PK: The markets are in free-fall, the recession has begun, it
will "never" end.
Reality: the markets were going thought the roof. Dow Jones went straight up and past it's
previous high.
Nov11 – PK: I have rethought what I said on Nov09 and there's a chance the markets will take
the elections results well.
Nov14 – PK: After giving my Nov09 prediction some thought, I "quickly" retracted it.
Yeah, you moran. You retracted it after seeing it was 180 degrees wrong and everyone can now
see that your fear-mongering about markets was just more of your bullshit.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2
b: "That is why I will not write about John Bolton or Rudy Giuliani as coming Secretary of State.
Both are possible (unqualified) candidates. "
You just did.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
3.
b: "Today the Russian and Syrian military started the long expected big campaign against the "moderate"
al-Qaeda in east-Aleppo city and Idleb governate."
I don't know about Aleppo. Here's RT earlier today:
" The Russian military has launched a large-scale operation against terrorists stationed in
Homs and Idlib provinces of Syria, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said on Tuesday."
/snip
"Journalists asked presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov about the possibility of the operation
which started on Tuesday to be expanded to include Aleppo. 'Aleppo has not been mentioned in
the report of the defense minister; it concerned other areas – Homs and Idlib [provinces],'
Peskov told the press.
/snip
"Russian jets have not been in the vicinity of Aleppo for the last 28 days"
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-aleppo-idUSKBN13A16O
Intense air strikes resumed in rebel-held districts of eastern Aleppo after a weeks-long pause
on Tuesday, killing at least three people, residents and a war monitor said.
Syrian state television said the Damascus government's air force took part in strikes against
"terrorist strongholds" in Aleppo's Old City while Russia said it had struck Islamic State and
former Nusra Front sites elsewhere in Syria, without mentioning Aleppo.
The bombardment appeared to mark the end of a pause in strikes on targets inside the city declared
by Syria's government and Russia on Oct 18.
~~~
On Monday and early Tuesday, air strikes hit hospitals in three towns and villages in rebel-held
areas to the west of Aleppo, putting them all out of action. Damascus and Moscow both deny targeting
hospitals.
Other strikes, including some by suspected Russian cruise missiles, hit Saraqeb in Idlib, a province
near Aleppo where many of the rebel factions have a large presence.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday Russia had launched attacks in Idlib and
Homs provinces using missiles and jets from the country's only aircraft carrier, which recently
arrived in the eastern Mediterranean.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-russia-mideast-idUSKBN13A2CN?il=0 Russia has long-term ambitions in the Middle East: Israeli official
By Luke Baker | JERUSALEM
Israel should be concerned about the deepening disconnect between Russia's aims in the Middle
East and its own goals, according to a senior Israeli official who held high-level meetings in
Moscow last week.
Avi Dichter, chairman of Israel's foreign affairs and defense committee and the former head of
the Shin Bet intelligence agency, said Russia's views on Iran, Syria's Bashar al-Assad and the
Lebanese militia Hezbollah were in sharp contrast to Israel's and a growing source of potential
conflict.
While he said Moscow appreciates the good ties it has with Israel and takes the diplomatic relationship
seriously, it won't hesitate to impose actions that serve its interests on any countries in the
Middle East, including Israel.
"The gap between us and them is large and disturbing," Dichter said in summing up discussions
with senior members of Russia's upper and lower houses of parliament, the deputy defense minister
and the deputy head of national security.
"Russia thinks and acts as a superpower and as such it often ignores Israeli interest when
it doesn't coincide with the Russian interest," he said.
Wow, more insightful analysis about the US!!!! FAIL.
Um, James Woolsey of PNAC was Trump's advisor. He was also financially backed by Adelson who
is one of the people who FUNDS the neocons or are we not going to talk about the neocon's Zionist
roots?
Gee, b, could the neocons have everyone in their pocket or do thoughts like that get in the
way of your devotion to this fascist girl-raping piece of garbage, Trump?
I can't remember, did Berlusconi send a shiver down your spine as well, b?
Here is another example of folks trying get in front of the Trump train and turn it into a parade.
"Trump has pledged to change things in Washington -- about draining the swamp. He is going
to need some people to help guide him through the swamp -- how do you get in and how do you get
out? We are prepared to help do that."
-former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, speaking on behalf of Squire Patton Boggs, the lobbying
firm he works for
Nuland has managed to "burrow" herself - convert their political slot to permanent one at Foggy
Bottom since Strobe Talbot after Bill Clinton's terms.
There are quite a few Israel firsters like her: Jeffrey Feltman is another one.
What have the poor people of Outer Mongolia ever done to deserve this: "Does this mean that Victoria
Nuland will be fired? Actually, can she be fired? or at at least transferred to the embassy in
Outer Mongolia?" I think all of the neo-cons should replace current prisoners at Gitmo, along
with BOTH Clintons, Obama, G W Bush, Cheney, et al. Then subjected to all sorts of 'information
gathering techniques' ...
Ha ha.
Obama has called a press conference to deliver a lecture about the consequences of a descent into
'tribalism'.
One hopes that Bibi and the pro-"Israel" crowd are paying attention...
Let's hope that all the radical rabbinical right-wing fascists like Cohen and Nuland and Bolton
can be pressed to death with stones at Foggy Bottom Swamp.
Very tiny stones, lol. Like Death of 3,035,795,900,000 Cuts they impose on US.
I did some math on Mil.Gov.Fed. There are 6,800 banks in the US, and an average bank robbery
in the US nets ~$10,000. If every bank in the US was robbed every 10 minutes, of every day, throughout
every month, for the entire year, that would equal the yearly depredation of our last life savings
by OneParty of Mil.Gov.Fed.
That's 6,800 211A police bank robbery calls, every 10 minutes, forever, and that doesn't include
$T a year interest-only forever payments on their odious 'debt'.
Maybe pressed to death with damp pig dung would be more appropriate for them.
"Thank you for this summary. Trump will be a mixed bag especially in domestic politics. I was
happy to hear that the old liberal Trump still exists. He may appoint an openly gay man to a Cabinet
position (I do not know if this is tokenism or not). If his appointments follow policy then I
think a lot of Clinton crybabies in the streets will have a harder time gaining traction with
the social justice warriors."
Yes.
As a lifelong liberal who voted for Trump primarily to keep to the warmongering wackjob
Clinton out of power the early moves by Trump are promising.
As someone who lived lived through the 1980s I remember how telling people how concerned and
fearful you were of nuclear war was most something you did in an attempt to make yourself look
'deep'.
This past six month have been the first time in my life where I was found myself really being
afraid. Sitting in my safe home that has never been touched by war it has been a sobering shock
of just how close the frantic push for all out war with Russia by Clinton and her army of neocon
cronies infesting the US government came to killing tens or hundreds of millions of people.
It is going to be a painful four years for a large number of liberal issues but the avoidance
of the horror of an actual all out war between two nuclear powers is worth the pain on many social
and environmental issues.
...
I hope Trump can pull in some realists but I do not know where these people exist anymore. People
like that are typically weeded out at lower levels.
...
Posted by: AnEducatedFool | Nov 15, 2016 12:39:17 PM | 4
Don't fret. Trump is a gifted personnel picker with a flair for innovation.
In 1980 he (very unfashionably) appointed a woman as the construction project manager for Trump
Tower, a task she performed with remarkable expertise.
Bacevich for Secretary of State!
Or at least Secretary of Defense.
Would be great to see Chas Freeman nominated for Sec/State but
GOP/Neocons/Zionists blocked him from lesser post under Obama.
Here we have Woolsey quoting and adopting Cohen's WWIV theory (I wonder who they think the
parties will be for WWIII) and Woolsey has even referred to Cohen as my friend just this
month!
I have adopted Eliot Cohen's formulation, distinguished professor at Johns Hopkins School
for Advanced International Studies, that we are in World War IV, World War III having been the
Cold War. And I think Eliot's formulation fits the circumstances really better than describing
this as a war on terrorism.
Yes, I do think you get your news from the MSM and what is worse is that you actually believe
it just like b.
Gee, do you think that having all of the neocons tell the MSM - and thus you - that they really
support HRC had anything to do with how much you, b and the other bedwetters p!ssed themselves
about OMG!1!! WWIII!!1!!1 especially as those announcements came out in March - now listen closely
- when HRC WAS RUNNING AGAINST BS?
Why, that sure was fuel to the fire for Bernie-bros, huh?
By deception thou shall wage war, huh?
Gee, I can't think of a worse poison pill for a fake-left Democratic candidate than to have
the endorsements of the neocons, can you? Why, that might even sway some easily fooled MSM-imbibers
as to whose string the neocons might end up pulling in the end, huh?
Why, maybe do ya think they might sway even more people by PUBLICLY tweeting about just HOW
MUCH they still hate that dastardly Trump, y'know, the same guy who was backed by the world's
richest Zionist Jew and who was advised by James Woosley throughout his campaign?
No one - but especially Israeli-backing neocons - would never think to use subterfuge to get
their way, huh?
But you and b and all the rest here don't pay attention to the MSM, huh? You all just happened
to have been parroting the "neocons love HRC" line that was first found in the MSM, huh?
Names have been floated for this and that positions in the Trump Administration but I haven't
seen Pat Buchanan been named for anything; or have I skipped too much comments? I rather think
much of Buchanan's world views are in line with Trump's, and he should make a sensible Secretary
of State.
Norm MacDonald the Canadian humorist was fired from Saturday Night Live in 1998 for allegedly
telling to many O.J. Simpson jokes. This 25 minute compilation video illustrates that the real
reason was most likely that Norm made fun of the Clinton's life of crime by actually stating their
crime spree facts disguised as humor?
Maybe Putin told Trump "the sooner we (Russia, Syria, etc. clear out Al Qaeda, the sooner we deal
with ISIS". An offer Trump would be an idiot to refuse, not that I think he's an idiot. Hopefully,
the moronic BS we had to put up with from Obama, Cameron, Hollande, The Grauniad, New York Times,
etc. about how Russia, Syria, weren't attacking ISIS but were attacking "moderate" Al Qaeda will
soon go away.
"Vice President-elect Mike Pence is the best person to shape the transition effort, with the president-elect's
input, Trump spokesman Jason Miller said."
"... On Sunday's "60 Minutes," Trump said: "You know, we've been fighting this war for 15 years. … We've spent $6 trillion in the Middle East, $6 trillion - we could have rebuilt our country twice. And you look at our roads and our bridges and our tunnels … and our airports are … obsolete." ..."
"... They want to confront Vladimir Putin, somewhere, anywhere. They want to send U.S. troops to the eastern Baltic. They want to send weapons to Kiev to fight Russia in Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea. ..."
"... At the end of the Cold War, however, with the Soviet Empire history and the Soviet Union having disintegrated, George H.W. Bush launched his New World Order. His son, George W., invaded Iraq and preached a global crusade for democracy "to end tyranny in our world." ..."
"... Result: the Mideast disaster Trump described to Lesley Stahl, and constant confrontations with Russia caused by pushing our NATO alliance right up to and inside what had been Putin's country. ..."
"... The opportunity is at hand for Trump to reconfigure U.S. foreign policy to the world we now inhabit, and to the vital interests of the United States. ..."
However Donald Trump came upon the foreign policy views he espoused, they were as crucial to his
election as his views on trade and the border.
Yet those views are hemlock to the GOP foreign policy elite and the liberal Democratic interventionists
of the Acela Corridor. Trump promised an "America First" foreign policy rooted in the national interest, not in nostalgia.
The neocons insist that every Cold War and post-Cold War commitment be maintained, in perpetuity.
On Sunday's "60 Minutes," Trump said: "You know, we've been fighting this war for 15 years. …
We've spent $6 trillion in the Middle East, $6 trillion - we could have rebuilt our country twice.
And you look at our roads and our bridges and our tunnels … and our airports are … obsolete."
Yet the War Party has not had enough of war, not nearly.
They want to confront Vladimir Putin, somewhere, anywhere. They want to send U.S. troops to the
eastern Baltic. They want to send weapons to Kiev to fight Russia in Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea.
They want to establish a no-fly zone and shoot down Syrian and Russian planes that violate it,
acts of war Congress never authorized.
They want to trash the Iran nuclear deal, though all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies told us, with
high confidence, in 2007 and 2011, Iran did not even have a nuclear weapons program.
Other hardliners want to face down Beijing over its claims to the reefs and rocks of the South
China Sea, though our Manila ally is talking of tightening ties to China and kicking us out of Subic
Bay.
In none of these places is there a U.S. vital interest so imperiled as to justify the kind of
war the War Party would risk.
Trump has the opportunity to be the president who, like Harry Truman, redirected U.S. foreign
policy for a generation.
After World War II, we awoke to find our wartime ally, Stalin, had emerged as a greater enemy
than Germany or Japan. Stalin's empire stretched from the Elbe to the Pacific.
In 1949, suddenly, he had the atom bomb, and China, the most populous nation on earth, had fallen
to the armies of Mao Zedong.
As our situation was new, Truman acted anew. He adopted a George Kennan policy of containment
of the world Communist empire, the Truman Doctrine, and sent an army to prevent South Korea from
being overrun.
At the end of the Cold War, however, with the Soviet Empire history and the Soviet Union having
disintegrated, George H.W. Bush launched his New World Order. His son, George W., invaded Iraq and
preached a global crusade for democracy "to end tyranny in our world."
A policy born of hubris.
Result: the Mideast disaster Trump described to Lesley Stahl, and constant confrontations with
Russia caused by pushing our NATO alliance right up to and inside what had been Putin's country.
How did we expect Russian patriots to react?
The opportunity is at hand for Trump to reconfigure U.S. foreign policy to the world we now inhabit,
and to the vital interests of the United States.
What should Trump say?
As our Cold War presidents from Truman to Reagan avoided World War III, I intend to avert Cold
War II. We do not regard Russia or the Russian people as enemies of the United States, and we
will work with President Putin to ease the tensions that have arisen between us.
For our part, NATO expansion is over, and U.S. forces will not be deployed in any former republic
of the Soviet Union.
While Article 5 of NATO imposes an obligation to regard an attack upon any one of 28 nations
as an attack on us all, in our Constitution, Congress, not some treaty dating back to before most
Americans were even born, decides whether we go to war.
The compulsive interventionism of recent decades is history. How nations govern themselves
is their own business. While, as JFK said, we prefer democracies and republics to autocrats and
dictators, we will base our attitude toward other nations upon their attitude toward us.
No other nation's internal affairs are a vital interest of ours.
Europeans have to be awakened to reality. We are not going to be forever committed to fighting
their wars. They are going to have to defend themselves, and that transition begins now.
In Syria and Iraq, our enemies are al-Qaida and ISIS. We have no intention of bringing down
the Assad regime, as that would open the door to Islamic terrorists. We have learned from Iraq
and Libya.
Then Trump should move expeditiously to lay out and fix the broad outlines of his foreign policy,
which entails rebuilding our military while beginning the cancellation of war guarantees that have
no connection to U.S. vital interests. We cannot continue to bankrupt ourselves to fight other countries'
wars or pay other countries' bills.
The ideal time for such a declaration, a Trump Doctrine, is when the president-elect presents
his secretaries of state and defense.
"... The affluent and rich voted for Clinton by a much broader margin than they had voted for the Democratic candidate in 2012. Among those with incomes between $100,000 and $200,000, Clinton benefited from a 9-point Democratic swing. Voters with family incomes above $250,000 swung toward Clinton by 11 percentage points. The number of Democratic voters amongst the wealthiest voting block increased from 2.16 million in 2012 to 3.46 million in 2016-a jump of 60 percent. ..."
"... Clinton's electoral defeat is bound up with the nature of the Democratic Party, an alliance of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus with privileged sections of the upper-middle class based on the politics of race, gender and sexual orientation ..."
"... Over the course of the last forty years, the Democratic Party has abandoned all pretenses of social reform, a process escalated under Obama. Working with the Republican Party and the trade unions, it is responsible for enacting social policies that have impoverished vast sections of the working class, regardless of race or gender. ..."
The elections saw a massive shift in party support among the poorest and wealthiest voters. The share
of votes for the Republicans amongst the most impoverished section of workers, those with family
incomes under $30,000, increased by 10 percentage points from 2012. In several key Midwestern states,
the swing of the poorest voters toward Trump was even larger: Wisconsin (17-point swing), Iowa (20
points), Indiana (19 points) and Pennsylvania (18 points).
The swing to Republicans among the $30,000 to $50,000 family income range was 6 percentage points.
Those with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000 swung away from the Republicans compared to 2012
by 2 points.
The affluent and rich voted for Clinton by a much broader margin than they had voted for the
Democratic candidate in 2012. Among those with incomes between $100,000 and $200,000, Clinton benefited
from a 9-point Democratic swing. Voters with family incomes above $250,000 swung toward Clinton by
11 percentage points. The number of Democratic voters amongst the wealthiest voting block increased
from 2.16 million in 2012 to 3.46 million in 2016-a jump of 60 percent.
Clinton was unable to make up for the vote decline among women (2.1 million), African Americans
(3.2 million), and youth (1.2 million), who came overwhelmingly from the poor and working class,
with the increase among the rich (1.3 million).
Clinton's electoral defeat is bound up with the nature of the Democratic Party, an alliance
of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus with privileged sections of the upper-middle
class based on the politics of race, gender and sexual orientation.
Over the course of the last forty years, the Democratic Party has abandoned all pretenses
of social reform, a process escalated under Obama. Working with the Republican Party and the trade
unions, it is responsible for enacting social policies that have impoverished vast sections of the
working class, regardless of race or gender.
"... There are some who believe the elites are actually splintered into numerous groups and that domestic US elites have positioned themselves against the banking elites in London's City. ..."
"... US elites are basically in the employ of a handful of families, individuals and institutions in our view. It is confusing because it is hard to tell if Hillary, for instance, is operating on her own accord or at the behest of higher and more powerful authorities. ..."
"... It is probably a combination of both but at root those who control central banks are managing the world's move towards globalism. ..."
"... The vote to propel Trump to the US presidency reflects a profound backlash against open markets and borders, and the simmering anger of millions of blue-collar white and working-class people who blame their economic woes on globalisation and multiculturalism. ..."
"... If indeed Trump's election has damped the progress of TPP, and TTIP, this is a huge event. As we've pointed out, both agreements effectively substituted technocratic corporatism for the current sociopolitical model of "democracy." ..."
"... one of the elite's most powerful, operative memes today is "populism vs. globalism" ..."
"... No matter what, the reality of these two events, the victories of both Trump and Brexit, stand as signal proof that elite stratagems have been defeated, at least temporarily. Though whether these defeats have been self-inflicted as part of a change in tactics remains to be seen. ..."
Was Trump's victory actually created by the very globalist elites that Trump is supposed to have
overcome? There are some who believe the elites are actually splintered into numerous groups and
that domestic US elites have positioned themselves against the banking elites in London's City.
We
see no fundamental evidence of this.
The world's real elites in our view may have substantive histories in the hundreds and
thousands of years. US elites are basically in the employ of a handful of families,
individuals and institutions in our view. It is confusing because it is hard to tell if Hillary,
for instance, is operating on her own accord or at the behest of higher and more powerful
authorities.
It is probably a combination
of both but at root those who control central banks are managing the world's move towards globalism.
History easily shows us who these groups are – and they are not located in America.
This is a cynical perspective to be sure, and certainly doesn't remove the impact of Trump's victory
or his courage in waging his election campaign despite what must surely be death threats to himself
and his family..
But if true, this perspective corresponds to predictions that we've been making for nearly a decade
now, suggesting that sooner or later elites – especially those in London's City – would have to "take
a step back."
More:
The vote to propel Trump to the US presidency reflects a profound backlash against open markets
and borders, and the simmering anger of millions of blue-collar white and working-class people
who blame their economic woes on globalisation and multiculturalism.
"There are a few parallels to Switzerland – that the losers of globalisation find somebody
who is listening to them," said Swiss professor and lawyer Wolf Linder, a former director of the
University of Bern's political science institute.
"Trump is doing his business with the losers of globalisation in the US, like the Swiss People's
Party is doing in Switzerland," he said. "It is a phenomenon which touches all European nations."
... ... ...
If indeed Trump's election has damped the progress of TPP, and TTIP, this is a huge event. As
we've pointed out, both agreements effectively substituted technocratic corporatism for the current
sociopolitical model of "democracy." The elites were trying to move toward a new
model of world control with these two agreements. ...
Additionally, one of the elite's most powerful, operative memes today is "populism vs. globalism"
that seeks to contrast the potentially freedom-oriented events of Trump and Brexit to the discarded
wisdom of globalism. See
here and
here.
No matter what, the reality of these two events, the victories of both Trump and Brexit, stand
as signal proof that elite stratagems have been defeated, at least temporarily. Though whether these
defeats have been self-inflicted as part of a change in tactics remains to be seen.
Conclusion: But the change has come. One way or another the Internet and tens of millions or people
talking, writing and acting has forced new trends. This can be hardly be emphasized enough. Globalism
has been at least temporarily redirected.
Editor's Note: The Daily Bell is giving away a silver coin and a silver "white paper" to subscribers.
If you enjoy DB's articles and want to stay up-to-date for free, please subscribe
here .
The analysis is flawed in that it fails to understand the context for power and influence in the
western alliance. The Crowns in contest are seeking coordinated domination through political proxy,
i.e. the force behind the EU and the UN. The problem is the most influential crown was not in
a mind to destroy the fabric of their civilization and more importantly to continue to bail-out
the "socialist" paradises in the continent and beyond. Britannia has its own socialism to support
much less that of the world.
Trump represents keeping the Colony in line with a growing interest in keeping traditions intact
and in more direct control of Anglo values. Europe has this insane multi-culturalism that is fundamentally
incompatible with a "free" and robust civilization. The whole goal of detente with China was to
convert them to our values via proxy institutions and that is working in the long-run. In the
short-run, the Empire must reunite and solidify its value bulwark against the coming storm from
China and to a lesser extend from the expanded EU states. Russia is playing out on its own.
Most commenters do not realise that it is neoliberalism that caused the current suffering of
working people in the USA and elsewhere...
Notable quotes:
"... Working class wages destroyed. The wages of the low paid lowered. Ordinary people robbed of holiday and sickness pay. Working people priced out of ever owning their own home. Our city centers socially cleansed of the working class. Poor people forced to fight like rats in sacks with even poorer foreigners for jobs, housing, school places and social and health services. ..."
"... Keep going mate. Continue to pump out that snobbish attitude because every time you do you've bagged Mr Trump, Mr Farage and Ms LePen another few votes. ..."
"... I recall a time when any suggestion that immigration may be too high was silenced by cries of racism, eventually that label was misused so often that it lost its potency, one gets the sense that this trend for dubbing those who hold certain opinions as somehow unintelligent will go the same way. People are beginning to see through this most hateful tactic of the Modern Left. ..."
"... Which is why I think Mr D'Ancona and many others are wrong to say that Farage and Trump will face the whirlwind when voters realise that their promises were all unachievable. The promises were much less important than the chance to slap the political world in the face. Given another chance, a lot of voters will do the same again. ..."
"... I think the author completely misses the most salient point from the two events he cites: simply that the *vast* majority of people have become completely disenfranchised with the utter corruption that is mainstream politics today. ..."
"... It doesn't matter who is voted in, the status quo [big business and the super-rich get wealthier whilst the middle is squeezed and the poorest are destroyed] remains. ..."
"... The votes for Brexit and Trump are as much a rejection of "establishment" as anything else. Politicians in both countries heed these warnings at their peril... ..."
"... The majority of the people are sick and tired of PC ism and the zero hour, minimum wage economy that both Britain and America have suffered under "globalisation". And of the misguided "[neo]liberal" agenda of much of the media which simply does not speak to or for society. ..."
"... People in western democracies are rising up through the ballot box to defeat PC [neo]liberalism and globalisation that has done so much to impoverish Europe and America morally and economically. To the benefit of the tax haven corporates. ..."
"... Globalisation disembowelled American manufacturing so the likes of Blair and the Clintons could print money. The illimitable lives they destroyed never entered their calculus. ..."
"... I have stood in the blue lane in Atlanta waiting for my passport to be processed; in the adjoining lane was a young British female student (so she said to the official). The computer revealed she had overstayed her visa by 48 hours the last time she visited. She was marched out by two armed tunics to the next plane home. That's how Europeans get treated if they try to enter America illegally. Why the demented furor over returning illegal Hispanics or anyone else? ..."
Surely the people who voted for Trump and Farage are too stupid to realise the sheer,
criminal folly of their decision...
thoughtcatcher -> IanPitch 12h ago
Working class wages destroyed. The wages of the low paid lowered. Ordinary people
robbed of holiday and sickness pay. Working people priced out of ever owning their own home.
Our city centers socially cleansed of the working class. Poor people forced to fight like rats
in sacks with even poorer foreigners for jobs, housing, school places and social and health
services.
But yeah, they voted against the elite because they are "stupid".
attila9000 -> IanPitch 11h ago
I think at some point a lot of them will realize they have been had, but then they will
probably just blame immigrants, or the EU. Anything that means they don't have to take
responsibility for their own actions. It would appear there is a huge pool of people who can
be conned into acting against their own self interest.
jonnyoyster -> IanPitch 11h ago
Keep going mate. Continue to pump out that snobbish attitude because every time you do
you've bagged Mr Trump, Mr Farage and Ms LePen another few votes. Most people don't
appreciate being talked down to and this arrogant habit of calling those who hold views
contrary to your own 'stupid' is encouraging more and more voters to ditch the established
parties in favour of the new.
I recall a time when any suggestion that immigration may be too high was silenced by
cries of racism, eventually that label was misused so often that it lost its potency, one gets
the sense that this trend for dubbing those who hold certain opinions as somehow unintelligent
will go the same way. People are beginning to see through this most hateful tactic of the
Modern Left.
DilemmataDocta -> IanPitch 11h ago
A lot of the people who put their cross against Brexit or Trump weren't actually voting for
anything. They were just voting against this, that or the other thing about the world that
they disliked. It was voting as a gesture.
Which is why I think Mr D'Ancona and many others are wrong to say that Farage and Trump
will face the whirlwind when voters realise that their promises were all unachievable. The
promises were much less important than the chance to slap the political world in the face.
Given another chance, a lot of voters will do the same again.
Sproggit 12h ago
I think the author completely misses the most salient point from the two events he
cites: simply that the *vast* majority of people have become completely disenfranchised with
the utter corruption that is mainstream politics today.
It doesn't matter who is voted in, the status quo [big business and the super-rich get
wealthier whilst the middle is squeezed and the poorest are destroyed] remains.
The votes for Brexit and Trump are as much a rejection of "establishment" as anything
else. Politicians in both countries heed these warnings at their peril...
NotoBlair 11h ago
OMG, the lib left don't Geddit do they?
The majority of the people are sick and tired of PC ism and the zero hour, minimum wage
economy that both Britain and America have suffered under "globalisation". And of the
misguided "[neo]liberal" agenda of much of the media which simply does not speak to or for
society.
People in western democracies are rising up through the ballot box to defeat PC [neo]liberalism
and globalisation that has done so much to impoverish Europe and America morally and
economically. To the benefit of the tax haven corporates.
The sour grapes bleating of the lib left who refuse to accept the democratic will of the
people is a movement doomed failure.
Frankincensedabit 11h ago
Malign to whom? Wall Street and people who want us all dead?
Globalisation disembowelled American manufacturing so the likes of Blair and the Clintons
could print money. The illimitable lives they destroyed never entered their calculus.
I have stood in the blue lane in Atlanta waiting for my passport to be processed; in the
adjoining lane was a young British female student (so she said to the official). The computer
revealed she had overstayed her visa by 48 hours the last time she visited. She was marched
out by two armed tunics to the next plane home. That's how Europeans get treated if they try
to enter America illegally. Why the demented furor over returning illegal Hispanics or anyone
else?
I likely wouldn't have voted at all. But all my life the occupants of the White House
represented the interests of those nobody could ever identify. The owners of the media and the
numbered accounts who took away the life-chances of U.S. citizens by the million and called
any of them who objected a thick white-trash bigot. Whatever Trump is, he will be different.
That is why watching President-elect Trump's choices for his foreign policy team is so important.
If he chooses primarily alumni of the Bush administration, we can be fairly certain that there
will be few, if any, beneficial changes in Washington's security strategy. Indeed, it could conceivably
be even more interventionist than that pursued by the Clinton, Bush or Obama administrations.
The main difference might be that it would be conducted unilaterally rather than multilaterally,
especially if someone like John Bolton gets a key position.
If on the other hand, Trump begins to pick advisers who have little or no previous government
service, it would be an encouraging step. Watch for appointments from realist enclaves like Defense
Priorities, the Independent Institute and others. Also watch for the appointment of individual unorthodox
or "rogue" scholars from such places as Notre Dame University, George Mason University, the Lyndon
B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, and (ironically) the Bush School
at Texas A&M University. Such moves would indicate that Trump was choosing new blood and really intending
to make a meaningful change in the direction of U.S. foreign policy.
"... It's not just corporate lobbyists who are playing early, visible roles in the new power structure. Some of Trump's biggest political donors are shaping the incoming administration, including Rebekah Mercer, a daughter of billionaire Robert Mercer, who is figuring prominently in behind-the-scenes discussions, according to people familiar with the transition. ..."
"... Mercer is among four major donors appointed by Trump Friday to a 16-person executive committee overseeing his transition. The others are campaign finance chairman Steven Mnuchin, New York financier Anthony Scaramucci and Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel. ..."
The chant echoed through Donald Trump's boisterous rallies leading up to Election Day: "Drain the swamp! Drain the swamp! Drain
the swamp!"
"We are fighting for every citizen that believes that government should serve the people, not the donors and not the special interests,"
the billionaire real estate developer promised exuberant supporters at his last campaign rally in Manchester, N.H.
But just days later, there is little evidence that the president-elect is seeking to restrain wealthy interests from having access
and influence in his administration.
It's not just corporate lobbyists who are playing early, visible roles in the new power structure. Some of Trump's biggest political
donors are shaping the incoming administration, including Rebekah Mercer, a daughter of billionaire Robert Mercer, who is figuring
prominently in behind-the-scenes discussions, according to people familiar with the transition.
Mercer is among four major donors appointed by Trump Friday to a 16-person executive committee overseeing his transition. The
others are campaign finance chairman Steven Mnuchin, New York financier Anthony Scaramucci and Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel.
Meanwhile, top campaign fundraisers and a raft of lobbyists tied to some of the country's wealthiest industries have been put
in charge of hiring and planning for specific federal agencies. They include J. Steven Hart, chairman of the law and lobbying shop
Williams & Jensen; Michael McKenna, an energy company lobbyist who is overseeing planning for the Energy Department; and Dallas fundraiser
Ray Washburne, was has been tapped to oversee the Commerce Department.
Billionaires who served as Trump's policy advisers, such as Oklahoma oil executive Harold Hamm, are under consideration for Cabinet
positions.
LOL .
LOL
. So how about a new chant for protesters: DRAIN THE SWAP!?
... ... ...
UPDATE:
Asked about the tensions, and about Kushner's role in the leadership change at the transition team, Trump spokesman Jason Miller
said, "Anybody seeing today's news about the appointment of Vice President-elect Mike Pence to run the Presidential Transition
Team realizes that President-elect Donald J. Trump is serious about changing Washington whether the town likes it or not. This
might ruffle the delicate sensitivities of the well-heeled two-martini lunch set, but President-elect Trump isn't fighting for
them, he's fighting for the hard-working men and women outside the Beltway who don't care for insider bickering."
It's not uncommon for rivalries to emerge inside campaigns and administrations as advisers jockey to place allies in key roles
and advance their policy priorities. But the level of internecine conflict during Trump's drive toward the GOP nomination was
so extreme that it sometimes resulted in conflicting directives for even simple hiring and spending decisions.
"... Trump can renegotiate that Iranian treaty but he should never change the result: Iran loses its sanctions and joins the rest of the trading world. ditto with Russia. I have a feeling after trump has a long talk with Putin the Iranian deal will look somewhat different. ..."
Trump can renegotiate that Iranian treaty but he should never change the result: Iran loses its
sanctions and joins the rest of the trading world. ditto with Russia. I have a feeling after trump
has a long talk with Putin the Iranian deal will look somewhat different.
the last thing, the very fucking last thing, trump needs to do is start adopting the neocon,
Zionist, Israeli first agenda after the total opposite of those fucks elected him.
"... Real foreign policy positions will only emerge with the formation of a Trump cabinet when it becomes clear who will be in charge. ..."
"... But, if future policies remain unknowable, super-charged American nationalism combined with economic populism and isolationism are likely to set the general tone. ..."
"... This sort of aggressive nationalism is not unique to Trump. All over the world nationalism is having a spectacular rebirth in countries from Turkey to the Philippines. It has become a successful vehicle for protest in Britain, France, Germany, Austria and Eastern Europe. ..."
"... The most serious wars in which the US is already militarily involved are in Iraq and Syria and here Trump's comments during the campaign suggest that he will focus on destroying Isis, recognise the danger of becoming militarily over-involved and look for some sort of cooperation with Russia as the next biggest player in the conflict. This is similar to what is already happening. ..."
"... Trump's instincts generally seem less well-informed but often shrewd, and his priories have nothing to do with the Middle East. ..."
"... The region has been the political graveyard for three of the last five US presidents: Jimmy Carter was destroyed by the consequences of the Iranian revolution; Ronald Reagan was gravely weakened by the Iran-Contra scandal; and George W Bush's years in office will be remembered chiefly for the calamities brought on by his invasion of Iraq. Barack Obama was luckier and more sensible, but he wholly underestimated the rise of Isis until it captured Mosul in 2014. ..."
...the election campaign was focused almost exclusively on American domestic politics with voters
showing little interest in events abroad. This is unlikely to change.
Governments around the world can see this for themselves, though this will not stop them badgering
their diplomats in Washington and New York for an inkling as to how far Trump's off-the-cuff remarks
were more than outrageous attempts to dominate the news agenda for a few hours. Fortunately, his
pronouncements were so woolly that they can be easily jettisoned between now and his inauguration. Real foreign policy positions will only emerge with the formation of a Trump cabinet when it becomes
clear who will be in charge.
But, if future policies remain unknowable, super-charged American nationalism combined with
economic populism and isolationism are likely to set the general tone.Trump has invariably portrayed
Americans as the victims of the foul machinations of foreign countries who previously faced no real
resistance from an incompetent self-serving American elite.
This sort of aggressive nationalism is not unique to Trump. All over the world nationalism
is having a spectacular rebirth in countries from Turkey to the Philippines. It has become a successful
vehicle for protest in Britain, France, Germany, Austria and Eastern Europe.Though Trump is
frequently portrayed as a peculiarly American phenomenon, his populist nationalism has a striking
amount in common with that of the Brexit campaigners in Britain or even the chauvinism of President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey. Much of this can be discounted as patriotic bombast, but in all cases
there is a menacing undercurrent of racism and demonisation, whether it is directed against illegal
immigrants in the US, asylum seekers in the Britain or Kurds in south east Turkey.
In reality, Trump made very few proposals for radical change in US foreign policy during the election
campaign, aside from saying that he would throw out the agreement with Iran on its nuclear programme
– though his staff is now being much less categorical about this, saying only that the deal must
be properly enforced. Nobody really knows if Trump will deal any differently from Obama with the
swathe of countries between Pakistan and Nigeria where there are at least seven wars raging – Afghanistan,
Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and South Sudan – as well as four serious insurgencies.
The most serious wars in which the US is already militarily involved are in Iraq and Syria and
here Trump's comments during the campaign suggest that he will focus on destroying Isis, recognise
the danger of becoming militarily over-involved and look for some sort of cooperation with Russia
as the next biggest player in the conflict. This is similar to what is already happening.
Hillary Clinton's intentions in Syria, though never fully formulated, always sounded more interventionist
than Trump's. One of her senior advisers openly proposed giving less priority to the assault on Isis
and more to getting rid of President Bashar al-Assad. To this end, a third force of pro-US militant
moderates was to be raised that would fight and ultimately defeat both Isis and Assad. Probably this
fantasy would never have come to pass, but the fact that it was ever given currency underlines the
extent to which Clinton was at one with the most dead-in-the-water conventional wisdom of the foreign
policy establishment in Washington.
President Obama developed a much more acute sense of what the US could and could not do in the
Middle East and beyond, without provoking crises exceeding its political and military strength. Its
power may be less than before the failed US interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan following 9/11,
but it is still far greater than any other country's. Currently, it is the US which is successfully
coordinating the offensive against Isis's last strongholds in Mosul and Raqqa by a multitude of fractious
parties in Iraq and Syria. It was never clear how seriously one should have taken Clinton's proposals
for "safe zones" and trying to fight Isis and Assad at the same time, but her judgements on events
in the Middle East since the Iraq invasion of 2003 all suggested a flawed idea of what was feasible.
Trump's instincts generally seem less well-informed but often shrewd, and his priories have
nothing to do with the Middle East.Past US leaders have felt the same way, but they usually
end up by being dragged into its crises one way or other, and how they perform then becomes the test
of their real quality as a leader. The region has been the political graveyard for three of
the last five US presidents: Jimmy Carter was destroyed by the consequences of the Iranian
revolution; Ronald Reagan was gravely weakened by the Iran-Contra scandal; and George W Bush's
years in office will be remembered chiefly for the calamities brought on by his invasion of Iraq.
Barack Obama was luckier and more sensible, but he wholly underestimated the rise of Isis until
it captured Mosul in 2014.
(Reprinted from
The Independent by permission of author or representative)
"... if the rumors are true and Trump nominates John Bolton as secretary of state, it's almost unfathomable to believe that Washington would continue to certify that Tehran is meeting its nuclear commitments. ..."
"... This is the same guy who, during the tail-end of the P5+1 negotiating process for an interim, placeholder accord, wrote in the New York Times that the United States needed to bomb Iran's facilities or at least support the Israelis so they could do it themselves. ..."
"... John Bolton for SoS? Criminality! ..."
"... If the hardest core neocons are brought directly into the highest echelons of American government and institute the kinds of policies mentioned in this article there will be much destruction, and when the dust settles there will be a popularly mandated realignment of EU countries away from fast allegiance with the US, and finally, a functioning alternative monetary and financial system revolving around the BRICS countries. ..."
Trump's ambivalence and wishy-washiness isn't much comfort for people who worked on the negotiation
tirelessly over a matter of years. Richard Nephew, the former sanctions official who helped put in
place and implement nuclear-related economic restrictions on the Iranians,
strongly believes that the JCPOA is a dead deal walking and will be slowly strangled to death
as soon as Trump is sworn in. In many ways, he could be right;
if the rumors are true and Trump nominates
John Bolton as secretary of state, it's almost unfathomable to believe that Washington would continue
to certify that Tehran is meeting its nuclear commitments.
This is the same guy who, during the tail-end
of the P5+1 negotiating process for an interim, placeholder accord,
wrote in the New York Times that the United States needed to bomb Iran's facilities or
at least support the Israelis so they could do it themselves.
If the hardest core neocons are brought directly into the highest echelons of American
government and institute the kinds of policies mentioned in this article there will be much destruction,
and when the dust settles there will be a popularly mandated realignment of EU countries away
from fast allegiance with the US, and finally, a functioning alternative monetary and financial
system revolving around the BRICS countries.
It doesn't have to happen, but if Trump brings in fire breathing nut jobs like Bolton, it WILL
happen. Non-the-less, I do predict that Trump will be greatly coopted by "the establishment" he
vilified and that the public largely hates. It's an irresistible force that will only be brought
down with general social collapse.
We face the greatest challenges to our security in a generation. This is no time to question
the value of the partnership between Europe and the United States.
Britain is facing a diplomatic crisis with the US over Donald Trump's plans to forge an
alliance with Vladimir Putin and bolster the Syrian regime.
In a significant foreign policy split, officials admitted that Britain will have some "very
difficult" conversations with the President-elect in coming months over his approach to Russia.
I don't think it will be difficult for the US president-elect to tell the UK government where
to go.
Donald Trump's plans to forge an alliance with Vladimir Putin and bolster the Syrian regime. When
did he ever say he had any such plans? But now they are a fact in being, thanks to the Torygraph.
Britain has evolved into an expert panicker.
"... Trump, to a degree previously matched only by such outlier presidential candidates as Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, is challenging Washington's conventional wisdom that America must dominate the globe. ..."
"... He also criticized nation-building. "We have a country that's in bad shape," he reasonably allowed: "I just think we have to rebuild our country." ..."
"... Fifth, foreign policy is ultimately about domestic policy. "War is the health of the state," Randolph Bourne presciently declared a century ago. There is no bigger big government program war, no graver threat to civil liberties than perpetual conflict with the homeland the battlefield, no greater danger to daily life than blowback from military overreach. ..."
Still, Trump, to a degree previously matched only by such outlier presidential candidates as Ron
Paul and Dennis Kucinich, is challenging Washington's conventional wisdom that America must dominate
the globe. The "usual suspects" who manage foreign policy in every administration, Republican and
Democrat, believe that the U.S. must cow every adversary, fight every war, defend every ally, enforce
every peace, settle every conflict, pay every bill, and otherwise ensure that the lion lies down
with the lamb at the end of time, if not before.
Not Donald Trump. He recently shocked polite war-making society in the nation's capital when he
criticized NATO, essentially a welfare agency for Europeans determined to safeguard their generous
social benefits. Before the Washington Post editorial board he made the obvious point that "NATO
was set up at a different time." Moreover, Ukraine "affects us far less than it affects other countries
in NATO, and yet we're doing all of the lifting." Why, he wondered? It's a good question.
His view that foreign policy should change along with the world scandalized Washington policymakers,
who embody Public Choice economics, which teaches that government officials and agencies are self-interested
and dedicated to self-preservation. In foreign policy that means what has ever been must ever be
and everything is more important today than in the past, no matter how much circumstances have changed.
Trump expressed skepticism about American defense subsidies for other wealthy allies, such as
South Korea and Saudi Arabia as well as military deployments in Asia. "We spent billions of dollars
on Saudi Arabia and they have nothing but money," he observed. Similarly, he contended, "South Korea
is very rich, great industrial country, and yet we're not reimbursed fairly for what we do."
He also criticized nation-building. "We have a country that's in bad shape," he reasonably allowed:
"I just think we have to rebuild our country."
Unlike presidents dating back at least to George H.W. Bush, Trump appears reluctant to go to war.
He opposed sending tens of thousands of troops to fight the Islamic State: "I would put tremendous
pressure on other countries that are over there to use their troops." Equally sensibly, he warned
against starting World War III over Crimea or useless rocks in East Asian seas. He made a point that
should be obvious at a time of budget crisis: "We certainly can't afford to do this anymore."
... ... ...
Fifth, foreign policy is ultimately about domestic policy. "War is the health of the state,"
Randolph Bourne presciently declared a century ago. There is no bigger big government program war,
no graver threat to civil liberties than perpetual conflict with the homeland the battlefield, no
greater danger to daily life than blowback from military overreach.
Donald Trump's proposal for $1 trillion worth of new infrastructure construction relies entirely
on private financing, which industry experts say is likely to fall far short of adequately funding
improvements to roads, bridges and airports.
The president-elect's infrastructure plan largely boils down to a tax break in the hopes of
luring capital to projects. He wants investors to put money into projects in exchange for tax
credits totaling 82% of the equity amount. His plan anticipates that lost tax revenue would be
recouped through new income-tax revenue from construction workers and business-tax revenue from
contractors, making the proposal essentially cost-free to the government.
Mr. Trump has made a $1 trillion infrastructure investment over 10 years one of his first priorities
as president, promising in his victory speech early Wednesday morning to "rebuild our highways,
bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals."
The Trump team's $1 trillion infrastructure investment plan over 10 years is laid out in a
description of the proposal on the website (#) of Peter Navarro, an adviser to Mr. Trump and a
public-policy professor at the University of California, Irvine. A presidential transition website
that went up this week (*) said Mr. Trump planned to invest $550 billion in infrastructure, without
offering details on where that funding would come from. Top Trump aides couldn't be reached to
comment on the proposal.
Experts and industry officials, though, say there are limits to how much can be done with private
financing. Because privately funded projects need to turn a profit, they are better suited for
major projects such as toll roads, airports or water systems and less appropriate for routine
maintenance, such as repaving a public street, they say.
Officials also doubt that the nation's aging infrastructure can be updated without a significant
infusion of public dollars. ...
A sweeping Pacific trade pact meant to bind the U.S.and Asia effectively died Friday, as Republican
and Democratic leaders in Congress told the White House they won't advance it in the election's aftermath,
and Obama administration officials acknowledged it has no way forward now.
The failure to pass the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership-by far the biggest trade agreement
in more than a decade-is a bitter defeat for President Barack Obama, whose belated but fervent support
for freer trade divided his party and complicated the campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
The White House had lobbied hard for months in the hope of moving forward on the pact if Mrs.
Clinton had won.
The deal's collapse, which comes amid a rising wave of antitrade sentiment in the U.S., also dents
American prestige in the region at a time when China is flexing its economic and military muscles.
Just over a year ago, Republicans were willing to vote overwhelmingly in support of Mr. Obama's
trade policy. But as the political season approached and voters registered their concerns by supporting
Donald J. Trump, the GOP reacted coolly to the deal Mr. Obama's team reached with Japan and 10 others
countries just over a year ago in Atlanta. ...
NATO strategists are reportedly planning for a scenario in which Trump orders US troops out of Europe,
as the shock result of the US presidential election sinks in, spreading an atmosphere of uncertainty.
According to Spiegel magazine,
strategists from NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg's staff have drafted a secret report
which includes a worst-case scenario in which Trump orders US troops to withdraw from Europe and
fulfills his threat to make Washington less involved in European security. Read more
German
defense minister says Trump should be firm with Russia as NATO stood by US after 9/11
"For the first time, the US exit from NATO has become a threat" which would mean the end
of the bloc, a German NATO officer told the magazine.
During his campaign, Trump repeatedly slammed NATO, calling the alliance "obsolete." He
also suggested that under his administration, the US may refuse to come to the aid of NATO allies
unless they "pay their bills" and "fulfill their obligations to us."
"We are experiencing a moment of the highest and yet unprecedented uncertainty in the transatlantic
relationship," said Wolfgang Ischinger, former German ambassador in Washington and head of the
prominent Munich Security Conference. By criticizing the collective defense, Trump has questioned
the basic pillar of NATO as a whole, Ischinger added.
The president-elect therefore has to reassure the European allies that he remains firm on the
US commitment under Article 5 of the NATO charter prior to his inauguration, the top diplomat stressed.
Earlier this week, Stoltenberg lambasted Trump's agenda, saying: "All allies have made a solemn
commitment to defend each other. This is something absolutely unconditioned."
Fearing that Trump would not appear in Brussels even after his inauguration, NATO has re-scheduled
its summit – expected to take place in early 2017 – to next summer, Spiegel said.
The report might reflect current moods within the EU establishment as well, as Jean-Claude Juncker,
President of the European Commission, has called on the member states to establish Europe's own military.
Washington "will not ensure the security of the Europeans in the long term... we have to do this
ourselves," he argued on Thursday.
If Trump is serious about reducing the number of US troops stationed in Europe, large NATO countries
like Germany have little to offer, Spiegel said. Even major member states' militaries lack units
able to replace the Americans, which in turn may trigger debate on strengthening NATO's nuclear arm,
a sensitive issue in most European countries for domestic reasons.
Still, an increase in defense spending has already been approved by the Europeans following pressure
from the outgoing US administration. Over the past few days in Brussels, representatives of NATO
states have been working on the so-called "Blue Book," a secret strategy paper which stipulates
each member's contribution in the form of troops, aircraft, warships, and heavy armor until 2032,
Spiegel reported.
The document stipulates an increase in each NATO members' military spending by one percent of
each nation's GDP, in addition to the current two percent.
Uncertainty over Trump's NATO policy seems to be taking its toll; Germany, one of the largest
military powers in Europe, plans to allocate 130 billion euros ($140bn) to military expenditures
by 2030, but the remarkable figure may be a drop in the ocean.
"No one knows yet if the one percent more would be enough," the German NATO officer told Spiegel.
Nevertheless, the US is continuing to deploy troops to eastern Europe, justifying the move with
the need to protect the region from "assertive Russia." Earlier this week, the largest arms
shipment yet, 600 containers, arrived in Germany to supply the US armored and combat aviation brigades,
expected to
deploy
in Europe by January 2017.
"... Better relations with Russia will encourage them to venture into Europe? How does that work? The more friendly they are with us, I'd think the less they'd want to upset us and destroy those gains. The alternative might end up in a war with Russia. Yeah, that's great! Good grief, CNN. ..."
"... " ultranationalistic rhetoric". This sensationalist hyperbole is wrecking our language. Being against intervening in other countries affairs is not being "ultranationalistic" ..."
"... When you [neo]liberals living in your bubble fly over middle America, over all the small towns, farms, factories and coal miners that you often forget about. Just remember that there is a big middle finger pointing up at you. ..."
"... Well now a substancial portion of Americans know that free trade isn't so good. When it started to hit home for non working class folks, eyes opened up. ..."
Flynn, like Trump, sees Russian president Vladimir Putin as someone the US can do business
with. In December, Flynn attended a banquet in Moscow where he sat next to Putin. He also has
appeared on the Kremlin TV mouthpiece, Russia Today (which Flynn has compared to CNN).
If Flynn is Trump's national security advisor or secretary of defense we can expect him to push
for a closer relationship with the Russians; a punitive policy on Iran -- and a more aggressive
war on Islamist militants around the world. These views mesh well with what we have heard from
Donald Trump on the campaign trail.
Daniel, 35 minutes ago
Mr. Bergen : "American Islamists, Flynn claims, are trying to create "an Islamic state
right here at home" by pushing to "gain legal standing for Sharia." Flynn cited no evidence
for this claim." !!!?? Really ?? "German court lets off 'Sharia police' patrol in Wuppertal"
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35059488
SimpleStupid
Not a bad article up until the last paragraph. Better relations with Russia will
encourage them to venture into Europe? How does that work? The more friendly they are with us,
I'd think the less they'd want to upset us and destroy those gains. The alternative might end
up in a war with Russia. Yeah, that's great! Good grief, CNN.
And "derail the deal that prevents Iran from developing nuclear weapons"? What is this,
backwards day?
Ron Lane
" ultranationalistic rhetoric". This sensationalist hyperbole is wrecking our language.
Being against intervening in other countries affairs is not being "ultranationalistic"
hanklmarcus
Iraq was a failure , But attacking IRAN will not be ??????????? FOOLS
CNN User
When you [neo]liberals living in your bubble fly over middle America, over all the
small towns, farms, factories and coal miners that you often forget about. Just remember that
there is a big middle finger pointing up at you.
We don't accept your values and are tired of having ours oppressed.
LizardKing
@Lenny Good - Ukraine should clearly be dominated by Russia and who gives a s t about
Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Call me when Russia is threatening Poland
Dwright :
Well now a substancial portion of Americans know that free trade isn't so good. When it
started to hit home for non working class folks, eyes opened up.
With President-elect Trump's victory last night, the last hopes of the Obama administration passing
the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) during the lame duck session of Congress have evaporated. The
passage of the TPP through Congress was dependent upon support from members of the Republican majority,
and there is no realistic prospect that they will now pass the deal given their elected President's
firmly expressed opposition to it. Even if they did so, the new President would presumably veto the
pact's implementing legislation.
Ed209
5h ago
2
3
Good article, but it fails to mention immigration as a
further factor hammering the working class. Of course it's
pc to pretend that immigrants create jobs rather than
taking them etc etc. But I would put this question to any
economist, journalist or politician who doesn't believe
that immigration hurts the working classes: how would you
like it if a million workers arrived, all qualified to
your level or above in economics/journalism/politics, and
all willing to work for much less than you make?
Of course, in the case of the UK it hasn't been one
million, but more than three million. And in the case of
the USA, untold millions (illegals alone are thought to
number 10 million).
It's because economists, journalists and politicians
never have to face this kind of competition for their own
jobs that they are so keen on mass immigration. But
low-skill/no-skill workers face this reality everyday.
Nika2015
Ed209
4h ago
0
1
Telling it like it is...Bravo!
Reply
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Dana Todd
Ed209
4h ago
0
1
There's a pretty in-depth analysis of immigration's
effect on economy and workers/wages here
http://cis.org/immigration-and-the-american-worker-review-academic-literature
Bottom line is, it's complicated, and not all
immigrants are the same - or the same value to a
country. Immigrants with college degrees definitely add
to the GDP of their new home, typically estimated in
six figures cumulative per individual contribution.
Immigrants without college degree do place a drain on
the country, through depressed wages, because there's
parity (and since we haven't invested as much in our
educations here, we are not as competitive to outside
labor). Illegal immigrants cause a definite deficit,
albeit not so big as to threaten an entire economy -
but by creating an artificial competition they drive
wages down.
I am by all measures a liberal and very open to
immigration - I think we can't measure in dollars what
we get in new ideas, new energy, culture, art, food,
music - but for those who take a hard line look at the
return/impacts, it's worth taking the time to
understand the more complex story in the data.
"[Trump] has many tools to reverse the post World War II consensus on liberalizing U.S. trade
without needing congressional approval. For instance, he can withdraw from the North American Free
Trade Agreement, as he has threatened to do, by simply notifying the U.S.' Nafta partners, Mexico
and Canada, and waiting six months. Withdrawing from the World Trade Organization, which sets rules
for global trading and enforces tariffs, has a similar provision" [
Wall
Street Journal
, "Donald Trump Will Need to Leverage Size, Power of U.S. Economy to Remake Global
Trading System"]. "'Our major trading partners are far more likely to cooperate with an America resolute
about balancing its trade than they are likely to provoke a trade war,' wrote Trump economic advisers
Peter Navarro [
here
]
of the University of California-Irvine and investor Wilbur Ross in September. 'This is true for one
very simple reason: America's major trading partners are far more dependent on American markets than
America is on their markets.'"
TPP: "To take effect, TPP must be ratified by February 2018 by at least six countries that account
for 85 percent of the 12 members' aggregate economic output. This effectively means that the U.S.
and Japan, the world's third-largest economy and the second-largest that is a signatory nation, must
both be on board" [
DC
Velocity
].
TPP: "Mr. Trump's win also seals the fate of President Barack Obama's 12-nation trade agreement,
the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP. The president-elect blamed the TPP on special interests who
want to "rape" the country" [
Wall
Street Journal
, "Donald Trump Win to Upend Trade Policy"]. "Mr. Obama had hoped to work with
Republican lawmakers to pass the TPP during the 'lame duck' session of Congress after the election,
where they faced an uphill battle even if Tuesday's vote had favored Hillary Clinton, who previously
backed the TPP negotiations. Now Republicans have little incentive to bring the TPP to a vote, since
Mr. Trump could easily threaten to unravel the deal when he takes office and block its implementation,
as well as punish lawmakers who vote for it."
TPP: "Donald Trump's historic victory Tuesday has killed any chance of Congress voting on President
Barack Obama's signature Asia-Pacific trade agreement while raising the odds of a damaging trade
confrontation with China - just two ways a Trump presidency could upend the global trading system
and usher in a new era of U.S. protectionism, analysts say" [
Politico
].
"'This is the end of globalization is we knew it … because what the U.S. is going to do is certainly
going to impact other countries' and their decisions on negotiations,' Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow
at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told Politico. 'TPP is now in the history
dustbin for sure,' Hufbauer said."
TPP: "House GOP election outcomes will be key as House Speaker Paul Ryan decides whether to bring
the TPP to a vote in the lame-duck session with GOP voters strongly against and the GOP 's high-donor
base demanding action. With an eye to conservative GOP threats to withhold support for his speakership
and a possible 2020 presidential run, Ryan's decision is complicated. Whether the TPP will get a
lame-duck vote is his call. Beyond whether he can muster the votes of representatives who weathered
the wrath of trade voters in this cycle and worry about the 2018 primaries lies the longer-term implications
of his even trying to do so with the GOP voter base so intensely against the pact" [Lori Wallach,
Eyes on Trade
].
That's why a British court has effectively overturned the results of the Brexit vote – in
a lawsuit brought by a hedge fund manager and former model – and thrown the fate of the country
into the hands of pro-EU Tories, and their Labor and Liberal Democrat collaborators.
This stunning reversal was baked in to the legislation that enabled the referendum to begin
with, and is par for the course as far as EU referenda are concerned: in 1992,
Danish voters rejected the EU, only to have the Euro-crats demand a rematch with a "modified"
EU treaty which won narrowly. There have been repeated attempts to modify the modifications,
which have all failed. Ireland voted against both the Lisbon Treaty and the Nice Treaty, only
to have the issue brought up again until the "right" result was achieved.
"... "Yet commentators who have been ready and willing to attribute Donald Trump's success to anger, authoritarianism, or racism rather than policy issues have taken little note of the extent to which Mr. Sanders's support is concentrated not among liberal ideologues but among disaffected white men." ... ..."
"... poor pk a leader of the Stalinist press ..."
"... the surprising success of Bernie Sanders -- a Brooklyn-born, Jewish socialist -- in the primaries is solid proof that the electorate was open to a coherent argument for genuine progressive change, and that a substantial portion of that electorate is not acting on purely racist and sexist impulses, as so many progressive commentators say. ..."
"... "I will live my life calmly and my children will be just fine. I will live my life calmly and my children will be just fine." That assumes you're about 85 years old...and don't have long to live! ..."
"... Laid out by whom? By the commercial "media" hype machine that has 12-16 hours of airtime to fill every day with the as sensationalized as possible gossip (to justify the price for the paid advertisements filling the remaining hours). ..."
"... Killary Clinton got no closer than Ann Arbor this weekend, a message! ..."
"... Mr. Krugman forgot to list the collusion of the DNC and the Clinton campaign to work against Sanders. ..."
"... putting crooked in the same sentence as Clinton or DNC is duplicative wording. This mortification is brought to US by the crooked and the stalinist press that calls crooked virtue. ..."
"... Krugman did so much to help create the mass of white working class discontent that is electing Trump. Krugman and co cheering on NAFTA/PNTR/WTO etc, US deindustrialization, collapse of middle class... ..."
"... Hopefully the working class masses will convince our rulers to abandon free trade before every last factory is sold off or dismantled and the US falls to the depths of a Chad or an Armenia. ..."
The Truth About the Sanders Movement
By Paul Krugman
In short, it's complicated – not all bad, by any means, but not the pure uprising of idealists
the more enthusiastic supporters imagine.
The political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels have an illuminating discussion
of Sanders support. The key graf that will probably have Berniebros boiling is this:
"Yet commentators who have been ready and willing to attribute Donald Trump's success to
anger, authoritarianism, or racism rather than policy issues have taken little note of the extent
to which Mr. Sanders's support is concentrated not among liberal ideologues but among disaffected
white men." ...
[ Yes, I do find defaming people by speculation or stereotype to be beyond saddening. ]
The fact that Obama either won, or did so much better than Hillary appears to be doing with, the
white working-class vote in so many key battleground states, as well as the surprising success
of Bernie Sanders -- a Brooklyn-born, Jewish socialist -- in the primaries is solid proof that
the electorate was open to a coherent argument for genuine progressive change, and that a substantial
portion of that electorate is not acting on purely racist and sexist impulses, as so many progressive
commentators say.
And her opponent was/is incapable of debating on substance, as there was/is neither coherence
nor consistency in any part of his platform -- nor that of his party....
Question is, will Krugman be able to move on after the election...and talk about something useful?
Like how to get Hillary to recognize and deal with inequality...
Barbara Ehrenreich: "Forget fear and loathing. The US election inspires projectile vomiting. The
most sordid side of our democracy has been laid out for all to see. But that's only the beginning:
whoever wins, the mutual revulsion will only intensify... With either Clinton or Trump, we will
be left to choke on our mutual revulsion."
"I will live my life calmly and my children will be just fine. I will live my life calmly
and my children will be just fine." That assumes you're about 85 years old...and don't have long
to live!
Laid out by whom? By the commercial "media" hype machine that has 12-16 hours of airtime to
fill every day with the as sensationalized as possible gossip (to justify the price for the paid
advertisements filling the remaining hours).
Something interesting today.... President Obama came to Michigan. I fully expected him to speak
in Detroit with a get out the vote message. Instead he is in Ann Arbor, speaking to an overwhelmingly
white and white-collar audience. On a related note, the Dems have apparently written off
the white blue collar vote in Michigan, even much of the union vote. the union leaders are pro
Clinton, but the workers not so much. Strange year.
The real danger of serious election-rigging: electronic voting machines. How do we know the machine
*really* recorded everyone's votes correctly? (Did any Florida county ever give Al Gore negative
something votes?)
That's a big subject but you are right, that is the biggest risk of significant fraud. Not just
the voting machines, but the automatic counting systems. Other forms of possible election fraud
are tiny by comparison.
Here is the transcript from 60 Minutes about the Luntz focus group rancor. Instructive to read
about the depth of feeling in case you didn't see the angry, disgusted faces of citizens.
putting crooked in the same sentence as Clinton or DNC is duplicative wording. This mortification
is brought to US by the crooked and the stalinist press that calls crooked virtue.
Before the 1970s the US was both rich and protectionist - no look at our horrible roads and hopeless
people - the miracle of free trade! : ,
November 07, 2016 at 07:13 PM
Krugman did so much to help create the mass of white working class discontent that is electing
Trump. Krugman and co cheering on NAFTA/PNTR/WTO etc, US deindustrialization, collapse of
middle class...
Hopefully the working class masses will convince our rulers to abandon free trade before
every last factory is sold off or dismantled and the US falls to the depths of a Chad or an Armenia.
"... What America objects to in Russia is that Americans couldn't buy control of their oil, couldn't buy control of their natural resources, couldn't buy control of their public utilities and charge economic rents and continue to make Russia the largest stock market boom in the world as it was from 1994 through 1998 when there was the crisis. ..."
"... So the conflict is not one of economic systems. It's simply that America wants to control other countries and keep other countries within the dollar orbit. And what that means is that if the whole world saves in the form of dollars, that means saving by buying Treasury bonds. ..."
"... And other countries are trying to withdraw from this and America says, "Well, we can smash you." ..."
"... There really is no alternative, and that's the objective of control: to create a society in which there is no choice. That's what a free market [myth] is really all about: preventing any choice by the people except what the government gives them. ..."
"... has the illusion of choice in choosing either between which is the lesser evil. They get to vote for the lesser evil when it's all really the same process. ..."
> Ashcroft: What sort of president then will Hillary Clinton be?
> Hudson: A dictator. She… a vindictive dictator, punishing her enemies, appointing neocons in the secretary
of state, in the defense department, appointing Wall Street people in the Treasury and the Federal Reserve,
and the class war will really break out very explicitly. And she'll-as Warren Buffet said, there is
a class war and we're winning it.
> Ashcroft: As in the one percent are winning it.
> Hudson: The one percent are winning it. And she will try to use the rhetoric to tell people: "Nothing
to see here folks. Keep on moving," while the economy goes down and down and she cashes in as she's
been doing all along, richer and richer, and if she's president, there will not be an investigator of
the criminal conflict of interest of the Bill Clinton Foundation, of pay-to-play. You'll have a presidency
in which corporations who pay the Clintons will be able to set policy. Whoever has the money to buy
the politicians will buy control of policy because elections have been privatized and made part of the
market economy in the United States. That's what the Citizens United Supreme Court case was all about.
> Hudson: Well, after 1991 when the Soviet Union broke up, it really went neoliberal. And Putin is basically
a neoliberal. So there's not a clash of economic systems as there was between capitalism and communism.
What America objects to in Russia is that Americans couldn't buy control of their oil, couldn't buy
control of their natural resources, couldn't buy control of their public utilities and charge economic
rents and continue to make Russia the largest stock market boom in the world as it was from 1994 through
1998 when there was the crisis.
So the conflict is not one of economic systems. It's simply that America
wants to control other countries and keep other countries within the dollar orbit. And what that means
is that if the whole world saves in the form of dollars, that means saving by buying Treasury bonds.
And that means lending all of the balance-of-payments surplus that Russia or China or other countries
look at, by lending it to the U.S. Treasury, which will use that money to militarily encircle these
countries and threaten to do to any country that seeks to withdraw from the dollar system exactly what
they did to Iraq or Libya or Afghanistan, or now Syria.
And other countries are trying to withdraw from
this and America says, "Well, we can smash you." No country's going to invade any other country. There's
not going to be a military draft in any country 'cause the students; the population would rise up. Nobody's
going to invade, and you can't control or occupy a country if you don't have an army. So the only thing
that America can do-or any country can do militarily-is drop bombs.
And that's sort of the equivalent
of, just like the European Central Bank told Greece, "We'll close down your banks and the ATM machines
will be empty," America will say, "Well, we'll bomb you, make you look like Syria and Libya if you don't
turn over your oil, your pipelines, your utilities to American buyers so we can charge rents; we can
be the absentee landlords. We can conquer the world financially instead of militarily. We don't need
an army; we can use finance. And the threat of military warfare and bombing you to achieve things."
Other countries are trying to stay free of the mad bomber, and it's all about who's going to control
the world's natural resources: water, real estate, utilities-not a question of economic systems so much
anymore.
> Well, President Obama, even though he's a tool of Wall Street, at least he says, "It's not worth blowing
up the world to fight in the near east." Hillary says, "It is worth pushing the world back to the Stone
Age if they don't let us and me, Hillary, tell the world how to behave." That's a danger of the world
and that's why the Europeans should be terrified of a Hillary presidency and terrified of the direction
that America is doing, saying, "We want to control the world." It's not control the world through a
different economic philosophy. It's to control the world through ownership of their land, natural resources
and essentially, governments and monetary systems. That's really what it's all about. And the popular
press is not doing a good job of explaining that context, but I can assure you, that's what they're
talking about in Russia, China and South America.
> There really is no alternative, and that's the objective of control: to create a society in which
there is no choice. That's what a free market [myth] is really all about: preventing any choice by the people
except what the government gives them. That's what the Austrian school was all about in the 1920s, waging
war and assassination against the labor leaders and the socialists in Vienna, and that's what the free
marketers in Chile were all about in the mass assassinations of labor leaders, university professors,
intellectuals, and that's exactly the situation in America today without the machine guns, because the
population doesn't really feel that it has any alternative, but has the illusion of choice in choosing
either between which is the lesser evil. They get to vote for the lesser evil when it's all really the
same process.
"... it's easy to imagine a President Trump refusing to heed our own highest court, which, as President Andrew Jackson observed, has no way, other than respect of institutions, to enforce its decisions. ..."
"... It's easy to carp like this but the sclerotic elite in charge of the country has failed to address demographic concerns, and has stamped out any politically incorrect thoughts as being signs of baseness. ..."
"... Now they are so upset that a challenger has arisen. It's unfortunate that this particular challenger has no background in government and will probably harm our economic growth with his lack of skill, but the elites will have to eat the cake they baked. ..."
"... Economists told us that free trade deals and open borders would make us prosperous and yet that hasn't happens. ..."
"... The technicians running trade policy, monetary policy and fiscal policy haven't held up their end of the bargain. ..."
"... Wealth and power has been redistributed upwards. ..."
"... The union movement has been destroyed in outright class war. ..."
"... The corporate media spread lies and distraction. It induces both apathy and a rat race/dog-eat-dog mentality. ..."
"... Consider how far we've moved right, so that Nixon e.g. would be considered hopelessly and radically leftist today. Given that, moving left should be one of the first things you consider. ..."
"... Yes, we've seen right wing policies killing jobs and steering wealth to the wealthy, and that's bad policy. But unfortunately it seems it's always possible to do *worse*. ..."
"... Trump's policies would double down on wealth transfer, while he spouts the typical RW mantra of "(my dopey policy which would destroy jobs) would be good for jobs." ..."
"... Economic growth fueled by foreign oil is nice while it lasts but what will happen to the country when the oil runs out or we are forced to fight a war that disrupts the supply? ..."
More Jobs, a Strong Economy, and a Threat to Institutions : ...Institutions are significant
to economists, who have come to see that countries become prosperous not because they have bounteous
natural resources or an educated population or the most advanced technology but because they have
good institutions. Crucially, formal structures are supported by informal, often unstated, social
agreements. A nation not only needs courts; its people need to believe that those courts can be
fair. ...
Over most of history, a small élite confiscated wealth from the poor. Subsistence farmers lived
under rules designed to tax them so that the rulers could live in palaces and pay for soldiers
to maintain their power. Every now and then, though, a system appeared in which leaders were forced
to accommodate the needs of at least some of their citizens. ... The societies with the most robust
systems for forcing the powerful to accommodate some of the needs of the powerless became wealthier
and more peaceful. ... Most nations without institutions to check the worst impulses of the rich
and powerful stay stuck in poverty and dysfunction. ...
This year's Presidential election has alarmed economists for several reasons. No economist,
save one , supports Donald J. Trump's stated economic plans, but an even larger concern is
that, were he elected, Trump would attack the very institutions that have provided our economic
stability. In his campaign, Trump has shown outright contempt for courts, free speech, international
treaties, and many other pillars of the American way of life. There is little reason to think
that, if granted the Presidency, Trump would soften his stand. ...
...it's easy to imagine a President Trump refusing to heed our own highest court, which, as
President Andrew Jackson observed, has no way, other than respect of institutions, to enforce
its decisions. No one knows what Trump would do as President, but, based on his statements on
the campaign trail, it's possible to imagine a nation where people have less confidence in the
courts, the military, and their rights to free speech and assembly. When this happens, history
tells us, people stop dreaming about what they could have if they invest in education, new businesses,
and new ideas. They focus, instead, on taking from others and holding tightly to what they've
already amassed. Those societies, without the institutions that protect us from our worst impulses,
become poorer, uglier, more violent. That is how nations fail.
It's easy to carp like this but the sclerotic elite in charge of the country has failed to address
demographic concerns, and has stamped out any politically incorrect thoughts as being signs of
baseness.
Now they are so upset that a challenger has arisen. It's unfortunate that this particular
challenger has no background in government and will probably harm our economic growth with his
lack of skill, but the elites will have to eat the cake they baked.
"No one knows what Trump would do as President, but, based on his statements on the campaign trail,
it's possible to imagine a nation where people have less confidence in the courts, the military,
and their rights to free speech and assembly. When this happens, history tells us, people stop
dreaming about what they could have if they invest in education, new businesses, and new ideas.
They focus, instead, on taking from others and holding tightly to what they've already amassed.
Those societies, without the institutions that protect us from our worst impulses, become poorer,
uglier, more violent. That is how nations fail."
This is all true but let's provide a little more context than the totebaggers' paint-by-numbers
narrative.
Economists told us that free trade deals and open borders would make us prosperous and
yet that hasn't happens.
The technicians running trade policy, monetary policy and fiscal policy haven't held up
their end of the bargain.
Wealth and power has been redistributed upwards.
The union movement has been destroyed in outright class war.
The corporate media spread lies and distraction. It induces both apathy and a rat race/dog-eat-dog
mentality.
The Democratic Party has been moved to right as the middle class has struggled.
And more and more people become susceptible to demagogues like Trump as Democrats try to play
both sides of the fence, instead of standing foresquarely behind the job class.
Let's hope we don't find out what Trump does if elected. My guess is that he'd delegate foreign
and domestic policy to Mike Pence as Trump himself would be free to pursue his own personal grudges
via whatever means are available.
Alex S -> Peter K.... , -1
As we can see here, through leftist glasses, the only possible remedy for solving a problem is
moving left.
Consider how far we've moved right, so that Nixon e.g. would be considered hopelessly and radically
leftist today.
Given that, moving left should be one of the first things you consider.
Consider how far we've moved right, so that Nixon e.g. would be considered hopelessly and radically
leftist today.
Given that, moving left should be one of the first things you consider.
Yes, we've seen right wing policies killing jobs and steering wealth to the wealthy, and that's
bad policy. But unfortunately it seems it's always possible to do *worse*.
Trump's policies would
double down on wealth transfer, while he spouts the typical RW mantra of "(my dopey policy which
would destroy jobs) would be good for jobs."
Tim Harford made a good case for trust accounting
for 99% of the difference in per capita GNP between the US and Somalia.
""If you take a broad enough definition of trust, then it would explain basically all the difference
between the per capita income of the United States and Somalia," ventures Steve Knack, a senior
economist at the World Bank who has been studying the economics of trust for over a decade. That
suggests that trust is worth $12.4 trillion dollars a year to the U.S., which, in case you are
wondering, is 99.5% of this country's income (2006 figures). If you make $40,000 a year, then
$200 is down to hard work and $39,800 is down to trust.
How could that be? Trust operates in all sorts of ways, from saving money that would have to
be spent on security to improving the functioning of the political system. But above all, trust
enables people to do business with each other. Doing business is what creates wealth." goo.gl/t3OqHc
Presidents and the US Economy: An Econometric Exploration
By Alan S. Blinder and Mark W. Watson
Abstract
The US economy has performed better when the president of the United States is a Democrat rather
than a Republican, almost regardless of how one measures performance. For many measures, including
real GDP growth (our focus), the performance gap is large and significant. This paper asks why.
The answer is not found in technical time series matters nor in systematically more expansionary
monetary or fiscal policy under Democrats. Rather, it appears that the Democratic edge stems mainly
from more benign oil shocks, superior total factor productivity (TFP) performance, a more favorable
international environment, and perhaps more optimistic consumer expectations about the near-term
future.
Economic growth fueled by foreign oil is nice while it lasts but what will happen to the country
when the oil runs out or we are forced to fight a war that disrupts the supply?
I was in college in the mid 1970's and we asked this question a lot. Some think this worry has
gone away. I don't agree with those types. Which is why a green technology investment drive makes
a lot of sense for so many reasons.
Quote from the paper you linked to: "Arguably, oil shocks have more to do with US foreign policy
than with US economic policy-the two Gulf Wars being prominent examples. That said, several economists
have claimed that US monetary policy played an important role in bringing on the oil shocks. See,
for example, Barsky and Kilian (2002)."
Do We Really Know that Oil Caused the Great Stagflation? A Monetary Alternative
By Robert B. Barsky and Lutz Kilian
Abstract
This paper argues that major oil price increases were not nearly as essential a part of the
causal mechanism that generated the stagflation of the 1970s as is often thought. There is neither
a theoretical presumption that oil supply shocks are stagflationary nor robust empirical evidence
for this view. In contrast, we show that monetary expansions and contractions can generate stagflation
of realistic magnitude even in the absence of supply shocks. Furthermore, monetary fluctuations
help to explain the historical movements of the prices of oil and other commodities, including
the surge in the prices of industrial commodities that preceded the 1973/74 oil price increase.
Thus, they can account for the striking coincidence of major oil price increases and worsening
stagflation.
My quote dragged on too long. I should have ended it with the first sentence. Monetary policy
could play a role but foreign policy could still be the biggest factor.
"Former Fed Vice Chairman Alan Blinder said he's skeptical that fiscal policy will be loosened
a great deal if Clinton wins the election, as seems likely based on recent voter surveys.
"She is promising not to make budget deficits bigger by her programs," said Blinder, who is
now a professor at Princeton University. "Whatever fiscal stimulus there is ought to be small
enough for the Fed practically to ignore it."
PGL told us that Hillary's fiscal program would be YUGE.
Dean Baker in "Rigged" * reminds me of the lasting limits to growth that appear to follow the
sacrifice of growth, especially to the extent of allowing a recession, for the sake of budget
balancing during a time of surrounding economic weakness:
Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich
Richer
By Dean Baker
Introduction: Trading in Myths
In winter 2016, near the peak of Bernie Sanders' bid for the Democratic presidential nomination,
a new line became popular among the nation's policy elite: Bernie Sanders is the enemy of the
world's poor. Their argument was that Sanders, by pushing trade policies to help U.S. workers,
specifically manufacturing workers, risked undermining the well-being of the world's poor because
exporting manufactured goods to the United States and other wealthy countries is their path out
of poverty. The role model was China, which by exporting has largely eliminated extreme poverty
and drastically reduced poverty among its population. Sanders and his supporters would block the
rest of the developing world from following the same course.
This line, in its Sanders-bashing permutation, appeared early on in Vox, the millennial-oriented
media upstart, and was quickly picked up elsewhere (Beauchamp 2016). After all, it was pretty
irresistible. The ally of the downtrodden and enemy of the rich was pushing policies that would
condemn much of the world to poverty.
The story made a nice contribution to preserving the status quo, but it was less valuable if
you respect honesty in public debate.
The problem in the logic of this argument should be apparent to anyone who has taken an introductory
economics course. It assumes that the basic problem of manufacturing workers in the developing
world is the need for someone who will buy their stuff. If people in the United States don't buy
it, then the workers will be out on the street and growth in the developing world will grind to
a halt. In this story, the problem is that we don't have enough people in the world to buy stuff.
In other words, there is a shortage of demand. But is it really true that no one else in the world
would buy the stuff produced by manufacturing workers in the developing world if they couldn't
sell it to consumers in the United States? Suppose people in the developing world bought the stuff
they produced raising their living standards by raising their own consumption.
That is how the economics is supposed to work. In the standard theory, general shortages of
demand are not a problem. Economists have traditionally assumed that economies tended toward full
employment. The basic economic constraint was a lack of supply. The problem was that we couldn't
produce enough goods and services, not that we were producing too much and couldn't find anyone
to buy them. In fact, this is why all the standard models used to analyze trade agreements like
the Trans-Pacific Partnership assume trade doesn't affect total employment. Economies adjust so
that shortages of demand are not a problem.
In this standard story (and the Sanders critics are people who care about textbook economics),
capital flows from slow-growing rich countries, where it is relatively plentiful and so gets a
low rate of return, to fast-growing poor countries, where it is scarce and gets a high rate of
return....
It is yuuuuge - and no I did not say anything of the sort. Rather I noted it would be less than
1% of GDP. This is what I get for trying to get the facts right. It gets too complicated for you
even when we simplify things so you get angry and start screaming "liar". Grow up.
Per capta GDP grew from $51,100 to $51,400 between July 1 2015 and July 1 2016. This 0.6% growth
does not seem to me to be a statistic supporting claims of improving employment and improving
wage growth.
Dean has suggested in one of his commentaries that wage growth may be an artifact of a decline
in the quality of health insurance coverage. Wage growth is not figured net of increased outlays
for deductibles and copays related to changes in health insurance. PPACA discourages low deductible
and low copay health plans by placing a "Cadillac tax" on them, or at least threatening to do
so. The consequent rise in wage workers' outlays for copays and deductibles are not captured in
the statistics that claim to measure wage gains. This results in an income transfer from the well
to the sick, but can produce statistics that can be interpreted in politically convenient ways
by those so inclined
I get why the plans are taxed. I don't believe that the results of that policy have been beneficial
for the bulk of the population. Most of the good done by PPACA was done by the expansion of Medicaid
eligibility. I believe that requiring the working poor people to settle for high deductible high
copay policies has had the practical effect of requiring them to choose between adequate medical
and further impoverishment. I do not believe that the PPACA could not have been financed in a
way less injurious to the working poor. As the insurers have been unable to make money in this
deal, the hospital operators seem to have been the only winners in that their bad debt problems
have been ameliorated.
"people stop dreaming about what they could have if they invest in education, new businesses,
and new ideas"
And this is entirely rational, as in the situation described, the fruits of their efforts will
likely be siphoned from their pockets by the elites and generally rent-seekers with higher social
standing and leverage, or at best their efforts will amount to too little to be worth the risk
(including the risk of wasting one's time i.e. opportunity cost). It also becomes correspondingly
harder to convince and motivate others to join or fund any worthwhile efforts. What also happens
(and has happened in "communism") is that people take their interests private, i.e. hidden from
the view of those who would usurp or derail them.
"Those who witness extreme social collapse at first hand seldom describe any deep revelation about
the truths of human existence. What they do mention, if asked, is their surprise at how easy it
is to die.
The pattern of ordinary life, in which so much stays the same from one day to the next, disguises
the fragility of its fabric. How many of our activities are made possible by the impression of
stability that pattern gives? So long as it repeats, or varies steadily enough, we are able to
plan for tomorrow as if all the things we rely on and don't think about too carefully will still
be there. When the pattern is broken, by civil war or natural disaster or the smaller-scale tragedies
that tear at its fabric, many of those activities become impossible or meaningless, while simply
meeting needs we once took for granted may occupy much of our lives.
What war correspondents and relief workers report is not only the fragility of the fabric,
but the speed with which it can unravel. As we write this, no one can say with certainty where
the unraveling of the financial and commercial fabric of our economies will end. Meanwhile, beyond
the cities, unchecked industrial exploitation frays the material basis of life in many parts of
the world, and pulls at the ecological systems which sustain it.
Precarious as this moment may be, however, an awareness of the fragility of what we call civilisation
is nothing new.
'Few men realise,' wrote Joseph Conrad in 1896, 'that their life, the very essence of their
character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in
the safety of their surroundings.' Conrad's writings exposed the civilisation exported by European
imperialists to be little more than a comforting illusion, not only in the dark, unconquerable
heart of Africa, but in the whited sepulchres of their capital cities. The inhabitants of that
civilisation believed 'blindly in the irresistible force of its institutions and its morals, in
the power of its police and of its opinion,' but their confidence could be maintained only by
the seeming solidity of the crowd of like-minded believers surrounding them. Outside the walls,
the wild remained as close to the surface as blood under skin, though the city-dweller was no
longer equipped to face it directly.
Bertrand Russell caught this vein in Conrad's worldview, suggesting that the novelist 'thought
of civilised and morally tolerable human life as a dangerous walk on a thin crust of barely cooled
lava which at any moment might break and let the unwary sink into fiery depths.' What both Russell
and Conrad were getting at was a simple fact which any historian could confirm: human civilisation
is an intensely fragile construction. It is built on little more than belief: belief in the rightness
of its values; belief in the strength of its system of law and order; belief in its currency;
above all, perhaps, belief in its future.
Once that belief begins to crumble, the collapse of a civilisation may become unstoppable.
That civilisations fall, sooner or later, is as much a law of history as gravity is a law of physics.
What remains after the fall is a wild mixture of cultural debris, confused and angry people whose
certainties have betrayed them, and those forces which were always there, deeper than the foundations
of the city walls: the desire to survive and the desire for meaning."
Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich
Richer By Dean Baker
Introduction: Trading in Myths
In winter 2016, near the peak of Bernie Sanders' bid for the Democratic presidential nomination,
a new line became popular among the nation's policy elite: Bernie Sanders is the enemy of the
world's poor. Their argument was that Sanders, by pushing trade policies to help U.S. workers,
specifically manufacturing workers, risked undermining the well-being of the world's poor because
exporting manufactured goods to the United States and other wealthy countries is their path out
of poverty. The role model was China, which by exporting has largely eliminated extreme poverty
and drastically reduced poverty among its population. Sanders and his supporters would block the
rest of the developing world from following the same course.
This line, in its Sanders-bashing permutation, appeared early on in Vox, the millennial-oriented
media upstart, and was quickly picked up elsewhere (Beauchamp 2016). After all, it was pretty
irresistible. The ally of the downtrodden and enemy of the rich was pushing policies that would
condemn much of the world to poverty.
The story made a nice contribution to preserving the status quo, but it was less valuable if
you respect honesty in public debate.
The problem in the logic of this argument should be apparent to anyone who has taken an introductory
economics course. It assumes that the basic problem of manufacturing workers in the developing
world is the need for someone who will buy their stuff. If people in the United States don't buy
it, then the workers will be out on the street and growth in the developing world will grind to
a halt. In this story, the problem is that we don't have enough people in the world to buy stuff.
In other words, there is a shortage of demand. But is it really true that no one else in the world
would buy the stuff produced by manufacturing workers in the developing world if they couldn't
sell it to consumers in the United States? Suppose people in the developing world bought the stuff
they produced raising their living standards by raising their own consumption.
That is how the economics is supposed to work. In the standard theory, general shortages of
demand are not a problem. Economists have traditionally assumed that economies tended toward full
employment. The basic economic constraint was a lack of supply. The problem was that we couldn't
produce enough goods and services, not that we were producing too much and couldn't find anyone
to buy them. In fact, this is why all the standard models used to analyze trade agreements like
the Trans-Pacific Partnership assume trade doesn't affect total employment. Economies adjust so
that shortages of demand are not a problem.
In this standard story (and the Sanders critics are people who care about textbook economics),
capital flows from slow-growing rich countries, where it is relatively plentiful and so gets a
low rate of return, to fast-growing poor countries, where it is scarce and gets a high rate of
return....
More Jobs, a Strong Economy, and a Threat to Institutions : ...Institutions are significant
to economists, who have come to see that countries become prosperous not because they have bounteous
natural resources or an educated population or the most advanced technology but because they have
good institutions. Crucially, formal structures are supported by informal, often unstated, social
agreements. A nation not only needs courts; its people need to believe that those courts can be
fair. ...
Over most of history, a small élite confiscated wealth from the poor. Subsistence farmers lived
under rules designed to tax them so that the rulers could live in palaces and pay for soldiers
to maintain their power. Every now and then, though, a system appeared in which leaders were forced
to accommodate the needs of at least some of their citizens. ... The societies with the most robust
systems for forcing the powerful to accommodate some of the needs of the powerless became wealthier
and more peaceful. ... Most nations without institutions to check the worst impulses of the rich
and powerful stay stuck in poverty and dysfunction. ...
This year's Presidential election has alarmed economists for several reasons. No economist,
save one , supports Donald J. Trump's stated economic plans, but an even larger concern is
that, were he elected, Trump would attack the very institutions that have provided our economic
stability. In his campaign, Trump has shown outright contempt for courts, free speech, international
treaties, and many other pillars of the American way of life. There is little reason to think
that, if granted the Presidency, Trump would soften his stand. ...
...it's easy to imagine a President Trump refusing to heed our own highest court, which, as
President Andrew Jackson observed, has no way, other than respect of institutions, to enforce
its decisions. No one knows what Trump would do as President, but, based on his statements on
the campaign trail, it's possible to imagine a nation where people have less confidence in the
courts, the military, and their rights to free speech and assembly. When this happens, history
tells us, people stop dreaming about what they could have if they invest in education, new businesses,
and new ideas. They focus, instead, on taking from others and holding tightly to what they've
already amassed. Those societies, without the institutions that protect us from our worst impulses,
become poorer, uglier, more violent. That is how nations fail.
It's easy to carp like this but the sclerotic elite in charge of the country has failed to address
demographic concerns, and has stamped out any politically incorrect thoughts as being signs of
baseness. Now they are so upset that a challenger has arisen. It's unfortunate that this particular
challenger has no background in government and will probably harm our economic growth with his
lack of skill, but the elites will have to eat the cake they baked.
"No one knows what Trump would do as President, but, based on his statements on the campaign trail,
it's possible to imagine a nation where people have less confidence in the courts, the military,
and their rights to free speech and assembly. When this happens, history tells us, people stop
dreaming about what they could have if they invest in education, new businesses, and new ideas.
They focus, instead, on taking from others and holding tightly to what they've already amassed.
Those societies, without the institutions that protect us from our worst impulses, become poorer,
uglier, more violent. That is how nations fail."
This is all true but let's provide a little more context than the totebaggers' paint-by-numbers
narrative.
Economists told us that free trade deals and open borders would make us prosperous and
yet that hasn't happens.
The technicians running trade policy, monetary policy and fiscal policy haven't held up
their end of the bargain.
Wealth and power has been redistributed upwards.
The union movement has been destroyed in outright class war.
The corporate media spread lies and distraction. It induces both apathy and a rat race/dog-eat-dog
mentality.
The Democratic Party has been moved to right as the middle class has struggled.
And more and more people become susceptible to demagogues like Trump as Democrats try to play
both sides of the fence, instead of standing foresquarely behind the job class.
Let's hope we don't find out what Trump does if elected. My guess is that he'd delegate foreign
and domestic policy to Mike Pence as Trump himself would be free to pursue his own personal grudges
via whatever means are available.
As Bernie Sanders's campaign demonstrated, there is still hope. In fact hope is growing.
Lucky for us Sanders campaigned hard for Hillary, knowing what the stakes are.
Given the way people like PGL treated Sanders during the campaign and given what Wikileaks
showed, I doubt the reverse would have been true had Sanders won the primary.
The reverse would have been true, because we Democrats would have voted party above all else and
especially in this election year. Remember "party" the thing that Bernie supporters and Bernie
himself denigrated? I believe the term
"elites" was used more than once to describe the party faithful.
Alex S -> Peter K.... , -1
As we can see here, through leftist glasses, the only possible remedy for solving a problem is
moving left.
Consider how far we've moved right, so that Nixon e.g. would be considered hopelessly and radically
leftist today.
Given that, moving left should be one of the first things you consider.
Does the Right Hold the Economy Hostage to Advance Its Militarist Agenda?
That's one way to read Tyler Cowen's New York Times column * noting that wars have often been
associated with major economic advances which carries the headline "the lack of major wars may
be hurting economic growth." Tyler lays out his central argument:
"It may seem repugnant to find a positive side to war in this regard, but a look at American
history suggests we cannot dismiss the idea so easily. Fundamental innovations such as nuclear
power, the computer and the modern aircraft were all pushed along by an American government eager
to defeat the Axis powers or, later, to win the Cold War. The Internet was initially designed
to help this country withstand a nuclear exchange, and Silicon Valley had its origins with military
contracting, not today's entrepreneurial social media start-ups. The Soviet launch of the Sputnik
satellite spurred American interest in science and technology, to the benefit of later economic
growth."
This is all quite true, but a moment's reflection may give a bit different spin to the story.
There has always been substantial support among liberals for the sort of government sponsored
research that he describes here. The opposition has largely come from the right. However the right
has been willing to go along with such spending in the context of meeting national defense needs.
Its support made these accomplishments possible.
This brings up the suggestion Paul Krugman made a while back (jokingly) that maybe we need
to convince the public that we face a threat from an attack from Mars. Krugman suggested this
as a way to prompt traditional Keynesian stimulus, but perhaps we can also use the threat to promote
an ambitious public investment agenda to bring us the next major set of technological breakthroughs.
1. Baker's peaceful spending scenario is not likely because of human nature.
2. Even if Baker's scenario happened, a given dollar will be used more efficiently in a war.
If there is a threat of losing, you have an incentive to cut waste and spend on what produces
results.
3. The United States would not exist at all if we had not conquered the territory.
US Budgetary Costs of Wars through 2016: $4.79 Trillion and Counting
Summary of Costs of the US Wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan and Homeland Security
By Neta C. Crawford
Summary
Wars cost money before, during and after they occur - as governments prepare for, wage, and
recover from them by replacing equipment, caring for the wounded and repairing the infrastructure
destroyed in the fighting. Although it is rare to have a precise accounting of the costs of war
- especially of long wars - one can get a sense of the rough scale of the costs by surveying the
major categories of spending.
As of August 2016, the US has already appropriated, spent, or taken on obligations to spend
more than $3.6 trillion in current dollars on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria
and on Homeland Security (2001 through fiscal year 2016). To this total should be added the approximately
$65 billion in dedicated war spending the Department of Defense and State Department have requested
for the next fiscal year, 2017, along with an additional nearly $32 billion requested for the
Department of Homeland Security in 2017, and estimated spending on veterans in future years. When
those are included, the total US budgetary cost of the wars reaches $4.79 trillion.
But of course, a full accounting of any war's burdens cannot be placed in columns on a ledger....
Yes, we've seen right wing policies killing jobs and steering wealth to the wealthy, and that's
bad policy. But unfortunately it seems it's always possible to do *worse*. Trump's policies would
double down on wealth transfer, while he spouts the typical RW mantra of "(my dopey policy which
would destroy jobs) would be good for jobs." Tim Harford made a good case for trust accounting
for 99% of the difference in per capita GNP between the US and Somalia.
""If you take a broad enough definition of trust, then it would explain basically all the difference
between the per capita income of the United States and Somalia," ventures Steve Knack, a senior
economist at the World Bank who has been studying the economics of trust for over a decade. That
suggests that trust is worth $12.4 trillion dollars a year to the U.S., which, in case you are
wondering, is 99.5% of this country's income (2006 figures). If you make $40,000 a year, then
$200 is down to hard work and $39,800 is down to trust.
How could that be? Trust operates in all sorts of ways, from saving money that would have to
be spent on security to improving the functioning of the political system. But above all, trust
enables people to do business with each other. Doing business is what creates wealth." goo.gl/t3OqHc
Presidents and the US Economy: An Econometric Exploration
By Alan S. Blinder and Mark W. Watson
Abstract
The US economy has performed better when the president of the United States is a Democrat rather
than a Republican, almost regardless of how one measures performance. For many measures, including
real GDP growth (our focus), the performance gap is large and significant. This paper asks why.
The answer is not found in technical time series matters nor in systematically more expansionary
monetary or fiscal policy under Democrats. Rather, it appears that the Democratic edge stems mainly
from more benign oil shocks, superior total factor productivity (TFP) performance, a more favorable
international environment, and perhaps more optimistic consumer expectations about the near-term
future.
Economic growth fueled by foreign oil is nice while it lasts but what will happen to the country
when the oil runs out or we are forced to fight a war that disrupts the supply?
I was in college in the mid 1970's and we asked this question a lot. Some think this worry has
gone away. I don't agree with those types. Which is why a green technology investment drive makes
a lot of sense for so many reasons.
Economic growth fueled by foreign oil is nice while it lasts but what will happen to the country
when the oil runs out or we are forced to fight a war that disrupts the supply?
[ Having read and reread this question, I do not begin to understand what it means. There is
oil here, there is oil all about us, there is oil in Canada and Mexico and on and on, and the
supply of oil about us is not about to be disrupted by any conceivable war and an inconceivable
war is never going to be fought. ]
Economic growth fueled by foreign oil is nice while it lasts but what will happen to the country
when the oil runs out or we are forced to fight a war that disrupts the supply?
[ My guess is that this is a way of scarily pitching for fracking for oil right in my garden,
but I like my azealia bushes and mocking birds. ]
Quote from the paper you linked to: "Arguably, oil shocks have more to do with US foreign policy
than with US economic policy-the two Gulf Wars being prominent examples. That said, several economists
have claimed that US monetary policy played an important role in bringing on the oil shocks. See,
for example, Barsky and Kilian (2002)."
Do We Really Know that Oil Caused the Great Stagflation? A Monetary Alternative
By Robert B. Barsky and Lutz Kilian
Abstract
This paper argues that major oil price increases were not nearly as essential a part of the
causal mechanism that generated the stagflation of the 1970s as is often thought. There is neither
a theoretical presumption that oil supply shocks are stagflationary nor robust empirical evidence
for this view. In contrast, we show that monetary expansions and contractions can generate stagflation
of realistic magnitude even in the absence of supply shocks. Furthermore, monetary fluctuations
help to explain the historical movements of the prices of oil and other commodities, including
the surge in the prices of industrial commodities that preceded the 1973/74 oil price increase.
Thus, they can account for the striking coincidence of major oil price increases and worsening
stagflation.
My quote dragged on too long. I should have ended it with the first sentence. Monetary policy
could play a role but foreign policy could still be the biggest factor.
"Former Fed Vice Chairman Alan Blinder said he's skeptical that fiscal policy will be loosened
a great deal if Clinton wins the election, as seems likely based on recent voter surveys.
"She is promising not to make budget deficits bigger by her programs," said Blinder, who is
now a professor at Princeton University. "Whatever fiscal stimulus there is ought to be small
enough for the Fed practically to ignore it."
PGL told us that Hillary's fiscal program would be YUGE.
Dean Baker in "Rigged" * reminds me of the lasting limits to growth that appear to follow the
sacrifice of growth, especially to the extent of allowing a recession, for the sake of budget
balancing during a time of surrounding economic weakness:
Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich
Richer
By Dean Baker
Introduction: Trading in Myths
In winter 2016, near the peak of Bernie Sanders' bid for the Democratic presidential nomination,
a new line became popular among the nation's policy elite: Bernie Sanders is the enemy of the
world's poor. Their argument was that Sanders, by pushing trade policies to help U.S. workers,
specifically manufacturing workers, risked undermining the well-being of the world's poor because
exporting manufactured goods to the United States and other wealthy countries is their path out
of poverty. The role model was China, which by exporting has largely eliminated extreme poverty
and drastically reduced poverty among its population. Sanders and his supporters would block the
rest of the developing world from following the same course.
This line, in its Sanders-bashing permutation, appeared early on in Vox, the millennial-oriented
media upstart, and was quickly picked up elsewhere (Beauchamp 2016). After all, it was pretty
irresistible. The ally of the downtrodden and enemy of the rich was pushing policies that would
condemn much of the world to poverty.
The story made a nice contribution to preserving the status quo, but it was less valuable if
you respect honesty in public debate.
The problem in the logic of this argument should be apparent to anyone who has taken an introductory
economics course. It assumes that the basic problem of manufacturing workers in the developing
world is the need for someone who will buy their stuff. If people in the United States don't buy
it, then the workers will be out on the street and growth in the developing world will grind to
a halt. In this story, the problem is that we don't have enough people in the world to buy stuff.
In other words, there is a shortage of demand. But is it really true that no one else in the world
would buy the stuff produced by manufacturing workers in the developing world if they couldn't
sell it to consumers in the United States? Suppose people in the developing world bought the stuff
they produced raising their living standards by raising their own consumption.
That is how the economics is supposed to work. In the standard theory, general shortages of
demand are not a problem. Economists have traditionally assumed that economies tended toward full
employment. The basic economic constraint was a lack of supply. The problem was that we couldn't
produce enough goods and services, not that we were producing too much and couldn't find anyone
to buy them. In fact, this is why all the standard models used to analyze trade agreements like
the Trans-Pacific Partnership assume trade doesn't affect total employment. Economies adjust so
that shortages of demand are not a problem.
In this standard story (and the Sanders critics are people who care about textbook economics),
capital flows from slow-growing rich countries, where it is relatively plentiful and so gets a
low rate of return, to fast-growing poor countries, where it is scarce and gets a high rate of
return....
It is yuuuuge - and no I did not say anything of the sort. Rather I noted it would be less than
1% of GDP. This is what I get for trying to get the facts right. It gets too complicated for you
even when we simplify things so you get angry and start screaming "liar". Grow up.
Per capta GDP grew from $51,100 to $51,400 between July 1 2015 and July 1 2016. This 0.6% growth
does not seem to me to be a statistic supporting claims of improving employment and improving
wage growth.
Dean has suggested in one of his commentaries that wage growth may be an artifact of a decline
in the quality of health insurance coverage. Wage growth is not figured net of increased outlays
for deductibles and copays related to changes in health insurance. PPACA discourages low deductible
and low copay health plans by placing a "Cadillac tax" on them, or at least threatening to do
so. The consequent rise in wage workers' outlays for copays and deductibles are not captured in
the statistics that claim to measure wage gains. This results in an income transfer from the well
to the sick, but can produce statistics that can be interpreted in politically convenient ways
by those so inclined
I get why the plans are taxed. I don't believe that the results of that policy have been beneficial
for the bulk of the population. Most of the good done by PPACA was done by the expansion of Medicaid
eligibility. I believe that requiring the working poor people to settle for high deductible high
copay policies has had the practical effect of requiring them to choose between adequate medical
and further impoverishment. I do not believe that the PPACA could not have been financed in a
way less injurious to the working poor. As the insurers have been unable to make money in this
deal, the hospital operators seem to have been the only winners in that their bad debt problems
have been ameliorated.
"people stop dreaming about what they could have if they invest in education, new businesses,
and new ideas"
And this is entirely rational, as in the situation described, the fruits of their efforts will
likely be siphoned from their pockets by the elites and generally rent-seekers with higher social
standing and leverage, or at best their efforts will amount to too little to be worth the risk
(including the risk of wasting one's time i.e. opportunity cost). It also becomes correspondingly
harder to convince and motivate others to join or fund any worthwhile efforts. What also happens
(and has happened in "communism") is that people take their interests private, i.e. hidden from
the view of those who would usurp or derail them.
"Those who witness extreme social collapse at first hand seldom describe any deep revelation about
the truths of human existence. What they do mention, if asked, is their surprise at how easy it
is to die.
The pattern of ordinary life, in which so much stays the same from one day to the next, disguises
the fragility of its fabric. How many of our activities are made possible by the impression of
stability that pattern gives? So long as it repeats, or varies steadily enough, we are able to
plan for tomorrow as if all the things we rely on and don't think about too carefully will still
be there. When the pattern is broken, by civil war or natural disaster or the smaller-scale tragedies
that tear at its fabric, many of those activities become impossible or meaningless, while simply
meeting needs we once took for granted may occupy much of our lives.
What war correspondents and relief workers report is not only the fragility of the fabric,
but the speed with which it can unravel. As we write this, no one can say with certainty where
the unraveling of the financial and commercial fabric of our economies will end. Meanwhile, beyond
the cities, unchecked industrial exploitation frays the material basis of life in many parts of
the world, and pulls at the ecological systems which sustain it.
Precarious as this moment may be, however, an awareness of the fragility of what we call civilisation
is nothing new.
'Few men realise,' wrote Joseph Conrad in 1896, 'that their life, the very essence of their
character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in
the safety of their surroundings.' Conrad's writings exposed the civilisation exported by European
imperialists to be little more than a comforting illusion, not only in the dark, unconquerable
heart of Africa, but in the whited sepulchres of their capital cities. The inhabitants of that
civilisation believed 'blindly in the irresistible force of its institutions and its morals, in
the power of its police and of its opinion,' but their confidence could be maintained only by
the seeming solidity of the crowd of like-minded believers surrounding them. Outside the walls,
the wild remained as close to the surface as blood under skin, though the city-dweller was no
longer equipped to face it directly.
Bertrand Russell caught this vein in Conrad's worldview, suggesting that the novelist 'thought
of civilised and morally tolerable human life as a dangerous walk on a thin crust of barely cooled
lava which at any moment might break and let the unwary sink into fiery depths.' What both Russell
and Conrad were getting at was a simple fact which any historian could confirm: human civilisation
is an intensely fragile construction. It is built on little more than belief: belief in the rightness
of its values; belief in the strength of its system of law and order; belief in its currency;
above all, perhaps, belief in its future.
Once that belief begins to crumble, the collapse of a civilisation may become unstoppable.
That civilisations fall, sooner or later, is as much a law of history as gravity is a law of physics.
What remains after the fall is a wild mixture of cultural debris, confused and angry people whose
certainties have betrayed them, and those forces which were always there, deeper than the foundations
of the city walls: the desire to survive and the desire for meaning."
Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Hillary Clinton's plan for Syria would "lead to world war three"
because of the potential for conflict with military forces from nuclear-armed Russia.
In an interview focused largely on foreign policy, the Republican presidential nominee said defeating
Islamic State was a higher priority than persuading than Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, to step
down, playing down a long-held goal of US policy.
Trump questioned how his Democratic opponent would negotiate with Russia's president Vladimir
Putin after having demonized him; blamed Barack Obama for a downturn in US relations with the Philippines
under its new president, Rodrigo Duterte;
bemoaned a lack of Republican unity behind his candidacy
and said he would easily win the election if the party leaders supported him.
"If we had party unity, we couldn't lose this election to Hillary Clinton," he said.
On Syria's civil war, Trump said Clinton could drag the US into a world war with a more aggressive
posture toward resolving the conflict.
Clinton has called for the establishment of a no-fly zone and "safe zones" on the ground to
protect noncombatants. Some analysts fear that protecting those zones could bring the US bring into
direct conflict with Russian fighter jets.
"What we should do is focus on Isis. We should not be focusing on Syria," said Trump as he
dined on fried eggs and sausage at his Trump National Doral golf resort. "You're going to end up
in world war three over Syria if we listen to Hillary Clinton," Trump said.
"You're not fighting Syria any more, you're fighting Syria, Russia and Iran, all right? Russia
is a nuclear country, but a country where the nukes work as opposed to other countries that talk,"
he said.
Trump said Assad is much stronger now than he was three years ago. He said getting Assad to leave
power was less important than defeating Isis.
"Assad is secondary, to me, to Isis," he said.
On Russia, Trump again knocked Clinton's handling of US-Russian relations while secretary
of state and said her harsh criticism of Putin raised questions about "how she is going to go back
and negotiate with this man who she has made to be so evil", if she wins the presidency.
On the deterioration of ties with the Philippines, Trump aimed his criticism at Obama, saying
the president "wants to focus on his golf game" rather than engage with world leaders.
Since assuming office, Duterte has expressed open hostility towards the US, rejecting criticism
of his violent anti-drug clampdown, using an expletive to describe Obama and telling the US not to
treat his country "like a dog with a leash".
The Obama administration has expressed optimism that the two countries can remain firm allies.
Trump said Duterte's latest comments showed "a lack of respect for our country".
"... In the presidential debates, Clinton talked of establishing a "no-fly zone" or a "safe zone" inside Syria. However, it is hard to see how that would be done without risking a direct clash with Russia, with all the risks that entails. The generals at the Pentagon, who have long argued against the feasibility of establishing such a zone, would work hard to block such a scheme. A Clinton White House is also likely to explore ways of increasing the flow of arms to moderate opposition groups. ..."
"... Trump has indicated that he would seek to work with Assad and Putin in a combined fight against Isis, and has not voiced criticism of the bombardment of rebel-held areas such as eastern Aleppo. That policy would also have heavy costs. The Syrian opposition and the Gulf states would see it as a betrayal, and the new administration would have to deal with the reality that neither the regime nor Russia has much immediate interest in fighting Isis. ..."
"... Trump is likely to take the opposite approach. He avoided criticism of Russia for its actions in Ukraine, hinted he might accept the annexation of Crimea, and ignored US intelligence findings that Moscow was behind the hacking of Democratic party's email. ..."
"... Trump has suggested, by contrast, that Nato is obsolete and questioned whether its security commitments in Europe are worth what the US is currently spending on them. ..."
"... Clinton first supported the TPP and then criticised it in the face of the primary challenge from Bernie Sanders. Her reservations may prolong the negotiations, but she is ultimately expected to pursue and seek completion of the ambitious multilateral trade deals. ..."
"... Trump built his campaign on opposition to all such deals , which he has characterised as inherently unfavourable to the US. He has promised to seek bilateral trade deals on better terms and to punish other countries deemed to be trading unfairly with sanctions, ignoring the threat of retaliation. ..."
Within his or her first year in office, a new US president would also face a direct challenge
to US power in the western Pacific. The Chinese programme of laying claim to reefs and rocks in
the South China Sea and turning them into naval and air bases gives Beijing potential control
over some the busiest shipping lanes in the world. US influence is under further threat by the
rise of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, who has
threatened to eject US troops , casting doubt on his predecessor's agreement to allow new
permanent American presence.
Clinton's likely policy will be to continue Obama's faltering "pivot to Asia", and to prioritise
restoring the faith of US allies in the region that Washington will help them resist Chinese attempts
to dominate the South China Sea. It is a policy that is held hostage to some extent by Duterte's
ultimate intentions, and it could lead to a rapid escalation of tension in the region.
Trump has pointed to the Chinese reef-building programme as a reflection of US weakness but has
not said what he would do about it. He has focused more on the threat posed to the US by its trade
relations with China. In the transactional model of foreign relations Trump favours, he
could
agree to turn a blind eye to creeping Chinese takeover in the South China Sea in exchange for
a bilateral trade deal with Beijing on better terms.
Syria
A new US president will arrive in office at a time of significant military advances against
Islamic State in Syria and
neighbouring Iraq, but diminishing options when it comes to helping shape the opposition battle
against the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian backers. It is possible that the rebel stand
in Aleppo will have fallen by then, giving the regime the upper hand and postponing yet again
any hopes of a political transition.
In the presidential debates, Clinton
talked of establishing a "no-fly zone" or a "safe zone" inside Syria. However, it is hard to
see how that would be done without risking a direct clash with Russia, with all the risks that entails.
The generals at the Pentagon, who have long argued against the feasibility of establishing such a
zone, would work hard to block such a scheme. A Clinton White House is also likely to explore ways
of increasing the flow of arms to moderate opposition groups.
Trump has indicated that he would seek to work with Assad and Putin in a combined fight against
Isis, and has not voiced criticism of the bombardment of rebel-held areas such as eastern Aleppo.
That policy would also have heavy costs. The Syrian opposition and the Gulf states would see it as
a betrayal, and the new administration would have to deal with the reality that neither the regime
nor Russia has much immediate
interest in fighting Isis.
Russia and Ukraine
A Clinton administration is expected to take a tougher line with Moscow than the Obama White House,
all the more so because of the
substantial evidence of the Kremlin's efforts to try to intervene in the US presidential election
in her opponent's favour. Clinton could well seek to take a leadership role in negotiations with
Moscow over Ukraine and the stalled Minsk peace process, which have hitherto been left to Germany
and France. She could also opt to send lethal aid to Ukraine as a way of increasing US leverage.
Trump is likely to take the opposite approach. He avoided criticism of Russia for its
actions in Ukraine, hinted he might accept the annexation of Crimea, and ignored US
intelligence findings that Moscow was behind the hacking of Democratic party's email. A
Trump administration is unlikely to contest Russian enforcement of its influence in eastern
Ukraine.
Europe and Nato
Clinton aides have signalled consistently that one of her priorities would be to show US willingness
to shore up EU and Nato cohesion,
and will attend summits of both organisations in February.
Trump has suggested, by contrast, that Nato is obsolete and questioned whether its security commitments
in Europe are worth what the US is currently spending on them. He said he would check whether US
allies "fulfilled their obligation to us" before
coming to their defence , calling into question the purpose of the defence pact. Later in the
campaign, he changed tack, saying he would seek to strengthen the alliance, but a win for Trump on
Tuesday would nonetheless deepen anxiety in eastern European countries, such as the Baltic states,
that a US-led Nato would come to their defence in the face of Russian encroachment.
Trade
The two major free trade projects of the Obama administration, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment
Partnership with Europe (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with the countries on the
Pacific rim, will probably still be under negotiation when the new president comes into office, giving
him or her the option of killing or completing them.
Clinton
first supported the TPP and then criticised it in the face of the primary challenge from Bernie
Sanders. Her reservations may prolong the negotiations, but she is ultimately expected to pursue
and seek completion of the ambitious multilateral trade deals.
Trump built his campaign on
opposition to all such deals , which he has characterised as inherently unfavourable to the US.
He has promised to seek bilateral trade deals on better terms and to punish other countries deemed
to be trading unfairly with sanctions, ignoring the threat of retaliation.
"... An awful lot of people out there think we live in a one-party state-that we're ruled by what is coming to be called the "Uniparty." ..."
"... There is a dawning realization, ever more widespread among ordinary Americans, that our national politics is not Left versus Right or Republican versus Democrat; it's we the people versus the politicians. ..."
"... Donald Trump is no nut. If he were a nut, he would not have amassed the fortune he has, nor nurtured the capable and affectionate family he has. ..."
"... To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss. ..."
"... Trump has all the right instincts. And he's had the guts and courage-and, just as important, the money -to do a thing that has badly needed doing for twenty years: to smash the power of the real nuts in the GOP Establishment. ..."
A couple of remarks in
Professor Susan
McWillams' recent Modern Age piece celebrating the 25th anniversary of Christopher Lasch's
1991 book
The True and Only Heaven , which analyzed the cult of progress in its American manifestation,
have stuck in my mind. Here's the first one:
McWilliams adds a footnote to that: The 19 percent figure is from 2012, she says. Then she tells
us that in 1964, 64 percent of Americans agreed with the same statement.
Wow. You have to think that those two numbers, from 64 percent down to 19 percent in two generations,
tell us something important and disturbing about our political life.
Second McWilliams quote:
In 2016 if you type the words "Democrats and Republicans" or "Republicans and Democrats" into
Google, the algorithms predict your next words will be "are the same".
I just tried this, and she's right. These guesses are of course based on the frequency with which
complete sentences show up all over the internet. An awful lot of people out there think we live
in a one-party state-that we're ruled by what is
coming to be called the "Uniparty."
There is a dawning realization, ever more widespread among ordinary Americans, that our national
politics is not Left versus Right or Republican versus Democrat; it's we the people
versus the politicians.
Which leads me to a different lady commentator: Peggy Noonan, in her October 20th Wall Street
Journal column.
The title of Peggy's piece was:
Imagine
a Sane Donald Trump . [
Alternate link ]Its gravamen:
Donald Trump has shown up the Republican Party Establishment as totally out of touch with their base,
which is good; but that he's bat-poop crazy, which is bad. If a sane Donald Trump had done
the good thing, the showing-up, we'd be on course to a major beneficial correction in our national
politics.
It's a good clever piece. A couple of months ago on Radio Derb I offered up one and a half cheers
for Peggy, who gets a lot right in spite of being a longtime Establishment Insider. So it
was here. Sample of what she got right last week:
Mr. Trump's great historical role was to reveal to the Republican Party what half of its
own base really thinks about the big issues. The party's leaders didn't know! They were shocked,
so much that they indulged in sheer denial and made believe it wasn't happening.
The party's leaders accept more or less open borders and like big trade deals. Half the base
does not! It is longtime GOP doctrine to cut entitlement spending. Half the base doesn't want
to, not right now! Republican leaders have what might be called assertive foreign-policy impulses.
When Mr. Trump insulted George W. Bush and nation-building and said he'd opposed the Iraq invasion,
the crowds, taking him at his word, cheered. He was, as they say, declaring that he didn't want
to invade the world and invite the world. Not only did half the base cheer him, at least half
the remaining half joined in when the primaries ended.
End of pause. OK, so Peggy got some things right there. She got a lot wrong, though
Start with the notion that Trump is crazy. He's a nut, she says, five times. His brain is "a TV
funhouse."
Well, Trump has some colorful quirks of personality, to be sure, as we all do. But he's no nut.
A nut can't be as successful in business as Trump has been.
I spent 32 years as an employee or contractor, mostly in private businesses but for two years
in a government department. Private businesses are intensely rational, as human affairs go-much more
rational than government departments. The price of irrationality in business is immediate and plainly
financial. Sanity-wise, Trump is a better bet than most people in high government positions.
Sure, politicians talk a good rational game. They present as sober and thoughtful on the Sunday
morning shows.
Look at the stuff they believe, though. Was it rational to respond to the collapse of the U.S.S.R.
by moving NATO right up to Russia's borders? Was it rational to expect that post-Saddam Iraq would
turn into a constitutional democracy? Was it rational to order insurance companies to sell healthcare
policies to people who are already sick? Was the Vietnam War a rational enterprise? Was it rational
to respond to the 9/11 attacks by massively increasing Muslim immigration?
Make your own list.
Donald Trump displays good healthy patriotic instincts. I'll take that, with the personality quirks
and all, over some earnest, careful, sober-sided guy whose head contains fantasies of putting the
world to rights, or flooding our country with unassimilable foreigners.
I'd add the point, made by many commentators, that belongs under the general heading: "You don't
have to be crazy to work here, but it helps." If Donald Trump was not so very different from run-of-the-mill
politicians-which I suspect is a big part of what Peggy means by calling him a nut-would he have
entered into the political adventure he's on?
Thor Heyerdahl sailed across the Pacific on a hand-built wooden raft to prove a point, which
is not the kind of thing your average ethnographer would do. Was he crazy? No, he wasn't. It was
only that some feature of his personality drove him to use that way to prove the point he
hoped to prove.
And then there is Peggy's assertion that the Republican Party's leaders didn't know that half
the party's base were at odds with them.
Did they really not? Didn't they get a clue when the GOP lost in 2012, mainly because millions
of Republican voters didn't turn out for Mitt Romney? Didn't they, come to think of it, get the glimmering
of a clue back in 1996, when Pat Buchanan won the New Hampshire primary?
Pat Buchanan is in fact a living counter-argument to Peggy's thesis-the "sane Donald Trump" that
she claims would win the hearts of GOP managers. Pat is Trump without the personality quirks. How
has the Republican Party treated him ?
Our own
Brad Griffin , here at VDARE.com on October 24th, offered a couple more "sane Donald Trumps":
Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee. How did they fare with the GOP Establishment?
Donald Trump is no nut. If he were a nut, he would not have amassed the fortune he
has, nor nurtured the capable and affectionate family he has. Probably he's less well-informed
about the world than the average pol. I doubt he could tell you what
the capital of Burkina Faso is. That's secondary, though. A President has people to look up that
stuff for him. The question that's been asked more than any other about Donald Trump is not, pace
Peggy Noonan, "Is he nuts?" but, "
Is he conservative? "
I'm sure he is. But my definition of "conservative" is temperamental, not political. My touchstone
here is the sketch of the conservative temperament given to us by the English political philosopher
Michael Oakeshott :
To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried
to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the
near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present
laughter to utopian bliss.
That fits Trump better than it fits any liberal you can think of-better also than many senior
Republicans.
For example, it was one of George W. Bush's senior associates-probably Karl Rove-who scoffed at opponents
of Bush's delusional foreign policy as "the reality-based community." It would be hard to think of
a more un -Oakeshottian turn of phrase.
Trump has all the right instincts. And he's had the guts and courage-and, just as important,
the money -to do a thing that has badly needed doing for twenty years: to smash the power
of the real nuts in the GOP Establishment.
I thank him for that, and look forward to his Presidency.
"... I'll be interested to see how much Hillary tries to "work with Republicans" when it comes to foreign or domestic policy, as she's promising on the campaign trail. ..."
"... In a recent interview Biden was talking about how his "friends" in the Senate like McCain, Lindsy Graham, etc. - the sane ones who hate Trump - have to come out in support of the Republican plan to block Clinton from nominating a Supreme Court judge, because of if they don't, the Koch brothers will primary them. ..."
"... While I agree that the Republican party has been interested in whatever argument will win elections and benefit their donor class, doesn't the Democratic Party also have a donor class? Haven't Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton had a close relationship with some business interests? Did anyone go to jail after the asset bubble? Did welfare reform work or simply shift the problem out of view? How complicit are the Democrats in the great risk shift? ..."
"... I would think the scorched earth politics of the neoliberals required Democrats to shift to the right if they ever hoped to win an election, again. That is what it has looked like to me. The American equivalent of New Labor in Britain. So, we have a more moderate business-interest group of Democrats and a radical business-interest group of Republicans during the past 40 years. I think Kevin Phillips has made this argument. ..."
"... Our grand experimental shift back to classical theory involved supply side tax cuts, deregulation based on the magic of new finance theory, and monetarist pro-financial monetary policy. All of which gave us the masquerade of a great moderation that ended in the mother of all asset bubbles. While we shredded the safety net. ..."
"... Now the population is learning the arguments about free trade magically lifting all boats up into the capitalist paradise has blown up. We've shifted the risk onto the working population and they couldn't bear it. ..."
"... Economists lied to the American people about trade and continue to lie about the issue day in and day out. Brainwashing kids with a silly model called comparative advantage. ..."
This is all true but Krugman always fails to tell the other side of the story.
I'll be interested to see how much Hillary tries to "work with Republicans" when it comes
to foreign or domestic policy, as she's promising on the campaign trail.
The centrists always do this to push through centrist, neoliberal "solutions" which anger the
left.
In a recent interview Biden was talking about how his "friends" in the Senate like McCain,
Lindsy Graham, etc. - the sane ones who hate Trump - have to come out in support of the Republican
plan to block Clinton from nominating a Supreme Court judge, because of if they don't, the Koch
brothers will primary them.
Let's hope Hillary does something about campaign finance reform and Citizen United and takes
a harder line against obstructionist Republicans.
While I agree that the Republican party has been interested in whatever argument will win
elections and benefit their donor class, doesn't the Democratic Party also have a donor class?
Haven't Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton had a close relationship with some business
interests? Did anyone go to jail after the asset bubble? Did welfare reform work or simply shift
the problem out of view? How complicit are the Democrats in the great risk shift?
I would think the scorched earth politics of the neoliberals required Democrats to shift
to the right if they ever hoped to win an election, again. That is what it has looked like to
me. The American equivalent of New Labor in Britain. So, we have a more moderate business-interest
group of Democrats and a radical business-interest group of Republicans during the past 40 years.
I think Kevin Phillips has made this argument.
Our grand experimental shift back to classical theory involved supply side tax cuts, deregulation
based on the magic of new finance theory, and monetarist pro-financial monetary policy. All of
which gave us the masquerade of a great moderation that ended in the mother of all asset bubbles.
While we shredded the safety net.
Now the population is learning the arguments about free trade magically lifting all boats
up into the capitalist paradise has blown up. We've shifted the risk onto the working population
and they couldn't bear it.
Perhaps the less partisan take-way would be - is it possible for any political candidate to
get elected in this environment without bowing to the proper interests? How close did Bernie get?
And, how do we fix it without first admitting that the policies of both political parties have
not really addressed the social adjustments necessary to capture the benefits of globalization?
We need an evolution of both political parties - not just the Republicans. If we don't get it,
we can expect the Trump argument to take even deeper root.
Economists lied to the American people about trade and continue to lie about the issue day
in and day out. Brainwashing kids with a silly model called comparative advantage. East Asian
economists including Ha Joon Chang among others debunked comparative advantage and Ricardianism
long ago.
Manufacturing is everything. It is all that matters. We needed tariffs yesterday. Without them
the country is lost.
"... Among the more prominent exchanges released in the latest, 27th, Wikileaks release of Podesta emails is a thread from March 2016 which discusses a Politico article tilted " Clintonites: How we beat Bernie on trade ", and which reports that " Clinton faced internal pressure from her Brooklyn headquarters to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal she helped craft as secretary of State ." ..."
Among the more prominent exchanges released in the latest, 27th, Wikileaks release of Podesta
emails is a thread from
March 2016 which discusses a Politico article tilted "
Clintonites: How we beat Bernie on trade ", and which reports that " Clinton faced internal pressure
from her Brooklyn headquarters to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal she helped craft
as secretary of State ."
Senior Clinton strategist, Joel Benenson, is quoted in the piece as saying:
"Voters agree that we have to compete and win in a global economy and that means we have to
make things in the United States that we can sell to 95 percent of the world's consumers who happen
to live outside of the United States. What the data from the exit polls says is these voters were
more aligned with her fundamental view of trade ."
* * *
Clinton instead pushed back on Sanders' opposition to the Export-Import Bank, and doubled down
on the idea that America needs to compete and win in the global economy.
"We engaged with him on trade more forcefully," Benenson said. In the end, " I guess he came
off as an economic isolationist."
The article prompted Gene Sperling, former economic policy assistant to both Bill Clinton and
Obama to say:
" Do not get our spin here. Why we not hyping claw back, ROO, out front on steel, tough enforcement
on China?! Was this just her not talking to any of us and off on her own take?(But Joel is in
there ) please clarify."
To which, a clearly angry Tanden replies:
"Is Joel off reservation? Does he not get that this story makes Hillary seem politically craven
at best or a liar at worse? Or if this is campaign position, can I object ?"
She then adds: " Hard to say she believes what she says when Joel is spinning that she doesn't
mean what she is out there saying. Her language was pretty tough last week. "
Finally, she concludes that " Sanders or trump can move on this. "
Thiel also criticized the media's coverage of Trump's bombastic remarks. He said that while the
media takes Trump's remarks "literally" but not "seriously," he believes Trump supporters take them
seriously but not literally. In short, Trump isn't actually going to impose religious tests on
immigrants or build a wall along the Mexican border, as he has repeatedly said, but will simply
pursue "saner, more sensible" immigration policies.
"His larger-than-life persona attracts a lot of attention. Nobody would suggest that Donald Trump is
a humble man. But the big things he's right about amount to a much needed dose of humility in our
politics," Thiel said.
While the Silicon Valley tech corridor and suburbs around Washington have thrived in the last
decade or more, many other parts of the country have been gutted by economic and trade policies
that closed manufacturing plants and shipped jobs overseas, Thiel said, reiterating a previous
talking point.
"Most Americans don't live by the Beltway or the San Francisco Bay. Most Americans haven't
been part of that prosperity," Thiel said Monday. "It shouldn't be surprising to see people vote
for Bernie Sanders or for Donald Trump, who is the only outsider left in the race."
Thiel later said he had hoped the presidential race might come down to Sanders and Trump, two
outsiders with distinct views on the root cause of the nation's economic malaise and the best
course of action to fix it. "That would have been a very different sort of debate," he said.
Thiel's prepared remarks seemed more of an admonishment of the state of the country today than a
ringing endorsement of Trump's persona and policies. He decried high medical costs and the lack
of savings baby boomers have on hand. He said millennials are burdened by soaring tuition costs
and a poor outlook on the future. Meanwhile, he said, the federal government has wasted trillions
of dollars fighting wars in Africa and the Middle East that have yet to be won.
Trump is the only candidate who shares his view that the country's problems are substantial and
need drastic change to be repaired, Thiel said. Clinton, on the other hand, does not see a need
for a hard reset on some of the country's policies and would likely lead the U.S. into additional
costly conflicts abroad, he said.
A self-described libertarian, Thiel amassed his fortune as the co-founder of digital payment
company PayPal and data analytics firm Palantir Technologies. He has continued to add to that
wealth through venture capital investments in companies that include Facebook, Airbnb, Lyft and
Spotify, among many others.
"... Actually there is a point about reducing migration that can be rationally made. It's not about racial purity or demonising refugees but the prospect of high population growth brings great challenges and a. Need to assess what population Australia can reasonably sustain. ..."
"... It's interesting that Australia has benefited greatly by migration since WW2. The enriching of our economic and cultural fabric has been incontestable. But maybe we've reached the safe limits of population growth. Even the Bernadis and Abetz clans have reached here relatively recently. ..."
"... Call me old fashioned but I thought it was the responsibility of Governments to develop sound policies in the interests of the country and EXPLAIN them to the voters so that they can get understanding and support. This seems to be way beyond our politicians now, they throw anything up in the air and abandon it when there is opposition. So much for integrity and conviction. ..."
"... This morning an economic think tank recommended doubling the immigration intake, saying it would "increase per capita GDP" despite the fact that per capita GDP has gone backwards due to increased migration. ..."
"... If you halved the current migration rate it would return to historical levels, and be better for the economy and for the well being of the people already here. ..."
"... The problem is not with migration in this country, but with the 457 visa program where employers, like Caltex and 7Eleven, pay below award wages and provide poor working conditions. ..."
"... This flows on into the broader community festering discontent amongst Australians who see their jobs and employment conditions disappearing. ..."
"... Rather than focusing on immigrants, how about a thoughtful discussion of growth: what it means, how it ought to be measured, what's good and bad about it, and moving forward, what we as a society want in those terms. Immigration will assume a far more meaningful place in the context of a discussion of that kind, which would hopefully incorporate a strong environmental focus. But even in terms of the latter, issues of sustainability are not simply about raw population numbers but ultimately about lifestyle, modes of consumption, and energy use. ..."
"... What's really interesting here are the telling contradictions within the governing party between its fundamental commitments to neo-liberalism and ever-increasing growth in GDP as absolute goods, and its stumbling attempts to also embrace political reaction against the economic consequences of both policies. ..."
"... In that sense Bernardi is a useful idiot - plays to reaction through the red herring of prejudice (plus allowing the extreme right in the LNP to vent a bit of steam) while remaining rock-solid behind neo-liberalism and free markets -- at least, when it comes to the free movement of capital anyway (though the LNP has very astutely used various categories of working visa as an attempt to gradually entrench the movement of labour also, though not in any 'free' sense, just in the interests of maximizing profits). ..."
"... Yes it has, but Australia is now a vastly different place to what it was in the 40s, 50s and 60s. Back then there was plenty of land and housing, jobs available to anyone who wanted them, and the roads and hospitals were virtually empty. ..."
"... Australia isn't like that anymore and anyone living in the major cities knows how overcrowded they currently are. The 2 bedroom flat opposite me is being rented out and 7 people are living in it. Also, one of the garages downstairs is being occupied by a small family of three.. ..."
"... We need pro family policies if we wish to reduce migration. Working women must be given bigger incentives. ..."
Liberal senator, who has reiterated his support for Trump while on taxpayer-funded
secondment to the UN, calls on government to 'reconsider' refugee intake
quintal -> MadDuck
Hi mad duck
Actually there is a point about reducing migration that can be rationally made. It's not
about racial purity or demonising refugees but the prospect of high population growth brings
great challenges and a. Need to assess what population Australia can reasonably sustain.
We are, Antarctica aside, the driest, ,soil poor of all the continents. To put further
pressure on our resources by too great a population increase is not wise.
It's interesting that Australia has benefited greatly by migration since WW2. The
enriching of our economic and cultural fabric has been incontestable. But maybe we've reached
the safe limits of population growth. Even the Bernadis and Abetz clans have reached here
relatively recently.
It's also instructive that those countries with relatively small populations that invest in
people as opposed to mines are economically more successful than are we. Think Singapore,
Sweden, Switzerland. Taken together they have about half of Austrlias population and are
amongst the strongest economies in the world.
So there's an irony that Senator BErnadi, detestable in so many of his statements, makes some
common purpose with environmental groups .
Ironic but I suppose that it is what it is and the issue needs some careful thought.
Cheers
Alpo88 1h ago
"Cory Bernardi warns One Nation will rise if migration not halved"....
Liberal Civil War- Dispatch from the front N. 22:
General Bernardi, commander of the Third Infantry Division of the Confederate Army of the
Australian Conservatives has sent an ultimatum to the besieged contingent of the Army of the
Waffler in Canberra warning that an all out assault, with a taking-no-prisoners rule is being
prepared unless the Waffler's Army surrenders immediately and unconditionally.
Commander in Chief Gen. Turnbull is reported to be in his bunker, frantically thinking how to
respond to the ultimatum: a task that he has described to his entourage as "squaring the
circle in a way that nobody notices I have failed in the task"....
A review of the young stormtroopers deployed to protect the bunker is planned for this
afternoon....
Facebook Twitter
McMurdo 1h ago
What an intelligent approach, there is criticism of policy so drop it quickly.
Call me old fashioned but I thought it was the responsibility of Governments to develop
sound policies in the interests of the country and EXPLAIN them to the voters so that they can
get understanding and support. This seems to be way beyond our politicians now, they throw
anything up in the air and abandon it when there is opposition. So much for integrity and
conviction.
Of course Bernardi is being opportunistic here and using scare tactics to get a policy
change he wants for other reasons. That he even tries this stunt indicates the very low point
our
politics has reached. In a healthy system his views would be disowned and rejected instantly.
Our brave pollies will spend days wafting in the wind waiting to see how much support he gets
before they declare a position, if they manage that at all. Pathetic.
ajostu 1h ago
OK I loathe Bernardi, but it's time to look at a bit of history.
John Howard has admitted that his "Stop The Boats" policy was a bait-and-switch scheme to
soften the public's resistance to higher immigration. Other ministers from the period
(Costello, Vanstone) have supported this version of history.
So while pushing the we-hate-boat-people line, Howard doubled the regular immigration intake.
Rudd, Gillard and Abbott have all gone along with this in a completely bipartisan fashion.
Why? Because it's what lazy, uninnovative Australian business wants. More people, business
expands, CEO bonus, that's all that matters.
Meanwhile people (particularly in Sydney and Melbourne) are noticing that their quality of
life has gone down. Cities are crowded, traffic appalling, and young people can't buy a house
(though immigration is a small factor in that last one).
Both Labour and Liberal have completely buggered up regular immigration. The 457 scheme is a
disaster, below-minimum-wage pseudo-slavery is widespread, and "students" are rorting the
system left right and centre.
And the Greens do SFA because they'd have to choose between genuine sustainability (which is,
you know, what Greens are supposed to be on about) and an open migration policy (because they
don't have the political skills to separate refugees from the overall intake).
This morning an economic think tank recommended doubling the immigration intake, saying it
would "increase per capita GDP" despite the fact that per capita GDP has gone backwards due to
increased migration.
If you halved the current migration rate it would return to historical levels, and be
better for the economy and for the well being of the people already here.
Of course Bernardi doesn't care about any of that he only cares about One Nation. But if One
Nation is the only party proposing a reduction in immigration, they'll get a lot of votes.
FredLurk 1h ago
I hate to agree with Bernadi, but he's dead right. Look at what is happening in Paris right
now. Ask yourself, do we want this here?
The problem is not with migration in this country, but with the 457 visa program where
employers, like Caltex and 7Eleven, pay below award wages and provide poor working conditions.
This flows on into the broader community festering discontent amongst Australians who
see their jobs and employment conditions disappearing.
But Bernadi and his ilk choose to distract from corporate malfeasance by playing the racist
card, and thereby protecting the vested interests of the Coalition.
Filipio 1h ago
I happen to be a fan of immigration to Australia. It's enriched Australian society
enormously. At the same time can we please move on from seeing GDP as some kind of sacred
measure of all that is holy and good, even in economic terms?
Rather than focusing on immigrants, how about a thoughtful discussion of growth: what it
means, how it ought to be measured, what's good and bad about it, and moving forward, what we
as a society want in those terms. Immigration will assume a far more meaningful place in the
context of a discussion of that kind, which would hopefully incorporate a strong environmental
focus. But even in terms of the latter, issues of sustainability are not simply about raw
population numbers but ultimately about lifestyle, modes of consumption, and energy use.
What's really interesting here are the telling contradictions within the governing party
between its fundamental commitments to neo-liberalism and ever-increasing growth in GDP as
absolute goods, and its stumbling attempts to also embrace political reaction against the
economic consequences of both policies.
In that sense Bernardi is a useful idiot - plays to reaction through the red herring of
prejudice (plus allowing the extreme right in the LNP to vent a bit of steam) while remaining
rock-solid behind neo-liberalism and free markets -- at least, when it comes to the free
movement of capital anyway (though the LNP has very astutely used various categories of
working visa as an attempt to gradually entrench the movement of labour also, though not in
any 'free' sense, just in the interests of maximizing profits).
jack1878 -> Filipio 43m ago
"I happen to be a fan of immigration to Australia. It's enriched Australian society
enormously."
Yes it has, but Australia is now a vastly different place to what it was in the 40s, 50s
and 60s. Back then there was plenty of land and housing, jobs available to anyone who wanted
them, and the roads and hospitals were virtually empty.
Australia isn't like that anymore and anyone living in the major cities knows how
overcrowded they currently are. The 2 bedroom flat opposite me is being rented out and 7
people are living in it. Also, one of the garages downstairs is being occupied by a small
family of three..
Is this what we really want? Just because a policy worked well 50 years ago doesn't mean it
should be retained for eternity.
jack1878 1h ago
I hate to say it, but I agree with Bernardi on the issue of immigration--but not much else.
To still be carrying out a policy of mass immigration in these disastrous economic times ie.
no jobs, shortage of housing, overcrowded roads, hospitals etc. is a recipe for social unrest.
To cause such social unrest merely to prop up an overheated housing market and create a large
pool of cheap labour for the benefit of wealthy elites is about as irresponsible a policy as
you can get.
James Graham 45m ago
We need pro family policies if we wish to reduce migration. Working women must be given
bigger incentives.
Abolish the tax breaks for novated lease vehicles for a start. Lift the GST on cars to 15%.
And lets offer even higher incentives to have the 2nd and 3rd child.
SisterRhino -> NambuccaBarry 34m ago
I note even CNN ( Clinton Network News!) that has championed the same views of Donald Trump
that you have just outlined, is starting to distance itself from Hillary.
She's so tainted that she will be of no use to her benefactors if she does squeak across
the line. Who'd be dumb enough to be asking for the favours they've paid for given the
scrutiny she'd going to be under from hereon in?
Just watch....as her backers desert the ship, one by one, then all at once.
"... HEDGES: Well what feeds the hatred toward the west has nothing to do with Donald Trump. It has to do with the one-thousand-pound iron fragmentation bombs and cruise missiles and 155 artillery shells that are being dropped all over areas that ISIS controls. ..."
"... That is a far more potent engine of rage than anything Trump says and I think sometimes we forget what we' re doing and the state terror that is delivered day in and day out on Muslims in areas that have been opened up by these failed states because of our military adventurism in countries like Libya and Iraq. ..."
"... : Chris the recently released WikiLeaks indicate that Hillary Clinton is involved in conspiring in maintaining Israels nuclear dominance in the region and containing Irans nuclear development program. ..."
"... Yea, I mean shes quite upfront. I have to give her credit on that in terms of her militantly pro-Israel stance. She of course has courted quite successfully wealthy pro-Israeli donors attacking the Boycott Divestment Sanctions Movement. ..."
"... So one of the dangers of Clinton and shes called for a no fly zone over Syria. Well, people forget that when you institute a no fly zone, that is patrolled and that requires very heavy presence of US forces. ..."
HEDGES: Well what feeds the hatred toward the west has nothing to do with Donald Trump. It
has to do with the one-thousand-pound iron fragmentation bombs and cruise missiles and 155 artillery
shells that are being dropped all over areas that ISIS controls.
That is a far more potent engine of rage than anything Trump says and I think sometimes we
forget what we' re doing and the state terror that is delivered day in and day out on Muslims in areas
that have been opened up by these failed states because of our military adventurism in countries
like Libya and Iraq.
PERIES: So connect those two for us. Give us some examples of how the war on terror in the Middle
East, Syria in particular, is causing this kind of islamophobia here and our hesitancy about doing
humanitarian work by accepting refugees that are fleeing these wars and how it manifests itself in
the form of islamophobia here.
HEDGES: Well, islamophobia here is a doctrine that plays quite conveniently into the goals of
the corporate state in the same way that anti-communism once played into the goals of our capitalist
democracy. So the caricature of threats from the Muslim world independent of the actual possibility
of those threats has especially since 9/11, one of the corner stones of the argument that has been
used by the security and surveillance state to strip us of basic civil liberties, including for instance,
under the Obama administration, misinterpreting the 2001 authorization to use military force act
as giving the executive branch to right to assassinate American citizens. Of course I'm talking about
Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son.
So the rise of islamophobia has been largely independent of anything Muslims have done other than
perhaps initially the attacks of 9/11. The continued over 15 years of indiscriminate violence, industrial
violence, delivered on whole swaps of the Muslim world has stirred up the kind of hornet' s nest that
we' re seeing enraged not only among Muslims in the Muslim world but Muslims in Europe and many other
parts of the globe who despite Clinton' s rhetoric see this as a war against Muslims. I think that
although she speaks in kind of a softer and more tolerate tone, Clinton has been one of the main
architects of the attacks for instance in Libya that have given or empowered or given rise to groups
like ISIS. While Clinton' s rhetoric is certainly more palatable, she has been an enthusiastic supporter
that we are going to bomb our way into peace in the Muslim world.
PERIES: Chris give us a sense of the climate created by what both candidates eluded to that Muslims
in this country has to help us in terms of identifying potential terrorists and any kind of activities
in the community that might feed terrorists attacks here. What does this do to a society?
HEDGES: Well it turns us into a society of informers. I think we have to acknowledge how pervasive
the harassment is of Muslim Americans when they go through the airport, intrusive invasions of their
privacy by Homeland Security, the FBI, and others. We have to acknowledge that almost all of the
homegrown terrorist attacks that the FBI have broken have been orchestrated by the FBI usually with
people of marginal means and sometimes marginal intelligence being prodded and often provided supposed
equipment to carry out terrorist attacks. The racial profiling that has gone on coupled with the
rhetoric and this is very dangerous because if you take already an alienated youth and subject it
to this kind of unrelenting harassment, then you provide a recipe for homegrown radicalism.
So yes it' s once again an effort in this case on part of the Trump rhetoric to blame the Muslims
for not only their own victimhood but for terrorist attacks that are being driven by jihadist whom
the vast majority, 99 plus percent of the Muslim world has no contact with and probably very little
empathy for, I mean there' s 4 to 5 million Muslims, I think I have that right, in the United States.
Most of them have integrated quite successfully into American. Unlike in Britain because Muslim immigrants
in the United States whereas in Europe, France, they came over as laborers, we largely absorbed Muslim
professional classes, doctors, engineers, and others and the Muslim community in the United States
is pretty solidly middle class and professional.
... ... ...
PERIES: Chris the recently released WikiLeaks indicate that Hillary Clinton
is involved in conspiring in maintaining Israels nuclear dominance in the region and containing
Irans nuclear development program. Your comments on those WikiLeaks.
HEDGES:Yea, I mean shes quite upfront. I have to give her credit on that in terms of
her militantly pro-Israel stance. She of course has courted quite successfully wealthy
pro-Israeli donors attacking the Boycott Divestment Sanctions Movement. And she has and will
continue what are considered Israeli interests in the region which are not our interest. Israel
pushed very heavily for an invasion of Iraq as a way to destroy a powerful state within the
region. That did not serve our interests at all. In fact, it elevated to the dominant position
within the region, Iran and out of these vacuums gave birth to these jihadist groups and got us
embroiled in wars that we can never win.
So one of the dangers of Clinton and shes called for a no fly zone over Syria. Well, people
forget that when you institute a no fly zone, that is patrolled and that requires very heavy
presence of US forces. Not just air forces but ground stations, radar stations,
anti-aircraft missile batteries. Shes quite openly calling for a further escalation for American
involvement in the Syrian quagmire which of course again we did so much to create by along with
our allies, the Saudis and Qataris and others pumping so many arms in them. I think we gave a
billion dollars worth of arms to Syrian rebels as if you can control where those arms go, just in
the last year.
"... The international community considers backroom corporate trade deals as one example of the general problem of fragmentation. The US government tries to end-run the UN Charter with NATO. It tries to end-run ILO conventions with the WTO. It tries to end-run economic and social rights with ISDS. It tries to end-run sovereign debt principles (e.g. A/69/L.84) with the Paris Club and the IMF. In response, the international community has been working to synthesize the different legal regimes in an objective way. ..."
"... Corporate special pleading gets subsumed in old-time diplomacy, finding common ground, so the pitched-battle narrative is absent, but when Zayas comes out and says ISDS cannot negate human rights, this is the context. They're trying to preserve a non-hierarchical regime in which the only absolute is the purposes and principles of the UN: peace and development, which comes down to human rights. ..."
The international community considers backroom corporate trade deals as one example of
the general problem of fragmentation. The US government tries to end-run the UN Charter with NATO.
It tries to end-run ILO conventions with the WTO. It tries to end-run economic and social rights
with ISDS. It tries to end-run sovereign debt principles (e.g. A/69/L.84) with the Paris Club
and the IMF. In response, the international community has been working to synthesize the different
legal regimes in an objective way.
Corporate special pleading gets subsumed in old-time diplomacy, finding common ground,
so the pitched-battle narrative is absent, but when Zayas comes out and says ISDS cannot negate
human rights, this is the context. They're trying to preserve a non-hierarchical regime in which
the only absolute is the purposes and principles of the UN: peace and development, which comes
down to human rights.
"... Reality dictates ...abstaining or voting for anyone other than Donald Trump is a de facto vote for Hillary Clinton. As POTUS she has declared her intentions of imposing a (Libyan style) "NO FLY" zone over Syria, to "Obliterate" "Iran" and "Russia", confront China and expand the globalization of the American economy. ..."
"... For the sake of all humanity, criminal warmonger Hillary must be voted out on Nov.8 2016 ..."
"... While what you say may be half true, you miss the point entirely. It's irrelevant weather or not Trump keeps his words as we have no control over that anyway. What we do have control over however is not giving a mandate to Hillary's criminal war making intentions and the only way to do that under the circumstances, is to vote her out, by voting Trump in period. ..."
"... The clever economic left realizes that although Trump has some of dem ebul GOP economic ideas, he's more sensible than Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... I think b should've taken note of the Hillary camp's attempt in recent days to play down her militarism. ..."
"... IMO the best strategy is to vote Trump in battleground states and vote Green everywhere else. ..."
"... Very early on, I was of the opinion that Hillary's negatives were so high that her run should be seen as electing the Republican. But neocon defections, DNC collusion, 'sheepdog' Sanders, and more convinced me that the establishment really does want a Hillary coronation. ..."
"... The lesser-evilists are assuming that there aren't enough votes, so you are just taking votes from the lesser evil and helping the greater evil. True if their assumption is true, that there aren't enough votes for a third party to win. ..."
"... Another third-party argument is sending a signal to party leaders and the public that there are voters who despise the oligarchy candidates. That would improve growth of a third party (it would also attract oligarchy influence to them). ..."
"... We need to stop letting the corporate press goad us into fighting over trivia - transgenders in bathrooms! Trump's hair! Clinton's smile! - and focus on what is truly crucial. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton is a monster and God help us all if she wins. I envision President Clinton with perfectly coiffed hair with a rosy plastic smile (kudos to her mortician) giving a perfectly written speech with all the trendy buzzwords (celebrating diversity, helping the middle class, sustainable energy, etc.etc.) while outside the world burns. ..."
"... Whatever you do, no matter how much the corporate press tells you that Trump is 'finished,' go to the polls and vote. Because for the first time in decades, a US presidential election matters. ..."
"... Trump will meet with much resistance from the establishment. His worst instincts will be constrained. That is not true for Hillary & Co. ..."
"... A loss for a corrupted Democratic Party is best for the country. A strong showing by Greens is a further embarrassment. The left can then build on a solid foundation. ..."
"... Chomsky advocated for voting for Hillary in battleground states and Greens elsewhere. ..."
"... I do not believe that the 'Third Way' Democratic Party can be changed from within. The example of Obama and Hillary should have disabused any progressive of such fantasies. ..."
"... Trump, both domestically and internationally is the best breath of fresh air in American politics since FDR. Of course purists and utopians might disagree, but when he wins on Nov.8,I'll treat that day as the second 4th of July. America first, at long last, instead of traitors for zion. Hoo haw. Todays Wapoo intimates Trump anti-Semite. And Colin liar Powell is for the Hell Bitch. ..."
"... This elections cycle almost all fake leftist and NeoCon, both Democratic Party and Republicans voting for Hillary. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton's foreign policy is taken straight out of "A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties" by Oded Yinon, also known as The Yinon Plan. ..."
"... I am a spectator outside the USSA. USSA policies affect all of humanity on planet earth. A vote for the Clinton adds another potential 16 years reign in the WH, a continuation of the corruption, death, destruction and endless wars. ..."
"... Since the 1990s in Arkansas then in D.C., their retirement is long overdue. Stop the Clintons from enriching themselves on the public purse…foreign and domestic. ..."
"... OMg Illary cares about women's rights but takes $millions in donations from such likes as KSA, Qatar. Not to mention, countries that are steeped in poverty. Take a look at the donors to the Clinton Foundation. ..."
Some highlights of a recent Donald Trump
interview with Reuters:
U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Democrat Hillary Clinton's
plan for Syria would "lead to World War Three," because of the potential for conflict with military
forces from nuclear-armed Russia.
In an interview focused largely on foreign policy, Trump said defeating Islamic State is a
higher priority than persuading Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down,..
Trump questioned how Clinton would negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin after
demonizing him; blamed President Barack Obama for a downturn in U.S. relations with the Philippines
under its new president, Rodrigo Duterte;...
Trump's foreign policy talk is far more sane than Clinton's and her camp's. It is ludicrous
to event think about openly attacking Russian (or Syrian) troops in Syria with an al-Qaeda supporting
"no-Fly-Zone". Russia would respond by taking down U.S. planes over Syria. The Russian government
would have to do so to uphold its authority internationally as well as at home.
The U.S. could respond by destroying all Russian assets in and around Syria. It has the capabilities.
But then what? If I were Putin my next step would be a nuclear test shoot in Siberia - a big one
- to make a point and to wake up the rest of the world. I would also provide secret support to any
indigenous anti-U.S. movement anywhere. China would support Russia as its first line of self defense.
"What we should do is focus on ISIS. We should not be focusing on Syria," said Trump as he dined
on fried eggs and sausage at his Trump National Doral golf resort. "You're going to end up in
World War Three over Syria if we listen to Hillary Clinton.
"You're not fighting Syria any more, you're fighting Syria, Russia and Iran, all right? Russia
is a nuclear country, but a country where the nukes work as opposed to other countries that talk,"
he said.
...
On Russia, Trump again knocked Clinton's handling of U.S.-Russian relations while secretary of
state and said her harsh criticism of Putin raised questions about "how she is going to go back
and negotiate with this man who she has made to be so evil," if she wins the presidency.
On the deterioration of ties with the Philippines, Trump aimed his criticism at Obama, saying
the president "wants to focus on his golf game" rather than engage with world leaders.
The last two points are important. Trump, despite all his bluster, knows about decency. What is
the point of arrogantly scolding negotiation partner who have the power to block agreements you want
or need?
Why blame Russia for hacking wide open email servers when
no Russian speakers were involved? Why blame Duterte? It is the U.S. that has a long
history of violent racism in the Philippines and FBI agents
committed false flag "terrorism" is Duterte's home town Davao. Bluster may paper over such history
for a moment but it does not change the facts or helps solving problems.
Trump's economic policies would be catastrophic for many people in the U.S. and elsewhere.
But Hillary Clinton would put her husband, the man who deregulated Wall Street, back in charge of
the economy. What do people expect the results would be?
The points above may be obvious and one might be tempted to just pass them and dig into some nig-nagging
of this or that election detail. But the above points as THE most important of any election. The
welfare of the people is not decided with some "liberal" concession to this or that niche of the
general society. The big issues count the most. Good or evil flow from them. Trumps principle, and
I think personal position, is leaning towards peaceful resolution of conflicts. Clinton's preference
is clearly, as her history shows, escalation and general belligerence. It is too risky to vote for
her.
Reality dictates ...abstaining or voting for anyone other than Donald Trump is a de facto vote
for Hillary Clinton. As POTUS she has declared her intentions of imposing a (Libyan style) "NO
FLY" zone over Syria, to "Obliterate" "Iran" and "Russia", confront China and expand the globalization
of the American economy.
Thus all Americans by default and their own actions will have given her a mandate to do her
will and thereby become complicit in their own economic destruction, war crimes and potentially
starting world war three and a planetary thermonuclear holocaust.
Striped of all the other none issue nonsense and distractions the critical choice we are all
faced with making is that simple. And one that will for all eternity weigh on our collective souls
conscience.
For the sake of all humanity, criminal warmonger Hillary must be voted out on Nov.8 2016
Why are you still beating on that worn out tin drum of yours, Dr. Jill Stein isn't going anywhere,
not even if she politically walks on water. You keep at it like the dog in a manger, gnawing on
the remains of some desiccated bone. What you (and others maintaining your OPINIONS) have become
is stool pigeons to land some herd of discontents into the position of self inflicted voter suppression,
their votes without effect on the outcome of the election. If you and the others weren't so completely
innumerate, you would realise the first division in the election was between elegible participants
and non-participants. Of the participants only voters for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump
will decide the eventual winner (with the highly probable event of assisted voting machine fraud).
All other votes are the effete delusions of some morally deranged cult. There Is No Alternative
(TINA) is the illusion of your political kindred is saying there is an alternative. You cannot
point out even one city commission in the top thousand that either the 'Greens' or 'Libertarians'
exercise control over, at best there may be a Communist mayor somewhere in that number. If perchance
Dr Stein were to win, where is the political support necessary to conduct governance at any level?
No your ideas come from Walt Disney directly - they are cartoon delusions. You need to carry a
warning whenever you express your opinions, like those posted on nuts - My opinion may contain
delusions.
About the only ability for today's voter to have any effect on the voting system is to provide
an unexpected aggregate that would draw back the curtains to expose the expectations and machinations
of the vote counters. Voting as you suggest will only allow those manipulations to remain hidden
- not effective voting by any measure, nor is it voting one's interests. If any of your ilk have
a counter argument that will stand scrutiny, please have at it, otherwise your silence after once
stating your opinion might be your best course to follow.
While what you say may be half true, you miss the point entirely. It's irrelevant weather or
not Trump keeps his words as we have no control over that anyway. What we do have control over
however is not giving a mandate to Hillary's criminal war making intentions and the only way to
do that under the circumstances, is to vote her out, by voting Trump in period.
Anything else amounts to a dereliction of patriotic duty and criminal negligence.
The idea that there is any real "choice" here to be had, other than doing what's of a critical
necessity at this point in time, is totally delusional in and of itself buying into the illusion
that we have any real freedom of choices here. Sorry we don't have that luxury.
We don't have a choice, other than to resister our protest vote against the political establishment
which clearly doesn't want to see Trump win the presidency of the US empire under any circumstances.
Given how close trump has gotten to within the reach of taking real power as commander in chief
of the worlds most powerful imperial empire, the deep state and political establishment will make
sure that, that threat will never happen again, if they even allow him to live very much longer.
So no second chances here for us all in another 4-8 years down the road, nor for all the men,
women and children victims to be killed by wars in all the countries Hillary has set her cross-hair
sights on as soon as she takes control of the entire state apparatus from the white house.
Time to get off our asses and get real here, and back on the right side of history, if but
for once in our lifetimes.
Talk is cheep but action is not. As in Trump's Gettysburg address he said "we have now crossed
the Rubicon" and heaven or hell there's no going back to the status quo, as he's already declared
war on the corrupt state department, the media and the whole of the elite's political establishment.
"So there's but one choice left to make here, and it's which side are you fighting on?"
According to an email from Marissa Astor, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook's assistant,
to Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, the campaign knew Trump was going to run, and pushed
his legitimacy as a candidate.
WikiLeaks' release shows that it was seen as in Clinton's best
interest to run against Trump in the general election. The memo, sent to the Democratic National
Committee (DNC) also reveals the DNC and Clinton campaign were strategizing on behalf of their
candidate at the very beginning of the primaries. "We think our goals mirror those of the DNC,"
stated the memo, attached to the email under the title "muddying the waters."
The memo named Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz, and Ben Carson as wanted candidates. "We need to be
elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press
to them seriously," the memo noted.
Clinton was widely presumed to be the Democratic presidential nominee long before the primaries
began. This assumption was held by the mainstream media and the Democratic Party leadership.
Expecting Clinton to be the nominee, the DNC and Clinton campaign developed strategies for
the general election.
In June, hacker Guccifer 2.0 released an opposition research dossier on Trump, dated December
19, 2015. Coincidentally, no other opposition research dossiers were released by Guccifer 2.0
from the DNC hacks.
It was in the best interest of Clinton, and therefore the Democratic Party, that Trump was
the Republican presidential nominee. Polls indicated Sen. Rubio, Gov. Kasich, or almost any
other establishment Republican would likely beat Clinton in a general election. Even Cruz,
who is reviled by most Republicans, would still maintain the ability to rally the Republican
Party-especially its wealthy donors-around his candidacy. Clinton and Democrats expected the
FBI investigation into her private email server would serve as a major obstacle to Clinton's
candidacy, and the public's familiarity with her scandals and flip-flopping political record
put her at a disadvantage against a newcomer. Donald Trump solved these problems.
All the Clinton campaign had to do was push the mainstream media in the general direction
of covering and attacking Trump as though he was the star of the Republican presidential primaries.
As the presumed Democratic nominee, whomever she decided to dignify by responding to-whether
the comments were directed at her or not-would be presumed to be the spokesperson, or nominee,
of the Republican Party.
"Clinton, Trump trade insults as rhetoric heats up between front-runners," read the headline
from a CNN article in September 2015. "Hillary Clinton Seizes On Donald Trump's Remarks to
Galvanize Women," read a New York Times headline from December. Several media outlets criticized
the mainstream media obsession with Trump, but despite a few concerns that the media was propping
up his legitimacy as a candidate with their constant news coverage, it continued unabatedly.
The mainstream media was more than willing to do the Clinton campaign and DNC's work for
them by creating a narrative that the 2016 presidential elections was about Hillary Clinton
vs. Donald Trump.
Hey T bear are you Aussie, their was a poster T bear banging on in Aussie press, quite liked your
arguments as of now.
As Trump policy I predicted it (quite like Alexander Mercouris ) by 1. observation of what is
said, what was not said and what you can tease out of the rest. After the 2 debate i was convinced
that Trump would not declare "Assad must go " Just for this he has my consent to be POTUS.
How does the saying go?... 'oh what a tangled web we weave when we seek to deceive". Hence
I don't believe that if Hillary actually chose Trump to be who she ran against, that she (nor
all the expert politico's around her)had any real idea of what a Pandora's box they were opening.
Same thing go's for Trump, whom I don't think understood how fate and destiney would seize
him and transform his role in life into a renegade against the systemic corruption of the deep
state's political establishment.
Now only a year back, I would never have thought and sooner die and be the last person on earth
to be plumbing for a megalomaniac character like billionaire Trump.
But when faced with the real prospect of a criminally indictable and clinically insane, maniacal
psychopathic personality like Hillary, having her finger on the red nuclear button, my instincts
for survival and that of all humanity, informs my rational judgements and actions.
And that's essentially the basis on which I've decided that voting for Trump is the only sane
option left to try and avert more wars and the possibility of a thermonuclear disaster.
Very early on, I was of the opinion that Hillary's negatives were so high that her run should
be seen as electing the Republican. But neocon defections, DNC collusion, 'sheepdog' Sanders, and more convinced me that the establishment
really does want a Hillary coronation.
"About 30% of what's on Veterans Today is patently false. About 40% of what I write is at
least purposefully partially false. Because if I didn't write false information I wouldn't
be alive. I simply have to do that."
Your points are good but there is no need for this vitriol: the opposing points are also good
as far as they go.
You believe that a third party is the only way out of the 2-party oligarchy sham. True only
if it works, which it hasn't. You are assuming that there are, or eventually would be enough voters.
That argument is missing so far. Provide that evidence and you beat the lesser-evilists.
The lesser-evilists are assuming that there aren't enough votes, so you are just taking votes
from the lesser evil and helping the greater evil. True if their assumption is true, that there
aren't enough votes for a third party to win.
You both need to get that evidence before getting angry.
Another third-party argument is sending a signal to party leaders and the public that there
are voters who despise the oligarchy candidates. That would improve growth of a third party (it
would also attract oligarchy influence to them).
I think that your anger would be better directed at the problem (take out MSM stations and
staff and oligarchy generally). Between ourselves, let's get the evidence on vote effects.
Consider each state a 'battleground' state, there are national aggregates to consider that,
if nothing else, shed light on the historical contest for future historians to inspect and pass
judgement, particularly should the qualified 'not participating' outnumber the qualified participants.
No telling what future criteria will be about the validity of sub-median voter turnout, in some
places it is enough to invalidate a poll, that could easily spread.
@ 12
No, not Aussie but have friends who were. I hold the Australian government to be the hiding
place for the 3rd Reich, so not likely any beneficial relationship will exist.
@ fairleft | Oct 26, 2016 8:05:28 AM | 14
Experience informs those who rely on 'ad hominem' as defence against another's argument are
incapable of mounting a counter argument using facts. Furthermore, with few exception most so
doing have developmental problems and have not matured much past adolescence, they going
through life as man-children. Check back when you have matured. And that is definitely an ad
hominem - to the person.
We need to stop letting the corporate press goad us into fighting over trivia - transgenders
in bathrooms! Trump's hair! Clinton's smile! - and focus on what is truly crucial.
It's rational to worry about Trump. Yes, he has a good track record of getting along with business
partners when it counts, but he has no track record in governance. But Hillary Clinton is a monster
and God help us all if she wins. I envision President Clinton with perfectly coiffed hair with
a rosy plastic smile (kudos to her mortician) giving a perfectly written speech with all the trendy
buzzwords (celebrating diversity, helping the middle class, sustainable energy, etc.etc.) while
outside the world burns.
Whatever you do, no matter how much the corporate press tells you that Trump is 'finished,'
go to the polls and vote. Because for the first time in decades, a US presidential election matters.
Trump will meet with much resistance from the establishment. His worst instincts will be constrained.
That is not true for Hillary & Co.
A loss for a corrupted Democratic Party is best for the country. A strong showing by Greens
is a further embarrassment. The left can then build on a solid foundation.
@fair Chomsky advocated for voting for Hillary in battleground states and Greens elsewhere.
I do not believe that the 'Third Way' Democratic Party can be changed from within. The example
of Obama and Hillary should have disabused any progressive of such fantasies.
Trump, both domestically and internationally is the best breath of fresh air in American politics
since FDR.
Of course purists and utopians might disagree, but when he wins on Nov.8,I'll treat that day as
the second 4th of July.
America first, at long last, instead of traitors for zion.
Hoo haw. Todays Wapoo intimates Trump anti-Semite.
And Colin liar Powell is for the Hell Bitch.
The U.S. could respond by destroying all Russian assets in and around Syria. It has the capabilities.
But then what? If I were Putin my next step would be a nuclear test shoot in Siberia - a big
one - to make a point and to wake up the rest of the world.
Russia's "deescalation" procedure (in reality it could be viewed both ways) is a take off of
several strategic bombers (TU-160 from Engels) and deployment into the Arctic Region with subsequent
launch of salvo of cruise missiles (Kh-102) armed with nuclear warheads into the polygons or uninhabited
spaces. Putting all RVSN (nuclear strategic missile forces) on the immediate readiness (Combat
Station) is also an option.
There are certain ways, including diplomatic ones, to make "partners"
more attentive to the events. Plus, most likely, the price, which US and NATO would pay in case
some moron will decide to eliminate Russian Forces in Syria, will be very high purely militarily
and, especially, reputation-wise.
Attack on Russian Forces in Syria will also be the beginning
of the end of NATO, if not the outright collapse. In the end, Russia has means to directly conventionally
counter US, just this last quarter alone Russian Navy took delivery of 100+ cruise and ASMs of
Kaliber and Onyx-classes. Contingencies have been counted and planned for.
Trump's foreign policy summed up in a 35% levy threat on Ford exporting jobs to Mexico. Read my
lips ...! Nails the underlying tensions in the Race for the Place. The Big "F__k You!" election... Even the spinless Bernie S. is slithering into criticism of Klinton and the Wall St Gang. "Michael Moore Explains Why TRUMP Will Win"
James Clapper thinks the Russians just might be serious.....
'...says he wouldn't put it past Russia to "to shoot down an American aircraft" if a no-fly
zone is imposed over Syria.'
A loss for a corrupted Democratic Party is best for the country. A strong showing by Greens
is a further embarrassment. The left can then build on a solid foundation.
We are on the same wavelength. YES , we can't have Green and Democratic Party at the
same time. First eliminates the Democratic party in this election cycle. You can't eat your cake
and have it too . Therefore, voting against Democratic Party is my first priority.
This elections cycle almost all fake leftist and NeoCon, both Democratic Party and Republicans
voting for Hillary.
Hillary Clinton's foreign policy is taken straight out of "A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen
Eighties" by Oded Yinon, also known as The Yinon Plan.
Here are are a few illustrative excerpts:
"The Western front, which on the surface appears more problematic, is in fact less complicated
than the Eastern front, in which most of the events that make the headlines have been taking place
recently. Lebanon's total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire
Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that
track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas
such as in Lebanon, is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the
dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. Syria
will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such
as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi'ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni
state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and
the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in
northern Jordan. This state of affairs will be the guarantee for peace and security in the area
in the long run, and that aim is already within our reach today.
Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate
for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is
stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat
to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before
it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation
will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking
up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along
ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible."
Now compare this to what Gen. Wesley Clarke revealed about the lead-up to the Iraq War. Six
weeks later, I saw the same officer, and asked: "Are we still going to attack Iraq?" He said:
"Sir, it's worse than that. He said – he pulled up a piece of paper off his desk – he said: "I
just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense's office. It says we're going to attack and destroy
the governments in 7 countries in five years – we're going to start with Iraq, and then we're
going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran."
This document, and the events which have followed its publication, should lay to rest once
and for all any illusions we might have harboured in relation to the various wars in the Middle
East.
The depths of the associated treason and treachery are simply breathtaking and will continue in
overdrive should Hillary Rodent Clinton be elected President.
The only answer is eliminating the pre-selection mechanism that delivers the 2-candidate,
elephant/jackass non-choice every election.
This is the election to do so: No to Clinton, no to Trump
jfl, I have always admired and read your comments here on MoA.
Sadly your posit means either of these two candidates will be (s)elected. Third Party rise
in the USSA Will. Not. Happen. Anytime .Soon. Third Party candidates will not attract the ->$7
+ billions required to run for the presidency. The status quo prevails.
So, in this very close election, wherein Soros told Bloomberg Hillary is a done deal,
http://toprightnews.com/the-fix-is-in-george-soros-says-hillary-election-a-done-deal-despite-trump-landslide/
Amerikans are left with these two options; voting for the least dangerous of the two:
[.] The media needs to be destroyed. And although voting for Trump won't do it, it's something.
Essentially, I am voting for Trump because of the people who don't want me to, and I believe I
must register my disgust with Hillary Clinton.
I am not of the mindset that any vote not for Trump is a vote for Hillary, but a vote for Trump
is a vote against Hillary. And I need to vote against Hillary. I need to vote against the media.
After the last debate, when no outlet "fact checked" Hillary's lie that her opposition to the
Heller decision had anything to do with children, or her lie that the State Department didn't
lose $6 billion under her leadership, I couldn't hold out any longer.
A Trump administration at least will include people I trust in positions that matter. I don't
know if they will be able to hold him completely in check, but I know a Clinton administration
will include people who have been her co-conspirators in corruption, and there won't even be a
media to hold her accountable.
The Wikileaks emails have exposed an arrogant cabal of misery profiteers who hold everyone,
even their fellow travelers deemed not pure enough, in contempt. These bigots who've made their
fortune from government service should be kept as far away from the levers of power as the car
keys should be kept from anyone named Kennedy on a Friday night. My one vote against it will not
be enough, but it's all I can do and I have to do all I can do.
I won't stop being critical of Trump when he deserves it; I won't pretend someone is handing
out flowers when they're shoveling BS. But I'd rather have BS shoveled out of a president than
our tax dollars shoveled to a president's friends and political allies.
The Project Vertias videos exposed a corrupt political machine journalists would have been
proud to expose in the past. The Wikileaks emails pulled back the curtain on why that didn't happen
– journalists are in on it. I can't pretend otherwise, and I have no choice but to oppose it.
[.]
I oppose much of what Donald Trump has said, but I oppose everything Hillary Clinton has done
and wants to do. And what someone says, no matter how objectionable, is less important than what
someone does, especially when it's so objectionable. A personal moral victory won't suffice when
the stakes are so high. As such, I am compelled to vote against Hillary by voting for the only
candidate with any chance whatsoever of beating her – Donald Trump.
~ ~ ~ I am a spectator outside the USSA. USSA policies affect all of humanity on planet earth. A vote
for the Clinton adds another potential 16 years reign in the WH, a continuation of the corruption,
death, destruction and endless wars.
Since the 1990s in Arkansas then in D.C., their retirement is long overdue. Stop the Clintons
from enriching themselves on the public purse…foreign and domestic.
OMg Illary cares about women's rights but takes $millions in donations from such likes as KSA,
Qatar. Not to mention, countries that are steeped in poverty. Take a look at the donors to the
Clinton Foundation.
The Clintons have no shame, no conscience and they can't grow one.
@ 12
No, not Aussie but have friends who were. I hold the Australian government to be one of
the hiding place s for the 3rd Reich, so not likely any beneficial relationship will exist.
...
Posted by: Formerly T-Bear | Oct 26, 2016 8:55:20 AM | 23
There, fixed it.
ALL of the Christian Colonial countries have pro-AmeriKKKan fascist governments which studiously
ignore the Will Of the People.
I can't think of a single X-tian government which has NOT fallen into lockstep with the US - in
flagrant defiance of the electorate.
Since we can't outbid the ppl who are bribing them to defy us, the only practical solution is
rg the lg's pitchforks.
I don't post here much anymore but Dr. Stein is the head of an NGO called the Green Party not
a political party. She is busy protesting in North Dakota to get on Democracy Now instead of camping
out in Bernie States pushing those voters to continue our political revolution with her. It's
a shame really.
I've never had much respect for the Green Party and they have shown that they are incapable
of becoming an oppisition party in the U.S.
If you are interested in 3rd parties take some time to check out the Justice Party and Rocky
Anderson. They are not active this cycle. The Justice Party does not have an International Party
which is problematic for the Greens in the U.S. The name Justice is much better in rhetorical
fights than Green and they are not riddled with former Democratic whores.
With that said vote for Trump in swing states. He is the Lesser of Two Evils and this time
we are talking about Nuclear War with Russia. Clinton is still a Goldwater Girl.
The Green Party should, for all intents and purposes, be opposed to a billionaire lobbyist like
Soros, however Jill Stein's running mate, Baraka, was also a board member at the Center for Constitutional
Rights, CCR.
There are other connections between the Green Party and George Soros, but I haven't got time
to pursue this....
Anyone interested should look into the period from 2004 to 2011, when Baraka was the Executive
Director of the US Human Rights Network, and look at who was funding the HUNDREDS of NGOs that
make up the Human Rights Network.
Anyone who seriously considers that voting...or NOT voting...for either of these creatures
will change a goddamned thing is totally asleep to what has happened in the U.S. over the past
60+ years.
Today the path to total dictatorship in the U.S. can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen
and unheard by Congress, the President, or the people. Outwardly we have a Constitutional
government. We have operating within our government and political system … a well-organized
political-action group in this country, determined to destroy our Constitution and establish
a one-party state…. The important point to remember about this group is not its ideology
but its organization… It operates secretly, silently, continuously to transform our Government….
This group … is answerable neither to the President, the Congress, nor the courts. It is
practically irremovable."
- Senator William Jenner, 1954 speech
Unaffected by elections. Unaltered by populist movements. Beyond the reach of the law.
Say hello to America's shadow government.
A corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed
by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country, this shadow government represents
the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry.
No matter which candidate wins the presidential election, this shadow government is here
to stay. Indeed, as recent documents by the FBI reveal, this shadow government-also referred
to as "The 7th Floor Group"-may well have played a part in who will win the White House this
year.
And then go take care of your own business as best you can. The status quo will remain...hidden
in various ways as it has been hidden since the late '40s/early '50s...until it fails of its own
doing. No amount of talky talk talk, no amount of organizing, no amount of anything is going to
change what is up here. The best any of us can do is to try to reach one mind at a time.
Eisenhower tried to warn us in his farewell speech:
The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their Government have, in the
main, understood these truths and have responded to them well in the face of threat and stress.
But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise.
Of these, I mention two only.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty,
ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors
in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American
makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can
no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create
a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million
men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military
security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now
we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to
create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in
the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt
in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative
need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil,
resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous
rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the
proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods
and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture,
has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex,
and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal
government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces
of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university,
historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution
in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract
becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are
now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations,
and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also
be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive
of a scientific-technological elite.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations,
and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces,
new and old, within the principles of our democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme
goals of our free society.
"It is ludicrous to event think about openly attacking Russian (or Syrian) troops in Syria
with an al-Qaeda supporting "no-Fly-Zone". Russia would respond by taking down U.S. planes over
Syria. The Russian government would have to do so to uphold its authority internationally as well
as at home."
It is ludicrous. And stupid. It would also be tantamount to a declaration of war. And the chickenshit
US Military does NOT want a war with Russia, no matter what the daydreamers might say.
Stating that the Green Party can not win does not take reality into account. Only 18% of
voters participated in the primaries, the majority of voters are neither Democrats nor Republicans,
and the population of Millennials has surpassed that of the Baby Boomers.
Of course this doesn't change the fact that it is still very unlikely that Jill Stein will
win, but to imply that it's impossible is dishonest. I have always voted for the candidate that
I liked... never for the lesser of two evils. How different would the world be if Nader had either
won or gained popular support in 2000? Voting for the lesser of two evils has pushed the Republican
Party into crazy town with the Democratic Party taking their place.
I'm not arrogant enough to tell people how to vote, however I am arrogant enough to inform.
The lack of information and the inability to process more than one thought by both the voters
and the media, alternative included, is astounding.
I'm pretty sure that people on this site know what imposing a no-fly zone in Syria would entail.
How is this not advocating a war of aggression? Have we forgotten what the Nuremberg Tribunal
declared as the supreme international crime:
War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states
alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only
an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war
crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.
Not only do you have the current administration committing war crimes, you also have it's presidential
candidate openly advocating a war crime.
[.] The media needs to be destroyed. And although voting for Trump won't do it, it's something.
Essentially, I am voting for Trump because of the people who don't want me to, and I believe I
must register my disgust with Hillary Clinton.
I am not of the mindset that any vote not for Trump is a vote for Hillary, but a vote for Trump
is a vote against Hillary. And I need to vote against Hillary. I need to vote against the media.
After the last debate, when no outlet "fact checked" Hillary's lie that her opposition to the
Heller decision had anything to do with children, or her lie that the State Department didn't
lose $6 billion under her leadership, I couldn't hold out any longer.
A Trump administration at least will include people I trust in positions that matter. I don't
know if they will be able to hold him completely in check, but I know a Clinton administration
will include people who have been her co-conspirators in corruption, and there won't even be a
media to hold her accountable.
The Wikileaks emails have exposed an arrogant cabal of misery profiteers who hold everyone,
even their fellow travelers deemed not pure enough, in contempt. These bigots who've made their
fortune from government service should be kept as far away from the levers of power as the car
keys should be kept from anyone named Kennedy on a Friday night. My one vote against it will not
be enough, but it's all I can do and I have to do all I can do.
I won't stop being critical of Trump when he deserves it; I won't pretend someone is handing
out flowers when they're shoveling BS. But I'd rather have BS shoveled out of a president than
our tax dollars shoveled to a president's friends and political allies.
The Project Vertias videos exposed a corrupt political machine journalists would have been
proud to expose in the past. The Wikileaks emails pulled back the curtain on why that didn't happen
– journalists are in on it. I can't pretend otherwise, and I have no choice but to oppose it.
[.]
I oppose much of what Donald Trump has said, but I oppose everything Hillary Clinton has
done and wants to do. And what someone says, no matter how objectionable, is less important than
what someone does, especially when it's so objectionable. A personal moral victory won't suffice
when the stakes are so high. As such, I am compelled to vote against Hillary by voting for the
only candidate with any chance whatsoever of beating her – Donald Trump.
~ ~ ~ ~
It is long past due and time to stop the corrupt Clintons from continuing to enrich themselves
off the backs of taxpayers; domestic and foreign.
Illary professes to care about women's rights yet her Clinton Family Foundation takes in $millions
from the likes of KSA and Qatar. Moreover, there is no shame in taking donations from small countries
steeped in poverty. It is high time to retire the Clintons. They have no conscience. If you haven't
a conscience you can't grow one.
RayB - well stated arguments to vote for Trump. Thank you for taking the time to post them.
As folks here already know, Hillary's stated commitment to impose a No-Fly Zone in Syria is
a show stopper for me. There is no way I can support more tragedy in Syria let alone elsewhere.
Any who don't think such a policy position does not matter tells me you are a supporter of
the neoliberal/neocon imperial building for which I cannot support. This is what a vote for Clinton
means.
I may have had a different opinion or thought about the U.S. morphing into the world's top
cop had I ever been asked, but I wasn't. I never was asked to vote on it or for/against it. These
sneaky rastards intentions were never spelled out, never communicated succinctly to the populous
let alone debated on the merits. Nope. These rastards are hell bent on shoving their neoliberal/neocon/third
way/nwo crap down American's throats.
And no, Donald is and always will be an outsider. If you believe otherwise you've obviously
not been paying much attention to him over the last four years. That man did not win the primaries
by chance, he won them handily through skill and out maneuvering his opponents. He has spent the
last four years learning up close the plethora of challenges an open border presents to the security
of the U.S. He gets the issues revolving around policing and the growing police state. He has
formiddable experience making, losing and making money again. He's had a front seat to big business
and its multiple machinations for decades.
And a vote for Hillary is a vote for the Establishment and their utopian new world order, which
includes WAR, WAR, and MORE WAR!
Touching naivety about Trump however the probability of him being 'different', given his record,
doesn't support it.
The problem with Trump is he made a #1 strategic mistake in supporting and giving in to the
religious right.
Apart from anything else this gives zero confidence that he'd stand up to the far more powerful
neo-liberal, neo-con 'war party' establishment if he got into power. If he caves totally to a
bunch of fundamentalist nutjobs, who themselves are neo-liberal and neo-conservative to the core,
it doesn't actually inspire any confidence whatsoever. Take one example Mike Pence is a neo-conservative
'Israel firster'... through and through.
Somehow I can't see the world being a safer place if the US tears itself to pieces trying to
become a fundamentalist religious 'state', dominated by a bunch of people wanting 'the end of
times'....
Despite the "with some "liberal" concession to this or that niche of the general society."
comment, he has threatened the rights of the majority of voters and even the very existence of
some.
In case no one had noticed 50% of the population are women, add in all the other minorities and
you have a healthy 60-70% he is directly threatening.
Religious right candidates (like Cruz and Pence) are unelectable, ever more so with time as
organised religion dies in the US and their policies on women and LGBTI people, plus let's not
forget their endemic racism, become every more unacceptable.
And note ALL the 'religious right' people are total neo-conservatives, that almost make Clinton
look like a pacifist.
Trump has nearly destroyed the Republican Party. And he has done so by speaking truths that
are rarely heard in "polite company": our politicians are puppets and our elections are "rigged".
Sanders spoke against inequality but he didn't go as far as Trump. He couldn't because he was
merely a sheepdog, leading his young 'flock' to Hillary.
If Trump wins, it would be a body blow to the Democrats who play on peoples fears to get elected
but never deliver workable solutions. Rinse. Repeat.
The Greens can win in 2020 after Trump fails and both parties are in disarray.
<> <> <> <> <> <> <>
I'm not telling people how to vote. I encourage people to think for themselves. This is only
MY opinion.
Its hard to emotionally accept the occurrence of a nuclear war today.
You should see how Saker couldn't cope with it at first.
If Russian assets in Syria get destroyed. The response will not to be nuking that little island
in the Indian ocean far away from everything or Hawaii that is in the middle of nowhere.
"The U.S. could respond by destroying all Russian assets in and around Syria. It has the capabilities.
But then what?" Then the US activates also activates phase D which is NATO invasion of Russia
(from Ukraine, the Baltics, Scandinavia) and China (from South Korea, Japan + other US bases scatered
all over the US empire).
I don't believe Trump's domestic and foreign policy will be any more different or peacefull.
I think he would just be facing a lot more resistance. Either way, unless Hillary dies there is
no doubt she will be the next POTUS.
As a 50 something adult who lives in a state where we have a healthy voter population of Christian
Right, which you refer to as religious right, folk let me assure you that your description of
them is way the hell out of line. Your distasteful comment shows just how inexperienced and ignorant
you are about this very American voting block.
Why are you even weighing in here? You seem more of a DailyKos kinda poster. Posters around
here tend to avoid language that is as divisive as yours and that all knowing punkish tone you
are using.
Maybe you haven't been paying attention, but these neoconservative you are talking about have
been leaving his camp in droves in the preceeding months. Please do not lecture us on some secret
collusion between Trump and those wicked shits. There is no doubt they will be crawling back to
the Donald when he sits on the throne. But make no mistake: he will not forget the treachery of
these subjects, just as the constituents of these jokers will not forget how they abandoned the
Donald and revealed their obedience to the uniparty. These are the voters that hate "politicians,"
remember? I can't wait to see Paul Ryan squirm.
And GTFO with your lgbtq trolling nonsense. Time to relegate these babies to their safe spaces
so we can all breathe a sigh of relief to be rid of their loud, obnoxious mental anguish over
their own petty insignificance. Remember, too, that Syrian lives matter. Once the culture of death
is curtailed anroad, we can tackle the culture of death at home. Ancient Chinese wisdom for dumb
trolls.
Trump sounds very scary in many ways but most of the stuff he babbles on about should not worry
anybody. The President of the US does not rule the US. Power in the US is distributed into the
three branches of government -- the executive, Congress and the judiciary. Most of Trump's worst
ideas will have to pass through Congress and the judiciary. There is only one area where the President
has total dominion and that is foreign policy and making war.
The question should come down to who do we want want as the next President -- a candidate that
seeks war with Russia or one who wants to negotiate and make deals? Given that question we will
be better off with Trump.
If Trump wins he will not have any support in Congress so it makes no sense that he will succeed
in cutting taxes for the richest or build the Mexican wall or any of the other nutty things he
advocates. But making peace with the Russians is the one thing he could accomplish.
Also I support Trump because the Democratic National Committee has been completely taken over
by the Hillary and neocon wing of the Democratic Party. As long as they control the Democratic
Party (which they do today) any US president that is a Democrat means that WWIII is a real option
always on the table. Tax cuts for the rich, increased monopolization of the economy, increased
poverty rates, restrictions on abortions, etc, are quite secondary. [BTW, I have served on a county
Democratic central committee for the last two decades and worked on presidential campaigns for
Democrats going back to Eisenhower-Stevens in 1956 (except for Humphrey in 1968). What I have
witnessed is that the entire party has been taken over by the big money contributions going down
to city council elections.] A Trump victory will give us a small chance for the grass roots Democrats
to regain some influence in national Party affairs -- today we have none.
NOT voting requires no amount of talky talk talk, no amount of organizing, no amount of anything.
but if everyone did it the central government would become immediately irrelevant and collapse,
and if the central government collapsed, its attendant institutions would unravel, the primary
grifters would atrophy on the vine, and the deep state would be in deep shit.
@1 I think it makes little sense to convince progressives that the should vote for Hillary. And
it is absurd to insist that a vote for anyone other than Trump is "a de facto vote for Hillary
Clinton." The more people that don't vote for Hillary the better. And a vote for Jill Stein builds
up the Green Party. If we could get the message out that Hillary is just too dangerous and that
a real progressive choice is Jill Stein, then it is possible that a good number of people who
may have voted for Hillary (and who can't stomach Trump) could take away Clinton's margin of victory
. I am voting for Jill Stein, I live in NY, it is not practical, given past elections, to think
Trump could win NY. I would be wasting my vote to vote for Trump in NY. When I vote for Jill Stein,
that is another vote NOT going to Hillary Clinton. see video:
VIDEO
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In the U.S., 13% approve of the job Congress is doing, in line with approval
ratings ranging from 11% to 16% since August. The current rating is just four percentage points
above the record low of 9% recorded in November 2013.
'Selection' 2016 is a clown show. Trump, Hill & Bill, Bu$h I, Bu$h II even Romney are all heavily
involved is the drug money laundry business. A vote is a vote that legitimises the system.
I just cannot bring myself to vote for any of these criminals. Every vote legitimises this
freak show.
***Last letter of the alphabet does not work on my keyboard.
Donald Trump as the front runner and then candidate of the Republican Party didn't just happen.
This was by design, it was what the DNC and the Hillary campaign wanted and what they told the
media to do, to elevate him to leader of the pack. (
Wikileaks reveals
NOT voting requires no amount of talky talk talk, no amount of organizing, no amount of anything.
but if everyone did it the central government would become immediately irrelevant and collapse,
and if the central government collapsed, its attendant institutions would unravel, the primary
grifters would atrophy on the vine, and the deep state would be in deep shit.
A huge majority of the U.S. population is still caught up in the wonderful political virtual
reality game so generously provided for free by the Deep State-controlled media. They will clomp-clomp-clomp
on out of their zombified dwellings and vote for whichever of the two-dimensional VR candidates
for whom they root.
Ludicrous propaganda once again from b. B sure is trying his darndest to want to work for the
Russian state under his lord and saviour Putin the irresistible.
Trump himself said that China is a threat to the US. And he refuses to rule out no war with
China. Therefore Trump is likely wanting to start world War three by attacking China. How is that
worse than Hitlery wanting to attack Russia in Syria.
Trump will take Iraqs oil, make Mexico pay for a wall on the US side starting a war with them,
and so much more horrendous criminality
And Trumps foreign policy is "sane". What despicable ludicrous lies
Seriously people. If anyone believes either candidate means what they say, with all due respect,
you're delusional. No matter what, whomever "wins", they'll do as they're instructed to do.
Sorry b, with all due respect and gratitude for what you do, that includes you. Living up to
one's rhetoric is difficult, for anyone running for POTUS, impossible.
The only relevant vote against that crazy bitch from hell?
Of course:
Trump
A number of commentators have pointed out that the US could destroy Russia's assets - what they don't
point out is that this would expose US assets to destruction - which is why WW3 is almost inevitable
if the US escalates in Syria
A number of commentators have pointed out that the US could destroy Russia's assets - what they
don't point out is that this would expose US assets to destruction - which is why WW3 is almost
inevitable if the US escalates in Syria
Those who say: Its all a charade, voting changes nothing, Trump will do what he's told, etc. have
either given up in disgust or are purposely ignoring reality. The establishment is afraid of a
Trump win. There are numerous instances of their manipulating or attempting to manipulate the
election.
Vote Trump in swing states. Vote Green everywhere else.
So what? I've read that leak. Doesn't speak or reference in any way complicity of Trump's campaign
or even the repubs. I think you are framing that to fit your perspective that the DNC is the main
powerbroker, here. Whereas, the more hilarious conclusion to draw would be that, through their
arrogance and complete and utter disdain for the disaffected, they underestimated the threat of
a "fringe" candidate. Talk about the most fuckin' shortsighted political decision (all-time bone
head plays #1) this side of Joe Liebermann. God it makes me smile. And to think, the media played
right into Trump's tiny hands. That's showmanship. Face it: he is smarter and crafter and he knows
the people just a hair more.
Yes, we all want Trump to save the whales, make cake healthy, unite the Muslim world, make
college free, fix health-care, restore the rust-belt, solve climate - change while delivering
more jobs to energy sector, defeat Isis while not upsetting KSA, Qatar, et.al, and not go into
Syria.
I'll take one of those at least for my vote. Can you guess which one?
Lately I can understand why most people hate trump and love Clinton or vise versa. But I have
to say that both party's have great and solid points that needs to be taken serious the voting
will be harder then before that is for sure the only thing I hate about the politics is that when
the candidate has won all point's they have made in the election round will go out the window.
My dutch boyfriend just ask me why do they always put one man in the seat to control all why
not join forces will this not be a better option what do you think those he has a point or is
it just wrong thinking on his part.
Look at Greece. The progressives/socialists could not win. It seems that we need a nationalist.
It is a hard truth for progressives. The left has failed miserably to check the tyranny of
neolibcon Centrists who sell us all out to the highest bidder.
We need a Trump, like Russia needed a Putin. To right the ship.
When the dust settles, and lessons are learned, real progressives with integrity can rebuild.
Jimbo is giving a good daily rundown of the fraud coming in from the advance polls, & other things.
I like the one where the poll station workers are filling in the paper ballot votes after, for
those not voting. http://82.221.129.208/basepageq5.html
I don't know about Trump. But Hillary is a fucking nightmare. I don't live in America and I can't
vote there, but to those who do and can, please don't vote for that psycho bitch. Anyone else.
Anybody. But to cast a vote for her would be an exhibition of ignorance and willful sociopathy.
The world is begging you, please... Pleeeeeeeease. Do not vote for whole countries to be flushed
down the same toilet of meglomaniacal greed. Be nice. There are a lot of other people living on
this planet. We don't wanna kill anybody, we just wanna relax and thrive. Get with the program....
Trump loses in the Electoral College. Gets his own TV network and proceeds to preempt and co
opt 3rd party Constitution Party. Just like Dr. Ron Paul's campaign was co opted by supposed Tea
Party people who were in fact Conservative paid stooges. Right off the top the Cock brothers come
to mind.
@Jackrabbit 74
The Nationalist response is a natural one in the face of this unseen, centralising, globalist
beast. UK just had theirs with Brexit, and now we see the battle lines redrawn and subsequent
rally behind Corbyn. France could be next in Europe.
The left seems not to know where it is in the states... I agree it needs to fall into disarray
before rediscovering itself.
Trump has the momentum going down the straight, no one knows what the fuck is going on amongst
all the monkey shit being flung in the cage...but no one is oblivious to the the fact that the
establishment, from the neocon flight to the unprecedented MSM collusion and everything in-between,
is so OTT Trump. Too much so. It's what the progressive left always wanted, a hero like this,
to stand up to the machine.
All that money and all Hillary cam come up with is a naughty word and 'Never Trump' - almost
as if Trump goaded them into a shitfight by making idiotic, outlandish statements alongside his
more thoughtful output that doesn't make primetime cable news. Now the Dems have less than two
weeks to attack some real issues to quiet the silent majority's upcoming 'fuck you' vote...
I'd even go as far to say there will be plenty of silent Dems voting Trump if the election
was right now. No wonder Trump wants a 4th debate.
The only recourse the citizenry of the Outlaw US Empire has in attempting to restore its freedoms
and regain control of the national government is to revolt. Unfortunately, such a dire action
requires a high degree of solidarity amongst a body of citizens large enough to make the attempt
and there's no sign of such a body anywhere to be seen. Thus we'll see the selection of HRC and
the last gasp of the Neoliberalcons attempt to establish Full Spectrum Dominance of the planet
and its people that will likely escalate the already existing Hybrid WW3 to a hot war. In other
words, it doesn't matter who you vote for, so you ought to vote your conscience so you can be
right with yourself. Our household's voting Stein.
'The big issues count the most. Good or evil flow from them. Trumps principle, and I think personal
position, is leaning towards peaceful resolution of conflicts.' - b
The latter sentence contrasts with trump's determination to kill ISIS and take their oil. Sounds
like occupation to me. And his manner of fighting them - with unrestrained torture and bullets
dipped in pig's blood - is likely to catalyse supporty for them else where in the muslim world
(and the muslim parts of the west), even if ISIS is stomped flat in Syria/Iraq. Coup[led with
his blanket ban on muslim immigration, this sounds like a recipe for more conflict, not less.
Likewise with some other big issues: climate change and world trade. As shitty as the WTO system
can be, simply withdrawing and erecting huge tariffs would have catastrophic effects on world
trade that wwe comparable to if not worse than the 1931 Smoot-Hawley tariffs that crippled world
trade and set the stage for WW2. Worse, Trump's 100% opposition to acting on climate change, and
his determination to allow all fossil fuel extraction projects to go ahead, will guarantee catastrophic
global warming that will make WW2 itself look insignificant in the long run.
I agree that Hillary is a menace. But that doesn't make Trump less of one.
Perfect legacy of Obama is the just announced Obamacare insurance premium 25℅ avg rate increases.
Covered at WSWS but can't link from this phone. How about a $10,000 deductible for a family of
4 making $40,000? Things will get worse on several fronts next year, according to bipartisan plans
published in the NYT. Trump's 'solution' is going back to what we had before, ie he has no solution.
Wants to turn Medicaid, aid for our poor, into a voucher program. Don't vote for austerity, don't
vote for HillTrump.
Trump isn't a leftist, nor is he a pacifist. In fact, Trump is an ardent militarist, who has
been proposing actual colonial wars of conquest for years. It's a kind of nationalist hawkishness
that we haven't seen much of in the United States since the Cold War - but has supported some
of the most aggressive uses of force in American history.
You'll see a robust bill of particulars in the article; I've cited some of them earlier. To
little effect of course; Red Hats and Green Tea Bags make excellent counter-factual filters.
The author, Zack Beauchamp, quite helpfully puts The Day-Glo Orange Duckhead in historical
context. He quotes the historian Walter Russell Mead on the Jacksonian tradition in American foreign
policy. He's from Bard College, BTW, which rates fairly high up on the uber-liberal university
scale. So they don't be doin' too many Orange Jello Shots, know what I mean?
Jacksonians, according to Mead, are basically focused on the interests and reputation of the
United States. They are skeptical of ... idealistic quests removed from the interests of everyday
Americans. But when American interests are in question, or failing to fight will make America
look weak, Jacksonians are more aggressive than anyone.
"The Gulf War was a popular war in Jacksonian circles because the defense of the nation's
oil supply struck a chord with Jacksonian opinion.... With them it is an instinct rather than
an ideology - a culturally shaped set of beliefs and emotions rather than a set of ideas,"
Mead writes. Sound familiar?
Historically - and here's the important part - the Jacksonian tradition has been partly
responsible for a lot of what we see today as American atrocities....
Jackson himself is responsible for the "Trail of Tears."
On the campaign trail, Trump routinely cites Gens. George Patton and Douglas MacArthur as foreign
policy models - uber-Jacksonians both. Patton wanted to invade the Soviet Union after World
War II to head off perceived future threats to America. And President Harry Truman fired MacArthur,
despite his strategic genius, for publicly and insubordinately advocating total war against
China during the Korean War.
This is the tradition Trump's views seem to fit into. But while Patton and MacArthur at
least had real military expertise and intellectual heft animating their hawkishness, Trump
is just a collection of angry impulses. There's no worked-out strategic doctrine here, just
an impulse to act aggressively when it seems like America's interests and/or reputation are
at stake.
Just a bundle of anger, driven by emotion, no set plan, aggressive with poor impulse control.
What could possibly go wrong?
So he doesn't want the present wars in the Ukraine and Syria, he says, now. But all the better
to bomb Iraq and Iran into a pulp, it would seem.
Climate change is already affecting the world, and it will take a concerted effort over a much,
much longer period to get it under control, when compared to the Nazi threat.
This is scientifically certain. The prospect of WW3 under Hillary's presidency is very far from
being certain.
what oligarch will those pesky amerikkans vote for?
oligarch 1 - hillary
or oligarch 2 - trump
if it was me, i would be voting 2.. but being in canada, i don't get to vote.. i just get to
listen to bullshite 2016 election usa 24/7 any time i venture onto the internut..
The third - and final - presidential debate between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican
Donald Trump was held Oct. 19 at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and moderated by Fox News'
Chris Wallace.
At one point Hillary said: "....and I'm going to continue to push for a no-fly zone and safe
havens within Syria"
A No Fly Zone means we shoot down Russian planes. And THAT MEANS WW-III.
= = = = Furthermore = = = =
With single-bid ("plurality") voting you only have two candidates to choose from.
I have described the strategic hedge simple score election method all over the Internet, and
it has been known of for many years. It is simple in the sense that does not require easily hackable
voting machines, and can easily work with hand counted paper ballots at non-centralized poling
stations. It is not hampered by any requirement to cater to so-called "sincere," "honest" (actually
artless and foolish) voters. It easily thwarts both the spoiler effect and the blind hurdle dilemma
(the "Burr Dilemma"), which prevents voters from exercising the strategies that they need to use
to defeat the big bosses. It just works.
Strategic hedge simple score voting can be described in one simple sentence: Strategically
bid no vote at all for undesired candidates (ignore them as though they did not exist), or strategically
cast from five to ten votes for any number of candidates you prefer (up to some reasonable limit
of, say, twelve candidates), and then simply add all the votes up.
Both IRV-style and approval voting methods suffer from the blind hurdle dilemma, which can
be overcome with the hedge voting strategy. An example of usage of the hedge strategy, presuming
the (most famous) case of a "leftist" voter, would be casting ten votes for Ralph Nader, and only
eight or nine "hedge votes" for Al Gore. This way, the voter would only sacrifice 20 or 10 percent
of their electoral influence if Nader did not win.
Don't be fooled by fake "alternatives" like "IRV" and "approval voting". Ranked choice voting
is supported by the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Open Society Foundations
(of Soros), and on and on.
Ranked choice voting is just as bad,or worse than out present single-bid ("plurality") method
with regard to enforcing the two party syndrome, and this has been demonstrated repeatedly in
history.
Score voting is fundamentally distinct from ranked choice voting, and does not promote the
two party syndrome. That's probably why it doesn't get hundreds of millions of promotion dollars
as the "Green" Party's ranked choice system does.
And demand hand counted paper ballots that cannot be rigged by "Russian hackers".
We are stuck with this miserable system because of a surprisingly large array of people who
I call the "election methods cognoscenti". Over many years, these cognoscenti have assembled an
enormous collection of distracting, unworkable election methods. This "intellectual subject" has,
for instance, consumed perhaps hundreds of pages in works such as the Wikipedia. These cognoscenti
have created a gigantic Glass Bead Game which serves no real purpose other than to facilitate
intellectual speculation. In nearly every instance where their election methods have been employed,
disaster has ensued, although in a few cases, their systems have languished on, providing no better
results than the choose-one voting system. Millions, perhaps tens of millions of dollars, have
been spent promoting the "IRV" method, which has been tried and abandoned in several venues where
it caused massive chaos.
We cannot afford any more of this intellectual masturbation, which has lead to this absurd
2016 "election". All we should be doing is protesting for safe, easy-to-understand strategic hedge
simple score voting.
And I will be voting for Donald Trump, even though I know that my "ballot" is going to be fed
into an infernal machine.
Clinton advised the mainstream media to push his legitimacy as a "pied piper" candidate because
she realized, after looking at the poll numbers, that she wouldn't stand a chance at winning the
presidency against any of the establishment republicans without making them "pied pipers" – it
just so happened that Donald was the easiest to play the role considering his long history of
friendship with the Clintons.
https://dollarvigilante.com/blog/2016/10/25/rigged-election-hillary-trump-caught-partying-like-bffs-kissinger-jesuit-gala.html
Oh c'mon. Stooping pretty low on that one. One of election's sicker sideshows: Briebert's site
covering Stein more then almost anyone else... when they can twist one of Jill's criticism's of
Hillary into and endorsement of Trump. Jill is most certainly a NASTY woman. :)
Trump has some strange ideas. And he'll cause some real harm in some areas.
But again, his strong medicine is what is needed. We can spill loads of electronic ink debating
the
reasons why and talking about how he sucks but that won't change the reality.
I am very much against the duopoly. But one of these two will win. A win by Trump and a strong
showing by the Greens is the best we can hope for.It sends a clear message. What message does
voting for Hillary send? That we will allow ourselves to be compromised yet AGAIN?
Trump says: "either you have a country, or you don't". So what are the 'borders' that the left
will
defend? Just how much will the Left allow its so-called leaders to compromise and marginalize
us?
There is a natural alliance between the principled left and principled right that the mercenary,
mendacious establishment fears. Don't be fooled by Hillary/DNC scare tactics and media manipulation!
Hillary tells some voters that she will continue Obama's policies and other voters that she
will be
different. She assures Goldman Sacks that her private positions differ very much from her public
positions. She runs pay to play scams via the Clinton Foundation, takes tons of money from Wall
Street
and pretends that none of that influences her. The Chair of the DNC joined her campaign after
her
work against Sanders was revealed! And Sanders response? He endorsed Hillary!!
The Democrats believe that YOU and your family, friends, and neighbors are confused and scared
or just
plain dumb and foolish enough to vote for Hillary and other Democrats that will ride her coattails.
Prove them wrong. Stand up for yourself! Vote for Trump in swing states and Jill Stein in other
states.
That the establishment candidate is not automatically the worst possible candidate. Not when
the other is an unrepentant racist determined to castrate the First Amendment and incinerate the
climate. What message does it send when a candidate whose campaign took off at the point he called
most - if not all - illegal immigrants 'rapists' wins the White House? Besides, you sound more
like a Sanders supporter than a Trump supporter - so maybe his thoughts are worth taking into
account here.
I had assumed your link would be garbage, but took a look, anyway. In fact, it raises significant
points. In particular, previously unknown (to me) details about his views about "taking the oil".
I'm definitely for Trump, consider him far safer and saner than Clinton wrt foreign policy
with most of the world (I suspect he could be worse wrt N Korea, than Clinton; also, no better
wrt Africa, than Clinton).
I have never been impressed with the Trumpian "take the oil" position that I learned of during
the campaign, and have described it as "goofy" and "sure sounding like a war crime". That this
particular stupidity (or hawkish stupidity, if you prefer) is nothing new, and extended to Libya,
is disappointing.
Still, on balance, compared to the endless hemming in and provocation of nuclear super-power
Russia (not to mention smearing of Putin), by the neocon class of which Hillary is an obvious
example of, the author's claim that Trump is more of a hawk than her still sounds absurd. Even
if the argument has some merits.
"Donald Trump's foreign policy speech last Wednesday deserves at least a solid B+ and you can
read my take on it in the June issue of Chronicles. It offered an eloquent argument for offensive
realism, based on the fact that the international system-composed of sovereign nation-states pursuing
their interests-is still essentially competitive and Hobbesian. Trump is the only candidate who
understands this cardinal fact, and who unambiguously states America is not and should not be
an exception to that timeless principle."
"Since leaving government, Flynn has angered U.S. officials over his friendly ties to Russia,
with which he has publicly advocated better relations and military cooperation in the Middle East
- a departure from the official Pentagon line. He even recently sat at the head table at a dinner
in Moscow with President Vladimir Putin, whom Trump has praised."
This same article also says,
"Much as Trump likes to keep things in the family, Flynn's son, Michael G. Flynn, serves as
a chief adviser."
The idea that Trump wouldn't consult with the likes of Flynn - who might be his Secretary of Defense
- also seems goofy. Of course he will.
The Obama Administration, of which Hillary was an integral part, deliberately allowed ISIS
to flourish, in it's early stages. Trump's incompetence as a political candidate is amply demonstrated
by the fact that, even given 3 national debate audiences, he FAILED to pin the US non-interdiction
of the mega ISIS oil trade, run through Turkey, on the Obama administration (thus, to one degree
or another, also on Clinton). See "Russian intel spots 12,000 oil tankers & trucks on Turkey-Iraq
border - General Staff" for photos that Trump should have (pardon the expression) trumpeted during
all 3 national debates. Had he done so, in stead of being politically inept and inarticulate,
he would have cemented in the public's mind just HOW evil the foreign policy of both Obama and
Clinton were. (Of course, he should have also mentioned the wikileaks tick tock memos, crediting
uber SoS failure Hilary Clinton with steps on the road to the destruction of Libya).
Hillary has not just spouted militaristic, imperialistic hokum. She was also in the decision
loop, as war crimes against Libya, in particular, were being decided on, then perpetrated. She
has a history that is far more evidential of catastrophic militarism than goofy statements about
"taking the oil".
Very kind of you to note your new-found concerns, anytime.
Trump has net yet been in the loop. I do not want him there, he would be bad for the country
and planet. His public statements suggest he would make far worse decisions.
{quote} > BREAKING: JILL STEIN ENDORSES DONALD TRUMP
Oh c'mon. Stooping pretty low on that one. {end quote}
You are misquoting me intensionally. I put: "BREAKING: JILL STEIN ENDORSES DONALD TRUMP [Sort
Of][1 min., 15 sec.]" And that is because YouTube links often break up while their titles remain
searchable.
You ignored that I added "[Sort of]"!
I think there are likely a lot of DailyKos zombies around here tonight.
Trump may be a bullheaded semi-thug, but I'll vote for him before I join the "die with Hillary"
movement.
"His public statements suggest he would make far worse decisions."
On balance, no, they don't. Even if Flynn couldn't talk any sense into him regarding "taking
the oil", and a President Trump somehow managed to pull that off, and it turned into an endless
conflict, the $$ cost of which exceeded the oil profits thus obtained, that would still be preferable
to nuclear exchanges with Russia.
I read just today about a Russian nuke, called "Satan", that supposedly can destroy a country
the size of France (or the state of Texas). I had to read it twice, since the claim seemed preposterous.
(I assume it's some sort of multiple warhead device, and what the claim really means is that it
can destroy all cities in an area the size of France.)
Peace with Russia is, to use a Star Trek phrase, the "prime directive". Trusting that to Clinton
is a fool's errand. Trusting that to Trump is not.
No matter the facts, and b has laid it out as clearly as one can, the left and the urban classes
in America will vote for the proven warmonger. Why? For them virtue signalling is more important
than the existential threat of riding up an escalatory ladder to a nuclear exchange with Russia.
After listening to right-wingers howl and whine today, droning on about big bad gumint and the
only salvation is their guy and/or the free market. I say we end the misery that the capitalist
system produces once and for all by throwing all support for Hillary. An anti-war vote for Trump
helps preserve the madness, how could any sane person help capitalism, that to me is abnormal
behaviour that Hillary can rectify. Death is an inevitable human condition, Right-wing evangelists
are nothing but cowards. Viva Hillary and cheers to accelerating the process!
President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey's military operations in Syria aimed to secure al-Bab
and the town of Manbij, which a group of Kurdish and Arab militias seized from Islamic State
in August, but were not intended to stretch to Aleppo.
"Let's make a joint fight against terrorist organizations. But Aleppo belongs to the people
of Aleppo ... making calculations over Aleppo would not be right," he said in a speech in Ankara.
Turkey launched "Operation Euphrates Shield" two months ago, sending tanks and warplanes into
Syria in support of the largely Turkmen and Arab rebels.
Erdogan signaled Turkey could target the Afrin region of northwest Syria, which is controlled
by Kurdish YPG forces and lies just west of the "Euphrates Shield" area of operations.
"In order to defeat threats directed at our nation from Kilis to Kirikhan, we are also putting
that area on our agenda of cleansing from terror," he said, referring to two Turkish towns
across the border from Afrin.
Looks fairly clear the objectives are Al-bab & Manbij, and then the Afrin pocket. Definitely
if the Syrians/Russians don't intervene to "save" Afrin, then that would push the Kurds into the
arms of the Americans, but if that's all the Turks do, then that solidifies the Turkish-Russian
pact at the same time.
Inching ever closer, one reported death at a time, to the current world record holder who is either
Mark Twain or perhaps Binny himself.
http://en.alalam.ir/news/1877644
26 October 2016 14:48
Iraqi Analyst Discloses S.Arabia, Turkey's Plot to Transfer Al-Baghdadi to Libya
A prominent Iraqi military analyst disclosed that Riyadh and Ankara had hatched plots to transfer
ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from Mosul to Libya but the massive presence of the popular forces
and Russian fighter jets at the bordering areas of Iraq and Syria dissuaded them.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has said he wants all foreign troops, in which the majority
are American, out of the Philippines in the next two years.
This comes amidst his desire to realign his country with China and Russia, and further from
the grasps of Washington.
Russia has launched the latest addition to its series of super-stealth diesel-electric submarines,
the Veliky Novgorod, which sports advanced stealth technologies and increased combat range.
The latest addition to the Black Sea Fleet is capable of striking land, sea and underwater
targets and was officially launched from St. Petersburg's Admiralty Shipyard on Wednesday in the
presence of Russian Navy Deputy Commander Vice-Admiral Aleksandr Fedotenkov, and Admiralty Shipyard
CEO Alexander Buzakov.
GOP nominee Donald Trump does not believe that settlements built by the Zionist regime of Israel
in Palestine are illegal, his advisor on Israel says.
David Friedman, who was campaigning for the New York billionaire at a restaurant on Mount Zion
(Jabel Sahyoun) in East Jerusalem al-Quds, made the comments to AFP after the Wednesday rally.
Remember on November 8, vote for any party, but not The Democratic Party. The Democratic Party
is the war party.
For me still undecided - Donald Trump or Jill Stein.
Dr. William Wedin | Oct 27, 2016 12:48:06 AM |
112
I agree with Moon of Alabama's predictions up to the point that he asserts that Putin's "best"
or "most likely" response (I am not clear which) to having all of Russia's military assets in
Syria destroyed is the meek test-firing of a "big" tactical nuclear weapon in Siberia by way of
a non-lethal display of "shock and awe." Neither Putin nor his generals would ever let things
get so one-sided in America's father. Rather, the Russian military would respond the way Putin,
the 8th-degree black-belt Judoka has responded in every match that led to his becoming the Judo
Champion of Leningrad in 1976. Namely, they would attack, attack, attack--no matter the cost.
That's how General Zhukov defeated Hitler. The same way Grant won the Civil War. Zhukov never
let up the pressure. Putin learned his lesson on that score when he tried to teach the US the
Judo principle of Jita Kyoei (or the "mutual benefit") in mutual self-restraint in his acceptance
of a ceasefire and a partial pull-out of Russian forces back in March; followed by another betrayed
ceasefire last month. No more. Now if he is hit, he's going to hit back harder--in unexpected
places and ways. He has vowed to never fight another war on Russian soil. So he may well carry
the attack early to the US homeland. Study the way he won Judo matches--with lightning speed and
startling moves. The Saker would argue that Putin would go for lateral rather than vertical escalation.
But I think that Hillary's transsexual desire (I speak as a psychologist here) to prove herself
the "tougher man" may force Putin to launch a First Strike in the expectation she's about to.
Indeed he tells us that the first lesson he learned as a street fighter at the age of 10 was:
"Strike First." I think he will.
I can never under understand why so many 60s and 70s antiwar become warmongers today?
Amerika drops more than 7 millions tons of bombs, about 20 to 30% unexploded. They knew millions
innocent civilians perished and many more will die of unexploded bombs. Further Napalm & Agent
Orange was used and still causing deforms children today.
How can anyone vote for The Democratic Party is beyond common sense? The Democratic Party had
always been a warmonger party, yesterday, today and tomorrow....
With the Clinton's long list of shady deals Hillary would be an easy target for blackmail by some
organisation such as a security service that wants to control the policies of the president.
It's not funny how hypocritical the right-wing have become just to get their guy in office.
Fuck 'em I say. For those same fucktards that believe Obama a communist/socialist, they're simply
invoking a red scare tactic. The love to scapegoat the other, ie. teacher's, immigrants because
their brainwashed minds love their servitude and criticism of the capitalist system is beyond
the pale.
Both parties represent what you nominally call warmonger in one form or the other, serving
their corporate paymasters. Any minds reconciling the differences would be well advised to check
up on Glen Ford, Omali Yeshitela and the world socialist website periodically.
Would you please delete ArthurGilroy's comments
at #42 and #60?
#42 could have been an accident caused by
failure to Preview.
But #60 was a deliberate margin wrecker, imo.
@ psychohistorian | Oct 26, 2016 11:42:46 PM | 103
No they did not mess up their HTML, they put ==== well beyond the wrap limits. It happens when
commentators use any lengthy address that does not have hyphens incorporated. If the programming
were to put in a virtual hyphen, that changes the address for using, it seems. HTML is the tool
to use to get around that problem. The problem is few commentators are tool users; the result
is the reader suffers from one: stupid, inattention or intent. The perpetrator:
With Hillary Clinton in the audience, singer Adele told her fans at a Miami concert Tuesday
night not to vote for Donald Trump.
"Don't vote for him," the Grammy Award winner said on stage, according to a Clinton aide. "I can't
vote but I am 100% for Hillary Clinton, I love her, she's amazing."
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/26/politics/hillary-clinton-adele-concert/
And so on.
Also for example:
Elton John
John Fogerty
Neil Young
Paul mcCartney
Roger Waters
@119 FTH
Holier than thou superstars wrapped in the warm bosom of capitalism that is the 1%. Can't blame
them, they're being looked after. They just hear the un-pc bleating.
Working Class Nero | Oct 27, 2016 4:21:36 AM |
122
What makes me happiest about this election is that we are finally seeing some left/right cooperation
in the fight against the corporate oligarchy. I follow both sides closely and it is great to see
right wingers cheering Jill Stein, Julian Assange, and even Bernie Sanders.
In order for the left/right combination to work both sides have to make compromises. Certainly
we see the Trumpian right dumping the warmongering. as MoA is pointing out. Trumpsters are also
open to universal health care, and are less insistent on divisive social issues. And the rejection
of job-killing "free" trade is another great evolution towards sanity on the right.
The left are goig to have to abandon the idea of remaking America by pumping in millions of
3rd world immigrants. This is the largest wedge still existing between the left and right. if
you have not seen Bernie Sanders denouncing Open Borders as a Koch Borthers scam to lower wages
then you need to get busy on Google right now. Besides universal health care is absolutely impossible
without very tight borders -- just ask Canada who have far more Draconian immigration laws than
even Trump is proposing.
But the most important reason to vote Trump is because if he wins the Powers-That-Be will never
let him take power! Remember the Electoral College? TPTB can and will strip the victory away from
Trump and give it to someone else. This will do more to destroy the current capitalist system
than anything else.
@105, quoting Reuters: "Erdogan signaled Turkey could target the Afrin region of northwest Syria"
When Turkey launched "Operation Euphrates Shield" there was much commentary about how this
would end the Kurdish plan to link Kobane with the Afrin pocket.
At the time I thought to myself: OK, so does that leave the Afrin pocket exposed, or is it
pretty secure even when left to its own devices?
Nobody else seemed the slightest bit interested in pondering that though, apparently, Erdogan
has now decided that it is a blister that needs to be lanced.
@105: "then that would push the Kurds into the arms of the Americans"
Err, no, I suspect not. After all, it was Biden who ordered the Kurdish forces to withdraw
back behind the Euphrates once Erdogan started his little adventure, so it's pretty obvious that
if the choice is between (a) Turkey and (b) the Kurds then good ol' Uncle Sam is going to side
with the Turks.
Surprised to see Roger Waters on that list. WTF, Roger?
His condemnation of Israel and his love for Palestine has been clear.
Expressing his staunch I/P political views, Roger has consistently angered warmongering wingnuts
at his concerts. (They like his music, but they wish he would shut up about " his politics".)
Waters should know clearly that Hillary Rotten Clinton will explicitly follow the Yinon Plan
dictates for Greater Israel; and feed our sons and daughters (not hers) into the military meat
grinder.
Many thanks for those who read and comments.. I can never under understand why so many 60s
and 70s antiwar become warmongers today?
I'm from the sixties - baby boom generation, not antiwar but leaning from anti commie to warmonger.
I cannot understands why antiwar movements were against Vietnam war . America, land of
the free leading the fighting against the commies spreading from the North moving southward to
the two Korea, (Indochina) Laos, Cambodia, North &South Vietnam, Thailand, Malaya (independent),
Singapore British Crown colony, Hong Kong British Crown colony, Indonesia, The Philippines. The
warmonger was Lyndon B. Johnson a Democrat.
Blowin' In the Wind sang by leftist's antiwar singers. I'm especially touched by Peter, Paul
and Mary, Joan Baez... Where are they today? Warmongers for Hillary?
The red zionist leader pretend hates Trump.
Hee hee,the vitriol from the serial liars should be enough for sane human to vote Trump.
Imagine the debt that the HB will owe the zionists if they manage to steal this election for her,their
obvious chosen whore.
The zionists aint going to like the heartlands response to the fix.
The raw deal they are issuing to Trump will be rejected.
"But I think that Hillary's transsexual desire (I speak as a psychologist here) to prove herself
the "tougher man" may force Putin to launch a First Strike in the expectation she's about to.
Indeed he tells us that the first lesson he learned as a street fighter at the age of 10 was:
"Strike First." I think he will."
So do I. He did not go into Syria without a long-range strategy. And when he and China and
others use the term "multi-polar" they mean it. Their commitment/strategy is at the cellular level
which makes them unpredictable and dangerous to their adversary. Putin is all business.
----------------
Here's a vid of Podesta's think tank - Center for American Progress - where Mike Morrell NOT
Chris Morrell along with others discuss the Middle East and U.S. partners -
I've written along this line before, apologies for the repeat.
The US has lost power, particularly economic power, and some soft power -not military power-
in the last 20 or ++ years. An uncomfortable situation. This has disturbed, and will continue
to disrupt, nay shatter, the PTB (Shadow Gvmt., fake duopoly, corporate rule, neo-fascism, slot
in yr perso description) control.
The selection of Obama was a simplistic move: he could be ushered in as representing 'change',
and seemingly 'win' an 'election' twice, with biz as usual (hopefully) maintaining itself, continuing
with a puppet President. (As is organised 'abroad', see Poroshenko for ex.)
A crack on the political scene was the Tea Party, within Repub. circles, and it was genuine
(if wacky), unlike Occupy Wall Street, or the present Black Lives Matter, which are more or less
'fake color revol.' controlled splinters that can be turned on or off. The Sanders candidacy split
the Dem. base, and was either a nasty surprise for the neo-libs (they brought it on themselves,
read Podesta e-mails) or an 'allowed' move to maintain the pretense of real political options.
The Repubs. could not turn up a convincing candidate (anyone with brains would avoid this situation
like the plague, and the Rubio, Cruz type personas were just 'place holders') so the plan
morphed into letting Trump win the nomination and lose the election to the neo-lib-con (HRC)
faction. This plan was born out of arrogance, hubris, 'bubble' blindness and ignorance, and the
supposed iron grip control of the MSM, aka 'the narrative.'
Trump did much better than expected, went on doing so. CNN at first gave him a 1% chance of
winning the nomination, what a laugh. Imho Trump played the MSM masterfully, but that is neither
here nor there - the PTB were shocked to see their hold erode, they never imagined losing control
of the 'opposition' or the discontents, aka the rabble, the compliant sheeples: many different
strands: Greens, e.g. Stein, whose vicious tweets against HRC are something to behold, libertarians,
BernieBros for 'social democracy' and free college, now turned to Cleaning Out the Swamp, law
-n- order types, gun toters, Blacks for Trump, and on and on ..unimaginable.
As no reasoned politically argued response was available, the PTB went into attack mode which
completely backfired, as could readily be predicted. This is the post-Democracy Age (if it ever
existed and the term 'democracy' is of course BS.)
Trump appears to confusedly propose a way of dealing with the US loss of economic domination,
of power and place on the World Stage: nationalistic retrenchment, "better deals", OK, plus "a
stronger military," a double-pronged sword, not pacifist, on the face of it.
Makes a kind of hopeful sense, and appeals greatly. HRC (she is just a propped up figure) in
a corrupt circuit of PTB-NWO - the top 20% globalist class - has to push the agenda of the MIC,
of Wall Street, Big Corps, Silicon Valley, etc. for personal position. Donors who give mega-cash
get corp. and pol. favors, etc.
French MSM report as if it was the most natural thing in the world that Erdogan made a speech
to say he intends to get back Manbij from the Kurds and participate in getting back Northern Syria,
in cooperation with the US.
If the Turks enter that far, there is no doubt it will lead to a wider war ... Could that be the
reason Hollande is so sure of being reelected in May?
stopped going to VT several years ago during their grand support of the slaughter of Libya. duff
wrote I was posting from tel aviv.
have to be careful with vt. what is a lie and what is decent.
trump is hated/feared by repubs/dems, the establishment, wall st, the crooks, cronies, pedophiles,
liars, warmongers, creepers in the dark, rich beggars with hands out, culture-destroyers.
supporting legal immigration is sound national policy as is not wanting to fight wars for jewry.
supporting soc sec and medicare and spending tax dollars on repairing infrastructure in America
not Israel is also sound.
My take is similar to rufus magister, namely that Trump (a) talks a lot of nonsense, but unlike
a disciplined robot like Marco Rubio, he is eclectic and mixes that nonsense with surprisingly
reasonable statements.
Many attacks on Trump almost convince me that he is the best candidate out there. But his own
web site is much less convincing, and his personal appearances may be outright scary.
On domestic issues, he more or less follows all bad aspects of GOP model. His trade policy
ideas are so unworkable that nothing will come out of them. Not that I disagree that there is
too much of "free trade", but like with any complex system, it is much easier to make it worse
that to make it better.
Back to Trump as an architect of new, improved foreign policy. Here the room for improvement
is much more clear, because so much of the current policy is to effectively do little shits here
and there, and to sell more arms than before, so totally ineffective policy would be a plus. It
does not even need to be particularly consistent etc. But "greedy merchant" mentality exhibited
by Trump in many quotes, like "take their oil", "those allies do not pay their dues", and "why
did we give [returned!!!] money to Iran", make me genuinely worried that he would continue selling
weapons to Gulfies and help them bombing Yemen and smuggling weapons to Syria: if they pay us
that this is OK. Secondly, he was abjectly pandering to AIPAC. Thirdly, some mad statements about
decisive direct intervention and using torture. The only change that I would be sure under Trump
presidency is that CIA would be out of the loop, or at least, much less visible than now. And
he would probably stop pressing EU to maintain and expand sanctions on Russia. But he would restore
sanctions on Iran??
In other words, a mixed bag at best on foreign policy, probably ineffectual nonsense on trade
policy and very retrograde changes in domestic policy. To name the few, green light to all possible
abortion restriction, if not outlawing the abortion by SCOTUS, advocacy of police brutality, regressive
taxation, letting people with chronic diseases die as uninsurable etc. So one has to consider
how scary HRC is.
My estimate is that she would be basically Obama with inferior rhetoric. Leaked e-mails show
that her decision making is quite deliberative, and the circle of opinions that are included not
particularly insular. It is too neocon to my liking, and "Obama as is" happened to be much less
appealing than "Obama before elected". Since there is no consensus to attack the Russians, she
would not hammer it through.
Thus one can reasonably hope that HRC will be relatively harmless. And it is not even clear
that Russia is harmed by sanctions. They restrict somewhat the access to goods and financial services,
but during cheap oil, the top issues for Russia is import substitution, development of domestic
production, and curtailing the capital flight. Good access to financial services can be quite
detrimental to a country, as we can study on the example of Greece: joining Eurozone vastly improved
the access to the financial markets and enabled to borrow much more that prudent. As Russia remains
a net exporter by a quite large margin, keeping money at home is much more important than access
to credit.
That said, a reasonable hope does not exactly dispel the fears described above. Moreover, it
is predicated on the lack of "imperialist/neo-con consensus", and wobbly results of the elections
would help. Thus, everybody here who can vote should vote as she/he damn pleases. If you do not
like Clinton, I would suggest Stein, because she actually spells out a coherent and sensible position,
and not patches of senses and horror, so this is
Trump's policy and this is
Stein's
policy.
CETA: "EU's Canada free-trade CETA deal could be back on as Walloons agree to last-minute deal"
[
Telegraph
].
"Belgium's Prime Minister Charles Michel said that Wallonia was now in agreement, and the regional
parliaments may now agree to CETA by the end of Friday night, opening the door to the deal being
signed. Mr Tusk said that once the regional votes had taken place, he will inform Canadian Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau. Any extra concessions given to Wallonia may mean other countries will want
to look again at the deal, however." (The BBC's headline, then -
"EU-Canada trade deal: Belgians break Ceta deadlock"
- is quite irresponsible. As is–
CETA: "Belgium breaks Ceta deadlock" [
EUObserver
].
Not quite:
Belgium's political entities agreed to a declaration on Thursday (26 October), which gives
their government a green light to sign Ceta, the EU-Canada trade pact.
The agreement was promptly sent to EU ambassadors in Brussels, to be discussed later in the
afternoon.
After a week of marathon negotiations, Belgian prime minister Charles Michel said that Thursday's
talks had calmed "outstanding concerns".
As part of the trade-off, Belgium will ask the European Court of Justice to clarify the proposed
investment court system, which was one of the most controversial elements of the trade deal.
Ceta was due to be signed off by EU leaders and Canada's prime minister Justin Trudeau at a
summit in Brussels on Thursday. Trudeau cancelled the trip during the night as no agreement had
been reached in Brussels.
It's not known when the summit will take place, or whether the Belgian go-ahead was the last
hurdle.
The other 27 EU countries must first accept the Belgian deal.
At their meeting on Thursday, EU ambassadors will be accompanied by lawyers and representatives
of the EU institutions, who will examine the legality and consequences of the text.
The Walloon parliament will vote on the agreement on Friday.
Still, how do we slay these undead deals? The same thing happened with TPP.
CETA: "The great CETA swindle" [
Corporate
Europe Observatory
]. "The latest PR move is a "joint interpretative declaration" on the trade
deal hammered out by Ottawa and Brussels and published by investigative journalist collective Correctiv
last Friday. It is designed to alleviate public concerns but in fact does nothing to fix CETA's flaws.
In September, Canada's Trade Minister, Chrystia Freeland, and her German counterpart, Sigmar Gabriel,
had announced such a text to appease Social Democrats, trade unions and the wider public who fear
that CETA would threaten public services, labour and environmental standards and undermine governments'
right to regulate in the public interest. Several governments, notably Austria, had linked their
'yes' to CETA to the declaration. [But] According to environmental group Greenpeace, the declaration
therefore has the 'legal weight of a holiday brochure'."
Legal experts have also warned that the declaration "could be misleading for non-lawyers, who
might think that the Declaration will alter or override the CETA". But it does not change CETA's
legal terms – and it is these terms which have raised concerns. As Canadian law Professor Gus
van Harten explains: "Based on principles of treaty interpretation, the CETA will be interpreted
primarily according to the text of its relevant provisions…. The Declaration would play a subsidiary
role, if any, in this interpretative process." In other words, legally (and thus politically),
the CETA text is far more important than the declaration – and the former could prevail over the
latter in case of a conflictive interpretation.
The post then goes on to analyze the provisions of the declaration in detail, comparing them to
the text. (Readers may remember that
TPP advocates have made the same sort of claim for the TPP Preamble, which the text also over-rides
.
So, the Belgians are smart to get a court ruling on this. And we might also expect the adminsitration
to use similar tactics to (the toothless distraction of) the CETA "resolution" in the upcoming attempt
to pass the TPP.
"Belgian officials were discussing a working document aimed at addressing Wallonia's concerns
on the trade deal. The document, published by Belgian state media RTBF, shows that Belgium is moving
toward requesting additional safeguards for the agricultural sector 'in cases of market turbulence.'
It also puts forward a number of requests regarding the investor court system, including 'progressing
towards hiring judges on a permanent basis'" [
Politico
].
This seems to be a
different
document from the "declaration"; it was leaked by a different
source.
Here is is; it's in French
.
TPP: "Eight major financial services industry associations made an appeal to congressional leaders
to support passage of the TPP this year, arguing that the deal is 'vital to ensuring that the U.S.
financial services sector remains a vibrant engine for domestic and global growth'" [
Politico
].
What the heck is a "vibrant engine"? Maybe a screw loose or something? Needs a tightening to stop
the shaking and shimmying?
TPP: "Health, labor and consumer groups are warning President Barack Obama to refrain from including
a 12-year monopoly period for biological drugs in legislation to implement the TPP as a means for
addressing congressional concerns over the pact. The groups argue that such a move could undermine
future efforts to shorten that protection period under U.S. law" [
Politico
].
"The letter, signed by Doctors Without Borders, the AFL-CIO, AARP, Oxfam and Consumers Union, also
expresses concern over reports that the administration is prepared to negotiate side letters with
TPP countries to reinforce U.S. lawmaker demands that countries respect a 12-year protection period,
which reflects U.S. law."
"The case against free trade – Part 1" [
Bill
Mitchell
].
"... My impression is that Trump_vs_deep_state is more about dissatisfaction of the Republican base with the Republican brass (which fully endorsed neoliberal globalization), the phenomenon somewhat similar to Sanders. ..."
"... Working class and lower middle class essentially abandoned DemoRats (Clinton democrats) after so many years of betrayal and "they have nowhere to go" attitude. ..."
"... Now they try to forge the alliance of highly paid professionals who benefitted from globalization("creative class"), financial speculators and minorities. Which does not look like a stable coalition to me. ..."
"... In other words both Parties are now split and have two mini-parties inside. I am not sure that Sanders part of Democratic party would support Hillary. The wounds caused by DNC betrayal and double dealing are still too fresh. ..."
"... We have something like what Marxists call "revolutionary situation" when the elite loses control of "peons". And existence of Internet made MSM propaganda far less effective that it would be otherwise. That's why they resort to war propaganda tricks. ..."
"That's not untrue, but it seems to me to be getting worse."
Because of economic stagnation and anxiety among lower class Republicans. Trump blames immigration
and trade unlike traditional elite Republicans. These are economic issues.
Trump supporters no longer believe or trust the Republican elite who they see as corrupt
which is partly true. They've been backing Nixon, Reagan, Bush etc and things are just getting
worse. They've been played.
Granted it's complicated and partly they see their side as losing and so are doubling down
on the conservatism, racism, sexism etc. But Trump *brags* that he was against the Iraq war.
That's not an elite Republican opinion.
likbez -> DrDick... , -1
My impression is that Trump_vs_deep_state is more about dissatisfaction of the Republican base with the Republican
brass (which fully endorsed neoliberal globalization), the phenomenon somewhat similar to Sanders.
Working class and lower middle class essentially abandoned DemoRats (Clinton democrats) after
so many years of betrayal and "they have nowhere to go" attitude.
Looks like they have found were to go this election cycle and this loss of the base is probably
was the biggest surprise for neoliberal Democrats.
Now they try to forge the alliance of highly paid professionals who benefitted from globalization("creative
class"), financial speculators and minorities. Which does not look like a stable coalition to
me.
Some data suggest that among unions which endorsed Hillary 3 out of 4 members will vote against
her. And that are data from union brass. Lower middle class might also demonstrate the same pattern
this election cycle.
In other words both Parties are now split and have two mini-parties inside. I am not sure that
Sanders part of Democratic party would support Hillary. The wounds caused by DNC betrayal and
double dealing are still too fresh.
We have something like what Marxists call "revolutionary situation" when the elite loses control
of "peons". And existence of Internet made MSM propaganda far less effective that it would be
otherwise. That's why they resort to war propaganda tricks.
In a lengthy speech on Saturday night in Manheim, Pennsylvania, Republican nominee for president
Donald J. Trump lambasted his opponent Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton for a secret tape
recording of her bashing supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont-and even called for Clinton
to be placed in prison and questioned as to whether she has been loyal to her husband former President
Bill Clinton.
Trump said in the speech on Saturday night:
A new audio tape that has surfaced just yesterday from another one of Hillary's high roller
fundraisers shows her demeaning and mocking Bernie Sanders and all of his supporters. You know,
and I'll tell you something we have a much bigger movement that Bernie Sanders ever had. We have
much bigger crowds than Sanders ever had. And we have a more important movement than Bernie Sanders
ever had because we're going to save our country, okay? We're going to save our country. But I
can tell you Bernie Sanders would have left a great, great legacy had he not made the deal with
the devil. He would have really left a great legacy. Now he shows up and 120 people come in to
hear him talk. Bernie Sanders would have left a great legacy had he not made the deal, had he
held his head high and walked away. Now he's on the other side perhaps from us and we want to
get along with everybody and we will-we're going to unite the country-but what Bernie Sanders
did to his supporters was very, very unfair. And they're really not his supporters any longer
and they're not going to support Hillary Clinton. I really believe a lot of those people are coming
over and largely because of trade, college education, lots of other things-but largely because
of trade, they're coming over to our side-you watch, you watch. Especially after Hillary mocks
him and mocks all of those people by attacking him and his supporters as 'living in their parents'
basements,' and trapped in dead-end careers. That's not what they are.
Also in his speech on Saturday night, Trump summed up exactly what came out in the latest Hillary
Clinton tapes in which she mocks Sanders supporters:
She describes many of them as ignorant, and [that] they want the United States to be more like
Scandinavia but that 'half the people don't know what that means' in a really sarcastic tone because
she's a sarcastic woman. To sum up, and I'll tell you the other thing-she's an incompetent woman.
She's an incompetent woman. I've seen it. Just take a look at what she touches. It never works
out, and you watch: her run for the presidency will never ever work out because we can't let it
work out. To sum up, Hillary Clinton thinks Bernie supporters are hopeless and ignorant basement
dwellers. Then, of course, she thinks people who vote for and follow us are deplorable and irredeemable.
I don't think so. I don't think so. We have the smartest people, we have the sharpest people,
we have the most amazing people, and you know in all of the years of this country they say, even
the pundits-most of them aren't worth the ground they're standing on, some of that ground could
be fairly wealthy but ground, but most of these people say they have never seen a phenomenon like
is going on. We have crowds like this wherever we go.
WATCH THE FULL SPEECH:
Later in the speech, Trump came back to the tape again and hammered her once more for it.
"Hillary Clinton all but said that most of the country is racist, including the men and women
of law enforcement," Trump said. "She said that the other night. Did anybody like Lester Holt? Did
anybody question her when she said that? No, she said it the other night. [If] you're not a die hard
Clinton fan-you're not a supporter-from Day One, Hillary Clinton thinks you are a defective person.
That's what she's going around saying."
In the speech, Trump questioned whether Clinton has the moral authority to lead when she considers
the majority of Americans-Trump supporters and Sanders supporters-to be "defective" people. And he
went so far as saying that Clinton "should be in prison." He went on:
How on earth can Hillary Clinton try to lead this country when she has nothing but contempt
for the people who live in this country? She's got contempt. First of all, she's got so many scandals
and she's been caught cheating so much. One of the worst things I've ever witnessed as a citizen
of the United States was last week when the FBI director was trying so hard to explain how she
away with what she got away with, because she should be in prison. Let me tell you. She should
be in prison. She's being totally protected by the New York Times and the Washington Post and
all of the media and CNN-Clinton News Network-which nobody is watching anyway so what difference
does it make? Don't even watch it. But she's being protected by many of these groups. It's not
like do you think she's guilty? They've actually admitted she's guilty. And then she lies and
lies, 33,000 emails deleted, bleached, acid-washed! And then they take their phones and they hammer
the hell out of them. How many people have acid washed or bleached a Tweet? How many?
He returned to the secret Clinton tape a little while later:
Hillary Clinton slanders and attacks anyone who wants to put America First, whether they
are Trump Voters or Bernie Voters. What she said about Bernie voters amazing. Like the European
Union, she wants to erase our borders and she wants to do it for her donors and she wants people
to pour into country without knowing who they are.
Trump later bashed the media as "dishonest as hell" when calling on the reporters at his event
to "turn your cameras" to show the crowd that came to see him.
"If they showed the kind of crowds we have-which people can hear, you know it's interesting: you
can hear the crowd when you hear the television but if they showed the crowd it would be better television,
but they don't know much about that. But it would actually be better television," Trump said.
Trump also questioned whether Hillary Clinton has been loyal to her husband, former President
Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton has been known to cheat on Hillary Clinton with a variety of mistresses
and has been accused of rape and sexual assault by some women.
"Hillary Clinton's only loyalty is to her financial contributors and to herself," Trump
said. "I don't even think she's loyal to Bill, if you want to know the truth. And really, folks,
really: Why should she be, right? Why should she be?"
Throughout the speech, Trump weaved together references to his new campaign theme about Clinton-"Follow
The Money"-with details about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. He said:
We're going to take on the corrupt media, the powerful lobbyists and the special interests
that have stolen your jobs, your factories, and your future-that's exactly what's happened. We're
going to stop Hillary Clinton from continuing to raid the industry from your state for her profit.
Hillary Clinton has collected millions of dollars from the same global corporations shipping
your jobs and your dreams to other countries. You know it and everybody else knows it. That's
why Clinton, if she ever got the chance, would 100 percent approve Trans Pacific Partnership-a
total disastrous trade deal. She called the deal the 'gold standard.' The TPP will bring economic
devastation to Pennsylvania and our campaign is the only chance to stop that and other bad things
that are happening to our country. She lied about the Gold Standard the other night at the debate.
She said she didn't say it-she said it. We want to stop the Trans Pacific Partnership and if we
don't-remember this, if we don't stop it, billions and billions [of dollars] in jobs and wealth
will be vacuumed right out of Pennsylvania and sent to these other countries. Just like NAFTA
was a disaster, this will be a disaster. Frankly I don't think it'll be as bad as NAFTA. It can't
get any worse than that-signed by Bill Clinton. All of us here in this massive room here tonight
can prevent this from happening. Together we can stop TPP and we can end the theft of American
jobs and prosperity.
Trump praised Sanders for being strongly opposed to the TPP:
I knew one man-I'm not a big fan-but one man who knew the dangers of the TPP was Bernie
Sanders. Crazy Bernie. He was right about one thing, only one thing, and that was trade. He was
right about it because he knew we were getting ripped off, but he wouldn't be able to do anything
about it . We're going to do a lot about it. We're going to have those highways running the
opposite direction. We're going to have a lot of trade, but it's going to come into our country.
We are going to start benefitting our country because right now it's one way road to trouble.
Our jobs leave us, our money leaves us. With Mexico, we get the drugs-they get the cash-it's that
simple.
Hillary Clinton, Trump noted, is "controlled by global special interests."
"She's on the opposite side of Bernie on the trade issue," Trump said. "She's totally on the opposite
side of Bernie."
He circled back to trade a bit later in the more-than-hour-long speech, hammering TPP and Clinton
cash connections. Trump continued:
Three TPP member countries gave between $6 and $15 million to Clinton. At least four lobbyists
who are actively lobbying for TPP passage have raised more than $800,000 for her campaign. I'm
just telling you Pennsylvania, we're going to make it. We're going to make it. We're going to
make it if we have Pennsylvania for sure. It'll be easy. But you cannot let this pass. NAFTA passed.
It's been the worst trade deal probably ever passed, not in this country but anywhere in the world.
It cleaned out New England. It cleaned out big portions of Pennsylvania. It cleaned out big portions
of Ohio and North Carolina and South Carolina-you can't let it happen.
Trump even called the politicians like Clinton "bloodsuckers" who have let America be drained
out of millions upon millions of jobs.
"These bloodsuckers want it to happen," Trump said. "They're politicians that are getting taken
care of by people that want it to happen. Other countries want it to happen because it's good for
them, but it's not good for us. So hopefully you're not going to let it happen. Whatever Hillary's
donors want, they get. They own her. On Nov. 8, we're going to end Clinton corruption. Hillary Clinton,
dishonest person, is an insider fighting for herself and for her friends. I'm an outsider fighting
for you. And by the way, just in case you're not aware, I used to be an insider but I thought this
was the right thing to do. This is the right thing to do, believe me."
The Walloon mouse : ...Instead of decrying people's stupidity and ignorance in rejecting trade
deals, we should try to understand why such deals lost legitimacy in the first place. I'd put
a large part of the blame on mainstream elites and trade technocrats who pooh-poohed ordinary
people's concerns with earlier trade agreements.
The elites minimized distributional concerns, though they turned out to be significant for
the most directly affected communities. They oversold aggregate gains from trade deals, though
they have been smallish since at least NAFTA. They said sovereignty would not be diminished though
it clearly was in some instances. They claimed democratic principles would not be undermined,
though they are in places. They said there'd be no social dumping though there clearly is at times.
They advertised trade deals (and continue to do so) as "free trade" agreements, even though Adam
Smith and David Ricardo would turn over in their graves if they read, say, any of the TPP chapters.
And because they failed to provide those distinctions and caveats now trade gets tarred with
all kinds of ills even when it's not deserved. If the demagogues and nativists making nonsensical
claims about trade are getting a hearing, it is trade's cheerleaders that deserve some of the
blame.
One more thing. The opposition to trade deals is no longer solely about income losses. The
standard remedy of compensation won't be enough -- even if carried out. It's about fairness, loss
of control, and elites' loss of credibility. It hurts the cause of trade to pretend otherwise.
... ... ..
Trump would propose and/or enact, he listed the following six:
"A Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress."
"A hiring freeze on all federal employees."
"A requirement that for every new federal regulation, 2 existing regulations must be eliminated."
"A 5-year ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government."
"A lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government."
"A complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections."
"
~~WWW~
Lot of reform is needed but may be
The forgotten spirit of American protectionism : , -1
The free traders have human economic history precisely inverted. Countries that practice protectionism
almost uniformly become wealthy and technologically advanced. Countries that don't become or remain
terribly sad, poverty-stricken producers of worthless raw materials and desperate labor migrants.
This has been true at least going back to Byzantium and its economic conquest by Genoa and Venice.
That the US thrived pre-1970 free trade is no coincidence. There is no alternative to protectionism.
Free trade = no industry = no money = no future.
CETA's collapse is equivalent to the Budapest COMECON council session of
28/6/91. Corporate central planning has flopped down dead alongside Soviet
central planning. The Western Bloc is finally breaking up.
The Walloons, part of a barely real country. The Walloons, who brought you
much of Belgian colonialism, which got a bad name even among colonialists. The
Walloons, who oppressed the Flemings. There were cases of Dutch speakers being
condemned to death in courts that were in French and refused to provide
translation.
And yet the Walloons, a singularly unsuccessful people, are derailing a bad
trade deal.
Enlightening times. And times in which we cannot assume that we know where
our allies will come from.
Liberation weighs in with an interesting analysis: La Vallonie considers
CETA to be a Trojan horse bearing the subsidiaries of U.S. companies into
Belgium:
Shipping: "China is to build a deepwater tanker port in Malaysia off the
Malacca Strait, a key gateway for Chinese oil imports.The $1.9bn port,
located on the coast of Malacca City, will be able to accommodate very large
crude carriers" [Lloyd's List].
But, if the point of the TPP is to hem in China by excluding them and
bringing Malaysia into our "orbit" then why would they do this?
Unless, of course they know that any deal will make Malaysia a key gateway
to the American market and thus allow them to use it to wash their goods
through the TPP for cheap market access in the exact same way that they do it
now via Mexico.
It appears Belgium's Wallonia has put a nail on the coffin
of the EU-Canada trade agreement (CETA) by vetoing it. The
reasons, The Economist puts it, "are hard to understand."
Well, yes and no. Canada is one of the most progressive
trade partners you could hope to have, and it is hard to
believe that Walloon incomes or values are really being
threatened. But clearly something larger than the specifics
of this agreement is at stake here.
Instead of decrying people's stupidity and ignorance in
rejecting trade deals, we should try to understand why such
deals lost legitimacy in the first place. I'd put a large
part of the blame on mainstream elites and trade technocrats
who pooh-poohed ordinary people's concerns with earlier trade
agreements.
The elites minimized distributional concerns, though they
turned out to be significant for the most directly affected
communities. They oversold aggregate gains from trade deals,
though they have been smallish since at least NAFTA. They
said sovereignty would not be diminished though it clearly
was in some instances. They claimed democratic principles
would not be undermined, though they are in places. They said
there'd be no social dumping though there clearly is at
times. They advertised trade deals (and continue to do so) as
"free trade" agreements, even though Adam Smith and David
Ricardo would turn over in their graves if they read, say,
any of the TPP chapters.
And because they failed to provide those distinctions and
caveats now trade gets tarred with all kinds of ills even
when it's not deserved. If the demagogues and nativists
making nonsensical claims about trade are getting a hearing,
it is trade's cheerleaders that deserve some of the blame.
One more thing. The opposition to trade deals is no longer
solely about income losses. The standard remedy of
compensation won't be enough -- even if carried out. It's
about fairness, loss of control, and elites' loss of
credibility. It hurts the cause of trade to pretend
otherwise.
Reply
Saturday, October 22, 2016 at 09:32 AM
Peter K. -> Peter K....
, -1
Wallonia is adamantly blocking the EU's trade deal with
Canada
"HEY Canada, f!@# you." Within hours this tweet (the
result of a hack) from the Belgian foreign minister's account
was replaced with a friendlier message: "keep calm and love
Canada". Yet his country's actions are closer to the
original. On October 14th the regional parliament of Wallonia
voted to block the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement
(CETA), a trade deal between the European Union and Canada.
As Europeans assess the fallout from the U.K.'s
Brexit referendum
, they face a series of elections that could equally shake the political establishment. In the
coming 12 months, four of Europe's five largest economies have votes that will almost certainly mean
serious gains for right-wing populists and nationalists. Once seen as fringe groups, France's National
Front, Italy's Five Star Movement, and the Freedom Party in the Netherlands have attracted legions
of followers by tapping discontent over immigration, terrorism, and feeble economic performance.
"The Netherlands should again become a country of and for the Dutch people," says Evert Davelaar,
a Freedom Party backer who says immigrants don't share "Western and Christian values."
... ... ....
The populists are deeply skeptical of European integration, and those in France and the Netherlands
want to follow Britain's lead and quit the European Union. "Political risk in Europe is now far more
significant than in the United States," says Ajay Rajadhyaksha, head of macro research at Barclays.
... ... ...
...the biggest risk of the nationalist groundswell: increasingly fragmented parliaments that will
be unable or unwilling to tackle the problems hobbling their economies. True, populist leaders might
not have enough clout to enact controversial measures such as the Dutch Freedom Party's call to close
mosques and deport Muslims. And while the Brexit vote in June helped energize Eurosceptics, it's
unlikely that any major European country will soon quit the EU, Morgan Stanley economists wrote in
a recent report. But they added that "the protest parties promise to turn back the clock" on free-market
reforms while leaving "sclerotic" labour and market regulations in place. France's National Front,
for example, wants to temporarily renationalise banks and increase tariffs while embracing cumbersome
labour rules widely blamed for chronic double-digit unemployment. Such policies could damp already
weak euro zone growth, forecast by the International Monetary Fund to drop from 2 percent in 2015
to 1.5 percent in 2017. "Politics introduces a downside skew to growth," the economists said.
TPP: "CLINTON ADVISERS WALK THE KNIFE'S EDGE ON TPP: The hand wringing over Clinton's stance on the
TPP was even more evident in another batch of hacked emails posted by WikiLeaks on Wednesday. The
exchange from Oct. 6, like other emails allegedly* from the account of Clinton campaign chairman
John Podesta, is focused on the Democratic candidate's statement following the conclusion of TPP
negotiations last October and how to balance the former secretary of State's previous support for
the deal with demands from her base. 'The goal here was to
minimize our vulnerability to the
authenticity attack
and not piss off the WH [White House] any more than necessary," wrote chief
speechwriter Dan Schwerin when sending out a draft of the statement" [
Politico
].
The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made. * Politico, can we
can get an asterisk on that allegedly? Something like "* Bob from Legal made us put this 'allegedly'
in, after he got a call from John." What say?
TPP: "El Salvador Ruling Offers a Reminder of Why
the TPP Must Be Defeated" [
The
Nation
(Re Silc)]. "Last week, the tribunal at the center of the proposed TPP ruled against a
global mining firm that sued El Salvador, but only after seven years of deliberations and over $12
million spent by the government of El Salvador. Equally outrageous, legal shenanigans by the Australian-Canadian
firm OceanaGold around corporate ownership will likely prevent El Salvador from ever recouping a
cent…. [N]o one should be complacent about defeating the TPP. Despite Hillary Clinton's professed
opposition to the agreement, she is not picking up the phone to convince members of Congress to vote
no."
TPP: "The Case for the TPP: Responding to the Critics" [
United
States Chamber of Commerce
]. These guys are rolling in dough. Is this really the best they can
do? Claim: "The TPP Will Undermine Regulations Protecting Health, Safety and the Environment."The
COC's answer: "ISDS has been included in approximately 3,000 investment treaties and trade agreements
over the past five decades. These neutral arbitrators have no power to overturn laws or regulations;
they can only order compensation." In the billions, right? No chilling effect there!
TISA: "Meanwhile, news out of Europe cast doubt on whether negotiators will actually finish TISA
this year because the EU cannot agree on how to handle cross-border data flows. The European Commission's
trade and justice departments have been squabbling for months over the issue, which Froman acknowledged
is an important outstanding concern. EU trade officials want data flows included in the pact, opening
up new markets for Europe's data economy to expand, while data protection officials are more concerned
about strong safeguards for privacy" [
Politico
].
Trump's promise to deport illegal immigrants and build a massive wall along the Mexican border
has been one of his signature issues of this campaign. "They are coming in illegally. Drugs are pouring
in through the border. We have no country if we have no border. Hillary wants to give amnesty, she
wants to have open borders," the GOP nominee argued.
And he also argued that the border problem was contributing to the drug and opioid crisis in the
country by allowing them to pore over the border.
"We're going to get them out, we're going to secure the border, and once the border is secured,
at a later date, we'll make a determination as to the rest, but we have some bad hombres here, and
we're going to get them out," Trump said.
Clinton said she didn't want to "rip families apart. I don't want to be sending parents away from
children. I don't want to see the deportation force that Donald has talked about in action in our
country." She pointed she voted for increased border security and that any violent person should
be deported.
"I think we are both a nation of immigrants and we are a nation of laws, and that we can act accordingly
and that's why I am introducing comprehensive immigration reform within the first hundred days with
a path to citizenship," Clinton promised.
This guy is die hard neoliberal. That's why he is fond of Washington consensus. He does not understand
that the time is over for Washington consensus in 2008. this is just a delayed reaction :-)
Notable quotes:
"... after years of unusually sluggish and strikingly non-inclusive growth, the consensus is breaking down. Advanced-country citizens are frustrated with an "establishment" – including economic "experts," mainstream political leaders, and dominant multinational companies – which they increasingly blame for their economic travails. ..."
"... Anti-establishment movements and figures have been quick to seize on this frustration, using inflammatory and even combative rhetoric to win support. They do not even have to win elections to disrupt the transmission mechanism between economics and politics. ..."
"... They also included attacks on "international elites" and criticism of Bank of England policies that were instrumental in stabilizing the British economy in the referendum's immediate aftermath – thus giving May's new government time to formulate a coherent Brexit strategy. ..."
"... The risk is that, as bad politics crowds out good economics, popular anger and frustration will rise, making politics even more toxic. ..."
"... At one time, the people's government served as a check on the excesses of economic interests -- now, it is simply owned by them. ..."
"... The defects of the maximalist-globalist view were known for years before the "consensus began to break down". ..."
"... In at least some of these cases, the "transmission" of the consensus involved more than a little coercion and undermining local interests, sovereignty, and democracy. This is an central feature of the "consensus", and it is hard to see how it can by anything but irredeemable. ..."
"... However it is not bad politics crowding out out good economics, for the simple reason that the economic "consensus" itself, in embracing destructive and destabilizing economic policy crowded out the ostensibly centrist politics... ..."
"... The Inclusive Growth has remained only a Slogan and Politicians never ventured into the theme. In the changed version of the World.] essential equal opportunity and World of Social media, perspective and social Political scene is changed. Its more like reverting to mean. ..."
In the 1990s and 2000s, for example, the so-called Washington Consensus dominated policymaking
in much of the world...
... ... ...
But after years of unusually sluggish and strikingly non-inclusive growth, the consensus is
breaking down. Advanced-country citizens are frustrated with an "establishment" – including economic
"experts," mainstream political leaders, and dominant multinational companies – which they increasingly
blame for their economic travails.
Anti-establishment movements and figures have been quick to seize on this frustration, using
inflammatory and even combative rhetoric to win support. They do not even have to win elections to
disrupt the transmission mechanism between economics and politics. The United Kingdom proved
that in June, with its Brexit vote – a decision that directly defied the broad economic consensus
that remaining within the European Union was in Britain's best interest.
... ... ...
... speeches by Prime Minister Theresa May and members of her cabinet revealed an intention to
pursue a "hard Brexit," thereby dismantling trading arrangements that have served the economy well.
They also included attacks on "international elites" and criticism of Bank of England policies
that were instrumental in stabilizing the British economy in the referendum's immediate aftermath
– thus giving May's new government time to formulate a coherent Brexit strategy.
Several other advanced economies are experiencing analogous political developments. In Germany,
a surprisingly strong showing by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland in recent state
elections already appears to be affecting the government's behavior.
In the US, even if Donald Trump's presidential campaign fails to put a Republican back in the
White House (as appears increasingly likely, given that, in the latest twist of this highly unusual
campaign, many Republican leaders have now renounced their party's nominee), his candidacy will likely
leave a lasting impact on American politics. If not managed well, Italy's constitutional referendum
in December – a risky bid by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to consolidate support – could backfire,
just like Cameron's referendum did, causing political disruption and undermining effective action
to address the country's economic challenges.
... ... ...
The risk is that, as bad politics crowds out good economics, popular anger and frustration
will rise, making politics even more toxic. ...
Mr El-Erian, I know you are a good man, but it seems as though everyone believes we can synthetically
engineer a way out of this never ending hole that financial engineering dug us into in the first
place.
Instead why don't we let this game collapse, you are a good man and you will play a role in
the rebuilding of better system, one that nurtures and guides instead of manipulate and lie.
The moral suasion you mention can only appear by allowing for the self annihilation of this
financial system. This way we can learn from the autopsies and leave speculative theories to third
rate economists
It is sadly true that "the relationship between politics and economics is changing," at least
in the U.S.. At one time, the people's government served as a check on the excesses of economic
interests -- now, it is simply owned by them.
It seems to me that the best we can hope for now is some sort of modest correction in the relationship
after 2020 -- and that the TBTF banks won't deliver another economic disaster in the meantime.
Petey Bee OCT 15, 2016
1. The defects of the maximalist-globalist view were known for years before the "consensus
began to break down".
2. In at least some of these cases, the "transmission" of the consensus involved more than
a little coercion and undermining local interests, sovereignty, and democracy. This is an central
feature of the "consensus", and it is hard to see how it can by anything but irredeemable.
In the concluding paragraph, the author states that the reaction is going to be slow. That's absolutely
correct, the evidence has been pushed higher and higher above the icy water line since 2008.
However it is not bad politics crowding out out good economics, for the simple reason that
the economic "consensus" itself, in embracing destructive and destabilizing economic policy crowded
out the ostensibly centrist politics...
Paul Daley OCT 15, 2016
The Washington consensus collapsed during the Great Recession but the latest "consensus" among
economists regarding "good economics" deserves respect.
atul baride OCT 15, 2016
The Inclusive Growth has remained only a Slogan and Politicians never ventured into the theme.
In the changed version of the World.] essential equal opportunity and World of Social media, perspective
and social Political scene is changed. Its more like reverting to mean.
"... If you insist on focusing on individuals, you may miss the connection, because the worst off
within communities - actual chronic discouraged workers, addicts - are likely to express no opinion
to the degree they can be polled at all. Trump primary voters are white Republicans who vote, automatically
a more affluent baseline* than the white voters generally. ..."
EMichael quotes Steve Randy Waldman and Dylan Matthews in today's links:
""Trump voters, FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver found, had a median household income of $72,000,
a fair bit higher than the $62,000 median household income for non-Hispanic whites in America."
...
""But it is also obvious that, within the Republican Party, Trump's support comes disproportionately
from troubled communities, from places that have been left behind economically, that struggle
with unusual rates of opiate addiction, low educational achievement, and other social vices."
I followed the link and failed to find any numbers on the "troubled communities" thing. It
seems strange to me that the two comments above are in conflict with each other."
It seems like you are missing the point of Waldman's blog post (and Stiglitz and Shiller)
You didn't quote this part:
"... If you insist on focusing on individuals, you may miss the connection, because the
worst off within communities - actual chronic discouraged workers, addicts - are likely to express
no opinion to the degree they can be polled at all. Trump primary voters are white Republicans
who vote, automatically a more affluent baseline* than the white voters generally.
"Among Republicans, Trump supporters have slightly lower incomes. But what really differentiates
them?"]
"At the community level**, patterns are clear. (See this*** too.) Of course, it could still
all be racism, because within white communities, measures of social and economic dysfunction are
likely correlated with measures you could associate with racism."
Of course, it could still all be racism, because within white communities, measures of social
and economic dysfunction are likely correlated with measures you could associate with racism.
Social affairs are complicated and the real world does not hand us unique well-identified models.
We always have to choose our explanations,**** and we should think carefully about how and why
we do so. Explanations have consequences, not just for the people we are imposing them upon, but
for our polity as a whole. I don't get involved in these arguments to express some high-minded
empathy for Trump voters, but because I think that monocausally attributing a broad political
movement to racism when it has other plausible antecedents does real harm....
The Hillary Clinton campaign says the hackers behind the leaked
email evidence of their collusion with the major media are from
Russia and linked to the Russian regime. If so, I want to publicly
thank those Russian hackers and their leader, Russian President
Vladimir Putin, for opening a window into the modern workings of
the United States government-corporate-media establishment.
We always knew that the major media were extensions of the
Democratic Party. But the email evidence of how figures like
Maggie
Haberman
of The New York Times,
Juliet
Eilperin
of The Washington Post, and
John
Harwood
of CNBC worked hand-in-glove with the Democrats is
important. The Daily Caller and Breitbart have led the way in
digging through the emails and exposing the nature of this
evidence. It is shocking even to those of us at Accuracy in Media
who always knew about, and had documented, such collusion through
analysis and observation.
The Clinton campaign and various intelligence officials insist
that the purpose of the Russian hacking is to weaken the confidence
of the American people in their system of government, and to
suggest that the American system is just as corrupt as the Russian
system is alleged to be. Perhaps our confidence in our system
should be shaken. The American people can see that our media are
not independent of the government or the political system and, in
fact, function as an arm of the political party in control of the
White House that wants to maintain that control after November 8.
In conjunction with other evidence, including the ability to
conduct vote fraud that benefits the Democrats, the results on
Election Day will be in question and will form the basis for Donald
J. Trump to continue to claim that the system is "rigged" against
outsiders like him.
The idea of an American system of free and fair elections that
includes an honest press has been terribly undermined by the
evidence that has come to light. We are not yet to the point of the
Russian system, where opposition outlets are run out of business
and dissidents killed in the streets. That means that the Russians
have not completely succeeded in destroying confidence in our
system. But we do know that federal agencies like the Federal
Election Commission (FEC) and Federal Communications Commission
(FCC) are poised to strike blows against free and independent
media. Earlier this year the three Democrats on the FEC
voted
to punish
filmmaker Joel Gilbert for distributing a film
critical of President Barack Obama during the 2012 campaign.
The New York Times is
reporting
that
Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta has been contacted by the
FBI about the alleged Russian hackers behind the leaks of his
emails. This is what Podesta and many in the media want to talk
about.
But the Russians, if they are responsible, have performed a
public service. And until there is a thorough house-cleaning of
those in the major media who have made a mockery of professional
journalism, the American people will continue to lack confidence in
their system. The media have been caught in the act of sabotaging
the public's right to know by taking sides in the presidential
contest. They have become a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party,
coordinating with the Hillary Clinton for president campaign, which
apparently was being run out of Georgetown University, where John
Podesta was based. Many emails carry the web address of
[email protected], a reference to the Georgetown
University position held by the chairman of the 2016 Hillary
Clinton presidential campaign. Podesta is a Visiting Professor at
Georgetown University Law Center. His other affiliations include
the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress and the United
Nations High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda.
Podesta and the other members of this U.N. panel had proposed "
A
New Global Partnership for the World
," which advocated for a
"profound economic transformation" of the world's economic order
that would result in a new globalist system. Shouldn't the American
people be informed about what Podesta and his Democratic allies
have planned for the United States should they win on November 8?
That Podesta would serve the purposes of the U.N. is not a
surprise. But it is somewhat surprising that he would use his base
at Georgetown University to run the Hillary campaign. On the other
hand, Georgetown, the nation's oldest Catholic and Jesuit
university,
describes
itself
as preparing "the next generation of global citizens to lead and
make a difference in the world."
When a Catholic university serves as the base for the election
of a Democratic Party politician committed to taxpayer-funded
abortion on demand and transgender rights, you know America's
political system and academia are rotten to the core. The
disclosure from WikiLeaks that Podesta used his Georgetown email to
engage in party politics only confirms what we already knew.
If the Russians are ultimately responsible for the release of
these emails, some of which
show
an anti-Catholic animus
on the part of Clinton campaign
officials, we are grateful to them. The answer has to be to clean
out the American political system of those who corrupt it and
demonstrate to the world that we can achieve higher standards of
integrity and transparency.
For its part, Georgetown University should be stripped of its
Catholic affiliation and designated as an official arm of the
Democratic Party.
Paul Kersey
balolalo
Oct 14, 2016 12:02 PM
The well deserved hatred for Hillary and the globalists is so
great, that at least 40% of the males in this country would back
anyone who went up against the Clintons. That's just not the
same thing as "BUYING TRUMPS BULLSHIT HOOK, LINE, AND SINKER".
Trump is exposing the corruption and the hypocrisy of the
Clintons in a way that no one has ever had the guts to do in the
past. He's doing it on national TV with a large national
audience. With Trump we may get anarchy, but with the Clintons,
Deep State is guaranteed. It is Deep State that is working
overtime to finish building the expressway to neofeudalism.
Killary only can beg that voters hold their noses and vote for her. Guardian neoliberal presstitutes
still don't want to understand that Hillary is more dangerous then trump, Sge with her attempt that
she is more militant then male neocons can really provoke a confrontation with Russia or China.
Notable quotes:
"... War at home versus another foreign war, nothing will get through Congress, and either will get impeached...so third party all the way for me. ..."
"... Keep in mind, the election is not over and that drip, drip, drip of Hillary emails may push more people towards Trump. ..."
"... Shameless. Absolutely shameless, Guardian. This is not-even-disguised Clinton sycophancy... ..."
"... Clinton has everything going for her. The media, the banks, big business, the UN, foreign leaders, special interest lobbyists, silicon valley, establishment Republicans. How can she not win in an landslide?! ..."
"... We came, we saw, and he grabbed some pussy. ..."
"... It seems nobody wants to talk about what is really going on here - instead we are fed this bilge from both sides about 'sexual misconduct' and other fluff ..."
"... The stagnation of middle-class incomes in the West may last another five decades or more. ..."
"... This calls into question either the sustainability of democracy under such conditions or the sustainability of globalization. ..."
"... These classes of "globalization losers," particularly in the United States, have had little political voice or influence, and perhaps this is why the backlash against globalization has been so muted. They have had little voice because the rich have come to control the political process. The rich, as can be seen by looking at the income gains of the global top 5 percent in Figure 1, have benefited immensely from globalization and they have keen interest in its continuation. ..."
"... But while their use of political power has enabled the continuation of globalization, it has also hollowed out national democracies and moved many countries closer to becoming plutocracies. Thus, the choice would seem either plutocracy and globalization – or populism and a halt to globalization. ..."
The vast majority of her support comes from people that will be holding their noses as they vote
for her. Seems to me that convincing those same people that you have it in the bag will just cause
them to think voting isn't worth their time since they don't want to anyway.
I know Trump's supporters, the real ones, and the anyone-but-Hillary club will show up as well.
Funny if this backfires and he wins.
I won't be voting for either one and couldn't care less which one wins. War at home versus
another foreign war, nothing will get through Congress, and either will get impeached...so third
party all the way for me.
"Trump has to be the limit, and there has to be a re-alignment"
Trump has shown one must fight fire with fire. The days of the meek and mild GOP are over. Twice
they tried with nice guys and failed. Trump has clearly shown come out with both fists swinging
and you attract needed media and you make the conversation about you. Trump's mistake was not
seeking that bit of polish that leaves your opponent on the floor.
Keep in mind, the election is not over and that drip, drip, drip of Hillary emails may
push more people towards Trump.
Shameless. Absolutely shameless, Guardian. This is not-even-disguised Clinton sycophancy...
tugend49
For every woman that's been sexually harassed, bullied, raped, assaulted, catcalled, groped,
objectified, and treated lesser than, a landslide victory for Clinton would be an especially sweet
"Fuck You" to the Trumps of this world.
Clinton has everything going for her. The media, the banks, big business, the UN, foreign
leaders, special interest lobbyists, silicon valley, establishment Republicans. How can she not
win in an landslide?!
It might be a reaction against Trump, but it's also a depressing example of the power of the
establishment, and their desire for control in democracy. Just look at how they squealed at Brexit.
It seems nobody wants to talk about what is really going on here - instead we are fed this
bilge from both sides about 'sexual misconduct' and other fluff
There is a report from two years ago, July 2014, before the candidates had even been selected,
by the economist Branko Milanovic for Yale 'Global' about the impact of Globalisation on the Lower
Middle Classes in the West and how this was basically going to turn into exactly the choice the
American electorate is facing now
Why won't the media discuss these issues instead of pushing this pointless circus?
These are the penultimate paragraphs of the article on the report (there is a similar one for
the Harvard Business Review
here ):
The populists warn disgruntled voters that economic trends observed during the past three
decades are just the first wave of cheap labor from Asia pitted in direct competition with
workers in the rich world, and more waves are on the way from poorer lands in Asia and Africa.
The stagnation of middle-class incomes in the West may last another five decades or more.
This calls into question either the sustainability of democracy under such conditions
or the sustainability of globalization.
If globalization is derailed, the middle classes of the West may be relieved from the immediate
pressure of cheaper Asian competition. But the longer-term costs to themselves and their countries,
let alone to the poor in Asia and Africa, will be high. Thus, the interests and the political
power of the middle classes in the rich world put them in a direct conflict with the interests
of the worldwide poor.
These classes of "globalization losers," particularly in the United States, have had
little political voice or influence, and perhaps this is why the backlash against globalization
has been so muted. They have had little voice because the rich have come to control the political
process. The rich, as can be seen by looking at the income gains of the global top 5 percent
in Figure 1, have benefited immensely from globalization and they have keen interest in its
continuation.
But while their use of political power has enabled the continuation of globalization, it
has also hollowed out national democracies and moved many countries closer to becoming plutocracies.
Thus, the choice would seem either plutocracy and globalization – or populism and a halt to
globalization.
Globalisation will continue to happen. It has pulled a large part of the world population out
of poverty and grown the global economy.
Sure on the downside it has also hugely benefitted the 1%, while the western middle classes
have done relatively less well and blue collar workers have suffered as they seek to turn to other
types (less well paid) of work.
The issue is the speed of change, how to manage globalisation and spread the wealth more equitably.
Maybe it will require slowing but it cannot and should not be stopped.
"... Now we're in a situation in which superexploitation options are largely gone. Routine profit generation has become difficult due to global productive overcapacity, leading to behavioral sinkish behavior like the US cannibalizing its public sector to feed capital. ..."
"... Since the late 19th century US foreign policy has been organized around the open markets mantra. It may be possible for the Chinese, with their greater options for economy manipulation, to avoid the crashes the US feared from lack of market access. ..."
"... But the current situation on its face does not have anything like the colonial escape valve available in the 19th century. ..."
"... To the extent that colonialism or neocolonialism does not actually hold fixed boundary ground is irrelevant, since assets are more differential and flexible needing only corporate law to sustain strict boundaries on possession or instruments that convert to the same power over assets. No one, of course, wants to assess stocks and bonds as instruments of global oppression or exploitation that far exceeds 19th century's crude colonial rule. ..."
"... The TPP is a corporate power grab, a 5,544-page document that was negotiated in secret by big corporations while Congress, the public, and unions were locked out. ..."
"... Multinationals like Google, Exxon, Monsanto, Goldman Sachs, UPS, FedEx, Apple, and Walmart are lobbying hard for it. Virtually every union in the U.S. opposes it. So do major environmental, senior, health, and consumer organizations. ..."
"... The TPP will mean fewer jobs and lower wages, higher prices for prescription drugs, the loss of regulations that protect our drinking water and food supply, and the loss of Internet freedom. It encourages privatization, undermines democracy, and will forbid many of the policies we need to combat climate change ..."
"... "Though the Obama administration touts the pact's labor and environmental protections, the official Labor Advisory Committee on the TPP strongly opposes it, arguing that these protections are largely unenforceable window dressing." ..."
global scenario that the down-to-earth presidents of China and Russia seem to have in mind
resembles the sort of balance of power that existed in Europe.
The article floats away here. China and Russia might want to have something that "resembles"
that time, but the analogy overlooks the fact that the relatively calm state of affairs -
Franco-Prussian war? - on the European continent after Napoleon coexisted with savage colonial
expansion. The forms of superexploitation thereby obtained did much to help stabilize Europe,
even as competition for colonial lands became more and more destabilizing and were part of what
led to WW1.
Now we're in a situation in which superexploitation options are largely gone. Routine profit
generation has become difficult due to global productive overcapacity, leading to behavioral
sinkish behavior like the US cannibalizing its public sector to feed capital.
Since the late 19th century US foreign policy has been organized around the open markets
mantra. It may be possible for the Chinese, with their greater options for economy manipulation,
to avoid the crashes the US feared from lack of market access.
But the current situation on its face does not have anything like the colonial escape valve
available in the 19th century.
Of course, duplicitous political COPORATISM means systems over a systemic characterized by
marked or even intentional deception that is now sustained and even spearheaded by state
systems.
Many contemporary liberal idealists living in urban strongholds of market mediated comfort
zones will not agree to assigning such strong description to an Obama administration. It is
too distant and remote to assign accountability to global international finance and currency
wars that have hegemonic hedge funds pumping and dumping crisis driven anarchy over global
exploit (ruled by market capital fright / fight and flight).
To the extent that colonialism or neocolonialism does not actually hold fixed boundary
ground is irrelevant, since assets are more differential and flexible needing only corporate
law to sustain strict boundaries on possession or instruments that convert to the same power
over assets. No one, of course, wants to assess stocks and bonds as instruments of global
oppression or exploitation that far exceeds 19th century's crude colonial rule.
Recall, however, how "joint stock" corporations first opened chartered exploit at global
levels under East and West Trading power aggregates that were profit driven enter-prize. So in
reality the current cross border market system of neoliberal globalization is, in fact, a
stealth colonialism on steroids.
TPP is part of that process in all its stealthy dimensions.
"The TPP is a corporate power grab, a 5,544-page document that was negotiated in secret
by big corporations while Congress, the public, and unions were locked out.
Multinationals like Google, Exxon, Monsanto, Goldman Sachs, UPS, FedEx, Apple, and Walmart
are lobbying hard for it. Virtually every union in the U.S. opposes it. So do major
environmental, senior, health, and consumer organizations.
The TPP will mean fewer jobs and lower wages, higher prices for prescription drugs, the
loss of regulations that protect our drinking water and food supply, and the loss of
Internet freedom. It encourages privatization, undermines democracy, and will forbid many
of the policies we need to combat climate change."
This is very handy, thanks. However the conclusion stops short of what the SCO is saying and
doing. They have no interest in an old-time balance of power. They want rule of law, a very
different thing. Look at Putin's Syria strategy: he actually complies with the UN Charter's
requirement to pursue pacific dispute resolution. That's revolutionary. When CIA moles in Turkey
shot that Russian jet down, the outcome was not battles and state-sponsored terror, as CIA
expected. The outcome was support for Turkey's sovereignty and rapprochement. Now when CIA starts
fires you go to Russia to put them out.
While China maintains its purist line on the legal principle of non-interference, it is
increasingly vocal in urging the US to fulfill its human rights obligations. That will sound
paradoxical because of intense US vilification of Chinese authoritarianism, but when you push for
your economic and social rights here at home, China is in your corner. Here Russia is leading by
example. They comply with the Paris Principles for institutionalized human rights protection
under independent international oversight. The USA does not.
When the USA goes the way of the USSR, we'll be in good hands. The world will show us how
developed countries work.
"RULE OF LAW" up front and personal (again?)
Now why would the USA be worried about global rule of law?
An Interesting ideal. No country above the law.
"…US President Barack Obama has vetoed a bill that would have allowed the families of the
victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks to sue the government of Saudi Arabia.
In a statement accompanying his veto message, Obama said on Friday he had
"deep sympathy" for the 9/11 victims' families and their desire to seek justice for
their relatives.
The president said, however, that the bill would be "detrimental to US national interests"
and could lead to lawsuits against the US or American officials for actions taken by groups
armed, trained or supported by the US.
"If any of these litigants were to win judgements – based on foreign domestic laws as
applied by foreign courts – they would begin to look to the assets of the US government held
abroad to satisfy those judgments, with potentially serious financial consequences for the
United States," Obama said."
-----------------------
To the tune of "Moma said…" by The Shirelles –
….Oh don't you know…Obama said they be days like this,
…..they would be days like this Obama said…
One interesting irony is that in Obama's TPP "The worst part is an Investor-State
Dispute Settlement provision, which allows a multinational corporation to sue to override
any U.S. law, policy, or practice that it claims could limit its future profits."
"Though the Obama administration touts the pact's labor and environmental protections, the
official Labor Advisory Committee on the TPP strongly opposes
it, arguing that these protections are largely unenforceable window dressing."
Britain's Economy Was Resilient After 'Brexit.'
Its Leaders Learned the Wrong Lesson.
http://nyti.ms/2dOx0Is
via @UpshotNYT
NYT - Neil Irwin - OCT. 10, 2016
This article must begin with a mea culpa. When British
voters decided in June that they wanted to depart the
European Union, I agreed with the conventional wisdom that
the British economy would probably slow and that uncertainty
put it at risk of recession.
Advocates of "Brexit" argued that was hogwash, and the
early evidence suggests they were right. For example, surveys
of purchasing managers showed that both the British
manufacturing and service sectors plummeted after the vote in
July, yet were comfortably expanding in August and September.
But the events of the last couple of weeks suggest that
British leaders are drawing the wrong conclusions from the
fact that their predictions proved right. The British
currency is plummeting again, most immediately because of
comments from French and German leaders suggesting they will
take a tough line in negotiating Brexit. But the underlying
reason is that the British government is ignoring the lessons
from the relatively benign immediate aftermath of the vote.
The British pound fell to about $1.24 on Friday from $1.30
a week earlier and continued edging down Monday. Even if you
treat a "flash crash" in the pound on Asian markets Thursday
night as an aberration - it fell 6 percent, then recovered in
a short span - these types of aberrations seem to happen only
when a market is already under severe stress. (See, for
example, the May 2010 flash crash of American stocks, during
a flare-up of the eurozone crisis).
Sterling, as traders refer to the currency, is acting as
the global market's minute-to-minute referendum on how
significant the economic disruption from Brexit will end up
being. So what does the latest downswing represent? It's
worth understanding why British financial markets and the
country's economy stabilized quickly after the Brexit vote to
begin with.
The vote set off a chaotic time of political disruption,
especially the resignation of the prime minister, David
Cameron, who had advocated for the country's remaining part
of the E.U. Theresa May won the internal battle to become the
next prime minister, which was to markets and business
decision makers a relatively benign result.
Down, Down, Down for the Pound
The British currency plummeted after the country's vote to
leave the European Union, and again this week.
(graph at the link: £ at ~$1.45 Jan-June 30,
then down to $1.30-1.35 thru Sep 30,
then plunging to $1.24.)
Ms. May, the former home secretary, is temperamentally
pragmatic. She reluctantly supported remaining in the union.
And while she pledged to follow through on leaving it
("Brexit means Brexit," she said), she seemed like the kind
of leader who would ensure that some of the worst-case
possibilities of how Brexit might go wouldn't materialize.
Exporters would retain access to European markets. London
could remain the de facto banking capital of Europe. All
would be well.
Meanwhile, the Bank of England sprang into action to
cushion the economic blow of Brexit-related uncertainty.
Despite the inflationary pressures created by a falling
pound, the bank, projecting loss of jobs and economic output,
cut interest rates and started a new program of quantitative
easing to try to soften the blow.
All of that - the prospect of "soft Brexit" and easier
monetary policy - helped financial markets stabilize and then
rally, and kept the economic damage mild, as the purchasing
managers' surveys show.
But in the last couple of weeks, the tenor has shifted.
The May government has sent a range of signals indicating
it will take a hard line in negotiations with European
governments over the terms of Brexit. At a conservative party
conference, she pledged to begin the "Article 50" process of
formally unwinding Britain's E.U. membership by the end of
March, declaring that the government's negotiators would
insist that Britain would assert control of immigration and
not be subject to decisions of the European Court of Justice.
That sets up confrontational negotiations between the
British government and its E.U. counterparts. European
leaders will be reluctant to allow Britain continued free
access to its markets, which the May government wants,
without similarly free movement of people across borders.
And beyond the substance of the negotiations, the British
government has signaled in recent days that it is looking
inward, and will be hostile to those who are not British
citizens. ...
The much-hyped severe Brexit
recession does not, so far, seem to be materializing – which
really shouldn't be that much of a surprise, because as I
warned, the actual economic case for such a recession was
surprisingly weak. (Ouch! I just pulled a muscle while
patting myself on the back!) But we are seeing a large drop
in the pound, which has steepened as it becomes likely that
this will indeed be a very hard Brexit. How should we think
about this?
Originally, stories about a pound plunge were tied to that
recession prediction: domestic investment demand would
collapse, leading to sustained very low interest rates, hence
capital flight. But the demand collapse doesn't seem to be
happening. So what is the story?
For now, at least, I'm coming at it from the trade side –
especially trade in financial services. It seems to me that
one way to think about this is in terms of the "home market
effect," an old story in trade but one that only got
formalized in 1980.
Here's an informal version: imagine a good or service
subject to large economies of scale in production, sufficient
that if it's consumed in two countries, you want to produce
it in only one, and export to the other, even if there are
costs of shipping it. Where will this production be located?
Other things equal, you would choose the larger market, so as
to minimize total shipping costs. Other things may not, of
course, be equal, but this market-size effect will always be
a factor, depending on how high those shipping costs are.
In one of the models I laid out in that old paper, the way
this worked out was not that all production left the smaller
economy, but rather that the smaller economy paid lower wages
and therefore made up in competitiveness what it lacked in
market access. In effect, it used a weaker currency to make
up for its smaller market.
In Britain's case, I'd suggest that we think of financial
services as the industry in question. Such services are
subject to both internal and external economies of scale,
which tends to concentrate them in a handful of huge
financial centers around the world, one of which is, of
course, the City of London. But now we face the prospect of
seriously increased transaction costs between Britain and the
rest of Europe, which creates an incentive to move those
services away from the smaller economy (Britain) and into the
larger (Europe). Britain therefore needs a weaker currency to
offset this adverse impact.
Does this make Britain poorer? Yes. It's not just the
efficiency effect of barriers to trade, there's also a
terms-of-trade effect as the real exchange rate depreciates.
But it's important to be aware that not everyone in
Britain is equally affected. Pre-Brexit, Britain was
obviously experiencing a version of the so-called Dutch
disease. In its traditional form, this referred to the way
natural resource exports crowd out manufacturing by keeping
the currency strong. In the UK case, the City's financial
exports play the same role. So their weakening helps British
manufacturing – and, maybe, the incomes of people who live
far from the City and still depend directly or indirectly on
manufacturing for their incomes. It's not completely
incidental that these were the parts of England (not
Scotland!) that voted for Brexit.
Is there a policy moral here? Basically it is that a
weaker pound shouldn't be viewed as an additional cost from
Brexit, it's just part of the adjustment. And it would be a
big mistake to prop up the pound: old notions of an
equilibrium exchange rate no longer apply.
Britain's Economy Was Resilient After 'Brexit.'
Its Leaders Learned the Wrong Lesson.
http://nyti.ms/2dOx0Is
via @UpshotNYT
NYT - Neil Irwin - OCT. 10, 2016
This article must begin with a mea culpa. When British
voters decided in June that they wanted to depart the
European Union, I agreed with the conventional wisdom that
the British economy would probably slow and that uncertainty
put it at risk of recession.
Advocates of "Brexit" argued that was hogwash, and the
early evidence suggests they were right. For example, surveys
of purchasing managers showed that both the British
manufacturing and service sectors plummeted after the vote in
July, yet were comfortably expanding in August and September.
But the events of the last couple of weeks suggest that
British leaders are drawing the wrong conclusions from the
fact that their predictions proved right. The British
currency is plummeting again, most immediately because of
comments from French and German leaders suggesting they will
take a tough line in negotiating Brexit. But the underlying
reason is that the British government is ignoring the lessons
from the relatively benign immediate aftermath of the vote.
The British pound fell to about $1.24 on Friday from $1.30
a week earlier and continued edging down Monday. Even if you
treat a "flash crash" in the pound on Asian markets Thursday
night as an aberration - it fell 6 percent, then recovered in
a short span - these types of aberrations seem to happen only
when a market is already under severe stress. (See, for
example, the May 2010 flash crash of American stocks, during
a flare-up of the eurozone crisis).
Sterling, as traders refer to the currency, is acting as
the global market's minute-to-minute referendum on how
significant the economic disruption from Brexit will end up
being. So what does the latest downswing represent? It's
worth understanding why British financial markets and the
country's economy stabilized quickly after the Brexit vote to
begin with.
The vote set off a chaotic time of political disruption,
especially the resignation of the prime minister, David
Cameron, who had advocated for the country's remaining part
of the E.U. Theresa May won the internal battle to become the
next prime minister, which was to markets and business
decision makers a relatively benign result.
Down, Down, Down for the Pound
The British currency plummeted after the country's vote to
leave the European Union, and again this week.
(graph at the link: £ at ~$1.45 Jan-June 30,
then down to $1.30-1.35 thru Sep 30,
then plunging to $1.24.)
Ms. May, the former home secretary, is temperamentally
pragmatic. She reluctantly supported remaining in the union.
And while she pledged to follow through on leaving it
("Brexit means Brexit," she said), she seemed like the kind
of leader who would ensure that some of the worst-case
possibilities of how Brexit might go wouldn't materialize.
Exporters would retain access to European markets. London
could remain the de facto banking capital of Europe. All
would be well.
Meanwhile, the Bank of England sprang into action to
cushion the economic blow of Brexit-related uncertainty.
Despite the inflationary pressures created by a falling
pound, the bank, projecting loss of jobs and economic output,
cut interest rates and started a new program of quantitative
easing to try to soften the blow.
All of that - the prospect of "soft Brexit" and easier
monetary policy - helped financial markets stabilize and then
rally, and kept the economic damage mild, as the purchasing
managers' surveys show.
But in the last couple of weeks, the tenor has shifted.
The May government has sent a range of signals indicating
it will take a hard line in negotiations with European
governments over the terms of Brexit. At a conservative party
conference, she pledged to begin the "Article 50" process of
formally unwinding Britain's E.U. membership by the end of
March, declaring that the government's negotiators would
insist that Britain would assert control of immigration and
not be subject to decisions of the European Court of Justice.
That sets up confrontational negotiations between the
British government and its E.U. counterparts. European
leaders will be reluctant to allow Britain continued free
access to its markets, which the May government wants,
without similarly free movement of people across borders.
And beyond the substance of the negotiations, the British
government has signaled in recent days that it is looking
inward, and will be hostile to those who are not British
citizens. ...
Reply
Tuesday,
Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs...
,
Tuesday, October 11, 2016 at 07:17 AM
The much-hyped severe Brexit
recession does not, so far, seem to be materializing – which
really shouldn't be that much of a surprise, because as I
warned, the actual economic case for such a recession was
surprisingly weak. (Ouch! I just pulled a muscle while
patting myself on the back!) But we are seeing a large drop
in the pound, which has steepened as it becomes likely that
this will indeed be a very hard Brexit. How should we think
about this?
Originally, stories about a pound plunge were tied to that
recession prediction: domestic investment demand would
collapse, leading to sustained very low interest rates, hence
capital flight. But the demand collapse doesn't seem to be
happening. So what is the story?
For now, at least, I'm coming at it from the trade side –
especially trade in financial services. It seems to me that
one way to think about this is in terms of the "home market
effect," an old story in trade but one that only got
formalized in 1980.
Here's an informal version: imagine a good or service
subject to large economies of scale in production, sufficient
that if it's consumed in two countries, you want to produce
it in only one, and export to the other, even if there are
costs of shipping it. Where will this production be located?
Other things equal, you would choose the larger market, so as
to minimize total shipping costs. Other things may not, of
course, be equal, but this market-size effect will always be
a factor, depending on how high those shipping costs are.
In one of the models I laid out in that old paper, the way
this worked out was not that all production left the smaller
economy, but rather that the smaller economy paid lower wages
and therefore made up in competitiveness what it lacked in
market access. In effect, it used a weaker currency to make
up for its smaller market.
In Britain's case, I'd suggest that we think of financial
services as the industry in question. Such services are
subject to both internal and external economies of scale,
which tends to concentrate them in a handful of huge
financial centers around the world, one of which is, of
course, the City of London. But now we face the prospect of
seriously increased transaction costs between Britain and the
rest of Europe, which creates an incentive to move those
services away from the smaller economy (Britain) and into the
larger (Europe). Britain therefore needs a weaker currency to
offset this adverse impact.
Does this make Britain poorer? Yes. It's not just the
efficiency effect of barriers to trade, there's also a
terms-of-trade effect as the real exchange rate depreciates.
But it's important to be aware that not everyone in
Britain is equally affected. Pre-Brexit, Britain was
obviously experiencing a version of the so-called Dutch
disease. In its traditional form, this referred to the way
natural resource exports crowd out manufacturing by keeping
the currency strong. In the UK case, the City's financial
exports play the same role. So their weakening helps British
manufacturing – and, maybe, the incomes of people who live
far from the City and still depend directly or indirectly on
manufacturing for their incomes. It's not completely
incidental that these were the parts of England (not
Scotland!) that voted for Brexit.
Is there a policy moral here? Basically it is that a
weaker pound shouldn't be viewed as an additional cost from
Brexit, it's just part of the adjustment. And it would be a
big mistake to prop up the pound: old notions of an
equilibrium exchange rate no longer apply.
"... But if the third globalisation wave is mostly about taking advantage of cheap labour not commodities - whilst simultaneously reducing industrial capacity at home - today's global imbalances could result in a very different type of correction (something which may or may not be happening now). ..."
"... The immediate consequence may be the developed world's desire to engage in significant industrial on-shoring. ..."
"... I'm not convinced the end of globalization and the retrenchment of banking industry are the same thing. There are some things that can't be exp/imported. Maybe we just got to the point where it didn't make sense to order moules marinieres from Brussels!? ..."
"... You forget the third leg - reducing the price of labour for services via immigration of labour from poorer countries. On top of the supply-and-demand effects, it reduces social solidarity (see Robert Putnam) - of which trades union membership and activity is one indicator. It's a win-win for capital. ..."
According to strategists Bhanu Baweja, Manik Narain and Maximillian
Lin the elasticity of trade to GDP - a measure of wealth creating
globalisation - rose to as high as 2.2. in the so-called third wave
of globalisation which began in the 1980s. This compared to an
average of 1.5 since the 1950s. In the post-crisis era, however,
the elasticity of trade has fallen to 1.1, not far from the weak
average of the 1970s and early 1980s but well below the second and
third waves of globalisation.
... ... ...
The anti-globalist position has always been simple. Global trade isn't a net positive for anyone
if the terms of trade relationships aren't reciprocal or if the trade exists solely for the purpose
of taking advantage of undervalued local resources like labour or commodities whilst channeling
rents/profits to a single central beneficiary. That, they have always argued, makes it more akin to
an imperialistic relationship than a reciprocal one.
If the latest wave of "globalisation" is mostly an expression of
American imperialism, then it does seem logical it too will fade as
countries wake-up to the one-sided nature of the current global
value chains in place.
Back in the first wave of globalisation,
of course, much of the trade growth was driven by colonial empires
taking advantage of cheap commodity resources abroad in a bid to
add value to them domestically. When these supply chains unravelled,
that left Europe short of commodities but long industrial capacity
- a destabilising imbalance which coincided with two world wars.
Simplistically speaking, resource rich countries at this point
were faced with only two options: industrialising on their own
autonomous terms or be subjugated by even more oppressive
imperialist forces, which had even grander superiority agendas than
their old colonial foes. That left those empires boasting domestic
industrial capacity but lacking natural resources of their own,
with the option of fighting to defend the rights of their former
colonies in the hope that the promise of independence and friendly
future knowledge exchanges (alongside military protection) would be
enough to secure resource access from then on.
But if the third globalisation wave is mostly about taking
advantage of cheap labour not commodities - whilst simultaneously
reducing industrial capacity at home - today's global imbalances
could result in a very different type of correction (something
which may or may not be happening now).
The immediate consequence
may be the developed world's desire to engage in significant
industrial on-shoring.
But while reversing the off-shoring trend may boost productivity
in nations like the US or even in Europe, it's also likely to
reduce demand for mobile international capital as a whole. As UBS
notes, global cross border capital flows are already decelerating
significantly as a share of GDP post-crisis, and the peak-to-trough
swing in capital inflows to GDP over the past ten years has been
much more dramatic in developed markets than in emerging ones:
To note, in China trade as a % of GDP fell from
65% in 2006 to 42% in 2014. The relationship
between trade and GDP is in reality more variable
than is usually claimed.
I'm not convinced the end of globalization and
the retrenchment of banking industry are the same
thing. There are some things that can't be
exp/imported. Maybe we just got to the point
where it didn't make sense to order moules
marinieres from Brussels!?
"if the third globalisation wave is mostly about taking advantage of cheap labour not
commodities - whilst simultaneously reducing
industrial capacity at home"
You forget the third leg - reducing the
price of labour for services via immigration of
labour from poorer countries. On top of the
supply-and-demand effects, it reduces social
solidarity (see Robert Putnam) - of which trades
union membership and activity is one indicator.
It's a win-win for capital.
The simple problem with globalization is that it was based off economic views which looked
at things in aggregate - but people are
individuals, not aggregates. "On average, GDP
per person has gone up" doesn't do anything for
the person whose income has gone down. "Just
think about all the people in China who are so
much better off than they used to be" isn't going
to do much for an American or European whose
standard of living has slipped from middle class
to working class to government assistance.
"Redistribution" is routinely advertised as
the solution to all of this. I leave it as an
exercise to the reader to figure out how to
redistribute wealth from the areas that have
prospered the most (Asia, particularly China) to
the individuals (primarily in the West) who have
lost the most. In the absence of any viable
redistribution scheme, though, I suspect the most
likely outcome will be a pulling back on
globalization.
@
Terra_Desolata
The aggregates also do apply to countries -
i.e. the US on aggregate has benefited from
globalisation, but median wages have been
stagnant in real terms, meaning that the
benefits of globalisation have not been
well distributed across the country
(indeed, companies like Apple have
benefited hugely from reducing the costs of
production, while you could make the case
that much of the benefits of lower
production costs have been absorbed into
profit margins).
That suggests that redistribution can
occur at the country level, rather than
requiring a cross-border dimension.
@
Meh...
in the US, median male wages were
lower in 2014 than in 1973 - when a
far higher proportion of working-age
males were active in the labour
force.
Growing up in the 1970s, it would
have been unthinkable for wages to
have fallen since the 1930s.
Terra_Desolata
5pts
Featured
8 hours ago
@
Meh...
@
Terra_Desolata
Yes, there has been uneven
distribution of income within
countries as well as between them -
but as the Panama Papers revealed, in
a world of free movement of capital,
incomes can also move freely between
borders. (See: Apple.) While the
U.S. has lower tolerance than Europe
and Asia for such games, any attempts
at redistribution would necessarily
include an effort to keep incomes
from slipping across national
borders, which would have the same
effect: a net reduction in
globalization.
"... "In my lifetime I cannot remember anything like the scepticism about these values that we see today," said Suma Chakrabarti, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. ..."
"... There was much discussion this week about the underlying causes of that scepticism - low growth, stagnant wages and other scars of the 2008 global financial crisis - together with calls for governments to do more to ensure the benefits of globalisation are distributed more widely. ..."
"... Lou Jiwei, China's finance minister, told reporters on Friday, the current "political risks" would in the immediate future lead only to "superficial changes" for the global economy. But underlying them was a deeper trend of "deglobalisation". ..."
The world's economic elite spent this week invoking fears of protectionism and the
existential
crisis facing globalisation
.... ... ...
Mr Trump has raised the possibility of trying to renegotiate the terms of the US sovereign debt
much as he did repeatedly with his own business debts as a property developer. He also has proposed
imposing punitive tariffs on imports from China and Mexico and ripping up existing US trade pacts.
... ... ...
"Once a tariff has been imposed on a country's exports, it is in that country's best interest
to retaliate, and when it does, both countries end up worse off," IMF economists wrote.
It is not just angst over Mr Trump. There are similar concerns over Brexit and the rise of populist
parties elsewhere in Europe. All present their own threats to the advance of the US-led path of economic
liberalisation pursued since Keynes and his peers gathered at Bretton Woods in 1944.
"In my lifetime I cannot remember anything like the scepticism about these values that we
see today," said Suma Chakrabarti, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
There was much discussion this week about the underlying causes of that scepticism - low growth,
stagnant wages and other scars of the 2008 global financial crisis - together with calls for governments
to do more to ensure the benefits of globalisation are distributed more widely.
Lou Jiwei, China's finance minister, told reporters on Friday, the current "political risks" would
in the immediate future lead only to "superficial changes" for the global economy. But underlying
them was a deeper trend of "deglobalisation".
"... Weak global trade, fears that the U.K. is marching towards a hard Brexit , and polls indicating that the U.S. election remains a tighter call than markets are pricing in have led a bevy of analysts to redouble their warnings that a backlash over globalization is poised to roil global financial markets-with profound consequences for the real economy and investment strategies. ..."
"... From the economists and politicians at the annual IMF meeting in Washington to strategists on Wall Street trying to advise clients, everyone seems to be pondering a future in which cooperation and global trade may look much different than they do now. ..."
"... "The main risk with potentially tough negotiating tactics is that trade partners could panic, especially if global coordination evaporates." ..."
Weak global trade, fears that the U.K. is marching towards a
hard Brexit , and polls indicating that the U.S. election remains a
tighter call than markets are
pricing in have led a bevy of analysts to redouble their warnings that a backlash over globalization
is poised to roil global financial markets-with profound consequences for the real economy and investment
strategies.
From the economists and politicians at the annual
IMF meeting in Washington to strategists on Wall Street trying to advise clients, everyone seems
to be pondering a future in which cooperation and
global trade may look much different than they do now.
Brexit
Suggestions that the U.K. will prioritize control over its migration policy at the expense of
open access to Europe's single market in negotiations to leave the European Union-a strategy that's
being dubbed a "hard Brexit"-loomed large over global markets. The U.K. government is "strongly supportive
of open markets, free markets, open economies, free trade," said
Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond during a Bloomberg Television interview in New York
on Thursday. "But we have a problem-and it's not just a British problem, it's a developed-world problem-in
keeping our populations engaged and supportive of our market capitalism, our economic model."
Trade
Citing the rising anti-trade sentiment, analysts from Bank of America Merrill Lynch warned that
"events show nations are becoming less willing to cooperate, more willing to contest," and a
backlash against inequality is likely to trigger more activist fiscal policies. Looser government
spending in developed countries-combined with trade protectionism and wealth redistribution-could
reshape global investment strategies, unleashing a wave of inflation, the bank argued, amid a looming
war against inequality.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew did his part to push for more openness. During an interview in
Washington on Thursday, he said that efforts to boost trade, combined with a more equitable distribution
of the fruits of economic growth, are key to ensuring
U.S. prosperity. Rolling back on globalization would be counterproductive to any attempt to boost
median incomes, he added.
Trump
Without mentioning him by name, Lew's comments appeared to nod to Donald Trump, who some believe
could take the U.S. down a more isolationist trading path should he be elected president in November.
"The emergence of Donald Trump as a political force reflects a mood of growing discontent about immigration,
globalization and the distribution of wealth," write analysts at Fathom Consulting, a London-based
research firm. Their central scenario is that a Trump administration might be benign for the U.S.
economy. "However, in our downside scenario, Donald Dark, global trade falls sharply and a global
recession looms. In this world, isolationism wins, not just in the U.S., but globally," they caution.
Analysts at Standard Chartered Plc agree that the tail risks of a Trump presidency could be significant.
"The main risk with potentially tough negotiating tactics is that trade partners could panic, especially
if global coordination evaporates." They add that business confidence could take a big hit in this
context. "The global trade system could descend into a spiral of trade tariffs, reminiscent of what
happened after the
Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930 , and ultimately a trade war, possibly accompanied by foreign-exchange
devaluations; this would be a 'lose-lose' deal for all."
Market participants are also concerned that populism could take root under a Hillary Clinton administration.
"We believe the liberal base's demands on a Clinton Administration could lead to an overly expansive
federal government with aggressive regulators," write analysts at Barclays Plc. "If the GOP does
not unify, Clinton may expand President Obama's use of executive authority to accomplish her goals."
"The top trade negotiators involved in the Trade in
Services Agreement (TiSA) will meet in Washington later
this month to review their latest market access offers and
prepare the groundwork for a final deal in December" [
Bloomberg
].
"The high-level meeting follows a successful September
negotiating round and recent signals from Washington that
a TiSA deal could be forged before the end of the year."
Yikes! Dark horse coming up on the outside!
"TTIP AG TALKS SET TO DRIFT: The U.S. summarily
rejected a European Union request for three days of
agriculture talks at this week's Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership round, further indicating that
political uncertainty has limited what either side is able
to discuss in the negotiations, sources close to the talks
say" [
Politico
].
"'I think we can get there,' Lew said, referring to a
vote on the Asia-Pacific pact. He argued that voting for
TPP should be easier than voting for last year's Trade
Promotion Authority bill because it has tangible benefits
that will grow the economy. He said current voter angst is
not due to TPP itself but rather to other domestic needs
that the government has not adequately addressed" [
Politico
].
"'If we were investing more in infrastructure, which I
believe we should, if we were investing more
smartly
in education and training and in child care, I'm not so
sure we'd be in the same place,' Lew said." I think
"hysteresis" is the word for the fact that you can't
reverse a 40-year screw job handwaving about a policy
pivot. And whenever you hear a liberal use the word
"smart," get your back against the nearest wall.
"The American Brexit Is Coming" [James Stavridis,
Foreign Policy
]. "The case for the TPP is economically
strong, but the geopolitical logic is even more
compelling. The deal is one that China will have great
difficulty accepting, as it would put Beijing outside a
virtuous circle of allies, partners, and friends on both
sides of the Pacific. Frankly, that is a good place to
keep China from the perspective of the United States….
Over 2,500 years ago, during the Zhou dynasty, the
philosopher-warrior Sun Tzu wrote the compelling study of
conflict The Art of War. There is much wisdom in that slim
volume, including this quote: "The supreme art of war is
to subdue the enemy without fighting." The United States
can avoid conflict best in East Asia by using a robust
combination of national tools - with the TPP at the top of
the list. Looking across the Atlantic to the Brexit
debacle, we must avoid repeating the mistake in the
Pacific." And we get?
"12 U.S. Senators Outline TPP's Fundamental Flaws, Tell
President Obama it Shouldn't Be Considered Until
Renegotiated" (PDF) [
Public
Citizen
]. Brown, Sanders, Blumenthal, Merkley,
Franken, Markey, Schatz, Casey, Warren, Whitehouse, Hirono,
and Baldwin call for renegotiation. "It is simply not
accurate to call an agreement progressive if it does not
require trading partners to ban trade in goods made with
forced labor or includes a special court for corporations
to challenge legitimate, democratically developed public
policies."
"The way ahead" [Barack Obama,
The Economist
]. "Lifting productivity and wages also
depends on creating a global race to the top in rules for
trade. While some communities have suffered from foreign
competition, trade has helped our economy much more than
it has hurt. Exports helped lead us out of the recession.
American firms that export pay their workers up to 18%
more on average than companies that do not, according to a
report by my Council of Economic Advisers. So, I will keep
pushing for Congress to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership
and to conclude a Transatlantic Trade and Investment
Partnership with the EU. These agreements, and stepped-up
trade enforcement, will level the playing field for
workers and businesses alike." I should really get out my
Magic Marker's for this one.
Steve C
October 7, 2016 at 4:45 pm
"Global race to the top" is vintage Obama propaganda. A "smart" sounding
phrase meant to obscure the impact of TPP on the non-elite. The adoring
comments make it all the worse. He sure knows the lingo to appeal to educated
professionals.
This is a lot of patented, soaring Obama verbiage that boils down to
surrendering to global corporations and the big banks.
Yeah, no one is thinking through the analogy to note that there are very
few races where everyone wins. In point of fact, except for those where
finishing is considered an accomplishment like marathons, there is only one
winner and what's left are also ran and losers. So why are we involved in a
situation where most are going to lose?
"Morning Trade was let down - along with many on Twitter - that there was no mention of the TPP [in
the Vice-Presidential Debate], a deal that both vice presidential candidates initially supported until
they signed on as running-mates and flip-flopped" [
Politico
].
Especially given that in Trump's strong first half-hour, he hammered Clinton with it.
"In conference at Yale Law School, DeLauro pushes to stop controversial Trans Pacific Partnership"
[
New
Haven Register
]. Detailed report of speech. ".S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, said the administration
will be "relentless" in its pursuit of a positive vote on the Trans Pacific Partnership in the lame
duck Congress, something she and a coalition in Congress are hoping to stop…. '(T)he agreement is undemocratic
in its drafting, undemocratic in its contents and it cannot be passed during an unaccountable lame duck
period,' she told Yale Law students and staff in attendance."
"Obama Hails Enforcement on Trade Deals to Win Support for T.P.P." [
New
York Times
]. "Such actions against other countries' subsidies, dumping and market barriers, however,
do not address two big concerns of trade skeptics: currency manipulation and workers' rights."
"The French decision follows Uruguay and Paraguay leaving the controversial US backed TISA negotiations
last year and the recent humiliating back down of the EU on Investor State Dispute Resolution. With
Germany and France so critical and Great Britain on the way out of the EU, it is hard to see how the
European Commission can continue the negotiations" [
Public
Services International
].
Now the predatory class claims to be aghast at what its
policies have enabled--Trump. But are Trumps policies really
the problem...or is the problem that doesn't use the
reassuring, coded language that the predatory class has
carefully crafted to cover its exploitation?
"... I usually remark that one must look at the 'second tier' of a political cabal to predict future actions by a 'candidate.' The people surrounding the 'candidate' and their track records on issues in their sphere of expertise tell the mind sets that 'drive' policy. Trump comes from the business world, where delegation of responsibility is standard for larger enterprises. His 'advisors' are key to future performance. Clinton seems to be encapsulated in a bubble of sycophants. So, the same rationale applies to her as applies to Trump. Who are her main 'advisors?' ..."
"... As anyone possessed of discernment would have noticed in the 2008 campaign, Obama surrounded himself with 'less than progressive' advisors. His subsequent governance followed suit so that we find the nation in the mess it is in today. ..."
"... Finally, all signs are that the Russians are not taking this slide towards bellicosity lightly. The Russians are demonstrating a clear sighted view of Americas dysfunctions. For the Russians to hold massive Civil Defense drills now is a clear message; "We are preparing for the worst. How about you?" ..."
"... The tone of this piece is remarkably similar to a long article Bacevich headed in a recent Harper's article on US foreign policy. Presented as a roundtable discussion, it centered on the dogged insistence of some State Department-tied clown that Russia is The Aggressor, while Bacevich and a two other participants nicked away at her position, largely, as I recall, by granting the Russians some right to a regional interest. While they slowed her down, the great missing element was a characterization of global aims of the US her position reflected. ..."
"... In short, Bacevich, a good liberal, will not name the beast of US imperialism. As a result he makes it seem as though any policy can be judged on a truncated logic of its own, and so policy debates fragment into a disconnected series of arguments that bid for "fresh thinking" without daring to consider the underlying drivers. It's one of the reasons Eisenhower, with his criticism of the military-industrial complex, still comes across as a guiding light. ..."
"... I'll put it out there: We have too many upper-middle-class white women who claim to understand foreign policy who should have been subject to a draft to concentrate their minds on what happens when a person is forced into the military and sent off to drive around with a rifle as people lob bombs at them. Madeleine Albright is the classic case: "What good is our exquisite military, if I, a compassion-challenged expert, can't waste a lot of lives on my follies?" Bacevich's personal history means that he knows what war is about (as did Gen. Sherman). ..."
"... Perry is forthright when he says: "Today, the danger of some sort of a nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War and most people are blissfully unaware of this danger." He also tells us that the nuclear danger is "growing greater every year" and that even a single nuclear detonation "could destroy our way of life." ..."
"... Perry does not use his memoir to score points or settle grudges. He does not sensationalize. But, as a defense insider and keeper of nuclear secrets, he is clearly calling American leaders to account for what he believes are very bad decisions, such as the precipitous expansion of NATO, right up to the Russian border,* and President George W. Bush's withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, originally signed by President Nixon. ..."
"... Interesting comments by Mr. Perry who had a starring role in 1979's "First Strike" propaganda film where he advocated for the MX ICBM system. ..."
"... So what's a voter to do? ..."
"... Well, I would hope that informed voters who have a healthy fear of the military-industrial-political complex will vote to keep the scariest of the two re: nuclear war out of office. This particular concern is the reason why I will in all likelihood be voting for the man I've been ridiculing for most of the past year, simply because I am terrified of the prospect of Hillary Clinton as Commander-in-Chief. ..."
"... Trump is a bad choice for a long list of reasons, but the most outrageous things he has proposed require legislation and I think it will be possible to defeat his essential sociopathy on that level, since he will face not only the opposition of the Dem Party, but also MSM and a significant number of people from his own party. ..."
"... But when it comes to the President's ability to put American 'boots on the ground' vs. some theoretical enemy, no such approval from Congress is necessary. Hillary Clinton will be in a position to get us into a costly war without having to overcome any domestic opposition to pull it off. ..."
"... What scares me is my knowledge of her career-long investment in trying to convince the generals and the admirals that she is a 'tough bitch', ala Margaret Thatcher, who will not hesitate to pull the trigger. An illuminating article in the NY Times revealed that she always ..."
"... All of her experience re: foreign policy that she's been touting is actually the scariest thing about her, when you look at what her historical dispositions have been. The "No Fly Zone" she's been pushing since last year is just the latest example of her instinct to act recklessly, as it directly invites a military confrontation with Russia. ..."
"... Her greatest political fear-that she might one day be accused by Republicans of being "weak on America's enemies"-is what we have to fear ..."
"... How reckless is Trump likely to be? Well, like Clinton-and all other civilian Commanders-in-Chief, Trump be utterly dependent upon the advice of military professionals in deciding what kind of responses to order. But in the position of The Decider, there is one significant difference between Trump and Clinton. Trump is at least willing and able to 1) view Putin as someone who is not a threat to the United States and 2) is able/willing to question the rationality of America's continued participation in NATO. ..."
"... Of Harding's speechifying, H.L. Mencken wrote at the time, "It reminds me of a string of wet sponges." Mencken characterized Harding's rhetoric as "so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash." So, too, with Hillary Clinton. She is our Warren G. Harding. In her oratory, flapdoodle and balderdash live on. ..."
"... At least Harding was aware of the damage his friends caused to him: "I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies in a fight. But my friends, my goddamned friends, they're the ones who keep me walking the floor at nights! " ..."
"... As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Harding had the political courage to pardon, and free from prison, Eugene V. Debs for his crime of giving an anti-war speech the Wilson administration did not like. ..."
"... Harding did not believe in foreign involvements and was never personally implicated in the financial corruption of his administration. ..."
"... If Clinton is to be compared to Harding, it would be to view Clinton as a "new" Harding who now believes she is well qualified to be President, wants to do much foreign military involvement, perhaps resulting in war, who is now trusting of her sycopathic friends to give her good advice, and who is personally involved in selling government favors (via the Clinton foundation) ..."
"... HRC is more dangerous because she is the 1st woman to become a serious contender for a position that has traditionally been considered a "man's job". Therefore she believes she must not, in any way, be perceived as "soft" or lacking "toughness" or aggressiveness. She feels compelled to "out-macho" the macho guys. ..."
"... The only bright spot in the prospect of a Hellary Klinton presidency is the probability that she may not survive long enough to start a war with Russia. I wonder how the training for the Mark I body double is coming? ..."
"... On the other hand, why should anyone think that a bubble-headed blowhard like Trumpet has the intelligence or gumption to have any effect upon the operations of the Warfare State? When the opinion makers of his own party and the neoliberal leaders of Klinton's party are all riding on the Military-Industrial gravy train looking for the next enemy to keep business booming? ..."
"... And how can anyone with a functioning brain cell think that anything a politician says or promises during an election has any connection to how they will act once elected? Remember Obama, Mr. "Audacity of Hope?" ..."
Prof. Bacevitch has bought up the one overriding problem with this election cycle: Lack of
substance.
I usually remark that one must look at the 'second tier' of a political cabal to predict
future actions by a 'candidate.' The people surrounding the 'candidate' and their track records
on issues in their sphere of expertise tell the mind sets that 'drive' policy. Trump comes from
the business world, where delegation of responsibility is standard for larger enterprises. His
'advisors' are key to future performance. Clinton seems to be encapsulated in a bubble of sycophants.
So, the same rationale applies to her as applies to Trump. Who are her main 'advisors?'
As anyone possessed of discernment would have noticed in the 2008 campaign, Obama surrounded
himself with 'less than progressive' advisors. His subsequent governance followed suit so that
we find the nation in the mess it is in today.
Finally, all signs are that the Russians are not taking this slide towards bellicosity
lightly. The Russians are demonstrating a clear sighted view of Americas dysfunctions. For the
Russians to hold massive Civil Defense drills now is a clear message; "We are preparing for the
worst. How about you?"
As always, Prof. Bacevitch is a joy to read. Live long, prosper, and hope those in positions
of power take his message to heart.
The tone of this piece is remarkably similar to a long article Bacevich headed in a recent
Harper's article on US foreign policy. Presented as a roundtable discussion, it centered on the
dogged insistence of some State Department-tied clown that Russia is The Aggressor, while Bacevich
and a two other participants nicked away at her position, largely, as I recall, by granting the
Russians some right to a regional interest. While they slowed her down, the great missing element
was a characterization of global aims of the US her position reflected.
That's pretty much what's going on here. "Do we really need a trillion dollar upgrade to US
nuclear capability?" Good question. But why, oh why, Andrew is it being proposed in the first
place? (Actually O has been pursuing the preliminaries for some time.) There's nothing about feeding
a military-industrial complex, nothing about trying to further distort the Russian economy to
promote instability, nothing about trying to capitalize on the US' military superiority as its
economic hegemony slips away.
In short, Bacevich, a good liberal, will not name the beast of US imperialism. As a result
he makes it seem as though any policy can be judged on a truncated logic of its own, and so policy
debates fragment into a disconnected series of arguments that bid for "fresh thinking" without
daring to consider the underlying drivers. It's one of the reasons Eisenhower, with his criticism
of the military-industrial complex, still comes across as a guiding light.
The round-table in Harper's, for background. One of the "takeaways" that I had is that both
of the women who participated are gratuitously hawkish. I am now tending to favor a universal
draft.
I'll put it out there: We have too many upper-middle-class white women who claim to understand
foreign policy who should have been subject to a draft to concentrate their minds on what happens
when a person is forced into the military and sent off to drive around with a rifle as people
lob bombs at them. Madeleine Albright is the classic case: "What good is our exquisite military,
if I, a compassion-challenged expert, can't waste a lot of lives on my follies?" Bacevich's personal
history means that he knows what war is about (as did Gen. Sherman).
Knowing what war's all about doesn't help much with knowing why wars come about, I'm afraid.
Bacevich is not helpful here. This reminds me of a great article by Graham Allison on bureaucratic
drivers in the Cuban Missile crisis, set out as three competing/complementary theories. Within
its mypoic scope, excellent, but as far as helping with the Cold War context, nada. He went on
to scotomize away in a chair at Harvard, gazing out his very fixed Overton window of permissible
strategic critique.
Wow. I just went to the TomDispatch site to look at Bacevich's work there. He does have a piece
criticizing Trump and HRC in light of Eisenhower, but slaps Eisenhower, appropriately, for various
crap, including the military-industrial complex takeoff. Why is it missing from this article?
At least Eisenhower criticized it.
Surprised that Bacevitch omits the thrust of Jerry Brown's important review:
My Journey at the Nuclear Brink
by William J. Perry, with a foreword by George P. Shultz
Stanford Security Studies, 234 pp., $85.00; $24.95 (paper)
I know of no person who understands the science and politics of modern weaponry better than
William J. Perry, the US Secretary of Defense from 1994 to 1997. When a man of such unquestioned
experience and intelligence issues the stark nuclear warning that is central to his recent
memoir, we should take heed. Perry is forthright when he says: "Today, the danger of some
sort of a nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War and
most people are blissfully unaware of this danger." He also tells us that the nuclear danger
is "growing greater every year" and that even a single nuclear detonation "could destroy our
way of life."
Perry does not use his memoir to score points or settle grudges. He does not sensationalize.
But, as a defense insider and keeper of nuclear secrets, he is clearly calling American leaders
to account for what he believes are very bad decisions, such as the precipitous expansion of
NATO, right up to the Russian border,* and President George W. Bush's withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty, originally signed by President Nixon.
*"The descent down the slippery slope began, I believe, with the premature NATO expansion,
and I soon came to believe that the downsides of early NATO membership for Eastern European
nations were even worse than I had feared" (p. 152).
Well, I would hope that informed voters who have a healthy fear of the military-industrial-political
complex will vote to keep the scariest of the two re: nuclear war out of office. This particular
concern is the reason why I will in all likelihood be voting for the man I've been ridiculing
for most of the past year, simply because I am terrified of the prospect of Hillary Clinton as
Commander-in-Chief.
Trump is a bad choice for a long list of reasons, but the most outrageous things he has
proposed require legislation and I think it will be possible to defeat his essential sociopathy
on that level, since he will face not only the opposition of the Dem Party, but also MSM and a
significant number of people from his own party.
But when it comes to the President's ability to put American 'boots on the ground' vs.
some theoretical enemy, no such approval from Congress is necessary. Hillary Clinton will be in
a position to get us into a costly war without having to overcome any domestic opposition to pull
it off.
What scares me is my knowledge of her career-long investment in trying to convince the
generals and the admirals that she is a 'tough bitch', ala Margaret Thatcher, who will not hesitate
to pull the trigger. An illuminating
article in the NY Times revealed that she always advocates the most muscular and
reckless dispositions of U.S. military forces whenever her opinion is solicited.
All of her experience re: foreign policy that she's been touting is actually the scariest
thing about her, when you look at what her historical dispositions have been. The "No Fly Zone"
she's been pushing since last year is just the latest example of her instinct to act recklessly,
as it directly invites a military confrontation with Russia.
Her willingness to roll the dice, to gamble with other people's lives, is ingrained within
her political personality, of which she is so proud.
Her greatest political fear-that she might one day be accused by Republicans of being "weak
on America's enemies"-is what we have to fear . That fear is what drives
her to the most extreme of war hawk positions, since her foundational strategy is to get out in
front of the criticism she anticipates.
It is what we can count on. She will most assuredly get America into a war within the first
6-9 months of her Presidency, since she will be looking forward to the muscular response she will
order when she is 'tested', as she expects.
How reckless is Trump likely to be? Well, like Clinton-and all other civilian Commanders-in-Chief,
Trump be utterly dependent upon the advice of military professionals in deciding what kind of
responses to order. But in the position of The Decider, there is one significant difference between
Trump and Clinton. Trump is at least willing and able to 1) view Putin as someone who is not a
threat to the United States and 2) is able/willing to question the rationality of America's continued
participation in NATO.
These differences alone are enough to move me to actually vote for someone I find politically
detestable, simply because I fear that the alternative is a high probability of war, and a greatly
enhanced risk of nuclear annihilation-through miscalculation-under a Hillary Clinton Presidency.
Yep. In the meantime, you have to wonder just how bad the false choice between the GOP / Dem
has to be before people vote in numbers for a better third-party candidate? Really, can it possible
get any worse than Trump v. Clinton?
Between this post and the VP debate I am growing comfortable with a decision to vote Green
and will probably continue voting Green in future elections.
Not that this isn't an important issue, but I disagree on the desirability of posing wonkish
questions in presidential debates, in the hopes of proving that someone didn't do enough homework.
Far too much policy is hidden by the constant recourse to bureaucratic language, which often rests
on other policy positions that remain undiscussed. One example: "chained CPI". Talking about it
/ taking it seriously presupposes that you subscribe to the notion that poor people may be told
to eat cardboard if some economist / committee member designated such an adequate replacement
for food. Yet most listeners will not catch on to that fact, were it ever to even come up in a
debate.
Words are just words, especially for politicians. If you want an idea of how they would govern,
go by what they did in the past. Right now we have the choice between a touchy blowhard with bad
hair and a mendacious conniver with bad judgement; you'd be foolish take anything either says
too seriously, even aside from the fact that they're wannabe politicians.
The response to why the nuclear arsenals need to be so large and constantly updated would have
been an interesting one if it had materialized. The fact is even a fairly limited exchange between
other nuclear powers with much smaller arsenals has the potential for rapid climate change that
renders Earth unlivable.
The Cold War notion that you just have to hole up a few days to avoid fallout doesn't really
make any more sense than using these weapons in the first place.
Just along these line, I did some order of magnitude calculations based on the US SLBM fleet.
Since the MIRV warheads are dial a yield, I calculated a range of 1210 – 1915 Megatons.
I know your point is more on the limited exchange scenario; just wanted to point out the destructive
potential of one country's submarine nuclear capability.
Of Harding's speechifying, H.L. Mencken wrote at the time, "It reminds me of a string of
wet sponges." Mencken characterized Harding's rhetoric as "so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps
into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle
of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash." So, too, with
Hillary Clinton. She is our Warren G. Harding. In her oratory, flapdoodle and balderdash live
on.
And when a person keeps pointing out the importance of keeping one's word, it almost always
means that he or she is lying.
At least Harding was aware of the damage his friends caused to him: "I have no trouble
with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies in a fight. But my friends, my goddamned friends,
they're the ones who keep me walking the floor at nights! "
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Harding had the political courage to pardon, and free from
prison, Eugene V. Debs for his crime of giving an anti-war speech the Wilson administration did
not like.
Harding did not believe in foreign involvements and was never personally implicated in
the financial corruption of his administration.
The Presidency was pushed on him, and he admitted felt he was not qualified.
I believe Harding gets a bad rap because he was not the leader of bold actions (wars) and the
corruption of people in his administration was well-documented.
His death was widely mourned in the USA.
As far as long term harm to the country, the do-nothing Harding was not bad for the country.
If Clinton is to be compared to Harding, it would be to view Clinton as a "new" Harding
who now believes she is well qualified to be President, wants to do much foreign military involvement,
perhaps resulting in war, who is now trusting of her sycopathic friends to give her good advice,
and who is personally involved in selling government favors (via the Clinton foundation)
Clinton is probably well coached by well paid advisors in her oratory.
Probably Harding wrote his own..
I would prefer Clinton to be like the old Harding, and the country would muddle through.
All it would take would be for a couple of strategically placed EMPs over the north american
continent ..
and poof . nothing functions anymore . while we get to stand and watch our 'supreme' military
launch their roman candles .
When it comes to war & nukes, I believe that HRC is the more dangerous of the two.
Before I explain, I would like to invite Yves or any female NC reader to consider & give their
POV on what I'm about say.
HRC is more dangerous because she is the 1st woman to become a serious contender for a
position that has traditionally been considered a "man's job". Therefore she believes she must
not, in any way, be perceived as "soft" or lacking "toughness" or aggressiveness. She feels compelled
to "out-macho" the macho guys.
Obviously this could have serious implications in any situation involving escalating tensions.
Negotiation or compromise would be off the table if she thought it could be perceived as soft
or weak (and she contemplates being a 2 term pres.)
What say you NC readers? Is this a justified concern or am I letting male bias color my view?
The only bright spot in the prospect of a Hellary Klinton presidency is the probability
that she may not survive long enough to start a war with Russia. I wonder how the training for
the Mark I body double is coming?
On the other hand, why should anyone think that a bubble-headed blowhard like Trumpet has
the intelligence or gumption to have any effect upon the operations of the Warfare State? When
the opinion makers of his own party and the neoliberal leaders of Klinton's party are all riding
on the Military-Industrial gravy train looking for the next enemy to keep business booming?
And how can anyone with a functioning brain cell think that anything a politician says
or promises during an election has any connection to how they will act once elected? Remember
Obama, Mr. "Audacity of Hope?"
"... Average US wages rose 350% in the 40 years between 1932 and 1972, but only 22% over the next 40 years. The pattern holds similar across the developed world. In other words, for all their hype, the computer and the internet have done less to lift economic growth than the flush toilet. ..."
"... ahem… the computer and the internet sped outsourcing to countries like China. Ask China or India how their economic growth has been since 1972. The author is mixing up several things at once. ..."
"... When so many of our jobs, technology and investment is offshored to China (and elsewhere), the future for innovation is certainly not bright, and this should be obvious to everyone, including the author. ..."
" Average US wages rose 350% in the 40 years between 1932 and 1972, but only 22% over the next
40 years. The pattern holds similar across the developed world. In other words, for all their hype,
the computer and the internet have done less to lift economic growth than the flush toilet."
ahem… the computer and the internet sped outsourcing to countries like China. Ask China or India
how their economic growth has been since 1972. The author is mixing up several things at once.
Great comments, and please allow me to piggyback off them:
When so many of our jobs, technology and investment is offshored to China (and elsewhere), the
future for innovation is certainly not bright, and this should be obvious to everyone, including
the author.
When so many have contributed so much, only to see their jobs and livelihoods offshored again
and again and again, that great jump the others have will then zero out OUR innovation!
Afaict, neither HRC nor Trump has said much of anything about the worldwide
network of U.S. bases. HRC doesn't talk about (this aspect of) the U.S. global
military footprint, and while Trump rambles on about making S Korea and Japan
shoulder more (or all) of their own security (and ponders aloud whether it
might be a good idea for both to acquire their own nuclear weapons), I haven't
heard him address the issue of bases: a question is whether Trump even knows
that the base network exists.
Doing what contemporary American economists
suggest: eliminate tariffs, don't worry about huge capital inflows or a ridiculously overvalued dollar,
has led the US from being the envy of the world to being a non-developed economy with worse roads
than Cuba or Ghana.
That US economists are still treated with any degree of credibility it totally
appalling. They are so obviously bought-and-paid for snake oil salesmen that people are finally tuning
them out.
TRUMP 2016: Return America to Protectionism - Screw globalism
[There is a pdf at the link. Olivier Blanchard has
surprised me again. As establishment economists go he is not
so bad. There is plenty that he still glosses over but
insofar as status quo establishment macroeconomics goes he is
thorough and coherent. One might hope that those that do not
understand either the debate for higher inflation targets or
the debate for fiscal policy to accomplish what monetary
policy cannot might learn from this article by Olivier
Blanchard, but I will not hold my breath waiting for that. In
any case the article is worth a read for anyone that can.]
RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
,
Friday, September 30, 2016 at 07:07 AM
Get real! No alumni of the Peterson Institute and IMF is
going to go all mushy on the down sides of globalization and
wealth distribution.
The State of Advanced Economies and Related Policy
Debates: A Fall 2016 Assessment
By Olivier Blanchard
Perhaps the most striking macroeconomic fact about
advanced economies today is how anemic demand remains in the
face of zero interest rates.
In the wake of the global financial crisis, we had a
plausible explanation why demand was persistently weak:
Legacies of the crisis, from deleveraging by banks, to fiscal
austerity by governments, to lasting anxiety by consumers and
firms, could all explain why, despite low rates, demand
remained depressed.
This explanation is steadily becoming less convincing.
Banks have largely deleveraged, credit supply has loosened,
fiscal consolidation has been largely put on hold, and the
financial crisis is farther in the rearview mirror. Demand
should have steadily strengthened. Yet, demand growth has
remained low.
Why? The likely answer is that, as the legacies of the
past have faded, the future has looked steadily bleaker.
Forecasts of potential growth have been repeatedly revised
down. And consumers and firms-anticipating a gloomier
future-are cutting back spending, leading to unusually low
demand growth today....
"... "Over the last 25 years, the number of people living in extreme poverty has been cut from nearly 40 percent of humanity to under 10 percent." This is roughly true, according to World Bank data, but the story of how it happened goes against his whole speech - which argues that this progress is a result of the "globalization" that Washington leads and supports wherever it has influence in the developing world. In fact, the majority of the reduction in extreme poverty during this period (more than 1.1 billion people worldwide) took place in China. But during this period China was really the counterexample to the "principles of open markets" with which Obama insists "we must go forward, not backward." ..."
"... If we go back a bit more and look at 1981–2012, China accounted for even more of the reduction of the world population in extreme poverty, about 70 percent. This would indicate that other parts of the developing world increased their economic and social progress during the 21st century, relative to China, and indeed many developing countries did (as compared to the last two decades of the 20th century). But China played an increasingly large role in reducing poverty in other countries during this period. ..."
"... It was so successful in its economic growth and development - by far the fastest in world history - that it became the largest economy in the world, and pulled up many developing countries through its imports. Chinese imports went from a negligible 0.1 percent of other developing countries' exports to 3 percent, from 1980–2010. China also provided hundreds of billions of dollars in investment, loans, and aid to low- and middle-income countries in the 21st century. (In the last few years, Chinese growth has slowed, along with that of most countries, and that has contributed - although perhaps not as much as Europe has - to the global slowdown since 2011.) ..."
"... the "principles of open markets" that Obama refers to is really code for "policies that Washington supports." ..."
"... In his defense of a world economic order ruled by Washington and its rich country allies, President Obama also asserted that "we have made international institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund more representative." But that is a gross exaggeration: the most recent reform of IMF voting shares left the US with an unchanged 16.7 percent share, enough to veto many important decisions (that require an 85 percent majority) by itself; and it left Washington and its traditional rich country allies with a solid majority of more than 60 percent of votes. Of course, it is the developing countries, especially poorer ones, that are most subject to IMF decisions. But the IMF is - by a gentleman's agreement among the rich country governments - headed by a European, and the World Bank by an American. It should not be surprising if these institutions do not look out for the interests of the developing world. ..."
President Obama Inadvertently Gives High Praise to China
in UN Speech
By Mark Weisbrot
President Obama's speech at the UN last week was mostly a
defense of the world's economic and political status quo,
especially that part of it that is led or held in place by
the US government and the global institutions that Washington
controls or dominates. In doing so, he said some things that
were exaggerated or wrong, or somewhat misleading. It is
worth looking at some of the things that media reports on
this speech missed.
"Over the last 25 years, the number of people living
in extreme poverty has been cut from nearly 40 percent of
humanity to under 10 percent." This is roughly true,
according to World Bank data, but the story of how it
happened goes against his whole speech - which argues that
this progress is a result of the "globalization" that
Washington leads and supports wherever it has influence in
the developing world. In fact, the majority of the reduction
in extreme poverty during this period (more than 1.1 billion
people worldwide) took place in China. But during this period
China was really the counterexample to the "principles of
open markets" with which Obama insists "we must go forward,
not backward."
China's historically unprecedented economic growth in the
past 25 years (or 35 years, or even more) was accomplished
with state-owned enterprises and banks dominating the
economy. State control over investment, technology transfer,
and foreign exchange was vastly greater than in other
developing countries. China rejected the neoliberal policies
of an "independent central bank," indiscriminate opening to
international trade and investment, and rapid privatization
of state companies. Instead, it chose a gradual transition,
over 35 years, from an overwhelmingly planned economy to a
mixed economy in which the state still plays a leading role.
Even today, China expanded the investment of state-owned
enterprises by 23.5 percent in the first six months of 2016
(as compared to the same period in 2015), to help boost the
economy.
If we go back a bit more and look at 1981–2012, China
accounted for even more of the reduction of the world
population in extreme poverty, about 70 percent. This would
indicate that other parts of the developing world increased
their economic and social progress during the 21st century,
relative to China, and indeed many developing countries did
(as compared to the last two decades of the 20th century).
But China played an increasingly large role in reducing
poverty in other countries during this period.
It was so
successful in its economic growth and development - by far
the fastest in world history - that it became the largest
economy in the world, and pulled up many developing countries
through its imports. Chinese imports went from a negligible
0.1 percent of other developing countries' exports to 3
percent, from 1980–2010. China also provided hundreds of
billions of dollars in investment, loans, and aid to low- and
middle-income countries in the 21st century. (In the last few
years, Chinese growth has slowed, along with that of most
countries, and that has contributed - although perhaps not as
much as Europe has - to the global slowdown since 2011.)
Of course, the "principles of open markets" that Obama
refers to is really code for "policies that Washington
supports." Some of them are the exact opposite of "open
markets," such as the lengthening and strengthening of patent
and copyright protection included in the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP) agreement. President Obama also made a plug
for the TPP in his speech, asserting that "we've worked to
reach trade agreements that raise labor standards and raise
environmental standards, as we've done with the Trans-Pacific
Partnership, so that the benefits [of globalization] are more
broadly shared." But the labor and environmental standards in
the TPP, as with those in previous US-led commercial
agreements, are not enforceable; whereas if a government
approves laws or regulations that infringe on the future
profit potential of a multinational corporation - even if
such laws or regulations are to protect public health or
safety - that government can be hit with billions of dollars
in fines. And they must pay these fines, or be subject to
trade sanctions.
In his defense of a world economic order ruled by
Washington and its rich country allies, President Obama also
asserted that "we have made international institutions like
the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund more
representative." But that is a gross exaggeration: the most
recent reform of IMF voting shares left the US with an
unchanged 16.7 percent share, enough to veto many important
decisions (that require an 85 percent majority) by itself;
and it left Washington and its traditional rich country
allies with a solid majority of more than 60 percent of
votes. Of course, it is the developing countries, especially
poorer ones, that are most subject to IMF decisions. But the
IMF is - by a gentleman's agreement among the rich country
governments - headed by a European, and the World Bank by an
American. It should not be surprising if these institutions
do not look out for the interests of the developing world.
"We can choose to press forward with a better model of
cooperation and integration," President Obama told the world
at the UN General Assembly. "Or we can retreat into a world
sharply divided, and ultimately in conflict, along age-old
lines of nation and tribe and race and religion."
But the rich country governments led by Washington are not
offering the rest of the world any better model of
cooperation and integration than the failed model they have
been offering for the past 35 years. And that is a big part
of the problem....
China's historically unprecedented economic growth in the
past 25 years (or 35 years, or even more) was accomplished
with state-owned enterprises and banks dominating the
economy. State control over investment, technology transfer,
and foreign exchange was vastly greater than in other
developing countries. China rejected the neoliberal policies
of an "independent central bank," indiscriminate opening to
international trade and investment, and rapid privatization
of state companies. Instead, it chose a gradual transition,
over 35 years, from an overwhelmingly planned economy to a
mixed economy in which the state still plays a leading role.
Even today, China expanded the investment of state-owned
enterprises by 23.5 percent in the first six months of 2016
(as compared to the same period in 2015), to help boost the
economy....
Even today, China expanded the investment of state-owned
enterprises by 23.5 percent in the first six months of 2016
(as compared to the same period in 2015), to help boost the
economy....
Yale Professors Offer Economic Prescriptions
By Brenda Cronin - Wall Street Journal
Richard C. Levin, president of Yale - and also a professor
of economics - moderated the conversation among Professors
Judith Chevalier, John Geanakoplos, William D. Nordhaus,
Robert J. Shiller and Aleh Tsyvinski....
An early mistake during the recession, Mr. Levin said, was
not targeting more stimulus funds to job creation. He
contrasted America's meager pace of growth in gross domestic
product in the past few years with China's often double-digit
pace, noting that after the crisis hit, Washington allocated
roughly 2% of GDP to job creation while Beijing directed 15%
of GDP to that goal....
Repeatedly there are warnings from Western economists that
the Chinese economy is near collapse, nonetheless economic
growth through the first 2 quarters this year is running at
6.7% and the third quarter looks about the same. The point is
to ask and describe how after these last 39 remarkable years:
Before the crash, complacent Democrats, ... tended to agree
with them that the economy was largely self-correcting.
Who is a complacent Democrat? Obama ran as a fiscal
conservative and appointed a GOP as his SecTreas. Geithner
was a "banks need to be bailed out" and the economy self
corrects. Geithner was not in favor of cram down or mortgage
programs that would have bailed out the injured little folks.
Democrats like Romer and Summers were in favor a fiscal
stimulus, but not enough of it. I expect to see the Clinton
economic team include a lot more women and especially focus
on economic policies that help working women and families.
I have always thought that a big reason for the Bush
jobless recovery was his lack of true fiscal stimulus. Bush
had tax cuts for the wealthy, but the latest from Summers
shows why trickle down does not work.
Full employment may have been missing from the 1992
platform, but full employment was pursued aggressively by
Bill Clinton. He got AG to agree to allow unemployment to
drop to 4% in exchange for raising taxes and dropping the
middle class tax cuts. Bill Clinton used fiscal policy to tax
the economy and as a break so monetary policy could be
accommodating.
He should include raising the MinWage. Maybe that has not
changed but it is a lynchpin for putting money in the pockets
of the working poor.
"... Will the media ever stop the ridiculous charade of pretending that the path of globalization that we are on is somehow and natural and that it is the outcome of a "free" market? Are longer and stronger patent and copyright monopolies the results of a free market? ..."
"... The NYT should up its game in this respect. It had a good piece on the devastation to millions of working class people and their communities from the flood of imports of manufactured goods in the last decade, but then it turns to hand-wringing nonsense about how it was all a necessary part of globalization. Actually, none of it was a necessary part of a free trade. ..."
"... First, the huge trade deficits were the direct result of the decision of China and other developing countries to buy massive amounts of U.S. dollars to hold as reserves in this period. This raised the value of the dollar and made our goods and services less competitive internationally. This problem of a seriously over-valued dollar stems from the bungling of the East Asian bailout by the Clinton Treasury Department and the I.M.F. ..."
"... The second point is political leaders are constantly working to make patents and copyrights stronger and longer. This raises the price that ordinary workers have to pay for everything from drugs to computer games. The result is lower real wages for ordinary workers and higher incomes for the beneficiaries of these rents. It also slows economic growth since markets are not smart enough to distinguish between a 10,000 percent price increase due to a tariff and a 10,000 percent price increase due to a patent monopoly. (In other words, all the bad things that "free trade" economists say about tariffs also apply to patents and copyrights, except the impact is far larger in the later case.) ..."
Why are none of the "free trade" members of
Congress pushing to change the regulations that require
doctors go through a U.S. residency program to be able to
practice medicine in the United States? Obviously they are
all protectionist Neanderthals.
Will the media ever stop the ridiculous charade of
pretending that the path of globalization that we are on is
somehow and natural and that it is the outcome of a "free"
market? Are longer and stronger patent and copyright
monopolies the results of a free market?
The NYT should up its game in this respect. It had a good
piece on the devastation to millions of working class people
and their communities from the flood of imports of
manufactured goods in the last decade, but then it turns to
hand-wringing nonsense about how it was all a necessary part
of globalization. Actually, none of it was a necessary part
of a free trade.
First, the huge trade deficits were the direct result of
the decision of China and other developing countries to buy
massive amounts of U.S. dollars to hold as reserves in this
period. This raised the value of the dollar and made our
goods and services less competitive internationally. This
problem of a seriously over-valued dollar stems from the
bungling of the East Asian bailout by the Clinton Treasury
Department and the I.M.F.
If we had a more competent team in place, that didn't
botch the workings of the international financial system,
then we would have expected the dollar to drop as more
imports entered the U.S. market. This would have moved the
U.S. trade deficit toward balance and prevented the massive
loss of manufacturing jobs we saw in the last decade.
The second point is political leaders are constantly
working to make patents and copyrights stronger and longer.
This raises the price that ordinary workers have to pay for
everything from drugs to computer games. The result is lower
real wages for ordinary workers and higher incomes for the
beneficiaries of these rents. It also slows economic growth
since markets are not smart enough to distinguish between a
10,000 percent price increase due to a tariff and a 10,000
percent price increase due to a patent monopoly. (In other
words, all the bad things that "free trade" economists say
about tariffs also apply to patents and copyrights, except
the impact is far larger in the later case.)
Finally, the fact that trade has exposed manufacturing
workers to international competition, but not doctors and
lawyers, was a policy choice, not a natural development.
There are enormous potential gains from allowing smart and
ambitious young people in the developing world to come to the
United States to work in the highly paid professions. We have
not opened these doors because doctors and lawyers are far
more powerful than autoworkers and textile workers. And, we
rarely even hear the idea mentioned because doctors and
lawyers have brothers and sisters who are reporters and
economists.
Addendum:
Since some folks asked about the botched bailout from the
East Asian financial crisis, the point is actually quite
simple. Prior to 1997 developing countries were largely
following the textbook model, borrowing capital from the West
to finance development. This meant running large trade
deficits. This reversed following the crisis as the
conventional view in the developing world was that you needed
massive amounts of reserves to avoid being in the situation
of the East Asian countries and being forced to beg for help
from the I.M.F. This led to the situation where developing
countries, especially those in the region, began running very
large trade surpluses, exporting capital to the United
States. (I am quite sure China noticed how its fellow East
Asian countries were being treated in 1997.)
"... Reuters reports that an investigation conducted by it in 2013 found that around three-fourths of the 50 biggest U.S. technology companies use practices that are similar to Apple's to avoid paying tax. So Verstager has taken on not just one giant, but the worlds corporate elite. She should not lose. But even if she does this time, this is a battle well begun. ..."
"... Thus the power of the multinationals comes not just from their own size and reach, and from the support that their own governments afford them, but from their ability to divide desperate countries seeking the presence of global giants to make a small difference to their economic conditions ..."
"... Those who support globalisation support this power disparity. ..."
The case of Apple's Irish operations is an extreme example of such tax avoidance accounting. It relates
to two Apple subsidiaries Apple Sales International and Apple Operations Europe. Apple Inc US has
given the rights to Apple Sales International (ASI) to use its "intellectual property" to sell and
manufacture its products outside of North and South America, in return for which Apple Inc of the
US receives payments of more than $2 billion per year. The consequence of this arrangement is that
any Apple product sold outside the Americas is implicitly first bought by ASI, Ireland from different
manufacturers across the globe and sold along with the intellectual property to buyers everywhere
except the Americas. So all such sales are by ASI and all profits from those sales are recorded in
Ireland. Stage one is complete: incomes earned from sales in different jurisdictions outside the
Americas (including India) accrue in Ireland, where tax laws are investor-friendly. What is important
here that this was not a straight forward case of exercising the "transfer pricing" weapon. The profits
recorded in Ireland were large because the payment made to Apple Inc in the US for the right to use
intellectual property was a fraction of the net earnings of ASI.
Does this imply that Apple would
pay taxes on these profits in Ireland, however high or low the rate may be? The Commission found
it did not. In two rather curious rulings first made in 1991 and then reiterated in 2007 the Irish
tax authority allowed ASI to split it profits into two parts: one accruing to the Irish branch of
Apple and another to its "head office". That "head office" existed purely on paper, with no formal
location, actual offices, employees or activities. Interestingly, this made-of-nothing head office
got a lion's share of the profits that accrued to ASI, with only a small fraction going to the Irish
branch office. According to Verstager's Statement: "In 2011, Apple Sales International made profits
of 16 billion euros. Less than 50 million euros were allocated to the Irish branch. All the rest
was allocated to the 'head office', where they remained untaxed." As a result, across time, Apple
paid very little by way of taxes to the Irish government. The effective tax rate on its aggregate
profits was short of 1 per cent. The Commissioner saw this as illegal under the European Commission's
"state aid rules", and as amounting to aid that harms competition, since it diverts investment away
from other members who are unwilling to offer such special deals to companies.
In the books, however, taxes due on the "head office" profits of Apple are reportedly treated
as including a component of deferred taxes. The claim is that these profits will finally have to
be repatriated to the US parent, where they would be taxed as per US tax law. But it is well known
that US transnationals hold large volumes of surplus funds abroad to avoid US taxation and the evidence
is they take very little of it back to the home country. In fact, using the plea that it has "permanent
establishment" in Ireland and, therefore, is liable to be taxed there, and benefiting from the special
deal the Irish government has offered it, Apple has accumulated large surpluses. A study by two non-profit
groups published in 2015 has argued that Apple is holding as much as $181 billion of accumulated
profits outside the US, a record among US companies. Moreover, The Washington Post reports that Apple's
Chief Executive Tim Cook told its columnist Jena McGregor, "that the company won't bring its international
cash stockpile back to the United States to invest here until there's a 'fair rate' for corporate
taxation in America."
This has created a peculiar situation where the US is expressing concern about the EC decision
not because it disputes the conclusion about tax avoidance, but because it sees the tax revenues
as due to it rather than to Ireland or any other EU country. US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew criticised
the ruling saying, "I have been concerned that it reflected an attempt to reach into the U.S. tax
base to tax income that ought to be taxed in the United States." In Europe on the other hand, the
French Finance Minister and the German Economy Minister, among others, have come out in support of
Verstager, recognizing the implication this has for their own tax revenues. Governments other than
in Ireland are not with Apple, even if not always for reasons advanced by the EC.
... ... ...
Thus the power of the multinationals comes not just from their own size and reach, and from
the support that their own governments afford them, but from their ability to divide desperate
countries seeking the presence of global giants to make a small difference to their economic
conditions. The costs of garnering that difference are, therefore, often missed. Reuters
reports that an investigation conducted by it in 2013 found that around three-fourths of the 50
biggest U.S. technology companies use practices that are similar to Apple's to avoid paying tax.
So Verstager has taken on not just one giant, but the worlds corporate elite. She should not
lose. But even if she does this time, this is a battle well begun.
I think the common misconception that multinational corporations exist because "they are big
companies that happen to operate in more than one country" is one of the biggest lies ever told.
From the beginning (e.g. Standard Oil, United Fruit) it was clear that multinational status
was an exercise in political arbitrage.
" Thus the power of the multinationals comes not just from their own size and reach, and
from the support that their own governments afford them, but from their ability to divide desperate
countries seeking the presence of global giants to make a small difference to their economic conditions
"
Those who support globalisation support this power disparity.
I'm all for reducing the unmanageably high levels of total immigration
into the U.S., and I strongly believe in penalizing illegal employers, but I
think you have exaggerated the number of illegal immigrants.
According to Numbers USA, there are about 12 million illegal immigrants in
the U.S.:
"... It is not clear what the NYT thinks it is telling readers with this comment. The economy grows and creates jobs, sort of like the tree in my backyard grows every year. The issue is the rate of growth and job creation. While the economy has recovered from the lows of the recession, employment rates of prime age workers (ages 25-54) are still down by almost 2.0 percentage points from the pre-recession level and almost 4.0 percentage points from 2000 peaks. There is much research ** *** showing that trade has played a role in this drop in employment. ..."
"... It is not surprising that Ford's CEO would say that shifting production to Mexico would not cost U.S. jobs. It is likely he would make this claim whether or not it is true. Furthermore, his actual statement is that Ford is not cutting U.S. jobs. If the jobs being created in Mexico would otherwise be created in the United States, then the switch is costing U.S. jobs. The fact that Michigan and Ohio added 75,000 jobs last year has as much to do with this issue as the winner of last night's Yankees' game. ..."
"... The piece goes on to say that the North American Free Trade Agreement has "for more than two decades has been widely counted as a main achievement of [Bill Clinton]." It doesn't say who holds this view. The deal did not lead to a rise in the U.S. trade surplus with Mexico, which was a claim by its proponents before its passage. It also has not led to more rapid growth in Mexico which has actually fallen further behind the United States in the two decades since NAFTA. ..."
"... It is worth noting that none of the analyses that provide the basis for this assertion take into the account the impact of the increased protectionism, in the form of longer and stronger patent and copyright protections, which are a major part of the TPP. These forms of protection are equivalent to tariffs of several thousand percent on the protected items. As they apply to an ever growing share of the economy, the resulting economic losses will expand substantially in the next decade, especially if the TPP is approved. ..."
NYT Editorial In News Section for TPP Short on Substance
When the issue is trade deals, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the New York Times
throws out its usual journalistic standards to push its pro-trade deal agenda. Therefore it is
not surprising to see a story * in the news section that was essentially a misleading advertisement
for these trade deals.
The headline tells readers that Donald Trump's comments on trade in the Monday night debate
lacked accuracy. The second paragraph adds:
"His aggressiveness may have been offset somewhat by demerits on substance."
These comments could well describe this NYT piece.
For example, it ostensibly indicts Trump with the comment:
"His [Trump's] first words of the night were the claim that "our jobs are fleeing the country,"
though nearly 15 million new jobs have been created since the economic recovery began."
It is not clear what the NYT thinks it is telling readers with this comment. The economy
grows and creates jobs, sort of like the tree in my backyard grows every year. The issue is the
rate of growth and job creation. While the economy has recovered from the lows of the recession,
employment rates of prime age workers (ages 25-54) are still down by almost 2.0 percentage points
from the pre-recession level and almost 4.0 percentage points from 2000 peaks. There is much research
** *** showing that trade has played a role in this drop in employment.
The NYT piece continues:
"[Trump] singled out Ford for sending thousands of jobs to Mexico to build small cars and worsening
manufacturing job losses in Michigan and Ohio, but the company's chief executive has said 'zero'
American workers would be cut. Those states each gained more than 75,000 jobs in just the last
year."
It is not surprising that Ford's CEO would say that shifting production to Mexico would
not cost U.S. jobs. It is likely he would make this claim whether or not it is true. Furthermore,
his actual statement is that Ford is not cutting U.S. jobs. If the jobs being created in Mexico
would otherwise be created in the United States, then the switch is costing U.S. jobs. The fact
that Michigan and Ohio added 75,000 jobs last year has as much to do with this issue as the winner
of last night's Yankees' game.
The next sentence adds:
"Mr. Trump said China was devaluing its currency for unfair price advantages, yet it ended
that practice several years ago and is now propping up the value of its currency."
While China has recently been trying to keep up the value of its currency by selling reserves,
it still holds more than $4 trillion in foreign reserves, counting its sovereign wealth fund.
This is more than four times the holdings that would typically be expected of a country its side.
These holdings have the effect of keeping down the value of China's currency.
If this seems difficult to understand, the Federal Reserve now holds more than $3 trillion
in assets as a result of its quantitative easing programs of the last seven years. It raised its
short-term interest rate by a quarter point last December, nonetheless almost all economists would
agree the net effect of the Fed's actions is the keep interest rates lower than they would otherwise
be. The same is true of China and its foreign reserve position.
The piece goes on to say that the North American Free Trade Agreement has "for more than
two decades has been widely counted as a main achievement of [Bill Clinton]." It doesn't say who
holds this view. The deal did not lead to a rise in the U.S. trade surplus with Mexico, which
was a claim by its proponents before its passage. It also has not led to more rapid growth in
Mexico which has actually fallen further behind the United States in the two decades since NAFTA.
In later discussing the TPP the piece tells readers:
"Economists generally have said the Pacific nations agreement would increase incomes, exports
and growth in the United States, but not significantly."
It is worth noting that none of the analyses that provide the basis for this assertion
take into the account the impact of the increased protectionism, in the form of longer and stronger
patent and copyright protections, which are a major part of the TPP. These forms of protection
are equivalent to tariffs of several thousand percent on the protected items. As they apply to
an ever growing share of the economy, the resulting economic losses will expand substantially
in the next decade, especially if the TPP is approved.
Hillary Clinton's campaign manager Robby Mook and other top Democrats refused to answer whether
Clinton wants President Barack Obama to withdraw the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) from consideration
before Congress during interviews with Breitbart News in the spin room after the first presidential
debate here at Hofstra University on Monday night.
The fact that Mook, Clinton campaign
spokesman Brian Fallon, and Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairwoman Donna Brazile each refused
to answer the simple question that would prove Clinton is actually opposed to the Trans Pacific Partnership
now after praising it 40 times and calling it the "gold standard" is somewhat shocking.
After initially ignoring the question entirely four separate times, Mook finally replied to Breitbart
News. But when he did respond, he didn't answer the question:
BREITBART NEWS: "Robby, does Secretary Clinton believe that the president should withdraw the
TPP?"
ROBBY MOOK: "Secretary Clinton, as she said in the debate, evaluated the final TPP language
and came to the conclusion that she cannot support it."
BREITBART NEWS: "Does she think the president should withdraw it?"
ROBBY MOOK: "She has said the president should not support it."
Obama is attempting to ram TPP through Congress as his last act as president during a lame duck
session of Congress. Clinton previously supported the TPP, and called it the "Gold Standard" of trade
deals. That's something Brazile, the new chairwoman of the DNC who took over after Rep. Debbie Wasserman
Schultz (D-FL) was forced to resign after email leaks showed she and her staff at the DNC undermined
the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and in an untoward way forced the nomination
into Clinton's hands, openly confirmed in her own interview with Breitbart News in the spin room
post debate. Brazile similarly refused to answer if Clinton should call on Obama to withdraw the
TPP from consideration before Congress.
"... Global is gone as a main driving force, pan-European is gone, and whether the United States will stay united is far from a done deal. We are moving towards a mass movement of dozens of separate countries and states and societies looking inward. All of which are in some form of -impending- trouble or another. ..."
"... And of course it's confusing that the protests against the 'old regimes' and the growth and centralization -first- manifest in the rise of faces and voices who do not reject all of the above offhand. That is to say, the likes of Marine Le Pen, Donald Trump and Nigel Farage may be against more centralization, but none of them has a clue about growth being over. They don't get that part anymore than Hillary or Hollande or Merkel do. ..."
"... Dems in the US, Labour in the UK, and Hollande's 'Socialists' in France have all become part of the two-headed monster that is the political center, and that is (held) responsible for the deterioration in people's lives. ..."
But nobody seems to really know or understand. Which is odd, because it's not that hard. That
is, this all happens because growth is over. And if growth is over, so are expansion and centralization
in all the myriad of shapes and forms they come in.
Global is gone as a main driving force, pan-European is gone, and whether the United States
will stay united is far from a done deal. We are moving towards a mass movement of dozens of separate
countries and states and societies looking inward. All of which are in some form of -impending-
trouble or another.
What makes the entire situation so hard to grasp for everyone is that nobody wants to acknowledge
any of this. Even though tales of often bitter poverty emanate from all the exact same places
that Trump and Brexit and Le Pen come from too.
That the politico-econo-media machine churns out positive growth messages 24/7 goes some way
towards explaining the lack of acknowledgement and self-reflection, but only some way. The rest
is due to who we ourselves are. We think we deserve eternal growth.
And of course it's confusing that the protests against the 'old regimes' and the growth
and centralization -first- manifest in the rise of faces and voices who do not reject all of the
above offhand. That is to say, the likes of Marine Le Pen, Donald Trump and Nigel Farage may be
against more centralization, but none of them has a clue about growth being over. They don't get
that part anymore than Hillary or Hollande or Merkel do.
So why these people? Look closer and you see that in the US, UK and France, there is nobody
left who used to speak for the 'poor and poorer'. While at the same time, the numbers of poor
and poorer increase at a rapid clip. They just have nowhere left to turn to. There is literally
no left left.
Dems in the US, Labour in the UK, and Hollande's 'Socialists' in France have all become
part of the two-headed monster that is the political center, and that is (held) responsible for
the deterioration in people's lives. Moreover, at least for now, the actual left wing may
try to stand up in the form of Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders, but they are both being stangled
by the two-headed monster's fake left in their countries and their own parties.
================================================
This is from today's Links, but I didn't have a chance to post this snippet. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A191RL1A225NBEA
Long time since we had 5% – if the whole system is financial scheme is premised on growth,
and there is less and less of it ever year, it doesn't look sustainable. How bad http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/09/200pm-water-cooler-9272016.html#comment-2676054does
it have to get for how many before the model is chucked???
In the great depression, even the bankers were having a tough time. If the rich are exempt
from suffering, I think history has shown that a small elite can impose suffering on masses for
a long time…
'there is nobody left who used to speak for the 'poor and poorer'.
Actually, there are plenty who SPEAK for the poor, there just is NONE who ACT.
How would we measure this growth that is supposed to be over? Yes of course there are the conventional
measurements like GDP, but it's not zero. Yes of course if inflation is understated it would overstate
GDP, and yes GDP measurements may not measure much as many critics have said. But what about other
measures?
Is oil use down, are CO2 emissions down, is resource use in general down? If not it's growth
(or groath). This growth is at the cost of the planet but that's why GDP is flawed. And the benefit
of this groath goes entirely to the 1%ers, but that's distribution.
The left failed, I don't know all the reasons (and it's always hard to oppose the powers that
be, the field always tilts toward them, it's never a fair fight) but it failed. That's what we
see the results of.
Someone very smart said "the Fed makes the economy more stable".
He also quoted The Princess Bride: "You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you
think".
Definition of stable: firm; steady; not wavering or changeable.
As in: US GDP growth of a paltry 1.22% per year.
But hey it only took an additional trillion $ in debt per year to stay "stable".
there are plenty who SPEAK for the poor, there just is NONE who ACT.
========
That's why in 1992 Francis Futurama refirmed the end of history that was predicted by Hegel some
150 years earlier.
TPP is practically written by the lobbyists from the multi-international corporations that
exploit every possible tax laws, labor laws, environmental and public health regulations, legal
representations and consequences. It is imperialism 2.0 in the 21st century, exclusively serving
the interests of top point one percent while greatly depressing the wages of middle class;
it is overwhelmingly opposed by the public opinion, law makers of all sides and current president
candidates. There is zero chance Obama could make it through legislation before his exit; Clinton
will not even consider bringing it back if she wins the election because she already flip-flopped
once on the issue during her campaign; and it would seriously damage her chance of re-election
if she does. As for Trump, I leave it to anyone's imaginations.
"... Conventionally the US is being outplayed but it is possible that it is playing a different game in which it is complicit in the transition from nation state to corporate oligarchy. Isn't that the Neoliberal end game? ..."
"... The biggest mistake was to enact a policy shunning Russia, when Russia should be a key, partner of Europe and the US. ..."
"... And the USA invaded Vietnam, Panama, Nicaragua with the contras, Iraq, Afghanistan, are currently bombing the crap out of another dozen nations, has militarily occupied another 100 nations with their bases and you are worried about Russia with Georgia and The Ukraine? What in Hades is wrong with this picture? ..."
"... "Barack Obama's 'Asian pivot' failed. China is in the ascendancy" says the heading. So Obama's "Asian pivot" was meant to thwart China's development. ..."
"... And the big problem with Trump's approach is that good ol' American corporations are the ones who are profiting wildly from business in China. They wanted access to the Chinese labor force, e.g. Walmart and every other manufacturer who now peddles goods made in China in US stores. They are the entities that cost western workers millions of jobs, creating massive trade deficits. ..."
"... They are wealthy beyond measure and anyone who wants to alter this system whereby American corporations manufacture in China and ship products around the world, inc. to the US, would have to fight them. And if anyone believes that Trump would succeed in this battle, they are delusional. ..."
"... "These two juggernauts are on a collision course" is far too alarmist. Relying mainly on right-wing US thinktanks for analysis doesn't help. ..."
"... Now we are waking up to the realisation that we are the big loosers of globalisation. ..."
"... "The west has been long living under the illusion that the so called globalised world would be beneficial for all. " No, actually they thought it would be beneficial for the Western countries mostly. And it was, but whatever benefits developing countries received allowed them to rise to the level of a potential future threat to the unquestionable Western dominance. And now the US is looking for a way to destroy them preemptively. The US is paranoid. ..."
"... I think this "ascendancy" and nationalistic fervor is actually a sign of internal turmoil. ..."
"... The labor supply is assured because there are still multi millions in poverty and signing up as cheap labor is exactly what brings them out of poverty. I assume you've never been to China and therefore have never heard of Chunyun, the largest human migration in the world. This is partly the ruralites returning home from the cities with their years spoils. This year individual journeys totalled almost 3bn. ..."
"... By the way, China is reducing it's land army by a third over the next few years and has just concluded very constructive summits with all it's neighbours during last weeks ASEAN bunfight. ..."
"... a collapse of the chinese economy would collapse the American economy as well ..."
"... Fascinating & well structured article - except for one glaring omission - the LNP selling of the Port of Darwin to a Chinese Government business. Yeh, sure it's a '99 year lease' but for all effective purposes it's a sellout of a strategic port to the Chinese Government. ..."
"... America is in terminal decline, beset by economic and fiscal crises, sapped by imperial overstretch, a victim of a cosmopolitan ennui and fecklessness, divided politically and culturally, belligerent and militant to the extreme. An empire in decline is at its most dangerous. America today is a far greater threat to world peace than China. Simply witness America's accommodation of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the odious Saudi theocracy, and how its insane policy in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan has led to hundreds of thousands of lives lost and millions displaced ..."
"... The US has no significantly greater percentage of debt than any of the other Western nations except Germany. If you think the Americas bankrupt then you'd have to think a whole lot of other nations including the UK is as well. ..."
"... "China has divided and conquered certain countries in SE Asia." These certain SE Asian countries would say that it's because they are not willing to be Uncle Sam's "yes man". ..."
"... The US is still so very powerful but the problem is they feel powerless from time to time with their hammer in hand against flying mosquitos. Why they always wanted to solve problems using force is beyond stupidity. ..."
"... It also destabilises the entire region. Something the Americans are masters of. ..."
"... Were the US to form a cooperative instead of confrontational relationship with China the world would be a better place. The same could be said for the US relationship with Russia. ..."
"... Of course the military-industrial-banking-congressional complex that governs Washington's behavior would not be happy. WIthout confrontation the arms industries can't sell their weapons of war, banks' profits take a hit and congress critters don't get their kickbacks, err, "donations". ..."
"... Given the way the US government has screwed the Philippines over steadily since 1898, it's not surprising that Pres. Dutarte has decided to be friendly with his neighbor. Obama of the Kill List lecturing other countries about human rights abuses! What hypocrisy. ..."
"... Is what China doing in the south china sea different from what the USA does in the gulf of Mexico or in Panama... not to mention that Chi a is litterally surounded by US bases that sit squarely across all its sea trading routes: Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Fillipines ..."
"... China has been accumulating debt at unprecedented rates to try to maintain faltering growth. In 2007 Chinese debt stood at $7 trillion. By 2014 it had quadrupled to $28 trillion. That's $60 billion of extra debt every week. It's still rising rapidly as the government desperately tries to keep momentum. ..."
"... TPP is practically written by the lobbyists from the multi-international corporations that exploit every possible tax laws, labor laws, environmental and public health regulations, legal representations and consequences. It is imperialism 2.0 in the 21st century, exclusively serving the interests of top point one percent while greatly depressing the wages of middle class; it is overwhelmingly opposed by the public opinion, law makers of all sides and current president candidates. There is zero chance Obama could make it through legislation before his exit; Clinton will not even consider bringing it back if she wins the election because she already flip-flopped once on the issue during her campaign; and it would seriously damage her chance of re-election if she does. As for Trump, I leave it to anyone's imaginations. ..."
"... Globalisation is another word for one world government and all that brings, one currency, one police force, taxation, dissolution of borders, an end to sovereignty and all of our hard won freedoms. Freedom is a thing of the past, with MSM owned by the globalist elites, enforcing a moratorium on truth, and a population that has no idea what is going on behind the scenes. ..."
"... Another brilliant thought from Rand; when in doubt, shoot from the hip .... ..."
"... They tell their employers what they want to hear. ..."
"... Do Americans not realize that Chinese and Russians read this too and plan accordingly? This is madness. I am fairly certain preemptive strikes are against international law. Why nobody has the guts to call the US out on this kind of illegal warmongering? ..."
"... The dilemma is clear: amid rising nationalism in both countries, China is not willing to have its ambitions curbed or contained and the US is not ready to accept the world number two spot. These two juggernauts are on a collision course. ..."
"... What does the criticism in USA get you? It is just blah blah blah. ONly criticism that matters is from the corporations and wealthy individuals like Koch bros and Sheldon Edelson and their ilk. Rest can watch football. ..."
"... Simon Tisdall and many Europeans as well as the US GOP party still thinks that US is an empire similar to what the British had in the 18th century. This assumption is completely wrong especially in the 21th century where Western Europe, Japan, Korea if they want can be spend their money and also become global military power. ..."
"... Being a large country surrounded by many other occasionally threatening powers, the governments' priority is and always has been defending its territorial integrity. China is happy enough to leave the command and conquer stuff, sorry "democratization" to the US. ..."
"... Why did Obama say that his greatest regret was Libya.? Because Obama's policy is/was to manage the decline of US power. To manage the end of US hegemony. I doubt that Obama believes that any pivot to any where can restore or maintain US dominance on planet earth. ..."
"... China wishes to expand trade and improve economic conditions for its people and for those with whom it trades. That is not aggression except when it interferes with US global economic hegemony. ..."
"... The most belligerent nation in the world the nation with its army in over 100 countries, the nation bombing and conducting perpetual war throughout the middle east, the country invading countries for "regime change" and creating only misery and death -- it is not China. ..."
"... The US and its Neoliberal capitalist system must expand to grow - plus they clearly want total global domination - the US and its Imperial agents have encircled both China and Russia with trillions of dollars of the most destructive weapons in the world including nuclear weapons - do you thin they have done that for "security" if so you simply ignore the aggression and hubris of an Imperial US. ..."
Before the pivot could even get underway the Saudis threw their rattle out of the pram and drew
US focus back to the Middle East and proxy war two steps removed with Russia. Empires don't get
to focus, they react to each event and seek to gain from the outcome so the whole pivot idea was
flawed.
Obama's foreign policy has been clumsy and amoral. It remains to be seen whether it will become
more so in an effort to double down. Under Clinton it definitely will, under Trump who knows but
random isn't a recommendation.
Conventionally the US is being outplayed but it is possible that it is playing a different
game in which it is complicit in the transition from nation state to corporate oligarchy. Isn't
that the Neoliberal end game?
So the Rand Think Tank would sooner have war now than later. Who wouldda guessed that.
The Chinese want to improve trade and business with the rest of the world. The US answer? destroy
China militarily. so who best to lead the world. I think the article answers that question unintentionally.
The rest of the world has had it up to the ears with American military invasions, regeime changes,
occupations and bombing of the world. They are ready for China´s approach to international relations.
it is about time the adults took over the leadership of the world. Europe and the USA and their
offspring have clearly failed.
China has been handed everything it needs to fly solo: money, factories, IP, etc. Fast forwarding
into the western civic model limits (traffic, pollution, etc.), its best bet is to offload US
"interests" and steer clear.
No clear sign India's learned/recovered from British occupation, as they let tech create more
future Kanpurs.
The biggest mistake was to enact a policy shunning Russia, when Russia should be a key, partner
of Europe and the US.
Was it really worth expanding NATO to Russia's borders instead of offering neutrality to former
Soviet States and thus retain Russia's confidence in global matters that far out weigh the interests
of the neo-cons?
neutrality? Russia invaded non-NATO members Georgie, Ukraine, and Moldavia, and created puppet-states
on their soil.
The Jremlin-rules are simple: the former Sovjet states should be ruled by a pro-Russian dictator
(Bella-Russia, Kazachstan, etc. etc...). Democracies face boycots, diplomatic and military support
of rebels, and in the end simply a military invasion.
The only reason why the baltic states are now thriving democracies, is that they are NATO members.
And the USA invaded Vietnam, Panama, Nicaragua with the contras, Iraq, Afghanistan, are currently
bombing the crap out of another dozen nations, has militarily occupied another 100 nations with
their bases and you are worried about Russia with Georgia and The Ukraine? What in Hades is wrong
with this picture?
When Obama took office his first major speech was in Cairo - where he said
"I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around
the world," US President Barack Obama said to the sounds of loud applause which rocked not
only the hall, but the world. "One based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based
upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead,
they overlap, and share common principles-principles of justice and progress; tolerance and
the dignity of all human beings."
He displayed a dangerous mix of innocence, foolishness, disregard for the truth and misunderstanding
of the nature of Islamic regimes - does the West have common values with Lebanon which practices
apartheid for Palestinians, Saudi, where women cannot drive a car, Syria, where over 17,000 have
died in Assad's torture chambers, we can go on and on.
And on China - Trump has it right - China has been manipulating its currency exchange rate
for years, costing western workers millions of jobs, creating massive trade deficits and something
needs to be done about it.
" America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap,
and share common principles-principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of
all human beings. "
He spoke about the whole of Islam, not specific " Islamic regimes ". And he is correct
on it. All religions share a great deal of values with the USAmerican constition and even each
other .
The overwhelming majority of USAmerican muslims have accepted the melting pot with their whole
heart, second generation children have JOINED its fighting forces to protect the interest of the
USA all over the world. Normally this full an integration is reached with the third generation.
The west has won against those religious fanatics. How else to explain that exactly the people
those claim to speak turn up with us?
And the big problem with Trump's approach is that good ol' American corporations are the ones
who are profiting wildly from business in China. They wanted access to the Chinese labor force,
e.g. Walmart and every other manufacturer who now peddles goods made in China in US stores. They
are the entities that cost western workers millions of jobs, creating massive trade deficits.
They are wealthy beyond measure and anyone who wants to alter this system whereby American
corporations manufacture in China and ship products around the world, inc. to the US, would have
to fight them. And if anyone believes that Trump would succeed in this battle, they are delusional.
"These two juggernauts are on a collision course" is far too alarmist. Relying mainly on right-wing
US thinktanks for analysis doesn't help.
Interesting in particular to see RAND is still in its Cold War mindset. There's famous footage
of RAND analysts in the 60s (I think) discussing putative nuclear war with the USSR and concluding
that the US was certain of 'victory' following a missile exchange because its surviving population
(after hundreds of millions of deaths and the destruction of almost all urban centres) would be
somewhat larger.
China's island claims are all about a broader strategic aim- getting unencumbered access to
the Pacific for its growing blue water navy. It's not aimed at Taiwan or Japan in any sort of
specific sense and, save for the small possibility of escalation following an accident (ships
colliding or something), there's very little risk of conflict in at least the medium term.
It's crucial to remember just how much China and the US depend upon each other economically.
The US is by far China's largest single export market, powering its manufacturing economy. In
return, China uses the surplus to buy up US debt, which allows the Americans to borrow cheaply
and keep the lights on. Crash China and you crash the US- and vice versa.
For now, China is basically accepting an upgraded number 2 spot (along with the US acknowledging
them as part of a 'G2'), but supporting alternative governance structures when it doesn't like
the ones controlled by the US/Japan (so the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the BRICS etc.).
This doesn't mean that the two don't see each other as long term strategic and economic rivals.
But the risks to both of rocking the boat are gigantic and not in the interest of either party
in the foreseeable future. Things that could change that:
a. a succession of Trump-like US presidents (checks and balances are probably sufficient to
withstand one, were it to come to that);
b. a revolution in China (possible if the economy goes South- and what comes next is probably
not liberal democracy but anti-Japanese or anti-US authoritarian nationalism);
c. an unpredictable chain of events arising from N Korean collapse or a regional nuclear race
(Japan-China is a more likely source of conflict than US-China).
"The west has been long living under the illusion that the so called globalised world would
be beneficial for all. " No, actually they thought it would be beneficial for the Western countries
mostly. And it was, but whatever benefits developing countries received allowed them to rise to
the level of a potential future threat to the unquestionable Western dominance. And now the US
is looking for a way to destroy them preemptively. The US is paranoid.
The writing is on the wall: the future is with China. All the US can do is make nice or reap the
dire consequences. If China can clean up its human rights record, I would be happy to see them
supplant or rival the US as a global hegemon. After all, looked at historically, haven't they
earned it? - An American, born and bred, but no nationalist
Well, that is naïve. Look at China and how the Chinese people are governed. Look at the US. And
please don't tell me you don't see a difference. I'll take a world with the US as the global hegemon
any day.
A regional counter balance is needed. Cooperation is hindered by Japan. They should be the center
point of a regional alliance strong enough to contain China with US help, but it doesn't work:
whilst everybody fears China, everybody hates Japan.
The reason is they failed miserably to rebuild trust after WWII, rather than going cap in hand,
acknowledging respondibility for atrocities and other crimes and injustice, and compensate victims,
they kept their pride and isolation. They are now paying the price - possibly together with the
rest of us.
Maybe a full scale change after 7 decades of to-little-to-late diplomacy can still achieve
sth.
The ass the US should kick sits in Tokyo - something they failed to do properly after WWII,
when they managed it well in West Germany (ok - they had help from the Brits there, who for all
their failings understand foreign nations far better), where it facilitated proper integration
into European cooperation.
I think this "ascendancy" and nationalistic fervor is actually a sign of internal turmoil.
Countries that do well don't need to crack down on dissidents to the point of kidnappings
or spend millions of stupid man made islands that pisses everyone off but have all the military
value of a threatening facial tattoo. The South China Sea tactics is partially Chinese "push until
something pushes back" diplomacy but also stems from the harsh realisation that their resources
can be easily choked of and even the CPC knows it can't hold down a billion plus Chinese people
once the hunger sets it.
China is facing the dilemna that as it brings people out of poverty it reduces the supply of
the very cheap labor that makes it rich. You can talk about Lenovo all you want, no one is buying
a Chinese car anytime soon. Nor is any airline outside of China going to buy one of their planes.
Copyright fraud is one thing the West can retaliate easily upon and will if they feel China has
gone too far. Any product found in a western court to be a blatant copy can effectively be banned.
The next step is to refuse to recognize Chinese copyright on the few genuine innovations that
come out of it.
Plus the deal Deng Xiaoping made with the urban classes is fraying. It was wealth in exchange
for subservience. The people in the cities stay out of direct politics but quality of life issues,
safety, petty corruption and pollution are angering them and scaring them hence the vast amount
of private Chinese money being sunk into global real estate.
The military growth and dubious technobabble is just typical Chinese mianzi gaining. If you
do have a brand new jet stealth jet fighter, you don't release pictures of it to the world press.
They got really rattled when Shinzo Abe decided the JSDF can go and deliver slappings abroad to
help their friends if needed. Because an army that spends a lot of time rigging up Michael Bayesque
set maneuvers for the telly is not what you want to pit against top notch technology handled by
obsessive perfectionists.
No one plays hardball with China because we all like cheap shit. But once that is over then
China is a very vulnerable country with not one neighbour they can call a friend. They know it.
Obama hasn't failed.. It's the histrionics that prove it not the other way round.
The labor supply is assured because there are still multi millions in poverty and signing
up as cheap labor is exactly what brings them out of poverty. I assume you've never been to China
and therefore have never heard of Chunyun, the largest human migration in the world. This is partly
the ruralites returning home from the cities with their years spoils. This year individual journeys
totalled almost 3bn.
No-one is buying a Chinese car? Check the sales for Wuling. They produce the small vans that
are the lifeblood of the small entrepreneur. BYD are already exporting electric buses to London.
The likes of VW, BMW, Land Rover, are all in partnership with Chinese auto-makers and China is
the largest car market in the world.
Corruption has been actively attacked and over a quarter of a million officials have been brought
to book in Xi's time in office. The pollution causing steel and coal industries are being rapidly
contracted and billions spent on re-training.
Plus the fact that while the Chinese are mianzi gazing, the last thing they think about is
politics. They simply don't want to know.
By the way, China is reducing it's land army by a third over the next few years and has
just concluded very constructive summits with all it's neighbours during last weeks ASEAN bunfight.
The conclusion is that bi-lateral talks, not US led pissing contests are the way forward.
"What has happened is the ICA has ruled against China in the SCS..." Nothing new. The UN Commission on the Limits of Continental Shelf had also ruled against the
UK and the International Court of Justice had ruled against the US.
Fascinating & well structured article - except for one glaring omission - the LNP selling
of the Port of Darwin to a Chinese Government business. Yeh, sure it's a '99 year lease' but for
all effective purposes it's a sellout of a strategic port to the Chinese Government.
Just look at how gobsmacked the US Military & President were over such a stupidly undertaken
sale by the LNP. This diplomatically lunatic sell off by the LNP of such a vital national asset
has effectively taken-out any influence or impact Australia may have, or exert, over critical
issues happening on our northern doorstep.
If there was ever a case for buying back a strategic national asset, this is definitely the
one. Oh, if folks are worried about the $Billions in penalties incurred, simple solution - just
stop the $Billions of Diesel Fuel Rebates gifted to Miners for, say, 10 years..... Done!
America is in terminal decline, beset by economic and fiscal crises, sapped by imperial overstretch,
a victim of a cosmopolitan ennui and fecklessness, divided politically and culturally, belligerent
and militant to the extreme. An empire in decline is at its most dangerous. America today is a
far greater threat to world peace than China. Simply witness America's accommodation of the Israeli
occupation of Palestine, the odious Saudi theocracy, and how its insane policy in Libya, Syria,
Iraq, and Afghanistan has led to hundreds of thousands of lives lost and millions displaced.
Europe
is under siege by endless tides of refugees that are the direct consequence of America's neo-Conservative
and militant foreign policy. Meanwhile, America's neo-liberal economic and trade policies have
not only decimated her own manufacturing base and led to gross inequality but also massive dislocations
in South America, Middle East, Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Tired, irritated, frustrated,
exhausted, cynical, violent, moral-less, deeply corrupt, and rudderless, America is effectively
bankrupt and on the verge of becoming another Greece, if not for the saving grace of the petro-Dollar.
Europe would be well-advised to keep the Yanks at arm's length so as to escape as much as possible
the fallout from her complete collapse. As for Britain, soon to be divorced from the EU, time
draws nigh to end the humiliating, one-sided servitude that is the 'Special Relationship' and
forge an independent foreign policy. The tectonic plates of history is again shifting, and there
nothing America can do to stop it.
I don't know America probably occupies the most prime geographical spot on the planet, and buffered
by two oceans. It doesn't have to worry about refugees and the other problems and ultimately they
can produce enough food and meet all of its energy needs domestically. And it's the third most
populous nation on earth and could easily grow its population with immigration.
The US has no significantly greater percentage of debt than any of the other Western nations
except Germany. If you think the Americas bankrupt then you'd have to think a whole lot of other
nations including the UK is as well.
Given the facts it would be daft a write off America. Every European nation have lost their
number one spot in history and they seem to be doing just fine. Is there some reason why this
can't be America's destiny as well? Does it really have to end in flames?
"China has divided and conquered certain countries in SE Asia."
These certain SE Asian countries would say that it's because they are not willing to be Uncle
Sam's "yes man".
The US is still so very powerful but the problem is they feel powerless from time to time with
their hammer in hand against flying mosquitos. Why they always wanted to solve problems using
force is beyond stupidity.
Pivot to Asia is about one thing only, sending more war ships to encircle China. But for what
purpose exactly? It does one thing though, it united china by posing as a threat.
Those blaming Obama most stridently for not keeping China in its box are those most responsible
for China's rise. American and Western companies shafted their own people to make themselves more
profit. They didn't care what the consequences might be, as long as the lmighty "Shareholder Value"
continued to rise. Now they demand that the taxes from all those people whose jobs they let go
be used to contain the new superpower that they created. As usual, Coroporate America messes
things up then demands to know what someone else is going to do about it
Were the US to form a cooperative instead of confrontational relationship with China the world
would be a better place. The same could be said for the US relationship with Russia.
Of course the military-industrial-banking-congressional complex that governs Washington's behavior
would not be happy. WIthout confrontation the arms industries can't sell their weapons of war,
banks' profits take a hit and congress critters don't get their kickbacks, err, "donations".
Given the way the US government has screwed the Philippines over steadily since 1898, it's not
surprising that Pres. Dutarte has decided to be friendly with his neighbor. Obama of the Kill List lecturing other countries about human rights abuses! What hypocrisy.
fuck his pivot.....this ain't syria.....having destroyed the middle east it was our turn.....this
is americas exceptionalism........stay #1 by desabilising/destroying everyone else.....p.s. shove
the TPP also..........
The real question is why should not China be more dominant in Asia... i understands the USA tendency
especially since the fall of the soviet union at seing themselves as the only world superpower.
And i understand why China would like to balance tbat especially in her own neighborhood.
Is what China doing in the south china sea different from what the USA does in the gulf of Mexico
or in Panama... not to mention that Chi a is litterally surounded by US bases that sit squarely
across all its sea trading routes: Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Fillipines,... and considering that the
chinese have a long memory of werstern gunboat diplomacy and naval for e projection, if i was
them i would feel a little uncomfortable at how vulnerable my newfound trade is... especially
when some western politician so clearly think that china needs to be contained...
China has been accumulating debt at unprecedented rates to try to maintain faltering growth.
In 2007 Chinese debt stood at $7 trillion. By 2014 it had quadrupled to $28 trillion. That's
$60 billion of extra debt every week. It's still rising rapidly as the government desperately tries to keep momentum.
Much of this money has been funnelled into 'investments' that will never yield a return. The most almighty crash is coming. Which will be interesting to say the least.
Now that is interesting but odd. They are buying phuqing HUGE swathes of land in Africa, investing
everywhere they can on rest of the planet. All seemingly on domestic debt then.
Yes. The Japanese went on a spending spree abroad in the 1980s, while accumulating debt at home,
and when that popped the economy entered 20 years of stagnation, as bad debts hampered the financial
system.
The Chinese bubble is far larger, and made worse by the fact that much of the debt has been
taken on by inefficient state owned enterprises and local government, spending not because the
figures make sense but to meet centrally-dictated growth targets. Much of the rest has been funnelled
into real estate, which now makes up more than twice the share of the Chinese economy than is
the case in the UK. Property prices in some major Chinese cities have reached up to 30 times local
incomes, making London look cheap in comparison.
TPP is practically written by the lobbyists from the multi-international corporations that exploit
every possible tax laws, labor laws, environmental and public health regulations, legal representations
and consequences. It is imperialism 2.0 in the 21st century, exclusively serving the interests
of top point one percent while greatly depressing the wages of middle class; it is overwhelmingly
opposed by the public opinion, law makers of all sides and current president candidates. There
is zero chance Obama could make it through legislation before his exit; Clinton will not even
consider bringing it back if she wins the election because she already flip-flopped once on the
issue during her campaign; and it would seriously damage her chance of re-election if she does.
As for Trump, I leave it to anyone's imaginations.
Don't believe for a second Hillary won't ram through a version of the TPP/IP if she wins. What
she's actually said is that she's against it in its current form
Remember she is part of an owned by the 0.1% that stand to benefit from the agreement, she
will do their bidding and be well rewarded. A few cosmetic changes will be applied to the agreement
so she can claim that she wasn't lying pre-election and we'll have to live with the consequences.
Well done all you globalists for failing to spot the bleedin obvious...that millions of homes
worldwide full of 'Made In China' was ultimately going to pay for the People's Liberation
Army. Still think globalisation is wonderful ?
Quite. How can you believe in a liberal, global free market and then do business with the Socialist
Republic of China, that is the antithesis of free markets. The name is above the door, so there's
no use acting all surprised when it doesn't pan out the way you planned it.
Anything good can be made evil, including globalization. Imagine fair trade completely globalized
so very nation relies on every other nation for goods. That type of shared destiny is the only
way to maintain peace because humans are tribalist to a fault. We evolved in small groups, our
social dynamics are not well suited to large diverse groups. If nation has food but nation B does
not, nation B will go to war with nation A, so hopefully both nations trade and alleviate that
situation. Nations with high economic isolation are beset by famines and poverty. Germany usually
beats China in total exports and Germany is a wonderful place to live. It's not globalization
that is the problem, it's exploitation and failure of our leaders to follow and enforce the Golden
Rule.
Roll out the barrel.....
Well said and you are so right.
15 years ago, I had a conversation in an airport with an American. I remarked that, by outsourcing
manufacturing to China the US had sold its future to an entity that would prove to be their enemy
before too long. I was derided and ridiculed. I wonder where that man is and whether he remembers
our conversation.
Globalisation is another word for one world government and all that brings, one currency, one
police force, taxation, dissolution of borders, an end to sovereignty and all of our hard won
freedoms. Freedom is a thing of the past, with MSM owned by the globalist elites, enforcing a
moratorium on truth, and a population that has no idea what is going on behind the scenes.
I despair of "normalcy bias" and the insulting term "conspiracy theorist". People have lost
the ability to work things out for themselves and the majority knows nothing about Agenda 21 aka
Sustainable Development Goals 2030, until the land grabs start and private ownership is outlawed.
... the study also suggests that, if war cannot be avoided, the US might be best advised to
strike first, before China gets any stronger and the current US military advantage declines further
..
Another brilliant thought from Rand; when in doubt, shoot from the hip ....
Do Americans not realize that Chinese and Russians read this too and plan accordingly? This is
madness.
I am fairly certain preemptive strikes are against international law. Why nobody has the guts
to call the US out on this kind of illegal warmongering?
1. With respect, Mr Tidsall is badly off track in painting China as the one evil facing an innocent
world.
2. The fact is that US' belief in and repeated resort to force has created a huge mess in the
Middle East, brought true misery to millions, and truly thrown Europe in turmoil in the bargain.
3. Besides this Middle East mess, the US neoliberal economic policies have wreaked havoc, culminating
in an unprecedented financial and economic crisis that has left millions all over the world without
any hope for the future
4. Hence Mr Tidsall's pronouncement:
This dilemma – how to work constructively with a powerful, assertive China without compromising
or surrendering national interests – grows steadily more acute.
Ought to read:
This dilemma – how to work constructively with a powerful, assertive United States
without compromising or surrendering national interests – grows steadily more acute.
5. US would be better advised to focus on its growing social problems, evident in the growing
random killings, police picking on blacks, etc, and on its fast decaying infrastructure. We now
read that China has the fastest computer, the largest telescope, etc, whilst US just kills and
kills all over the world.
6. Mr Tidsall, may I request that you kindly focus on realities rather than come up with opinion
that approaches science fiction
I agree that Mr Tisdall's treatment of the US is somewhat naive and ignorant. However couldn't
it be that both countries are capable of aggression and assertiveness? The US's malign influence
is mainly focussed on the Middle East and North Africa region, while China's is on its neighbours.
China's attitude to Taiwan is pure imperialism, as is its treatment of dissenting voices on the
mainland and in Hong Kong. China's contempt for international law and the binding ruling by the
UNCLOS Arbitral Tribunal is also deeply harmful to peace and justice in the region and worldwide.
We now read that China has the fastest computer, the largest telescope, etc, whilst US just
kills and kills all over the world.
Very superficial indeed - compare, just as one example, the number of Nobel prizes won by American
scientists recently with those by Chinese. The US is still, in general, far ahead of China in
terms of scientific research (though China is making rapid progress). (That is not intended to
excuse US killing of course.)
The US follows the USSR path of increasingly ignoring the needs of its own population in order
to retain global dominance. It will end the same as the USSR. That which cannot continue will
not continue.
Xi is not looking for a fight. His first-choice agent of change is money, not munitions.
According to Xi's "One Belt, One Road" plan, his preferred path to 21st-century Chinese hegemony
is through expanded trade, business and economic partnerships extending from Asia to the Middle
East and Africa. China's massive Silk Road investments in central and west Asian oil and gas
pipelines, high-speed rail and ports, backed by new institutions such as the Asia Infrastructure
Investment Bank, are part of this strategy, which simultaneously encourages political and economic
dependencies. Deng Xiaoping once said to get rich is glorious. Xi might add it is also empowering.
The most realistic assessment on Xi and China.
The dilemma is clear: amid rising nationalism in both countries, China is not willing to
have its ambitions curbed or contained and the US is not ready to accept the world number two
spot. These two juggernauts are on a collision course.
A Grim and over-paranoid predicament: US is not in decline and need not worry about China's "ambition";
China is well aware it remains a poor nation compared to developed world and is decades behind
of US in military, GDP per capital and science, that is not including civil liberty, citizen participation,
Gov't transparency and so on. China is busy building a nation confident of its culture and history,
military hegemony plays no part of its dream.
US is not in decline and need not worry about China's "ambition"
Oh come on, $20 Trillion in debt and with Social Security running out of money, there will
be no more to lend the government.
China has forged an agreement with Russia for all its needs in oil ( Russia has more oil than
Saudi Arabia) and payment will not be in US dollars. Russia will not take US$ for trade and the
BRICS nations will squeeze the US$ out of its current situation as reserve currency. When the
dollars all find their way back to the USA hyperinflation will cause misery.
Before the Chinese or anyone else gets any ideas, they should reflect on the size of the US defence
budget, 600 billion dollars in 2015, and consider what that might imply in the event of conflict.
a third of that budget goes in profit for the private companies they employ to make duds like
the F35 - so you can immediately reduce that to 400 billion. The US have been fighting third world
countries for 50 years, and losing, their military is bloated, out of date and full of retrograde
gear that simply wont cut it against the Russians. Privately you would find that most top line
military agree with that statement. They also have around 800 bases scattered world wide, spread
way too thin. Its why theyve stalled in Ukraine and can't handle the middle east. The Russians
spend less than $50 billion but have small, highly mobile forces, cutting edge missile defence
systems (which will have full airspace coverage by 2017). The Chinese policy of A2D/AD or access
denial has got the US surface fleet marooned out in the oceans as any attempt to get close enough
to be effective would be met with a hail of multiple rocket shedding war heads. The only place
where it is probable (but my no means certain) that the US still has the edge is in submarine
warfare, although again if the Russians and Chinese have full coverage of their airspace nothing
(or little) would get through.
Two theorys are in current operation about the election and the waring factions in the NSA and
the CIA 1) HRC wins but is too much of a warmonger and would push america into more wars they
simply cannot win 2) there is a preference for Trump to win amongst the MIC because he would (temporarily)
seek 'peace' with the Russians thus giving the military the chance to catch up - say in 3 or 4
years - plus all the billions and billions of dollars that would mean for them.
Overwhelming fire power no longer wins wars, the US have proved that year in year out since
the end of the second world war, theyve lost every war theyve started/caused/joined in. Unless
you count that limited skirmish on British soil in Grenada - and I guess we could call Korea a
score draw. The yanks are bust and they know it, the neocons are all bluster and idiots like Breedlove,
Power and Nuland are impotent because they don't have right on their side or the might to back
it up. The US is mired in the middle east, locked out of asia and would grind to halt in Europe
against the Russians. (every NATO wargame simulation in the last 4 years has conclusively shown
this) Add to that the fact that the overwhelming majority of US citizens dont have the appetite
for a conventional war and in the event of a nuclear war the US would suffer at least as much
as Europe and youve got a better picture of where we are at.
Well it is just ABOUT money.Also during Vietnam and Iraq war US was biggest spender.
Nobody in US still thinks that Vietnam war was a good idea and the same applies to Iraq.Iraq war
will be even in history books for biggest amount spend to achieve NOTHING.
Chinese military spending is at least on a par with American. A huge part of American military
money goes to personnel salary while China does NOT pay to Chinese soldiers for their service
as China holds a compulsory military service system.
This article assumes China is evil and the US is the righteous protector of all nations in the
SE Asian region against the evil China which is obviously out to destroy the hapless SE Asian
nations. This assumption is obviously nonsense. The US itself is rife with racial problems. Everybody
has seen what it had done to Vietnam. Nobody believes that a racist US that cares nothing for
the welfare of its own black, Latino and Asian population will actually care for the welfare of
the same peoples outside of the US and especially in SE Asia.
The truth is China is not the evil destroyer of nations. The truth is the US is the evil destroyer
of nations. The US has brought nothing but bloodshed and destruction to the SE Asian regions for
the last 200 years. The US had killed millions of Filipinos during it colonial era. The US had
killed millions of Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. The US had incited pogroms against the ethnic
Chinese unceasingly. The May 13 massacre in Malaysia, the anti-Chinese massacres in the 1960's
and the 1990's in Indonesia, and many other discrimination and marginalization of ethnic Chinese
throughout the entire SE Asia are all the works of the US. It is the US that is the killer and
destroyer.
Therefore, it is a good thing that the evil intents of the US had failed. With the all but
inevitable rise of China, the influence of the Japanese and the americans will inevitably wane.
The only danger to China is the excessive xenocentrism of the Dengist faction who is selling out
China to these dangerous enemies. If the CPC government sold out China's domestic economy, then
China will become a colony of the Japanese and americans without firing a single shot. And the
Chinese economy will slide into depression as it had done in the Qing Dynasty and Chinese influence
in the SE Asian region will collapse.
Therefore, the task before the CPC government is to ban all foreign businesses out of China's
domestic economy, upgrade and expand China's education and R&D, urbanize the rural residents and
expand the Chinese military, etc. With such an independent economic, political and military policies,
China will at once make itself the richest and the most powerful nation in the world dwarfing
the Japanese and American economies and militaries. China can then bring economic prosperity and
stability to the SE Asian region by squeezing the evil Japanese and americans out of the region.
Lets be honest what has Obama achieved,he got the Nobel peace prize for simply not being George
Bush Jr he has diplayed a woeful lack of leadership with Russia over Syria Libya and the Chinese
Simply being the first African American president will not be a legacy
Do you know of one Leninist state that ever built a prosperous modern industrial nation? Therein
lies the advantage and the problem with China. China is totally export dependant and therefore
its customers can adversely affect its economy - put enough chinese out of work and surely political
instability will follow. A threatened dictatorship with a large army, however, is a danger to
its neighbors and the world.
China are now net consumers. You need to read up on whats happening, not from just the western
press. They are well on their way to becoming the most powerful nation on earth, they have access
(much like Russia) to over two thirds of the population of the worlds consumers and growing (this
is partially why sanctions against Russia have been in large part meaningless) China will never
want for buyers of their products (the iphone couldnt be made without the Chinese) with the vast
swaithes of unplumbed Russian resources becoming available to them its hard to see how the west
can combat the Eurasians. The wealth is passing from west to east, its a natural cycle the 'permanant
growth' monkies in the west have been blind to by their own greed and egotism. Above all the Chinese
are a trading nation, always seeking win/win trading links. The west would be better employed
trading and linking culturally with the Chinese rather than trying to dictate with military threats.
The west comprises only 18% of the global population and our growth and wealth is either exhausted
or locked away in vaults where it is doing no one any good. Tinme to wise up or get left behind.
Tisdall...absolute war-monger and neo-con "dog of war". Is this serious journalism? The rise of
China was as inevitable as the rise of the US in the last century..."no man can put a stop to
the march of a nation". It's Asias century and it's not the first time for China to be the No
1 economy in the world. They have been here before and have much more wisdom than the west...for
too long the tail has wagged the dog...suck it up Tisdall!
The US grand strategy post-Bush was to reposition itself at the heart of a liberal economic system
excluding China through TTIP with the EU and TPP with Asia-Pac ex. China and Russia. The idea
was that this would enable the US to sustain its hegemony.
It has been an absolute failure. Brexit has torpedoed TTIP and TPP has limited value- the largest
economy in the partnership, Japan, has been largely integrated in to the US for the past 70 years.
IMO the biggest failure of the US has been hating Russia too much. The Russians have just as
much reason to be afraid of China as the US do and have a pretty capable army. If the US patched
things up with the Russians, firstly it could redeploy forces and military effort away from the
Middle East towards Asia Pac and secondly it would give the US effective leverage over China-
with the majority of the oil producing nations aligned with the US, China would have difficulty
in conducted a sustained conflict. It's old Cold War thinking that has seen America lose its hegemony-
similar to how the British were so focused on stopping German ascendancy they didn't see the Americans
coming with the knife.
America is reaping the fruits of what they sowed during the time of Reagan. It was never a good
idea to outsource your entire manufacturing industry to a country that is a dictatorship and does
not embrace western liberal democratic values. Now the Americans are hopelessly dependent on China
- a country that does not play by the rules in any sphere - it censors free speech, it blatantly
violates intellectual property, it displays hostile intent towards nearly all South East Asian
countries, its friends include state sponsors of terror like Pakistan and North Korea, it is carefully
cultivating the enemies of America and the west in general.
In no way, shape or form does China fulfill the criteria for being a trustworthy partner of
the west. And yet today, China holds all the cards in its relationship with the west, with the
western consumerist economies completely dependent on China. Moral of the story - Trade and economics
cannot be conducted in isolation, separate from geopolitical realities. Doing so is a recipe for
disaster.
Mr Tisdall should declare his affiliation, if any, with the military-industrial complex.
It is surprising coming from a Briton which tried to contain Germany and fought two
wars destroying itself and the empire. War may be profitable for military-industrial complex
but disastrous for everyone else. In world war 2, USA benefited enormously by ramping
up war material production and creating millions of job which led to tremendous
prosperity turning the country around from a basket case in 1930s to a big prosperous power
which dominated the world till 2003.
US insistence on being top cat in a changing world will end up by dragging us all into a WW III.
Why can't the US leave the rest of the world alone? Americans do not need a military presence
to do business with the rest of the world and earn a lot of money with such trade. And they are
too ignorant, too unsophisticate and too weak to be able to impose their will on the rest of us.
The (very) ugly Americans are back and all we want is for them to go back home and forever remain
there... The sooner the better...
The world is going to look fantastically different in a hundred years time.
Points of world power will go back to where they was traditionally; Europe and Asia. America
is a falling power, it doesn't get the skilled European immigrants it use to after German revolution
and 2 world wars. And it's projected white population will be a minority by 2050. America's future
lies with south America.
Australia with such a massive country but with a tiny population of 20million will look very
attractive to China. It's future lies with a much stronger commonwealth, maybe a united military
and economic commonwealth between the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Even without the EU, Europe is going to have to work together, including Russia to beat the
Chinese militarily and economically. America will not be the same power in another 30-50 years
and would struggle to beat them now.
China are expansionists, always have been. War is coming with them and North Korea sometime
in the future.
From the article above, it is clear who is the more dangerous power. While China is aiming to
be the hegemon through economic means like the neo silk road projects, the US is aiming to maintain
its hegemon status through military power. The US think thank even suggest to preemptive strike
against China to achieve that. This is also the problem with US pivot to Asia, it may fail to
contain China, but it didn't fail to poison the atmosphere in Asia. Asia has never been this dangerous
since the end of cold war, all thanks to the pivot.
Obama is trying to maintain the status quo. China and N. Korea are the ones pushing military intimidation.
The key to the US plan is to form an alliance between countries in the region that historically
distrust each other. The Chinese are helping that by threatening everybody at the same time. Tisdall
sees this conflict strictly as between the US and China. Obama's plan is to form a group of countries
to counter China. Japan will have a major role in this alliance but the problem is whether the
other victims of WW2 Japanese aggression will agree to it.
The US's disastrous foreign policy since 9/11 which has unleashed so much chaos in Afghanistan,
Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc etc... is not exactly a commendation for credibility these days.
A useful summary of the state of play in the Pacific and SCS. It is somewhat hawkish in analysis,
military fantasists will always be legion, they should be listened to with extra large doses of
salt, or discussion of arguments which favour peaceful cooperation and development, such as trade,
cultural relations, and natural stalemates. American anxiety at its own perception of decline,
is at least as dangerous for the world as the immature expression of rising Chinese confidence.
But the biggest problem it seems we face, is finding a way to accommodate and translate the aspirations
of rising global powers with the existing order established post-45, in incarnated in the UN and
other international bodies, in international maritime law as in our western notions of universal
human rights. Finding a way for China to express origination of these ideas compatible with its
own history, to be able to proclaim them as a satisfactory settlement for human relations, is
an ideal, but apparently unpromising task.
Perhaps Samuel P Huntingdon was broadly correct when he wrote "The Clash of Civilizations" in
the late 90's. He was criticized for his work by neo-liberals who believed that after the Cold
War the rest of the world would follow the west and US in particular.
The problem with the neo-liberal view is that only their opinions on issues are correct, and
all others therefore should be ridiculed. What has happened in Ukraine is a prime example. Huntingdon
called the Ukraine a "cleft" country split between Russia and Europe. The EU and the US decided
to stir up trouble in the Ukraine to get even with Putin over Syria. It was never about EU or
NATO membership for the Ukraine which is now further away than ever.
A Trump presidency is regarded with fear. The Obama presidency has been a failure with regard
to foreign policy and a major reason was because Clinton was Secretary of State in the 1st four
years. In many ways a Clinton presidency is every bit as dangerous as a Trump presidency.
Certainly relations with Russia will be worse under Clinton than under Trump, and for the rest
of the world that is not a good thing. To those that believe liek Clinton that Putin is the new
Hitler, then start cleaning out the nuclear bunkers. If he is then WW3 is coming like it or not
and Britain better start spending more on defence.
What does the criticism in USA get you? It is just blah blah blah.
ONly criticism that matters is from the corporations and wealthy individuals
like Koch bros and Sheldon Edelson and their ilk. Rest can watch football.
Never mind that a general, high-intensity war in Northern Asia would be disastrous for all involved,
whatever the outcome.
Never mind that much of the discussion about containing China is by warmongers urging such
a conflict.
Never mind that very little depth in fact lies behind the shell of American and Japanese military
strength, or that a competently-run Chinese government is well able to grossly outproduce "us"
all in war materiel.
Never mind that those same warmongers and neocons drove and drive a succession of Imperial
disasters; they remain much-praised centres of attention, just as the banksters and rentiers that
are sucking the life from Americans have never had it so good.
Never mind that abbott encouraged violence as the automatic reaction to problems, while his
Misgovernment was (while Turnbull to a lesser extent still is) working hard to destroy the economic
and social strengths we need to have any chance of surmounting those problems.
Yes, it is a proper precaution to have a military strength that can deny our approaches to
China. Unfortunately that rather disregards that "we" have long pursued a policy of globalisation
involving the destruction of our both own manufacturing and our own merchant navy. Taken together
with non-existent fuel reserves, "our" military preparations are pointless, because we would have
to surrender within a fortnight were China to mount even a partial maritime blockade of Australia.
What I don't quite understand is how all this comes as any surprise to those in the know. China
has been on target to be the #1 economic power in the world in this decade for at least 30 years.
And who made it so? Western capitalists. China is now not only the world's industrial heartbeat,
it also owns a large proportion of Western debt - despite the fact that its differences with the
West (not least being a one-party Communist state) couldn't be more obvious - and while I doubt
it's in its interests to destabilise its benefactorrs at the moment, that may not always be the
case.
It also has another problem: In fifty or sixty years time it is due to be overtaken by India,
which gives it very little time to develop ASEAN in its own image; but I suspect that it's current
"silk glove" policy is far smarter and more cost-effective than any American "iron fist".
The US is just worried about losing out on markets and further exploitation. They should have
no authority over China's interest in the South China Sea. If China do rise to the point were
they can affect foreign governments, they will unlikely be as brutal as the United States. [Indonesia
1964, Congo 1960s, Brazil 1964, Chile 1973, Central America 1980s, Egyptian military aid, Saudi
support, Iraq 2003, the Structural Adjustments of the IMF]
Simon Tisdall and many Europeans as well as the US GOP party still thinks that US is an empire
similar to what the British had in the 18th century. This assumption is completely wrong especially
in the 21th century where Western Europe, Japan, Korea if they want can be spend their money and
also become global military power.
While many Europeans and others including our current GOP party
thinks we are the global empire and we should stick our nose everywhere, our people doesn't we
are an empire or we should stick our nose in every trouble spot in the world spending our blood
and treasure to fight others battles and get blame when everything goes wrong. President Obama
doesn't think of himself as Julius Ceaser and America is not Rome.
He will be remembered as one
of our greatest president ever setting a course for this country's foreign policy towards trying
to solve the world's problems through alliances and cooperation with like minded countries as
the opposite of the war mongering brainless, trigger happy GOP presidents. However when lesser
powers who preach xenophobia and destabilize their neighborhood through annexation as the Hitler
like Putin has, he comes down with a hammer using tools other than military to punish the aggressor.
All you need to do is watch what is happening to the Russian economy since he imposed sanctions
to the Mafiso Putin.
This article is completely misleading and the author is constricting himself in his statement
that Obama's pivot to Asia is a failure. Since China tried to annex the Islands near the Philippines,
countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, India, etc. has ask the US for more cooperation
both military and economically these countries were moving away from US under Bush and others
so I think this is a win for Obama not a loss. Unlike the idiotic Russians, China is a clever
country and is playing global chess in advancing her foreign policy goals. While the US cannot
do anything with China's annexation of these disputed Islands has costs her greatly because the
Asian countries effected by China's moves are running towards the US, this is a win for the US.
China's popularity around her neighborhood has taken a nose dive similar to Russian's popularity
around her neighborhood. These are long term strategic wins for the US, especially if Hillary
wins the white house and carry's on Obama's mantel of speaking softly but carry a big stick. Obama
will go down as our greatest foreign policy president by building alliances in Europe to try stop
Mafioso Putin and alliances in Asia to curtail China's foreign policy ambitions. This author's
thesis is pure bogus, because he doesn't indicate what Obama should have done to make him happy?
Threaten Chine military confertation?
All you have to do is go back 8 years ago and compare our last two presidents and you can see
where Obama is going.
For the allusion to Rome, I think they act like the old empire when they had to send their army
to keep the peace....and it is an empire of the 21 first century, not like the old ones (Assange).
China needs western consumerism to maintain its manufacturing base. If China's growth impacts
the ability of the West to maintain its standard of consumerism, then China will need a new source
of affluent purchaser. If China's own citizens become affluent, they will expect a standard of
living commensurate with that status, accordingly China will not be able to maintain its manufacturing
base.
So the options for China are:
a) Prop up western economies until developing nations in Africa and South America (themselves
heavily dependent on the West) reach a high standard of consumerism.
b) Divide China into a ruling class, and a worker class, in which the former is a parasite
on the latter.
The current tactic seems to be to follow option b, until option a becomes viable.
However, the longer option a takes to develop, and therefore the longer option b is in effect,
the greater the chances of counter-revolution (which at this stage is probably just revolution).
The long and the short of it, is that China is boned.
Being a large country surrounded by many other occasionally threatening powers, the governments'
priority is and always has been defending its territorial integrity. China is happy enough to
leave the command and conquer stuff, sorry "democratization" to the US.
It's got it's hands full
at home. As long as the West doesn't try to get involved in what China sees as its historical
territory (i.e. The big rooster shaped landmass plus Hainan and Hong Kong and various little islands)
there's absolutely nothing to worry about.
Why did Obama say that his greatest regret was Libya.? Because Obama's policy is/was to manage
the decline of US power. To manage the end of US hegemony. I doubt that Obama believes that any
pivot to any where can restore or maintain US dominance on planet earth. There is absolutely nothing
exceptional about a power not admitting publicly what is known to many,see the outpourings of
the British elites during the end of its empire.
As usual the Guardian is on its anti-China horse. Look through this article and every move China
has made is "aggressive" or when it tries to expand trade (and produce win win economic conditions)
it is "hegemonic" while the US is just trying to protect us all and is dealing with the "Chinese
threat" -- a threat to their economic interests and global imperial hegemony is what they mean.
The US still maintains a "one China" policy and the status quo is exactly that "one China"
It would be great for someone in the west to review the historical record instead of arming Taiwan
to the teeth. Additionally, before China ever started its island construction the US had already
begun the "pivot to Asia" which now is huge with nuclear submarines patrolling all around China,
nuclear weapons on the - two aircraft carrier fleets now threatening China - very rare for the
US to have two aircraft carrier fleets in the same waters - the B-1 long range nuclear bombers
now in Australia, and even more belligerent the US intends to deploy THAAD missals in South Korea
- using North Korea as an excuse to further seriously threaten China.
China wishes to expand trade and improve economic conditions for its people and for those with
whom it trades. That is not aggression except when it interferes with US global economic hegemony.
Just look around the world - where are the conflicts - the middle east and Africa - who is
there with military and arms sales and bombing seven countries -- is it China?
The most belligerent nation in the world the nation with its army in over 100 countries, the
nation bombing and conducting perpetual war throughout the middle east, the country invading countries
for "regime change" and creating only misery and death -- it is not China.
The US and its Neoliberal capitalist system must expand to grow - plus they clearly want total
global domination - the US and its Imperial agents have encircled both China and Russia with trillions
of dollars of the most destructive weapons in the world including nuclear weapons - do you thin
they have done that for "security" if so you simply ignore the aggression and hubris of an Imperial
US.
"... By Miguel Niño-Zarazúa, Research Fellow, UNU-WIDE, Laurence Roope, Researcher, Health Economics Research Centre, University of Oxford, and Finn Tarp, Director, UNU-WIDER. Originally published at VoxEU ..."
"... See original post for references ..."
"... John Ross argues that the reduction in poverty has been pretty much all China. I'm also not convinced China is actually that much richer than before. A sweatshop worker has a higher income than a traditional farmer, but probably has a lower standard of living, and while the traditional farmer maintains the natural resource base, the industrial worker destroys it. ..."
"... Globalization is an economic and ecological disaster. We have outsourced wealth creation to China and they do it in the most polluting way possible, turning their country into a toxic waste dump in the process. ..."
"... The peasants slaving away in the cinder block hellholes of their factories churning out the crapola on Wal-Mart's shelves also get paid squat, while the leaders of the Chinese Criminal Party steal half of their effort for themselves and smuggle the loot out, to get away from the pollution. The other half gets stolen by the likes of Wal-Mart and Apple. ..."
"... The elites sold globalization as something that would generate such a munificent surplus that those in harms way would be helped. It ends up as a lie, where the elites the world over help themselves to the stolen sweat of the lowest people in society, with nothing left over, except for a polluted planet. ..."
"... Yes, those who "have seen their incomes stagnating in real terms for over 20 years" are indeed experiencing "considerable discontent." But this anodyne phrasing masks the reality of entire communities seeing their means of livelihood ripped out and shipped across the globe. This rhetoric makes it sound like, Oh those prosperous American workers can't buy as many luxuries now, boo hoo, when the standard practice from NAFTA on of globalization-as-corporate-welfare has meant real impoverishment for hundreds of thousands of individuals, entire cities and large chunks of whole states. As Lambert always says, Whose economy? ..."
...if you look at absolute inequality, as opposed to relative inequality, inequality has increased
around the world. This calls into question one of the big arguments made in favor of globalization:
that the cost to workers in advanced economies are offset by gains to workers in developing economies,
and is thus virtuous by lowering inequality more broadly measured.
By Miguel Niño-Zarazúa, Research Fellow, UNU-WIDE, Laurence Roope, Researcher, Health
Economics Research Centre, University of Oxford, and Finn Tarp, Director, UNU-WIDER. Originally published
at VoxEU
Since the turn of the century, inequality in the distribution of income, together with concerns
over the pace and nature of globalisation, have risen to be among the most prominent policy issues
of our time. These concerns took centre stage at the recent annual G20 summit in China. From President
Obama to President Xi, there was broad agreement that the global economy needs more inclusive and
sustainable growth, where the economic pie increases in size and is at the same time divided more
fairly. As President Obama emphasised, "[t]he international order is under strain." The consensus
is well founded, following as it does the recent Brexit vote, and the rise of populism (especially
on the right) in the US and Europe, with its hard stance against free trade agreements, capital flows
and migration.
... ... ...
The inclusivity aspect of growth is now more imperative than ever. Globalisation has not been
a zero sum game. Overall perhaps more have benefitted, especially in fast-growing economies in the
developing world. However, many others, for example among the working middle class in industrialised
nations, have seen their incomes stagnating in real terms for over 20 years. It is unsurprising that
this has bred considerable discontent, and it is an urgent priority that concrete steps are taken
to reduce the underlying sources of this discontent. Those who feel they have not benefitted, and
those who have even lost from globalisation, have legitimate reasons for their discontent. Appropriate
action will require not only the provision of social protection to the poorest and most vulnerable.
It is essential that the very nature of the ongoing processes of globalisation, growth, and economic
transformation are scrutinised, and that broad based investments are made in education, skills, and
health, particularly among relatively disadvantaged groups. Only in this way will the world experience
sustained – and sustainable – economic growth and the convergence of nations in the years to come.
John Ross argues that the reduction in poverty has been pretty much all China. I'm also
not convinced China is actually that much richer than before. A sweatshop worker has a higher
income than a traditional farmer, but probably has a lower standard of living, and while the traditional
farmer maintains the natural resource base, the industrial worker destroys it.
Only in this way will the world experience sustained – and sustainable
– economic growth and the convergence of nations in the years to come.
Globalization is an economic and ecological disaster. We have outsourced wealth creation
to China and they do it in the most polluting way possible, turning their country into a toxic
waste dump in the process.
The peasants slaving away in the cinder block hellholes of their factories churning out
the crapola on Wal-Mart's shelves also get paid squat, while the leaders of the Chinese Criminal
Party steal half of their effort for themselves and smuggle the loot out, to get away from the
pollution. The other half gets stolen by the likes of Wal-Mart and Apple.
The elites sold globalization as something that would generate such a munificent surplus
that those in harms way would be helped. It ends up as a lie, where the elites the world over
help themselves to the stolen sweat of the lowest people in society, with nothing left over, except
for a polluted planet.
The notable presence of public policies that exacerbate racial and economic inequality and
the lack of will by Washington to change the system mean that the ethnic/racial wealth gap is
becoming more firmly entrenched in society.
"broad based investments are made in education, skills, and health, particularly among relatively
disadvantaged groups. Only in this way will the world experience sustained – and sustainable
– economic growth and the convergence of nations in the years to come."
…I guess if the skills were sustainable low chemical and diverse farming in 5 acre lots or
in co-ops then I might have less complaint, however the skills people apparently are going to
need are supervising robots and going to non jobs in autonomous vehicles and being fed on chemical
mush shaped like things we used to eat, a grim dystopia.
Yesterday I had the unpleasant experience of reading the hard copy nyt wherein kristof opined
that hey it's not so bad, extreme poverty has eased (the same as in this article, but without
this article's Vietnamese example where 1 v. 8 becomes 8 v. 80),ignoring the relative difference
while on another lackluster page there was an article saying immigrants don't take jobs from citizens
which had to be one of the most thinly veiled press releases of some study made by some important
sounding acronym and and, of course a supposed "balance" between pro and anti immigration academics.
because in this case, they claim we're relatively better off.
So there you have it, it's all relative. Bi color bird cage liner, dedicated to the ever shrinking
population of affluent/wealthy who are relatively better off as opposed to the ever increasing
population of people who are actually worse off…There was also an article on the desert dwelling
uighur and their system of canals bringing glacier water to farm their arid land which showed
some people who were fine for thousands of years, but now thanks to fracking, industrial pollution
and less community involvement (kids used to clean the karatz, keeping it healthy) now these people
can be uplifted into the modern world(…so great…) that was reminiscent of the nyt of olde which
presented the conundrum but left out the policy prescription which now always seems to be "the
richer I get the less extreme poverty there is in the world so stop your whining and borrow a
few hundred thousand to buy a PhD "
Yes, those who "have seen their incomes stagnating in real terms for over 20 years" are
indeed experiencing "considerable discontent." But this anodyne phrasing masks the reality of
entire communities seeing their means of livelihood ripped out and shipped across the globe. This
rhetoric makes it sound like, Oh those prosperous American workers can't buy as many luxuries
now, boo hoo, when the standard practice from NAFTA on of globalization-as-corporate-welfare has
meant real impoverishment for hundreds of thousands of individuals, entire cities and large chunks
of whole states. As Lambert always says, Whose economy?
Three reading recommendations for anyone who doesn't grasp your sentiment, shared by millions:
Sold Out , by Michelle Malkin Outsourcing America , by Ron Hira America: Who
Stole the Dream? , by Donald L. Barlett
Reply ↓
"... I wonder if there is a simpler explanation. US immigration policy has come to be about suppressing wages. The suppressing wages operation has been great for those at the top of the food chain at the cost of overall growth. ..."
"... As long as there exist Western countries to act as "safety valves" there is no incentive for immigrant source countries to correct the deficiencies in their economical / political / social systems or resolve ongoing conflicts. In fact, there is every incentive to maintain the status quo. ..."
"... And when will the Wester polity finally figure out that if you destabilize a metastable regime by force, the result isn't stability but inevitably chaos and a further flood of refugee/immigrants? ..."
"... Now most of the net immigration across the US-Mexican border comes from Central America: countries such as El Salvador and Guatemala destabilized by the Reagan regime in the 1980s. Now they're dominated by violent gangs trained in California prisons and repatriated to Central America. ..."
"... Immigration across the U.S.-Mexican border is driven by Central American refugees fleeing gross instability, crime and violence in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala; not by Mexicans. The U.S. played a deep long-term role in creating the mess that Central America is today. ..."
"... U.S. creates instability (war, coup) in a region. ..."
"... The ensuing instability creates a class of desperate folks, who then seek bodily, economic, and political safety within the borders of the empire. This leads to a class of desperate workers, often undocumented and constantly at risk of deportation, willing to work for far less compensation than the native population. ..."
"... Poorer countries suffer brain drain. They do receive large amount of remittances, but an economy which sends its best and the brightest to benefit the industrial countries and receives industrial products in exchange does not seem like it can develop very easily. ..."
"... Here's a somewhat interesting backgrounder on American immigration. The author's premise is that US immigration policies were always about race (white Europeans welcome to stay, brown Mexicans welcome to do manual labor and leave) but this is undoubtedly a simplification as the discrimination in favor of high skills–talked about in the above post–undoubtedly a factor. ..."
"... most other countries do not offer citizenship unless you have something valuable to offer them. An acquaintance who thought about becoming Canadian found this out. ..."
"... It is dangerous for Trump to demonize undocumented immigrants without holding the corporations that attracted and hired them responsible and the system that allowed it. ..."
"... I would argue that migration has both positive and negative impact on the receiving country. But at some point I believe the 'self' is selfish and not necessarily selfless. In a world of limited resources and opportunities it is normal for the 'self' to be highly selfish hence the contradictory nature of the theory of free market economy under globalization. ..."
"... So the UK National Health system nurtured me through my early years, and the UK education system gave me primary, secondary and degree level education. I have spent most of my working life doing an R&D job in the US. The US has benefited from my work during my working life. If I should choose to retire back to the UK, I will remit my pension income back there, and because of the tax treaty, pay income taxes there, which I claim as a full credit against the US tax return. So I'm "taking money out of the US, to the detriment of social cohesion and economic growth". ..."
"... H1-B visas tap larger, typically Asian populations than the U.S. for their best & brightest. ..."
"... Roughly 50% of the undocumented are from Asia. Yet 90% of the deportations are Hispanic. ..."
"... My experience is that the Asian population is either native or here on student visas. The chinese student population is quite large in Los Angeles. Student visas don't allow foreign students to work off-campus, so many of them are family-funded. So they're not taking jobs, but do impact the housing/rental market. (The California colleges love them for their out-of-state fees and strong study habits.) ..."
Posted on
September 21, 2016 by
Yves Smith Yves here.
I wonder if there is a simpler explanation. US immigration policy has come to be about suppressing
wages. The suppressing wages operation has been great for those at the top of the food chain at the
cost of overall growth.
In
a
recent post , I showed that looking at data since 1950 or so, the percentage of the population
that is foreign born is negatively correlated with job creation in later years. I promised an explanation,
and I will attempt to deliver on that promise in this post.
I can think of a few reasons for the finding, just about all of which would have been amplified
since LBJ's Presidency due to two things: the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act and the launch of the Great Society.
The Hart-Cellar Act may be better known as the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. It phased
out country quotas in existence since the 1920s. As a result of these quotas, about 70% of all immigrants
were coming from England, Germany and Ireland, with most of the remainder coming from elsewhere in
Western Europe and from Latin America. The Great Society, of course, included a number of welfare
programs, many of which (or their descendants) are still in existence.
With that, reasons why the foreign born population is negatively correlated with subsequent job
creation include:
1. Immigrants who are sufficiently similar to the existing population when it comes to language,
culture, skillsets and expectations will integrate more smoothly. Slower and more imperfect integration
necessarily requires more expenditure of resources, resources which otherwise could go toward economic
development.
2. Naturally, skills and values that are more productive and efficient than those of the existing
population are conducive toward growth. Conversely, bringing inferior technology and processes
does not improve the economy. As the source of immigrants shifted away from sources of sources of
high technology like England and Germany and toward the developing and not-developing world, the
likelihood that a randomly selected new immigrant will improve productivity diminishes.
3. Eligibility for welfare can change the incentive structure for existing and potential immigrants.
An immigrant arriving in the US in 1890 certainly had no expectation of being supported by the
state. It may be that most immigrants arriving in the US now also don't have that expectation. However,
it is no secret that welfare exists so some percentage of potential immigrants arrive expecting to
be supported to some degree by the state. In some (many?) cases, the expectation increases post-arrival.
(Like any great economist, Milton Friedman got a lot of things wrong about how the economy works
but he had a point when he said you can have a welfare state or open borders but not both.)
4. Rightly or wrongly, reasons 1 – 3 above may combine to create resentment in the existing
population. Think "my grandparents came to this country with nothing and nobody gave them anything "
Resentment can break down trust and institutions necessary for the economy to function smoothly.
5. Over time, transportation has become cheaper and easier. As a result, the likelihood
that an immigrant has come to the US to stay has diminished. Many immigrants come to the US for several
years and then go back to their country of origin. This in turn leads to four issues that can have
negative impacts on the economy:
5a. Immigrants that expect to leave often send back remittances, taking resources out of the
US economy. For example, in 2010, remittances from workers in the US
amounted to 2.1% of Mexican GDP .
5b. Relative to many non-Western countries, the US taxpayer invests heavily in the creation
of a state that is conducive toward acquiring useful skills and education. Often, the acquisition
of such skills and education is heavily subsidized. When people acquire those tools and then leave
without applying them, the value of the resources could have been better spent elsewhere.
5c. Immigrants who don't expect to stay can have less reason to integrate culturally and economically;
any real estate investor can tell you that all else being equal, a neighborhood made up largely
of homeowners is almost always nicer than a neighborhood made up largely of renters.
5d. Immigrants who arrive with a non-negligible expectation of leaving are, on average, more
likely to take risks which generate private gains and social losses. If the bet goes well, congratulations.
If the bet goes bad, "so long suckers!" The bet may even involve a crime.
6. (This one is more conjecture than the others – I think it is true, but I haven't given it
enough thought, particularly whether it is entirely separate from the previous reasons.) The
non-existence of a lump of labor does not mean there isn't a population to labor multiplier, or that
the multiplier cannot change over time. In an era of relatively slow economic growth, economies of
scale, and outsourcing abroad, the number of new employment opportunities per new customer (i.e.,
job creation per resident) can shrink. We've certainly seen something resembling that since about
2000.
None of this is to say that immigration is good or bad, or even that it should be opposed or encouraged.
In this post I simply tried to explain what I saw in the data. I will have one or more follow-up
posts.
I think one of the best things the US can do re immigration is to develop policies that make
it easier for people to stay in their country of origin which many probably want to do. Our policies
have tended to have the opposite effect such as
and Syria/Libya etc "An estimated 11 million Syrians have fled their homes
since the outbreak of the civil war in March 2011. Now, in the sixth year of war, 13.5 million
are in need of humanitarian assistance within the country. " (
http://syrianrefugees.eu/ )
We are also very much in need of a job guarantee paying a living wage which would put pressure
on major employers such as Walmart and McDonalds and get their executives off of government subsidies.
(they pay a wage so low their workers are forced into food stamps and medicaid) (One of the major
beneficiaries of the nation's food-stamp program is actually a hugely profitable company:
Walmart .) (
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/31/walmart-food-stamps_n_4181862.html )
Another great post, read word-for-word, and I very much look forward your subsequent ones.
You've cogently explored the "yin" of immigration, but what about the "yang"?
As long as there exist Western countries to act as "safety valves" there is no incentive
for immigrant source countries to correct the deficiencies in their economical / political / social
systems or resolve ongoing conflicts. In fact, there is every incentive to maintain the status
quo.
And when will the Wester polity finally figure out that if you destabilize a metastable
regime by force, the result isn't stability but inevitably chaos and a further flood of refugee/immigrants?
'As long as there exist Western countries to act as "safety valves" there is no incentive
for immigrant source countries to correct the deficiencies in their economical / political / social
systems or resolve ongoing conflicts.'
After a mere ten years, NAFTA succeeded in reversing net immigration from Mexico.
Now most of the net immigration across the US-Mexican border comes from Central America:
countries such as El Salvador and Guatemala destabilized by the Reagan regime in the 1980s. Now
they're dominated by violent gangs trained in California prisons and repatriated to Central America.
Increasingly Mexico will focus on its own southern border with Guatemala, as it becomes more
of a destination country rather than simply a transit country, as detailed here:
Immigration across the U.S.-Mexican border is driven by Central American refugees fleeing
gross instability, crime and violence in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala; not by Mexicans.
The U.S. played a deep long-term role in creating the mess that Central America is today.
Yes. It is a pernicious cycle with something like these dimensions. . .
U.S. creates instability (war, coup) in a region.
The ensuing instability creates a class of desperate folks, who then seek bodily, economic,
and political safety within the borders of the empire. This leads to a class of desperate workers,
often undocumented and constantly at risk of deportation, willing to work for far less compensation
than the native population.
Native population sees the contours of its society change with the influx along with a
lessening in quality of living standards, which leads to dangerous, xenophobic mental associations.
Xenophobic politics begin to take root and thrive.
The real solution is for our country to stop doing step 1.
Poorer countries suffer brain drain. They do receive large amount of remittances, but an
economy which sends its best and the brightest to benefit the industrial countries and receives
industrial products in exchange does not seem like it can develop very easily.
Its clear that the emigree benefits, and the receiving country receives a subsidy in the form
of valuable human capital. But how does the originating country develop? Invest in education and
the best leave. Invest in industry and you compete with the products of the developed countries.
And of course, the rich in unstable countries have little reason to care about the long term
consequences of their actions if they can take their loot and run. There is a reason so many rich
Chinese are emigrating.
David Harvey once told a story about how he warned investment bankers that if things keep getting
worse, the US could end up a failed state like Mexico. In typical Wall Street fashion they asked
Harvey if they should buy villas in France.
I think this is the first article I have EVER read that even supposes there might be negative
ECONOMIC effects of immigration.
I would note that if there ever was a jobs program with the explicit goal of reducing unemployment
to 4% (and not pretending the people who have dropped out don't want a job because they CAN'T
get a job) and providing a job to any and all applicants – well, I think the immigration from
South America that has slowed would amp right up again – of course.
You know, I have been reading some of the Davos Man class going on and on about how they didn't
really do enough to ameliorate the negative effects of "free" trade on those who don't benefit
from trade. But NAFTA is going on a quarter of a century – and in every subsequent trade deal
such promises are either never kept or never effectively implemented.
I suspect that to REALLY provide jobs of equal pay and equal benefits is not economically feasible.
Think of it this way – people who worked as landscapers, when displaced by immigrants, may not
have the aptitude, skills, or even desire to change careers – if you work outside, why in the
hell do you want to have to start working indoors???
Go to college and become a computer programmer .H1b .
What are you gonna do keep these people employed – have the same lawn mowed twice every week?
Have the same computer code written twice?????
Again, the whole scenario has struck me as not being ever critically thought through. The benefits
to consumers getting low prices are endlessly pointed out, but the negative effect of fewer jobs
at low pay are glossed over or NOT ACKNOWLEDGED. The whole deal is that less income to workers
and more income to capital – is it REALLY unforseeable that eventually there will be a demand
dearth?? Decades of experience of jobs shipped overseas and not replaced are not acknowledged.
Ever growing inequality. We have been sold a load of bullsh*t because it benefited a very, very
narrow slice at the top only.
Go to college and become a computer programmer .H1b .
Over 100K H-1B Visas issued so far for 2016 alone, over 10% of those were issued in my state
of Massachusetts. The Mathworks Inc. of Natick was given a $3 million dollar state tax subsidy
in return for "creating" 600 new jobs – they created jobs alright, 386 H-1B jobs so far, Americans
need not apply.
The HB-1 Indian workers that have flooded Boston's labor market seem to fit this part because
they get on and off Public transportation enmass at stops with clusters of rental buildings --
"5c. Immigrants who don't expect to stay can have less reason to integrate culturally and economically;
any real estate investor can tell you that all else being equal, a neighborhood made up largely
of homeowners is almost always nicer than a neighborhood made up largely of renters."
As a lifelong blue collar worker for nearly 40 years, I found my ability to remain employed
competing against a never-ending influx of 22 year old immigrants to be a sinking, and finally
sunk quagmire. I lost. I cannot be 22 forever.
Coming up in the 1970's many of my acquaintances and I were skilled laborers, we got up in
the morning and went out everyday to work hard for a living. None of us would even be considered
for any of those entry level positions any more. They all go to immigrants from somewhere else
or another. As a native born white American you don't even get a chance at those jobs anymore,
no employer would even bother talking to you.
The US has all but done away with apprenticeship programs for the skilled trades. We just bring
in exploitable people from all over the world to build our stuff, and then when we're done with
them, they go back to where they came from. I know this is true because I've asked them, I've
worked with them – they have no intention of staying in America longer than it takes to educate
their kids, build up a nest egg, and go back home. A lot of them don't really like it here.
But we Americans don't have those options. We can't go to Guatemala or Germany or the Philippines
to work for 10 or 20 years to return to America with saved money on which we can survive for the
rest of a lifetime.
This deal is a one-way street.
As an American, I challenge you to get a job abroad. I challenge you to get a foreign residency
visa or a work visa. I challenge you to do any of the things that immigrants do in our country.
You can't.
I'm not anti-immigrant. I'm pro- our people first. Us first, and then when we need other folks
they're welcome too. But that's not what has been happening in my work lifetime of the last 40
years.
Here's a somewhat interesting backgrounder on American immigration. The author's premise
is that US immigration policies were always about race (white Europeans welcome to stay, brown
Mexicans welcome to do manual labor and leave) but this is undoubtedly a simplification as the
discrimination in favor of high skills–talked about in the above post–undoubtedly a factor.
For example most other countries do not offer citizenship unless you have something valuable
to offer them. An acquaintance who thought about becoming Canadian found this out.
In any case the below author does talk about how the notion of "illegal" immigrants is a more
recent phenomenon and in earlier periods Mexicans were freely allowed to come across and work.
I think it's also useful to consider private prison labor. This article notes that half this
revenue comes from undocumented immigrants but that means the other half comes from US citizens.
private prisons
""Private prisons bring in about $3 billion in revenue annually, and over half of that comes
from holding facilities for undocumented immigrants. Private operations run between 50% to 55%
of immigrant detainment facilities. The immigration bill battling its way through Washington right
now might also mean good things for private prisons. Some estimate that the crackdown on undocumented
immigrants will lead to 14,000 more inmates annually with 80% of that business going to private
prisons.
The prison industry has also made money by contracting prison labor to private companies. The
companies that have benefited from this cheap labor include Starbucks (SBUX), Boeing (BA), Victoria's
Secret, McDonalds (MCD) and even the U.S. military. Prison laborers cost between 93 cents and
$4 a day and don't need to collect benefits, thus making them cheap employees.""
It is dangerous for Trump to demonize undocumented immigrants without holding the corporations
that attracted and hired them responsible and the system that allowed it.
Now that they are here and have settled with families, it is deplorable to speak of mass deportation.
As has been noted with the Walmart expample, those that massively profit from this abberation
should bear the major cost of public services required for a 'Shadow Workforce'.
And Hillary Clinton and her neocon crowd, whose policies have created chaos resulting in mass
immigration of refugees offers no apology but more of the same. Insanity doing the same thing
over and over for a different result?
I would argue that migration has both positive and negative impact on the receiving country.
But at some point I believe the 'self' is selfish and not necessarily selfless. In a world of
limited resources and opportunities it is normal for the 'self' to be highly selfish hence the
contradictory nature of the theory of free market economy under globalization.
I argue that the theory is self contradictory because it is normal human nature being selfish
hence anti competition. When threatened by the influx of seemingly hard working, creative and
passive immigrants, I tend to gravitate towards conservatism. I start taking necessary steps towards
protecting myself, my immediate family and hence my domestic market. These rules are typically
borrowed from nature. How to balance the impulsive theory of free market economics vs the reality
of limited resources and opportunities is a unique challenge to governments, policy and decision
makers worldwide hence globalization in the short run presents unique challenges (conflicts) sometimes.
Johnson supports private, for-profit prisons. As Governor of New Mexico he dealt with overcrowded
prisons (and approximately seven hundred prisoners held out-of-state due to a lack of available
space) by opening two private prisons, later arguing that "building two private prisons in
New Mexico solved some very serious problems – and saved the taxpayers a lot of money."
He could have saved the taxpayers even more money by releasing non-violent prisoners convicted
of minor crimes. But that would have offended some of his campaign donors.
Bernie's goal is to ban private prisons. Hillary has a similar goal, but takes money from
prison lobbyists. Does this make sense to you?
According to Lee Fang of The Intercept, Private Prison Lobbyists Are Raising Cash for Hillary
Clinton.
After pressure from civil rights groups, Vice News explains Hillary Clinton Shuns Private
Prison Cash, Activists Want Others to Follow Suit.
The Huffington Post writes "Lobbying firms that work for two major private prison giants,
GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America, gave $133,246 to the Ready for Hillary PAC,
according to Vice."
Do you trust Clinton?
I guess this means that we should vote for Sanders in the primary. Oh gosh, there's a minor
problem. The primaries are over, and Clinton is the nominee.
"I do think we can do a lot of privatizations, and private prisons it seems to work a lot
better," said Trump when asked how he planned to reform the country's prison system.
For more research on the topic – I found the following very readable, gave me a lot of insight
into the factors influencing whether or when immigration is good or bad from which point of view:
So the UK National Health system nurtured me through my early years, and the UK education
system gave me primary, secondary and degree level education. I have spent most of my working
life doing an R&D job in the US. The US has benefited from my work during my working life. If
I should choose to retire back to the UK, I will remit my pension income back there, and because
of the tax treaty, pay income taxes there, which I claim as a full credit against the US tax return.
So I'm "taking money out of the US, to the detriment of social cohesion and economic growth".
Question is, how much of the pension and/or social security and/or investment gains do I owe
to the US, and how much to the UK? I think I owe more there than I do here. Particularly in light
of the fact that the UK paid for my college education, but my nephews and nieces have to pay for
their own, so I have hitherto been a drain on the UKs social investment strategy.
I see it as much a moral question as an economic one that I should help support my family's
education directly, and the UK social system through future taxes paid from pension. I have after
all supported the US social and military-industrial systems through work done and taxes paid during
my working life.
1. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for welfare they can barely get emergency room
care.
2. H1-B visas tap larger, typically Asian populations than the U.S. for their best & brightest.
Could India actually make use of its intelligent people? Is it moral for the U.S. to, in effect,
bribe them to leave their native country? (A point made by Ralph Nader in answering a libertarian
at his Google talk )
3. Roughly 50% of the undocumented are from Asia. Yet 90% of the deportations are Hispanic.
Got a link on this? My experience is that the Asian population is either native or here
on student visas. The chinese student population is quite large in Los Angeles. Student visas
don't allow foreign students to work off-campus, so many of them are family-funded. So they're
not taking jobs, but do impact the housing/rental market. (The California colleges love them for
their out-of-state fees and strong study habits.)
I can only speak for Texas, but the nail salons, massage parlors, dry cleaners, restaurants,
fishing boats and electronics refurbishing can't ALL be H1-B visas. And that isn't even counting
all the people from India I see. Most of them are too old to be students.
Trump's statement that he will issue an executive order forcing employers to use E-Verify for
all new employees is a good start. While that program has a few flaws, the net effect would be
massive for favoring citizens over illegals.
To be fair, employers should still have the option of using illegals, however, they should
put their money where their mouths and labor savings are, by not being able to deduct the non
E-Verifiable wages from their income for taxation purposes.
"... traditional ways of life are dissolving as a new class of entrepreneur-warriors are wielding unprecedented power - and changing the global landscape. ..."
"... It's a huge psychological dent in people's faith in the system. I think what's going to happen in the next few years is huge unemployment in the middle class in America because a lot of their jobs will be outsourced or automated. ..."
Novelist Rana Dasgupta recently turned to nonfiction to explore the explosive
social and economic changes in Delhi starting in 1991, when India launched a
series of transformative economic reforms. In
Capital: The Eruption of Delhi, he describes a city where the epic hopes
of globalization have dimmed in the face of a sterner, more elitist world. In
Part 1 of an interview with the
Institute for New Economic
Thinking, Dasgupta traces a turbulent time in which traditional ways
of life are dissolving as a new class of entrepreneur-warriors are wielding
unprecedented power - and changing the global landscape.
Lynn Parramore: Why did you decide to move from New York to Delhi
in 2000, and then to write a book about the city?
Rana Dasgupta: I moved to be with my partner who lived in Delhi, and soon
realized it was a great place to have landed. I was trying write a novel and
there were a lot of people doing creative things. There was a fascinating intellectual
climate, all linked to changes in society and the economy. It was 10 years since
liberalization and a lot of the impact of that was just being felt and widely
sensed.
There was a sense of opportunity, not any more just on the part of business
people, but everyone. People felt that things were really going to change in
a deep way - in every part of the political spectrum and every class of society.
Products and technology spread, affecting even very poor people. Coke made ads
about the rickshaw drivers with their mobile phones -people who had never had
access to a landline. A lot of people sensed a new possibility for their own
lives.
Amongst the artists and intellectuals that I found myself with, there were
very big hopes for what kind of society Delhi could become and they were very
interested in being part of creating that. They were setting up institutions,
publications, publishing houses, and businesses. They were thinking new ideas.
When I arrived, I felt, this is where stuff is happening. The scale of conversations,
the philosophy of change was just amazing.
LP: You've interviewed many of the young tycoons who emerged during
Delhi's transformation. How would you describe this new figure? How do they
do business?
RD: Many of their fathers and grandfathers had run significant provincial
businesses. They were frugal in their habits and didn't like to advertise themselves,
and anyway their wealth remained local both in its magnitude and its reach.
They had business and political associates that they drank with and whose weddings
they went to, and so it was a tight-knit kind of wealth.
But the sons, who would probably be now between 35 and 45, had an entirely
different experience. Their adult life happened after globalization. Because
their fathers often didn't have the skills or qualifications to tap into the
forces of globalization, the sons were sent abroad, probably to do an MBA, so
they could walk into a meeting with a management consultancy firm or a bank
and give a presentation. When they came back they operated not from the local
hubs where their fathers ruled but from Delhi, where they could plug into federal
politics and global capital.
So you have these very powerful combinations of father/son businesses. The
sons revere the fathers, these muscular, huge masculine figures who have often
done much more risky and difficult work building their businesses and have cultivated
relationships across the political spectrum. They are very savvy, charismatic
people. They know who to give gifts to, how to do favors.
The sons often don't have that set of skills, but they have corporate skills.
They can talk finance in a kind of international language. Neither skill set
is enough on its own by early 2000's: they need each other. And what's interesting
about this package is that it's very powerful elsewhere, too. It's kind of a
world-beating combination. The son fits into an American style world of business
and finance, but the thing about American-style business is that there are lots
of things in the world that are closed to it. It's very difficult for an American
real estate company or food company to go to the president of an African country
and do a deal. They don't have the skills for it. But even if they did, they
are legally prevented from all the kinds of practices involved, the bribes and
everything.
This Indian business combination can go into places like Africa and Central
Asia and do all the things required. If they need to go to market and raise
money, they can do that. But if they need to sit around and drink with some
government guys and figure out who are the players that need to be kept happy,
they can do that, too. They see a lot of the world open to themselves.
LP: How do these figures compare to American tycoons during, say,
the Gilded Age?
RD: When American observers see these people they think, well, we had these
guys between 1890 and 1920, but then they all kind of went under because there
was a massive escalation of state power and state wealth and basically the state
declared a kind of protracted war on them.
Americans think this is a stage of development that will pass. But I think
it's not going to pass in our case. The Indian state is never going to have
the same power over private interests as the U.S. state because lots of things
have to happen. The Depression and the Second World War were very important
in creating a U.S. state that was that powerful and a rationale for defeating
these private interests. I think those private interests saw much more benefit
in consenting to, collaborating in, and producing a stronger U.S. state.
Over time, American business allied itself with the government, which did
a lot to open up other markets for it. In India, I think these private interests
will not for many years see a benefit in operating differently, precisely because
continents like Africa, with their particular set of attributes, have such a
bright future. It's not just about what India's like, but what other places
are like, and how there aren't that many people in the world that can do what
they can do.
LP: What has been lost and gained in a place like Delhi under global
capitalism?
RD: Undeniably there has been immense material gain in the city since 1991,
including the very poorest people, who are richer and have more access to information.
What my book tracks is a kind of spiritual and moral crisis that affects rich
and poor alike.
One kind of malaise is political and economic. Even though the poorest are
richer, they have less political influence. In a socialist system, everything
is done in the name of the poor, for good or for bad, and the poor occupy center
stage in political discourse. But since 1991 the poor have become much less
prominent in political and economic ideology. As the proportion of wealth held
by the richest few families of India has grown massively larger, the situation
is very much like the break-up of the Soviet Union, which leads to a much more
hierarchical economy where people closest to power have the best information,
contacts, and access to capital. They can just expand massively.
Suddenly there's a state infrastructure that's been built for 70 years or
60 years which is transferred to the private domain and that is hugely valuable.
People gain access to telecommunication systems, mines, land, and forests for
almost nothing. So ordinary people say, yes, we are richer, and we have all
these products and things, but those making the decisions about our society
are not elected and hugely wealthy.
Imagine the upper-middle-class guy who has been to Harvard, works for a management
consultancy firm or for an ad agency, and enjoys a kind of international-style
middle-class life. He thinks he deserves to make decisions about how the country
is run and how resources are used. He feels himself to be a significant figure
in his society. Then he realizes that he's not. There's another, infinitely
wealthier class of people who are involved in all kinds of backroom deals that
dramatically alter the landscape of his life. New private highways and new private
townships are being built all around him. They're sucking the water out of the
ground. There's a very rapid and seemingly reckless transformation of the landscape
that's being wrought and he has no part in it.
If he did have a say, he might ask, is this really the way that we want this
landscape to look? Isn't there enormous ecological damage? Have we not just
kicked 10,000 farmers off their land?
All these conversations that democracies have are not being had. People think,
this exactly what the socialists told us that capitalism was - it's pillage
and it creates a very wealthy elite exploiting the poor majority. To some extent,
I think that explains a lot of why capitalism is so turbulent in places like
India and China. No one ever expected capitalism to be tranquil. They had been
told for the better part of a century that capitalism was the imperialist curse.
So when it comes, and it's very violent, and everyone thinks, well that's what
we expected. One of the reasons that it still has a lot of ideological consensus
is that people are prepared for that. They go into it as an act of war, not
as an act of peace, and all they know is that the rewards for the people at
the top are very high, so you'd better be on the top.
The other kind of malaise is one of culture. Basically, America and Britain
invented capitalism and they also invented the philosophical and cultural furniture
to make it acceptable. Places where capitalism is going in anew do not have
200 years of cultural readiness. It's just a huge shock. Of course, Indians
are prepared for some aspects of it because many of them are trading communities
and they understand money and deals. But a lot of those trading communities
are actually incredibly conservative about culture - about what kind of lifestyle
their daughters will have, what kinds of careers their sons will have. They
don't think that their son goes to Brown to become a professor of literature,
but to come back and run the family business.
LP: What is changing between men and women?
RD: A lot of the fallout is about families. Will women work? If so, will
they still cook and be the kind of wife they're supposed to be? Will they be
out on the street with their boyfriends dressed in Western clothes and going
to movies and clearly advertising the fact that they are economically independent,
sexually independent, socially independent? How will we deal with the backlash
of violent crimes that have everything to do with all these changes?
This capitalist system has produced a new figure, which is the economically
successful and independent middle-class woman. She's extremely globalized in
the sense of what she should be able to do in her life. It's also created a
set of lower-middle-class men who had a much greater sense of stability both
in their gender and professional situation 30 years ago, when they could rely
on a family member or fellow caste member to keep them employed even if they
didn't have any marketable attributes. They had a wife who made sure that the
culture of the family was intact - religion, cuisine, that kind of stuff.
Thirty years later, those guys are not going to get jobs because that whole
caste value thing has no place in the very fast-moving market economy. Without
a high school diploma, they just have nothing to offer. Those guys in the streets
are thinking, I don't have a claim on the economy, or on women anymore because
I can't earn anything. Women across the middle classes - and it's not just across
India, it's across Asia -are trying to opt out of marriage for as long as they
can because they see only a downside. Remaining single allows all kinds of benefits
– social, romantic, professional. So those guys are pretty bitter and there's
a backlash that can become quite violent. We also have an upswing of Hindu fundamentalism
as a way of trying to preserve things. It's very appealing to people who think
society is falling apart.
LP: You've described India's experience of global capitalism as traumatic.
How is the trauma distinct in Delhi, and in what ways is it universal?
RD: Delhi suffers specifically from the trauma of Partition, which has created
a distinct society. When India became independent, it was divided into India
and Pakistan. Pakistan was essentially a Muslim state, and Hindis and Sikhs
left. The border was about 400 kilometers from Delhi, which was a tiny, empty
city, a British administrative town. Most of those Hindis and Sikhs settled
in Delhi where they were allocated housing as refugees. Muslims went in the
other direction to Pakistan, and as we know, something between 1 and 2 million
were killed in that event.
The people who arrived in Delhi arrived traumatized, having lost their businesses,
properties, friends, and communities, and having seen their family members murdered,
raped and abducted. Like the Jewish Holocaust, everyone can tell the stories
and everyone has experienced loss. When they all arrive in Delhi, they have
a fairly homogeneous reaction: they're never going to let this happen to them
again. They become fiercely concerned with security, physical and financial.
They're not interested in having nice neighbors and the lighter things of life.
They say, it was our neighbors that killed us, so we're going to trust only
our blood and run businesses with our brother and our sons. We're going to build
high walls around our houses.
When the grandchildren of these people grow up, it's a problem because none
of this has been exorcised. The families have not talked about it. The state
has not dealt with it and wants to remember only that India became independent
and that was a glorious moment. So the catastrophe actually becomes focused
within families rather than the reverse. A lot of grandchildren are more fearful
and hateful of Muslims than the grandparents, who remembered a time before when
they actually had very deep friendships with Muslims.
Parents of my generation grew up with immense silence in their households
and they knew that in that silence was Islam - a terrifying thing. When you're
one year old, you don't even know yet what Islam is, you just know that it's
something which is the greatest horror in the universe.
The Punjabi businessman is a very distinct species. They have treated business
as warfare, and they are still doing it like that 70 years later and they are
very good at it. They enter the global economy at a time when it's becoming
much less civilized as well. In many cases they succeed not because they have
a good idea, but because they know how to seize global assets and resources.
Punjabi businessmen are not inventing Facebook. They are about mines and oil
and water and food -things that everyone understands and needs.
In this moment of globalization, the world will have to realize that events
like the Partition of India are not local history anymore but global history.
Especially in this moment when the West no longer controls the whole system,
these traumas explode onto the world and affect all of us, like the Holocaust.
They introduce levels of turbulence into businesses and practices that we didn't
expect necessarily.
Then there's the trauma of capitalism itself, and here I think it's important
for us to re-remember the West's own history. Capitalism achieved a level of
consensus in the second half of the 20th century very accidentally, and by a
number of enormous forces, not all of which were intended. There's no guarantee
that such consensus will be achieved everywhere in the emerging world. India
and China don't have an empire to ship people off to as a safety valve when
suffering become immense. They just have to absorb all that stuff.
For a century or so, people in power in Paris and London and Washington felt
that they had to save the capitalist system from socialist revolution, so they
gave enormous concessions to their populations. Very quickly, people in the
West forgot that there was that level of dissent. They thought that everyone
loved capitalism. I think as we come into the next period where the kind of
consensus has already been dealt a huge blow in the West, we're going to have
to deal with some of those forces again.
LP: When you say that the consensus on capitalism has been dealt
a blow, are you talking about the financial crisis?
RD: Yes, the sense that the nation-state - I'm talking about the U.S. context
- can no longer control global capital, global processes, or, indeed, it's own
financial elite.
It's a huge psychological dent in people's faith in the system. I think
what's going to happen in the next few years is huge unemployment in the middle
class in America because a lot of their jobs will be outsourced or automated.
Then, if you have 30-40 percent unemployment in America, which has always
been the ideological leader in capitalism, America will start to re-theorize
capitalism very profoundly (and maybe the Institute of New Economic Thinking
is part of that). Meanwhile, I think the middle class in India would not have
these kinds of problems. It's precisely because American technology and finance
are so advanced that they're going to hit a lot of those problems. I think in
places like India there's so much work to be done that no one needs to leap
to the next stage of making the middle class obsolete. They're still useful.
Lynn Parramore is contributing editor at AlterNet. She is cofounder of Recessionwire,
founding editor of New Deal 2.0, and author of "Reading the Sphinx: Ancient
Egypt in Nineteenth-Century Literary Culture." She received her Ph.D. in English
and cultural theory from NYU. Follow her on Twitter @LynnParramore.
This set of principles in the core of "Trump_vs_deep_state" probably can be
improved, but still are interesting: "... If you listen closely to Trump, you'll hear a direct repudiation of the
system of globalization and identity politics that has defined the world order since
the Cold War. There are, in fact, six specific ideas that he has either blurted
out or thinly buried in his rhetoric: (1) borders matter; (2) immigration policy
matters; (3) national interests, not so-called universal interests, matter; (4)
entrepreneurship matters; (5) decentralization matters; (6) PC speech-without which
identity politics is inconceivable-must be repudiated. ..."
Notable quotes:
"... If you listen closely to Trump, you'll hear a direct repudiation of the system of globalization and identity politics that has defined the world order since the Cold War. There are, in fact, six specific ideas that he has either blurted out or thinly buried in his rhetoric: (1) borders matter; (2) immigration policy matters; (3) national interests, not so-called universal interests, matter; (4) entrepreneurship matters; (5) decentralization matters; (6) PC speech-without which identity politics is inconceivable-must be repudiated. ..."
"... These six ideas together point to an end to the unstable experiment with supra- and sub-national sovereignty that many of our elites have guided us toward, siren-like, since 1989. ..."
"... if anti-Trumpers convince themselves that that's all ..."
"... What is going on is that "globalization-and-identity-politics-speak" is being boldly challenged. Inside the Beltway, along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, there is scarcely any evidence of this challenge. There are people in those places who will vote for Trump, but they dare not say it, for fear of ostracism. ..."
"... Out beyond this hermetically sealed bicoastal consensus, there are Trump placards everywhere, not because citizens are racists or homophobes or some other vermin that needs to be eradicated, but because there is little evidence in their own lives that this vast post-1989 experiment with "globalization" and identity politics has done them much good. ..."
"... The most highly motivated voters in this election cycle seem to be insurgents pushing back against corrupt and incompetent elites and the Establishment. That does not bode well for Clinton. ..."
"... Another page in the annals of American elite incompetence, only five days after the ceasefire in Syria was negotiated, we broke it by bombing a well-known Syrian position. After Russia took us to the woodshed, Samantha Power responds by basically saying, "We messed up, but Russia is a moralistic hypocrite because they support Assad and he is, like, really bad and stuff." ..."
"... They seem to think that any attempt to stop mass 3rd world immigration, stop pc thought police, or up hold Christian-ish values are a direct threat to them. ..."
"... The enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders and Trump can only be understood as an overdue awakening of voters--finally recognizing that voting for more of the same tools of the plutocrats and oligarchs (which was represented by all candidates other than Trump and Sanders) will only serve the war profiteers, neocons, and other beltway bandits--at the expense of every other voter. ..."
"... Once the voters have awakened, they will not return to slumber or accept the establishment politics as usual. It is going to be a very interesting process to watch, and the political operatives who think we will return to the same old GOP and Democratic politics as usual should brace themselves for a rude awakening. ..."
"... Trump vs. Clinton = Nationalism vs. Globalism ..."
If you listen closely to Trump, you'll hear a direct repudiation
of the system of globalization and identity politics that has defined the
world order since the Cold War. There are, in fact, six specific ideas that
he has either blurted out or thinly buried in his rhetoric: (1) borders
matter; (2) immigration policy matters; (3) national interests, not so-called
universal interests, matter; (4) entrepreneurship matters; (5) decentralization
matters; (6) PC speech-without which identity politics is inconceivable-must
be repudiated.
These six ideas together point to an end to the unstable experiment
with supra- and sub-national sovereignty that many of our elites have guided
us toward, siren-like, since 1989.
That is what the Trump campaign, ghastly though it may at times be, leads
us toward: A future where states matter. A future where people are citizens,
working together toward (bourgeois) improvement of their lot. His ideas
do not yet fully cohere. They are a bit too much like mental dust that has
yet to come together. But they can come together. And Trump is the first
American candidate to bring some coherence to them, however raucous his
formulations have been.
Mitchell goes on to say that political elites call Trump "unprincipled,"
and perhaps they're right: that he only does what's good for Trump. On the other
hand, maybe Trump's principles are not ideological, but pragmatic. That is,
Trump might be a quintessential American political type: the leader who gets
into a situation and figures out how to muddle through. Or, as Mitchell puts
it:
This doesn't necessarily mean that he is unprincipled; it means rather
that he doesn't believe that yet another policy paper based on conservative
"principles" is going to save either America or the Republican Party.
Also, Mitchell says that there are no doubt voters in the Trump coalition
who are nothing but angry, provincial bigots. But if anti-Trumpers convince
themselves that that's all the Trump voters are, they will miss something
profoundly important about how Western politics are changing because of deep
instincts emerging from within the body politic:
What is going on is that "globalization-and-identity-politics-speak"
is being boldly challenged. Inside the Beltway, along the Atlantic
and Pacific coasts, there is scarcely any evidence of this challenge. There
are people in those places who will vote for Trump, but they dare not say
it, for fear of ostracism.
They think that identity politics has gone too
far, or that if it hasn't yet gone too far, there is no principled place
where it must stop. They believe that the state can't be our only large-scale
political unit, but they see that on the post-1989 model, there will, finally,
be no place for the state.
Out beyond this hermetically sealed bicoastal consensus, there are Trump
placards everywhere, not because citizens are racists or homophobes or some
other vermin that needs to be eradicated, but because there is little evidence
in their own lives that this vast post-1989 experiment with "globalization"
and identity politics has done them much good.
There's lots more here, including his prediction of what's going to happen
to the GOP.
Read the whole thing.
The most highly motivated voters in this election cycle seem to be
insurgents pushing back against corrupt and incompetent elites and the
Establishment. That does not bode well for Clinton.
Another page in the annals of American elite incompetence, only five
days after the ceasefire in Syria was negotiated, we broke it by
bombing a well-known Syrian position. After Russia took us to the woodshed,
Samantha Power responds by basically saying, "We messed up, but Russia is
a moralistic hypocrite because they support Assad and he is, like, really
bad and stuff."
Which not only makes it seem more likely that we were targeting
Assad's forces to anyone reasonably distrustful of American involvement
in the war, but also shows the moral reasoning ability of nothing greater
than a 6 year old.
Seriously, accusing Russia of moralism, and then moralistically trying
to hide responsibility by listing atrocities committed by Assad? It is self-parody.
Call it anti-Semitic if you want but all my Jewish cousins and the several
other Jewish business associates I know feel uncontrollable hate for Trump.
"thinly buried in his rhetoric:
borders matter;
immigration policy matters;
national interests, not so-called universal interests, matter;
entrepreneurship matters;
decentralization matters;
PC speech-without which identity politics is inconceivable-must
be repudiated."
They seem to think that any attempt to stop mass 3rd world immigration,
stop pc thought police, or up hold Christian-ish values are a direct threat
to them.
I cannot speak to what is best for conservative Christians, but change is
definitely in the air. Since the start of this election, I have had a clear
sense that we are seeing a beginning of a new political reality.
The enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders and Trump can only be understood
as an overdue awakening of voters--finally recognizing that voting for more
of the same tools of the plutocrats and oligarchs (which was represented
by all candidates other than Trump and Sanders) will only serve the war
profiteers, neocons, and other beltway bandits--at the expense of every
other voter.
Too many voters have finally come to recognize that neither party serves
them in any real way. This will forcibly result in a serious reform process
of one or both parties, a third party that actually represents working people,
or if neither reform or a new party is viable-–a new American revolution,
which I fear greatly.
Once the voters have awakened, they will not return to slumber or
accept the establishment politics as usual. It is going to be a very interesting
process to watch, and the political operatives who think we will return
to the same old GOP and Democratic politics as usual should brace themselves
for a rude awakening.
I'm certainly not
the first to say this, but perhaps the first to post it on this blog. RD,
perhaps rightfully, has steered this post toward the Benedict Option, but
what should be debated is the repudiation of globalization and identity
politics.
"Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will and
deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases
have to be changed."
Uh Oh -- We Christians are in Hillary Clinton's Basket of Deplorables.
"... Moscow did indeed support secessionist pro-Russia rebels in East Ukraine. But did not the U.S. launch a 78-day bombing campaign on tiny Serbia to effect a secession of its cradle province of Kosovo? ..."
"... Russia is reportedly hacking into our political institutions. If so, it ought to stop. But have not our own CIA, National Endowment for Democracy, and NGOs meddled in Russia's internal affairs for years? ..."
"... Scores of the world's 190-odd nations are today ruled by autocrats. How does it advance our interests or diplomacy to have congressional leaders yapping "thug" at the ruler of a nation with hundreds of nuclear warheads? ..."
"... Very good article indeed. Knee-jerk reaction of american politicians and journalists looks extremely strange. As a matter of fact they look like idiots or puppets. ..."
"... Rubio and Graham are reflexively ready to push US influence everywhere, all the time, with military force always on the agenda, and McCain seems to be in a state of constant agitation ..."
"... Very sensible article. And as the EU falls further into disarray and possible disintegration, due to migration and other catastrophically mishandled problems, a working partnership with Russia will become even more important. Right now, we treat Russia as an enemy and Saudi Arabia as a friend. That makes no sense at all. ..."
"... As I've stated many times, Obama the narcissist hates Putin because Putin doesn't play the sycophantic lapdog yapping about how good it is to interact with the "smartest person in the room". ..."
"... I'm serious. Obama craves sources of narcissistic supply and has visceral contempt for sources of narcissistic injury. I.e., people who may reveal the mediocrity that he actually is. Obama considers Putin a threat in that context. ..."
"... The downside for the U.S. is that Obama has extended hating Putin to hating Russia. And yes, Washington is flooded with sources of sycophantic narcissistic supply for Obama including the MSM. And they are happy to massage his twisted ego by enthusiastically playing along with the Putin/Russia fear-monger bashing. ..."
"... P.S. too bad Hillary is saturated with her own psychopathology that portends more Global Cop wreckage. ..."
"... Anyway, what Buchanan is saying is, "We have to deal with him," not "favor him." The two terms should not be confused. ..."
"... There are a lot of "allies" of questionable usefulness that the US should stop "favoring," and a lot of competitors (and potential allies in the true sense) out there the US should begin "dealing" with. ..."
"... Everything the Western elite does is about dollar hegemony and control of energy. ..."
"... As long as Russia is not a puppet of the globalist banking cartel they will be presented as an "enemy". Standing in the way of energy imperialism was the last straw for the all out hybrid war being launched on Russia now. ..."
"... If the Western public wasn't so lazy and stupid we would remove the globalists controlling us. Instead people, especially liberals, get in bed with the globalists plans against Russia bc they can't stand Russia is Christian and supports the family. ..."
"... Every word about Russia allowed in the Western establishment are lies funded and molded by people like Soros and warmongers. This is the reality. Nobody who will speak honestly or positively about Russia is allowed any voice. And scumbag neoliberal globalists like Kasperov are presented as "Russians" while real Russian people are given zero voice. ..."
"... What the Western elite is doing right now in Ukraine and Syria is reprehensible and its all our fault for letting these people control us. ..."
...Arriving on Capitol Hill to repair ties between Trump and party elites,
Gov. Mike Pence was taken straight to the woodshed.
John McCain told Pence that Putin was a "thug and a butcher," and Trump's
embrace of him intolerable.
Said Lindsey Graham: "Vladimir Putin is a thug, a dictator … who has
his opposition killed in the streets," and Trump's views bring to mind Munich.
Putin is an "authoritarian thug," added "Little Marco" Rubio.
What causes the Republican Party to lose it whenever the name of Vladimir
Putin is raised?
Putin is no Stalin, whom FDR and Harry Truman called "Good old Joe" and "Uncle
Joe." Unlike Nikita Khrushchev, he never drowned a Hungarian Revolution in blood.
He did crush the Chechen secession. But what did he do there that General Sherman
did not do to Atlanta when Georgia seceded from Mr. Lincoln's Union?
Putin supported the U.S. in Afghanistan, backed our nuclear deal with Iran,
and signed on to John Kerry's plan have us ensure a cease fire in Syria and
go hunting together for ISIS and al-Qaida terrorists.
Still, Putin committed "aggression" in Ukraine, we are told. But was that
really aggression, or reflexive strategic reaction? We helped dump over a pro-Putin
democratically elected regime in Kiev, and Putin acted to secure his Black Sea
naval base by re-annexing Crimea, a peninsula that has belonged to Russia from
Catherine the Great to Khrushchev. Great powers do such things.
When the Castros pulled Cuba out of America's orbit, we decided to keep Guantanamo,
and dismiss Havana's protests?
Moscow did indeed support secessionist pro-Russia rebels in East Ukraine.
But did not the U.S. launch a 78-day bombing campaign on tiny Serbia to effect
a secession of its cradle province of Kosovo?
... ... ...
Russia is reportedly hacking into our political institutions. If so,
it ought to stop. But have not our own CIA, National Endowment for Democracy,
and NGOs meddled in Russia's internal affairs for years?
... ... ...
Is Putin's Russia more repressive than Xi Jinping's China? Yet, Republicans
rarely use "thug" when speaking about Xi. During the Cold War, we partnered
with such autocrats as the Shah of Iran and General Pinochet of Chile, Ferdinand
Marcos in Manila, and Park Chung-Hee of South Korea. Cold War necessity required
it.
Scores of the world's 190-odd nations are today ruled by autocrats. How
does it advance our interests or diplomacy to have congressional leaders yapping
"thug" at the ruler of a nation with hundreds of nuclear warheads?
>>During the Cold War, we partnered with such autocrats as the Shah
of Iran and General Pinochet of Chile, Ferdinand Marcos in Manila, and Park
Chung-Hee of South Korea
buttressed could be even more pertinent)
Very good article indeed. Knee-jerk reaction of american politicians
and journalists looks extremely strange. As a matter of fact they look like
idiots or puppets.
Rubio
and Graham are reflexively ready to push US influence everywhere, all the
time, with military force always on the agenda, and McCain seems to be in
a state of constant agitation whenever US forces are not actively engaged
in combat somewhere. They are loud voices, yes, but irrational voices, too.
Very sensible article. And as the EU falls further into disarray
and possible disintegration, due to migration and other catastrophically
mishandled problems, a working partnership with Russia will become even
more important. Right now, we treat Russia as an enemy and Saudi Arabia
as a friend. That makes no sense at all.
"Just" states the starvation of the Ukraine is a western lie. The Harvest
of Sorrow by Robert Conquest refutes this dangerous falsehood. Perhaps "Just"
believes The Great Leap Forward did not lead to starvation of tens of millions
in China. After all, this could be another "western lie". So to could be
the Armenian genocide in Turkey or slaughter of Communists in Indonesia.
As I've stated many times, Obama the narcissist hates Putin because
Putin doesn't play the sycophantic lapdog yapping about how good it is to
interact with the "smartest person in the room".
I'm serious. Obama craves sources of narcissistic supply and has
visceral contempt for sources of narcissistic injury. I.e., people who may
reveal the mediocrity that he actually is. Obama considers Putin a threat
in that context.
The downside for the U.S. is that Obama has extended hating Putin
to hating Russia. And yes, Washington is flooded with sources of sycophantic
narcissistic supply for Obama including the MSM. And they are happy to massage
his twisted ego by enthusiastically playing along with the Putin/Russia
fear-monger bashing.
And so the U.S. – Russia relationship is wrecked by the "smartest person
in the room".
P.S. too bad Hillary is saturated with her own psychopathology that
portends more Global Cop wreckage.
John asks, "We also have to deal with our current allies. Whom would
Mr. Buchanan like to favor?"
Well, we could redouble our commitment to our democracy and peace loving
friends in Saudi Arabia, we could deepen our ties to those gentle folk in
Egypt, and maybe for a change give some meaningful support to Israel. Oh,
and our defensive alliances will be becoming so much stronger with Montenegro
as a member, we will need to pour more resources into that country.
Anyway, what Buchanan is saying is, "We have to deal with him," not
"favor him." The two terms should not be confused.
There are a lot of "allies" of questionable usefulness that the US
should stop "favoring," and a lot of competitors (and potential allies in
the true sense) out there the US should begin "dealing" with.
"During the Cold War, we partnered with such autocrats as the Shah of
Iran and General Pinochet of Chile, Ferdinand Marcos in Manila, and Park
Chung-Hee of South Korea. Cold War necessity required it (funny, you failed
to mention Laos, South Vietnam, Nicaragua, Noriega/Panama, and everyone's
favorite 9/11 co-conspirator and WMD developer, Saddam Hussein). either
way how did these "alliances" work out for the US? really doesn't matter,
does it? it is early 21st century, not mid 20th century. there is a school
of thought in the worlds of counter-terrorism/intelligence operations, which
suggests if you want to be successful, you have to partner with some pretty
nasty folks. Trump is being "handled" by an experienced, ruthless (that's
a compliment), and focused "operator". unless, of course, Trump is actually
the superior operator, in which case, this would be the greatest black op
of all time.
"From Russia With Money - Hillary Clinton, the Russian Reset and Cronyism,"
"Of the 28 US, European and Russian companies that participated in Skolkovo,
17 of them were Clinton Foundation donors" or sponsored speeches by former
President Bill Clinton, Schweizer told The Post.
Everything the Western elite does is about dollar hegemony and control
of energy. Once you understand that then the (evil)actions of the Western
elite make sense. Anyone who stands in the way of those things is an "enemy".
This is how they determine an "enemy".
As long as Russia is not a puppet of the globalist banking cartel
they will be presented as an "enemy". Standing in the way of energy imperialism
was the last straw for the all out hybrid war being launched on Russia now.
If the Western public wasn't so lazy and stupid we would remove the
globalists controlling us. Instead people, especially liberals, get in bed
with the globalists plans against Russia bc they can't stand Russia is Christian
and supports the family.
Every word about Russia allowed in the Western establishment are
lies funded and molded by people like Soros and warmongers. This is the
reality. Nobody who will speak honestly or positively about Russia is allowed
any voice. And scumbag neoliberal globalists like Kasperov are presented
as "Russians" while real Russian people are given zero voice.
What the Western elite is doing right now in Ukraine and Syria is
reprehensible and its all our fault for letting these people control us.
You need to substitute PIC (a.k.a., The Elites or Political Class)) for
neoliberal elite for the article to make more sense.
Notable quotes:
"... Our nation is in the grip of such poisonous thinking. The DNC with its "Super Delegates" already has a way to control who will be their candidate. In an irony to beat all ironies, the DNC's Super Delegates were able to stop Bernie Sanders... ..."
"... The reason Trump is still rising (and I believe will win handily) is he clearly represents the original image of America: a self made success story based on capitalism and the free market. ..."
This election cycle is so amazing one cannot help but think it has been scripted
by some invisible, all-powerful, hand. I mean, how could we have two completely
opposite candidates, perfectly reflecting the forces at play in this day and
age? It truly is a clash between The Elites and The Masses!
Main Street vs Wall & K Street.
The Political Industrial Complex (PIC – a.k.a., The Elites or Political Class)
is all up arms over the outsider barging in on their big con. The PIC is beside
itself trying to stop Donald Trump from gaining the Presidency, where he will
be able to clean out the People's House and the bureaucratic cesspool that has
shackled Main Street with political correctness, propaganda, impossibly expensive
health care, ridiculous taxes and a national debt that will take generations
to pay off.
The PIC has run amok long enough – illustrated perfectly by the defect ridden
democrat candidate: Hillary Clinton. I mean, how could you frame America's choices
this cycle
any better than this --
Back in July, Democratic presidential nominee and former Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton said, "there is
absolutely no connection between anything that I did as secretary of
state and the Clinton Foundation."
On Monday of this week,
ABC's Liz Kreutzer reminded people of that statement, as a new batch
of emails reveal that there was a connection, and
it was cash .
…
The Abedin emails reveal that the longtime Clinton aide apparently served
as a conduit between Clinton Foundation donors and Hillary Clinton while
Clinton served as secretary of state. In more than a dozen email exchanges,
Abedin provided expedited, direct access to Clinton for donors who had contributed
from $25,000 to $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. In many instances,
Clinton Foundation top executive Doug Band, who worked with the Foundation
throughout Hillary Clinton's tenure at State, coordinated closely with Abedin.
In Abedin's June deposition to Judicial Watch, she conceded that part of
her job at the State Department was taking care of "
Clinton family matters ."
This is what has Main Street so fed up with Wall & K street (big business,
big government). The Clinton foundation is a cash cow for Clinton, Inc. So while
our taxes go up, our debt sky rockets and our health care becomes too expensive
to afford, Clan Clinton has made 100's of millions of dollars selling access
(and obviously doing favors, because no one spends that kind of money without
results).
The PIC is circling the wagons with its news media arm shrilly screaming
anything and everything about Trump as if they could fool Main Street with their
worn out propaganda. I seriously doubt it will work. The Internet has broken
the information monopoly that allowed the PIC in the not too distant past to
control what people knew and thought.
Massachusetts has a long history of using the power of incumbency to
cripple political opponents. In fact, it's a leading state for such partisan
gamesmanship. Dating back to 1812, when Gov. Elbridge Gerry signed into
law a redistricting plan for state Senate districts that favored his Democratic-Republican
Party, the era of Massachusetts rule rigging began. It has continued, unabated,
ever since.
Given the insider dealing and venality that epitomized the 2016 presidential
primary process, I'd hoped that politicians would think twice before abusing
the power of the state for political purposes. Galvin quickly diminished
any such prospect of moderation in the sketchy behavior of elected officials.
He hid his actions behind the thin veil of fiscal responsibility. He claimed
to be troubled by the additional $56,000 he was going to have to spend printing
ballots to accommodate Independent voters. He conveniently ignored the fact
that thousands of these UIP members have been paying taxes for decades to
support a primary process that excludes them.
…
In my home state of Kansas, where my 2014 candidacy threatened to take
a U.S. Senate seat from the Republicans, they responded predictably. Instead
of becoming more responsive to voters, our state's highly partisan secretary
of state, Kris Kobach, introduced legislation that would bring back one
of the great excesses of machine politics: straight party-line voting –
which is designed to discourage voters from considering an Independent candidacy
altogether. Kobach's rationale, like Galvin's, was laughable. He described
it as a "convenience" for voters.
The article goes on to note these acts by the PIC are an affront to the large
swath of the electorate who really choose who will win elections:
In a recent Gallup poll, 60 percent of Americans said they do not feel
well-represented by the Democrats and Republicans and believe a third major
party is needed. Fully 42 percent of Americans now describe themselves
as politically independent .
That means the two main parties are each smaller in size than the independents
(68% divided by 2 equals 34%), which is why independents pick which side will
win. If the PIC attacks this group – guess what the response will look like?
I recently had a discussion with someone from Washington State who is pretty
much my opposite policy-wise. She is a deep blue democrat voter, whereas I am
a deep purple independent who is more small-government Tea Party than conservative-GOP.
She was lamenting the fact that her state has caucuses, which is one method
to blunt Main Street voters from having a say. It was interesting that we quickly
and strongly agreed on one thing above all else: open primaries. We both knew
that if the voters had the only say in who are leaders
would be, all sides could abide that decision easily. It is when PIC intervenes
that things get ugly.
Open primaries make the political parties accountable to the voters. Open
primaries make it harder for the PIC to control who gets into office, and reduces
the leverage of big donors. Open primaries reflect the will of the states and
the nation – not the vested interests (read bank accounts) of the PIC.
Without doubt, one of the most troublesome aspects of the current system
is its gross inefficiency. Whereas generations ago selecting a nominee
took relatively little time and money , today's process has resulted
in a near-permanent campaign. Because would-be nominees have to
win primaries and open caucuses in several states, they must put
together vast campaign apparatuses that spread across the nation, beginning
years in advance and raising tens of millions of dollars.
The length of the campaign alone keeps many potential candidates on the
sidelines. In particular, those in positions of leadership at various
levels of our government cannot easily put aside their duties and
shift into full-time campaign mode for such an extended period.
It is amazing how this kind of thinking can be considered legitimate. Note
how independent voters are evil in the mind of the PIC, and only government
leaders need apply. Not surprising, their answer is to control access to the
ballot:
During the week of Lincoln's birthday (February 12), the Republican Party
would hold a Republican Nomination Convention that would borrow from the
process by which the Constitution was ratified. Delegates to the
convention would be selected by rank-and-file Republicans in their local
communities , and those chosen delegates would meet, deliberate,
and ultimately nominate five people who, if willing, would each
be named as one of the party's officially sanctioned finalists for its presidential
nomination. Those five would subsequently debate one another a half-dozen
times.
Brexit became a political force because the European Union was not accountable
to the voters. The EU members are also selected by members of the European PIC
– not citizens of the EU. Without direct accountability to all citizens (a.k.a.
– voters) there is no democracy –
just a variant
of communism:
During the Russian Civil War (1918–1922), the Bolsheviks nationalized
all productive property and imposed a policy named war communism,
which put factories and railroads under strict government control,
collected and rationed food, and introduced some bourgeois management of
industry . After three years of war and the 1921 Kronstadt rebellion,
Lenin declared the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921, which was to give
a "limited place for a limited time to capitalism." The NEP lasted until
1928, when Joseph Stalin achieved party leadership, and the introduction
of the Five Year Plans spelled the end of it. Following the Russian Civil
War, the Bolsheviks, in 1922, formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR), or Soviet Union, from the former Russian Empire.
Following Lenin's democratic centralism, the Leninist parties
were organized on a hierarchical basis, with active cells of members as
the broad base; they were made up only of elite cadres approved by higher
members of the party as being reliable and completely subject to party discipline
.
Emphasis mine. Note how communism begins with government control of major
industries. The current con job about Global Warming is the cover-excuse for
a government grab of the energy sector. Obamacare is an attempt to grab the
healthcare sector. And Wall Street already controls the banking sector. See
a trend yet?
This is then followed by imposing a rigid hierarchy of "leaders" at all levels
of politics – so no opposing views can gain traction. Party discipline uber
alles!
Our nation is in the grip of such poisonous thinking. The DNC with its "Super
Delegates" already has a way to control who will be their candidate. In an irony
to beat all ironies, the DNC's Super Delegates were able to stop Bernie Sanders...
The reason Trump is still rising (and I believe will win handily) is he clearly
represents the original image of America: a self made success story based on
capitalism and the free market.
His opponent is the epitome of the Political Industrial Complex – a cancer
that has eaten away America's free market foundation and core strength. A person
who wants to impose government on the individual.
"... cultural nationalism is the only ideology capable of being a legitimising ideology under the prevailing global and national political economy. ..."
"... Neoliberalism cannot perform this role since its simplicities make it harsh not just towards the lower orders, but give it the potential for damaging politically important interests amongst capitalist classes themselves. ..."
"... In this form, cultural nationalism provides national ruling classes a sense of their identity and purpose, as well as a form of legitimation among thelower orders. ..."
"... As Gramsci said, these are the main functions of every ruling ideology. Cultural nationalism masks, and to a degree resolves, the intense competition between capitals over access to the state for support domestically and in the international arena – in various bilateral and multilateral fora – where it bargainsfor the most favoured national capitalist interests within the global and imperial hierarchy. ..."
This is where cultural nationalism comes in. Only it can serve to mask, and
bridge, the divides within the 'cartel of anxiety' in a neoliberal context.
Cultural nationalism is a nationalism shorn of its civic-egalitarian and developmentalist
thrust, one reduced to its cultural core. It is structured around the culture
of thee conomically dominant classes in every country, with higher or lower
positions accorded to other groups within the nation relative to it. These positions
correspond, on the whole, to the groups' economic positions, and as such it
organises the dominant classes, and concentric circles of their allies, into
a collective national force. It also gives coherence to, and legitimises, the
activities of the nation-state on behalf of capital, or sections thereof, in
the international sphere.
Indeed, cultural nationalism is the only ideology capable of being a legitimising
ideology under the prevailing global and national political economy.
Neoliberalism
cannot perform this role since its simplicities make it harsh not just towards
the lower orders, but give it the potential for damaging politically important
interests amongst capitalist classes themselves. The activities of the state
on behalf of this or that capitalist interest necessarily exceed the Spartan
limits that neoliberalism sets. Such activities can only be legitimised as being
'in the national interest.'
Second, however, the nationalism that articulates
these interests is necessarily different from, but can easily (and given its
function as a legitimising ideology, it must be said, performatively) be mis-recognised
as, nationalism as widely understood: as being in some real sense in the interests
of all members of the nation. In this form, cultural nationalism provides national
ruling classes a sense of their identity and purpose, as well as a form of legitimation
among thelower orders.
As Gramsci said, these are the main functions of every
ruling ideology. Cultural nationalism masks, and to a degree resolves, the intense
competition between capitals over access to the state for support domestically
and in the international arena – in various bilateral and multilateral fora
– where it bargainsfor the most favoured national capitalist interests within
the global and imperial hierarchy.
Except for a commitment to neoliberal policies, the economic policy content
of this nationalism cannot be consistent: within the country, and inter-nationally,
the capitalist system is volatile and the positions of the various elements
of capital in the national and international hierarchies shift constantly as
does the economic policy of cultural nationalist governments. It is this volatility
that also increases the need for corruption – since that is how competitive
access of individual capitals to the state is today organised.
Whatever its utility to the capitalist classes, however, cultural nationalism
can never have a settled or secure hold on those who are marginalised or sub-ordinated
by it. In neoliberal regimes the scope for offering genuine economic gains to
the people at large, however measured they might be, is small.
This is a problem for right politics since even the broadest coalition of
the propertied can never be an electoral majority, even a viable plurality.
This is only in the nature of capitalist private property. While the left remains
in retreat or disarray, elec-toral apathy is a useful political resource but
even where, as in most countries, political choices are minimal, the electorate
as a whole is volatile. Despite, orperhaps because of, being reduced to a competition
between parties of capital, electoral politics in the age of the New Right entails
very large electoral costs, theextensive and often vain use of the media in
elections and in politics generally, and political compromises which may clash
with the high and shrilly ambitiou sdemands of the primary social base in the propertied
classes. Instability, uncertainty ...
"... What is "Globalization" and "Free Trade" really?… Does it encompass the slave trade, trading in narcotics, deforestation and export of a nation's tropical hardwood forests, environmentally damaging transnational oil pipelines or coal ports, fisheries depletion, laying off millions of workers and replacing them and the products they make with workers and products made in a foreign country, trading with an enemy, investing capital in a foreign country through a subsidiary or supplier that abuses its workers to the point that some commit suicide, no limits on or regulation of financial derivatives and transnational financial intermediaries?… the list is endless. ..."
"... As always, the questions are "Cui bono?"… "Who benefits"?… How and Why they benefit?… Who selects the short-term "Winners" and "Losers"? And WRT those questions, the final sentence of this post hints at its purpose. ..."
"... Yeah, how is European colonialism - starting in, what, like the 15th century, or something - not "globalisation"? What about the Roman and Persian and Selucid empires? Wasn't that globalisation? I think we've pretty much always lived in a globalised world, one way or another (if "globalised world" even makes sense). ..."
"... Bring back the broader, and more meaningful conception of Political Economy and some actual understanding can be gained. The study of economics cannot be separated from the political dimension of society. Politics being defined as who gets what in social interactions. ..."
"... The neoliberal experiment has run its course. Milton Friedman and his tribe had their alternative plan ready to go and implemented it when they could- to their great success. The best looting system developed-ever. This system only works with the availability of abundant resources and the mental justifications to support that gross exploitation. Both of which are reaching limits. ..."
"... If only the Milton Friedman tribe had interested itself in sports instead of economics. They could have argued that referees and umpires should be removed from the game for greater efficiency of play, and that sports teams would follow game rules by self-regulation. ..."
"... Wouldn't the whole thing just work out more efficiently if you leave traffic lights and rules out of it? Just let everyone figure it out at each light, survival of the fittest. ..."
"... With increasingly free movement of people as tourists whose spending impacts nations GDP, where does it fit in to discussions on globalization and trade? ..."
What is "Globalization" and "Free Trade" really?… Does it encompass
the slave trade, trading in narcotics, deforestation and export of a nation's
tropical hardwood forests, environmentally damaging transnational oil pipelines
or coal ports, fisheries depletion, laying off millions of workers and replacing
them and the products they make with workers and products made in a foreign
country, trading with an enemy, investing capital in a foreign country through
a subsidiary or supplier that abuses its workers to the point that some
commit suicide, no limits on or regulation of financial derivatives and
transnational financial intermediaries?… the list is endless.
As always, the questions are "Cui bono?"… "Who benefits"?… How and
Why they benefit?… Who selects the short-term "Winners" and "Losers"? And
WRT those questions, the final sentence of this post hints at its purpose.
diptherio
Yeah, how is European colonialism - starting in, what, like the 15th
century, or something - not "globalisation"? What about the Roman and Persian
and Selucid empires? Wasn't that globalisation? I think we've pretty much
always lived in a globalised world, one way or another (if "globalised world"
even makes sense).
Norb
Bring back the broader, and more meaningful conception of Political
Economy and some actual understanding can be gained. The study of economics
cannot be separated from the political dimension of society. Politics being
defined as who gets what in social interactions.
What folly. All this complexity and strident study of minutia to bring
about what end? Human history on this planet has been about how societies
form, develop, then recede form prominence. This flow being determined by
how well the society provided for its members or could support their worldview.
Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.
The neoliberal experiment has run its course. Milton Friedman and
his tribe had their alternative plan ready to go and implemented it when
they could- to their great success. The best looting system developed-ever.
This system only works with the availability of abundant resources and the
mental justifications to support that gross exploitation. Both of which
are reaching limits.
Only by thinking, and communicating in the broader terms of political
economy can we hope to understand our current conditions. Until then, change
will be difficult to enact. Hard landings for all indeed.
flora
If only the Milton Friedman tribe had interested itself in sports
instead of economics. They could have argued that referees and umpires should
be removed from the game for greater efficiency of play, and that sports
teams would follow game rules by self-regulation.
LA Mike September 17, 2016 at 8:15 pm
While in traffic, I was thinking about that today. For some time now,
I've viewed the traffic intersection as being a good example of the social
contract. We all agree on its benefits. But today, I thought about it in
terms of the Friedman Neoliberals.
Why should they have to stop at red lights. Wouldn't the whole thing
just work out more efficiently if you leave traffic lights and rules out
of it? Just let everyone figure it out at each light, survival of the fittest.
sd
Something I have wondered for some time, how does tourism fit into trade?
With increasingly free movement of people as tourists whose spending
impacts nations GDP, where does it fit in to discussions on globalization
and trade?
I Have Strange Dreams
Other things to consider:
– negative effects of immigration (skilled workers leave developing countries
where they are most needed)
– environmental pollution
– destruction of cultures/habitats
– importation of western diet leading to decreased health
– spread of disease (black death, hiv, ebola, bird flu)
– resource wars
– drugs
– happiness
How are these "externalities" calculated?
"... Mexican workers were in rural areas over thirty years ago doing the farm labor that was formerly done by blacks. Often they lived in barracks together on the farms they worked. The ownership class of those hose lily white conservatives were the first to use them to displace native born workers and drive down wages. This was being done in California all the way back to 1910. ..."
"... Part time immigrants displace resident workers at wages no family could survive on in the US. These workers either stay in barracks on the farm or they crowd into cheap rental dwellings meant for a fraction of the number of occupants that they group in. ..."
"... As to H1B types, meme chose as off-shoring; as well as a missed opportunity to increase the skills of native-borns. http://angrybearblog.com/2006/12/disappearing-americans-and-illegal.html ..."
"... "Caesar Chavez understood the effects the effects of illegal immigation". That he did. Governor Pete Wilson promoted this to keep wages down for this agribusiness buddies. But then Wilson flip flopped in a draconian way with Prop 197. Every Republican in California came to realize this destroyed their chances with not only the Hispanic vote but also the votes are non-racist Californians. ..."
"... I grew up in a beautiful beach town called San Juan Capistrano. That's a Spanish name, and there was a Spanish mission where the swallows fly back to. Los Angeles, San Francisco. Spanish names. In my school days I had many Mexican American friends. At university I had a Guatamalan and then a Chinese American room mate. You heard the term wetback sometimes, but to me they were just friends, and Americans. You spend 5 minutes with em and you can't think anything else. We are all, save Native Americans, immigrants. ..."
"... Attacking immigrants is not new. But America has managed to be above that for the most part. ..."
"... "If immigration isn't the problem, then what is? The real problems faced by workers are globalization, technological change, and lack of bargaining power in wage negotiations, problems for which Donald Trump has no effective solutions. Reducing international trade through tariffs and the trade wars that come with them will make us worse off in the long-run – we will end up with fewer jobs, not more, and there's no reason to think the average job will be any better. Trump has nothing to offer in the way of providing more support for workers who lose their jobs due to the adoption of digital, robotic, and other technology or to help workers gain a stronger hand when wages are negotiated." ..."
"... I disagree. The heart of the matter is that so long as economists and corporate enablers ensure that protecting against globalisation is off the table, the problems will never be solved. Free trade is their snake oil. And if your "free trade" partner happens to be an autocracy, which will use the $Trillions they siphon out of you to build up their military, use that military to alter the lines on the map, intimidate their neighbors, and ultimately maybe even destroy you, well, those events never show up in their glorious equations, so they must not exist. ..."
"... The paradigm is that the white working class has not been able to form a majority by itself since the pre-Civil War Jacksonian era. They must either make a coalition with other minorities (the New Deal) or with Wall Street and corporate power (the GOP's Southern Strategy). In the 1970s with racial quotas and increasing taxation they felt abandoned by the Democrats, and now that they realize that the GOP corporate paradise is killing them, they are adrift. They once again can either make an alliance with the minorities who live in the next poorer neighborhood who they fear will rob them of their wallets, or with Wall Street who will rob them of everything they own over a much longer period of time, and live in fabulous palaces far far away. ..."
Trump's Taco Truck Fear Campaign Diverts Attention From the Real Issues : Donald Trump would
like you to believe that immigration is largely responsible for the difficult economic conditions
the working class has experienced in recent decades. But immigration is not the problem. The real
culprits are globalization, technological change, and labor's dwindling bargaining power in wage
negotiations.
Mexican workers were in rural areas over thirty years ago doing the farm labor that was formerly
done by blacks. Often they lived in barracks together on the farms they worked. The ownership
class of those hose lily white conservatives were the first to use them to displace native born
workers and drive down wages. This was being done in California all the way back to 1910.
Lettuce Wars: Ten Years of Work and Struggle in the Fields of California
In 1971, Bruce Neuburger-young, out of work, and radicalized by the 60s counterculture in Berkeley-took
a job as a farmworker on a whim. He could have hardly anticipated that he would spend the next
decade laboring up and down the agricultural valleys of California, alongside the anonymous and
largely immigrant workforce that feeds the nation. This account of his journey begins at a remarkable
moment, after the birth of the United Farm Workers union and the ensuing uptick in worker militancy.
As a participant in organizing efforts, strikes, and boycotts, Neuburger saw first-hand the struggles
of farmworkers for better wages and working conditions, and the lengths the growers would go to
suppress worker unity...
Mexican migrants were in Ohio 60+ years ago, making the vegetable circuit. (The biggest Campbells
Soup plant is in Napoleon Ohio. The region has some of the best top soil on the planet). Some
of them settled and are on the third generation. They even hang out with the white working class,
who are their neighbors and co-workers. Some of them even marry Germans and Swedes.
Yeah, guest workers go way back at least 100 years in the US. And sure many stayed and, in that
case, I am totally fine with actual immigration when they become citizens and pay taxes and buy
or rent homes here as permanent residents. Green card workers and illegals are doing a lot of
the farm work in VA on the Northern Neck and Eastern Shore and have been for thirty years.
Part time immigrants displace resident workers at wages no family could survive on in the US.
These workers either stay in barracks on the farm or they crowd into cheap rental dwellings meant
for a fraction of the number of occupants that they group in.
I understand the effect of illegal immigration, Caesar Chavez understood the effects the effects
of illegal immigation, ...., in fact almost all working class Americans understand the effects
of illegal immigration.
"Caesar Chavez understood the effects the effects of illegal immigation". That he did. Governor
Pete Wilson promoted this to keep wages down for this agribusiness buddies. But then Wilson flip
flopped in a draconian way with Prop 197. Every Republican in California came to realize this
destroyed their chances with not only the Hispanic vote but also the votes are non-racist Californians.
Mark Thoma is suggesting a humane alternative to Wilson's two extremes.
If there was a basic income with a substantial residency requirement for immigrants - this would
be a non-issue, since qualified residents could live better than immigrants on the same wages.
I grew up in a beautiful beach town called San Juan Capistrano. That's a Spanish name, and
there was a Spanish mission where the swallows fly back to. Los Angeles, San Francisco. Spanish
names. In my school days I had many Mexican American friends. At university I had a Guatamalan
and then a Chinese American room mate. You heard the term wetback sometimes, but to me they were
just friends, and Americans. You spend 5 minutes with em and you can't think anything else. We
are all, save Native Americans, immigrants.
I remember those old World War 2 movies where the squad is made up of diverse immigrants. You
got the Italian, the Jew, the Irsh guy, etc. And they formed a team. E pluribus unim. Attacking
immigrants is not new. But America has managed to be above that for the most part. E
"Attacking immigrants is not new. But America has managed to be above that for the most"
Conservatives have been attacking immigrants for years. They hated JFK and Catholics. Being
a Catholic Jew is not new to me, but Cons hated Catholics and then they used us Jews for their
political gains. It never worked on us. Most Jews are too intelligent for conservatism. Take care.
Our excellent host gets to the heart of the matter:
"If immigration isn't the problem, then what is? The real problems faced by workers are
globalization, technological change, and lack of bargaining power in wage negotiations, problems
for which Donald Trump has no effective solutions. Reducing international trade through tariffs
and the trade wars that come with them will make us worse off in the long-run – we will end up
with fewer jobs, not more, and there's no reason to think the average job will be any better.
Trump has nothing to offer in the way of providing more support for workers who lose their jobs
due to the adoption of digital, robotic, and other technology or to help workers gain a stronger
hand when wages are negotiated."
Trump has nothing to offer except hate. Besides - who could object to more tacos. Oh wait -
I need to do a long run before eating Mexican food tonight.
I disagree. The heart of the matter is that so long as economists and corporate enablers ensure
that protecting against globalisation is off the table, the problems will never be solved. Free
trade is their snake oil. And if your "free trade" partner happens to be an autocracy, which will
use the $Trillions they siphon out of you to build up their military, use that military to alter
the lines on the map, intimidate their neighbors, and ultimately maybe even destroy you, well,
those events never show up in their glorious equations, so they must not exist.
The paradigm is that the white working class has not been able to form a majority by itself
since the pre-Civil War Jacksonian era. They must either make a coalition with other minorities
(the New Deal) or with Wall Street and corporate power (the GOP's Southern Strategy). In the 1970s
with racial quotas and increasing taxation they felt abandoned by the Democrats, and now that
they realize that the GOP corporate paradise is killing them, they are adrift. They once again
can either make an alliance with the minorities who live in the next poorer neighborhood who they
fear will rob them of their wallets, or with Wall Street who will rob them of everything they
own over a much longer period of time, and live in fabulous palaces far far away.
And if your "free trade" partner happens to be an autocracy, which will use the $Trillions they
siphon out of you to build up their military, use that military to alter the lines on the map,
intimidate their neighbors, and ultimately maybe even destroy you, well, those events never show
up in their glorious equations, so they must not exist....
[ Perfectly paraphrased from Dr. Strangelove. We are being siphoned, OMG. ]
Washington Post Presents an Overly Simplistic View of Trade
It is unfortunate that it now acceptable in polite circles to connect a view with Donald Trump
and then dismiss it. The result is that many fallacious arguments can now be accepted without
being seriously questioned. (Hey folks, I hear Donald Trump believes in evolution.)
The Post plays this game * in noting that the U.S. trade deficit with Germany is now larger
than its deficit with Mexico, putting Germany second only to China. It then asks why people aren't
upset about the trade deficit with Germany.
It partly answers this story itself. Germany's huge trade surplus stems in large part from
the fact that it is in the euro zone. The euro might be properly valued against the dollar, but
because Germany is the most competitive country in the euro zone, it effectively has an under-valued
currency relative to the dollar.
The answer to this problem would be to get Germany to have more inflationary policies to allow
other countries to regain competitiveness -- just as the other euro zone countries were generous
enough to run inflationary policies in the first half of the last decade to allow Germany to regain
competitiveness. However, the Germans refuse to return this favor because their great great great
great grandparents lived through the hyper-inflation in Weimar Germany. (Yes, they say this.)
Anyhow, this issue has actually gotten considerable attention from economists and other policy
types. Unfortunately it is very difficult to force a country in the euro zone -- especially the
largest country -- to run more expansionary countries. As a result, Germany is forcing depression
conditions on the countries of southern Europe and running a large trade surplus with the United
States.
The other part of the difference between Germany and China and Mexico is that Germany is a
rich country, while China and Mexico are developing countries. Folks that took intro econ courses
know that rich countries are expected to run trade surpluses.
The story is that rich countries are slow growing with a large amount of capital. By contrast,
developing countries are supposed to fast growing (okay, that doesn't apply to post-NAFTA Mexico),
with relatively little capital. Capital then flows from where it is relatively plentiful and getting
a low return to developing countries where it is scarce and can get a high return.
The outflow of capital from rich countries implies a trade surplus with developing countries.
Developing countries are in turn supposed to be borrowing capital to finance trade deficits. These
trade deficits allow them to build up their capital stocks even as they maintain the consumption
standards of their populations.
In the case of the large trade surpluses run by China and other developing countries, we are
seeing the opposite of the textbook story. We are seeing fast growing developing countries with
outflows of capital. This largely because they have had a policy of deliberately depressing the
value of their currencies by buying up large amounts of foreign reserves (mostly dollars.)
So the economics textbooks explain clearly why we should see the trade deficits that the U.S.
runs with China and Mexico as being different than the one it runs with Germany. And that happens
to be true regardless of what Donald Trump may or may not say.
By the way, this piece also asserts that "Germany on average has lower wages than Belgium or
Ireland." This is not true according to our friends at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
China is building its military at a huge rate. Double digit growth per yer over almost 20 years.
They are at $150 billion a year(if you believe their figures).
You have a point with China at $150B a year going to real engineering and not inept Lockheed
you need to worry. Those PLA re-education camps might make you another McCain.
US' Pentagon welfare trough: $500B "core" per year even with the sequestration.
Paying for DoD part of drones delivering collateral damage justified by its military utility*:
$80B in FY 16 (was $150B in FY 12).
CIA contracted drones and contractor (See the guys killed in Benghazi) run wars we can know
nothing about $XXB a year.
*If Germany had won WW II Bomber Harris would have been hanged.
Rusty - your usual confusion. Economists only advise. Lawyers make these decisions. And most lawyers
either do not listen to economists or if they do they get really confused. But will a lawyer ever
admit they are confused or not listening?
I don't see your call to take America back to the 60s and tube radios and TVs because they are
cheaper than semiconductor manufacturing because all the tube electronic factories already exist.
Nor do I see you extolling the virtue of $8 gasoline and heating oil thanks to the total ban
on fossil fuel imports.
I'd love someone to ask Trump if he would ban imports of oil and iPhones and Samsung electronics
in his first 100 days as president.
If he says yes and doesn't lose popularity, I'll make sure to buy all the electronics I'll
want for a few years. I've already sworn off gasoline.
Surely fuller then full employment
and a largest possible share of net income
going to primary producers isn't precluded by external trade restrictions
Economies of scale ?
Adequate competition between producing units ?
North America is plenty big for most optimal "plant sizes "
And at least three firms for each product
See Stiglitz on the second best real market firm structure
See Stiglitz on the second best real market firm structure
[ Of course, that will take reading through the last 30 years or so of work by Joseph Stiglitz
since I am not going to give a reader a clue as to how to find such a reference. No problem though,
just start reading. ]
There will be no relief until we "euthanize the rentiers". Raise top marginal rates to confiscatory
levels on income over $1 million, treat all income the same, prohibit corporations from deducting
executive compensate over $1 million, eliminate all tax breaks for individuals that do not widely
apply to those in the bottom half of the income distribution and all corporate tax subsidies.
Not even close, just a return to the 1950s, when the economy boomed. The idea that the wealthy
and large corporations will physically move to countries with more favorable tax regimes, most
of which are in the third world, is pure fantasy, which is why most of the super rich live in
New York, California, and other high tax states.
I understand the differences, but was merely addressing Rusty's nonsense implying this was somehow
outrageous and unprecedented. In addition to the trade advantages the US had, the emergence of
new industries in electronics, aviation, and petrochemicals, which all needed a lot of highly
skilled workers and paid very well, was vital as well. Nonetheless, the policies I mentioned would
go a long way to addressing our current problems, including reducing the incentives to offshore
production (contrary to Rusty).
You don't understand the point of tax dodges, do you? The tax dodges are rewards for paying workers
to build capital assets. But they need high marginal rates to justify paying workers.
Capital gains needs to return to the hold for five years or more to get the incentive. It isn't
really "capital" if not held because it's productive.
However, if inflation in the price of productive capital that barely retains its value is taxed
as income, you punish building productive capital. Asset basis price can be inflation adjusted
reasonably well these days thanks to computer technology making detailed calculations simple for
humans.
I'd have loved to pay workers to install solar and batteries to dodge 50-70% marginal tax rates
in the 90s. Much better than the best case 30% tax credit for paying workers these days. Of course,
given the penalty for paying workers due to low tax rates, I have no high wage income to be taxed
at high rates.
As Milton Friedman pointed out in the 60s and then later in the 80s as I recall, the 50-70-90%
tax rates never raised much revenue because the tax dodges rewarded paying worker to do wasteful
things, in his opinion, like production too much cheap energy, producing too much innovation which
ended up in too many new consumer products the wastefully overpaid workers bought.
This is an irrelevant aside. Friday was a minor bloodbath for investors inequities and bonds.
Thing is, I was like okay, I lost paper money, why.? I could not find a reason the market was
tanking other than Fed fears. Now I realize equities markets can behave like crack addicts or
lemmings. But 2.45 percent based on Fed fears of a rate hike?
Usually when the market is down I go to Calculated risk to see what must be some bad data.
Friday is a profit taking day. But as a small investor that was a really bad day.
Also, Los Lobos version of Hotel California via the Big Libowski is essential.
Final trading session before the 15th anniversary of 9-11 disaster! Would you guess that lot of
folks hedged with ultra-short-ETF earlier in the week? Lot of folks took profits before labour
day?
A day like that is why there needs to be a micro tax on trades. I get it if people sell based
on fundamentals. Everyone hedges, too, that's why you diversify. But the ultimate purpose of investing
is to provide companies with the capital to make productive investment.
A good part of the market is just short term bets. How is that socially useful. And the funny
thing, a lot of these guys don't make money for their clients, they just make money on the commission.
Like a casino owner. Like the con man running for prez.
Technological change is definitely not an issue. Productivity growth is slower now than in 1945-1973
when we had a large middle class. Cross nationally the arguments that robots are taking jobs doesn't
make any sense. If you traveled in both the non-industrial world (Africa, Haiti etc) and East
Asia, you will be aware of this. In the non-industrial world formal sector employment is only
10-20% of the labor force; 80% of the pop. is involved in "gig" jobs selling candy on the street
etc. In East Asia you have virtually no unemployment, but these are the places with by far the
largest deployment of robots, much, much higher than the US. The robots argument is convenient
politically, but doesn't make any sense to anyone whose traveled the world or knows anything about
economic history.
Before, auto plants hired 5,500 @ and produced X vehicles; after, they hired 1,200 @ and produced
1.4 vehicles. You don't get to have your own reality.
I bet that tamales truck is run by a Mexican. I hope so as it would likely mean you are enjoying
awesome tamales. Trump has no idea what good Mexican food is as it does not exist in Manhattan.
I think we need to change the compound growth capitalism we've had since forever. It will not
be sustainable much longer. We need 'de-globalization' not more globalization, in my opinion.
The efficiency bookkeeping model that promotes globalization is deeply flawed. What about the
pollution issues involved in global distribution of products that can easily be made at home?
Again, Keynes said it best. "The decadent international but individualistic capitalism, in the
hands of which we found ourselves after the war, is not a success. It is not intelligent, it is
not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous--and it doesn't deliver the goods. In short,
we dislike it, and we are beginning to despise it. But when we wonder what to put in its place,
we are extremely perplexed."
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/interwar/keynes.htm
After the Berlin Wall fell, and defense budgets got cut, the SoCal economy changed as income
and jobs drained out. Blacks occupied the lower end of support jobs and got underbid by Hispanics,
so they moved away from LA. The same trend impacted lower income whites, who largely moved out
of state. Middle and upper income whites adapted as the local economy transitioned to absorb the
laid-off engineering talent, often through new business ventures along the 101 corridor and in
the multi-media areas in Santa Monica and the south bay. What took a few decades in Pittsburgh
and other cities impacted by major industry changes took about a decade in LA.
In southern California overall, the combination of illegal immigration and a higher total fertility
rate among Hispanics has brought about significant population and employment changes, particularly
over the last 25 years. As well-documented by demographers, blacks suffered significantly through
those changes and were displaced from low end jobs by the burgeoning Hispanic population.
For example, south central LA has transitioned from majority black to majority Hispanic as
a result of job changes and influx. Blacks moved to San Bernardino, Victorville and other areas
where cheaper housing and potential employment were available.
Now the taco trucks are supplemented by grilled cheese trucks, crepe trucks, Korean taco trucks
and other variations designed to serve a more diverse population.
That is actually a decent description of LA. And the diversity of food is why some sing "I Love
LA". It has its issues but I do miss southern CAL .. especially during these harsh NYC winters.
Urbanites like Trump probably see
'taco trucks' frequently as their
limos whiz by. They appreciate
their visibility to likely
Trumpy supporters.
(Limos & trucks both?)
'Doing something about pesky
immigrants should garner a few votes!'
Except The Donald didn't start the tweet storm.
'Taco Trucks on Every Corner': Trump Supporter's
Anti-Immigration Warning http://nyti.ms/2bIeFyw
NYT - NIRAJ CHOKSHI - SEPT. 2, 2016
"My culture is a very dominant culture, and it's imposing and it's causing problems. If you
don't do something about it, you're going to have taco trucks on every corner."
That was Marco Gutierrez, founder of the group Latinos for Trump, issuing a dire warning to
the United States in an interview with Joy Reid on MSNBC on Thursday night.
Trump campaign manager repeatedly grilled about
candidate's false proclamations on Iraq War
position http://read.bi/2bZ6iyG
via @BusinessInsider - Sep 9
Donald Trump's campaign manager was repeatedly pressed Friday as she attempted to explain inconsistencies
in the Republican presidential nominee's statements on the Iraq War.
On two separate morning shows, Kellyanne Conway said Trump's declaration of support for the
war during a 2002 interview with radio host Howard Stern was not a reliable indication of how
he felt at the time.
On CNN, anchor Chris Cuomo pressed Conway on Trump's Iraq War flip-flops.
"He doesn't want to own that he wasn't against it before it started," Cuomo said. "Why not?
Why not just own it? And as you like to say, he was a private citizen."
Conway insisted that despite Trump responding "yeah, I guess so" when Stern asked if he supported
the invasion of Iraq, his statement wasn't equal to then Sen. Hillary Clinton's vote in favor
of the war. ...
(At least, 'Trump has acknowledged that
Clinton's vote (for the war - *) was a mistake.')
... "The point is, as you know, he constantly says 'I was always against the war,'" host Charlie
Rose said to Conway. "Here he says 'I guess' I would support it. That's a contradiction."
Conway pushed back, offering a similar defense to the one she gave CNN.
"Not really, Charlie," she said. "And here is why: He is giving - he is on a radio show. Hillary
Clinton went into the well of the United States Senate representing this state of New York and
case a vote in favor of the Iraq War."
Rose said that "this is not about Hillary Clinton."
"She has acknowledged that vote and acknowledged it was a mistake," Rose said. "He has not,
and he wants to have it both ways."
Conway said that Trump has acknowledged that Clinton's vote was a mistake, to which Rose replied,
"No, but he has not acknowledged that at one point he said he was for the war.
"Why can't he simply say that?" Rose asked. "'At one point I was, and then I changed my mind."
...
(When Trump criticized the Iraq War in 2004,
it was because we hadn't seized their oil
assets as spoils, ostensibly.)
*- Iraq Resolution (formally the Authorization
for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002)
"Kellyanne Conway said Trump's declaration of support for the war during a 2002 interview with
radio host Howard Stern was not a reliable indication of how he felt at the time."
Of course Kellyanne Conway lies even more than her client.
Hillary Clinton Calls Many Trump Backers 'Deplorables' ... http://nyti.ms/2c1UlbC
NYT - AMY CHOZICK - SEPT. 10
... Mrs. Clinton's comments Friday night, which were a variation of a sentiment she has expressed
in other settings recently, came at a fund-raiser in Manhattan.
"You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what
I call the basket of deplorables. Right?" she said to applause and laughter. "The racist, sexist,
homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic - you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that.
And he has lifted them up."
By Saturday morning, #BasketofDeplorables was trending on Twitter as Mr. Trump's campaign demanded
an apology. His supporters hoped to use the remark as as evidence that Mrs. Clinton cannot connect
to the voters she hopes to represent as president.
"Wow, Hillary Clinton was SO INSULTING to my supporters, millions of amazing, hard working
people. I think it will cost her at the polls!" Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. ...
Immigration PLUS the "demobilization" of labor unions (the discontinuance of collective bargaining
with the concomitant dismemberment of middle class political punch) EQUALS the impoverishment
of low skilled workers ...
... equates to reducing what should be $800 jobs to $400 jobs ...
... which is the alpha and the omega of today's income inequality -- at least lowest income
inequality; the folks who work fast food and supermarkets (the wrong end of two-tier supermarket
contracts, gradually going low tier all the way). I'm not especially concerned that more low skilled
jobs add more higher skilled employment.
********************************
Why are 100,000 out of something like 200,000 Chicago gang-age, minority males in street gangs?
Where are the American raised taxi drivers? Could be $600 fast food jobs imm-sourced to Mexico
and India -- could be $800 taxi jobs imm-sourced to the whole world? $1000 construction jobs imm-sourced
to Eastern Europe and Mexico?
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/gang-wars-at-the-root-of-chicagos-high-murder-rate/
The way it works is COLLECTIVE BARGAINING SETS THE PRICE OF LABOR BY THE MOST THE CONSUMER
WILL TOLERATE -- RACE TO THE BOTTOM WAGES ARE SET BY THE LEAST THE EMPLOYEE WILL TOLERATE.
*****************************
Even zero immigration would only (as in merely) keep American labor from hitting rock bottom --
or at least hoping to find non-criminal employment w/o collective bargaining.
Current union busting penalties carry about as much weight as the "FBI warning" you get when
you start a DVD. More actually: if you actually enter a movie theater to copy a new movie before
it goes to DVD you face a couple of years mandatory federal hospitality.
OTH if you fire an organizer the most you face is hiring the organizer back and maybe a little
back pay while she's waiting to fired again for "something else." The labor market is the only
market where you can break the law and face zero penalties at all.
New idea: an NLRB finding of illegally blocking union organization should be able to lead to
a mandate that a certification election must be taken. This may only be implementable at the federal
level.
Beyond that union busting should be a felony at state and federal levels -- backed by RICO
for persistent violators to keep employers from playing at the edges. Our most progressive/pro
labor states (WA, OR, CA, NV, IL, MN, NY, MD?) could do that right now if someone would just raise
the issue.
IF SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE WOULD JUST RAISE THE ISSUE!!!!!!!!!!
Wanna stop the shoot-em-ups in Chicago and elsewhere? To paraphrase a line from Superfly: It's
the American dream dog: flush toilet down the hall, AM radio, electric light in every room.
Let's call that $200/wk job level -- in today's money. And the year is ...
... 1916 ...
.. and today's gang members, not to mention my American raised taxi driver "gang" would be
willing to put in a hard week's work for it ...
... in 1916.
But today's "gangs" are not going to work for $400, 100 years later. Hell, about 50 years later
...
... 1968 ...
... the federal minimum wage was $440 in today's money -- at half today's per capita income!
I read James Julius Wilson's book When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor and
Sudhir Venkatesh's book American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto, at the same time
-- and the projects only descended into gang infested hell as the bottom dropped out of the minimum
wage.
Beautiful thing about collective bargaining is: you know you have squeezed the most practicable
out (of your fellow consumers -- not the boss) of the economy and technology of your era.
Just don't forget Centralized bargaining so the Walmarts of the world can't squeeze better
contracts elsewhere. Walmart closed 88 big boxes in Germany which has centralized bargaining.
Wal-Mart's "advantage" is not in low labor cost, but logistics and market dominance allowing it
to boss around suppliers.
German labor laws may have contributed to its "problems", but the primary issues were its US-centric
logistics operation and having to compete against local incumbents who were at least its equals,
and had the home turf advantage. And competition as well as labor relations in German retail are
at least as cutthroat as in the US. Most recent (few years ago) scandals involving treatment of
workers and systematic intimidation were in large chain retailers.
There were also stories about how they were trying to sell US bedware sizes which are different
from the German sizes, and similar market research goofs, which seems to indicate a certain arrogance,
and that they probably underestimated the effort and sunk cost that had to be invested to become
successful.
Some of these stories also had a background of a general anti-US sentiment as neoliberal safety
net "reforms" and (labor) market "flexibilization" were prominently justified with US comparisons
(by officials). But I doubt this had much practical impact on the decision to cut the experiment.
"A staggering 96 per cent of America's net job growth since 1990 has come from sectors known
to have low productivity (construction, retail, bars, restaurants, and other low-paying services
were responsible for 46 percentage points of total growth) and sectors where low productivity
is merely suspected in the absence of competition and proper measurement techniques (healthcare,
education, government, and finance explain the remaining 50 percentage points)".
So we are expanding jobs that produce services. With increased robotics and productivity, a
smaller and smaller % of the workforce will be needed to produce all the food and merchandise
people need (or can consume). So the future growth of the job market will have to be in producing
services. The challenge will be to make sure that those jobs are paying sufficiently high salaries
to ensure continuous robust growth in demand. Otherwise we will be entering a permanent period
of low growth in the economy.
ensure that workers have more bargaining power so that the growth in output is shared rather than
"
~~MT~
Workers need to get a handle on bargaining power, need to realize that uncontrolled reproduction
will inevitably bid down the price of labour. Look!
American family should find it cheaper to reduce child bearing to one child per female. The
one child can then inherit the entire estate of the couple with no expense for legal battles with
rival siblings. The one child will have more quality time with parents, grand parents, and aunts
for mentor-ing and help with school work, be on the fast track of career path that requires quality
education. Some jobs here require local folks with better language skills. Such jobs do not adapt
easily to recent immigrants. Reduction in our birth rate cannot be completely de-fang-ed by immigration.
Our birth control will remain a windfall to our workers in aggregate sprint as well as in separate
family's economics.
One child per 2 parents would be an economic disaster. Unless productivity per worker exploded
we would find that the total GDP would shrink rather than increase. The national debt per worker
would also increase even if we somehow managed to stop adding to it. The current problem of a
much smaller number of workers to help pay retirement and medical cost for the old people would
become extremely hard to solve (without exploding tax rates). Growing the population either by
birth or by allowing immigrants to come here is part of why US is doing better than Europe.
national debt per worker would also increase even if we somehow managed to stop adding to it.
The current problem of a much smaller number of workers to help pay retirement and medical cost
for the old people would become extremely hard to solve (without exploding tax rates). Growing
the population
"
Believe it! I just crunched approximate numbers to find that each child with only $2 in pocket
owes $57,000 to public debt, each retired pensioner, each billionaire and each millionaire owe
same thing, 57 K. But!
But 33% of Americans couldn't come up with $555 to handle an emergency. The answer to national
debt?
Endless exponential population expansion until natural resources run dry, no air to breath,
no water to drink, fug-get about food.
Population expansion is a social Ponzi scheme. Eventually it collapses -- we starve.
The remarkable instance of population control started when Deng Xiaoping crunched the numbers
and decided to opt for a draconian return to a rational World. The one child tradition began with
the most dramatic success at making folks rich enough to enjoy life and produce things for people
around the World to enjoy. Let the good times roll and thrill your soul. Got soul?
From my point of view as an employer, the Mexican and Caribbean immigrants have been good hires.
They are generally reliable and good cooperators. Other employers seem to think so as well, judging
by what I see when I go to the doctor or the dentist or the mechanic shop or just about anywhere
else that low to intermediate skill personnel are essential to running the shop.
I would not say that immigrants' effect on wages is trivial except in the macro sense. The
union tradesmen in our area are suffering badly due to having their wages undercut by low wage
immigrants. The wage-rate cuts are on the order of 50%, $32/hr down to $16/hr. Unlike the doctors,
where immigrant doctors don't seem to depress wages much, the scarcity value of trained tradesmen
is substantially reduced by an influx of immigrants with similar skills. Auto mechanics, auto
body men, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, etc are badly hurt by the competition. Perhaps because
their skills are more easily acquired than those of the doctors. We have a large number of asian
scientific and technical people in the area and they are also high wage folks and native born
scientists and technical personnel do not seem to have been adversely affected. There is next
to no mechanism for the doctors and scientists and engineers, who arguably have been helped by
immigration, to help out the tradesmen who have been hurt.
Higher taxes may not be the only answer. Private and religious efforts are underway, mostly
religious in my locale. There is a Cristo Rey school that has received a lot of support from businesses
in the area, particularly the science and technology-based businesses. The Catholics organized
it and run it, but it is open to all. The kids get a better education than they can get in the
corruptly run, disorganized, deteriorating public high schools nearby. They are matched with a
team of 4 and each kid works one day per week at his or her sponsoring business and the earnings
pay for the schooling. The kids meet and work with business and professional people they would
not otherwise meet.
Higher tax rates may take too long to occur to make a difference in the lives of today's young
people struggling to get some security or a future worth living out. Supporting and participating
in religious and community-based efforts is something we can all do today.
Back when, before the onslaught, when I was a young man; a young man out of high school could
work construction, learn how to do a day's work, get paid enough to get a car, court a girl, go
to college, ... join the union, maybe get married, buy a home, start a family; it was a path upward
for so many. These days, those jobs are held by $10-15/hr illegals working as contract labor while
our own young men out of high school have never held a job, don't how to do a day's work, ...
may be on heroin or meth. This is not win win, this is not working. Time to stop pretending.
Re: " The union tradesmen in our area are suffering badly due to having their wages undercut by
low wage immigrants. The wage-rate cuts are on the order of 50%, $32/hr down to $16/hr. "
The way it works is COLLECTIVE BARGAINING SETS THE PRICE OF LABOR BY THE MOST THE CONSUMER WILL
TOLERATE -- RACE TO THE BOTTOM WAGES (as you describe here) ARE SET BY THE LEAST THE EMPLOYEE
WILL TOLERATE.
What you describe would never happen with sufficient (high!) union density. See Germany.
******************
What to do:
Current union busting penalties carry about as much weight as the "FBI warning" you get when
you start a DVD. More actually: if you actually enter a movie theater to copy a new movie before
it goes to DVD you face a couple of years mandatory federal hospitality.
OTH if you fire an organizer the most you face is hiring the organizer back and maybe a little
back pay while she's waiting to fired again for "something else." The labor market is the only
market where you can break the law and face zero penalties at all.
New idea: an NLRB finding of illegally blocking union organization should be able to lead to
a mandate that a certification election must be taken. This may only be implementable at the federal
level.
Beyond that union busting should be a felony at state and federal levels -- backed by RICO
for persistent violators to keep employers from playing at the edges. Our most progressive/pro
labor states (WA, OR, CA, NV, IL, MN, NY, MD?) could do that right now if someone would just raise
the issue.
Like any other collective action, collective bargaining relies on cohesion among the collective.
The objective of any collective, whether a trade group or union, is collective action on behalf
of its members. Cohesion among the group members is absolutely necessary to successful collective
action. Weakness of union bargaining is due to the inability of the collective to maintain cohesion.
Your own cabdrivers' union has been undercut by Uber. My friends among the local tradesmen are
being undercut by men with comparable skills who are not eligible for union membership under current
rules, but are willing to do comparable work for half the union scale. My friends in industrial
unions have been undercut by foreign competitors. Technological advances have played a large role
in assisting circumstances to undercut cabbies, carpenters, and machinists all.
"We have a large number of asian scientific and technical people in the area and they are also
high wage folks and native born scientists and technical personnel do not seem to have been adversely
affected."
A significant part of age discrimination complaints in tech is actually about preferring young
*foreign* or foreign-origin labor to locals who started their careers in the 80's and 90's, and
who are now around 40-60 years old.
There has been the related observation that EE/CS and other tech-related majors have been majority
foreign-populated as the share of locals has declined due to lower job prospects and escalating
tuition and ancillary costs.
Almost all entry-level hiring in "established" industries has been either abroad, or bringing
in visa workes, which after temporary labor crunches in the Y2K/dotcom booms led to an oversupply
of experienced but older workers who would be hired at more senior levels as long as they had
related recent work credentials, or not quite senior levels but expected to have age-appropriate
experience and work contribution.
But that works only for a few years. Once you are out of the industry for a while or stuck
at level because there is no need for advancement, prospects decline a lot.
In parallel there has been a widely bemoaned innovation stagnation, and that goes together
with more people being needed for maintenance-type jobs and only few for advanced R&D (and even
advanced R&D has a lot of mundane legwork - consider Edison's quip "invention is 1% inspiration
and 99% perspiration").
That relatively few people were hired at the entry level "here" since about 2000 has also contributed
to perceived "talent shortages" - as companies got used to the idea you can just poach talent
or hire from the market, as some point the supply of *young* local workers dried up as the pipeline
wasn't refilled.
If nobody has hired and trained freshers locally let's say for 5-10 years, how can anybody
expect to find people in that range of experience (who haven't "peaked" yet and can still be motivated
for a while with promises of career advancement, or still have headroom for actual advancement)?
That's actually what age discrimination is about.
Be careful who you call a racist. BTW racists are deplorable and some polls indicate that 60%
of Trump's supporters are racists. So "half" could be seen as an underestimate.
"none of the Trump campaign pushback to Clinton's "basket of deplorables" comments have said
anything about the people Clinton was talking about not being racist, not being misogynist or
by whatever definition not being 'haters.' It's not referenced once. Check out the statements
after the jump."
They cannot refute what Clinton said because Trump's supporters are racists. Rusty may be uncomfortable
with this reality but it is true.
Sanders style welfare proposals are misplaced. Continuing to subsidize people to live in areas
that are not sustainable does not fix the problem. Money is taken from urban areas that is needed
for renewal and investments in urban residents in sustainable areas and used to subsidize unsustainable
middle class lifestyles in exurban and rural areas. A more permanent solution is some combination
of transformation & relocation. Sanders tossed out the same 50 year old SWP nonsense without much
thought to whether it would work in today's economy. He made vague proposals that people were
free to interpret as matching their own. It was never in any sense a plan.
The world is urbanizing. The future is urban. The sooner we start planning and building for
the future, the less problems we will have with these unsustainable areas and lifestyles. An integrated
urban planning sustainable approach is needed.
Bernie's solution were those of the 70s, like the broken clock, he stood and waited, then yelled
I have the answer when he hadn't a clue what was happening. Hillary's are of the 90s and shall
prove worthless going forward, though she's not quite as clueless; the question is: Is she smart
enough to change her mind?
P T Trump, like his predecessors in such times, is offering snake oil remedies. His advantage,
his medium is the media (the man can see and admire himself when he's performing on stage and
camera), and enough suckers have already been born.. . America's love of snake oil has been the
subject of writers like Twain, movies, theater, ... is world renowned.
Supporting and participating in religious and community-based efforts is something we can all
do today.
"
Try it! You'll love it! Look!
Our rulers are in business for themselves, their votes, their re-election, and their own t-bonds
but not our jobs and families. We got to support our own community. Our pioneers learned that
from the Indians and passed it on to us. It starts with a block party on 4th of July and grows
in all directions -- looking
The US has a trade deficit of 2-3 billion dollars a year. Our exports to Asia are mostly transfer
pricing attempts to avoid foreign taxes and smuggle profits back to the US. Trump is the first
presidential candidate in forty years to make correcting the trade deficit a centerpiece of his
campaign.
There is no country today, and never has been, nor will there be one that has no industry and
is also wealthy. The US was once a protectionist manufacturing heavy country. DJT wants to take
us back to pre-1970 protectionism; this is our only hope.
$2-3 billion a day. Imagine if we manufactured cellphones, computers, socks, etc. etc. the Delta,
Appalachia, and Michigan, New Haven CT etc. wouldn't be quickly becoming hell holes.
BenIsNotYoda : , -1
Thanks to Mark Thoma for highlighting some good effects of legal immigration. From the article:
Immigrants also own a larger share of small businesses than natives, are no more likely to
be unemployed, are no less likely to assimilate than in the past (no matter their country of origin),
and they have contributed greatly to technological development in the US. One study estimates
that "25.3 percent of the technology and engineering businesses launched in the United States
between 1995 to 2005 had a foreign-born founder. In California, this percentage was 38.8 percent.
In Silicon Valley, the center of the high-tech industry, 52.4 percent of the new tech start-ups
had a foreign-born owner."
Now only if the extreme liberals would stop bad mouthing H-1B program that brings in these
very people. To those who oppose H-1B: some abuse of the program to shut down the program is like
shutting down Medicare because there was a little fraud in Medicare. Obviously it is not a good
enough argument. Therefore I have to conclude it is pure discrimination disguised as something
else.
"...a full 95% of the cash that went to Greece ran a trip through Greece
and went straight back to creditors which in plain English is banks. So,
public taxpayers money was pushed through Greece to basically bail out banks...So
austerity becomes a side effect of a general policy of bank bailouts that
nobody wants to own. That's really what happened, ok?
Why are we peddling nonsense? Nobody wants to own up to a gigantic bailout
of the entire European banking system that took six years. Austerity was
a cover.
If the EU at the end of the day and the Euro is not actually improving
the lives of the majority of the people, what is it for? That's the question
that they've brought no answer to.
...the Hamptons is not a defensible position. The Hamptons is a very
rich area on Long Island that lies on low lying beaches. Very hard to defend
a low lying beach. Eventually people are going to come for you.
What's clear is that every social democratic party in Europe needs to
find a new reason to exist. Because as I said earlier over the past 20 years
they have sold their core constituency down the line for a bunch of floaters
in the middle who don't protect them or really don't particularly care for
them. Because the only offers on the agenda are basically austerity and
tax cuts for those who already have, versus austerity, apologies, and a
minimum wage."
Mark Blyth
Although I may not agree with every particular that Mark Blyth may say, directionally
he is exactly correct in diagnosing the problems in Europe.
And yes, I am aware that the subtitles are at times in error, and sometimes
outrageously so. Many of the errors were picked up and corrected in the comments.
No stimulus, no plans, no official actions, no monetary theories can be sustainably
effective in revitalizing an economy that is as bent as these have become without
serious reform at the first.
This was the lesson that was given by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. There
will be no lasting recovery without it; it is a sine qua non . One cannot
turn their economy around when the political and business structures are systemically
corrupt, and the elites are preoccupied with looting it, and hiding their spoils
offshore.
"But part of the answer lies in something Americans have a hard time
talking about: class. Trade is a class issue. The trade agreements we have
entered into over the past few decades have consistently harmed some
Americans (manufacturing workers) while just as consistently benefiting
others (owners and professionals). …
To understand "free trade" in such a way has made it difficult for people
in the bubble of the consensus to acknowledge the actual consequences of the
agreements we have negotiated over the years."
"... Despite the neoliberal obsession with wage suppression, history suggests that such a policy is self-destructive. Periods of high wages are associated with rapid technological change. ..."
"... On the ideological front, the South adopted a shallow, but rigid libertarian perspective which resembled modern neoliberalism. Samuel Johnson may have been the first person to see through the hypocrisy of the hollowness of southern libertarianism. ..."
"... the famous Powell Memo helped to spark a well-financed movement of well-finance right-wing political activism which morphed into right-wing political extremism both in economics and politics. ..."
"... In short, neoliberalism was surging ahead and the economy of high wages was now beyond the pale. These new conditions gave new force to the southern "yelps of liberty." The social safety net was taken down and reconstructed as the flag of neoliberalism. The one difference between the rhetoric of the slaveholders and that of the modern neoliberals was that entrepreneurial superiority replaced racial superiority as their battle cry. ..."
Despite the neoliberal obsession with wage suppression, history suggests
that such a policy is self-destructive. Periods of high wages are associated
with rapid technological change.
... ... ...
On the ideological front, the South adopted a shallow, but rigid libertarian
perspective which resembled modern neoliberalism. Samuel Johnson may have been
the first person to see through the hypocrisy of the hollowness of southern
libertarianism. Responding to the colonists' complaint that taxation by
the British was a form of tyranny, Samuel Johnson published his 1775 tract,
"Taxation No Tyranny: An answer to the Resolutions and Address of the American
Congress," asking the obvious question, "how is it that we hear the loudest
yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?" In The Works of Samuel Johnson,
LL. D.: Political Tracts. Political Essays. Miscellaneous Essays (London: J.
Buckland, 1787): pp. 60-146, p. 142.
... ... ...
By the late 19th century, David A Wells, an industrial technician who later
became the chief economic expert in the federal government, by virtue of his
position of overseeing federal taxes. After a trip to Europe, Wells reconsidered
his strong support for protectionism. Rather than comparing the dynamism of
the northern states with the technological backward of their southern counterparts,
he was responding to the fear that American industry could not compete with
the cheap "pauper" labor of Europe. Instead, he insisted that the United States
had little to fear from, the competition from cheap labor, because the relatively
high cost of American labor would ensure rapid technological change, which,
indeed, was more rapid in the United States than anywhere else in the world,
with the possible exception of Germany. Both countries were about to rapidly
surpass England's industrial prowess.
The now-forgotten Wells was so highly regarded that the prize for the best
economics dissertation at Harvard is still known as the David A Wells prize.
His efforts gave rise to a very powerful idea in economic theory at the time,
known as "the economy of high wages," which insisted that high wages drove economic
prosperity. With his emphasis on technical change, driven by the strong competitive
pressures from high wages, Wells anticipated Schumpeter's idea of creative destruction,
except that for him, high wages rather than entrepreneurial genius drove this
process.
Although the economy of high wages remained highly influential through the
1920s, the extensive growth of government powers during World War I reignited
the antipathy for big government. Laissez-faire economics began come back into
vogue with the election of Calvin Coolidge, while the once-powerful progressive
movement was becoming excluded from the ranks of reputable economics.
... ... ...
With Barry Goldwater's humiliating defeat in his presidential campaign,
the famous Powell Memo helped to spark a well-financed movement of well-finance
right-wing political activism which morphed into right-wing political extremism
both in economics and politics. Symbolic of the narrowness of this new
mindset among economists, Milton Friedman's close associate, George Stigler,
said in 1976 that "one evidence of professional integrity of the economist is
the fact that it is not possible to enlist good economists to defend minimum
wage laws." Stigler, G. J. 1982. The Economist as Preacher and Other Essays
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press): p. 60.
In short, neoliberalism was surging ahead and the economy of high wages
was now beyond the pale. These new conditions gave new force to the southern
"yelps of liberty." The social safety net was taken down and reconstructed as
the flag of neoliberalism. The one difference between the rhetoric of the slaveholders
and that of the modern neoliberals was that entrepreneurial superiority replaced
racial superiority as their battle cry.
One final irony: evangelical Christians were at the forefront of the abolitionist
movement. Today, some of them are providing the firepower for the epidemic of
neoliberalism.
"... the US has been successful in dictating neoliberal policies, acting partly through the IMF and World Bank and partly through direct pressure. ..."
"... From roughly the mid 1930s to the mid 1970s a new "interventionist" approach replaced classical liberalism, and it became the accepted belief that capitalism requires significant state regulation in order to be viable. In the 1970s the Old Religion of classical liberalism made a rapid comeback, first in academic economics and then in the realm of public policy. ..."
"... Neoliberal theory claims that a largely unregulated capitalist system (a "free market economy" not only embodies the ideal of free individual choice but also achieves optimum economic performance with respect to efficiency, economic growth, technical progress, and distributional justice. ..."
"... The policy recommendations of neoliberalism are concerned mainly with dismantling what remains of the regulationist welfare state. ..."
"... This paper argues that the resurgence and tenacity of neoliberalism during the past two decades cannot be explained, in an instrumental fashion, by any favorable effects of neoliberal policies on capitalist economic performance. On the contrary, we will present a case that neoliberalism has been harmful for long-run capitalist economic performance, even judging economic performance from the perspective of the interests of capital. It will be argued that the resurgence and continuing dominance of neoliberalism can be explained, at least in part, by changes in the competitive structure of world capitalism, which have resulted in turn from the particular form of global economic integration that has developed in recent decades. The changed competitive structure of capitalism has altered the political posture of big business with regard to economic policy and the role of the state, turning big business from a supporter of state-regulated capitalism into an opponent of it. ..."
"... Second, the neoliberal model creates instability on the macroeconomic level by renouncing state counter-cyclical spending and taxation policies, by reducing the effectiveness of "automatic stabilizers" through shrinking social welfare programs,3 and by loosening public regulation of the financial sector. This renders the system more vulnerable to major financial crises and depressions. Third, the neoliberal model tends to intensify class conflict, which can potentially discourage capitalist investment.4 ..."
"... The evidence from GDP and labor productivity growth rates supports the claim that the neoliberal model is inferior to the state regulationist model for key dimensions of capitalist economic performance. There is ample evidence that the neoliberal model has shifted income and wealth in the direction of the already wealthy. However, the ability to shift income upward has limits in an economy that is not growing rapidly. Neoliberalism does not appear to be delivering the goods in the ways that matter the most for capitalism's long-run stability and survival. ..."
"... Once capitalism had become well established in the US after the Civil War, it entered a period of cutthroat competition and wild accumulation known as the Robber Baron era. In this period a coherent anti-interventionist liberal position emerged and became politically dominant. Despite the enormous inequalities, the severe business cycle, and the outrageous and often unlawful behavior of the Goulds and Rockefellers, the idea that government should not intervene in the economy held sway through the end of the 19th century. ..."
"... Small business has remained adamantly opposed to the big, interventionist state, from the Progressive Era through the New Deal down to the present. This division between big and small business is chronicled for the Progressive Era in Weinstein (1968). In the decades immediately following World War II one can observe this division in the divergent views of the Business Roundtable, a big business organization which often supported interventionist programs, and the US Chambers of Commerce, the premier small business organization, which hewed to an antigovernment stance. ..."
"... By contrast, the typical small business faces a daily battle for survival, which prevents attention to long-run considerations and which places a premium on avoiding the short-run costs of taxation and state regulation. This explains the radically different positions that big business and small business held regarding the proper state role in the economy for the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. ..."
"... This long-standing division between big business and small business appeared to vanish in the US starting in the 1970s. Large corporations and banks which had formerly supported foundations that advocated an active government role in the economy, such as the Brookings Institution, became big donors to neoliberal foundations such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. As a result, such right-wing foundations, which previously had to rely mainly on contributions from small business, became very wealthy and influential.10 It was big business=s desertion of the political coalition supporting state intervention and its shift to neoliberalism that rebuilt support for neoliberal theories and policies in the US, starting in the 1970s. With business now unified on economic policy, the shift was dramatic. Big grants became available for economics research having a neoliberal slant. The major media shifted their spin on political developments, and the phrase "government programs" now could not be printed except with the word "bloated" before it. ..."
"... Globalization is usually defined as an increase in the volume of cross-border economic interactions and resource flows, producing a qualitative shift in the relations between national economies and between nation-states (Baker et. al., 1998, p. 5; Kozul-Wright and Rowthorn, 1998, p. 1). Three kinds of economic interactions have increased substantially in past decades: merchandise trade flows, foreign direct investment, and cross-border financial investments. We will briefly examine each, with an eye on their effects on the competitive structure of contemporary capitalism. ..."
"... By the close of the twentieth century, capitalism had become significantly more globalized than it had been fifty years ago, and by some measures it is much more globalized than it had been at the previous peak of this process in 1913. The most important features of globalization today are greatly increased international trade, increased flows of capital across national boundaries (particularly speculative short-term capital), and a major role for large TNCs in manufacturing, extractive activities, and finance, operating worldwide yet retaining in nearly all cases a clear base in a single nation-state. ..."
"... Some analysts argue that globalization has produced a world of such economic interdependence that individual nation-states no longer have the power to regulate capital. However, while global interdependence does create difficulties for state regulation, this effect has been greatly exaggerated. Nation-states still retain a good deal of potential power vis-a-vis capitalist firms, provided that the political will is present to exercise such power. For example, even such a small country as Malaysia proved able to successfully impose capital controls following the Asian financial crisis of 1997, despite the opposition of the IMF and the US government. ..."
"... Globalization appears to be one factor that has transformed big business from a supporter to an opponent of the interventionist state. It has done so partly by producing TNCs whose tie to the domestic markets for goods and labor is limited. ..."
"... Globalization has produced a world capitalism that bears some resemblance to the Robber Baron Era in the US. Giant corporations battle one another in a system lacking well defined rules. Mergers and acquisitions abound, including some that cross national boundaries, but so far few world industries have evolved the kind of tight oligopolistic structure that would lay the basis for a more controlled form of market relations. Like the late 19th century US Robber Barons, today's large corporations and banks above all want freedom from political burdens and restraints as they confront one another in world markets.18 ..."
"... The existence of a powerful bloc of Communist-run states with an alternative "state socialist" socioeconomic system tended to push capitalism toward a state regulationist form. It reinforced the fear among capitalists that their own working classes might turn against capitalism. It also had an impact on relations among the leading capitalist states, promoting inter-state unity behind US leadership, which facilitated the creation and operation of a world-system of state-regulated capitalism.19 The demise of state socialism during 1989-91 removed one more factor that had reinforced the regulationist state. ..."
"... If state socialism re-emerged in one or more major countries, perhaps this might push the capitalist world back toward the regulationist state. However, such a development does not seem likely. Even if Russia or Ukraine at some point does head in that direction, it would be unlikely to produce a serious rival socioeconomic system to that of world capitalism. ..."
Department of Economics and Political Economy Research Institute Thompson Hall
University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA 01003 U.S.A. Telephone 413-545-1248
Fax 413-545-2921 Email [email protected] August, 2000 This paper was published
in Rethinking Marxism, Volume 12, Number 2, Summer 2002, pp. 64-79.
Research assistance was provided by Elizabeth Ramey and Deger Eryar. Research
funding was provided by the Political Economy Research Institute of the University
of Massachusetts at Amherst. Globalization and Neoliberalism 1 For some
two decades neoliberalism has dominated economic policymaking in the US and
the UK. Neoliberalism has strong advocates in continental Western Europe and
Japan, but substantial popular resistance there has limited its influence so
far, despite continuing US efforts to impose neoliberal policies on them. In
much of the Third World, and in the transition countries (except for China),
the US has been successful in dictating neoliberal policies, acting partly through
the IMF and World Bank and partly through direct pressure.
Neoliberalism is an updated version of the classical liberal economic thought
that was dominant in the US and UK prior to the Great Depression of the 1930s.
From roughly the mid 1930s to the mid 1970s a new "interventionist" approach
replaced classical liberalism, and it became the accepted belief that capitalism
requires significant state regulation in order to be viable. In the 1970s the
Old Religion of classical liberalism made a rapid comeback, first in academic
economics and then in the realm of public policy.
Neoliberalism is both a body of economic theory and a policy stance.
Neoliberal theory claims that a largely unregulated capitalist system (a "free
market economy" not only embodies the ideal of free individual choice but also
achieves optimum economic performance with respect to efficiency, economic growth,
technical progress, and distributional justice. The state is assigned a
very limited economic role: defining property rights, enforcing contracts, and
regulating the money supply.1 State intervention to correct market failures
is viewed with suspicion, on the ground that such intervention is likely to
create more problems than it solves.
The policy recommendations of neoliberalism are concerned mainly with
dismantling what remains of the regulationist welfare state. These recommendations
include deregulation of business; privatization of public activities and assets;
elimination of, or cutbacks in, social welfare programs; and reduction of taxes
on businesses and the investing class. In the international sphere, neoliberalism
calls for free movement of goods, services, capital, and money (but not people)
across national boundaries. That is, corporations, banks, and individual investors
should be free to move their property across national boundaries, and free to
acquire property across national boundaries, although free cross-border movement
by individuals is not part of the neoliberal program. How can the re-emergence
of a seemingly outdated and outmoded economic theory be explained? At first
many progressive economists viewed the 1970s lurch toward liberalism as a temporary
response to the economic instability of that decade. As corporate interests
decided that the Keynesian regulationist approach no longer worked to their
advantage, they looked for an alternative and found only the old liberal ideas,
which could at least serve as an ideological basis for cutting those state programs
viewed as obstacles to profit-making. However, neoliberalism has proved to be
more than just a temporary response. It has outlasted the late 1970s/early 1980s
right-wing political victories in the UK (Thatcher) and US (Reagan). Under a
Democratic Party administration in the US and a Labor Party government in the
UK in the 1990s, neoliberalism solidified its position of dominance.
This paper argues that the resurgence and tenacity of neoliberalism during
the past two decades cannot be explained, in an instrumental fashion, by any
favorable effects of neoliberal policies on capitalist economic performance.
On the contrary, we will present a case that neoliberalism has been harmful
for long-run capitalist economic performance, even judging economic performance
from the perspective of the interests of capital. It will be argued that the
resurgence and continuing dominance of neoliberalism can be explained, at least
in part, by changes in the competitive structure of world capitalism, which
have resulted in turn from the particular form of global economic integration
that has developed in recent decades. The changed competitive structure of capitalism
has altered the political posture of big business with regard to economic policy
and the role of the state, turning big business from a supporter of state-regulated
capitalism into an opponent of it.
The Problematic Character of Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism appears to be problematic as a dominant theory for contemporary
capitalism. The stability and survival of the capitalist system depends on its
ability to bring vigorous capital accumulation, where the latter process is
understood to include not just economic expansion but also technological progress.
Vigorous capital accumulation permits rising profits to coexist with rising
living standards for a substantial part of the population over the long-run.2
However, it does not appear that neoliberalism promotes vigorous capital accumulation
in contemporary capitalism. There are a number of reasons why one would not
expect the neoliberal model to promote rapid accumulation. First, it gives rise
to a problem of insufficient aggregate demand over the long run, stemming from
the powerful tendency of the neoliberal regime to lower both real wages and
public spending. Second, the neoliberal model creates instability on the
macroeconomic level by renouncing state counter-cyclical spending and taxation
policies, by reducing the effectiveness of "automatic stabilizers" through shrinking
social welfare programs,3 and by loosening public regulation of the financial
sector. This renders the system more vulnerable to major financial crises and
depressions. Third, the neoliberal model tends to intensify class conflict,
which can potentially discourage capitalist investment.4
The historical evidence confirms doubts about the ability of the neoliberal
model to promote rapid capital accumulation. We will look at growth rates of
gross domestic product (GDP) and of labor productivity. The GDP growth rate
provides at least a rough approximation of the rate of capital accumulation,
while the labor productivity growth rate tells us something about the extent
to which capitalism is developing the forces of production via rising ratios
of means of production to direct labor, technological advance, and improved
labor skills.5 Table 1 shows average annual real GDP growth rates for six leading
developed capitalist countries over two periods, 1950-73 and 1973-99. The first
period was the heyday of state-regulated capitalism, both within those six countries
and in the capitalist world-system as a whole. The second period covers the
era of growing neoliberal dominance. All six countries had significantly faster
GDP growth in the earlier period than in the later one.
While Japan and the major Western European economies have been relatively
depressed in the 1990s, the US is often portrayed as rebounding to great prosperity
over the past decade. Neoliberals often claim that US adherence to neoliberal
policies finally paid off in the 1990s, while the more timid moves away from
state-interventionist policies in Europe and Japan kept them mired in stagnation.
Table 2 shows GDP and labor productivity growth rates for the US economy for
three subperiods during 1948-99.6 Column 1 of Table 2 shows that GDP growth
was significantly slower in 1973-90 B a period of transition from state-regulated
capitalism to the neoliberal model in the US B than in 1948-73. While GDP growth
improved slightly in 1990-99, it remained well below that of the era of state-regulated
capitalism. Some analysts cite the fact that GDP growth accelerated after 1995,
averaging 4.1% per year during 1995-99 (US Bureau of Economic Analysis, 2000).
However, it is not meaningful to compare a short fragment of the 1990s business
cycle expansion to the longrun performance of the economy during 1948-73.7
Column 2 of Table 1 shows that the high rate of labor productivity growth
recorded in 1948- 73 fell by more than half in 1973-90. While there was significant
improvement in productivity growth in the 1990s, it remained well below the
1948-73 rate, despite the rapid spread of what should be productivity-enhancing
communication and information-management technologies during the past decade.
The evidence from GDP and labor productivity growth rates supports the
claim that the neoliberal model is inferior to the state regulationist model
for key dimensions of capitalist economic performance. There is ample evidence
that the neoliberal model has shifted income and wealth in the direction of
the already wealthy. However, the ability to shift income upward has limits
in an economy that is not growing rapidly. Neoliberalism does not appear to
be delivering the goods in the ways that matter the most for capitalism's long-run
stability and survival.
The Structure of Competition and Economic Policy
The processes through which the dominant economic ideology and policies
are selected in a capitalist system are complex and many-sided. No general rule
operates to assure that those economic policies which would be most favorable
for capitalism are automatically adopted. History suggests that one important
determinant of the dominant economic ideology and policy stance is the competitive
structure of capitalism in a given era. Specifically, this paper argues that
periods of relatively unconstrained competition tend to produce the intellectual
and public policy dominance of liberalism, while periods of relatively constrained,
oligopolistic market relations tend to promote interventionist ideas and policies.
A relation in the opposite direction also exists, one which is often commented
upon. That is, one can argue that interventionist policies promote monopoly
power in markets, while liberal policies promote greater competition. This latter
relation is not being denied here. Rather, it will be argued that there is a
normally-overlooked direction of influence, having significant historical explanatory
power, which runs from competitive structure to public policy. In the period
when capitalism first became well established in the US, during 1800-1860, the
government played a relatively interventionist role. The federal government
placed high tariffs on competing manufactured goods from Europe, and federal,
state, and local levels of government all actively financed, and in some cases
built and operated, the new canal and rail system that created a large internal
market. There was no serious debate over the propriety of public financing of
transportation improvements in that era -- the only debate was over which regions
would get the key subsidized routes.
Once capitalism had become well established in the US after the Civil
War, it entered a period of cutthroat competition and wild accumulation known
as the Robber Baron era. In this period a coherent anti-interventionist liberal
position emerged and became politically dominant. Despite the enormous inequalities,
the severe business cycle, and the outrageous and often unlawful behavior of
the Goulds and Rockefellers, the idea that government should not intervene in
the economy held sway through the end of the 19th century.
From roughly 1890 to 1903 a huge merger wave transformed the competitive
structure of US capitalism. Out of that merger wave emerged giant corporations
possessing significant monopoly power in the manufacturing, mining, transportation,
and communication sectors. US industry settled down to a more restrained form
of oligopolistic rivalry. At the same time, many of the new monopoly capitalists
began to criticize the old Laissez Faire ideas and support a more interventionist
role for the state.8 The combination of big business support for state regulation
of business, together with similar demands arising from a popular anti-monopoly
movement based among small farmers and middle class professionals, ushered in
what is called the Progressive Era, from 1900-16. The building of a regulationist
state that was begun in the Progressive Era was completed during the New Deal
era a few decades later, when once again both big business leaders and a vigorous
popular movement (this time based among industrial workers) supported an interventionist
state. Both in the Progressive Era and the New Deal, big business and the popular
movement differed about what types of state intervention were needed. Big business
favored measures to increase the stability of the system and to improve conditions
for profit-making, while the popular movement sought to use the state to restrain
the power and privileges of big business and provide greater security for ordinary
people. The outcome in both cases was a political compromise, one weighted toward
the interests of big business, reflecting the relative power of the latter in
American capitalism.
Small business has remained adamantly opposed to the big, interventionist
state, from the Progressive Era through the New Deal down to the present. This
division between big and small business is chronicled for the Progressive Era
in Weinstein (1968). In the decades immediately following World War II one can
observe this division in the divergent views of the Business Roundtable, a big
business organization which often supported interventionist programs, and the
US Chambers of Commerce, the premier small business organization, which hewed
to an antigovernment stance.
What explains this political difference between large and small business?
When large corporations achieve significant market power and become freed from
fear concerning their immediate survival, they tend to develop a long time horizon
and pay attention to the requirements for assuring growing profits over time.9
They come to see the state as a potential ally. Having high and stable monopoly
profits, they tend to view the cost of government programs as something they
can afford, given their potential benefits. By contrast, the typical small
business faces a daily battle for survival, which prevents attention to long-run
considerations and which places a premium on avoiding the short-run costs of
taxation and state regulation. This explains the radically different positions
that big business and small business held regarding the proper state role in
the economy for the first two-thirds of the twentieth century.
This long-standing division between big business and small business appeared
to vanish in the US starting in the 1970s. Large corporations and banks which
had formerly supported foundations that advocated an active government role
in the economy, such as the Brookings Institution, became big donors to neoliberal
foundations such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation.
As a result, such right-wing foundations, which previously had to rely mainly
on contributions from small business, became very wealthy and influential.10
It was big business=s desertion of the political coalition supporting state
intervention and its shift to neoliberalism that rebuilt support for neoliberal
theories and policies in the US, starting in the 1970s. With business now unified
on economic policy, the shift was dramatic. Big grants became available for
economics research having a neoliberal slant. The major media shifted their
spin on political developments, and the phrase "government programs" now could
not be printed except with the word "bloated" before it.
This switch in the dominant economic model first showed up in the mid 1970s
in academic economics, as the previously marginalized Chicago School spread
its influence far beyond the University of Chicago. This was soon followed by
a radical shift in the public policy arena. In 1978- 79 the previously interventionist
Carter Administration began sounding the very neoliberal themes B deregulation
of business, cutbacks in social programs, and general fiscal and monetary austerity
B that were to become the centerpiece of Reagan Administration policies in 1981.
What caused the radical change in the political posture of big business regarding
state intervention in the economy? This paper argues that a major part of the
explanation lies in the effects of the globalization of the world capitalist
economy in the post-World War II period.
Globalization and Competition
Globalization is usually defined as an increase in the volume of cross-border
economic interactions and resource flows, producing a qualitative shift in the
relations between national economies and between nation-states (Baker et. al.,
1998, p. 5; Kozul-Wright and Rowthorn, 1998, p. 1). Three kinds of economic
interactions have increased substantially in past decades: merchandise trade
flows, foreign direct investment, and cross-border financial investments. We
will briefly examine each, with an eye on their effects on the competitive structure
of contemporary capitalism.
Table 3 shows the ratio of merchandise exports to gross domestic product
for selected years from 1820 to 1992, for the world and also for Western Europe,
the US, and Japan. Capitalism brought a five-fold rise in world exports relative
to output from 1820-70, followed by another increase of nearly three-fourths
by 1913. After declining in the interwar period, world exports reached a new
peak of 11.2% of world output in 1973, rising further to 13.5% in 1992. The
1992 figure was over fifty per cent higher than the pre-World War I peak.
Merchandise exports include physical goods only, while GDP includes services,
many of which are not tradable, as well as goods. In the twentieth century the
proportion of services in GDP has risen significantly. Table 4 shows an estimate
of the ratio of world merchandise exports to the good-only portion of world
GDP. This ratio nearly tripled during 1950-92, with merchandise exports rising
to nearly one-third of total goods output in the latter year. The 1992 figure
was 2.6 times as high as that of 1913.
Western Europe, the US, and Japan all experienced significant increases in
exports relative to GDP during 1950-92, as Table 3 shows. All of them achieved
ratios of exports to GDP far in excess of the 1913 level. While exports were
only 8.2% of the total GDP of the US in 1992, exports amounted to 22.0% of the
non-service portion of GDP that year (Economic Report of the President,
1999, pp. 338, 444).
Many analysts view foreign direct investment as the most important form of
cross-border economic interchange. It is associated with the movement of technology
and organizational methods, not just goods. Table 5 shows two measures of foreign
direct investment. Column 1 gives the outstanding stock of foreign direct investment
in the world as a percentage of world output. This measure has more than doubled
since 1975, although it is not much greater today than it was in 1913. Column
2 shows the annual inflow of direct foreign investment as a percentage of gross
fixed capital formation. This measure increased rapidly during 1975-95. However,
it is still relatively low in absolute terms, with foreign direct investment
accounting for only 5.2 per cent of gross fixed capital formation in 1995.
Not all, or even most, international capital flows take the form of direct
investment. Financial flows (such as cross-border purchases of securities and
deposits in foreign bank accounts) are normally larger. One measure that takes
account of financial as well as direct investment is the total net movement
of capital into or out of a country. That measure indicates the extent to which
capital from one country finances development in other countries. Table 6 shows
the absolute value of current account surpluses or deficits as a percentage
of GDP for 12 major capitalist countries. Since net capital inflow or outflow
is approximately equal to the current account deficit or surplus (differing
only due to errors and omissions), this indicates the size of net cross-border
capital flows. The ratio nearly doubled from 1970-74 to 1990-96, although it
remained well below the figure for 1910-14.
Cross-border gross capital movements have grown much more rapidly
than cross-border net capital movements.11 In recent times a very large
and rapidly growing volume of capital has moved back and forth across national
boundaries. Much of this capital flow is speculative in nature, reflecting growing
amounts of short-term capital that are moved around the world in search of the
best temporary return. No data on such flows are available for the early part
of this century, but the data for recent decades are impressive. During 1980-95
cross-border transactions in bonds and equities as a percentage of GDP rose
from 9% to 136% for the US, from 8% to 168% for Germany, and from 8% to 66%
for Japan (Baker et. al., 1998, p. 10). The total volume of foreign exchange
transactions in the world rose from about $15 billion per day in 1973 to $80
billion per day in 1980 and $1260 billion per day in 1995. Trade in goods and
services accounted for 15% of foreign exchange transactions in 1973 but for
less than 2% of foreign exchange transactions in 1995 (Bhaduri, 1998, p. 152).
While cross-border flows of goods and capital are usually considered to be
the best indicators of possible globalization of capitalism, changes that have
occurred over time within capitalist enterprises are also relevant. That is,
the much-discussed rise of the transnational corporation (TNC) is relevant here,
where a TNC is a corporation which has a substantial proportion of its sales,
assets, and employees outside its home country.12 TNCs existed in the pre-World
War I era, primarily in the extractive sector. In the post-World War II period
many large manufacturing corporations in the US, Western Europe, and Japan became
TNCs.
The largest TNCs are very international measured by the location of their
activities. One study found that the 100 largest TNCs in the world (ranked by
assets) had 40.4% of their assets abroad, 50.0% of output abroad, and 47.9%
of employment abroad in 1996 (Sutcliffe and Glyn, 1999, p. 125). While this
shows that the largest TNCs are significantly international in their activities,
all but a handful have retained a single national base for top officials and
major stockholders.13 The top 200 TNCs ranked by output were estimated to produce
only about 10 per cent of world GDP in 1995 (Sutcliffe and Glyn, 1999, p. 122).
By the close of the twentieth century, capitalism had become significantly
more globalized than it had been fifty years ago, and by some measures it is
much more globalized than it had been at the previous peak of this process in
1913. The most important features of globalization today are greatly increased
international trade, increased flows of capital across national boundaries (particularly
speculative short-term capital), and a major role for large TNCs in manufacturing,
extractive activities, and finance, operating worldwide yet retaining in nearly
all cases a clear base in a single nation-state.
While the earlier wave of globalization before World War I did produce a
capitalism that was significantly international, two features of that earlier
international system differed from the current global capitalism in ways that
are relevant here. First, the pre-world War I globalization took place within
a world carved up into a few great colonial empires, which meant that much of
the so-called "cross-border" trade and investment of that earlier era actually
occurred within a space controlled by a single state. Second, the high level
of world trade reached before World War I occurred within a system based much
more on specialization and division of labor. That is, manufactured goods were
exported by the advanced capitalist countries in exchange for primary products,
unlike today when most trade is in manufactured goods. In 1913 62.5% of world
trade was in primary products (Bairoch and Kozul-Wright, 1998, p. 45). By contrast,
in 1970 60.9% of world exports were manufactured goods, rising to 74.7% in 1994
(Baker et. al., 1998, p. 7).
Some analysts argue that globalization has produced a world of such economic
interdependence that individual nation-states no longer have the power to regulate
capital. However, while global interdependence does create difficulties for
state regulation, this effect has been greatly exaggerated. Nation-states still
retain a good deal of potential power vis-a-vis capitalist firms, provided that
the political will is present to exercise such power. For example, even such
a small country as Malaysia proved able to successfully impose capital controls
following the Asian financial crisis of 1997, despite the opposition of the
IMF and the US government. A state that has the political will to exercise
some control over movements of goods and capital across its borders still retains
significant power to regulate business. The more important effect of globalization
has been on the political will to undertake state regulation, rather than on
the technical feasibility of doing so. Globalization has had this effect by
changing the competitive structure of capitalism. It appears that globalization
in this period has made capitalism significantly more competitive, in several
ways. First, the rapid growth of trade has changed the situation faced by large
corporations. Large corporations that had previously operated in relatively
controlled oligopolistic domestic markets now face competition from other large
corporations based abroad, both in domestic and foreign markets. In the US the
rate of import penetration of domestic manufacturing markets was only 2 per
cent in 1950; it rose to 8% in 1971 and 16% by 1993, an 8-fold increase since
1950 (Sutcliffe and Glyn, 1999, p. 116).
Second, the rapid increase in foreign direct investment has in many cases
placed TNCs production facilities in the home markets of their foreign rivals.
General Motors not only faces import competition from Toyota and Honda but has
to compete with US-produced Toyota and Honda vehicles. Third, the increasingly
integrated and open world financial system has thrown the major banks and other
financial institutions of the leading capitalist nations increasingly into competition
with one another.
Globalization appears to be one factor that has transformed big business
from a supporter to an opponent of the interventionist state. It has done so
partly by producing TNCs whose tie to the domestic markets for goods and labor
is limited. More importantly, globalization tends to turn big business
into small business. The process of globalization has increased the competitive
pressure faced by large corporations and banks, as competition has become a
world-wide relationship.17 Even if those who run large corporations and financial
institutions recognize the need for a strong nationstate in their home base,
the new competitive pressure they face shortens their time horizon. It pushes
them toward support for any means to reduce their tax burden and lift their
regulatory constraints, to free them to compete more effectively with their
global rivals. While a regulationist state may seem to be in the interests of
big business, in that it can more effectively promote capital accumulation in
the long run, in a highly competitive environment big business is drawn away
from supporting a regulationist state.
Globalization has produced a world capitalism that bears some resemblance
to the Robber Baron Era in the US. Giant corporations battle one another in
a system lacking well defined rules. Mergers and acquisitions abound, including
some that cross national boundaries, but so far few world industries have evolved
the kind of tight oligopolistic structure that would lay the basis for a more
controlled form of market relations. Like the late 19th century US Robber Barons,
today's large corporations and banks above all want freedom from political burdens
and restraints as they confront one another in world markets.18
The above interpretation of the rise and persistence of neoliberalism attributes
it, at least in part, to the changed competitive structure of world capitalism
resulting from the process of globalization. As neoliberalism gained influence
starting in the 1970s, it became a force propelling the globalization process
further. One reason for stressing the line of causation running from globalization
to neoliberalism is the time sequence of the developments. The process of globalization,
which had been reversed to some extent by political and economic events in the
interwar period, resumed right after World War II, producing a significantly
more globalized world economy and eroding the monopoly power of large corporations
well before neoliberalism began its second coming in the mid 1970s. The rapid
rise in merchandise exports began during the Bretton Woods period, as Table
3 showed. So too did the growing role for TNC's. These two aspects of the current
globalization had their roots in the postwar era of state-regulated capitalism.
This suggests that, to some extent, globalization reflects a long-run tendency
in the capital accumulation process rather than just being a result of the rising
influence of neoliberal policies. On the other hand, once neoliberalism became
dominant, it accelerated the process of globalization. This can be seen most
clearly in the data on cross-border flows of both real and financial capital,
which began to grow rapidly only after the 1960s.
Other Factors Promoting Neoliberalism
The changed competitive structure of capitalism provides part of the explanation
for the rise from the ashes of classical liberalism and its persistence in the
face of widespread evidence of its failure to deliver the goods. However, three
additional factors have played a role in promoting neoliberal dominance. These
are the weakening of socialist movements in the industrialized capitalist countries,
the demise of state socialism, and the long period that has elapsed since the
last major capitalist economic crisis. There is space here for only some brief
comments about these additional factors.
The socialist movements in the industrialized capitalist countries have declined
in strength significantly over the past few decades. While Social Democratic
parties have come to office in several European countries recently, they no
longer represent a threat of even significant modification of capitalism, much
less the specter of replacing capitalism with an alternative socialist system.
The regulationist state was always partly a response to the fear of socialism,
a point illustrated by the emergence of the first major regulationist state
of the era of mature capitalism in Germany in the late 19th century, in response
to the world=s first major socialist movement. As the threat coming from socialist
movements in the industrialized capitalist countries has receded, so too has
to incentive to retain the regulationist state.
The existence of a powerful bloc of Communist-run states with an alternative
"state socialist" socioeconomic system tended to push capitalism toward a state
regulationist form. It reinforced the fear among capitalists that their own
working classes might turn against capitalism. It also had an impact on relations
among the leading capitalist states, promoting inter-state unity behind US leadership,
which facilitated the creation and operation of a world-system of state-regulated
capitalism.19 The demise of state socialism during 1989-91 removed one more
factor that had reinforced the regulationist state.
The occurrence of a major economic crisis tends to promote an interventionist
state, since active state intervention is required to overcome a major crisis.
The memory of a recent major crisis tends to keep up support for a regulationist
state, which is correctly seen as a stabilizing force tending to head off major
crises. As the Great Depression of the 1930s has receded into the distant past,
the belief has taken hold that major economic crises have been banished forever.
This reduces the perceived need to retain the regulationist state.
Concluding Comments
If neoliberalism continues to reign as the dominant ideology and policy stance,
it can be argued that world capitalism faces a future of stagnation, instability,
and even eventual social breakdown.20 However, from the factors that have promoted
neoliberalism one can see possible sources of a move back toward state-regulated
capitalism at some point. One possibility would be the development of tight
oligopoly and regulated competition on a world scale. Perhaps the current merger
wave might continue until, as happened at the beginning of the 20th century
within the US and in other industrialized capitalist economies, oligopoly replaced
cutthroat competition, but this time on a world scale. Such a development might
revive big business support for an interventionist state. However, this does
not seem to be likely in the foreseeable future. The world is a big place, with
differing cultures, laws, and business practices in different countries, which
serve as obstacles to overcoming the competitive tendency in market relations.
Transforming an industry=s structure so that two to four companies produce the
bulk of the output is not sufficient in itself to achieve stable monopoly power,
if the rivals are unable to communicate effectively with one another and find
common ground for cooperation. Also, it would be difficult for international
monopolies to exercise effective regulation via national governments, and a
genuine world capitalist state is not a possibility for the foreseeable future.
If state socialism re-emerged in one or more major countries, perhaps
this might push the capitalist world back toward the regulationist state. However,
such a development does not seem likely. Even if Russia or Ukraine at some point
does head in that direction, it would be unlikely to produce a serious rival
socioeconomic system to that of world capitalism.
A more likely source of a new era of state interventionism might come from
one of the remaining two factors considered above. The macro-instability of
neoliberal global capitalism might produce a major economic crisis at some point,
one which spins out of the control of the weakened regulatory authorities. This
would almost certainly revive the politics of the regulationist state. Finally,
the increasing exploitation and other social problems generated by neoliberal
global capitalism might prod the socialist movement back to life at some point.
Should socialist movements revive and begin to seriously challenge capitalism
in one or more major capitalist countries, state regulationism might return
in response to it. Such a development would also revive the possibility of finally
superceding capitalism and replacing it with a system based on human need rather
than private profit.
"... Elites can continue on the current path of pursuing integration projects and defending existing
integration, hoping to win enough popular support that their efforts are not thwarted. On the evidence
of the U.S. presidential campaign and the Brexit debate, this strategy may have run its course. ...
..."
"... I think some fellows already had this idea: "Much more promising is this idea: The promotion
of global integration can become a bottom-up rather than a top-down project" -- "Workers of the World,
Unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains!" ~Marx/Engels, 1848 ..."
"... Krugman sort of said this when he saw that apparel multinationals were shifting jobs out of
China to Bangladesh. Like $3 an hour is just way too high for workers. ..."
"... The "populists" are raging against global trade which benefits the world poor. The Very Serious
economists know what is really going on and have to interests of the poor at heart. Plus they are smarter
than the "populists" who are just dumb hippies. ..."
"... And what about neocolonialism and debt slavery ? http://historum.com/blogs/solidaire/245-debt-slavery-neo-colonialism-neoliberalism.html
..."
"... International debtors are the modern colonialists, sucking the marrow of countries; no armies
are needed anymore to keep those countries subjugated. Debt is the modern instrument of enslavement,
the international banks, corporations and hedge funds the modern colonial powers, and its enforcers
are instruments like the Global Bank, the IMF, and the corrupt, collaborationist governments (and totalitarian
regimes) of those countries, supported and propped up by these neo-colonials. ..."
"... Cover your a$$ much Larry? No mention of mass immigration? No mention of the elites' conscious,
planned attack on homogeneous societies in Western Europe, the US, and now Japan? ..."
"... The US was 88% European as of 1960. As of 1800 it was like 90% English. So yes, it was basically
a homogeneous society prior to the immigration act of 1965. Today it is extremely hard for Europeans
to get into the US -- but easier for non-Europeans. Now why would that be? Hmm .... ..."
"... The only trade that is actually free is trade not covered by laws and/or treaties. All other
trade is regulated trade. ..."
"... Here's a good rule to follow. When someone calls something the exact opposite of what it is,
in all probability they are trying to hustle your wallet. ..."
"... ISIS was invented by Wall Street who financed them. ISIS is a scam, just like Bin Laden's group,
just like "COMMUNISM!!!!" to control people. To manipulate them. ..."
"... Guys, the bourgeois state is a protection racket and always has been. It makes you feel safe,
secure and "feel like man". So we can enjoy every indulgent individual lust the world has to offer.
Then comes in dialectics of what that protection racket should do. ..."
"... To me, the bourgeois state is nothing more than a protection racket for the rich, something
you should not forget. ..."
"... I find it rather precious that Summers pretends not to understand why people hate TPP. I do
not think there is any real widespread antipathy toward global integration, though it does pose some
rather substantial systemic dangers, as we saw in the global financial collapse. What people, including
me, oppose is how that integration is structured. These agreements are about is not "free trade", but
removing all restrictions on global capital and that is a big problem. ..."
"... TPP is not free trade. It is protectionism for the rich. ..."
"... All or most modern "free trade" agreements are like that. What people oppose is agreements
which impoverish them and enrich capital. ..."
"... More free trade arrangement are not always better trade arrangements. People have seen the
results of the labor race to the bottom caused by earlier free trade agreements; and now they are guessing
we're going to get the same kind of race to the bottom with TPP when we have to put all of our environmental
laws and other domestic regulations into capitalist competition with backward countries. ..."
"... progressive states (WA, OR, CA, NV, IL, NY, MD) could simply treat union busting the same way
any OTHER major muscling or manipulation of the free market is treated: make it a felony. ..."
"... Summers: "Pie in the Sky" So trade negotiations would have to be lead by labor advocates and
environmental groups -- sounds great to me, but I can't for the life of me figure out why the goods
and service producers (i.e. capital owners) would have any incentive to promote trade under such a negotiated
trade agreement... or that trade would actually occur. You'd have to eliminate private enterprise incentives
to profit I think.. not something the U.S.'s "individualism" god can't tolerate. ..."
"... Alas, the Kaiser, the Tsar, and the Emperor did not act in accord with its tenets. Either increased
global trade is irrelevant to war and peace, or World War I didn't happen. Your pick which to believe.
..."
What's behind the revolt against global integration? : Since the end of World War II, a broad
consensus in support of global economic integration as a force for peace and prosperity has been
a pillar of the international order. ...
This broad program of global integration has been more successful than could reasonably have
been hoped. ... Yet a revolt against global integration is underway in the West. ...
One substantial part of what is behind the resistance is a lack of knowledge. ...The core of
the revolt against global integration, though, is not ignorance. It is a sense - unfortunately
not wholly unwarranted - that it is a project being carried out by elites for elites, with little
consideration for the interests of ordinary people. ...
Elites can continue on the current path of pursuing integration projects and defending
existing integration, hoping to win enough popular support that their efforts are not thwarted.
On the evidence of the U.S. presidential campaign and the Brexit debate, this strategy may have
run its course. ...
Much more promising is this idea: The promotion of global integration can become a bottom-up
rather than a top-down project. The emphasis can shift from promoting integration to managing
its consequences. This would mean a shift from international trade agreements to international
harmonization agreements, whereby issues such as labor rights and environmental protection would
be central, while issues related to empowering foreign producers would be secondary. It would
also mean devoting as much political capital to the trillions of dollars that escape taxation
or evade regulation through cross-border capital flows as we now devote to trade agreements. And
it would mean an emphasis on the challenges of middle-class parents everywhere who doubt, but
still hope desperately, that their kids can have better lives than they did.
I think some fellows already had this idea: "Much more promising is this idea: The promotion
of global integration can become a bottom-up rather than a top-down project" -- "Workers of the
World, Unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains!" ~Marx/Engels, 1848
Krugman sort of said this when he saw that apparel multinationals were shifting jobs out of
China to Bangladesh. Like $3 an hour is just way too high for workers.
A large part of the concern over free trade comes from the weak economic performances around the
globe. Summers could have addressed this. Jared Bernstein and Dean Baker - both sensible economists
- for example recently called on the US to do its own currency manipulation so as to reverse the
US$ appreciation which is lowering our net exports quite a bit.
What they left out is the fact that both China and Japan have seen currency appreciations as
well. If we raise our net exports at their expense, that lowers their economic activity. Better
would be global fiscal stimulus. I wish Larry had raised this issue here.
The "populists" are raging against global trade which benefits the world poor. The Very Serious
economists know what is really going on and have to interests of the poor at heart. Plus they
are smarter than the "populists" who are just dumb hippies.
One of the most fundamental reasons for the poverty and underdevelopment of Africa (and of
almost all "third world" countries) is neo-colonialism, which in modern history takes the shape
of external debt.
When countries are forced to pay 40,50,60% of their government budgets just to pay the interests
of their enormous debts, there is little room for actual prosperity left.
International debtors are the modern colonialists, sucking the marrow of countries; no
armies are needed anymore to keep those countries subjugated. Debt is the modern instrument of
enslavement, the international banks, corporations and hedge funds the modern colonial powers,
and its enforcers are instruments like the Global Bank, the IMF, and the corrupt, collaborationist
governments (and totalitarian regimes) of those countries, supported and propped up by these neo-colonials.
In reality, not much has changed since the fall of the great colonial empires. In paper, countries
have gained their sovereignty, but in reality they are enslaved to the international credit system.
The only thing that has changed, is that now the very colonial powers of the past, are threatened
to become debt colonies themselves. You see, global capitalism and credit system has no country,
nationality, colour; it only recognises the colour of money, earned at all cost by the very few,
on the expense of the vast, unsuspected and lulled masses.
Debt had always been a very efficient way of control, either on a personal, or state level.
And while most of us are aware of the implementations of personal debt and the risks involved,
the corridors of government debt are poorly lit, albeit this kind of debt is affecting all citizens
of a country and in ways more profound and far reaching into the future than those of private
debt.
Global capitalism was flourishing after WW2, and reached an apex somewhere in the 70's.
The lower classes in the mature capitalist countries had gained a respectable portion of the
distributed wealth, rights and privileges inconceivable several decades before. The purchasing
power of the average American for example, was very satisfactory, fully justifying the American
dream. Similar phenomena were taking place all over the "developed" world.
Cover your a$$ much Larry? No mention of mass immigration? No mention of the elites' conscious,
planned attack on homogeneous societies in Western Europe, the US, and now Japan?
There is of course no reasonable answering to prejudice, since prejudice is always unreasonable,
but should there be a question, when was the last time that, say, the United States or the territory
that the US now covers was a homogeneous society?
Before the US engulfed Spanish peoples? Before the US engulfed African peoples? Before the
US engulfed Indian peoples? When did the Irish, just to think of a random nationality, ruin "our"
homogeneity?
I could continue, but how much of a point is there in being reasonable?
The US was 88% European as of 1960. As of 1800 it was like 90% English. So yes, it was basically
a homogeneous society prior to the immigration act of 1965. Today it is extremely hard for Europeans
to get into the US -- but easier for non-Europeans. Now why would that be? Hmm ....
ISIS was invented by Wall Street who financed them. ISIS is a scam, just like Bin Laden's
group, just like "COMMUNISM!!!!" to control people. To manipulate them.
It is like using the internet to think you are "edgy". Some dudes like psuedo-science scam
artist Mike Adams are uncovering secrets to this witty viewer............then you wonder why society
is degenerating. What should happen with Mike Adams is, he should be beaten up and castrated.
My guess he would talk then. Boy would his idiot followers get a surprise and that surprise would
have results other than "poor mikey, he was robbed".
This explains why guys like Trump get delegates. Not because he uses illegal immigrants in
his old businesses, not because of some flat real wages going over 40 years, not because he is
a conman marketer.........he makes them feel safe. That is purely it. I think its pathetic, but
that is what happens in a emasculated world. Safety becomes absolute concern. "Trump makes me
feel safe".
Guys, the bourgeois state is a protection racket and always has been. It makes you feel
safe, secure and "feel like man". So we can enjoy every indulgent individual lust the world has
to offer. Then comes in dialectics of what that protection racket should do.
To me, the bourgeois state is nothing more than a protection racket for the rich, something
you should not forget.
I find it rather precious that Summers pretends not to understand why people hate TPP. I do
not think there is any real widespread antipathy toward global integration, though it does pose
some rather substantial systemic dangers, as we saw in the global financial collapse. What people,
including me, oppose is how that integration is structured. These agreements are about is not
"free trade", but removing all restrictions on global capital and that is a big problem.
Actually, this is my first actual response to the post itself, but you were too busy being and
a*****e to notice. All or most modern "free trade" agreements are like that. What people oppose
is agreements which impoverish them and enrich capital.
This has become a popular line, and it's not exactly false. But so what if it were a "free trade"
agreement? More free trade arrangement are not always better trade arrangements. People have
seen the results of the labor race to the bottom caused by earlier free trade agreements; and
now they are guessing we're going to get the same kind of race to the bottom with TPP when we
have to put all of our environmental laws and other domestic regulations into capitalist competition
with backward countries.
" The promotion of global integration can become a bottom-up rather than a top-down project. "
" ... whereby issues such as labor rights and environmental protection would be central ...
"
+1
Now if we could just adopt that policy internally in the United States first we could then
(and only then) support it externally across the world.
Easy approach: (FOR THE TEN MILLIONTH TIME!) progressive states (WA, OR, CA, NV, IL, NY,
MD) could simply treat union busting the same way any OTHER major muscling or manipulation of
the free market is treated: make it a felony. FYI (for those who are not aware) states can
add to federal labor protections, just not subtract.
A completely renewed, re-constituted democracy would be born.
Biggest obstacle to this being done in my (crackpot?) view: human males. Being instinctive
pack hunters, before they check out any idea they, first, check in with the pack (all those other
boys who are also checking in with the pack) -- almost automatically infer impossibility to overcome
what they see (correctly?) as wheels within wheels of inertia.
Self-fulfilling prophecy: nothing (not the most obvious, SHOULD BE easiest possible to get
support for actions) ever gets done.
I'm not the only one seeking a new path forward on trade.
by Jared Bernstein
April 11th, 2016 at 9:20 am
"...
Here's Larry's view of the way forward:
"The promotion of global integration can become a bottom-up rather than a top-down project.
The emphasis can shift from promoting integration to managing its consequences. This would
mean a shift from international trade agreements to international harmonization agreements,
whereby issues such as labor rights and environmental protection would be central, while issues
related to empowering foreign producers would be secondary. It would also mean devoting as
much political capital to the trillions of dollars that escape taxation or evade regulation
through cross-border capital flows as we now devote to trade agreements. And it would mean
an emphasis on the challenges of middle-class parents everywhere who doubt, but still hope
desperately, that their kids can have better lives than they did.
Good points, all. "Bottom-up" means what I've been calling a more representative, inclusive
process. But what's this about "international harmonization?""
It's a way of saying that we need to reduce the "frictions" and thus costs between trading
partners at the level of pragmatic infrastructure, not corporate power. One way to think of
this is TFAs, not FTAs. TFAs are trade facilitation agreements, which are more about integrating
ports, rail, and paperwork than patents that protect big Pharma.
It's refreshing to see mainstreamers thinking creatively about the anger that's surfaced
around globalization. Waiting for the anger to dissipate and then reverting back to the old
trade regimes may be the preferred path for elites, but that path may well be blocked. We'd
best clear a new, wider path, one that better accommodates folks from all walks of life, both
here and abroad."
Summers: "Pie in the Sky" So trade negotiations would have to be lead by labor advocates and
environmental groups -- sounds great to me, but I can't for the life of me figure out why the
goods and service producers (i.e. capital owners) would have any incentive to promote trade under
such a negotiated trade agreement... or that trade would actually occur. You'd have to eliminate
private enterprise incentives to profit I think.. not something the U.S.'s "individualism" god
can't tolerate.
Imagine a trade deal negotiated by the AFL-CIO. Labor wins a lot and capital owners lose a little.
We can all then smile and say to the latter - go get your buddies in Congress more serious about
the compensation principle. Turn the table!
"consensus in support of global economic integration as a force for peace and prosperity " --
"The Great Illusion" (
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion
)
That increased trade is a bulwark against war rears its ugly head again. The above book which
so ironically delivered the message was published in 1910.
Alas, the Kaiser, the Tsar, and the Emperor did not act in accord with its tenets. Either
increased global trade is irrelevant to war and peace, or World War I didn't happen. Your pick
which to believe.
Our problems began back in the 1970s when we abandoned the Bretton Woods international capital
controls and then broke the unions, cut taxes on corporations and upper income groups, and deregulated
the financial system. This eventually led a stagnation of wages in the US and an increase in the
concentration of income at the top of the income distribution throughout the world:
http://www.rwEconomics.com/Ch_1.htm
When combined with tax cuts and financial deregulation it led to increasing debt relative to
income in the importing countries that caused the financial catastrophe we went through in 2008,
the economic stagnation that followed, and the social unrest we see throughout the world today.
This, in turn, created a situation in which the full utilization of our economic resources can
only be maintained through an unsustainable increase in debt relative to income:
http://www.rwEconomics.com/htm/WDCh3e.htm
This is what has to be overcome if we are to get out of the mess the world is in today, and
it's not going to be overcome by pretending that it's just going to go away if people can just
become educated about the benefits of trade. At least that's not the way it worked out in the
1930s: http://www.rwEconomics.com/LTLGAD.htm
"... From Tunis to Tel Aviv, Madrid to Oakland, a new generation of youth activists is challenging the neoliberal state that has dominated the world ever since the Cold War ended. ..."
"... young rebels are reacting to a single stunning worldwide development: the extreme concentration of wealth in a few hands thanks to neoliberal policies of deregulation and union busting. They have taken to the streets, parks, plazas and squares to protest against the resulting corruption, the way politicians can be bought and sold, and the impunity ..."
"... In the "glorious thirty years" after World War II, North America and Western Europe achieved remarkable rates of economic growth and relatively low levels of inequality for capitalist societies, while instituting a broad range of benefits for workers, students and retirees. From roughly 1980 on, however, the neoliberal movement, rooted in the laissez-faire economic theories of Milton Friedman, launched what became a full-scale assault on workers' power and an attempt, often remarkably successful, to eviscerate the social welfare state. ..."
"... "Washington consensus" meant that the urge to impose privatisation on stagnating, nepotistic postcolonial states would become the order of the day. ..."
"... While neoliberalism has produced more unequal societies throughout the world, nowhere else has the income of the poor declined quite so strikingly. The concentration of wealth in a few hands profoundly contradicts the founding principles of Israel's Labour Zionism, and results from decades of right-wing Likud policies punishing the poor and middle classes and shifting wealth to the top of society. ..."
"... Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History and the director of the Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of Michigan. His latest book, ..."
"... Engaging the Muslim World , is just out in a revised paperback edition from Palgrave Macmillan. He runs the Informed Comment website. ..."
"... A version of this article was first published on Tom Dispatch . ..."
"... The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy. ..."
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN - From Tunis to Tel Aviv, Madrid to Oakland, a new
generation of youth activists is challenging the neoliberal state that has dominated
the world ever since the Cold War ended. The massive popular protests that
shook the globe this year have much in common, though most of the reporting
on them in the mainstream media has obscured the similarities.
Whether in Egypt or the United States, young rebels are reacting to a
single stunning worldwide development: the extreme concentration of wealth in
a few hands thanks to neoliberal policies of deregulation and union busting.
They have taken to the streets, parks, plazas and squares to protest against
the resulting corruption, the way politicians can be bought and sold, and the
impunity
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN - From Tunis to Tel Aviv, Madrid to
Oakland, a new generation of youth activists is challenging the neoliberal state
that has dominated the world ever since the Cold War ended. The massive popular
protests that shook the globe this year have much in common, though most of
the reporting on them in the mainstream media has obscured the similarities.
Whether in Egypt or the United States, young rebels are reacting to a single
stunning worldwide development: the extreme concentration of wealth in a few
hands thanks to neoliberal policies of deregulation and union busting. They
have taken to the streets, parks, plazas and squares to protest against the
resulting corruption, the way politicians can be bought and sold, and the impunity
of the white-collar criminals who have run riot in societies everywhere. They
are objecting to high rates of unemployment, reduced social services, blighted
futures and above all the substitution of the market for all other values as
the matrix of human ethics and life.
Pasha the Tiger
In the "glorious thirty years" after World War II, North America and
Western Europe achieved remarkable rates of economic growth and relatively low
levels of inequality for capitalist societies, while instituting a broad range
of benefits for workers, students and retirees. From roughly 1980 on, however,
the neoliberal movement, rooted in the laissez-faire economic theories of Milton
Friedman, launched what became a full-scale assault on workers' power and an
attempt, often remarkably successful, to eviscerate the social welfare state.
Neoliberals chanted the mantra that everyone would benefit if the public
sector were privatised, businesses deregulated and market mechanisms allowed
to distribute wealth. But as economist David Harvey
argues, from the beginning it was a doctrine that primarily benefited the
wealthy, its adoption allowing the top one per cent in any neoliberal society
to capture a disproportionate share of whatever wealth was generated.
In the global South, countries that gained their independence from European
colonialism after World War II tended to create large public sectors as part
of the process of industrialization. Often, living standards improved as a result,
but by the 1970s, such developing economies were generally experiencing a levelling-off
of growth. This happened just as neoliberalism became ascendant in Washington,
Paris and London as well as in Bretton Woods institutions like the International
Monetary Fund. This "Washington consensus" meant that the urge to impose
privatisation on stagnating, nepotistic postcolonial states would become the
order of the day.
Egypt and Tunisia, to take two countries in the spotlight for sparking the
Arab Spring, were successfully pressured in the 1990s to privatise their relatively
large public sectors. Moving public resources into the private sector created
an almost endless range of opportunities for staggering levels of corruption
on the part of the ruling families of autocrats
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunis and
Hosni Mubarak in Cairo. International banks, central banks and emerging
local private banks aided and abetted their agenda.
It was not surprising then that one of the first targets of Tunisian crowds
in the course of the revolution they made last January was the
Zitouna bank, a branch of which they torched. Its owner? Sakher El Materi,
a son-in-law of President Ben Ali and the notorious owner of
Pasha, the well-fed pet tiger that prowled the grounds of one of his sumptuous
mansions. Not even the way his outfit sought legitimacy by practicing "Islamic
banking" could forestall popular rage. A 2006 State Department cable released
by WikiLeaks
observed, "One local financial expert blames the [Ben Ali] Family for chronic
banking sector woes due to the great percentage of non-performing loans issued
through crony connections, and has essentially paralysed banking authorities
from genuine recovery efforts." That is, the banks were used by the regime to
give away money to his cronies, with no expectation of repayment.
Tunisian activists similarly directed their ire at foreign banks and lenders
to which their country owes $14.4bn. Tunisians are still railing and rallying
against the repayment of all that money, some of which they believe was
borrowed profligately by the corrupt former regime and then squandered quite
privately.
Tunisians had their own one per cent, a thin commercial elite,
half of whom were related to or closely connected to President Ben Ali.
As a group, they were accused by young activists of mafia-like, predatory practices,
such as demanding pay-offs from legitimate businesses, and discouraging foreign
investment by tying it to a stupendous system of bribes. The closed, top-heavy
character of the Tunisian economic system was blamed for the bottom-heavy waves
of suffering that followed: cost of living increases that hit people on fixed
incomes or those like students and peddlers in the marginal economy especially
hard.
It was no happenstance that the young man who
immolated himself and so sparked the Tunisian rebellion was a hard-pressed
vegetable peddler. It's easy now to overlook what clearly ties the beginning
of the Arab Spring to the European Summer and the present American Fall: the
point of the Tunisian revolution was not just to gain political rights, but
to sweep away that one per cent, popularly imagined as a sort of dam against
economic opportunity.
Tahrir Square, Zuccotti Park, Rothschild Avenue
The success of the Tunisian revolution in removing the octopus-like Ben Ali
plutocracy inspired the dramatic events in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria and even
Israel that are redrawing the political map of the Middle East. But the 2011
youth protest movement was hardly contained in the Middle East. Estonian-Canadian
activist Kalle Lasn and his anti-consumerist colleagues at the Vancouver-based
Adbusters Media Foundation
were inspired by the success of the revolutionaries in Tahrir Square in
deposing dictator Hosni Mubarak.
Their organisation specialises in combatting advertising culture through
spoofs and pranks. It was Adbusters magazine that sent out the call
on Twitter in the summer of 2011 for a rally at Wall Street on September 17,
with the now-famous hash tag #OccupyWallStreet. A thousand protesters gathered
on the designated date, commemorating the 2008 economic meltdown that had thrown
millions of Americans out of their jobs and their homes. Some camped out in
nearby Zuccotti Park, another unexpected global spark for protest.
The Occupy Wall Street movement has now spread throughout the United States,
sometimes in the face of serious acts of repression, as in
Oakland, California. It has followed in the spirit of the Arab and European
movements in demanding an end to special privileges for the richest one per
cent, including their ability to more or less buy the US government for purposes
of their choosing. What is often forgotten is that the Ben Alis, Mubaraks and
Gaddafis were not simply authoritarian tyrants. They were the one per
cent and the guardians of the one per cent, in their own societies - and loathed
for exactly that.
Last April, around the time that Lasn began imagining Wall Street protests,
progressive activists in Israel started planning their own movement. In July,
sales clerk and aspiring filmmaker Daphne Leef found herself
unable
to cover a sudden rent increase on her Tel Aviv apartment. So she started
a protest Facebook page similar to the ones that fuelled the Arab Spring and
moved into a tent on the posh Rothschild Avenue where she was soon joined by
hundreds of other protesting Israelis. Week by week, the demonstrations grew,
spreading to cities throughout the country and
culminating on September 3 in a massive rally, the largest in Israel's history.
Some 300,000 protesters came out in Tel Aviv, 50,000 in Jerusalem and 40,000
in Haifa. Their demands
included not just lower housing costs, but a rollback of neoliberal policies,
less regressive taxes and more progressive, direct taxation, a halt to the privatisation
of the economy, and the funding of a system of inexpensive education and child
care.
Many on the left in Israel are also
deeply troubled by the political and economic power of right-wing settlers
on the West Bank, but most decline to bring the Palestinian issue into the movement's
demands for fear of losing support among the middle class. For the same reason,
the way the Israeli movement was inspired by Tahrir Square and the Egyptian
revolution has been downplayed, although
"Walk like an Egyptian" signs - a reference both to the Cairo demonstrations
and the 1986 Bangles hit song - have been spotted on Rothschild Avenue.
Most of the Israeli activists in the coastal cities know that they are victims
of the same neoliberal order that displaces the Palestinians, punishes them
and keeps them stateless. Indeed, the Palestinians, altogether lacking a state
but at the complete mercy of various forms of international capital controlled
by elites elsewhere, are the ultimate victims of the neoliberal order. But in
order to avoid a split in the Israeli protest movement, a quiet agreement was
reached to focus on economic discontents and so avoid the divisive issue of
the much-despised West Bank settlements.
There has been little reporting in the Western press about a key source of
Israeli unease, which was palpable to me when I visited the country in May.
Even then, before the local protests had fully hit their stride, Israelis I
met were complaining about the rise to power of an Israeli one per cent. There
are now
16 billionaires in the country, who control $45bn in assets, and the current
crop of 10,153 millionaires is 20 per cent larger than it was in the previous
fiscal year. In terms of its distribution of wealth, Israel is now among the
most unequal of the countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation
and Development. Since the late 1980s, the average household income of families
in the bottom fifth of the population has been declining at an annual rate of
1.1 per cent. Over the same period, the average household income of families
among the richest 20 per cent went up at an annual rate of 2.4 per cent.
While neoliberalism has produced more unequal societies throughout the
world, nowhere else has the income of the poor declined quite so strikingly.
The concentration of wealth in a few hands profoundly contradicts the founding
principles of Israel's Labour Zionism, and results from decades of right-wing
Likud policies punishing the poor and middle classes and shifting wealth to
the top of society.
The indignant ones
European youth were also inspired by the Tunisians and Egyptians - and by
a similar flight of wealth. I was in Barcelona on May 27, when the police attacked
demonstrators camped out at the Placa de Catalunya, provoking widespread consternation.
The government of the region is currently led by the centrist Convergence and
Union Party, a moderate proponent of Catalan nationalism. It is relatively popular
locally, and so Catalans had not expected such heavy-handed police action to
be ordered. The crackdown, however, underlined the very point of the protesters,
that the neoliberal state, whatever its political makeup, is protecting the
same set of wealthy miscreants.
Spain's "indignados" (indignant ones) got
their start in mid-May with huge protests at Madrid's Puerta del Sol Plaza
against the country's persistent 21 per cent unemployment rate (and double that
among the young). Egyptian activists in Tahrir Square
immediately sent a statement of warm support to those in the Spanish capital
(as they would months later to New York's demonstrators). Again following the
same pattern, the Spanish movement does not restrict its objections to unemployment
(and the lack of benefits attending the few new temporary or contract jobs that
do arise). Its targets are the banks, bank bailouts, financial corruption and
cuts in education and other services.
Youth activists I met in Toledo and Madrid this summer
denounced
both of the country's major parties and, indeed, the very consumer society that
emphasised wealth accumulation over community and material acquisition over
personal enrichment. In the past two months Spain's young protesters have concentrated
on demonstrating against cuts to education, with crowds of 70,000 to 90,000
coming out more than once in Madrid and tens of thousands in other cities. For
marches in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement,
hundreds of thousands reportedly took to the streets of Madrid and Barcelona,
among other cities.
The global reach and connectedness of these movements has yet to be fully
appreciated. The Madrid education protesters, for example, cited for inspiration
Chilean students who, through persistent, innovative, and large-scale demonstrations
this summer and fall, have forced that country's neoliberal government, headed
by the increasingly unpopular billionaire president Sebastian Pinera, to inject
$1.6bn in new money into education. Neither the crowds of youth in Madrid nor
those in Santiago are likely to be mollified, however, by new dorms and laboratories.
Chilean students have
already moved on from insisting on an end to an ever more expensive class-based
education system to demands that the country's lucrative copper mines be nationalised
so as to generate revenues for investment in education. In every instance, the
underlying goal of specific protests by the youthful reformists is the neoliberal
order itself.
The word "union" was little uttered in American television news coverage
of the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, even though factory workers and sympathy
strikes of all sorts played a
key role in them. The right-wing press in the US actually went out of its
way to contrast Egyptian demonstrations against Mubarak with the Wisconsin rallies
of government workers against Governor Scott Walker's measure to cripple the
bargaining power of their unions.
The Egyptians, Commentary typically
wrote,
were risking their lives, while Wisconsin's union activists were taking the
day off from cushy jobs to parade around with placards, immune from being fired
for joining the rallies. The implication: the Egyptian revolution was against
tyranny, whereas already spoiled American workers were demanding further coddling.
The American right has never been interested in recognising this reality:
that forbidding unions and strikes is a form of tyranny. In fact, it wasn't
just progressive bloggers who saw a connection between Tahrir Square and Madison.
The head of the newly formed independent union federation in Egypt dispatched
an
explicit expression of solidarity to the Wisconsin workers, centering on
worker's rights.
At least,Commentary did us one favour: it clarified
why the story has been told as it has in most of the American media. If the
revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya were merely about individualistic political
rights - about the holding of elections and the guarantee of due process - then
they could be depicted as largely irrelevant to politics in the US and Europe,
where such norms already prevailed.
If, however, they centered on economic rights (as they certainly did), then
clearly the discontents of North African youth when it came to plutocracy, corruption,
the curbing of workers' rights, and persistent unemployment deeply resembled
those of their American counterparts.
The global protests of 2011 have been cast in the American media largely
as an "Arab Spring" challenging local dictatorships - as though Spain, Chile
and Israel do not exist. The constant speculation by pundits and television
news anchors in the US about whether "Islam" would benefit from the Arab Spring
functioned as an Orientalist way of marking events in North Africa as alien
and vaguely menacing, but also as not germane to the day to day concerns of
working Americans. The inhabitants of Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan clearly
feel differently.
Facebook flash mobs
If we focus on economic trends, then the neoliberal state looks eerily similar,
whether it is a democracy or a dictatorship, whether the government is nominally
right of centre or left of centre. As a package, deregulation, the privatisation
of public resources and firms, corruption and forms of insider trading and interference
in the ability of workers to organise or engage in collective bargaining have
allowed the top one per cent in Israel, just as in Tunisia or the US, to capture
the lion's share of profits from the growth of the last decades.
Observers were puzzled by the huge crowds that turned out in both Tunis and
Tel Aviv in 2011, especially given that economic growth in those countries had
been running at a seemingly healthy five per cent per annum. "Growth", defined
generally and without regard to its distribution, is the answer to a neoliberal
question. The question of the 99 per cent, however, is: Who is getting the increased
wealth? In both of those countries, as in the US and other neoliberal lands,
the answer is: disproportionately the one per cent.
If you were wondering why outraged young people around the globe are chanting
such similar slogans and using such similar tactics (including Facebook "flash
mobs"), it is because they have seen more clearly than their elders through
the neoliberal shell game.
Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History and
the director of the Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of Michigan.
His latest book,
Engaging the Muslim World, is just out in a revised paperback edition from
Palgrave Macmillan. He runs the
Informed Comment website.
A version of this article was first published on
Tom Dispatch.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and
do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Yet another response [ to globalization] is that I term 21stcentury fascism.The ultra-right is an insurgent force in many countries. In broad strokes,
this project seeks to fuse reactionary political power with transnational capital
and to organise a mass base among historically privileged sectors of the global
working class – such as white workers in the North and middle layers in the
South – that are now experiencing heightened insecurity and the specter of downward
mobility. It involves militarism, extreme masculinisation, homophobia, racism
and racist mobilisations, including the search for scapegoats, such as immigrant
workers and, in the West, Muslims. Twenty-first century fascism evokes mystifying
ideologies, often involving race/culture supremacy and xenophobia, embracing an
idealised and mythical past. Neo-fascist culture normalises and glamorises warfare
and social violence, indeed, generates a fascination with domination that is portrayed
even as heroic.
Notable quotes:
"... over-accumulation ..."
"... Cyclical crises ..."
"... . Structural crises ..."
"... systemic crisis ..."
"... social reproduction. ..."
"... crisis of humanity ..."
"... 1984 has arrived; ..."
"... The crisis has resulted in a rapid political polarisation in global society. ..."
"... In broad strokes, this project seeks to fuse reactionary political power with transnational capital and to organise a mass base among historically privileged sectors of the global working class ..."
"... It involves militarism, extreme masculinisation, homophobia, racism and racist mobilisations, including the search for scapegoats, such as immigrant workers and, in the West, Muslims. ..."
"... Neo-fascist culture normalises and glamorises warfare and social violence, indeed, generates a fascination with domination that is portrayed even as heroic. ..."
World capitalism is experiencing the worst crisis in its 500 year history.
Global capitalism is a qualitatively new stage in the open ended evolution of
capitalism characterised by the rise of transnational capital, a transnational
capitalist class, and a transnational state. Below, William I. Robinson argues
that the global crisis is structural and threatens to become systemic, raising
the specter of collapse and a global police state in the face of ecological
holocaust, concentration of the means of violence, displacement of billions,
limits to extensive expansion and crises of state legitimacy, and suggests that
a massive redistribution of wealth and power downward to the poor majority of
humanity is the only viable solution.
The New Global Capitalism and the 21st Century Crisis
The world capitalist system is arguably experiencing the worst crisis in
its 500 year history. World capitalism has experienced a profound restructuring
through globalisation over the past few decades and has been transformed in
ways that make it fundamentally distinct from its earlier incarnations. Similarly,
the current crisis exhibits features that set it apart from earlier crises of
the system and raise the stakes for humanity. If we are to avert disastrous
outcomes we must understand both the nature of the new global capitalism and
the nature of its crisis. Analysis of capitalist globalisation provides a template
for probing a wide range of social, political, cultural and ideological processes
in this 21st century. Following Marx, we want to focus on the internal dynamics
of capitalism to understand crisis. And following the global capitalism perspective,
we want to see how capitalism has qualitatively evolved in recent decades.
The system-wide crisis we face is not a repeat of earlier such episodes such
as that of the the 1930s or the 1970s precisely because capitalism is fundamentally
different in the 21st century. Globalisation constitutes a qualitatively new
epoch in the ongoing and open-ended evolution of world capitalism, marked by
a number of qualitative shifts in the capitalist system and by novel articulations
of social power. I highlight four aspects unique to this epoch.1
First is the rise of truly transnational capital and a new global production
and financial system into which all nations and much of humanity has been integrated,
either directly or indirectly. We have gone from a world economy, in
which countries and regions were linked to each other via trade and financial
flows in an integrated international market, to a global economy, in
which nations are linked to each more organically through the transnationalisation
of the production process, of finance, and of the circuits of capital accumulation.
No single nation-state can remain insulated from the global economy or prevent
the penetration of the social, political, and cultural superstructure of global
capitalism. Second is the rise of a Transnational Capitalist Class (TCC), a
class group that has drawn in contingents from most countries around the world,
North and South, and has attempted to position itself as a global ruling class.
This TCC is the hegemonic fraction of capital on a world scale. Third
is the rise of Transnational State (TNS) apparatuses. The TNS is constituted
as a loose network made up of trans-, and supranational organisations together
with national states. It functions to organise the conditions for transnational
accumulation. The TCC attempts to organise and institutionally exercise its
class power through TNS apparatuses. Fourth are novel relations of inequality,
domination and exploitation in global society, including an increasing importance
of transnational social and class inequalities relative to North-South inequalities.
Cyclical, Structural, and Systemic Crises
Most commentators on the contemporary crisis refer to the "Great Recession"
of 2008 and its aftermath. Yet the causal origins of global crisis are to be
found in over-accumulation and also in contradictions of state
power, or in what Marxists call the internal contradictions of the capitalist
system. Moreover, because the system is now global, crisis in any one place
tends to represent crisis for the system as a whole. The system cannot expand
because the marginalisation of a significant portion of humanity from direct
productive participation, the downward pressure on wages and popular consumption
worldwide, and the polarisation of income, has reduced the ability of the world
market to absorb world output. At the same time, given the particular configuration
of social and class forces and the correlation of these forces worldwide, national
states are hard-pressed to regulate transnational circuits of accumulation and
offset the explosive contradictions built into the system.
Is this crisis cyclical, structural, or systemic? Cyclical crises
are recurrent to capitalism about once every 10 years and involve recessions
that act as self-correcting mechanisms without any major restructuring of the
system. The recessions of the early 1980s, the early 1990s, and of 2001 were
cyclical crises. In contrast, the 2008 crisis signaled the slide into astructural
crisis. Structural crises reflect deeper contradictions that can only
be resolved by a major restructuring of the system. The structural crisis of
the 1970s was resolved through capitalist globalisation. Prior to that, the
structural crisis of the 1930s was resolved through the creation of a new model
of redistributive capitalism, and prior to that the structural crisis of the
1870s resulted in the development of corporate capitalism. A systemic crisis
involves the replacement of a system by an entirely new system or
by an outright collapse. A structural crisis opens up the possibility
for a systemic crisis. But if it actually snowballs into a systemic crisis –
in this case, if it gives way either to capitalism being superseded or to a
breakdown of global civilisation – is not predetermined and depends entirely
on the response of social and political forces to the crisis and on historical
contingencies that are not easy to forecast. This is an historic moment of extreme
uncertainty, in which collective responses from distinct social and class forces
to the crisis are in great flux.
Hence my concept of global crisis is broader than financial. There are multiple
and mutually constitutive dimensions – economic, social, political, cultural,
ideological and ecological, not to mention the existential crisis of our consciousness,
values and very being. There is a crisis of social polarisation, that is, of
social reproduction. The system cannot meet the needs or assure the
survival of millions of people, perhaps a majority of humanity. There are crises
of state legitimacy and political authority, or of hegemony and
domination. National states face spiraling crises of legitimacy as they
fail to meet the social grievances of local working and popular classes experiencing
downward mobility, unemployment, heightened insecurity and greater hardships.
The legitimacy of the system has increasingly been called into question by millions,
perhaps even billions, of people around the world, and is facing expanded counter-hegemonic
challenges. Global elites have been unable counter this erosion of the system's
authority in the face of worldwide pressures for a global moral economy. And
a canopy that envelops all these dimensions is a crisis of sustainability rooted
in an ecological holocaust that has already begun, expressed in climate change
and the impending collapse of centralised agricultural systems in several regions
of the world, among other indicators.
By a crisis of humanity I mean a crisis that is approaching systemic
proportions, threatening the ability of billions of people to survive, and raising
the specter of a collapse of world civilisation and degeneration into a new
"Dark Ages."2
Global capitalism now couples human and natural history in such a way
as to threaten to bring about what would be the sixth mass extinction in the
known history of life on earth.
This crisis of humanity shares a
number of aspects with earlier structural crises but there are also several
features unique to the present:
The system is fast reaching the ecological limits of its reproduction.
Global capitalism now couples human and natural history in such a way as
to threaten to bring about what would be the sixth mass extinction in the
known history of life on earth.3 This mass extinction would
be caused not by a natural catastrophe such as a meteor impact or by evolutionary
changes such as the end of an ice age but by purposive human activity. According
to leading environmental scientists there are nine "planetary boundaries"
crucial to maintaining an earth system environment in which humans can exist,
four of which are experiencing at this time the onset of irreversible environmental
degradation and three of which (climate change, the nitrogen cycle, and
biodiversity loss) are at "tipping points," meaning that these processes
have already crossed their planetary boundaries.
The magnitude of the means of violence and social control is unprecedented,
as is the concentration of the means of global communication and symbolic
production and circulation in the hands of a very few powerful groups.
Computerised wars, drones, bunker-buster bombs, star wars, and so forth,
have changed the face of warfare. Warfare has become normalised and sanitised
for those not directly at the receiving end of armed aggression. At the
same time we have arrived at the panoptical surveillance society and the
age of thought control by those who control global flows of communication,
images and symbolic production. The world of Edward Snowden is the world
of George Orwell; 1984 has arrived;
Capitalism is reaching apparent limits to its extensive
expansion. There are no longer any new territories of significance that
can be integrated into world capitalism, de-ruralisation is now well advanced,
and the commodification of the countryside and of pre- and non-capitalist
spaces has intensified, that is, converted in hot-house fashion into spaces
of capital, so that intensive expansion is reaching depths never
before seen. Capitalism must continually expand or collapse. How or where
will it now expand?
There is the rise of a vast surplus population inhabiting a "planet
of slums,"4 alienated from the productive economy, thrown
into the margins, and subject to sophisticated systems of social control
and to destruction – to a mortal cycle of dispossession-exploitation-exclusion.
This includes prison-industrial and immigrant-detention complexes, omnipresent
policing, militarised gentrification, and so on;
There is a disjuncture between a globalising economy and a nation-state
based system of political authority. Transnational state apparatuses
are incipient and have not been able to play the role of what social scientists
refer to as a "hegemon," or a leading nation-state that has enough power
and authority to organise and stabilise the system. The spread of weapons
of mass destruction and the unprecedented militarisation of social life
and conflict across the globe makes it hard to imagine that the system can
come under any stable political authority that assures its reproduction.
Global Police State
How have social and political forces worldwide responded to crisis? The
crisis has resulted in a rapid political polarisation in global society.
Both right and left-wing forces are ascendant. Three responses seem to be in
dispute.
One is what we could call "reformism from above." This elite reformism is
aimed at stabilising the system, at saving the system from itself and from more
radical responses from below. Nonetheless, in the years following the 2008 collapse
of the global financial system it seems these reformers are unable (or unwilling)
to prevail over the power of transnational financial capital. A second response
is popular, grassroots and leftist resistance from below. As social and political
conflict escalates around the world there appears to be a mounting global revolt.
While such resistance appears insurgent in the wake of 2008 it is spread very
unevenly across countries and regions and facing many problems and challenges.
Yet another response is that I term 21stcentury fascism.5
The ultra-right is an insurgent force in many countries. In broad
strokes, this project seeks to fuse reactionary political power with transnational
capital and to organise a mass base among historically privileged sectors of
the global working class – such as white workers in the North and middle
layers in the South – that are now experiencing heightened insecurity and the
specter of downward mobility. It involves militarism, extreme masculinisation,
homophobia, racism and racist mobilisations, including the search for scapegoats,
such as immigrant workers and, in the West, Muslims. Twenty-first century
fascism evokes mystifying ideologies, often involving race/culture supremacy
and xenophobia, embracing an idealised and mythical past. Neo-fascist culture
normalises and glamorises warfare and social violence, indeed, generates a fascination
with domination that is portrayed even as heroic.
The need for dominant groups around the world to secure widespread, organised
mass social control of the world's surplus population and rebellious forces
from below gives a powerful impulse to projects of 21st century fascism. Simply
put, the immense structural inequalities of the global political economy cannot
easily be contained through consensual mechanisms of social control. We have
been witnessing transitions from social welfare to social control states around
the world. We have entered a period of great upheavals, momentous changes and
uncertainties. The only viable solution to the crisis of global capitalism is
a massive redistribution of wealth and power downward towards the poor majority
of humanity along the lines of a 21st century democratic socialism, in which
humanity is no longer at war with itself and with nature.
About the Author
William I. Robinson is professor of sociology, global and
international studies, and Latin American studies, at the University of California-Santa
Barbara. Among his many books are Promoting Polyarchy (1996),
Transnational Conflicts (2003), A Theory of Global Capitalism
(2004), Latin America and Global Capitalism (2008),
and
Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity (2014).
This
article outlines the main elements of
rupture and continuity in the global political economy since the global
economic crisis of
2008-2009. While the current calamity poses a more systemic challenge to
neoliberal
globalization than genetically similar turbulences in the
semi-periphery during the 1990s, we find that evidence for its
transformative significance remains mixed. Efforts to reform the distressed
capitalist models in the North encounter severe resistance, and the
broadened multilateralism of the G-20 is yet
to provide effective global economic governance. Overall,
neoliberal
globalization looks set to survive, but in more heterodox and
multipolar fashion. Without tighter coordination between old and emerging
powers, this new synthesis is unlikely to inspire lasting solutions to
pressing global problems such as an unsustainable international financial
architecture and the pending environmental catastrophe, and may even fail to
preserve some modest democratic and developmental gains
of the recent past.
According to evolving campaign lore, Donald Trump's son called failed Republican
candidate John Kasich ahead of Trump's VP pick in July and told him he could
be "the most powerful vice president" ever-in charge of foreign policy, and
domestic too-if he agreed to come on board.
While Trump's people have
denied such a lavish entreaty ever occurred, it has become a powerful political
meme: the Republican nominee's lack of experience would force him to default
to others, particularly on the international front, which is a never-ending
series of flash points dotting Europe, Asia, and the Middle East like a child's
Lite Brite.
On the Democratic side there is no such concern-Hillary Clinton has plenty
of experience as a senator and secretary of state, and was a "two-for-one" first
lady who not only took part (unsuccessfully) in the domestic health-care debate,
but
passionately advocated (successfully) for the bombing campaigns in Bosnia
and Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
So what of Trump and Clinton's vice-presidential picks? For starters, they
are both hawkish.
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence was an apt pupil of Bush and Cheney during the neoconservative
years, voting for the Iraq War in 2002 and serving as one of David Petraeus's
cheerleaders in favor of the 2007 surge. He has since supported every intervention
his fellow Republicans did, even giving
early praise to Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration for the 2011
intervention in Libya.
On the other side, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine is as far from the Bernie Sanders
mold as they come: a centrist Democrat who supports a muscular, liberal-interventionist
foreign policy, and who has been pushing for greater intervention in Syria,
just like Hillary Clinton.
If veeps do matter-and as we saw with
Dick Cheney , in many ways they can, bigtime-the non-interventionists can
expect nothing but the status quo when it comes to war policy and the war machine
at home for the next four years. Under the right conditions, Pence would help
drag Trump to the right on war and defense, and Kaine would do nothing but bolster
Clinton's already hawkish views on a host of issues, including those involving
Syria, Russia, the Middle East, and China.
If anything, Pence could end up having more influence in the White House,
said Bonnie Kristian, a writer and
fellow at Defense
Priorities , in an interview with TAC . "With these two campaigns,
I would predict that Pence would have more of a chance of playing a bigger role
[in the presidency] than Tim Kaine does," she offered. Pence could bring to
bear a dozen years of experience as a pro-war congressman, including two years
on the foreign-affairs committee. "He's been a pretty typical Republican on
foreign policy and has a lot of neoconservative impulses. I don't think we could
expect anything different," she added.
For his part, Trump "has been all over the place" on foreign policy, she
said, and while his talk about restraint and Iraq being a failure appeals to
her and others who would like to see America's overseas operations scaled back,
his bench of close advisors is not encouraging.
Walid Phares ,
Gen. Michael Flynn ,
Chris Christie ,
Rudy Giuliani : along with Pence, all could fit like neat little pieces
into the Bush-administration puzzle circa 2003, and none has ever expressed
the same disregard for the Bush and Obama war policies as Trump has on the campaign
trail.
"On one hand, [Trump] has referred to the war in Iraq and regime change as
bad and nation-building as bad, but at the same time he has no ideological grounding,"
said Jack Hunter, politics editor at
Rare . If Trump leaves the policymaking up to others, including Pence, "that
doesn't bode well for those who think the last Republican administration was
too hawkish and did not exhibit restraint."
Pence,
Kristian reminds us , gave a speech just last year at the Conservative Political
Action Conference (CPAC) in which he called for a massive increase in military
spending. "It is imperative that conservatives again embrace America's role
as leader of the free world and the arsenal of democracy," Pence said, predicting
then that 2016 would be a "foreign-policy election."
"He embraces wholeheartedly a future in which America polices the world-forever-refusing
to reorient our foreign policy away from nation-building and toward restraint,
diplomacy and free trade to ensure U.S. security," Kristian wrote in
The Hill back when Pence accepted his place on the Trump ticket
in July. Since then, he has muted his support for Iraq (Trump has said Pence's
2003 vote doesn't matter, even calling it
"a mistake" ). Clearly the two men prefer to meet on the issue of Islamic
threats and the promise of "rebuilding the military," areas where they have
been equally enthusiastic.
Meanwhile, former Bernie Sanders supporters should be rather underwhelmed
with Kaine on national-security policy. On one hand,
writers rush to point out that Kaine split with President Obama and Hillary
Clinton just a few years ago, arguing the administration could not continue
to use the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to fight ISIS
in Iraq and Syria. He also proposed legislation with Sen. John McCain to
update the War Powers Act; the bill would have required the president to
consult with Congress when starting a war, and Congress to vote on any war within
seven days of military action. That would tighten the constitutional responsibilities
of both branches, the senators said in 2013.
On the War Powers Act, Kaine gets points with constitutionalists like University
of Texas law professor Steven Vladeck, who said Kaine's effort "recognizes,
as we all should, the broader problems with the War Powers Resolution as currently
written-and with the contemporary separation of war powers between Congress
and the executive branch." But on the issue of the AUMF, Vladeck and others
have not been so keen on Kaine.
Kaine has made
two proposals relating to the AUMF, and both would leave the door open to
extended overseas military combat operations-including air strikes, raids, and
assassinations-without a specific declaration of war. The first directs the
president to modify or repeal the 2001 AUMF "by September 2017"; the second,
authored with Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, keeps the 2001 AUMF but updates the
2002 AUMF used to attack Iraq to include ISIS.
A revised AUMF is likely to do precisely what the Bush administration
sought to do in the run-up to the Iraq War: codify a dangerous unilateral
theory of preemptive war, and provide a veneer of legality for an open-ended
conflict against an endlessly expanding list of targets.
While he might be applauded for trying to strengthen "the rule of law on
foreign policy," said Kristian, it's not clear he wants to do it "to scale back
these interventions." As a member of both the armed-services and foreign-relations
committees, he has already argued for greater intervention in Syria, calling
for "humanitarian zones"-which, like "no-fly zones" and "no-bombing zones,"
mean the U.S. better be ready to tangle with the Syrian president and Russia
as well as ISIS.
Plus, when Kaine was running for his Senate seat in 2011, and Obama-with
Clinton's urging-was in the midst of a coalition bombing campaign in Libya,
Kaine
was much more noncommittal when it came to the War Powers Act, saying Obama
had a "good rationale" for going in. When asked if he believed the War Powers
Act legally bound the president to get congressional approval to continue operations
there, he said, "I'm not a lawyer on that."
If anything, Kaine will serve as a reliable backup to a president who is
perfectly willing to use military force to promote "democracy" overseas. He
neither softens Clinton's edges on military and war, nor is necessary to sharpen
them. "Does Tim Kaine change [any dynamic]? I don't think so," said Hunter,
adding, "I can't imagine he is as hawkish as her on foreign policy-she is the
worst of the worst."
So when it comes to veep picks, the value is in the eye of the beholder.
"If you are a conservative and you don't think Trump is hawkish enough, you
will like it that Pence is there," notes Hunter. On the other hand, if you like
Trump's attitude on the messes overseas-preferring diplomacy over destruction,
as he said in his
speech Wednesday -Pence might make you think twice, added Kristian. "I'm
not sure Pence is going to further those inclinations, if indeed they do exist."
To make it more complicated, the American public is unsure how it wants to
proceed overseas anyway. While a majority favor airstrikes and sending in special-operations
groups to fight ISIS in Syria, only a minority want to insert combat troops
or even fund anti-Assad groups, according to an
August poll . A slim majority-52 percent-want to establish no-fly zones.
Yet only 31 percent want to to see a deal that would keep Bashar Assad in power.
A tall order for any White House.
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance reporter.
"... I think Trump is afraid the imperial global order presided by the US is about to crash and thinks he will be able to steer the country into a soft landing by accepting that other world powers have interests, by disengaging from costly and humiliating military interventions, by re-negotiating trade deals, and by stopping the mass immigration of poor people. Plus a few well-placed bombs ..."
"... Much has been written about the internet revolution, about the impact of people having access to much more information than before. The elite does not recognize this and is still organizing political and media campaigns as if it were 1990, relying on elder statesmen like Blair, Bush, Mitterrand, Clinton, and Obama to influence public opinion. They are failing miserably, to the point of being counterproductive. ..."
"... I don't think something as parochial as racism is sustaining Trump, but rather the fear of the loss of empire by a population with several orders of magnitude more information and communication than in 2008, even 2012. ..."
"... No one has literally argued that people should be glad to lose employment: that part was hyperbole. But the basic argument is often made quite seriously. See e.g. outsource Brad DeLong . ..."
"... The same thing has happened in Mexico with neoliberal government after neoliberal government being elected. There are many democratically elected neoliberal governments around the world. ..."
"... In the case of Mexico, because Peña Nieto's wife is a telenovela star. How cool is that? It places Mexico in the same league as 1st world countries, such as France, with Carla Bruni. ..."
"... To the guy who asked- poor white people keep voting Republican even though it screws them because they genuinely believe that the country is best off when it encourages a culture of "by the bootstraps" self improvement, hard work, and personal responsibility. They view taxing people in order to give the money to the supposedly less fortunate as the anti thesis of this, because it gives people an easy out that let's them avoid having to engage in the hard work needed to live independently. ..."
"... The extent to which "poor white people" vote against their alleged economic interests is overblown. To a large extent, they do not vote at all nor is anyone or anything on the ballot to represent their interests. And, yes, they are misinformed systematically by elites out to screw them and they know this, but cannot do much to either clear up their own confusion or fight back. ..."
"... The mirror image problem - of elites manipulating the system to screw the poor and merely middle-class - is daily in the news. Both Presidential candidates have been implicated. So, who do you recommend they vote for? ..."
"... I think you're missing Patrick's point. These voters are switching from one Republican to another. They've jettisoned Bush et. al. for Trump. These guys despise Bush. ..."
"... They've figured out that the mainstream party is basically 30 years of affinity fraud. ..."
"... My understanding is trumps support disproportionately comes from the small business owning classes, Ie a demographic similar to the petite bourgeoisie who have often been heavily involved in reactionary movements. This gets oversold as "working class" when class is defined by education level rather than income. ..."
"... Layman - Why are these voters switching from Bush et al to Trump? Once again, Corey's whole point is that there is very little difference between the racism of Trump and the mainstream party since Nixon. Is Trump just more racist? Or are the policies of Trump resonating differently than Bush for reasons other than race? ..."
"... Eric Berne, in The Structures and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups, proposed that among the defining characteristics of a coherent group is an explicit boundary which determines whether an individual is a member of the group or not. (If there is no boundary, nothing binds the assemblage together; it is a crowd.) The boundary helps provide social cohesion and is so important that groups will create one if necessary. Clearly, boundaries exclude as well as include, and someone must play the role of outsider. ..."
"... For a time, the balkanization of American political communities by race, religion and ethnicity was an effective means to the dominance of an tiny elite with ties to an hegemonic community, but it backfired. Dismantling that balkanization has left the country with a very low level of social affiliation and thus a low capacity to organize resistance to elite depredations. ..."
I think Trump is afraid the imperial global order presided by the US is about to crash
and thinks he will be able to steer the country into a soft landing by accepting that other world
powers have interests, by disengaging from costly and humiliating military interventions, by re-negotiating
trade deals, and by stopping the mass immigration of poor people. Plus a few well-placed bombs
.
Much has been written about the internet revolution, about the impact of people having
access to much more information than before. The elite does not recognize this and is still organizing
political and media campaigns as if it were 1990, relying on elder statesmen like Blair, Bush,
Mitterrand, Clinton, and Obama to influence public opinion. They are failing miserably, to the
point of being counterproductive.
I don't think something as parochial as racism is sustaining Trump, but rather the fear
of the loss of empire by a population with several orders of magnitude more information and communication
than in 2008, even 2012.
Layman 08.04.16 at 11:59 am
Rich P: "Neoliberals often argue that people should be glad to lose employment at 50 so
that people from other countries can have higher incomes "
I doubt this most sincerely. While this may be the effect of some neoliberal policies, I can't
recall any particular instance where someone made this argument.
Rich Puchalsky 08.04.16 at 12:03 pm
"I can't recall any particular instance where someone made this argument."
No one has literally argued that people should be glad to lose employment: that part was
hyperbole. But the basic argument is often made quite seriously. See e.g.
outsource
Brad DeLong .
engels 08.04.16 at 12:25 pm
While this may be the effect of some neoliberal policies, I can't recall any particular instance
where someone made this argument
Maybe this kind of thing rom Henry Farrell? (There may well be better examples.)
Is some dilution of the traditional European welfare state acceptable, if it substantially
increases the wellbeing of current outsiders (i.e. for example, by bringing Turkey into the club).
My answer is yes, if European leftwingers are to stick to their core principles on justice, fairness,
egalitarianism etc
Large numbers of low-income white southern Americans consistently vote against their
own economic interests. They vote to award tax breaks to wealthy people and corporations, to
cut unemployment benefits, to bust unions, to reward companies for outsourcing jobs, to resist
wage increases, to cut funding for health care for the poor, to cut Social Security and Medicare,
etc.
The same thing has happened in Mexico with neoliberal government after neoliberal government
being elected. There are many democratically elected neoliberal governments around the world.
Why might this be?
In the case of Mexico, because Peña Nieto's wife is a telenovela star. How cool is that?
It places Mexico in the same league as 1st world countries, such as France, with Carla Bruni.
Patrick 08.04.16 at 4:32 pm
To the guy who asked- poor white people keep voting Republican even though it screws them
because they genuinely believe that the country is best off when it encourages a culture of "by
the bootstraps" self improvement, hard work, and personal responsibility. They view taxing people
in order to give the money to the supposedly less fortunate as the anti thesis of this, because
it gives people an easy out that let's them avoid having to engage in the hard work needed to
live independently.
They see it as little different from letting your kid move back on after college and smoke
weed in your basement. They don't generally mind people being on unemployment transitionally,
but they're supposed to be a little embarrassed about it and get it over with as soon as possible.
They not only worry that increased government social spending will incentivize bad behavior, they
worry it will destroy the cultural values they see as vital to Americas past prosperity. They
tend to view claims about historic or systemic injustice necessitating collective remedy because
they view the world as one in which the vagaries of fate decree that some are born rich or poor,
and that success is in improving ones station relative to where one starts. Attempts at repairing
historical racial inequity read as cheating in that paradigm, and even as hostile since they can
easily observe white people who are just as poor or poorer than those who racial politics focuses
upon. Left wing insistence on borrowing the nastiest rhetoric of libertarians ("this guy is poor
because his ancestors couldn't get ahead because of historical racial injustice so we must help
him; your family couldn't get ahead either but that must have been your fault so you deserve it")
comes across as both antithetical to their values and as downright hostile within the values they
see around them.
All of this can be easily learned by just talking to them.
It's not a great world view. It fails to explain quite a lot. For example, they have literally
no way of explaining increased unemployment without positing either that everyone is getting too
lazy to work, or that the government screwed up the system somehow, possibly by making it too
expensive to do business in the US relative to other countries. and given their faith in the power
of hard work, they don't even blame sweatshops- they blame taxes and foreign subsidies.
I don't know exactly how to reach out to them, except that I can point to some things people
do that repulse them and say "stop doing that."
bruce wilder 08.04.16 at 5:50 pm
The extent to which "poor white people" vote against their alleged economic interests is
overblown. To a large extent, they do not vote at all nor is anyone or anything on the ballot
to represent their interests. And, yes, they are misinformed systematically by elites out to screw
them and they know this, but cannot do much to either clear up their own confusion or fight back.
The mirror image problem - of elites manipulating the system to screw the poor and merely
middle-class - is daily in the news. Both Presidential candidates have been implicated. So, who
do you recommend they vote for?
There is serious deficit of both trust and information among the poor. Poor whites hardly have
a monopoly; black misleadership is epidemic in our era of Cory Booker socialism.
bruce wilder 08.04.16 at 7:05 pm
Politics is founded on the complex social psychology of humans as social animals. We elevate
it from its irrational base in emotion to rationalized calculation or philosophy at our peril.
T 08.04.16 at 9:17 pm
@Layman
I think you're missing Patrick's point. These voters are switching from one Republican
to another. They've jettisoned Bush et. al. for Trump. These guys despise Bush.
They've figured out that the mainstream party is basically 30 years of affinity fraud.
So, is your argument is that Trump even more racist? That kind of goes against the whole point
of the OP. Not saying that race doesn't matter. Of course it does. But Trump has a 34% advantage
in non-college educated white men. It just isn't the South. Why does it have to be just race or
just class?
Ronan(rf) 08.04.16 at 10:35 pm
"I generally don't give a shit about polls so I have no "data" to evidence this claim, but
my guess is the majority of Trump's support comes from this broad middle"
My understanding is trumps support disproportionately comes from the small business owning
classes, Ie a demographic similar to the petite bourgeoisie who have often been heavily involved
in reactionary movements. This gets oversold as "working class" when class is defined by education
level rather than income.
This would make some sense as they are generally in economically unstable jobs, they tend to
be hostile to both big govt (regulations, freeloaders) and big business (unfair competition),
and while they (rhetorically at least) tend to value personal autonomy and self sufficiency ,
they generally sell into smaller, local markets, and so are particularly affected by local demographic
and cultural change , and decline. That's my speculation anyway.
T 08.05.16 at 3:12 pm
@patrick @layman
Patrick, you're right about the Trump demographic. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-working-class-support/
Layman - Why are these voters switching from Bush et al to Trump? Once again, Corey's whole
point is that there is very little difference between the racism of Trump and the mainstream party
since Nixon. Is Trump just more racist? Or are the policies of Trump resonating differently than
Bush for reasons other than race?
Are the folks that voted for the other candidates in the primary less racist so Trump supporters
are just the most racist among Republicans? Cruz less racist? You have to explain the shift within
the Republican party because that's what happened.
Anarcissie 08.06.16 at 3:00 pm
Faustusnotes 08.06.16 at 1:50 pm @ 270 -
Eric Berne, in The Structures and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups, proposed that among
the defining characteristics of a coherent group is an explicit boundary which determines whether
an individual is a member of the group or not. (If there is no boundary, nothing binds the assemblage
together; it is a crowd.) The boundary helps provide social cohesion and is so important that
groups will create one if necessary. Clearly, boundaries exclude as well as include, and someone
must play the role of outsider. While Berne's theories are a bit too nifty for me to love
them, I have observed a lot of the behaviors he predicts. If one wanted to be sociobiological,
it is not hard to hypothesize evolutionary pressures which could lead to this sort of behavior
being genetically programmed. If a group of humans, a notably combative primate, does not have
strong social cohesion, the war of all against all ensues and everybody dies. Common affections
alone do not seem to provide enough cohesion.
In an earlier but related theory, in the United States, immigrants from diverse European communities
which fought each other for centuries in Europe arrived and managed to now get along because they
had a major Other, the Negro, against whom to define themselves (as the White Race) and thus to
cohere sufficiently to get on with business. The Negro had the additional advantage of being at
first a powerless slave and later, although theoretically freed, was legally, politically, and
economically disabled - an outsider who could not fight back very effectively, nor run away. Even
so, the US almost split apart and there continue to be important class, ethnic, religious, and
regional conflicts. You can see how these two theories resonate.
It may be that we can't have communities without this dark side, although we might be able
to mitigate some of its destructive effects.
bruce wilde r 08.06.16 at 4:28 pm
I am somewhat suspicious of leaving dominating elites out of these stories of racism as an
organizing principle for political economy or (cultural) community.
Racism served the purposes of a slaveholding elite that organized political communities to
serve their own interests. (Or, vis a vis the Indians a land-grab or genocide.)
Racism serves as an organizing principle. Politically, in an oppressive and stultifying hierarchy
like the plantation South, racism not incidentally buys the loyalty of subalterns with ersatz
status. The ugly prejudices and resentful arrogance of working class whites is thus a component
of how racism works to organize a political community to serve a hegemonic master class. The business
end of racism, though, is the autarkic poverty imposed on the working communities: slaves, sharecroppers,
poor blacks, poor whites - bad schools, bad roads, politically disabled communities, predatory
institutions and authoritarian governments.
For a time, the balkanization of American political communities by race, religion and ethnicity
was an effective means to the dominance of an tiny elite with ties to an hegemonic community,
but it backfired. Dismantling that balkanization has left the country with a very low level of
social affiliation and thus a low capacity to organize resistance to elite depredations.
engels 08.07.16 at 1:02 am
But how did that slavery happen
Possible short answer: the level of technological development made slavery an efficient way
of exploiting labour. At a certain point those conditions changed and slavery became a drag on
further development and it was abolished, along with much of the racist ideology that legitimated
it.
Lupita 08.07.16 at 3:40 am
But how did that slavery happen
In Mesoamerica, all the natives were enslaved because they were conquered by the Spaniards.
Then, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas successfully argued before the Crown that the natives had souls
and, therefore, should be Christianized rather than enslaved. As Bruce Wilder states, this did
not serve the interests of the slaveholding elite, so the African slave trade began and there
was no Fray Bartolomé to argue their case.
It is interesting that while natives were enslaved, the Aztec aristocracy was shipped to Spain
to be presented in court and study Latin. This would not have happened if the Mesoamericans were
considered inferior (soulless) as a race. Furthermore, the Spaniards needed the local elite to
help them out with their empire and the Aztecs were used to slavery and worse. This whole story
can be understood without recurring to racism. The logic of empire suffices.
"... Not only are "[v]ulnerable Senate Republicans are starting to side with Donald Trump (and Democrats) by opposing President Obama's signature trade deal," as the Washington Post ..."
As the White House prepares for its final "
all-out push " to pass the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) during the upcoming
lame-duck session of Congress, lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle
are being made vulnerable due to growing opposition to the controversial, corporate-friendly
trade deal.
"[I]n 2016," the Guardian
reported on Saturday, "America's faltering faith in free trade has become
the most sensitive controversy in D.C."
Yet President Barack Obama "has refused to give up," wrote Guardian
journalists Dan Roberts and Ryan Felton, despite the fact that the 12-nation
TPP "suddenly faces a wall of political opposition among lawmakers who had,
not long ago, nearly set the giant deal in stone."
... ... ...
Not only are "[v]ulnerable Senate Republicans are starting to side with
Donald Trump (and Democrats) by opposing President Obama's signature trade deal,"
as the Washington Post
reported Thursday, but once-supportive Dems are also poised to jump ship.
To that end, in a column this week, Campaign for America's Future blogger
Dave Johnson
listed for readers "28 House Democrat targets...who-in spite of opposition
from most Democrats and hundreds of labor, consumer, LGBT, health, human rights,
faith, democracy and other civil organizations-voted for the 'fast-track' trade
promotion authority (TPA) bill that 'greased the skids' for the TPP by setting
up rigged rules that will help TPP pass."
Of the list that includes Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), Jared Polis
(Colo.), and Ron Kind (Wis.), Johnson wrote: "Let's get them on the record before
the election about whether they will vote for TPP after the election."
"You're living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58% of your youth is unemployed.
What the hell do you have to lose" by voting for Trump? the candidate asked. "At the end of four
years, I guarantee I will get over 95% of the African American vote."
The statement – highly unlikely given how poorly Republicans fare among black voters – continues
a theme the GOP presidential nominee has pounded this week as he courted African American voters.
He said Democrats take black voters for granted and have ignored their needs while governing cities
with large African American populations.
"America must reject the bigotry of Hillary Clinton, who sees communities of color only as votes,
not as human beings worthy of a better future," he said of his Democratic opponent.
... ... ...
Trump argued that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's policies on issues such as
immigration and refugee resettlement harm African Americans.
=== quote ===
It has recently become commonplace to argue that globalization can leave people behind, and that
this can have severe political consequences. Since 23 June, this has even become conventional
wisdom. While I welcome this belated acceptance of the blindingly obvious, I can't but help feeling
a little frustrated, since this has been self-evident for many years now. What we are seeing,
in part, is what happens to conventional wisdom when, all of a sudden, it finds that it can no
longer dismiss as irrelevant something that had been staring it in the face for a long time.
=== end of quote ==
This is not about "conventional wisdom". This is about the power of neoliberal propaganda,
the power of brainwashing and indoctrination of population via MSM, schools and universities.
And "all of a sudden, it finds that it can no longer dismiss as irrelevant something that had
been staring it in the face for a long time." also has nothing to do with conventional wisdom.
This is about the crisis of neoliberal ideology and especially Trotskyism part of it (neoliberalism
can be viewed as Trotskyism for the rich). The following integral elements of this ideology no
longer work well and are starting to cause the backlash:
1. High level of inequality as the explicit, desirable goal (which raises the productivity).
"Greed is good" or "Trickle down economics" -- redistribution of wealth up will create (via higher
productivity) enough scrapes for the lower classes, lifting all boats.
2. "Neoliberal rationality" when everything is a commodity that should be traded at specific
market. Human beings also are viewed as market actors with every field of activity seen as a specialized
market. Every entity (public or private, person, business, state) should be governed as a firm.
"Neoliberalism construes even non-wealth generating spheres-such as learning, dating, or exercising-in
market terms, submits them to market metrics, and governs them with market techniques and practices."
People are just " human capital" who must constantly tend to their own present and future market
value.
3. Extreme financialization or converting the economy into "casino capitalism" (under neoliberalism
everything is a marketable good, that is traded on explicit or implicit exchanges.
4. The idea of the global, USA dominated neoliberal empire and related "Permanent war for permanent
peace" -- wars for enlarging global neoliberal empire via crushing non-compliant regimes either
via color revolutions or via open military intervention.
5. Downgrading ordinary people to the role of commodity and creating three classes of citizens
(moochers, or Untermensch, "creative class" and top 0.1%), with the upper class (0.1% or "Masters
of the Universe") being above the law like the top level of "nomenklatura" was in the USSR.
6. "Downsizing" sovereignty of nations via international treaties like TPP, and making transnational
corporations the key political players, "the deciders" as W aptly said. Who decide about level
of immigration flows, minimal wages, tariffs, and other matters that previously were prerogative
of the state.
So after 36 (or more) years of dominance (which started with triumphal march of neoliberalism
in early 90th) the ideology entered "zombie state". That does not make it less dangerous but its
power over minds of the population started to evaporate. Far right ideologies now are filling
the vacuum, as with the discreditation of socialist ideology and decimation of "enlightened corporatism"
of the New Deal in the USA there is no other viable alternatives.
The same happened in late 1960th with the Communist ideology. It took 20 years for the USSR
to crash after that with the resulting splash of nationalism (which was the force that blow up
the USSR) and far right ideologies.
It remains to be seen whether the neoliberal US elite will fare better then Soviet nomenklatura
as challenges facing the USA are now far greater then challenges which the USSR faced at the time.
Among them is oil depletion which might be the final nail into the coffin of neoliberalism and,
specifically, the neoliberal globalization.
"... As the de facto test subjects for the inexorable media-fueled march of this ubiquitous global model, disparate groups worldwide have become the unwitting faces of revolt against inevitability. Anonymized behind the august facades of global financial institutions, neoliberal capitalism under TINA has produced political rage, confusion, panic and a worldwide search for scapegoats and alternatives across the political spectrum. ..."
"... McWorld cuts its destructive path under a self-promoting presumption of historic inevitability, because after more than four decades of the TINA narrative, the underlying rationale of market predestination is no longer economic. It is theological. ..."
"... Descriptions such as "free-market fundamentalism" and "market orthodoxy" are not mere figures of speech. They point to a deeper, technologically powered religious metamorphosis of capitalism that needs to be understood before a meaningful political response can be mounted. One does not have to be Christian, nor Catholic, to appreciate Pope Francis' warnings against the danger to Christian values from "a deified market" with its "globalization of indifference." The pope is explicitly acknowledging a new theology of capital whose core ethos runs counter to the values of both classical and religious humanism. ..."
"... Under the radically altered metaphysics of theologized capitalism, market outcomes are sacred and inevitable. Conversely, humanity and the natural world have been desacralized and defined as malleable forms of expendable and theoretically inexhaustible capital. Even life-sustaining ecosystems and individual human subjectivity are subsumed under a market rubric touted as historically preordained. ..."
"... Economic historian Karl Polanyi warned in 1944 that a false utopian belief in the ability of unfettered markets to produce naturally balanced outcomes would produce instead a dystopian "stark utopia." Today's political chaos represents a spontaneous and uncoordinated eruption of resistance against this encroaching sense of inevitable dystopianism. As Barber noted, what he refers to as "Jihad" is not a strictly Islamic phenomenon. It is localism, tribalism, particularism or sometimes classical republicanism taking a stand, often violently, acting as de facto social and political antibodies against the viral contagions of McWorld. ..."
"... The historically ordained march of theologized neoliberal capitalism depends for its continuation on a belief by individuals that they are powerless against putatively inevitable forces of market-driven globalization. ..."
"... One lesson nonetheless seems clear. The "power of the powerless" has been awakened globally. Whether this awakening will spark a movement towards equitable, ecologically sustainable democratic self-governance is an open question. ..."
In the wake of the June 23 Brexit vote, global media have bristled with headlines
declaring the Leave victory to be the latest sign of a historic
rejection of "globalization" by working-class voters on both sides of the
Atlantic. While there is an element of truth in this analysis, it misses the
deeper historical currents coursing beneath the dramatic headlines. If our politics
seem disordered at the moment, the blame lies not with globalization alone but
with the "There Is No Alternative" (TINA) philosophy of neoliberal market inevitability
that has driven it for nearly four decades.
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher introduced the TINA acronym to the
world in a 1980 policy speech that proclaimed
"There Is No Alternative" to a global neoliberal capitalist order. Thatcher's
vision for this new order was predicated on the market-as-god economic philosophy
she had distilled from the work of
Austrian School economists such as Friedrich Hayek and her own fundamentalist
Christian worldview. Western political life today has devolved into a series
of increasingly desperate and inchoate reactions against a sense of fatal historical
entrapment originally encoded in Thatcher's TINA credo of capitalist inevitability.
If this historical undercurrent is ignored, populist revolt will not produce
much-needed democratic reform. It will instead be exploited by fascistic nationalist
demagogues and turned into a dangerous search for political scapegoats.
The Rebellion Against Inevitability
Thatcher's formulation of neoliberal inevitability manifested itself in a
de facto policy cocktail of public sector budget cuts, privatization, financial
deregulation, tax cuts for the rich, globalization of capital flows and militarization
that were the hallmarks of her administration and a
template for the future of the world's developed economies. After the 1991
collapse of the Soviet Union, whose coercive state socialism represented capitalism's
last great power alternative, the underlying philosophy of economic inevitability
that informed TINA seemed like a prescient divination of cosmic design, with
giddy neoconservatives declaring the "end of history" and the triumph of
putatively democratic capitalism over all other historical alternatives.
Nearly four decades later, with neoliberalism having swept the globe in triumph
through a mix of technological innovation, exploitative financial engineering
and brute force, eclipsing its tenuous democratic underpinnings in the process,
disgraced British Prime Minister David Cameron maintained his devotion to TINA
right up to the moment of Brexit. In a 2013 speech delivered as his government
was preparing a
budget that proposed 40 percent cuts in social welfare spending , sweeping
privatization, wider war in Central Asia and continued austerity, he lamented
that "If there was another way, I would take it.
But there
is no alternative." Although they may want a change of makeup or clothes,
every G7 head of state heeds TINA's siren song of market inevitability.
As the de facto test subjects for the inexorable media-fueled march of
this ubiquitous global model, disparate groups worldwide have become the unwitting
faces of revolt against inevitability. Anonymized behind the august facades
of global financial institutions, neoliberal capitalism under TINA has produced
political rage, confusion, panic and a worldwide search for scapegoats and alternatives
across the political spectrum.
The members of ISIS have rejected the highest ideals of Islam in their search
for an alternative. Environmental activists attempt to counter the end-of-history
narrative at the heart of TINA with the scientific inevitability of global climate-induced
ecological catastrophe. Donald Trump offers a racial or foreign scapegoat for
every social and economic malady created by TINA, much like the far-right nationalist
parties emerging across Europe, while Bernie Sanders focuses on billionaires
and Wall Street. Leftist movements such as Podemos in Spain or Syriza in Greece
also embody attempted declarations of revolt against the narrative of inevitability,
as do the angry votes for Brexit in England and Wales.
Without judging or implying equality in the value of these varied expressions
of resistance, except to denounce the murderous ethos of ISIS and any other
call to violence or racism, it is clear that each offers seeming alternatives
to TINA's suffocating inevitability, and each attracts its own angry audience.
"Jihad" vs. "McWorld" and the New Theology of Capital
Benjamin Barber's 1992 essay and subsequent book, Jihad vs. McWorld
, is a better guide to the current politics of rage than the daily news
media. Barber describes a historic post-Soviet clash between the identity politics
of tribalism ("Jihad") and the forced financial and cultural integration of
corporate globalism ("McWorld").
McWorld is the financially integrated and omnipresent transnational order
of wired capitalism that has anointed itself the historic guardian of Western
civilization. It is viciously undemocratic in its pursuit of unrestricted profits
and violently punitive in response to any hint of economic apostasy. (See
Greece .) This new economic order offers the illusion of modernity with
its globally wired infrastructure and endless stream of consumerist spectacles,
but beneath the high-tech sheen, it is
spiritually empty , predicated on
permanent war ,
global poverty and is
destroying the biosphere .
McWorld cuts its destructive path under a self-promoting presumption
of historic inevitability, because after more than four decades of the TINA
narrative, the underlying rationale of market predestination is no longer economic.
It is theological. A historic transformation of market-based economic ideology
into theology underpins modern capitalism's instrumentalized view of human nature
and nature itself.
Descriptions such as
"free-market fundamentalism" and "market orthodoxy" are not mere figures
of speech. They point to a deeper, technologically powered religious metamorphosis
of capitalism that needs to be understood before a meaningful political response
can be mounted. One does not have to be Christian, nor Catholic, to appreciate
Pope Francis' warnings against the danger to Christian values from "a deified
market" with its "globalization of indifference." The pope is explicitly acknowledging
a new theology of capital whose core ethos runs counter to the values of both
classical and religious humanism.
Under the radically altered metaphysics of theologized capitalism, market
outcomes are sacred and inevitable. Conversely, humanity and the natural world
have been desacralized and defined as malleable forms of expendable and theoretically
inexhaustible capital. Even life-sustaining ecosystems and individual human
subjectivity are subsumed under a market rubric touted as historically preordained.
This is a crucial difference between capitalism today and capitalism even
50 years ago that is not only theological but apocalyptic in its refusal to
acknowledge limits. It has produced a global, social and economic order that
is increasingly feudal, while also connected via digital technologies.
Economic historian
Karl Polanyi warned in 1944 that a false utopian belief in the ability of
unfettered markets to produce naturally balanced outcomes would produce instead
a dystopian "stark utopia." Today's political chaos represents a spontaneous
and uncoordinated eruption of resistance against this encroaching sense of inevitable
dystopianism. As Barber noted, what he refers to as "Jihad" is not a strictly
Islamic phenomenon. It is localism, tribalism, particularism or sometimes classical
republicanism taking a stand, often violently, acting as de facto social and
political antibodies against the viral contagions of McWorld.
Pessimistic Optimism
The historically ordained march of theologized neoliberal capitalism
depends for its continuation on a belief by individuals that they are powerless
against putatively inevitable forces of market-driven globalization. It
is too early to know where the widely divergent outbreaks of resistance on display
in 2016 will lead, not least because they are uncoordinated, often self-contradictory
or profoundly undemocratic, and are arising in a maelstrom of confusion about
core causation.
One lesson nonetheless seems clear. The
"power of the powerless" has been awakened globally. Whether this awakening
will spark a movement towards equitable, ecologically sustainable democratic
self-governance is an open question. Many of today's leading political
theorists caution against an
outdated Enlightenment belief in progress and extol the
virtues of philosophic pessimism as a hedge against historically groundless
optimism. Amid today's fevered populist excitements triggered by a failure of
utopian faith in market inevitability, such cautionary thinking seems like sound
political advice. Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without
permission .
Michael Meurer is the founder of Meurer Education, a project offering classes
on the US political system in Latin American universities while partnering with
local education micro-projects to assist them with publicity and funding. Michael
is also president of Meurer Group & Associates, a strategic consultancy with
offices in Los Angeles and Denver.
"... It is fascinating that younger US neoliberals (e.g. Matthew Yglesias) are totally sold on the the positives of 'metrics', statistics, testing, etc, to the point where they ignore all the negatives of those approaches, but absolutely and utterly loathe being tracked, having the performance of their preferred policies and predictions analyzed, and called out on the failures thereof. Is sure seems to me that the campaign to quash the use of the US, Charles Peters version of neoliberal is part of the effort to avoid accountability for their actions. ..."
"... If "conservative" is to be a third way to the opposition of "reactionary" and "revolutionary", the "liberals" are a species of conservative - like all conservatives, seeking to preserve the existing order as far as this is possible, but appealing to reason, reason's high principles, and a practical politics of incremental reform and "inevitable" progress. The liberals disguise their affection for social and political hierarchy as a preference for "meritocracy" and place their faith in the powers of Reason and Science to discover Truth. ..."
"... Liberalism adopts nationalism as a vehicle for popular mobilization which conservatives can share and as an ideal of governance, the self-governing democratic nation-state with a liberal constitution. ..."
"... It wasn't Liberalism Triumphant that faced a challenge from fascism; it was the abject failures of Liberalism that created fascism. ..."
"... he Liberal projects to create liberal democratic nation-states ran aground in Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia between 1870 and 1910 and instead of gradual reform of the old order, Europe experienced catastrophic collapse, and Liberalism was ill-prepared to devise working governments and politics in the crisis that followed. ..."
"... What is called neoliberalism in American politics has a lot to do with New Deal liberalism running out of steam and simply not having a program after 1970. Some of that is circumstantial in a way - the first Oil Crisis, the breakup of Bretton Woods - but even those circumstances were arguably results of the earlier program's success. ..."
= = = I am actually honestly suggesting an intellectual exercise which, I think, might
be worth your (extremely valuable) time. I propose you rewrite this post without using the
word "neoliberalism" (or a synonym). = = =
It is fascinating that younger US neoliberals (e.g. Matthew Yglesias) are totally sold
on the the positives of 'metrics', statistics, testing, etc, to the point where they ignore all
the negatives of those approaches, but absolutely and utterly loathe being tracked, having the
performance of their preferred policies and predictions analyzed, and called out on the failures
thereof. Is sure seems to me that the campaign to quash the use of the US, Charles Peters version
of neoliberal is part of the effort to avoid accountability for their actions.
bruce wilder 09.03.16 at 7:47 pm
In the politics of antonyms, I suppose we are always going get ourselves confused.
Perhaps because of American usage of the root, liberal, to mean the mildly social democratic
New Deal liberal Democrat, with its traces of American Populism and American Progressivism, we
seem to want "liberal" to designate an ideology of the left, or at least, the centre-left. Maybe,
it is the tendency of historical liberals to embrace idealistic high principles in their contest
with reactionary claims for hereditary aristocracy and arbitrary authority.
If "conservative" is to be a third way to the opposition of "reactionary" and "revolutionary",
the "liberals" are a species of conservative - like all conservatives, seeking to preserve the
existing order as far as this is possible, but appealing to reason, reason's high principles,
and a practical politics of incremental reform and "inevitable" progress. The liberals disguise
their affection for social and political hierarchy as a preference for "meritocracy" and place
their faith in the powers of Reason and Science to discover Truth.
All of that is by way of preface to a thumbnail history of modern political ideology different
from the one presented by Will G-R.
Modern political ideology is a by-product of the Enlightenment and the resulting imperative
to find a basis and purpose for political Authority in Reason, and apply Reason to the design
of political and social institutions.
Liberalism doesn't so much defeat conservatism as invent conservatism as an alternative to
purely reactionary politics. The notion of an "inevitable progress" allows liberals to reconcile
both themselves and their reactionary opponents to practical reality with incremental reform.
Political paranoia and rhetoric are turned toward thinking about constitutional design.
Mobilizing mass support and channeling popular discontents is a source of deep ambivalence
and risk for liberals and liberalism. Popular democracy can quickly become noisy and vulgar, the
proliferation of ideas and conflicting interests paralyzing. Inventing a conservatism that competes
with the liberals, but also mobilizes mass support and channels popular discontent, puts bounds
on "normal" politics.
Liberalism adopts nationalism as a vehicle for popular mobilization which conservatives
can share and as an ideal of governance, the self-governing democratic nation-state with a liberal
constitution.
I would put the challenges to liberalism from the left and right well behind in precedence
the critical failures and near-failures of liberalism in actual governance.
Liberalism failed abjectly to bring about a constitutional monarchy in France during the first
decade of the French Revolution, or a functioning deliberative assembly or religious toleration
or even to resolve the problems of state finance and legal administration that destroyed the ancient
regime. In the end, the solution was found in Napoleon Bonaparte, a precedent that would arguably
inspire the fascism of dictators and vulgar nationalism, beginning with Napoleon's nephew fifty
years later.
It wasn't Liberalism Triumphant that faced a challenge from fascism; it was the abject
failures of Liberalism that created fascism. And, this was especially true in the wake of
World War I, which many have argued persuasively was Liberalism's greatest and most catastrophic
failure. T he Liberal projects to create liberal democratic nation-states ran aground in Germany,
Austria-Hungary and Russia between 1870 and 1910 and instead of gradual reform of the old order,
Europe experienced catastrophic collapse, and Liberalism was ill-prepared to devise working governments
and politics in the crisis that followed.
If liberals invented conservatism, it seems to me that would-be socialists were at pains to
re-invent liberalism, and they did it several times going in radically different directions, but
always from a base in the basic liberal idea of rationalizing authority. A significant thread
in socialism adopted incremental progress and socialist ideas became liberal and conservative
means for taming popular discontent in an increasingly urban society.
Where and when liberalism actually was triumphant, both the range of liberal views and the
range of interests presenting a liberal front became too broad for a stable politics. Think about
the Liberal Party landslide of 1906, which eventually gave rise to the Labour Party in its role
of Left Party in the British two-party system. Or FDR's landslide in 1936, which played a pivotal
role in the march of the Southern Democrats to the Right. Or the emergence of the Liberal Consensus
in American politics in the late 1950s.
What is called neoliberalism in American politics has a lot to do with New Deal liberalism
running out of steam and simply not having a program after 1970. Some of that is circumstantial
in a way - the first Oil Crisis, the breakup of Bretton Woods - but even those circumstances were
arguably results of the earlier program's success.
It is almost a rote reaction to talk about the Republican's Southern Strategy, but they didn't
invent the crime wave that enveloped the country in the late 1960s or the riots that followed
the enactment of Civil Rights legislation.
Will G-R's "As soon [as] liberalism feels it can plausibly claim to have . . .overcome the
socialist and fascist challenges [liberals] are empowered to act as if liberalism's adaptive response
to the socialist and fascist challenges was never necessary in the first place - bye bye welfare
state, hello neoliberalism" doesn't seem to me to concede enough to Clinton and Blair entrepreneurially
inventing a popular politics in response to Reagan and Thatcher, after the actual failures
of an older model of social democratic programs and populist politics on its behalf.
I write more about this
over at
my blog (in a somewhat different context).
John Quiggin 09.04.16 at 6:57 am
RW @113 I wrote a whole book using "market liberalism" instead of "neoliberalism", since I wanted
a term more neutral and less pejorative. So, going back to "neoliberalism" was something I did
advisedly. You say
The word is abstract and has completely different meanings west and east of the Atlantic. In
the USA it refers to weak tea center leftisms. In Europe to hard core liberalism.
Well, yes. That's precisely why I've used the term, introduced the hard/soft distinction and explained
the history. The core point is that, despite their differences soft (US meaning) and hard (European
meaning) neoliberalism share crucial aspects of their history, theoretical foundations and policy
implications.
=== quote ===
Neoliberalism is an ideology of market fundamentalism based on deception that promotes "markets"
as a universal solution for all human problems in order to hide establishment of neo-fascist regime
(pioneered by Pinochet in Chile), where militarized government functions are limited to external
aggression and suppression of population within the country (often via establishing National Security
State using "terrorists" threat) and corporations are the only "first class" political players.
Like in classic corporatism, corporations are above the law and can rule the country as they see
fit, using political parties for the legitimatization of the regime.
The key difference with classic fascism is that instead of political dominance of the corporations
of particular nation, those corporations are now transnational and states, including the USA are
just enforcers of the will of transnational corporations on the population. Economic or "soft"
methods of enforcement such as debt slavery and control of employment are preferred to brute force
enforcement. At the same time police is militarized and due to technological achievements the
level of surveillance surpasses the level achieved in Eastern Germany.
Like with bolshevism in the USSR before, high, almost always hysterical, level of neoliberal
propaganda and scapegoating of "enemies" as well as the concept of "permanent war for permanent
peace" are used to suppress the protest against the wealth redistribution up (which is the key
principle of neoliberalism) and to decimate organized labor.
Multiple definitions of neoliberalism were proposed. Three major attempts to define this social
system were made:
Definitions stemming from the concept of "casino capitalism"
Definitions stemming from the concept of Washington consensus
Definitions stemming from the idea that Neoliberalism is Trotskyism for the rich. This
idea has two major variations:
Definitions stemming from Professor Wendy Brown's concept of Neoliberal rationality
which developed the concept of Inverted Totalitarism of Sheldon Wolin
Definitions stemming Professor Sheldon Wolin's older concept of Inverted Totalitarism
- "the heavy statism forging the novel fusions of economic with political power that he
took to be poisoning democracy at its root." (Sheldon Wolin and Inverted Totalitarianism
Common Dreams )
The first two are the most popular.
likbez 09.04.16 at 5:03 pm
bruce,
@117
Thanks for your post. It contains several important ideas:
"It wasn't Liberalism Triumphant that faced a challenge from fascism; it was the abject failures
of Liberalism that created fascism."
"What is called neoliberalism in American politics has a lot to do with New Deal liberalism
running out of steam and simply not having a program after 1970. Some of that is circumstantial
in a way - the first Oil Crisis, the breakup of Bretton Woods - but even those circumstances were
arguably results of the earlier program's success."
Moreover as Will G-R noted:
"neoliberalism will be every bit the wellspring of fascism that old-school liberalism was."
Failure of neoliberalism revives neofascist, far right movements. That's what the rise of far
right movements in Europe now demonstrates pretty vividly.
"... As you note, its not clear that we in the US need ANY immigration; it's hard to claim that 300 million people is not enough. If we choose to allow immigration, it should be few and strongly selective, i.e. the cream of the crop and selected to benefit the US. ..."
"... But it benefits the Mandarin class, so opposition or even debate been defined by them as heresy. It appears that the non-Mandarin class, who has to live with the downsides, is staring to reject this orthodoxy. ..."
"... We import, legally, 50,000 people (plus families IIRC) via a random visa lottery. This verges on insanity. ..."
"... H1-B applicants require a BA or equivalent, but are then selected by lottery. Hardly selected specifically for the needs of the country. In 2015, 6 of the top 10 firms by number of applications approved were Indian IT firms (i.e. outsourcing. I'm sure you are aware of the long term and recent complaints concerning direct replacement of US citizens by these workers. ..."
"... I find the system you describe which relies, by design, on perpetually importing new waves of a helot underclass to be both immoral and unsustainable. ..."
It's remarkable how rarely the immigration debate is prefaced with an explicit
prior that we should give absolute priority to what is best for the receiving
county and their citizens.
As you note, its not clear that we in the US need ANY immigration;
it's hard to claim that 300 million people is not enough. If we choose to
allow immigration, it should be few and strongly selective, i.e. the cream
of the crop and selected to benefit the US.
Its not credible to complain about low employment/population ratios,
limited wage pressures, high poverty rates, overburdened social safety nets,
limited prospects for those on the left side of the bell curve, and inequality,
and simultaneously support more immigration of the poor, unskilled, or difficult
to assimilate.
But it benefits the Mandarin class, so opposition or even debate
been defined by them as heresy. It appears that the non-Mandarin class,
who has to live with the downsides, is staring to reject this orthodoxy.
We import, legally, 50,000 people (plus families IIRC) via a random
visa lottery. This verges on insanity.
H1-B applicants require a BA or equivalent, but are then selected
by lottery. Hardly selected specifically for the needs of the country. In
2015, 6 of the top 10 firms by number of applications approved were Indian
IT firms (i.e. outsourcing. I'm sure you are aware of the long term and
recent complaints concerning direct replacement of US citizens by these
workers.
I'm in favor of significant penalties for employing illegal workers.
Yes lets debate who is going to take care of washing and changing adult
diapers on 80 million baby boomers as they deteriorate towards their final
resting place, and who is going to dig the holes if we have deported all
those who know which end of a shovel is the business end.
"... Neoliberals use the term "alt-right" as shorthand for those who don't drink the Clinton neocon Kool-Aid. ..."
"... The bigotry of warmongering neoliberals against anyone who disagrees. ..."
"... The alt.* hierarchy is a major class of newsgroups in Usenet, containing all newsgroups whose name begins with "alt.", organized hierarchically. The alt.* hierarchy is not confined to newsgroups of any specific subject or type, although in practice more formally organized groups tend not to occur in alt.*. ... (Wikipedia) ..."
"... It basically was like snorting a line of Cocaine. We keep on going back and it is getting less and less pleasurable. ..."
"... The final stage will probably be the stripping of all national function with the economy. Much like the free market intellectuals want. This will finally expose it. White's will know. The government they were taught to hate, liquidated, instead a new market state replaced. Their democracy decayed and Capitalists running international slave states instead pushing less product for their indentured servitude. Then we are right back to Bismark and Wells. ..."
The burgeoning neolib dog whistle "alt-right" is short for "a$$hole
who thinks Clinton should go to jail for 1000 times the misconduct that
would get that a$$hole 10 years hard time".
Neoliberals use the term "alt-right" as shorthand for those who don't
drink the Clinton neocon Kool-Aid.
The bigotry of warmongering neoliberals against anyone who disagrees.
Fred C. Dobbs -> anne...
(So-called 'alt groups' have been around
since the earliest days of the internet.)
The alt.* hierarchy is a major class of newsgroups in Usenet, containing
all newsgroups whose name begins with "alt.", organized hierarchically.
The alt.* hierarchy is not confined to newsgroups of any specific subject
or type, although in practice more formally organized groups tend not to
occur in alt.*. ... (Wikipedia)
Ben Groves :
There are a lot of Jews in the "Alt-Right"(aka, a Spencer invented term,
that they need to at least admit). Most have ties to neo-conservatism in
their past outside the desperate paleo types hanging on. To me, they are
"racist", but lets face it, the gentile left can just be as racist and historically,
more dangerous. Trying to be reactionary is just not a neo-liberal thing.
Fabians were quite racist as HG Wells outright said he was. Their vision
of globalism was a Eurocentric world of socialism and those 3rd world "brownies"
were setting socialism back and needed it to be enforced on them. The Nazi's
took Fabian economics and that dream to the nadir.
The problem is, the 'Alt-Right' is so upfront about it with a typical
neo-liberal economic plan. Even their "nationalism" has a * by it. Economic
Nationalism isn't just about trade deals, but a organic, cohesive flow to
the nation. Being in business isn't about stuffing your pockets, it is about
serving your country and indeed, stuff like the Epi-pen price hikes would
be considered treason. You would lower your prices or off with your head.
This, is a area where the "Alt-Right" doesn't want to do. They are not true
connies in the Bismark-ian sense. They want a nominal judeo-christianity
inside a classically liberal mindset of market expansion where white's pull
the strings. That is simply dialectical conflict. Who invented capitalism?
It was Sephardic Jews(say, unlike Communism which attracted Ashkenazi much
to Herr Weitling chagrin). Modern materialism is all things like Trump really
care about. So do his handlers like Spencer. Without the Jews, there is
no capitalism period. They financed it through several different methods
since the 1600's. Even the American Revolution was financed by them and
the founders absolutely knew where the bread was buttered. The Great Depression
was really the death rattle of the House of Rothschild and its British Empire(with
the Federal Reserve pushing on the string to completely destroy them, but
that is another post for another time). Capitalism as a system does not
work and never has worked.
It basically was like snorting a line of Cocaine. We keep on going
back and it is getting less and less pleasurable.
The final stage will probably be the stripping of all national function
with the economy. Much like the free market intellectuals want. This will
finally expose it. White's will know. The government they were taught to
hate, liquidated, instead a new market state replaced. Their democracy decayed
and Capitalists running international slave states instead pushing less
product for their indentured servitude. Then we are right back to Bismark
and Wells.
ilsm -> Ben Groves, -1
"gentile left" bigotry is founded against po' white folk who are not as
educated in the logical fallacies the limo libruls use to continue plundering
them.
Everyone is so busy calling out Trumpistas they do not see their own
"inclusive frailty".
The immigration issue is the democrats' effort to distract Donald Trump's
outreach to the black community . . .
Mr. Trump has provided enough information on immigration. He has to put
the press and everyone else on notice: "He said enough for now!!!" The "flip-flop"
issue is minor at this point.
What's important is the "black vote" as his only logical road to the
White House. Mr. Trump must make it clear to the black community that he
needs their help.
He has little time and should immediately apologize for the Republican
Party's mistake of accepting the democrats' decades of influence over the
black community.
He must confront the Democratic Party's decades of neglect of minorities
(and the poor). What's "historical" about Donald Trump" campaign is he actually
represents "racial unity."
Those supporting Trump have the common bond of "poverty." Like President
Johnson he needs to use "poverty" to overcome a preceding president's popularity.
He has as his political base "poor whites." His efforts now must focus on
"winning" the support of "poor blacks."
He has "ONE JOB" as this point if he wants to be president . . . He must
make the black community understand "the opportunity presented."
Mr. Trump must go directly to the black community (not the black establishment
political brokers) and make things "clear" that a "VOTE" for Trump is the
black community's only available opportunity for racial equality.
Likewise, Mr. Trump needs to have his "poor white" political base understand
the importance of "moving past" those things that have separated us. Mr.
Trump needs "racial unity" rallies from this point forward.
The immigration issue is how he won the primaries and it is the issue that
has made him popular with his fans. It is typically the focus of his speeches.
How can you suggest that the democrats are attempting to distract anyone
on immigration? Trump is the one who talks about it constantly.
"... Your article fails to make a clear enough distinction between legal and illegal immigration. It suggests Trump is anti-immigration and anti-immigrants - which is not the case. This is a common error in the debate. ..."
"... You are so silly. How many times has Hillary changed her mind on immigration? In fact, I am sure all of you recall a time when she suggested a fence and deportation. ..."
"... Here's Hillary in favor of a wall and deportations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DckY2dRFtxc ..."
"... Hungary and Norway way are building walls..Israel has several ..Mexico put up one for the Guatemalen exodus..in the mean time Hillarys plan for improving Jobs for Black youth is importing tens of thousand more ..."
"... One of the prime reasons for the increase in illegal immigration from Mexico was NAFTA, which ended up displacing hundreds of thousands of farm owners and millions of farm workers due to NAFTA regulations. ..."
The immigration issue is the democrats' effort to distract Donald Trump's
outreach to the black community . . .
Mr. Trump has provided enough information on immigration. He has to put
the press and everyone else on notice: "He said enough for now!!!" The "flip-flop"
issue is minor at this point.
What's important is the "black vote" as his only logical road to the
White House. Mr. Trump must make it clear to the black community that he
needs their help.
He has little time and should immediately apologize for the Republican
Party's mistake of accepting the democrats' decades of influence over the
black community.
He must confront the Democratic Party's decades of neglect of minorities
(and the poor). What's "historical" about Donald Trump" campaign is he actually
represents "racial unity."
Those supporting Trump have the common bond of "poverty." Like President
Johnson he needs to use "poverty" to overcome a preceding president's popularity.
He has as his political base "poor whites." His efforts now must focus on
"winning" the support of "poor blacks."
He has "ONE JOB" as this point if he wants to be president . . . He must
make the black community understand "the opportunity presented."
Mr. Trump must go directly to the black community (not the black establishment
political brokers) and make things "clear" that a "VOTE" for Trump is the
black community's only available opportunity for racial equality.
Likewise, Mr. Trump needs to have his "poor white" political base understand
the importance of "moving past" those things that have separated us. Mr.
Trump needs "racial unity" rallies from this point forward.
Your article fails to make a clear enough distinction between legal
and illegal immigration. It suggests Trump is anti-immigration and
anti-immigrants - which is not the case. This is a common error in the
debate.
You are so silly.
How many times has Hillary changed her mind on immigration? In fact, I am sure all of you recall a time when she suggested a fence
and deportation.
Hungary and Norway way are building walls..Israel has several ..Mexico put
up one for the Guatemalen exodus..in the mean time Hillarys plan for improving
Jobs for Black youth is importing tens of thousand more .
If they are so good why doesn't Europe take them for us..
What gets lost in all of this how the USA allowed Mexico to spiral into
the corrupt, poor country they currently are.
It's time for the US to get firm with Mexico and help them get on their
feet - which their corrupt leaders will hate, but tough shit. There is no
excuse to border the United States of America and have such poor living
standards for their people.
Although not ideal, a wall is a very direct message to Mexico's govt
that the US will not tolerate their corrupt government and drug cartels.
What's wrong with Trump changing his stance? He listened to his supporters
(most of whom think some type of amnesty is appropriate) and tweaked his
immigration plan.. *gasp*
It seems like a mature, reasonable move from an intelligent strong leader
- which Trump is.
He will be an excellent President.
One of the prime reasons for the increase in illegal immigration from Mexico
was NAFTA, which ended up displacing hundreds of thousands of farm owners
and millions of farm workers due to NAFTA regulations.
The trouble with both candidates is the Believability Factor. No mater
what they may say, it's doubtful they will do what they say. There needs
to be election laws that make ignoring campaign 'promises' once in office
impeachable.
Trump's original platform of deporting 11 million illegals isn't doable.
That would involve round-ups and incarcerations last seen in Nazi Germany.
I don't think the American people at large would stand for that.
So the spiel has been morphing into something more palatable to Joe Average.
He keeps trying to placate his base by having his surrogates assure them
that nothing has changed but it obviously has.
"... the one thing about intelligence is we should stand for truth to power-meaning we should always say what we believe, and lay the facts out, lay the tough right facts out and then you let the policymakers make the decisions that they have to make. What has happened in the last 10 years, frankly in the last 8 years, is we have seen a level of dishonesty coming out of both the policy and the decision making structure with the American people." ..."
"... Because of the President's and the Secretary of State's-among other officials in the Obama administration-unwillingness to hear all the facts, including ones they needed to but didn't want to hear, Flynn says the President has presented a narrative to the American people about the war on terrorism and radical Islamism that is simply inaccurate. ..."
"... The intelligence process starts really at the ground level, but the priorities-the priorities, Matt, for an intelligence system and the intelligence community in our country and that's the President of the United States. ..."
"... "That means infiltrating into refugee populations, that means conducting of smart information operations," Flynn said. "Most people don't know but these guys have very sophisticated information operations going on, with publications of magazines and websites. They have leaders in their groups that have thousands and thousands-I'm talking tens of thousands of followers on social media and Instagram and Twitter. ..."
"... Then I call for in the book a new 21st century alliance. This is where we really come to how we take the Arab community to task on how they plan to fix this cancerous disease inside of their own body that has metastasized and grown exponentially over the last five or six years and certainly actually over the last eight to 10 years. So it's one thing to go after the ideology, just like we went after Communism for 40 years ..."
"... He is a street savvy strategic leader type person who has a vision for this country, and he's turned it into this phrase of 'Make America Great Again.'" ..."
NEW YORK CITY, New York - Retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, who served for more than two years as
the director of President Barack Obama's Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), leveled explosive charges
against the President and his former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in an exclusive hour-long
interview with Breitbart News Daily on Friday.
Specifically, during an exclusive interview about his book
The Field of Fight , Flynn said that Obama and Clinton were not interested in hearing
intelligence that did not fit their "happy talk" narrative about the Middle East. In fact, he alleged
the administration actively scrubbed training manuals and purged from the military ranks any thinking
about the concept of radical Islamism. Flynn argued that this effort by Obama, Clinton and others
to reduce the intelligence community to gathering only facts that the senior administration officials
wanted to hear-rather than what they needed to hear-helped the enemy fester and grow, while weakening
the United States on the world stage.
"The administration has basically denied the fact that we have this problem with 'Radical Islamists,'"
Flynn said during the interview. "And this is a very vicious, barbaric enemy and I recognize in the
book that there is an alliance of countries that are dedicated basically against our way of life
and they support different groups in the Islamic movement, principally the Islamic State and formerly
Al Qaeda-although Al Qaeda still exists. The administration denied the fact that this even existed
and then told those of us in the government to basically excise the phrase 'radical Islamism' out
of our entire culture, out of our training manuals, everything. That was a big argument I had internally
and I talked a little bit about it in the Senate testimony that I gave two years back."
Later in the interview, Flynn was even more specific, calling out Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama
for not wanting to hear all the facts about what was happening in the Middle East-only some of them.
"There's a narrative that the President and his team, including Hillary Clinton, wanted to
hear-instead of having the tough news or the bad news if you will that they needed to hear," Flynn
said. "Now, there's a big difference. And the one thing about intelligence is we should stand
for truth to power-meaning we should always say what we believe, and lay the facts out, lay the
tough right facts out and then you let the policymakers make the decisions that they have to make.
What has happened in the last 10 years, frankly in the last 8 years, is we have seen a level of
dishonesty coming out of both the policy and the decision making structure with the American people."
Because of the President's and the Secretary of State's-among other officials in the Obama
administration-unwillingness to hear all the facts, including ones they needed to but didn't want
to hear, Flynn says the President has presented a narrative to the American people about the war
on terrorism and radical Islamism that is simply inaccurate.
"The President has said they're jayvee, they're on the run, they're not that strong, what difference
does it make what we call-that's being totally dishonest with the American public," Flynn said.
"There's one thing that Americans are, and we're tough, resilient people but we have to be told
the truth. I think what a lot of this is, in fact what I know a lot of it is. It's a lot of happy
talk from a President who did not meet the narrative of his political ideology or his political
decision-making process to take our country in a completely different direction and frankly that's
why I'm sitting here talking to you here today, Matt. The intelligence process starts really
at the ground level, but the priorities-the priorities, Matt, for an intelligence system and the
intelligence community in our country and that's the President of the United States. "
The Obama administration's refusal to take these threats seriously and his, Flynn said, "has allowed
an enemy that is using very smart, savvy means to impact our way of life."
"That means infiltrating into refugee populations, that means conducting of smart information
operations," Flynn said. "Most people don't know but these guys have very sophisticated information
operations going on, with publications of magazines and websites. They have leaders in their groups
that have thousands and thousands-I'm talking tens of thousands of followers on social media and
Instagram and Twitter. So we are not even allowed to go after these kinds of things right
now. This is the problem-it's a big problem. In fact, if we don't change this we're going to see
this strengthening in our homeland."
Flynn also laid out how to defeat radical Islamism, a plan he has stated repeatedly that the Obama
Administration has ignored.
"The very first thing is we have to clearly define the enemy and we have to get our own house
in order, which this administration has not done," Flynn said. "We have to figure out how are
we going to organize ourselves. Then I call for in the book a new 21st century alliance. This
is where we really come to how we take the Arab community to task on how they plan to fix this
cancerous disease inside of their own body that has metastasized and grown exponentially over
the last five or six years and certainly actually over the last eight to 10 years. So it's one
thing to go after the ideology, just like we went after Communism for 40 years , but I also
say in the book we have to crush this enemy wherever they exist. We cannot allow them to have
any safe haven. We are dancing around the sort of head of a pin, when we know these guys are in
certain places around the world and our military is not allowed to go in there and get them. The
'mother may I' has to go all the way back up to the White House."
He said the fight has to be very similar to how the United States, over decades, thoroughly degraded
Communism on the world stage.
"There's no enemy that's unbeatable," Flynn said. "We can beat any enemy. We put our minds
to it, we decide to do that, we can beat any enemy. And there's no ideology in the world that's
better than the American ideology. We should not allow, because they mask themselves behind the
religion of Islam, we should not allow our ideology, our way of life, our system of principles,
our values that are based on a Judeo-Christian set that comes right out of our Constitution-we
should not fear that. In fact, we should fight those that try to impose a different way of life
on us. That's what we did against the Nazis, that's what we did against the Communists for the
better part of a half a century-in fact, more than half a century. Now we are dealing with another
Ism, and that's radical Islamism, and we're going to have to fight it-and we're going to be fighting
it for some time. But tactically we can defeat this enemy quickly. Then what we have to do is
we have to fight the ideology, and we can do that diplomatically, politically, informationally
and we can do that in very, very smart ways much greater than we're doing right now."
Flynn is a lifelong Democrat, and again served in this senior Obama administration position for
more than two years, but is now publicly supporting Republican nominee Donald Trump for president.
He spoke at the Republican National Convention in support of Trump, and has been publicly speaking
out in favor of the GOP nominee for some time now.
"My role as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency-that's almost a 20,000 person organization
in 140 plus countries around the world," Flynn said. "I was also the senior military and intelligence
officer not only for the Defense Department but for the country. So I mean I was basically told
'hey, you know what, what you're saying we don't like. So you're out.' To Donald Trump, though,
and I haven't known him that long but I met him a year ago-in fact a year ago this month. The
conversation that we had, which was an amazing conversation, I found a guy that like I to say,
'he gets it.' He gets it. He is a street savvy strategic leader type person who has a vision
for this country, and he's turned it into this phrase of 'Make America Great Again.'"
... ... ...
LISTEN TO LT. GEN. MICHAEL FLYNN ON BREITBART NEWS DAILY ON SIRIUSXM 125 THE PATRIOT CHANNEL:
It is unclear to what extent Trump represents a threat to Washington establishment and how easily
or difficult it would be to co-opt him. In any case "deep state" will stay in place, so the capabilities
of POTUS are limited by the fact of its existence. But comments to the article are great !
Notable quotes:
"... It goes all the way back to the collapse of the old Soviet Union and the elder Bush's historically foolish decision to invade the Persian Gulf in February 1991. The latter stopped dead in its tracks the first genuine opportunity for peace the people of the world had been afforded since August 1914. ..."
"... Instead, it reprieved the fading remnants of the military-industrial-congressional complex, the neocon interventionist camp and Washington's legions of cold war apparatchiks. All of the foregoing would have been otherwise consigned to the dust bin of history. ..."
"... And most certainly, this lamentable turn to the War Party's disastrous reign had nothing to do with oil security or economic prosperity in America. The cure for high oil is always and everywhere high oil prices, not the Fifth Fleet. ..."
"... It is the bombs, drones, cruise missiles and brutal occupations of Muslim lands unleashed by the War Party that has actually fostered the massive blowback and radical jidhadism rampant today in the middle east and beyond. ..."
"... Indeed, prior to 1991 Bin Laden and his mujahedeen, who had been trained and armed by the CIA and heralded in the west for their help in defeating purportedly godless communism in Afghanistan, had not declaimed against American liberty, opulence and decadence. They did not come to attack our way of life as the neocon propagandists have so speciously claimed. Misguided and despicable as their attack was, it was motivated by revenge and religious fanaticism that had never previously been directed against the American people. That is, not until the Washington War Party decided to intervene in the Persian Gulf in 1991. ..."
"... Not long thereafter in 1996, these same neocon warmongers produced for newly elected Israeli prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu, the infamous document called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy For Securing The Realm". ..."
"... There were several crucial moments along the way-–the first being the sacking of Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill by the White House praetorian guard led by Karl Rove. His sin was having the audacity to say that the Afghan and Iraqi wars were going to cost trillions, and that stiff tax increases and painful entitlements cuts were the only way to make ends meet. ..."
"... The great Dwight Eisenhower left office at the height of the cold war in 1961, warning the American public about the insatiable appetites for budgets and war of the military industrial complex. At the same time, however, his final budget attested to his conviction that $450 billion in today's purchasing power (2015 $) was enough to fund the Pentagon, foreign aid and security assistance and the needs of veterans of past wars. ..."
"... Thanks to the GOP War Party and neocons we are spending more than double that amount-upwards of $900 billion-–for those same purposes today. Yet unlike the nuclear threat posed by the Soviet Union at the peak of its industrial vigor, we no longer have any industrial state enemy left on the planet; we have appropriately been fired as the world's policeman and have no need for Washington's far flung imperium of bases and naval and air power projection; and would not even be confronted with the domestic policing challenges posed by highly limited and episodic homeland terrorist tempests had Washington not turned Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and others into failed states and economic rubble. ..."
"... But here's the thing. While spending a lifetime as a real estate speculator and self-created celebrity, The Donald apparently did not have time to get mis-educated by the Council On Foreign Relations or to hob knob with the GOP inner circle in Washington and the special interest group racketeers they coddle. ..."
"... But a nation tumbling into financial and fiscal crisis will welcome the War Party purge that Trump would surely undertake. He didn't allow the self-serving busy-bodies and fools who inhabit the Council on Foreign Relations to dupe him into believing that Putin is a horrible threat; or that the real estate on the eastern edge of the non-state of the Ukraine, which has always been either a de jure or de facto part of Russia, was any of our business. Likewise, he has gotten it totally right with respect to the sectarian and tribal wars of Syria and Iraq and Hillary's feckless destruction of a stable regime in Libya. ..."
"... Besides, unlike the boy Senator from Florida who wants to be President so he can play with guns, tanks, ships and bombs, The Donald has indicated no intention of tearing up the agreement on day one in office. ..."
"... Most importantly, The Donald has essentially proclaimed the obvious. Namely, that the cold war is over and that the American taxpayers have no business subsidizing obsolete relics like NATO and ground forces in South Korea and Japan. ..."
"... At the end of the day, the reason that the neocons are apoplectic is that Trump would restore the 1991 status quo ante. The nation's self-proclaimed greatest deal-maker might even take a leaf out of Warren G. Harding's playbook and negotiate sweeping disarmament agreements in a world where governments everywhere are on the verge of fiscal bankruptcy. ..."
"... Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.... A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass: he is actually ill. H. L. Mencken ..."
"... Great read Mr. Stockman, and I can only hope you are right, that Super Tuesday really triggers the demise of the Military Industrial Complex, although I seriously doubt it can be removed, replaced or dismantled that easily. ..."
"... The roots of the neocons and neolibs go so deep - multi-generational, multi-faceted, and removing their control will require Open Regime Surgery, something I don't see anyone capable of performing quite yet. Surely they are going to want their shot at being the first rulers to control the entire earth - just before the energy runs out and the planet collapses in on itself due to being hollowed out :) ..."
"... David, you are missing some fairly strong evidence that 911 was an inside job. ..."
"... As an engineer, I find it impossible to fathom that building 7, not hit by any planes and only suffering minor fires, would fall straight into its own footprint at FREEFALL SPEED. This is exactly the sort of thing you would expect ONLY from a controlled demolition. ..."
"... I think that the neocons, in their meetings regarding the "Project for a New American Century" (PNAC), needed 911 to foment, foster and facilitate a push of patriotic pathos of the American people to go to war. ..."
"... So so true. Of course this is an abridged version of history. You speak the truth to power. This never makes the news or any of the debate tables with any of the mainstream media. Why...because the media is owned by the corporations that profit from war. ..."
"... There is no more liberal media unless you watch the Young Turks. With regards to Iran. There is more to their history than...CIA's coup of 1953. From my memory the British controlled the Iranian oilfields up until 1951 when they were nationalized. Why...because the British BP oil company was cheating Iran on the profit sharing deal. So the British are out. It is 1953 and the Americans want in. 1953 the Anglo-American Coup happened and the the profit sharing began again with American oil companies with the Shaw (Shell-mobil-Exxon..I can't remember which one) Of course the American oil companies breached the deal and shorted the POS Shah who then shorted his nation. Rulers forget, poor people are pissed off people. So all this "it was the CIA" crap is baloney...They were tools for corporate America. Don't kid yourself, it was about the oil. IMO ..."
"... As Stockman points out, it seems that Washington was set on then neocon automatic pilot. The policy of the Democrats was basically a continuation of a policy started prior to Reagan presidency. Both Obama and Hillary Clinton are involved in regime change plans when we thought that Neo-cons has been shown to be a band of idiots that worked for the military industrial complex. ..."
"... In the seventies, Brzezinski advocated support for the Islamic belt with fundamentalist regimes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey. These Islamo-fascist were supposed to control the perceived enemies of Capitalism. ..."
"... Thank you Mr. Stockman for fearlessly stating the facts. As to the 1st Iraq War, and the lies on which it was based, the only other significant detail I would have mentioned is that Saddam was suckered into invading Kuwait by the bitch, April Gillespie who, at the time, was serving as his special envoy to the middle east. ..."
"... @lloydholiday Billionaire "businessman" Glen Taylor owns the influential Minneapolis newspaper. He and his idiotic neocon editorial board ENDORSED RUBIO just before the Minnesota caucuses. Rubio may have made secret promises to Taylor, whose cannot possibly separate his many business interests from Minnesota and national politics. This explanation is as likely any, how the Little Napoleon won the ONLY state he is going to win, unless Floridians are somehow swayed to raise up a man toward the Presidency who isn't qualified to be dog catcher. ..."
"... As usual concise, accurate. Bush and Shrub were phonies in thrall to the Carlyle Group and their buddies the 'Kingdom' (source and supporter of al-Quaeda) plus the pro-Israeli neocons who wanted US boots on the ground to protect Israel. The Bush duumvirate played along in this duplicitous game, which Trump called them on. Enron also played a role: Shrub let them set policy in the Stans as their consortium sought pipeline rights from the Taliban. Crooks at play in the garden of evil. ..."
"... It is the bombs, drones, cruise missiles and brutal occupations of Muslim lands unleashed by the War Party that has actually fostered the massive blowback and radical jidhadism rampant today in the middle east and beyond. ..."
"... Mr Stockman apparently has the bad manners to speak the truth. Washington is going to be PO'd at the blatant disrespect for their BS. ..."
"... @FreeOregon It will shocked me beyond words if he survives the primaries. Far too much is at stake. In fact, 100 years of lying, cheating, and thieving, and the wealth it has produced is at stake. The Rothschild Establishment, centered in London and Tel Aviv, will not sit idly by and watch as their lucrative racket is dismantled by an up-start politician that cannot be purchased and put under their control. ..."
"... All true....finally the politicians that have run our country into the ground are exposed for the puppets of oligarchs they are...it is obvious....both parties, phony conservatives and liberals alike, are waging war on Trump because he truly threatens the status quo......it's going to get real ugly now that the powers that be are threatened.....I wouldn't fly to much if I was Trump from here on in! ..."
Wow. Super Tuesday was an earthquake, and not just because Donald Trump ran the tables. The best
thing was the complete drubbing and humiliation that voters all over America handed to the little
Napoleon from Florida, Marco Rubio.
So doing, the voters began the process of ridding the nation of the GOP War Party and its neocon
claque of rabid interventionists. They have held sway for nearly three decades in the Imperial City
and the consequences have been deplorable.
It goes all the way back to the collapse of the old Soviet Union and the elder Bush's historically
foolish decision to invade the Persian Gulf in February 1991. The latter stopped dead in its tracks
the first genuine opportunity for peace the people of the world had been afforded since August 1914.
Instead, it reprieved the fading remnants of the military-industrial-congressional complex, the
neocon interventionist camp and Washington's legions of cold war apparatchiks. All of the foregoing
would have been otherwise consigned to the dust bin of history.
Yet at that crucial inflection point there was absolutely nothing at stake with respect to the
safety and security of the American people in the petty quarrel between Saddam Hussein and the Emir
of Kuwait.
The spate, in fact, was over directional drilling rights in the Rumaila oilfield which straddled
their respective borders. Yet these disputed borders had no historical legitimacy whatsoever. Kuwait
was a just a bank account with a seat in the UN, which had been created by the British only in 1899
for obscure reasons of imperial maneuver. Likewise, the boundaries of Iraq had been drawn with a
straight ruler in 1916 by British and French diplomats in the process of splitting up the loot from
the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
As it happened, Saddam claimed that the Emir of Kuwait, who could never stop stuffing his unspeakably
opulent royal domain with more petro dollars, had stolen $10 billion worth of oil from Iraq's side
of the field while Saddam was savaging the Iranians during his unprovoked but Washington supported
1980s invasion. At the same time, Hussein had borrowed upwards of $50 billion from Kuwait, the Saudis
and the UAE to fund his barbaric attacks on the Iranians and now the sheiks wanted it back.
At the end of the day, Washington sent 500,000 US troops to the Gulf in order to function as bad
debt collectors for three regimes that are the very embodiment of tyranny, corruption, greed and
religious fanaticism.
They have been the fount and exporter of Wahhabi fanaticism and have thereby fostered the scourge
of jihadi violence throughout the region. And it was the monumental stupidity of putting American
(crusader) boots on the ground in Saudi Arabia that actually gave rise to Bin Laden, al-Qaeda, the
tragedy of 9/11, the invasion and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Patriot Act and domestic
surveillance state and all the rest of the War Party follies which have followed.
Worse still, George H.W. Bush's stupid little war corrupted the very political soul and modus
operandi of Washington. What should have been a political contest over which party and prospective
leader could best lead a revived 1920s style campaign for world disarmament was mutated into a wave
of exceptionalist jingoism about how best to impose American hegemony on any nation or force on the
planet that refused compliance with Washington's designs and dictates.
And most certainly, this lamentable turn to the War Party's disastrous reign had nothing to do
with oil security or economic prosperity in America. The cure for high oil is always and everywhere
high oil prices, not the Fifth Fleet.
Indeed, as the so-called OPEC cartel crumbles into pitiful impotence and cacophony and as the
world oil glut drives prices eventually back into the teens, there can no longer be any dispute.
The blazing oilfields of Kuwait in 1991 had nothing to do with domestic oil security and prosperity,
and everything to do with the rise of a virulent militarism and imperialism that has drastically
undermined national security.
It is the bombs, drones, cruise missiles and brutal occupations of Muslim lands unleashed by the
War Party that has actually fostered the massive blowback and radical jidhadism rampant today in
the middle east and beyond.
Indeed, prior to 1991 Bin Laden and his mujahedeen, who had been trained and armed by the CIA
and heralded in the west for their help in defeating purportedly godless communism in Afghanistan,
had not declaimed against American liberty, opulence and decadence. They did not come to attack our
way of life as the neocon propagandists have so speciously claimed. Misguided and despicable as their
attack was, it was motivated by revenge and religious fanaticism that had never previously been directed
against the American people. That is, not until the Washington War Party decided to intervene in
the Persian Gulf in 1991.
Yes, the wholly different Shiite branch of Islam centered in Iran had a grievance, too. But that
wasn't about America's liberties and libertine ways of life, either. It was about the left over liability
from Washington's misguided cold war interventions and, specifically, the 1953 CIA coup that installed
the brutal and larcenous Shah on the Peacock Throne.
The whole Persian nation had deep grievances about that colossal injustice--a grievance that was
wantonly amplified in the 1980s by Washington's overt assistance to Saddam Hussein. Via the CIA's
satellite reconnaissance, Washington had actually helped him unleash heinous chemical warfare attacks
on Iranian forces, including essentially unarmed young boys who had been sent to the battle front
as cannon fodder.
Still, with the election of Rafsanjani in 1989 there was every opportunity to repair this historical
transgression and normalize relations with Tehran. In fact, in the early days the Bush state department
was well on the way to exactly that. But once the CNN war games in the gulf put the neocons back
in the saddle the door was slammed shut by Washington, not the Iranians.
Indeed at that very time, the re-ascendant neocons explicitly choose to demonize the Iranian regime
as a surrogate enemy to replace the defunct Kremlin commissars. Two of the most despicable actors
in the post-1991 neocon takeover of the GOP--Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz--actually penned a secret
document outlining the spurious anti-Iranian campaign which soon congealed into a full-blown war
myth.
To wit, that the Iranian's were hell bent on obtaining nuclear weapons and had become an implacable
foe of America and fountain of state sponsored terrorism.
Not long thereafter in 1996, these same neocon warmongers produced for newly elected Israeli prime
minister, Bibi Netanyahu, the infamous document called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy For Securing
The Realm".
Whether he immediately signed off an all of its sweeping plans for junking the Oslo Accords and
launching regime change initiatives against the Baathist regimes in Iraq and Syria is a matter of
historical debate. But there can be no doubt that shortly thereafter this manifesto became the operative
policy of the Netanyahu government and especially its virulent campaign to demonize Iran as an existential
threat to Israel. And that when the younger Bush took office and brought the whole posse of neocons
back into power, it became Washington's official policy, as well.
After 9/11 the dual War Party of Washington and Tel Aviv was off to the races and the US government
began its tumble toward $19 trillion of national debt and an eventual fiscal calamity. That's because
the neocon War Party sucked the old time religion of fiscal rectitude and monetary orthodoxy right
out of the GOP in the name of funding what has in truth become a trillion dollar per year Warfare
State.
There were several crucial moments along the way-–the first being the sacking of Treasury Secretary
Paul O'Neill by the White House praetorian guard led by Karl Rove. His sin was having the audacity
to say that the Afghan and Iraqi wars were going to cost trillions, and that stiff tax increases
and painful entitlements cuts were the only way to make ends meet.
Right then and there the GOP was stripped of any fiscal virginity that had survived the Reagan
era of triple digit deficits. Right on cue the contemptible Dick Cheney was quick to claim that Reagan
proved "deficits don't matter", meaning from that point forward whatever it took to fund the war
machine trumped any flickering Republican folk memories of fiscal prudence.
The great Dwight Eisenhower left office at the height of the cold war in 1961, warning the
American public about the insatiable appetites for budgets and war of the military industrial complex.
At the same time, however, his final budget attested to his conviction that $450 billion in today's
purchasing power (2015 $) was enough to fund the Pentagon, foreign aid and security assistance and
the needs of veterans of past wars.
Thanks to the GOP War Party and neocons we are spending more than double that amount-upwards
of $900 billion-–for those same purposes today. Yet unlike the nuclear threat posed by the Soviet
Union at the peak of its industrial vigor, we no longer have any industrial state enemy left on the
planet; we have appropriately been fired as the world's policeman and have no need for Washington's
far flung imperium of bases and naval and air power projection; and would not even be confronted
with the domestic policing challenges posed by highly limited and episodic homeland terrorist tempests
had Washington not turned Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and others into failed
states and economic rubble.
The Bush era War Party also committed an even more lamentable error in the midst of all of its
foreign policy triumphalism and its utter neglect of the GOP's actual purpose to function as an advocate
for sound money and free markets in the governance process of our two party democracy. Namely, it
appointed Ben Bernanke, an avowed Keynesian and big government statist who had loudly proclaimed
in favor of "helicopter money", to a Federal Reserve system that was already on the verge of an economic
coup d'état led by the unfaithful Alan Greenspan.
That coup was made complete by the loathsome bailout of Wall Street during the 2008 financial
crisis. And the latter had, in turn, been a consequence of the massive speculation and debt build-up
that had been enabled by the Fed's own policies during the prior decade and one-half.
Now after $3.5 trillion of heedless money printing and 86 months of ZIRP, Wall Street has been
transformed into an unstable, dangerous casino. Honest price discovery in the capital and money markets
no longer exists, nor has productive capital been flowing into real investments in efficiency and
growth.
Instead, the C-suites of corporate America have been transformed into stock trading rooms where
business balance sheets have been hocked to the tune of trillions in cheap debt in order to fund
stock buybacks, LBOs and M&A deals designed to goose stock prices and the value of top executive
options.
Indeed, the Fed's unconscionable inflation of the third massive financial bubble of this century
has showered speculators and the 1% with unspeakable financial windfalls that are fast creating not
only an inevitable thundering financial meltdown, but, also, a virulent populist backlash. The Eccles
Building was where the "Bern" that is roiling the electorate was actually midwifed.
And probably even the far greater political tremblor represented by The Donald, as well.
Yes, as a libertarian I shudder at the prospect of a man on a white horse heading for the White
House, as Donald Trump surely is. His rank demoguery and poisonous rhetoric about immigrants, Muslims,
refugees, women, domestic victims of police repression and the spy state and countless more are flat-out
contemptible. And the idea of building a horizontal version of Trump Towers on the Rio Grande is
just plain nuts.
But here's the thing. While spending a lifetime as a real estate speculator and self-created
celebrity, The Donald apparently did not have time to get mis-educated by the Council On Foreign
Relations or to hob knob with the GOP inner circle in Washington and the special interest group racketeers
they coddle.
So even as The Donald's election would bring on a thundering financial crash on Wall Street and
political upheaval in Washington-–the truth is that's going to happen anyway. Look at the hideous
mess that US policy has created in Syria or the incendiary corner into which the Fed has backed itself
or the fiscal projections that show we will be back into trillion dollar annual deficits as the recession
already underway reaches full force. The jig is well and truly up.
But a nation tumbling into financial and fiscal crisis will welcome the War Party purge that
Trump would surely undertake. He didn't allow the self-serving busy-bodies and fools who inhabit
the Council on Foreign Relations to dupe him into believing that Putin is a horrible threat; or that
the real estate on the eastern edge of the non-state of the Ukraine, which has always been either
a de jure or de facto part of Russia, was any of our business. Likewise, he has gotten it totally
right with respect to the sectarian and tribal wars of Syria and Iraq and Hillary's feckless destruction
of a stable regime in Libya.
Even his bombast about Obama's bad deal with Iran doesn't go much beyond Trump's ridiculous claim
that they are getting a $150 billion reward. In fact, it was their money; we stole it, and by the
time of the next election they will have it released anyway.
Besides, unlike the boy Senator from Florida who wants to be President so he can play with
guns, tanks, ships and bombs, The Donald has indicated no intention of tearing up the agreement on
day one in office.
Most importantly, The Donald has essentially proclaimed the obvious. Namely, that the cold
war is over and that the American taxpayers have no business subsidizing obsolete relics like NATO
and ground forces in South Korea and Japan.
At the end of the day, the reason that the neocons are apoplectic is that Trump would restore
the 1991 status quo ante. The nation's self-proclaimed greatest deal-maker might even take a leaf
out of Warren G. Harding's playbook and negotiate sweeping disarmament agreements in a world where
governments everywhere are on the verge of fiscal bankruptcy.
He might also come down with wrathful indignation on the Fed if its dares push toward the criminal
zone of negative interest rates. As far as I know, The Donald was never mis-educated by the Keynesian
swells at Brookings, either. No plain old businessman would ever fall for the sophistry and crank
monetary theories that are now ascendant in the Eccles Building.
When it comes to the nation's current economy wreckers-in-chief, Janet Yellen and Stanley Fischer,
he might even dust off on day one the skills he honed during 10-years on the Apprentice.
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable....
A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic
thought. He is not a mere ass: he is actually ill. H. L. Mencken
The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect
that religious opinions should be respected. Its evil effects must be plain enough to everyone.
... There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect
than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend to be noticeably silly. ... No, there is nothing
notably dignified about religious ideas. They run, rather, to a peculiarly puerile and tedious
kind of nonsense. At their best, they are borrowed from metaphysicians, which is to say, from
men who devote their lives to proving that twice two is not always or necessarily four. At their
worst, they smell of spiritualism and fortune telling. Nor is there any visible virtue in the
men who merchant them professionally. Few theologians know anything that is worth knowing, even
about theology, and not many of them are honest. ... But the average theologian is a hearty, red-faced,
well-fed fellow with no discernible excuse in pathology. He disseminates his blather, not innocently,
like a philosopher, but maliciously, like a politician. In a well-organized world he would be
on the stone-pile. But in the world as it exists we are asked to listen to him, not only politely,
but even reverently, and with our mouths open. H. L. Mencken
Great read Mr. Stockman, and I can only hope you are right, that Super Tuesday really triggers
the demise of the Military Industrial Complex, although I seriously doubt it can be removed, replaced
or dismantled that easily.
The roots of the neocons and neolibs go so deep - multi-generational, multi-faceted, and
removing their control will require Open Regime Surgery, something I don't see anyone capable
of performing quite yet. Surely they are going to want their shot at being the first rulers to
control the entire earth - just before the energy runs out and the planet collapses in on itself
due to being hollowed out :)
As an engineer, I find it impossible to fathom that building 7, not hit by any planes and
only suffering minor fires, would fall straight into its own footprint at FREEFALL SPEED. This
is exactly the sort of thing you would expect ONLY from a controlled demolition.
I think that the neocons, in their meetings regarding the "Project for a New American Century"
(PNAC), needed 911 to foment, foster and facilitate a push of patriotic pathos of the American
people to go to war.
So so true. Of course this is an abridged version of history. You speak the truth to power.
This never makes the news or any of the debate tables with any of the mainstream media. Why...because
the media is owned by the corporations that profit from war.
There is no more liberal media unless you watch the Young Turks. With regards to Iran.
There is more to their history than...CIA's coup of 1953. From my memory the British controlled
the Iranian oilfields up until 1951 when they were nationalized. Why...because the British BP
oil company was cheating Iran on the profit sharing deal. So the British are out. It is 1953 and
the Americans want in. 1953 the Anglo-American Coup happened and the the profit sharing began
again with American oil companies with the Shaw (Shell-mobil-Exxon..I can't remember which one)
Of course the American oil companies breached the deal and shorted the POS Shah who then shorted
his nation. Rulers forget, poor people are pissed off people. So all this "it was the CIA" crap
is baloney...They were tools for corporate America. Don't kid yourself, it was about the oil.
IMO
BTW the Kuwaiti Royalty were friends of the Bushes.
We also did Israel a favor as Saddam was funding suicide bombers in Palestine ($20,000.00 to
the family for every suicide bomber) Arab mothers were happy to have their kids blown up for that
Saddam "reward." Ever notice how the suicide bombs ended/slowed in Israel after Saddam was deposed.
I did. Also Saddam was amassing his military on the Saudi's border at that time (Saddam wanted
Saudi oil to pay off his war debt) and so as a favor the the Saudi King (Bush's buddy) we ended
that threat. Yipee for us. This is never brought out in serious debate or news coverage. So if
someone says it was not about the oil...It was about the oil and always has been. It is all about
the oil. Oil is short for corporate cash cow money.
SD is right, Osama hated the fact that Bush's infidels were in the land of Mecca, and that
was one of the major instigators for the 9/11 attacks. Efing arrogant, ignorant Bush keeping "Merica"
safe. Clinton could have done a much better job cleaning up those King George the 1st's foreign
policy blunders, so I fault him to a degree too.
There are some good web sites that talk about this..I don't have them handy.
You are absolutely right. As Chas Freeman, who was our ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the
1991 Gulf War, has recounted, the stationing of American troops on Saudi soil in response to Saddam's
invasion of Kuwait presented a serious issue given that "[m]any Saudis interpret their religious
tradition as banning the presence of non-Muslims, especially the armed forces of nonbelievers,
on the Kingdom's soil." Shortly after the invasion, Freeman was present at a meeting between King
Fahd and Vice-President Cheney at which the King, overruling most of the Saudi royal family, agreed
to allow U.S. troops to be stationed in his country. This decision was premised on the clear understanding,
stressed by Cheney, that the American forces would be removed from Saudi Arabia once the immediate
threat from Saddam was over.
When that did not happen, Fahd faced serious domestic problems. Several prominent Muslim clerics
who objected to his policies were sent into exile, further inflaming the religious community.
More significantly for us, Osama Bin Laden began to call for the overthrow of the monarchy and
elevated his jihadist fight against the U.S. His Saudi passport was revoked for his anti-government
rhetoric, and in April 1991, threatened with arrest, he secretly departed Saudi Arabia for the
Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, never to return. The result, ten years later, was 9-11.
As Stockman points out, it seems that Washington was set on then neocon automatic pilot.
The policy of the Democrats was basically a continuation of a policy started prior to Reagan presidency.
Both Obama and Hillary Clinton are involved in regime change plans when we thought that Neo-cons
has been shown to be a band of idiots that worked for the military industrial complex.
In the seventies, Brzezinski advocated support for the Islamic belt with fundamentalist
regimes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey. These Islamo-fascist were supposed to control
the perceived enemies of Capitalism.
Now, we talk 24/7 about the Islamic threat, while the Islamists are being supported by our
closest allies and elements in the deep state in Washington.
We rarely hear about the Shah of Iran and OUR CIA back in 1953. Nor about OBL and his stated reason's
for 9/11. Including the vengeful and childish bombardment of highlands behind Beirut by our terribly
expensive recommissioned Battle Ship -- Imagine the thinking behind taking that 'thing' out of
mothballs to Scare the A - rabs. Invading Grenada was Ollie North's idea to save face.
Thank you Mr. Stockman for fearlessly stating the facts. As to the 1st Iraq War, and the lies
on which it was based, the only other significant detail I would have mentioned is that Saddam
was suckered into invading Kuwait by the bitch, April Gillespie who, at the time, was serving
as his special envoy to the middle east.
@lloydholiday I lived
in MPLS. You would be amazed at how sacrificially 'liberal' they are, much like Merkel and the
deluded Germans. Minn let in thousands of Ethiopians and other Muslims who are now giving natives
a major headache, much like Europe.
The women over 30 are nearly fanatic over Black oppression, voted for Obama in droves, and
appear to be willing to sacrifice the interests of their own children in favor of aliens and minorities
(my own niece raised in Minn is a fanatic in this regard). Rubbero is a loser with a wind up tongue.
They are easily impressed by patter however inarticulate.
@lloydholiday
Billionaire "businessman" Glen Taylor owns the influential Minneapolis newspaper. He and his
idiotic neocon editorial board ENDORSED RUBIO just before the Minnesota caucuses. Rubio may
have made secret promises to Taylor, whose cannot possibly separate his many business interests
from Minnesota and national politics. This explanation is as likely any, how the Little Napoleon
won the ONLY state he is going to win, unless Floridians are somehow swayed to raise up a man
toward the Presidency who isn't qualified to be dog catcher.
As usual concise, accurate. Bush and Shrub were phonies in thrall to the Carlyle Group and
their buddies the 'Kingdom' (source and supporter of al-Quaeda) plus the pro-Israeli neocons who
wanted US boots on the ground to protect Israel. The Bush duumvirate played along in this duplicitous
game, which Trump called them on. Enron also played a role: Shrub let them set policy in the Stans
as their consortium sought pipeline rights from the Taliban. Crooks at play in the garden of evil.
It is the bombs, drones, cruise missiles and brutal occupations of Muslim lands unleashed
by the War Party that has actually fostered the massive blowback and radical jidhadism rampant
today in the middle east and beyond.
Mr Stockman apparently has the bad manners to speak the truth. Washington is going to be
PO'd at the blatant disrespect for their BS.
If the GOP disappears, there's always the brain dead Democrats. What we need is an end to both
parties. The best way to accomplish that is to cancel the entirety of the Fed Gov. Just get rid
of all of it. Let the states become countries and compete on the world stage. Let all those holding
Federal paper (the national debt) use it in their bathroom as toilet paper. Cancel the debt -
ignore it - lets start fresh with no central bank and real money based on something that the politicians
can't conjure into existence. I suggest gold and silver as history has shown that they work well.
@bill5 What I never
hear anyone state is that if we had let the Russians alone in Afghanistan this whole mess would
have never happened. Isn't that what originally allowed the Taliban and Obama bin Laden rise to
power? I though Reagan was a great president but made a catastrophic error in aligning with the
islamic insurgents against Russia . The Russians knew a radical Islamic state on their border
would be a problem and the existing Afghan government, an ally of Russia, asked them to help quell
the islamist civil war. The Russians would have ruthlessly eliminated the islamists without worrying
about causing any greenhouse gas emissions or hurting anyones feelings.
@FreeOregon It will
shocked me beyond words if he survives the primaries. Far too much is at stake. In fact, 100 years
of lying, cheating, and thieving, and the wealth it has produced is at stake. The Rothschild Establishment,
centered in London and Tel Aviv, will not sit idly by and watch as their lucrative racket is dismantled
by an up-start politician that cannot be purchased and put under their control.
All true....finally the politicians that have run our country into the ground are exposed
for the puppets of oligarchs they are...it is obvious....both parties, phony conservatives and
liberals alike, are waging war on Trump because he truly threatens the status quo......it's going
to get real ugly now that the powers that be are threatened.....I wouldn't fly to much if I was
Trump from here on in!
"... I know it is a bit picky of me, but I am getting really tired of Democrats trying to take the high road on immigration. It ignores that our current Democratic President has deported more 'illegal' immigrants than any previous President before him. ..."
"... With all their concern, couldn't the Democrats have made some token stab at immigration reform? Instead there has been a huge gift to the for profit prison operators who now count their immigration detention centers as their biggest profit centers. ..."
"... The Dems want to have their cake and eat it too. They want cheap labor and they want virtue. They sell out my friends and neighbors and think themselves noble for empowering foreign nationals. ..."
I know it is a bit picky of me, but I am getting really tired of Democrats
trying to take the high road on immigration. It ignores that our current
Democratic President has deported more 'illegal' immigrants than any previous
President before him.
In 2014 he deported nine times more people than had
been deported twenty years earlier. Some years it was nearly double the
numbers under George W. Bush. And yes, I know it was not strict fillibuster
proof majority in the Senate for his first two years, but damn close and
the only thing we got was a half assed stimulus made up largely of tax stimulus
AND that gift to for profit medicine and insurance, the ACA.
With all their
concern, couldn't the Democrats have made some token stab at immigration
reform? Instead there has been a huge gift to the for profit prison operators
who now count their immigration detention centers as their biggest profit
centers.
Trump says mean things, but the Democrats, well once again actions should
speak louder than words but it isn't happening.
The Dems want to have their cake and eat it too. They want cheap labor
and they want virtue. They sell out my friends and neighbors and think themselves
noble for empowering foreign nationals.
I guess this is one way for a supposedly pro-labor party to liquidate
its working class elements.
"... This needs more play. I am a blue-collar refugee, and most of my circle are same. They all seem to be captive to the messaging of the business press, and Trump, that we have lost some "competition" with China, India, etc. for the manufacturing business. The corporations and their minions in gov. are guilty of the real "un-patriotic" acts. ..."
"... The entire logic of how great globalization is is flawed at its heart. A. We have a much higher standard of living than other countries; so B. Let's "level the playing field" with those other countries. So A + B = a reversion of our country's standard of living to the global mean. ..."
"... Cue globalists who insist the citizens benefit anyway because they get to buy cheap stuff…now that they're unemployed. Oops ..."
"…the administration is absolutely right that America needs tools to counter China's growing
influence in Asia and around the world…"
So US industry with tacit blessing of US industrial policy spends 2 decades transferring our
manufacturing capabilities to a communist state…so…now we need "tools" to cage the dragon we created?
Not saying I would ever vote for Trump but this circular bullshit boggles the mind and sends me
screaming into the night.
This needs more play. I am a blue-collar refugee, and most of my circle are same. They
all seem to be captive to the messaging of the business press, and Trump, that we have lost some
"competition" with China, India, etc. for the manufacturing business. The corporations and their
minions in gov. are guilty of the real "un-patriotic" acts.
I don't know that "communist" really is a qualifier, though. If an ostensibly "commie" country
is "winning" at capitalism, what does that say about capitalism as a belief system? If a person
thinks that a free market sorts all these issues, they would have to be willing to just not buy
the goods produced in the cheap labor/dirty environment country, in order to make "losers" out
of them…how feasible is this?
The entire logic of how great globalization is is flawed at its heart.
A. We have a much higher standard of living than other countries; so
B. Let's "level the playing field" with those other countries.
So A + B = a reversion of our country's standard of living to the global mean.
Quick question: who thinks that is a good idea (pick one):
1. The owners of the means of production since they get to dramatically lower their costs;
or
2. The citizens of the country.
(Cue globalists who insist the citizens benefit anyway because they get to buy cheap stuff…now
that they're unemployed. Oops.)
From the Financial Times article 8/14/16, "during the first decade of this century" Trump worked
with Bayrock. That was a shift away from his Real Estate business, the last? being his Trump Soho
that failed. The point being that he hasn't been active in real estate for nearly a decade and
his 'Trump labeling" may be enhancing his wealth, but it certainly isn't a sign of good business
acumen.
He is relying on people forgetting when he got out of the business that made him wealthy. Relying
on him, IMO is risky business.
We need China more than they need us? Why? For what purpose? We are the customer. They are
a provider of labor. We have unutilized labor here. ???
I really am curious as to why you said that.
"China National Chemical Corp. received approval from U.S. national security officials for
its takeover of Swiss agrochemical and seeds company Syngenta AG, seen as the biggest regulatory
hurdle that the $43 billion acquisition faces.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. has cleared the transaction, the companies
said in a statement Monday. The deal, expected to be completed by the end of the year, is still
subject to antitrust review by regulators worldwide, according to the statement."
"... Trump is right to accuse the Bush administration of creating the mess, and also right to blame Obama for withdrawing American forces in 2011. Once the mess was made, the worst possible response was to do nothing about it (except, of course, to covertly arm "moderate Syrian rebels" with weapons from Libyan stockpiles, most of which found their way to al-Qaeda or ISIS). ..."
The first step to finding a solution is to know that there's a problem. Donald Trump
understands that the Washington foreign-policy establishment caused the whole Middle Eastern
mess. I will review the problem and speculate about what a Trump administration might do about it.
For the thousand years before 2007, when the Bush administration hand-picked Nouri al-Maliki to
head Iraq's first Shia-dominated government, Sunni Muslims had ruled Iraq. Maliki was vetted both
by the CIA and by the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.
With Iraq in the hands of an Iranian ally, the Sunnis–disarmed and marginalized by the dismissal
of the Iraqi army–were caught between pro-Iranian regimes in both Iraq and Syria. Maliki, as Ken
Silverstein reports in the
New Republic, ran one of history's most corrupt regimes, demanding among other things a 45% cut
in foreign investment in Iraq. The Sunnis had no state to protect them, and it was a matter of simple
logic that a Sunni leader eventually would propose a new state including the Sunni regions of Syria
as well as Iraq. Sadly, the mantle of Sunni statehood fell on Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who projected
not only an Islamic State but a new Caliphate as well. America had a dozen opportunities to preempt
this but failed to do so.
From a fascinating defector's account in the
Foreign Policy
website, we learn that the region's jihadists debated the merits of remaining non-state actors on
the al-Qaeda model versus attempting to form a state prior to the launch of ISIS. The defector reports
a 2013 meeting in which al-Baghdadi demanded the allegiance of al-Qaeda (that is, al-Nusra Front)
fighters in Syria:
Baghdadi also spoke about the creation of an Islamic state in Syria. It was important, he said,
because Muslims needed to have a dawla, or state. Baghdadi wanted Muslims to have their
own territory, from where they could work and eventually conquer the world….The participants differed
greatly about the idea of creating a state in Syria. Throughout its existence, al-Qaeda had worked
in the shadows as a non-state actor. It did not openly control any territory, instead committed
acts of violence from undisclosed locations. Remaining a clandestine organization had a huge advantage:
It was very difficult for the enemy to find, attack, or destroy them. But by creating a state,
the jihadi leaders argued during the meeting, it would be extremely easy for the enemy to find
and attack them….
Despite the hesitation of many, Baghdadi persisted. Creating and running a state was of paramount
importance to him. Up to this point, jihadis ran around without controlling their own territory.
Baghdadi argued for borders, a citizenry, institutions, and a functioning bureaucracy. Abu Ahmad
summed up Baghdadi's pitch: "If such an Islamic state could survive its initial phase, it was
there to stay forever."
Baghdadi prevailed, however, not only because he persuaded the al-Qaeda ragtag of his project,
but because he won over a
large number of officers from Saddam Hussein's disbanded army. America had the opportunity to
"de-Ba'athify" the Sunni-dominated Iraqi Army after the 2003 invasion, the way it de-Nazified the
German Army after World War II. Instead, it hung them out to dry. Gen. Petraeus' "surge" policy of
2007-2008 bought the Sunni's temporary forbearance with hundreds of millions of dollars in handouts,
but set the stage for a future Sunni insurgency, as I
warned in 2010.
Trump is right to accuse the Bush administration of creating the mess, and also right to blame
Obama for withdrawing American forces in 2011. Once the mess was made, the worst possible response
was to do nothing about it (except, of course, to covertly arm "moderate Syrian rebels" with weapons
from Libyan stockpiles, most of which found their way to al-Qaeda or ISIS).
Now the region is a self-perpetuating war of each against all. Iraq's Shia militias, which replaced
the feckless Iraqi army in fighting ISIS, are in reorganization under Iranian command on the model
of
Iran's Revolutionary Guards. The Kurds are fighting both ISIS and the Syrian government. ISIS
is attacking both the Kurds, who field the most effective force opposing them in Syria, as well as
the Turks, who are trying to limit the power of the Kurds. Saudi Arabia and Qatar continue to support
the Sunnis of Iraq and Syria, which means in effect funding either ISIS or the al-Nusra Front.
Russia, meanwhile, is flying bombing missions in Syria from Iranian air bases. Apart from its
inclination to bedevil the floundering United States, Russia has a dog in the fight: as a number
of foreign officials who have spoken with the Russian president have told me, Putin has told anyone
who asks that he backs the Iranian Shi'ites because all of Russia's Muslims are Sunni. Russia fears
that a jihadist regime in Iraq or Syria would metastasize into a strategic threat to Russia. That
is just what al-Baghdadi had in mind, as the Foreign Policy defector story made clear:
Baghdadi had another persuasive argument: A state would offer a home to Muslims from all over
the world. Because al-Qaeda had always lurked in the shadows, it was difficult for ordinary Muslims
to sign up. But an Islamic state, Baghdadi argued, could attract thousands, even millions, of
like-minded jihadis. It would be a magnet.
What Trump might do
What's needed is a deal, and a deal-maker. I have no information about Trump's thinking other
than news reports, but here is a rough sketch of what he might do:
Iraq's Sunnis require the right combination of incentives and disincentives. The disincentive
is just what Trump has proposed, an "extreme" and "vicious" campaign against the terrorist gang.
The United States and whoever wants to join it (perhaps the French Foreign Legion?) should exterminate
ISIS. That requires a combination of ruthless employment of air power with less squeamishness about
collateral damage as well as a division or two on the ground. America doesn't necessarily need to
deploy the kind of soldier who joined the National Guard to get a subsidy for college tuition. As
Erik Prince has suggested, private contractors could do the job cheaper, along with judicious
use of special forces.
While the US grinds up ISIS, it should find a former Iraqi general to lead a Sunni zone in Iraq,
and enlist former Iraqi army officers to join the war against ISIS. Gen. Petraeus no doubt still
has the payroll list for the "Sunni Awakening" and "Sons of Iraq." The Sunnis would get the incentive
of an eventual Sunni state, provided that they help crush the terrorists.
The US would give quiet support to the Kurds' aspirations for their own state, and encourage them
to take control of northern Syria along the Turkish border. If the US doesn't stand godfather to
a Kurdish state, the Russians will. The Turks won't like that, and it must be explained to them that
it is in their own best interests: the Kurds have twice as many children as ethnic Turks, and by
2045 will have more military-age men than do the Turks.
Possibly the US should propose a UN-supervised referendum to allow the Kurdish-majority provinces
of southeastern Turkey to secede and join the Iraqi and Syrian Kurds in a new state. That would be
good for Turkey. Those who vote "yes" are better off outside Turkey, and those who vote to stay in
Turkey have no excuse to support separatists in the future. There are several million Iranian Kurds,
and the US should encourage them to break away as well.
'Look, Vladimir, here's the deal'
The next conversation between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin might go something like this: "Look,
Vladimir, you say you're worried about Sunni terrorists destabilizing Russia. We're going to kill
all the terrorists or hire people to kill them for us. We're not going to arm jihadists to make trouble
for you like we did in Afghanistan during the Cold War. We leave you alone, and you get out of our
hair. You get to keep your naval station in Syria, and the Alawites get to have their own state in
the northwest. Give Basher Assad a villa in Crimea and put in someone else to replace him–anyone
you like. The Sunni areas of Syria will become a separate enclave, along with enclaves for
the Druze."
And Trump might add: "We're taking care of the Sunni terrorists. Now you help us take care of
the Iranians, or we'll do it ourselves, and you won't like that. You can either work together with
us and we tell the Iranians to shut down their centrifuges and their ballistic missile program, or
we'll bomb it. You don't want us to make the S-300 missiles you sold Iran look like junk–that's bad
for your arms business.
"As for Ukraine: let them vote on partition. If the eastern half votes to join Russia, you got
it. If not, you stay the hell out of it."
As Trump knows, everyone in a deal doesn't have to walk away happy. Only the biggest stakeholders
have to walk away happy. Everyone else can go suck eggs.
Russia can walk away with its Syrian naval station and some assurance that the Middle East jihad
won't spill over into its own territory. Syria's Alawites and Sunnis both can declare victory. The
Kurds, who provide the region's most effective boots on the ground, will be big winners. Iraq's Shi'ites
will be able to rule themselves but not over the Sunnis and Kurds, which is a better situation than
they had during the thousand years when the Sunnis ruled over them. Turkey won't like the prospect
of losing a chunk of its territory, even though it will be better off for it. Iran will lose its
aspirations to a regional empire, and won't like it at all, but no-one else will care.
Rebuilding America's military, one of Trump's campaign planks, is a sine qua non for
success. Russia as well as China should fear America's technological prowess today as much as Gorbachev
feared Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative in the 1980s. Russia and China are closing the
technology gap with the United States, and if the United States does not reverse that, not much else
it does will matter.
"... You know, the light bulb over my head went on when Hillary said she was against the TPP "as currently written." Political speak for: she'll fiddle with some words, pronounce it fixed, and pass it ..."
"... her surrogates extol her penchant for "free trade" and are sure she will support it. ..."
You know, the light bulb over my head went on when Hillary said she was against the TPP
"as currently written." Political speak for: she'll fiddle with some words, pronounce it fixed,
and pass it.
And while she and Kaine claim now to be against the TPP, her surrogates extol her penchant
for "free trade" and are sure she will support it.
Obama is a neocon and is fully dedicated to expansion and maintenance of the US global neoliberal
empire, at any cost for the US population. Racism card play against Trump, who opposes neoliberal interventionism,
is a variant of the classic " Divide et impera" strategy
Notable quotes:
"... Incidentally, historical amnesia also includes forgetting Barack Obama was the boss when Clinton was secretary and forgetting Barack Obama is still president pursuing insane war-mongering policies long after Clinton is gone ..."
"... Historical amnesia means forgetting the Democratic Party isn't socialist or leftist ..."
"... Historical amnesia means forgetting all foundations are ways for the wealthy to shelter money and exercise influence, Koch's, Rockefeller's, Carnegie's, Ford's, Soros', not just Clintons'. Historical amnesia means forgetting this government has always conducted foreign policy at the behest of special interests. ..."
"... Vilifying millions of people in preference to even asking if Trump hasn't got massive elite support is deeply, profoundly reactionary. Divide et impera has been the rulers' game for centuries. ..."
Incidentally, historical amnesia also includes forgetting Barack Obama was the boss when Clinton
was secretary and forgetting Barack Obama is still president pursuing insane war-mongering policies
long after Clinton is gone and forgetting Barack Obama is still president, and won't even
be a lame duck till November.
Historical amnesia means forgetting the Democratic Party isn't
socialist or leftist, despite Bernie Sanders' long career as a sort of socialist (only informally
a Democrat.)
Historical amnesia means forgetting to even ask what "Watergate" was, and if or how it mattered
(or didn't.)
Historical amnesia means forgetting all foundations are ways for the wealthy to shelter
money and exercise influence, Koch's, Rockefeller's, Carnegie's, Ford's, Soros', not just Clintons'.
Historical amnesia means forgetting this government has always conducted foreign policy at the
behest of special interests.
(Yes, Lupita believes that imperialism actually pays off for the whole country, which
presumably is why when her preferred rich people try to get their own she'll be for that. Nonetheless,
the idea is bullshit. At this point, I can only imagine people don't call her out on that because
they actually agree that "we" are all in it together with our owners.)
Historical amnesia includes forgetting Trump has run for president before, with the same personality
and the same tactics and the same party base. It is unclear how the essentially racist nature
of the vile masses has changed so much in four years.
Vilifying millions of people in preference to even asking if Trump hasn't got massive elite
support is deeply, profoundly reactionary. Divide et impera has been the rulers' game for centuries.
"... The 90's represent a time of relative economic prosperity and geopolitical dominance in the collective American imagination. Race relations, though briefly inflamed during the Los Angeles riots of 1992, remained relatively placid by the standards of U.S. history, and with the fall of the USSR, the United States became an unquestioned Global Hegemon. ..."
"... In this sense at least, the 90's were high times for the Clintons and their Neo-Liberal fellow travelers. Who had convinced themselves, along with much of the populace of the United States, that they had finally entered Francis Fukuyama's prophesied "End of History." ..."
"... Though Donald Trump promises to "Make America Great Again," his rhetoric recalls, not the beloved 1990s of the Clintons, but rather the decade from 1953 to 1963, the time between the Korean war and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. An era of middle-class flourishing and industrial expansion, when good paying factory work allowed unskilled laborers to achieve the "American Dream" of Suburban tranquility and economic comfort. An era of low crime and common purpose. An era when a beloved President first dreamt of landing a man on the moon and the covers of magazines like "Popular Mechanics" showcased grand visions of a future dominated by the wonders and comforts of American technology. Though of course profoundly philistine and materialist in nature (and thus genuinely American), it is a vision which remains quite distinct from violent, pathological visions dreamt of by the Clintons and their associates. ..."
"... This universal, imperialist programme of exploitation and domination is the explicit goal of the ideology of Neo-Liberalism, whose cause will seem all the more urgent to a newly elected and empowered Hillary Clinton. She will then have to face the reality of both a divided country at home and a rapidly decaying Neoliberal world order abroad. As Russia, China, Iran, and others begin to push back against the reign of U.S. led cultural Imperialism. ..."
"... A more cautious Trump presidency would likely approach the situation with a good deal of pragmatism by letting the United State's moment of unipolar hegemony naturally fade away as the world slowly drifts into the more organic and sustainable state of Multipolarity. ..."
"... Though derided by her detractors as a dangerous, ideologically driven hawk on foreign policy and praised by her devotees as a steady, experienced hand, possessing considerable analytic acumen. The truth is that, in reality, both assessments are correct. It is important to note, however, that for Hillary Clinton, the latter merely acts as a veneer for the former. Her strategic acumen, however potent it may be, remains merely the servant of the powerful chthonic forces which drive her damaged psyche. Despite any appearances to the contrary, in her purest essence, she remains a genuine fanatic. ..."
"... Regardless of these rumors, it is entirely fair to assert that Clinton, whether or not she is a practicing lesbian, is at least a functional one. Her projected persona, from the androgynous pantsuits to her open contempt for the Traditional female roles of wife and mother coupled with a fanatical devotion to the cause of universal LGBT "human rights," is an almost exact emulation of a butch lesbian aesthetic and sensibility. It is a direct mimicry of Western conceptions of corporate masculinity reconceptualized through the funhouse mirror of 1970's feminist ideology. It is this barely cryptic Lesbianism, which serves as the primary ideological scaffolding for Clinton's thought and action. An ideology that is driven almost purely by a profound ressentiment of all those who do not affirm its tenets. ..."
"... The very first action to be taken by a future Clinton administration will be an immediate reset of the U.S. policy on Syria. This intention has already been explicitly articulated and publicized in the international press and will mark a stark break with the Obama administration's previously more pragmatic approach. Syria was a war Obama was never particularly interested in and which he involved himself in only after intense pressure from his advisors (such as then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Victoria Nuland). Although Obama would, of course, have favored a solution that resulted in the replacement of Assad with a malleable puppet regime which was friendly to both American and Zionist ambitions in the Region. His better instincts led him to avoid the more extreme Anti-Assad approach favored by the most hawkish members of his cabinet. ..."
"... Clinton's stratagem will be the direct inverse of Obama's more tolerant approach to Assad. For Clinton, destroying Assad, and by extension, the millions of innocents which his government protects from Jihadi terror represents a triple opportunity. Enabling her to strike a direct blow simultaneously against Iranian and Russian interests in the region while also appeasing her Zionist backers. Thus, it will become an immediate priority for her administration. ..."
"... The full weight of U.S. power will be used to reignite a conflict in the Donbass region, which will be justified under the pretense of restoring the "territorial integrity" of the Ukrainian Junta. This will enable the U.S. to continue its encirclement of Russia while also bleeding it of resources. This will make it, it is hoped by the U.S., more vulnerable, over the long term, to a hostile, U.S. funded, regime change which will be carried out by Atlanticist Fifth Columnist inside Russia. ..."
"... Clinton's domestic policies will be similarly reckless and aggressive. These will focus primarily upon stamping out any dissent, whether on the Left or the Right, to her rule. This should not be a difficult task, as the vast majority of Media elites in the United States are open supporters of her ideology. These elites will be in a particularly foul mood after the Election, as they have come to view Trump, and especially his supporters, as a mortal threat to their continued hegemony. A Clinton victory would then give them the leverage and pretext they need to begin punishing and marginalizing the Trump electorate that they so deeply despise. ..."
"... Needless to say, dissenters will suffer greatly under a Clinton regime. Those who oppose further aggressive U.S. actions across the globe will be dealt with as borderline traitors. Others who oppose the normalization of Sodomy and other related deviancies, such as Transgenderism, will be labeled bigots and suffer economic consequences as they are forced out of their jobs under the pretext of creating "safe work environmen ..."
The Summer of 2016 is proving to be a decisive one in both the United States and the
rest of the world. The long shadows currently being thrown against the wall by history will soon
morph into their full forms come November when the presidential contest is finally decided. With
the longest and most ominous being the potential ascension of Hillary Rodham Clinton to the office
of President of the United States of America.
Most Americans are instinctively aware of this, and it is this instinct which has seen
Hillary Clinton's unfavorable ratings rise to
historic levels.
This anti-Clinton aversion is born as much from experience as it is from intuition,
as Americans vividly recall her Husband's presidency and assume, correctly, that a second Clinton
presidency would repeat all of the vices of the first but without any of its virtues.
Indeed, the 1990's still loom large in the imagination of most Clintonites.
The 90's
represent a time of relative economic prosperity and geopolitical dominance in the collective American
imagination. Race relations, though briefly inflamed during the Los Angeles riots of 1992, remained
relatively placid by the standards of U.S. history, and with the fall of the USSR, the United States
became an unquestioned Global Hegemon.
A Hegemon which possessed the perfect freedom to strike its
enemies, both real and perceived, with near impunity across the Globe. As the people of Serbia and
Iraq learned, only too well, through horrible experience.
In this sense at least, the 90's were high
times for the Clintons and their Neo-Liberal fellow travelers. Who had convinced themselves, along
with much of the populace of the United States, that they had finally entered Francis Fukuyama's
prophesied "End of History."
Though Donald Trump promises to "Make America Great Again," his rhetoric recalls, not
the beloved 1990s of the Clintons, but rather the decade from 1953 to 1963, the time between the
Korean war and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. An era of middle-class flourishing and industrial
expansion, when good paying factory work allowed unskilled laborers to achieve the "American Dream"
of Suburban tranquility and economic comfort. An era of low crime and common purpose. An era when
a beloved President first dreamt of landing a man on the moon and the covers of magazines like "Popular
Mechanics" showcased grand visions of a future dominated by the wonders and comforts of American
technology. Though of course profoundly philistine and materialist in nature (and thus genuinely
American), it is a vision which remains quite distinct from violent, pathological visions dreamt
of by the Clintons and their associates.
In contrast, to Trump's inward looking, Populist-Nationalist synthesis, Clinton offers
Americans what is perhaps the most thoroughly pure version of Neo-Liberalism yet put forward on a
national political stage. Consisting of both unapologetic support for international capitalist exploitation
of labor as well as a virulent dedication to the continued unipolar geopolitical dominance of the
United State's burgeoning Imperium. Its explicit goal is not merely to enable its own citizens to
live the good life of uninhibited, rootless hedonism (the American Dream) but also to impose this
concept of "the good life" upon the rest of the world.
This universal, imperialist programme of exploitation and domination is the explicit
goal of the ideology of Neo-Liberalism, whose cause will seem all the more urgent to a newly elected
and empowered Hillary Clinton. She will then have to face the reality of both a divided country at
home and a rapidly decaying Neoliberal world order abroad. As Russia, China, Iran, and others begin
to push back against the reign of U.S. led cultural Imperialism.
A more cautious Trump presidency would likely approach the situation with a good deal
of pragmatism by letting the United State's moment of unipolar hegemony naturally fade away as the
world slowly drifts into the more organic and sustainable state of Multipolarity.
The same cannot be said, of course, for the path a potential Clinton administration
would take, however. Clinton will have no choice but to throw all of her energies behind a shrill,
last-ditch defense of the American Imperium, in both its physical, cultural and psychological manifestations.
Though derided by her detractors as a dangerous, ideologically driven hawk on foreign
policy and praised by her devotees as a steady, experienced hand, possessing considerable analytic
acumen. The truth is that, in reality, both assessments are correct. It is important to note, however,
that for Hillary Clinton, the latter merely acts as a veneer for the former. Her strategic acumen,
however potent it may be, remains merely the servant of the powerful chthonic forces which drive
her damaged psyche. Despite any appearances to the contrary, in her purest essence, she remains a
genuine fanatic.
When one looks back on the trajectory of her political career, it is not difficult to
perceive it as a series of carefully calculated moves which served only to move her continually closer
to capturing the presidency and the ultimate power it offers. While this is not exactly original
analysis, it is still startling and instructive to contemplate the truly bizarre length and breadth
of the ambition which has propelled her this far. Her husband's philandering, which has become the
stuff of legend in the United States and has resulted in at least one serious claim of sexual assault,
was obviously known to her from the beginning of their relationship. Her apparent ambivalence (if
not open approval) regarding her husband's behavior is likewise an open secret and has, at least
in part, contributed to the constant rumors regarding her potential homosexuality.
Regardless of these rumors, it is entirely fair to assert that Clinton, whether or not
she is a practicing lesbian, is at least a functional one. Her projected persona, from the androgynous
pantsuits to her open contempt for the Traditional female roles of wife and mother coupled with a
fanatical devotion to the cause of universal LGBT "human rights," is an almost exact emulation
of a butch lesbian aesthetic and sensibility. It is a direct mimicry of Western conceptions of corporate
masculinity reconceptualized through the funhouse mirror of 1970's feminist ideology. It is this
barely cryptic Lesbianism, which serves as the primary ideological scaffolding for Clinton's thought
and action. An ideology that is driven almost purely by a profound ressentiment of all those who
do not affirm its tenets.
It is this ressentiment which serves as the motivator for all of her endeavors, both
of the past and of the future. Once Clinton secures the full powers of the U.S. presidency, she will
then have the ultimate tool with which to wage war upon her perceived tormentors, i.e. all those
who do not willingly affirm her particularly deviant ideological proclivities.
This campaign of revenge will be waged on two separate fronts, one foreign and one domestic
and will seek an utter subjugation or eradication of her perceived enemies.
On the foreign front Clinton will immediately seek to reestablish U.S. dominance over
the three primary regions of Modern Geopolitical Conflict: The Greater Middle East, the South China
Sea, and Europe with a special focus on subduing the Russian Federation
The very first action to be taken by a future Clinton administration will be an immediate
reset of the U.S. policy on Syria. This intention has already been explicitly articulated and publicized
in the international press
and will mark a stark break with the Obama administration's previously
more pragmatic approach. Syria was a war Obama was never particularly interested in and which he
involved himself in only after intense pressure from his advisors (such as then-Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton and Victoria Nuland). Although Obama would, of course, have favored a solution that
resulted in the replacement of Assad with a malleable puppet regime which was friendly to both American
and Zionist ambitions in the Region. His better instincts led him to avoid the more extreme Anti-Assad
approach favored by the most hawkish members of his cabinet.
Clinton's stratagem will be the direct inverse of Obama's more tolerant approach to
Assad. For Clinton, destroying Assad, and by extension, the millions of innocents which his government
protects from Jihadi terror represents a triple opportunity. Enabling her to strike a direct blow
simultaneously against Iranian and Russian interests in the region while also appeasing her Zionist
backers. Thus, it will become an immediate priority for her administration.
The policy will most likely take the form of a deluge of advanced armaments to the Syrian
Islamists currently at war with the Assad government, potentially including Jabhat Al Nusra whose
recent split with Al-Qaeda proper will make it a tempting potential ally in the new crusade against
Assad.
In addition to this new flow of arms, an attempt to establish a "no-fly zone" over Syria
will be made with the expressed purpose of denigrating the Syrian government's ability to defend
its people from Islamist terrorists. How this will be accomplished is still unclear, with the presence
of the Russian military posing an especially difficult challenge. However, a U.S. provocation to
open war is not entirely out of the question. Especially since a Clinton administration may view
Syria as a theatre which, given U.S. superiority in power projection, would potentially enable a
seemingly easy victory over Russian and Syrian forces.
Everything will depend on the actions of the Russian government, whether it decides
to double down on its ally or surrender to U.S. intimidation, as well as the disposition of Turkey.
In this sense, the recent Coup attempt may serve as a blessing in disguise, as it is well known that,
if not explicitly planned by the CIA, the Coup attempt was at the very least tacitly endorsed by
the Obama administration. These facts will weigh heavily on President Erdogan's mind if and when
a request is made to use Turkish airbases to enforce a no-fly zone in Syria.
The second theatre, which will serve as the medium-term priority, will be a renewed
attempt to further isolate and weaken the Russian Federation. This will involve both new deployments
of American Military forces and equipment to both the Baltic states and Eastern Ukraine.
The full
weight of U.S. power will be used to reignite a conflict in the Donbass region, which will be justified
under the pretense of restoring the "territorial integrity" of the Ukrainian Junta. This will enable
the U.S. to continue its encirclement of Russia while also bleeding it of resources. This will make
it, it is hoped by the U.S., more vulnerable, over the long term, to a hostile, U.S. funded,
regime change which will be carried out by Atlanticist Fifth Columnist inside Russia.
The third theatre, which will serve as the long-term priority, will be attempting to
contain China from asserting its sovereignty in the South China Sea and the island of Taiwan. This
will be by far the most difficult task facing a potential Clinton administration. China will possess
a distinct military advantage over U.S. forces in the region owing to its advanced area-denial capabilities
which will enable it effectively to neutralize the main tool of U.S. power projection: the aircraft
carrier. The exact course a Clinton administration would take in a potential showdown with China
is still unclear but given her past proclivities; it would not be a stretch to assume a choice for
confrontation over compromise would be made.
Clinton's domestic policies will be similarly reckless and aggressive. These will focus
primarily upon stamping out any dissent, whether on the Left or the Right, to her rule. This should
not be a difficult task, as the vast majority of Media elites in the United States are open supporters
of her ideology. These elites will be in a particularly foul mood after the Election, as they have
come to view Trump, and especially his supporters, as a mortal threat to their continued hegemony.
A Clinton victory would then give them the leverage and pretext they need to begin punishing and
marginalizing the Trump electorate that they so deeply despise.
This will involve not only formal purges of journalists and academics (which has already
become a regular occurrence in the U.S.) but also a renewed push to further hollow out what remains
of the American Middle class, as well as continuing to push an intrinsically violent LGBT ideology
further upon America's children.
Needless to say, dissenters will suffer greatly under a Clinton regime. Those who oppose
further aggressive U.S. actions across the globe will be dealt with as borderline traitors. Others
who oppose the normalization of Sodomy and other related deviancies, such as Transgenderism, will
be labeled bigots and suffer economic consequences as they are forced out of their jobs under the
pretext of creating "safe work environmen
ts".
Tax exemption for religiously affiliated schools and nonprofit organizations will be
revoked unless they agree to adhere to anti-discrimination laws which will require the affirmation
of LGBT ideology.
"... BTW Pat Buchanan says that if the R establishment tries to coalesce around Rubio or Cruz then
Trump will simply choose one of them as his running mate and end of story. That's assuming Trump does
in fact maintain his poll lead with actual votes. ..."
"... It's our foreign policy that is fubar and it's been fubar for awhile. This idea that Clinton
somehow was the worst Secretary of State is revisionism. Was she bad? Yes. Was she worse than Condeleeza
"I ignored a memo that said AQ was determined to attack" Rice? That is incredibly debatable. ..."
"... I'm less for her being the fall guy for ME policies that have been a disaster for at least
as long as I've been alive(and let's face it installing the Shah, trading hostages for arms, etc, etc
there's been ALOT of mistakes there) ..."
"... As soon as one subordinates themselves, they become the agent to a principal, whether that
principal be a natural person, a class, an identity group, or an old piece of paper with happy horse
dung written all over it. Given the choice between downward mobility and schizophrenia, most choose
compartmentalization as an imperfect but effective coping mechanism to help workers stay sane and maintain
their identity in the ever more grueling workplace. ..."
"... Hmm. You're saying that split consciousness screws up principal-agent relationships, not metaphoricallly,
but literally? That's a really interesting argument, a new way to think about elites ("know your enemy").
..."
"... Does anybody really believe that the Clinton who takes off the Secretary of State hat and puts
on the Clinton Foundation hat, or who takes off the Clinton Foundation hat and puts on the Campaign
hat, is not the same Hillary Clinton? She'd have to be a sociopath to keep her mind and heart that compartmentalized,
no? But if we accept the Clinton Dynasty's "attitude toward public service," as we put it, that's what
we'd have to believe. I don't believe it. ..."
"... So, either Clinton is a sociopath (the "compartmentalization") or deeply corrupt. Which is
it to be? ..."
"... If you're saying that split consciousness makes for split loyalties, I'd agree. It's part of
what makes that compartmentalized "workaday me" role slightly corrosive to community and citizenship.
..."
"... According to people who were there it was Clinton who pushed for regime change in Libya while
Obama was reluctant. The French were pushing for it as well but within the administration she was the
advocate. She also favored regime change in Syria although US actions there are murkier. ..."
"... So Trump and Cruz were quite justified in what they said. She also favored the surge in Afghanistan
while Biden opposed. She has compared Putin to Hitler and presumably fully supports the confrontation
with Russia. ..."
"... Condi on the other hand was just a functionary for policies being made by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld
and the neocons. It was a very different situation. ..."
"... Whatever one thinks of Trump it's quite possible he'd be a less dangerous choice than Hillary
when it comes to foreign policy. The Dems don't see it this way because so many of them agree with her–particularly
the Democrats' wealthy backers. ..."
Cruz–Trump's mini-me–has apparently also been claiming lately that Hillary was a foreign policy
disaster who killed thousands. This is what Sanders hasn't been saying forever. Libertarian
Raimondo gives his take on the debate and says Rand Paul had a big night.
BTW Pat Buchanan says that if the R establishment tries to coalesce around Rubio or Cruz
then Trump will simply choose one of them as his running mate and end of story. That's assuming
Trump does in fact maintain his poll lead with actual votes.
cwaltz
Sanders doesn't mention Hillary by name (probably because she isn't the primary problem. It
wasn't like Condeleeza Rice was a stellar Secretary of State or there weren't indictments under
the Reagan Secretary of State.) However, he has been saying that our foreign policy is part of
the problem which is the REAL problem. Clinton is just a symptom.
Steven D.
I thought you were going pin the blame on Barry O since he was Hillary's boss. The system doesn't
cut it as a target. It excuses the actors. Nobody has agency? Clinton had and has a lot of power.
She has had options. She has chosen her path.
cwaltz
Clinton's behavior was similar to her predecessors which was similar to her predecessors and
so on and so on.
It's our foreign policy that is fubar and it's been fubar for awhile. This idea that Clinton
somehow was the worst Secretary of State is revisionism. Was she bad? Yes. Was she worse than
Condeleeza "I ignored a memo that said AQ was determined to attack" Rice? That is incredibly debatable.
I'm all for Hillary being held accountable.
I'm less for her being the fall guy for ME policies that have been a disaster for at least
as long as I've been alive(and let's face it installing the Shah, trading hostages for arms, etc,
etc there's been ALOT of mistakes there)
Steven D.
Who makes foreign policy? People do. There are institutional prerogatives but she didn't have
to be so damned good at being so bad.
hunkerdown
As soon as one subordinates themselves, they become the agent to a principal, whether that
principal be a natural person, a class, an identity group, or an old piece of paper with happy
horse dung written all over it. Given the choice between downward mobility and schizophrenia,
most choose compartmentalization as an imperfect but effective coping mechanism to help workers
stay sane and maintain their identity in the ever more grueling workplace.
Hmm. You're saying that split consciousness screws up principal-agent relationships, not
metaphoricallly, but literally? That's a really interesting argument, a new way to think about
elites ("know your enemy").
I said something similar - OK, "interesting" could mean confirming my priors -
here:
Does anybody really believe that the Clinton who takes off the Secretary of State hat
and puts on the Clinton Foundation hat, or who takes off the Clinton Foundation hat and puts
on the Campaign hat, is not the same Hillary Clinton? She'd have to be a sociopath to keep
her mind and heart that compartmentalized, no? But if we accept the Clinton Dynasty's "attitude
toward public service," as we put it, that's what we'd have to believe. I don't believe it.
So, either Clinton is a sociopath (the "compartmentalization") or deeply corrupt. Which
is it to be?
Nose- or rather brain-bleeds at the commanding heights….
different clue
Sociocorruptopath.
hunkerdown
Split attribution enables screwed-up principal-agent relationships. Think sex workers,
used-car salesmen, fresh-out-of-Harvard Democratic strategists, other agents who loyally if resignedly
carry out what the mainstream deems inhospitable and/or dirty work to the benefit of their principals,
yet share no interest apart from the engaged work.
Cultivating a straw self-identity or group-identity, or maybe role, for the purpose of attribution
is an effective though problematic way to keep the evil from sticking to one's self-definition.
If you're saying that split consciousness makes for split loyalties, I'd agree. It's part
of what makes that compartmentalized "workaday me" role slightly corrosive to community and citizenship.
Carolinian
According to people who were there it was Clinton who pushed for regime change in Libya
while Obama was reluctant. The French were pushing for it as well but within the administration
she was the advocate. She also favored regime change in Syria although US actions there are murkier.
So Trump and Cruz were quite justified in what they said. She also favored the surge in
Afghanistan while Biden opposed. She has compared Putin to Hitler and presumably fully supports
the confrontation with Russia.
In Honduras she covertly supported the coup government at the urging of her crony Lanny Davis
and the Honduran children who are fleeing to the United States can be chalked up as another of
HIllary's little missteps. Whether or not she was the worst Sec State ever she's up there.
Condi on the other hand was just a functionary for policies being made by Bush, Cheney,
Rumsfeld and the neocons. It was a very different situation.
Whatever one thinks of Trump it's quite possible he'd be a less dangerous choice than Hillary
when it comes to foreign policy. The Dems don't see it this way because so many of them agree
with her–particularly the Democrats' wealthy backers.
Clinton really believes that stuff. She's not pandering. Well, I mean, she's pandering too,
of course, but from a base of conviction, not political posturing.
Steven D.
You give her too much credit. Like Lyndon Johnson, she's afraid of the Republicans getting
too much to her right on foreign policy. It's purely reactive. If she believes anything, it's
probably that Democrats need to be hawkish to avoid being portrayed as pansies. A fruit of her
McGovern experience in 1972.
different clue
Then she may be misreading that experience. My brain keeps circling back to Hunter S. Thompson's
argument that McGovern didn't start falling badly until he was seen visibly seeking to appease
the Establishment Democrats that his campaign had just beaten. If Thompson't analysis is correct,
McGovern betrayed his own campaign and everyone who worked in it.
But of course the Clintons just saw "evil workers supporting Nixon against our beloved McGovern".
I still wonder how much of Clinton's support for NAFTA was driven by a desire for revenge against
the working class which voted against his beloved McGovern? Revenge being a dish best served cold,
and so forth.
Carolinian
You are probably right, which just makes it worse. No dissuading a fanatic.Hillary doesn't
seem like the type who is inclined to admit to mistakes.
Ted Rall says that for once Trump's "s-bombs" are justified.
"... By Kevin O'Rourke, Chichele Professor of Economic History, All Souls College, University of Oxford; and Programme Director, CEPR. Originally published at VoxEU . ..."
"... I completely agree that the backlash has been a long time coming. We are decades into a slow motion train wreck at this point. The evidence is there for any who wish to see it. ..."
Aug 12, 2016 |
By Kevin O'Rourke, Chichele Professor of Economic History, All Souls College,
University of Oxford; and Programme Director, CEPR.
Originally published at VoxEU.
After the Brexit vote, it is obvious to many that globalisation in general, and European integration
in particular, can leave people behind – and that ignoring this for long enough can have severe political
consequences. This column argues that this fact has long been obvious. As the historical record demonstrates
plainly and repeatedly, too much market and too little state invites a backlash. Markets and states
are political complements, not substitutes.
The main point of my 1999 book with Jeff Williamson was that globalisation produces both winners
and losers, and that this can lead to an anti-globalisation backlash (O'Rourke and Williamson 1999).
We argued this based on late-19th century evidence. Then, the main losers from trade were European
landowners, who found themselves competing with an elastic supply of cheap New World land. The
result was that in Germany and France, Italy and Sweden, the move towards ever-freer trade that had
been ongoing for several years was halted, and replaced by a shift towards protection that benefited
not only agricultural interests, but industrial ones as well. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic,
immigration restrictions were gradually tightened, as workers found themselves competing with
European migrants coming from ever-poorer source countries.
...
The globalisation experience of the Atlantic economy prior to the Great War
speaks directly and eloquently to globalisation debates today – and the
political lessons from this are sobering.
"Politicians, journalists, and
market analysts have a tendency to extrapolate the immediate past into the
indefinite future, and such thinking suggests that the world is irreversibly
headed toward ever greater levels of economic integration. The historical
record suggests the contrary."
"Unless politicians worry about who gains and who loses,î we continued,
ìthey may be forced by the electorate to stop efforts to strengthen global
economy links, and perhaps even to dismantle them … We hope that this book will
help them to avoid that mistake – or remedy it."
...If the English want continued Single Market access, they will have to swallow continued labour
mobility. There are complementary domestic policies that could help in making that politically
feasible. We will have to wait and see what the English decide. But there are also lessons for the
27 remaining EU states (28 if, as I hope, Scotland remains a member). Too much market and too little
state invites a backlash. Take the politics into account, and it becomes clear (as Dani Rodrik has
often argued) that markets and states are complements, not substitutes.
UK Toryism today is not so much a political party espousing an ideology as
it is an ideology that has taken over a political party. It is the ideolgy of
exploitation of a tiny clique over an entire society and has become, through
extensive and relentless propoganda, embedded the fabric of UK society. It is a
class ideology that requires a middle classes and poorer apirants to the middle
classes to accept cuts to their influence and hence wealth by creating an
demonising a constructed underclass. The underclass serves as:
1. a frightening lesson to those who do not conform
2. scapegoats for every kind of social and cultural ill
3. a fungible source of wandering labour who can be compelled to exploitation
and discarded at will
It demands the destruction of the state that supports people and replaces it
with a state that supports business interests only. Everything must become a
commodity – especially humans. It is an ideology that decries income
distribution to the less wealthy but in every instance creates laws that ensure
distribution of vast majority of wealth to the wealthiest. It is the insurance
company for the wealthy as well. The taxpayer is the insurer.
The greatest single example of wealth redistribution from the politically
weak is the student loan wheeze. The mob in their greatest exploits could not
have contrived a more elaborate form of extortion. As Tory idoeology
'crapifies' every job in the UK, they goad the young into what have become
school factories, turning out people with certificates but often very little
relevant qualification for a shrinking economy. Meanwhile the governement sells
the loans to "investors" (themselves and their friends) for pence on the pound.
Create the law that create the conditions that create the cash flow, and
never lift a finger to do a real days work.
What's not to like?
Given the over population of the island, that oil is running out, and that
they have gutted any social and cultural cohesive factor, and even if Brexit
evaporates, the long term bodes ill anyway.
paul
So if the EU was completely different in action and intent, we would not
have had brexit?
Is labour mobility a really an expression of individual freedom, or coercive
displacement in the face of the internal devaluation insisted upon by the
technocrats?
Its the former for JC Juncker and the latter for the workers at the
sports direct gulags.
Globalisation is a mechanism to strengthen corporations and the elites that
own them, we would never had heard of the term otherwise.
The europroject has steadfastly committed itself to this end and nothing
will be allowed to interfere with it.
A highly coupled,regionally constrained 'free trade' area is the only way to
achieve this end.
Why is brexit going to be painful? The same reason a chinese finger trap is
difficult to get out of, it's designed that way.
The eurogroup cannot admit that it now only serves as an iron lung for the
financial sector.
Popular reaction against it is to be welcomed, It's the only thing that will
work.
windsock
"It is astonishing in retrospect how few people argued strongly for more
services rather than fewer people."
Well, Jeremy Corbyn did…
"Learning abroad and working abroad, increases the opportunities and skills
of British people and migration brings benefits as well as challenges at home.
But it's only if there is government action to train enough skilled workers
to stop the exploitation of migrant labour to undercut wages and invest in
local services and housing in areas of rapid population growth that they will
be felt across the country.'
And this Government has done nothing of the sort. Instead, its failure to
train enough skilled workers means we have become reliant on migration to keep
our economy functioning."
and
"It is sometimes easier to blame the EU, or worse to blame foreigners, than
to face up to our own problems. At the head of which right now is a
Conservative Government that is failing the people of Britain."
…but the Tories couldn't – they have been demonising the service users as
"scroungers" and "skivers" since Osborne introduced his austerity policies in
2010. Why on earth would he and Cameron – leading the Remain campaign, take the
opinions of such people (like me) into account?
Art Eclectic
I don't believe the lack of skilled workers is the problem. The problem
is the wages that professionals WANT to pay for skills do match up with what
labor needs/wants to make. Tech workers are a perfect example. US tech
companies want more HB1 visas, claiming there is not enough skilled labor.
The part they leave out is the skilled labor wages. A US citizen carrying
six figures in student load dept demands a higher wage than an Indian
immigrant on an HB1.
The professional class and corporations want to pay lower wages for
everything from child care to roofers to junior managers, so of course they
are all in favor of globalization and worker movement. There's bit of
classism there as well. The senior manager is pissed that some random coder
is making almost as much as he is. The professional is offended that a child
care worker can afford their own home and drive a middle class car. Keeping
wages low allows the professionals to maintain distinction of rank and
value.
You can see that impact in every discussion about minimum wages and
people complaining about fast food workers getting $15 a hour for
"low-skill" work.
Ancaeus
Lambert,
The subtext of this article is a fawning acceptance of the desirability of
globalization. Many of us reject globalization outright. We don't believe that
it can, or ever will, be "tamed". Nor do we desire to live in a world where its
pernicious effects must be forever mitigated. We do not want to be the
recipients of such long-term mitigation, with the consequent loss of dignity.
Instead, let us return to local products and services, produced by our
neighbors. The money we spend will stay in our community. What's more, the
social benefits of such local trade and the resulting thriving local economy go
well beyond economic ones.
The destruction of social cohesion is the primary externality that results
from "free trade". And, in my opinion, no amount of money can adequately
compensate for it. Returning to Brexit question, it is not clear to me that
these non-economic costs of free trade are made worthwhile by the supposed
non-economic benefits of the European project. From this side of the Atlantic,
it seems doubtful.
Agreed. I come at it from the other side: I think the (reasonably
controlled) exchange of people, ideas, goods, and services across national
borders is a good thing; however, I respect the right of those who dislike
globalization to do so. This post instead treats them with a thinly veiled
heaping of scorn on top of an implicit claim of calling people both stupid
and racist.
The notion at the end of the article that Brexit specifically, or
opposition to globalization more generally, is about market vs. the state is
nonsensical bordering on purposeful obtuseness. Western society today is not
characterized by too little state. The problem is what the state does.
Sound of the Suburbs
The BoE has taken more action that won't help and its been a long time since
2008.
More and more people have read Richard Koo's book and know fiscal stimulus
is required.
Ben Bernake and Janet Yellen had read Richard Koo's book and ensured the US
didn't impose austerity and go over the fiscal cliff.
Mario hasn't read Richard Koo's book and pushed the Club-Med nations over
the fiscal cliff.
The harsh austerity on Greece, killed the Greek economy altogether.
Reading Richard Koo's book is important, if only Mario would get a copy
before he wipes out the Club-Med economies and banking systems.
Mark Carney is from the Goldman stable and is naturally slow on the uptake
and is set in his old-fashioned banker ways.
Before you make a complete fool of yourself like Mario, here is an essential
video:
The IMF and World Bank spent 50 years imposing austerity, selling off
previously public companies and insisting on lower Government spending. The
trail of wreckage is spread across the world, South America, Africa, Asia and
finally Greece.
Bankers don't take responsibility for anything and so never learn from their
mistakes.
Well, The IMF, after 50 years, has finally realised this doesn't work.
At 15.30 mins. into the video you can see the UK situation.
There are massive bank reserves, adding to them will make no difference.
Comparing the charts, the UK's borrowing has gone down more since 2008 than
the US and the Euro-zone.
We are doing all the wrong things, like austerity.
If we had done the right things straight away the UK might still be
in the EU
(The Euro-zone figures look OK because the strong Northern nations aren't
doing too badly, looking at the Club-Med nations and Greece, it's a very
different story. The chart of Greece shows a nation being run into the ground.)
hotairmail
I voted Brexit not for the 'immigration issue' but for democracy. The EU
bureaucracy has too much power and leverages its Central Bank to keep wayward
states in line such as Greece, deliberately causing deflationary depressions
and mass unemployment in their wake. The disdain with which democratic leaders
are treated is typified by a rather famous video where a drunk Juncker greets
various heads of democratic governments and proceeds to treat them
disgracefully (search "Juncker bitch slap" on Youtube). That is not simply a
video of a drunk man being inappropriate – it shows you where the power lies
and what the bureaucracy routinely believes it can get away with.
Britain decided not to join the Euro bloc. It is well documented that its
design is not sustainable. It will either blow up and the thing will fall
apart, or they will need to implement new fiscal transfers from the rich parts
of the bloc to the less well off, as with an ordinary country. The Euro bloc
will need to make big changes to ensure the Euro stays together which involves
large costs to the richer nations such as Germany and Holland. But as most of
the EU decision making at inter governmental level is majority voting, it is
likely the UK would be outvoted to implement this via the EU – NOT the Euro
bloc. They will want to pick the pockets of the UK even though the reasons for
the transfers is nothing to do with the UK.
Turning to the immigartion issue itself, it seems to me this is just as much
about tax and benefits policy and its effects, as it is for free movement. As
an EU citizen when you come to the UK, you are automatically treated the same
as a UK citizen. This means you instantly have access to free health, free
schools, housing benefit and in work tax credits. These sums really add up. The
effect of these supports is to make labour very cheap to employers in the UK –
people can do very low value work and still make their way. The expansion of
the EU to the east made a vast pool of relatively poor labour available to
employers and we have witnessed an explosion of low value added work from "hand
car washes" to picking fruit (whilst fruit lays unpicked in their home
countries). People wring ther hands about why productivity and tax revenue
isn't growing despite rising employment coupled with an exploding housing
benefit and tax credit bill, pressure on schools and healthcare. Put quite
simply the UK cannot afford the services it has become used to with low value
added work, so something has to give. At the end of the day, a decent welfare
state in fact is NOT compatible with open borders. This is something the left
wing have yet to face properly. And ordinary people, far from being simply
'racist' and xenophobic, are simply exercising their choice at the ballot box
and they basically don't want to to see their lives get worse with lower wages,
fewer opportunities, poorer housing and reduced welfare and services.
A word of warning though about whether Brexit or the EU is protectionist or
left wing etc – there are actually quite well argued opinions on both sides.
For many Brexiteers, the EU actually represents a protectionist bloc that
hinders free trade with the world. Many on the left, coming from the pure
"international socialism" of the proper left wing also believe in fighting for
protections of workers on the international stage such as the EU and therefore
are not necessarily in step with their less well off followers, wondering who
stole their cheese. A free trading nation but with a controlled immigration
policy is actually quite appealing and may help to squeeze out the explosion of
low value added work.
On the democratic front, our politicians for decades have blamed the EU for
why they can't do x or y. Add in that for the ordinary Brit we've only ever
read articles about rules to implement "straight bananas" and the like, whilst
our media spends far more time covering the anglophone American election, you
can see there is no proper functioning "demos". And at the end of the day
although "status quo" was always the position of the Remain side of things,
this was never on the table. First we have the Euro issue and then we always
have the Rome Treaty we signed up to which clearly states "Ever closer union".
One final point about the vote split from the Ashcroft poll. You should note
that only 2 parties voters supported Leave – UKIP (96%) and the Tories (56%).
Labour and SNP were about the same at 62/63% to Remain. The idea that those who
voted Leave are council house dwelling northerners is far from the mark. If you
discount the fact that nationalist issues dominated proceedings in Scotland and
Northern Ireland, the vote was more decisive than at first glance – hence why
the Tories are treating this seemingly marginal result as so decisive – both
amongst their own voters and the prize of the UKIP support in the future.
Sorry for the rambling comment but there are lots of different angles to the
EU issue – I'd just like to leave you with how I feel the split amongst the
electorate occurs. Imagine a 4 box matrix, 2×2, with 'left' and 'right' on the
top and 'nightmare' and 'dream' along the left. Left wingers who voted to
remain have an international socialist dream. Right wingers who voted to Remain
see it as a rampant free trade dream. Those who voted to leave on the right saw
it as a socialist, protectionist nightmare. Those who voted leave on the left
saw it as a neo liberal nightmare. So, you can see the split isn't just about
whether you are left or right, free trade or protectionist – it has to be
overlaid with whether the EU better represents your hopes or is a threat. The
motivations for the vote are even more confusing than the coverage of those
supposed reasons.
sd
Shorter version: the only way
to keep capitalism in check is to pair it with a strong dose of socialism which
the greed of those in power rarely allows. Outcome is always the same: the
peasants revolt and management wonders why.
lyman alpha blob
The only reason globalization works for the meritorious technocrat class
that supports it is because they are able to take advantage of differences in
local currency values.
Funny how you hear all this talk about global trade being necessary and
unavoidable but never a global currency.
And now in France, a so-called Socialist government has weakened labor
protections. A situation where a proletariat forced to swallow this, along with
an easy immigration program, would spell trouble to anyone who has a knowledge
of history and human nature.
Plus, an even more immediate concern is that it appears globalization is an
environmental disaster that we may very well have precious little time to
correct.
dw
globalization isnt even all that popular among professionals since even
their jobs are at risk now. but its extremely popular among executives because
it makes their job easier. until their jobs end up being subject to it too. but
among the among 1% its very popular, at least until it becomes very hard to
make a profit or grow their business, since they all loose customers , and cant
raise prices
Mary Wehrheim
The reason why popular opinion turns toward solutions involving immigration
restriction rather than expansion of services is because….deficits. Watching
the GOP primary ads in the hermetically sealed conservative bubble that passes
for Kansas one would think that was the most pressing problem facing the US …
course they throw in the usual memes of terrorist and Obama care dangers with a
short sop about "more jobs" as rather an aside. The Powell memo propaganda
machine has been very successful in redirecting the popular world view through
the gaze of the 1%. Taxes = theft, just work harder (that one is finally
wearing a bit thin though after the wives got into the work force and people
got into deep debt over the past 40 years in a vain attempt to try and rise
above stagnant salaries), safety net = dependency, poverty = lazy habits,
privatization= efficiency, government and regulation = serfdom, and unions
interfere with the celestial harmony of the spheres that is markets.
Pookah Harvey
These same arguments can be made for the replacement of low skilled jobs by
robots, Closing borders will not help in this situation. Governments need to
start planning for a world where there will be less of what we now consider"
jobs" More services provided by government and lowering hours in the work week
soon have to be on the agenda for forward looking politicians or Dune's
Butlerian Jihad may come sooner than we think.
A guy named Karl Marx had an interesting little theory of value in
capitalism which explains that the more hours a person works = more profit
for the company. As automation deepens and spreads, companies will lay
people off, but they will never willingly reduce the hours worked for the
remaining employees.
Unless capitalism willingly adopts socialistic measures (and it never
will), it will keep herding workers – and eventually, itself – off a cliff.
Ché Pasa
These stories and the studies they're grounded in have been told over and
over again for decades now. They're true, and in some cases they are so
complete and compelling as to demolish once and for all the consensus ideology
of Neo-LibCon rule, and yet…
Our rulers do not listen. Our rulers do not care. They are lost in a
post-modern decoupling of truth and fact from anything they need concern
themselves with.
It's pure religion tangled with power.
The more stories and studies showing just how wrong they and their
ideology/religion are, the more they don't listen, the more they don't care.
Ulysses
"Our rulers do not listen. Our rulers do not care. They are lost in a
post-modern decoupling of truth and fact from anything they need concern
themselves with.
It's pure religion tangled with power.
The more stories and studies showing just how wrong they and their
ideology/religion are, the more they don't listen, the more they don't
care."
Very well said! Here in the U.S. we have enshrined in our fundamental law
the right: "to petition the government for a redress of grievances." This
first right amongst the bill of rights was only granted to us after Shay's
Rebellion showed the elites that the people wouldn't simply roll over and
subject themselves to an authoritarian government.
When this petitioning failed, in the 1770s, to produce satisfactory
results our independent nation was born amidst great tumult. Now we face a
similar crossroads: move forward into a potentially better life, after
toppling the transnational kleptocracy, or guarantee the further degradation
of humanity by failing to do more than meekly petition the kleptocrats to
throw us a few more crumbs.
We need to stop trying to persuade those who benefit from exploiting us
to stop through constructing ever more convincing arguments. The kleptocrats
need to suffer tangible consequences for their crimes, through massive
non-compliance with their wishes and monkey-wrenching of their systems.
Indigenous peoples in Brazil have just shown us how to proceed by halting
the dam.
Zvi Namenwirth. He did a pioneering early study measuring the rhetoric of
wealth transfer in American party platforms. I noticed twenty years ago that
the swings tacked according to Kondratieff curves, which measure shifts between
growth in manufacturing vs. agriculture. That's likely what you're seeing now
with the balance shifting from labor to capital (the 1%) since the early '70s.
It's not as important to look at general inflation as it is to measure the
relative changes in prices among different sectors. Given that parties
represent different interest groups, it's likely these stresses show up in
political speech.
But then that would mean politics drives economics and no economist wants to
admit that.
washunate
I completely agree that the backlash has been a long time coming. We are
decades into a slow motion train wreck at this point. The evidence is there for
any who wish to see it.
I completely disagree, though, with the conclusion. What is going on is not
about an insufficiently large state. Rather, it's that the state has been
entrenching inequality rather than addressing it. Our contemporary experience
with excessive concentration of wealth and power is not an outcome of markets.
It's an outcome of public policy. Implying that Brexit voters specifically, or
anti-globalization advocates more generally, are stupid and racist says a lot
more about the biases and blind spots in our intellectual class than it does
about the victims of globalization as western governments have implemented it
over the past few decades.
Stiglitz: AUG 5, 2016 8
Globalization and its New Discontents
NEW YORK – Fifteen years ago, I wrote a little book, entitled Globalization
and its Discontents, describing growing opposition in the developing world
to globalizing reforms. It seemed a mystery: people in developing countries
had been told that globalization would increase overall wellbeing. So why
had so many people become so hostile to it?
Now, globalization's opponents in the emerging markets and developing
countries have been joined by tens of millions in the advanced countries.
Opinion polls, including a careful study by Stanley Greenberg and his associates
for the Roosevelt Institute, show that trade is among the major sources
of discontent for a large share of Americans. Similar views are apparent
in Europe.
How can something that our political leaders – and many an economist
– said would make everyone better off be so reviled?
One answer occasionally heard from the neoliberal economists who advocated
for these policies is that people are better off. They just don't know it.
Their discontent is a matter for psychiatrists, not economists.
But income data suggest that it is the neoliberals who may benefit from
therapy. Large segments of the population in advanced countries have not
been doing well: in the US, the bottom 90% has endured income stagnation
for a third of a century. Median income for full-time male workers is actually
lower in real (inflation-adjusted) terms than it was 42 years ago. At the
bottom, real wages are comparable to their level 60 years ago.
The effects of the economic pain and dislocation that many Americans
are experiencing are even showing up in health statistics. For example,
the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, this year's Nobel laureate, have
shown that life expectancy among segments of white Americans is declining.
Things are a little better in Europe – but only a little better.
Branko Milanovic's new book Global Inequality: A New Approach for the
Age of Globalization provides some vital insights, looking at the big winners
and losers in terms of income over the two decades from 1988 to 2008. Among
the big winners were the global 1%, the world's plutocrats, but also the
middle class in newly emerging economies. Among the big losers – those who
gained little or nothing – were those at the bottom and the middle and working
classes in the advanced countries. Globalization is not the only reason,
but it is one of the reasons.
Under the assumption of perfect markets (which underlies most neoliberal
economic analyses) free trade equalizes the wages of unskilled workers around
the world. Trade in goods is a substitute for the movement of people. Importing
goods from China – goods that require a lot of unskilled workers to produce
– reduces the demand for unskilled workers in Europe and the US.
This force is so strong that if there were no transportation costs, and
if the US and Europe had no other source of competitive advantage, such
as in technology, eventually it would be as if Chinese workers continued
to migrate to the US and Europe until wage differences had been eliminated
entirely. Not surprisingly, the neoliberals never advertised this consequence
of trade liberalization, as they claimed – one could say lied – that all
would benefit.
The failure of globalization to deliver on the promises of mainstream
politicians has surely undermined trust and confidence in the "establishment."
And governments' offers of generous bailouts for the banks that had brought
on the 2008 financial crisis, while leaving ordinary citizens largely to
fend for themselves, reinforced the view that this failure was not merely
a matter of economic misjudgments.
In the US, Congressional Republicans even opposed assistance to those
who were directly hurt by globalization. More generally, neoliberals, apparently
worried about adverse incentive effects, have opposed welfare measures that
would have protected the losers.
But they can't have it both ways: if globalization is to benefit most
members of society, strong social-protection measures must be in place.
The Scandinavians figured this out long ago; it was part of the social contract
that maintained an open society – open to globalization and changes in technology.
Neoliberals elsewhere have not – and now, in elections in the US and Europe,
they are having their comeuppance.
Globalization is, of course, only one part of what is going on; technological
innovation is another part. But all of this openness and disruption were
supposed to make us richer, and the advanced countries could have introduced
policies to ensure that the gains were widely shared.
Instead, they pushed for policies that restructured markets in ways that
increased inequality and undermined overall economic performance; growth
actually slowed as the rules of the game were rewritten to advance the interests
of banks and corporations – the rich and powerful – at the expense of everyone
else. Workers' bargaining power was weakened; in the US, at least, competition
laws didn't keep up with the times; and existing laws were inadequately
enforced. Financialization continued apace and corporate governance worsened.
Now, as I point out in my recent book Rewriting the Rules of the American
Economy, the rules of the game need to be changed again – and this must
include measures to tame globalization. The two new large agreements that
President Barack Obama has been pushing – the Trans-Pacific Partnership
between the US and 11 Pacific Rim countries, and the Transatlantic Trade
and Investment Partnership between the EU and the US – are moves in the
wrong direction.
The main message of Globalization and its Discontents was that the problem
was not globalization, but how the process was being managed. Unfortunately,
the management didn't change. Fifteen years later, the new discontents have
brought that message home to the advanced economies.
Monessen, Pennsylvania (CNN)Donald Trump on Tuesday trashed U.S. trade policies that he
said have encouraged globalization and wiped out American manufacturing jobs in a speech in which
he promised to herald a U.S. economic resurgence.
Speaking before a colorful backdrop of crushed aluminum cans, Trump pitched himself at a factory
in Rust Belt Pennsylvania as a change agent who would bring back manufacturing jobs and end the "rigged
system," which he argued presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton represents.
Trump promised sweeping changes if elected -- including killing the Trans-Pacific Partnership
trade deal and renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement -- and urged voters to be wary
of a "campaign of fear and intimidation" aimed at swaying them away from his populist message.
"Our politicians have aggressively pursued a policy of globalization -- moving our jobs, our wealth
and our factories to Mexico and overseas," he said, reading from prepared remarks and using teleprompters.
"Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very, very wealthy. I used
to be one of them. Hate to say it, but I used to be one of them."
Trump repeatedly slammed Clinton for supporting free trade agreements and argued that under a
Clinton presidency "nothing is going to change."
"The inner cities will remain poor. the factories will remain closed," Trump said at Alumisource,
a raw material producer for the aluminum and steel industries in Monessen, Pennsylvania, an hour
south of Pittsburgh. "The special interests will remain firmly in control."
Echoing Clinton's chief
rival for the Democratic nomination, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Trump also argued that Clinton
has "voted for virtually every trade agreement" and accused her of supporting trade deals that have
hurt U.S. workers.
Trump's speech drew a swift rebuke Tuesday from opposing ends of the political spectrum.
The Chamber of Commerce, the big business lobby that traditionally backs Republicans, issued a
swift statement warning that Trump's proposed policies would herald another U.S. recession.
"Under Trump's trade plans, we would see higher prices, fewer jobs, and a weaker economy," the
group tweeted, linking to a lengthier article
warning that a recession would hit the U.S. "within the first year" of a Trump presidency.
"I'd love for him to explain how all of that fits with his talk about 'America First,'" Clinton
said in a speech last week.
Trump moved quickly on Tuesday to insulate himself from the criticism from his rival's campaign
and others opposed to his vision of radically changing U.S. economic policies.
Trump repeatedly warned Americans to gird themselves against a "campaign of fear" he argued Clinton
and others are running against him -- a notable criticism given the accusations that several of his
policies, including a ban on Muslims and a plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, have
played to voters' fears.
The de facto GOP nominee promised to instruct his treasury secretary to "label China a currency
manipulator" and to order the U.S. trade representative to bring lawsuits against China at the World
Trade Organization and in U.S. courts to combat what he characterized as unfair trade policies.
And he also warned of potentially levying tariffs on imports from China and other countries, reviving
a common theme of his campaign.
Trump has frequently argued on the stump that the U.S. is getting "killed" by other countries on
trade and threatened to raise certain tariffs on China and Mexico up to 35%.
Early on in his yearlong campaign, Trump singled out specific American companies -- notably Ford
and Nabisco -- for plans to move some of their manufacturing plants abroad.
Slamming Nabisco for building a factory in Mexico, Trump has vowed he's "not eating Oreos anymore."
A senior Trump aide told CNN earlier on Tuesday the speech would be "the most detailed economic address
he has given so far."
Trump has frequently lamented the economic slowdown working-class communities in America have faced
as a result of a drop in American manufacturing, particularly in the last decade.
As Scott Adams noted: "Clinton's campaign has such strong persuasion going right now that she is
successfully equating her actual misdeeds of the past with Trump's imaginary mental issues and
imaginary future misdeeds".
They use a Rovian strategy: Assault the enemy's strength. You've got to admire the
Chutzpah: Killing your parents, then complaining you're an orphan. The candidate who didn't raise a
voice against the Iraq War and pushed the administration in favor of war with Libya (which we're now
bombing again) paints their opponent as a lunatic warmonger.
Notable quotes:
"... it's hard not to applaud when he pisses off the stuff shirts at the Washington Post. ..."
"... the frustration with Obama's foreign policy - the continuation of wars, the expansion of drone attacks, the failure to reduce nuclear weapons - has prompted some to piece through Donald Trump's sayings in a desperate search for something, anything, that could possibly represent an alternative. ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... If we cannot be properly reimbursed for the tremendous cost of our military protecting other countries, and in many cases the countries I'm talking about are extremely rich. Then if we cannot make a deal, which I believe we will be able to, and which I would prefer being able to, but if we cannot make a deal…. I would be absolutely prepared to tell those countries, "Congratulations, you will be defending yourself. ..."
"... We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem. And we will send a clear signal that there is no daylight between America and our most reliable ally, the state of Israel. The Palestinians must come to the table knowing that the bond between the United States and Israel is absolutely, totally unbreakable. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton has traditionally adopted foreign policy positions to the right of Barack Obama. As president, she will likely tack in a more hawkish direction. ..."
"... John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus. ..."
Trump's foreign policy isn't an alternative to U.S. empire. It's just a cruder rendition of
it. ;
Donald Trump may be a bigot and a bully, but it's hard not to applaud when he pisses off the
stuff shirts at the Washington Post.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has staked out a foreign policy position quite
distinct from his opponent, Hillary Clinton. It is not, however, "isolationist" (contra
Jeb Bush and many others) or "less aggressively militaristic" (economist Mark Weisbrot
in The Hill ) or "a jolt of realpolitik " (journalist Simon Jenkins
in The Guardian ).
With all due respect to these sources, they're all wrong. Ditto John Pilger's
claim that Clinton represents the greater threat to the world, John Walsh's
argument that Trump is "the relative peace candidate," and Justin Raimondo's
assertion
that if Trump wins then "the military-industrial complex is finished, along with the globalists
who dominate foreign policy circles in Washington."
...His comments on foreign policy have frequently been incoherent, inconsistent, and just plain
ignorant. He hasn't exactly rolled out a detailed blueprint of what he would do to the world if elected
(though that old David Levine
cartoon of Henry Kissinger beneath the sheets comes to mind)...
However, over the last year Trump has said enough to pull together a pretty good picture of what
he'd do if suddenly in a position of
nearly unchecked power (thanks to the expansion of executive authority under both Bush and Obama).
President Trump would offer an updated version of Teddy Roosevelt's old dictum: speak loudly and
carry the biggest stick possible.
It's not an alternative to U.S. empire - just a cruder rendition of it.
The Enemy of My Enemy
Both liberals and conservatives in the United States,
as I've written , have embraced
economic policies that have left tens of millions of working people in desperate straits. The desperation
of the "left behind" faction is so acute, in fact, that many of its members are willing to ignore
Donald Trump's obvious disqualifications - his personal wealth, his disdain for "losers," his support
of tax cuts for the rich - in order to back the Republican candidate and stick it to the elite.
A similar story prevails in the foreign policy realm. On the left, the frustration with Obama's
foreign policy - the continuation of wars, the expansion of drone attacks, the failure to reduce
nuclear weapons - has prompted some to piece through Donald Trump's sayings in a desperate search
for something, anything, that could possibly represent an alternative. ... ... ...
Examined more carefully, his positions on war and peace, alliance systems, and human rights break
no new ground. He is old white whine in a new, cracked bottle.
Trump on War
... ... ...
True, Trump has criticized the neoconservative espousal of the use of military force to promote
democracy and build states. But that doesn't mean he has backed off from the use of military force
in general. Trump has
pledged to use the military "if there's a problem going on in the world and you can solve the
problem," a rather open-ended approach to the deployment of U.S. forces. He agreed, for instance,
that the Clinton administration was right to intervene in the Balkans to prevent ethnic cleansing
in Kosovo.
In terms of current conflicts, Trump
has promised to "knock the hell out of ISIS" with airpower and
20,000-30,000 U.S. troops on the ground. He even
reserves the right to use nuclear weapons against the would-be caliphate. By suggesting to allies
and adversaries alike that he is possibly unhinged, Trump has resurrected one of the most terrifying
presidential strategies of all time, Richard Nixon's
"madman" approach to bombing North Vietnam.
This is not isolationism. It's not even discriminate deterrence. As in the business world, Trump
believes in full-spectrum dominance in global affairs. As Zack Beauchamp
points out in Vox , Trump is an ardent believer in colonial wars of conquest to seize oil fields
and pipelines.
About the only place in the world that Trump has apparently ruled out war is with Russia. Yes,
it's a good thing that he's against the new cold war that has descended on U.S.-Russian relations...
... ... ...
Trump on Alliances
Trump has made few friends in Washington with his criticisms of veterans and their families and
his "joke" encouraging Russia to release any emails from Hillary Clinton's account that it might
have acquired in its hacking. Yet it's Trump's statements about NATO that have most unsettled the
U.S. foreign policy elite.
In an interview with The New York Times , Trump said:
If we cannot be properly reimbursed for the tremendous cost of our military protecting
other countries, and in many cases the countries I'm talking about are extremely rich. Then if
we cannot make a deal, which I believe we will be able to, and which I would prefer being able
to, but if we cannot make a deal…. I would be absolutely prepared to tell those countries, "Congratulations,
you will be defending yourself.
... ... ...
Again, I doubt Trump actually believes in abandoning NATO. Rather, he believes that threats enhance
one's bargaining position. In the Trump worldview, there are no allies. There are only competitors
from whom one extracts concessions.
We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem.
And we will send a clear signal that there is no daylight between America and our most reliable
ally, the state of Israel. The Palestinians must come to the table knowing that the bond between
the United States and Israel is absolutely, totally unbreakable.
Ultimately President Trump would extend the same reassurances to other allies once he is briefed
on exactly how much they contribute to maintaining U.S. hegemony in the world.
Trump on Pentagon Spending
Critics like Jean Bricmont
rave about Trump's willingness to take on the U.S. military-industrial complex: "He not only
denounces the trillions of dollars spent in wars, deplores the dead and wounded American soldiers,
but also speaks of the Iraqi victims of a war launched by a Republican president."
But Donald Trump, as president, would be the military-industrial complex's best friend. He has
stated on numerous occasions
his intention to "rebuild" the U.S. military: "We're going to make our military so big, so strong
and so great, so powerful that we're never going to have to use it."
More recently, in an interview with conservative
columnist Cal Thomas , he said, "Our military has been so badly depleted. Who would think the
United States is raiding plane graveyards to pick up parts and equipment? That means they're being
held together by a shoestring. Other countries have brand-new stuff they have bought from us." That
the United States already has the most powerful military in the world by every conceivable measure
seems to have escaped Trump. And our allies never get any military hardware that U.S. forces don't
already have.
Well, perhaps Trump will somehow strengthen the U.S. military by cutting waste and investing that
money more effectively. But Trump has promised to
increase
general military spending as well as the resources devoted to fighting the Islamic State. It's
part of an overall incoherent plan that includes large tax cuts and a promise to balance the budget.
An Exceptional Ruler
Let me be clear: Hillary Clinton has traditionally adopted foreign policy positions to the
right of Barack Obama. As president, she will likely tack in a more hawkish direction.
... ... ...
John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus.
It's heresy in the GOP to question the neoconservative paradigm – just ask Rand Paul. It's
assumed, as an article of faith, that America is the moral leader of the world; that we must not
only defend our values across the world, we must also use force to remake it in our image. This
is the thinking that gave us the Iraq War. It's the prism through which most of the GOP still
views international politics. Trump – and Bernie Sanders – represents a departure from this
paradigm.
Although it's unlikely to happen, a Trump-Sanders general election would have been refreshing for
at least one reason: it would have constituted a total rejection of neoconservatism.
Most Americans understand, intuitively, that the differences between the major parties are often
rhetorical, not substantive. That's not to say substantive differences don't exist – surely they
do, especially on social issues. But the policies from administration to administration overlap
more often than not, regardless of the party in charge. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Much of the stability is due to money and the structure of our system, which tends toward dynamic
equilibrium. And there are limits to what the president can do on issues like the economy and
health care.
But one area in which the president does have enormous flexibility is foreign policy. Which is
why, as Politico reported this week, the GOP's national security establishment is "bitterly
digging in against" Trump. Indeed, more than any other wing of the Republican Party, the
neoconservatives are terrified at the prospect of a Trump nomination.
"Hillary is the lesser evil, by a large margin," said Eliot Cohen, a former Bush official with
neoconservative ties. Trump would be "an unmitigated disaster for American foreign policy."
Another neocon, Max Boot, says he'd vote for Clinton over Trump: "She would be vastly preferable
to Trump." Even Bill Kristol, the great champion of the Iraq War, a man who refuses to consider
the hypothesis that he was wrong about anything, is threatening to recruit a third party
candidate to derail Trump for similar reasons.
Just this week, moreover, a group of conservative foreign policy intellectuals, several of whom
are neocons, published an open letter stating that they're "united in our opposition to a Donald
Trump presidency." They offer a host of reasons for their objections, but the bottom line is they
don't trust Trump to continue America's current policy of policing the world on ethical grounds.
Trump isn't constrained by the same ideological conventions as other candidates, and so he
occasionally stumbles upon unpopular truths. His comments about the Iraq War are an obvious
example. But even on an issue like the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, Trump says what any
reasonable observer should: we ought to maintain neutrality and work to solve the dispute with an
eyes towards our national interest. Now, Trump couldn't explain the concept of "realism" to save
his life, but this position is perfectly consistent with that tradition. And if Republicans
weren't blinkered by religious fanaticism, they'd acknowledge it as well. The same is true of
Trump's nebulous critiques of America's soft imperialism, which again are sacrilege in Republican
politics.
Diplomacy & respect crucial to our relationship with Russia
Q: This week we're going to see a lot of world leaders come to Manhattan. Might you have a
meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin?
TRUMP: Well, I had heard that he wanted to meet
with me. And certainly I am open to it. I don't know that it's going to take place, but I know
that people have been talking. We'll see what happens. But certainly, if he wanted to meet, I
would love to do that. You know, I've been saying relationship is so important in business, that
it's so important in deals, and so important in the country. And if President Obama got along
with Putin, that would be a fabulous thing. But they do not get along. Putin does not respect our
president. And I'm sure that our president does not like him very much.
Putin has no respect for America; I will get along with him
Q: What would you do right now if you were president, to get the Russians out of Syria?
TRUMP:
Number one, they have to respect you. He has absolutely no respect for President Obama. Zero. I
would talk to him. I would get along with him. I believe I would get along with a lot of the
world leaders that this country is not getting along with. I think I will get along with Putin,
and I will get along with others, and we will have a much more stable world.
We must deal with the maniac in North Korea with nukes
[With regards to the Iranian nuclear deal]: Nobody ever mentions North Korea where you have this
maniac sitting there and he actually has nuclear weapons and somebody better start thinking about
North Korea and perhaps a couple of other places. You have somebody right now in North Korea who
has got nuclear weapons and who is saying almost every other week, "I'm ready to use them." And
we don't even mention it.
China is our enemy; they're bilking us for billions
China is bilking us for hundreds of billions of dollars by manipulating and devaluing its
currency. Despite all the happy talk in Washington, the Chinese leaders are not our friends. I've
been criticized for calling them our enemy. But what else do you call the people who are
destroying your children's and grandchildren's future? What name would you prefer me to use for
the people who are hell bent on bankrupting our nation, stealing our jobs, who spy on us to steal
our technology, who are undermining our currency, and who are ruining our way of life? To my
mind, that's an enemy. If we're going to make America number one again, we've got to have a
president who knows how to get tough with China, how to out-negotiate the Chinese, and how to
keep them from screwing us at every turn.
When you love America, you protect it with no apologies
I love America. And when you love something, you protect it passionately--fiercely, even. We are
the greatest country the world has ever known. I make no apologies for this country, my pride in
it, or my desire to see us become strong and rich again. After all, wealth funds our freedom. But
for too long we've been pushed around, used by other countries, and ill-served by politicians in
Washington who measure their success by how rapidly they can expand the federal debt, and your
tax burden, with their favorite government programs.
American can do better. I think we deserve
the best. That's why I decided to write this book. The decisions we face are too monumental, too
consequential, to just let slide. I have answers for the problems that confront us. I know how to
make American rich again.
By 2027, tsunami as China overtakes US as largest economy
There is a lot that Obama and his globalist pals don't want you to know about China's strength.
But no one who knows the truth can sit back and ignore how dangerous this economic powerhouse
will be if our so-called leaders in Washington don't get their acts together and start standing
up for American jobs and stop outsourcing them to China. It's been predicted that by 2027, China
will overtake the United States as the world's biggest economy--much sooner if the Obama
economy's disastrous trends continue. That means in a handful of years, America will be engulfed
by the economic tsunami that is the People's Republic of China--my guess is by 2016 if we don't
act fast.
For the past thirty years, China's economy has grown an average 9 to 10 percent each
year. In the first quarter of 2011 alone, China's economy grew a robust 9.7 percent. America's
first quarter growth rate? An embarrassing and humiliating 1.9 percent. It's a national disgrace.
A lot of life is about survival of the fittest and adaption, as Darwin pointed out. It's not all
there is, but it's an indication of how the world has evolved in historical terms. We've seen
many empires come and go -- the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire -- there have always been surges
of power. Sometimes they last for centuries. Even so, some of us have never learned of them as of
today. In other words, things change. We have to keep up with the changes and move forward.
Source: Think Like a Champion, by Donald Trump, p. 23-4 , Apr 27,
2010
Criticized Buchanan's view on Hitler as appeasement
In Buchanan's book, he actually said the Western allies were wrong to stop Hitler. He
argued that we should have let Hitler take all of the territories to his east. What of the
systematic annihilation of Jews, Catholics, and Gypsies in those countries? You don't have to be
a genius to know that we were next, that once Hitler seized control of the countries to his east
he would focus on world domination.
Pat Buchanan was actually preaching the same policy of appeasement that had failed for Neville
Chamberlain at Munich. If we used Buchanan's theory on Hitler as a foreign policy strategy, we
would have appeased every world dictator with a screw loose and we'd have a brainwashed
population ready to go postal on command.
After I [wrote an article on this for] Face the Nation, Buchanan accused me of
⌠ignorance." Buchanan, who believes himself an expert, has also called Hitler ⌠a political
organizer of the first rank." Buchanan is a fan.
Post-Cold War: switch from chess player to dealmaker
In the modern world you can't very easily draw up a simple, general foreign policy. I was busy
making deals during the last decade of the cold war. Now the game has changed. The day of the
chess player is over. Foreign policy has to be put in the hands of a dealmaker.
Two dealmakers have served as president-one was Franklin Roosevelt, who got us through WWII,
and the other was Richard Nixon, who forced the Russians to the bargaining table to achieve the
first meaningful reductions in nuclear arms.
A dealmaker can keep many balls in the air, weigh the competing interests of other nations,
and above all, constantly put America's best interests first. The dealmaker knows when to be
tough and when to back off. He knows when to bluff and he knows when to threaten, understanding
that you threaten only when prepared to carry out the threat. The dealmaker is cunning,
secretive, focused, and never settles for less than he wants. It's been a long time since America
had a president like that.
I don't understand why American policymakers are always so timid in dealing with Russia on issues
that directly involve our survival. Kosovo was a perfect case in point: Russia was holding out
its hand for billions of dollars in IMF loans (to go along with billions in aid the U.S. has
given) the same week it was issuing threats and warnings regarding our conduct in the Balkans. We
need to tell Russia and other recipients that if they want our dime they had better do our dance,
at least in matters regarding our national security. These people need us much more than we need
them. We have leverage, and we are crazy not to use it to better advantage.
Few respect
weakness. Ultimately we have to deal with hostile nations in the only language they know:
unshrinking conviction and the military power to back it up if need be. There and in that order
are America's two greatest assets in foreign affairs.
China: lack of human rights prevents consumer development
Why am I concerned with political rights? I'm a good businessman and I can be amazingly
unsentimental when I need to be. I also recognize that when it comes down to it, we can't do much
to change a nation's internal policies. But I'm unwilling to shrug off the mistreatment of
China's citizens by their own government. My reason is simple: These oppressive policies make it
clear that China's current government has contempt for our way of life.
We want to trade with China because of the size of its consumer market. But if the regime
continues to repress individual freedoms, how many consumers will there really be? Isn't it
inconsistent to compromise our principles by negotiating trade with a country that may not want
and cannot afford our goods?
We have to make it absolutely clear that we're willing to trade with China, but not to trade
away our principles, and that under no circumstances will we keep our markets open to countries
that steal from us.
Our biggest long-term challenge will be China. The Chinese people still have few political rights
to speak of. Chinese government leaders, though they concede little, desperately want us to
invest in their country. Though we have the upper hand, we're way to eager to please. We see them
as a potential market and we curry favor with them at the expense of our national interests. Our
China policy under Presidents Clinton and Bush has been aimed at changing the Chinese regime by
incentives both economic and political. The intention has been good, but it's clear that the
Chinese have been getting far too easy a ride.
Despite the opportunity, I think we need to take
a much harder look at China. There are major problems that too many at the highest reaches of
business want to overlook, [primarily] the human-rights situation.
Q: Would you block Syrian refugees from entering the US?
RUBIO: The problem is we can't background check them. You can't pick up the phone and call
Syria. And that's one of the reasons why I said we won't be able to take more refugees. It's not
that we don't want to. The bottom line is that this is not just a threat coming from abroad. What
we need to open up to and realize is that we have a threat here at home, homegrown violent
extremists, individuals who perhaps have not even traveled abroad, who have been radicalized
online. This has become a multi-faceted threat. In the case of what's happening in Europe, this
is a swarm of refugees. And as I've said repeatedly over the last few months, you can have 1,000
people come in and 999 of them are just poor people fleeing oppression and violence but one of
them is an ISIS fighter.
Q: Russia has invaded Ukraine, and has put troops in Syria. You have said you will have a good
relationship with Mr. Putin. So, what does President Trump do in response to Russia's aggression?
TRUMP: As far as Syria, if Putin wants to go and knock the hell out of ISIS, I am all for it,
100%, and I can't understand how anybody would be against it.
Q: They're not doing that.
TRUMP: They blew up a Russian airplane. He cannot be in love with these people. He's going in,
and we can go in, and everybody should go in. As far as the Ukraine is concerned, we have a group
of people, and a group of countries, including Germany--why are we always doing the work? I'm all
for protecting Ukraine--but, we have countries that are surrounding the Ukraine that aren't doing
anything. They say, "Keep going, keep going, you dummies, keep going. Protect us." And we have to
get smart. We can't continue to be the policeman of the world.
Provide economic assistance to create a safe zone in Syria
Q: Where you are on the question of a safe zone or a no-fly zone in Syria?
TRUMP: I love a safe
zone for people. I do not like the migration. I do not like the people coming. What they should
do is, the countries should all get together, including the Gulf states, who have nothing but
money, they should all get together and they should take a big swath of land in Syria and they do
a safe zone for people, where they could to live, and then ultimately go back to their country,
go back to where they came from.
Q: Does the U.S. get involved in making that safe zone?
TRUMP: I would help them economically, even though we owe $19 trillion.
US should not train rebels it does not know or control
Q: The Russians are hitting Assad as well as people we've trained.
TRUMP: Where they're hitting
people, we're talking about people that we don't even know. I was talking to a general two days
ago. He said, "We have no idea who these people are. We're training people. We don't know who
they are. We're giving them billions of dollars to fight Assad." And you know what? I'm not
saying Assad's a good guy, because he's probably a bad guy. But I've watched him interviewed many
times. And you can make the case, if you look at Libya, look at what we did there-- it's a mess--
if you look at Saddam Hussein with Iraq, look what we did there-- it's a mess-- it's going be
same thing.
Q: You came across to me as if you welcomed Putin's involvement in Syria. You said you saw very
little downside. Why?
TRUMP: I want our military to be beyond anything, no contest, and
technologically, most importantly. But we are going to get bogged down in Syria. If you look at
what happened with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, that's when they went bankrupt.
Q: So, you think Putin's going to get suckered into--
TRUMP: They're going to get bogged down. Everybody that's touched the Middle East, they've
gotten bogged down. Now, Putin wants to go in and I like that Putin is bombing the hell out of
ISIS. Putin has to get rid of ISIS because Putin doesn't want ISIS coming into Russia.
Q: Why do you trust him and nobody else does?
TRUMP: I don't trust him. But the truth is, it's not a question of trust. I don't want to see
the United States get bogged down. We've spent now $2 trillion in Iraq, probably a trillion in
Afghanistan. We're destroying our country.
What does Donald Trump believe? Iran and Israel: Walk away from nuclear talks. Increase
sanctions.
Trump has said that the U.S. is mishandling current Iran negotiations and should
have walked away from the table once Tehran reportedly rejected the idea of sending enriched
uranium to Russia. He would increase sanctions on Iran. Trump has been sharply critical of the
Obama administration's handling of relations with Israel and has called for a closer alliance
with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Source: PBS News Hour "2016 Candidate Stands" series , Jun 16, 2015
Iran deal was signed when Hillary was not the Secretary of state (her last month was Feb 2013).
Is Trump delusional or stupid ?
Notable quotes:
"... whatever the 'ransom', both Clinton and Trump are hellbent on undermining the Iranian deal. idiots. ..."
"... The more I think about it, US deserve to have Trump as president. He will screw up the US so royally that may shock American people to start thinking straight. ..."
"... Trump would certainly screw up the US, but if 8 years of Bush couldn't get them to start thinking straight, I am not sure what would. ..."
"... Hillary hates Iran more than Trump does... she's just extremely good in deceiving.. Remember when Sanders said to reach out to Iran about the Syrian conflict? Her reply was exactly this; "asking Iran for cooperation in Syria is like asking a pyromaniac to extinguish a fire" .. when president, I fear she will not only avoid cooperation but will be playing real hardball with Iran, where Trump, as someone who seems to be sympathetic to the Russian regime, might get more friendly with Iran (the friends of your friends...) ..."
"... It's a mess anyways... trump changes like how the wind blows, and Hillary is a snake (understatement of the year) ..."
"... The US has not held up to the term of the nuclear agreement! The banks are still afraid of US to deal with Iran. Congress has stopped the beoing deal, etc. The US congress is acting as bully! Actually not holding itself with the very deal the US signed is very bad! I can see Iran reluctant to negotiate any deal with a bunch of liars ..."
"... There were no bank relations between the US and Iran, so cash was the only option. It was conducted in secret because who's going to announce that a plane full of cash is in route to, well, anywhere? ..."
"... The US owed that money to Iran. The transfer was kept secret for the reason mentioned by bob. ..."
"... Ultimately, Mr. Trump's outrage over the $ (true or not) is yet another dodge avoiding the real question that he needs to be asked: "Do you want a war with Iran?" ..."
"... Course, I think everybody probably already knows the answer. It'd just be nice to have it print (or a tweet as the case may be). ..."
"... If the reports about Trump asking his foreign policy advisers about the utility of using nuclear weapons are accurate, there are probably several nations, including Iran, who'd be wise to acquire nuclear weapons as soon as possible to let him know why they shouldn't be used. ..."
It was Iran's money that Washington froze . Besides, if I recall, the great Republican hero
Ronnie Reagan traded weapons to Iran for hostages.
Joel Marcuson
It probably hasn't dawned on him that Hillary has not been a member of the current Gov't
for about 4 yrs now. How could she possibly be responsible for that decision, the type our
Gov't has made all along for as long as I can remember? What a screwball.
onu labu
whatever the 'ransom', both Clinton and Trump are hellbent on undermining the Iranian
deal. idiots.
trucmat
The gist of reality here is that the US confiscated a bunch of Iranian money and are
decades later starting to give it back. Scandalous!
ViktorZK
They should be attacking Clinton over the DNC resignations and a whole bunch more. But the
entire week has been taken up damping down fires Trump and his surrogates keep lighting. Even
this story (which is a non-event really) will struggle for oxygen. The biggest headline today
is GOP ELDERS PLAN INTERVENTION TO REHABILITATE FAILING CAMPAIGN. Hard to top that.
macmarco 1h
One must remember that Obama early and often said Reagan was his political hero. The same
Reagan who bought hostages freedom with a cake, a bible and a bunch of weapons.
ClearItUp
The more I think about it, US deserve to have Trump as president. He will screw up the
US so royally that may shock American people to start thinking straight.
rberger -> ClearItUp
Trump would certainly screw up the US, but if 8 years of Bush couldn't get them to
start thinking straight, I am not sure what would.
ChangeIranNow
At this point, with tens of billions of dollars in frozen assets already on their way to
Iran and a virtual Tehran gold rush in which Western firms are seeking to profit from the
collapse of sanctions going on, revisiting the way the Iran deal was sold to the nation seems
beside the point. But with Iran already signaling that it will demand even more Western
appeasement to keep complying with the terms of the nuclear pact, an examination into the
cash-for-hostages' aspect of the story is important. Let us hope our next president is willing
to harden its stance on the Iran regime and support an era of domestically-fostered peace and
stability.
doublreed legalimmigrant
DryBack, Voilà: Wikileaks recently released documents proving that Hillary Clinton took
$100,000 of cash from a company she ran (and worked for in the 80's and 90's) that also funded
ISIS in Syria. French industrial giant, Lafarge, gave money to the Islamic state to operate
their (Lafarge's) cement plant in Syria, and purchased oil from ISIS. Lafarge are also large
donators to Clinton's election and the Clinton Foundation. More is here: http://yournewswire.com/clinton-was-director-of-company-that-donated-money-to-isis/
Lafarge is a regular donor to the Clinton Foundation – the firm's up to $100,000 donation was
listed in its annual donor list for 2015.
Zepp
Who on Earth would consider Tom Cotton and the Wall Street Journal to be credible sources?
They took the (true, verified) story of the Bush administration flying pallets of $100
bills into Baghdad where they promptly vanished, filed the numbers of, and resurrected it for
this story. The WSJ is a Murdoch organ, and Cotton is a crackpot.
itsmeLucas
Hillary hates Iran more than Trump does... she's just extremely good in deceiving..
Remember when Sanders said to reach out to Iran about the Syrian conflict? Her reply was
exactly this; "asking Iran for cooperation in Syria is like asking a pyromaniac to extinguish
a fire" .. when president, I fear she will not only avoid cooperation but will be playing real
hardball with Iran, where Trump, as someone who seems to be sympathetic to the Russian regime,
might get more friendly with Iran (the friends of your friends...)
It's a mess anyways... trump changes like how the wind blows, and Hillary is a snake
(understatement of the year)
coffeeclutch
Donald Trump and Tom Cotton are the verifying sources for this information? Tom Cotton, who
claimed that Iran needed to be stopped because "[they] already control Tehran?"
The circus act of American politics is really beyond belief. I'm still in awe the Republicans
faced no consequences for issuing a warning letter to a foreign government in the midst of
diplomatic negotiations with the President and the State Department. All while running around
Obama's back and inviting Israel's Prime Minister to address them directly in suggesting how
Americans should approach their foreign policy.
WorkingEU
To shift focus to an Iranian deal seems a good line of attack. But from a historical
perspective it may be a little guileless. The Iranian Revolution was a populist revolt against
globalization, elitism, corruption, foreign treachery and all the other abundant evils.
The clergy promised the earth, and delivered heaven. I confess this is a somewhat superficial
analysis when compared to the profound depth of the Trump campaign.
coffeeclutch -> WorkingEU
If I recall correctly the religious sphere was also one of the areas of social life not
micromanaged and controlled by the Shah (secular authority at that time was rather hands-off
on its approach to the clergy), so the clergy were in a unique position to manipulate a lot of
desperate people by presenting themselves as an "open and freer" alternative to the grossly
exploitative, corrupt, and often violent rule of the secular regime.
Of course once the were able to wrest enough power to shunt aside the various leftist and
student protest groups rising up at the same time, all that concern about anti-corruption and
public welfare was immediately tossed into the bin. Pretty much a Scylla and Charybdis
situation.
jokaz
The US has not held up to the term of the nuclear agreement! The banks are still afraid
of US to deal with Iran. Congress has stopped the beoing deal, etc. The US congress is acting
as bully! Actually not holding itself with the very deal the US signed is very bad! I can see
Iran reluctant to negotiate any deal with a bunch of liars
DBakes
I would like to understand more details about the cash payment and the reason. Was it
really a secret payment? That being said I will never vote for Trump who to me is an imminent
threat to national security.
bobj1156 -> DBakes
There were no bank relations between the US and Iran, so cash was the only option. It
was conducted in secret because who's going to announce that a plane full of cash is in route
to, well, anywhere?
MtnClimber -> DBakes
The US owed that money to Iran. The transfer was kept secret for the reason mentioned
by bob.
MiltonWiltmellow
The US state department has denied this.
The WSJ quoted Tom Cotton, a Republican senator from Arkansas, as accusing the Obama
administration of ...
Does the accusation even matter?
A Murdoch rag prints an unsubstantiated political accusation made a Murdoch political
sympathizer and somehow it becomes credible enough for the Guardian to repeat the smear?
Here's what those of us who live in the Real World™ say.
Where's your fucking proof??
williamdonovan
However, although the cash payment to Iran coincided with the release of a group of Iranian
American prisoners, there is no evidence to suggest any link between the two events.
Evidence maybe not but the read could draw easily make a "inference"
Blacks Law 4th Edition
INFERENCE. In the law of evidence. A truth or proposition drawn from another which is
sup- posed or admitted to be true. A process of reasoning by which a fact or proposition
sought to be established is deduced as a logical consequence from other facts, or a state
of facts, already proved or admitted. Whitehouse v. Bolster, 95 Me. 458, 50 A. 240; Joske
v. Irvine, 91 Tex. 574, 44 S.W. 1059.
A deduction which the reason of the jury makes from the facts proved, without an express
direction of law to that effect. Puget Sound Electric Ry. v. Benson, C.C.A. Wash., 253 F.
710, 714.
A "presumption" and an "inference" are not the same thing, a presumption being a deduction
which the law requires a trier of facts to make, an inference being a deduction which the
trier may or may not make, according to his own conclusions; a presumption is mandatory, an
INFERENCE
eyeinlurk -> williamdonovan
Kind of like the Reagan arms for hostages deal with...uh...Iran. Back in the 80's.
I'm starting to miss the 80's, and I never thought I'd say that.
Ranger4 -> eyeinlurk
And they used the cash to .............fund an insurrection
williamdonovan -> eyeinlurk
I was working at the Pentagon then and found myself having inside knowledge of Iran-Contra
before it unfolded to the rest of the world. Given that the information was highly classified
Top Secret/SRA access. I had been given access to what I thought at the time was two
completely unrelated events moving of the missiles and the training and arming of the contras.
The information was compartmented meaning few people knew about either program and even far
fewer people new both programs where related (it wasn't called Iran-Contra until after much
later) Just weeks before the public new. I was given access to the complete picture. Even then
I couldn't figure how could something like this be legal. Because as we know now it was not.
You could easily draw inference between the these two events.
As I already have!
jrcdmc6670
Ultimately, Mr. Trump's outrage over the $ (true or not) is yet another dodge avoiding
the real question that he needs to be asked: "Do you want a war with Iran?"
Course, I think everybody probably already knows the answer. It'd just be nice to have it
print (or a tweet as the case may be).
jrcdmc6670
If the reports about Trump asking his foreign policy advisers about the utility of
using nuclear weapons are accurate, there are probably several nations, including Iran, who'd
be wise to acquire nuclear weapons as soon as possible to let him know why they shouldn't be
used.
Donald J. Trump unabashedly trumpeted his support for warmer relations with Russia
at a campaign rally here on Monday night, acidly mocking opponents who say he is too
friendly to Vladimir V. Putin, the country's
strongman president. Mr. Trump,
who has been under fire from Democrats and some conservative national security
leaders for his accommodating stance toward Mr. Putin, cast his supportive remarks as
a matter of practical necessity. By aligning itself with Russia, he said, the United
States could more easily take on the Islamic State and other terrorist groups. "If we
could get Russia to help us get rid of ISIS -- if we could actually be friendly with
Russia -- wouldn't that be a good thing?" Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential
nominee, said. Repeating the question moments later, he won loud applause
from the crowd: "If we could get along with Russia, wouldn't that be a good
thing, instead of a bad thing?"
"... The Neoconservatives and the Neoliberals have created madness and mayhem in the world today. Real change will happen only if resources are available for all in a co-operative capitalistic way that raises the standard of living for all rather than the few. We now have socialism of the rich and low productivity with the standard of living becoming more about quantity rather than quality. ..."
Liberals ,conservatives and progressives need to put ideologies behind and form a coalition to
demand change. Just exercising our right to vote will change nothing.
We will continue to get
blow back in the form of terrorism as long as we do not change the foreign policy in the Middle
East which goes back to Sykes -Picot and the aftermath of World War One.
The Neoconservatives and the Neoliberals have created madness and mayhem in the world today.
Real change will happen only if resources are available for all in a co-operative capitalistic
way that raises the standard of living for all rather than the few. We now have socialism of the
rich and low productivity with the standard of living becoming more about quantity rather than
quality.
The people will stop this, dirt-bag:
Obama predicts TPP 'trade' deal will be ratified after election | 02 Aug 2016 | President
Barack Obama
dismissed Hillary Clinton's [phony] opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement
corporate takeover Tuesday and suggested that her disapproval of the deal may be politically
motivated. [*Duh.*] "Right now, I'm president, and I'm for it," he said
at a news conference with Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong...While Obama and Lee were speaking,
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was addressing supporters at a rally in Ashburn, Virginia,
just miles from the capital. In a statement, Trump said a victory by him in November is the only
way to stop a "TPP catastrophe."
The Us intervention were dictate by needs of global corporation that control the US foreigh
policy. And they need to open market, press geopolitical rivals (Ukraine, Georgia) and grab
resources (Iraq, Libya). The American people are now hostages in their own country and can do
nothing against the establishement militaristic stance. They will fight and die in unnecessary wars
of neoliberal globalization.
Notable quotes:
"... With Democrats howling that Vladimir Putin hacked into and leaked those 19,000 DNC emails to help Trump, the Donald had a brainstorm: Maybe the Russians can retrieve Hillary Clinton's lost emails. Not funny, and close to "treasonous," came the shocked cry. Trump then told the New York Times that a Russian incursion into Estonia need not trigger a U.S. military response ..."
"... Behind the war guarantees America has issued to scores of nations in Europe, the Mideast and Asia since 1949, the bedrock of public support that existed during the Cold War has crumbled. We got a hint of this in 2013. Barack Obama, claiming his "red line" against any use of poison gas in Syria had been crossed, found he had no public backing for air and missile strikes on the Assad regime. The country rose up as one and told him to forget it. He did. We have been at war since 2001. And as one looks on the ruins of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen, and adds up the thousands dead and wounded and trillions sunk and lost, can anyone say our War Party has served us well? ..."
"... The first NATO supreme commander, General Eisenhower, said that if U.S. troops were still in Europe in 10 years, NATO would be a failure. In 1961, he urged JFK to start pulling U.S. troops out, lest Europeans become military dependencies of the United States. Was Ike not right? Even Barack Obama today riffs about the "free riders" on America's defense. Is it really so outrageous for Trump to ask how long the U.S. is to be responsible for defending rich Europeans who refuse to conscript the soldiers or pay the cost of their own defense, when Eisenhower was asking that same question 55 years ago? ..."
"... In 1997, geostrategist George Kennan warned that moving NATO into Eastern Europe "would be the most fateful error of American policy in the post-Cold War era." He predicted a fierce nationalistic Russian response. Was Kennan not right? ..."
With Democrats howling that Vladimir Putin hacked into and leaked those 19,000 DNC emails
to help Trump, the Donald had a brainstorm: Maybe the Russians can retrieve Hillary Clinton's lost
emails. Not funny, and close to "treasonous," came the shocked cry. Trump then told the New York
Times that a Russian incursion into Estonia need not trigger a U.S. military response.
Even more shocking. By suggesting the U.S. might not honor its NATO commitment, under Article
5, to fight Russia for Estonia, our foreign policy elites declaimed, Trump has undermined the security
architecture that has kept the peace for 65 years. More interesting, however, was the reaction of
Middle America. Or, to be more exact, the nonreaction. Americans seem neither shocked nor horrified.
What does this suggest?
Behind the war guarantees America has issued to scores of nations in Europe, the Mideast and
Asia since 1949, the bedrock of public support that existed during the Cold War has crumbled. We
got a hint of this in 2013. Barack Obama, claiming his "red line" against any use of poison gas in
Syria had been crossed, found he had no public backing for air and missile strikes on the Assad regime.
The country rose up as one and told him to forget it. He did. We have been at war since 2001. And
as one looks on the ruins of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen, and adds up the thousands
dead and wounded and trillions sunk and lost, can anyone say our War Party has served us well?
On bringing Estonia into NATO, no Cold War president would have dreamed of issuing so insane a
war guarantee. Eisenhower refused to intervene to save the Hungarian rebels. JFK refused to halt
the building of the Berlin Wall. LBJ did nothing to impede the Warsaw Pact's crushing of the Prague
Spring. Reagan never considered moving militarily to halt the smashing of Solidarity.
Were all these presidents cringing isolationists? Rather, they were realists who recognized that,
though we prayed the captive nations would one day be free, we were not going to risk a world war,
or a nuclear war, to achieve it. Period. In 1991, President Bush told Ukrainians that any declaration
of independence from Moscow would be an act of "suicidal nationalism."
Today, Beltway hawks want to bring Ukraine into NATO. This would mean that America would go to
war with Russia, if necessary, to preserve an independence Bush I regarded as "suicidal."
Have we lost our minds?
The first NATO supreme commander, General Eisenhower, said that if U.S. troops were still
in Europe in 10 years, NATO would be a failure. In 1961, he urged JFK to start pulling U.S. troops
out, lest Europeans become military dependencies of the United States. Was Ike not right? Even Barack
Obama today riffs about the "free riders" on America's defense. Is it really so outrageous for Trump
to ask how long the U.S. is to be responsible for defending rich Europeans who refuse to conscript
the soldiers or pay the cost of their own defense, when Eisenhower was asking that same question
55 years ago?
In 1997, geostrategist George Kennan warned that moving NATO into Eastern Europe "would be
the most fateful error of American policy in the post-Cold War era." He predicted a fierce nationalistic
Russian response. Was Kennan not right? NATO and Russia are today building up forces in the
eastern Baltic where no vital U.S. interests exist, and where we have never fought before - for that
very reason. There is no evidence Russia intends to march into Estonia, and no reason for her to
do so. But if she did, how would NATO expel Russian troops without air and missile strikes that would
devastate that tiny country? And if we killed Russians inside Russia, are we confident Moscow would
not resort to tactical atomic weapons to prevail? After all, Russia cannot back up any further. We
are right in her face.
On this issue Trump seems to be speaking for the silent majority and certainly raising issues
that need to be debated.
How long are we to be committed to go to war to defend the tiny Baltic republics against a
Russia that could overrun them in 72 hours?
When, if ever, does our obligation end? If it is eternal, is not a clash with a revanchist
and anti-American Russia inevitable?
Are U.S. war guarantees in the Baltic republics even credible?
If the Cold War generations of Americans were unwilling to go to war with a nuclear-armed
Soviet Union over Hungary and Czechoslovakia, are the millennials ready to fight a war with Russia
over Estonia?
Needed now is diplomacy. The trade-off: Russia ensures the independence of the Baltic republics
that she let go. And NATO gets out of Russia's face. Should Russia dishonor its commitment, economic
sanctions are the answer, not another European war.
"... What cannot be ignored is that Hilary Clinton has supported a war machine that has resulted in the death of millions, while also supporting a neoliberal economy that has produced massive amounts of suffering and created a mass incarceration state. ..."
"... It is crucial to note that Clinton hides her crimes in the discourse of freedom and appeals to democracy ..."
What cannot be ignored is that Hilary Clinton has supported a war machine that has resulted in
the death of millions, while also supporting a neoliberal economy that has produced massive amounts
of suffering and created a mass incarceration state. Yet, all of that is forgotten as the mainstream
press focuses on stories about Clinton's emails and the details of her electoral run for the presidency.
It is crucial to note that Clinton hides her crimes in the discourse of freedom and appeals to democracy
while Trump overtly disdains such a discourse. In the end, state and domestic violence saturate American
society and the only time this fact gets noticed is when the beatings and murders of Black men are
caught on camera and spread through social media.
Who cares what foreigners think about our election?
Only people with financial ties to the outcome of the election can be expected to really care.
Goldman Sach's tentacles are worldwide.
I love those old cartoons from the 1890s that show the reformers smashing the monopolists.
Envision Trump with an axe, chopping off the tentacles of the vampire squid which screams in agony
and bleeds to death.
I'm reminded of the buttinsky old woman from Austria who is always lecturing me on how we treat
our "Africa-Americans."
I respond with , "So, how do you treat the gypsies in Austria?"
" Oh, that's different!" she shrieks.
"... Really? Do I trust Trump to give the keys to 6970 nukes, 10 carrier strike groups, and a $1Trillion/yr military-industrial complex to a bigoted, sociopathic liar. NOT. I still do remember what it was like the first time I gave my car keys to my 16-year old son. Give the nuclear keys to Trump – ABSOLUTELY. NEVER. ..."
"... Why can't the choice be that noone should have the keys to the nukes? That's assuming anyone does single handedly which is almost certainly false anyway. You think senile old Reagan did? Really you really truly believe that do you? ..."
"... "Should the president decide to order the launch of nuclear weapons, they would be taken aside by the "carrier" of the nuclear football and the briefcase opened. Once opened, the president would decide which "Attack Options", specific orders for attacks on specific targets, to use. The Attack Options are preset war plans developed under OPLAN 8010, and include Major Attack Options (MAOs), Selected Attack Options (SAOs), and Limited Attack Options (LAOs). The chosen attack option and the Gold Codes would then be transmitted to the NMCC via a special, secure channel. As commander-in-chief, the president is the only individual with the authority to order the use of nuclear weapons;however, the two-man rule still applies. ..."
Really? Do I trust Trump to give the keys to 6970 nukes, 10 carrier strike groups, and a $1Trillion/yr
military-industrial complex to a bigoted, sociopathic liar. NOT. I still do remember what it was
like the first time I gave my car keys to my 16-year old son. Give the nuclear keys to Trump –
ABSOLUTELY. NEVER.
Which is not to say that I am totally thrilled with neocon hawk Hillary. Number 1 on my list
of the 9 reasons why I voted for Bernie rather than her in our Primary is that she voted for Bush's
Iraq War and my son did six tours.
"The solution is not to save the Democratic Party, but to replace it."
True enough, but that will not happen between now and 08 November.
We have a binary choice on 08 Nov – I do not think a replay Nader in FL in 2000 is a particularly
smart option.
Why can't the choice be that noone should have the keys to the nukes? That's assuming anyone
does single handedly which is almost certainly false anyway. You think senile old Reagan did?
Really you really truly believe that do you?
"Should the president decide to order the launch of nuclear weapons, they would be taken aside
by the "carrier" of the nuclear football and the briefcase opened. Once opened, the president
would decide which "Attack Options", specific orders for attacks on specific targets, to use.
The Attack Options are preset war plans developed under OPLAN 8010, and include Major Attack Options
(MAOs), Selected Attack Options (SAOs), and Limited Attack Options (LAOs). The chosen attack option
and the Gold Codes would then be transmitted to the NMCC via a special, secure channel. As commander-in-chief,
the president is the only individual with the authority to order the use of nuclear weapons;however,
the two-man rule still applies.
The National Command Authority comprising the president and Secretary
of Defense must jointly authenticate the order to use nuclear weapons to the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff. The order would then be transmitted over a tan-yellow phone, the Joint Chiefs
of Staff Alerting Network, otherwise known as the "Gold Phone", that directly links the NMCC with
United States Strategic Command Headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska."
So there are some checks to prevent Donald Trump or HRC launching a nuclear strike in a fit
of temper..
Donald Trump Calls Comments About Russia and Clinton Emails 'Sarcastic' | 28 July 2016
| Facing a torrent of criticism over his comments seeming to condone the hacking of Hillary Clinton's
emails by Russian intelligence services, Donald J. Trump and his allies on Thursday sought to tamp
down his remarks, with Mr. Trump saying he was simply being "sarcastic." In public interviews and
private conversations on Thursday, Mr. Trump; his running mate, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana; and campaign
staff members contended that Mr. Trump was being facetious when, during a news conference on Wednesday,
he said he hoped Russia would be able to find Mrs. Clinton's missing emails. "Of course I'm being
sarcastic," Mr. Trump told "Fox and Friends" Thursday morning as his aides accused the news media
of misconstruing his remarks.
"... If he just avoids a major world war, that will be enough for me. Because I believe the American elite would be quite happy for that to happen – it badly wants Russia taken off the board, and China too if they will not cooperate and learn their place, and such a war would be fought in Europe – again – while America is insulated by distance. Of course Russia would ensure America paid a price, but in the plan, their missiles would not reach their targets owing to the USA's brilliant missile defense. ..."
"... If this is not America's plan, then the last 5 years' amped-up hatred and deliberate alienation of Russia from the United States, for a generation at least, looks awfully stupid. ..."
"... For the moment, at least, Trump has pulled into the lead . It remains to be seen if Sanders democrats will forgive Clinton for her unconscionable maneuvering, self-promotion and subordination of the DNC to her cause alone, not to mention what must now be complete disillusionment with the latter organization. The democrats, amazingly, are making the republicans look clean by comparison. ..."
"... Don't underestimate how stupid they can be. They trashed Afghanistan and Iraq, and were then surprised that Iran became the dominating power in the region (after destroying Iran's two most formidable foes). ..."
"... The US government can do stupidity, I don't think they plan so well. ..."
If you should happen to like to see our Fern's excellent comment on here turned into a 'Letter
to the Editor', look no further than here: http://www.ukipdaily.com/letters-editor-26th-july-2016/
Hers is the second of three – the last one by an American friend about the Hillary convention
is a hoot!
It looks even more visionary in a newspaper format. And the third comment is indeed a cracker.
I don't understand why there is not a general revolt in the United States – are Americans seriously
going to put up with this complete and brazen hijacking of what was not even a democratic process
to begin with? And what next? Will Hillary simply rewrite the Presidential term in office to 'forever'?
I don't think Hilary is going to get in.
In the first place, the now nearly daily muslim terrorist acts in Europe add another 5% each to
Trump's vote.
In the second place, more and more dirt will come out on Hilary and Bill, and more and more people
are aware of the underhand dealings in vote counting. It was one thing to keep quiet four years
ago when most people couldn't give a toss about Romney, so squeals of voting fraud were not widely
reported.
Now they know, now they are aware, and now, unlike Romney, there's one candidate who's not afraid
of saying what most people think.
I belive Trump will do it.
What happens after he's in – well, it's gotta be better than Hilary.
If he just avoids a major world war, that will be enough for me. Because I believe the American
elite would be quite happy for that to happen – it badly wants Russia taken off the board, and
China too if they will not cooperate and learn their place, and such a war would be fought in
Europe – again – while America is insulated by distance. Of course Russia would ensure America
paid a price, but in the plan, their missiles would not reach their targets owing to the USA's
brilliant missile defense.
If this is not America's plan, then the last 5 years' amped-up hatred and deliberate alienation
of Russia from the United States, for a generation at least, looks awfully stupid.
For the moment, at least,
Trump has pulled into the lead . It remains to be seen if Sanders democrats will forgive Clinton
for her unconscionable maneuvering, self-promotion and subordination of the DNC to her cause alone,
not to mention what must now be complete disillusionment with the latter organization. The democrats,
amazingly, are making the republicans look clean by comparison.
"Of course Russia would ensure America paid a price, but in the plan, their missiles would not
reach their targets owing to the USA's brilliant missile defense."
Don't underestimate how stupid they can be. They trashed Afghanistan and Iraq, and were then surprised
that Iran became the dominating power in the region (after destroying Iran's two most formidable
foes).
The US government can do stupidity, I don't think they plan so well.
"... Trump, unlike most politicians, isn't a pitiful, cowardly liar who'd sell his soul, his mother and his best friend for a fistful of cash. You're probably confusing him with Tony Bliar, Bush II and 'Mr Magoo without the good intentions' - John W Howard, a creepy sell-out with no presence, personality or moral compass. ..."
But don't expect anything much in the way of 'keeping promises' post-election. "What, those
were promises? I was just putting on a show, and you _loved_ it." Posted by: fairleft | Jul 25, 2016 12:28:47 PM | 42
You wish...
Trump, unlike most politicians, isn't a pitiful, cowardly liar who'd sell his soul, his mother and
his best friend for a fistful of cash. You're probably confusing him with Tony Bliar, Bush II and
'Mr Magoo without the good intentions' - John W Howard, a creepy sell-out with no presence, personality
or moral compass.
After one of his early promise-laden election victories, he had the gall to dismiss a press query
about several of his broken promises thus:
"Uhh, they were non-core promises."
Trump's too smart and proud to box himself in with false promises. If he's flogging a vague idea
it'll be vague BEFORE the election, not afterwards.
Remember Obama railed against "stupid wars". I assumed that he was referring to the destruction
of Iraq. Since then, Obama has engaged the USA in more stupid wars than any president in history.
Now we have Trump - America First. Also opposed to stupid wars. But his favorite Foreign Policy guy is Zionist for Yinon Plan for Greater Israel John Bolton.
That can't be good.
BUT Trump is not saber rattling straight out of the box like the Hell Bitch is doing.
"... According to recent figures, the BASF PAC has distributed $399,000 in donations. The lion's share of this money, a good 72 percent, flowed to the Republicans. This is not surprising, writes Die Welt. In previous election years, BASF, Allianz and Bayer had supported the Republicans. ..."
In a guest editorial reprinted from the Los Angeles Times, the FAZ writes of a possible
military coup in the oldest democracy in the world. Under the headline, "If Trump wins, a coup
isn't impossible here in the US," journalist James Kirchick develops a scenario in which
President Trump gives the military an illegal command, which it refuses to carry it out.
The article ends with the following: "Trump is not only patently unfit to be president, but a
danger to America and the world. Voters must stop him before the military has to."
German corporations with operations in the US reacted somewhat differently. As Die Welt
reports, notable large concerns from Germany gave more than two-thirds of their election
donations to the Republicans, and thus to Trump; above all BASF, Allianz, Siemens and Deutsche
Bank.
Since US law prevents American or foreign companies from making direct donations to
candidates, campaign funding takes place via so-called Political Action Committees (PACs). This
is a legal construct allowing the circumvention of both the strict limit on donations as well as
the ban on corporate donations. Via so-called super PACs, hundreds of millions of dollars flow
into campaign advertising.
According to recent figures, the BASF PAC has distributed $399,000 in donations. The
lion's share of this money, a good 72 percent, flowed to the Republicans. This is not surprising,
writes Die Welt. In previous election years, BASF, Allianz and Bayer had supported the
Republicans.
According to Die Welt, in this election campaign the chemical and pharmaceutical
group Bayer sent 80 percent of its donations to benefit the Republicans. At financial services
company Allianz it was 72 percent.
Deutsche Bank, on the other hand, changed political camps. The paper writes: "While Deutsche
Bank donated comparatively little, only $37,000, it is remarkable that 86 percent of this money
was distributed to the Republican camp." Such a clear tendency could not be seen in any other
German company.
That Deutsche Bank sympathies with the Republicans is new. In 2006 and 2008, the bank had
clearly tended toward the Democrats. The change of side was not surprising, "since Deutsche Bank
is the largest lender to Donald Trump." For the renovation of a hotel in Washington, Trump
borrowed $170 million from Deutsche Bank.
@37 jfl If you think Trump is a liar, then everything he says is bullshit. But I see his remarks over a long time are consistent.
And in sequel on #32 William Engdahl has to explain a lot. In his "A Century of War" he describes how the US industry was crippled in the 50's and 60's. And how the protestors were demonised.
p. 119 Riots were deliberately incited in industrial cities like Newark, Boston, Oakland and Philadelphia
by government-backed 'insurgents', such as Tom Hayden. The goal of this operation was to break the
power of established industrial trade unions in the northern cities by labeling them racist.
p. 120 The newly created U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity weakened the political voice of traditional
American labor and the influential urban constituency machines. The targeted white blue-collar industrial
operatives, only a decade earlier hailed as the lifeblood of American industry, were suddenly labeled
'reactionary' and 'racist' by the powerful liberal media. These workers were mostly fearful and confused
as they saw their entire social fabric collapsing in the wake of the disinvestment policy of the
powerful banks.
Hey William, did you read about Trump's ideas to bring back jobs to the USA? (and do you recognize something?)
And William, did you understand his remarks about that Mexican Wall (on American Soil). (preventing illegal immigration, ALSO because he wants higher minimum wages (impossible with illegal
immigrants))
In a YouTube video about the lawsuit, Jason Beck said there were six claims to the case. The
first is fraud against the DNC and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, stating that they broke legally
binding agreements by strategizing for Clinton.
The second is negligent misrepresentation.
The third is deceptive conduct by claiming they were remaining neutral when they were not. The
fourth is is retribution for monetary donations to Sanders' campaign.
The fifth is that the DNC broke its fiduciary duties during the primaries by not holding a
fair process. And the sixth is for negligence, claiming that the DNC did not protect donor
information from hackers.
"... But finally came Trump's speech, and this was for the first time, policy was there. And he's making a left run around Hillary. He appealed twice to Bernie Sanders supporters, and the two major policies that he outlined in the speech broke radically from the Republican traditional right-wing stance. And that is called destroying the party by the right wing, and Trump said he's not destroying the party, he's building it up and appealing to labor, and appealing to the rational interest that otherwise had been backing Bernie Sanders. ..."
"... So in terms of national security, he wanted to roll back NATO spending. And he made it clear, roll back military spending. We can spend it on infrastructure, we can spend it on employing American labor. And in the speech, he said, look, we don't need foreign military bases and foreign spending to defend our allies. We can defend them from the United States, because in today's world, the only kind of war we're going to have is atomic war. Nobody's going to invade another country. We're not going to send American troops to invade Russia, if it were to attack. So nobody's even talking about that. So let's be realistic. ..."
PERIES: So let's take a look at this article by Paul Krugman. Where is he going with this analysis
about the Siberian candidate?
HUDSON: Well, Krugman has joined the ranks of the neocons, as well as the neoliberals, and they're
terrified that they're losing control of the Republican Party. For the last half-century the Republican
Party has been pro-Cold War, corporatist. And Trump has actually, is reversing that. Reversing the
whole traditional platform. And that really worries the neocons.
Until his speech, the whole Republican Convention, every speaker had avoided dealing with economic
policy issues. No one referred to the party platform, which isn't very good. And it was mostly an
attack on Hillary. Chants of "lock her up." And Trump children, aimed to try to humanize him and
make him look like a loving man.
But finally came Trump's speech, and this was for the first time, policy was there. And he's
making a left run around Hillary. He appealed twice to Bernie Sanders supporters, and the two major
policies that he outlined in the speech broke radically from the Republican traditional right-wing
stance. And that is called destroying the party by the right wing, and Trump said he's not destroying
the party, he's building it up and appealing to labor, and appealing to the rational interest that
otherwise had been backing Bernie Sanders.
So in terms of national security, he wanted to roll back NATO spending. And he made it clear,
roll back military spending. We can spend it on infrastructure, we can spend it on employing American
labor. And in the speech, he said, look, we don't need foreign military bases and foreign spending
to defend our allies. We can defend them from the United States, because in today's world, the only
kind of war we're going to have is atomic war. Nobody's going to invade another country. We're not
going to send American troops to invade Russia, if it were to attack. So nobody's even talking about
that. So let's be realistic.
Well, being realistic has driven other people crazy.
"... The most important difference between our plan and that of our opponents, is that our plan will put America First. Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo. As long as we are led by politicians who will not put America First, then we can be assured that other nations will not treat America with respect. This will all change in 2017. ..."
"... The American People will come first once again. My plan will begin with safety at home – which means safe neighborhoods, secure borders, and protection from terrorism. There can be no prosperity without law and order. On the economy, I will outline reforms to add millions of new jobs and trillions in new wealth that can be used to rebuild America. ..."
"... Big business, elite media and major donors are lining up behind the campaign of my opponent because they know she will keep our rigged system in place. They are throwing money at her because they have total control over everything she does. She is their puppet, and they pull the strings. ..."
"... That is why Hillary Clinton's message is that things will never change. My message is that things have to change – and they have to change right now. Every day I wake up determined to deliver for the people I have met all across this nation that have been neglected, ignored, and abandoned. ..."
"... I have visited the laid-off factory workers, and the communities crushed by our horrible and unfair trade deals. These are the forgotten men and women of our country. People who work hard but no longer have a voice. ..."
"... I have embraced crying mothers who have lost their children because our politicians put their personal agendas before the national good. I have no patience for injustice, no tolerance for government incompetence, no sympathy for leaders who fail their citizens. ..."
"... And when a Secretary of State illegally stores her emails on a private server, deletes 33,000 of them so the authorities can't see her crime, puts our country at risk, lies about it in every different form and faces no consequence – I know that corruption has reached a level like never before. ..."
"... When the FBI Director says that the Secretary of State was "extremely careless" and "negligent," in handling our classified secrets, I also know that these terms are minor compared to what she actually did. They were just used to save her from facing justice for her terrible crimes. ..."
"... In fact, her single greatest accomplishment may be committing such an egregious crime and getting away with it – especially when others have paid so dearly. When that same Secretary of State rakes in millions of dollars trading access and favors to special interests and foreign powers I know the time for action has come. ..."
"... We must have the best intelligence gathering operation in the world. We must abandon the failed policy of nation building and regime change that Hillary Clinton pushed in Iraq, Libya, Egypt and Syria. Instead, we must work with all of our allies who share our goal of destroying ISIS and stamping out Islamic terror. ..."
"... We are going to build a great border wall to stop illegal immigration, to stop the gangs and the violence, and to stop the drugs from pouring into our communities. I have been honored to receive the endorsement of America's Border Patrol Agents, and will work directly with them to protect the integrity of our lawful immigration system. ..."
"... On January 21st of 2017, the day after I take the oath of office, Americans will finally wake up in a country where the laws of the United States are enforced. We are going to be considerate and compassionate to everyone. ..."
"... But my greatest compassion will be for our own struggling citizens. My plan is the exact opposite of the radical and dangerous immigration policy of Hillary Clinton. Americans want relief from uncontrolled immigration. Communities want relief. ..."
"... Remember, it was Bill Clinton who signed NAFTA, one of the worst economic deals ever made by our country. ..."
"... My opponent, on the other hand, has supported virtually every trade agreement that has been destroying our middle class. She supported NAFTA, and she supported China's entrance into the World Trade Organization – another one of her husband's colossal mistakes. ..."
"... She supported the job killing trade deal with South Korea. She has supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The TPP will not only destroy our manufacturing, but it will make America subject to the rulings of foreign governments. I pledge to never sign any trade agreement that hurts our workers, or that diminishes our freedom and independence. Instead, I will make individual deals with individual countries. ..."
"... My opponent would rather protect education bureaucrats than serve American children. We will repeal and replace disastrous Obamacare. You will be able to choose your own doctor again. And we will fix TSA at the airports! We will completely rebuild our depleted military, and the countries that we protect, at a massive loss, will be asked to pay their fair share. We will take care of our great Veterans like they have never been taken care of before. My opponent dismissed the VA scandal as being not widespread – one more sign of how out of touch she really is. We are going to ask every Department Head in government to provide a list of wasteful spending projects that we can eliminate in my first 100 days. The politicians have talked about it, I'm going to do it. We are also going to appoint justices to the United States Supreme Court who will uphold our laws and our Constitution. ..."
Not only have our citizens endured domestic disaster, but they have lived through one international
humiliation after another. We all remember the images of our sailors being forced to their knees
by their Iranian captors at gunpoint.
This was just prior to the signing of the Iran deal, which gave back to Iran $150 billion and
gave us nothing – it will go down in history as one of the worst deals ever made. Another humiliation
came when president Obama drew a red line in Syria – and the whole world knew it meant nothing.
In Libya, our consulate – the symbol of American prestige around the globe – was brought down
in flames. America is far less safe – and the world is far less stable – than when Obama made the
decision to put Hillary Clinton in charge of America's foreign policy.
I am certain it is a decision he truly regrets. Her bad instincts and her bad judgment – something
pointed out by Bernie Sanders – are what caused the disasters unfolding today. Let's review the record.
In 2009, pre-Hillary, ISIS was not even on the map.
Libya was cooperating. Egypt was peaceful. Iraq was seeing a reduction in violence. Iran was being
choked by sanctions. Syria was under control. After four years of Hillary Clinton, what do we have?
ISIS has spread across the region, and the world. Libya is in ruins, and our Ambassador and his staff
were left helpless to die at the hands of savage killers. Egypt was turned over to the radical Muslim
brotherhood, forcing the military to retake control. Iraq is in chaos.
Iran is on the path to nuclear weapons. Syria is engulfed in a civil war and a refugee crisis
that now threatens the West. After fifteen years of wars in the Middle East, after trillions of dollars
spent and thousands of lives lost, the situation is worse than it has ever been before.
This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: death, destruction and weakness.
But Hillary Clinton's legacy does not have to be America's legacy. The problems we face now –
poverty and violence at home, war and destruction abroad – will last only as long as we continue
relying on the same politicians who created them. A change in leadership is required to change these
outcomes. Tonight, I will share with you my plan of action for America.
The most important difference between our plan and that of our opponents, is that our plan will
put America First. Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo. As long as we are led by politicians
who will not put America First, then we can be assured that other nations will not treat America
with respect. This will all change in 2017.
The American People will come first once again. My plan will begin with safety at home – which
means safe neighborhoods, secure borders, and protection from terrorism. There can be no prosperity
without law and order. On the economy, I will outline reforms to add millions of new jobs and trillions
in new wealth that can be used to rebuild America.
A number of these reforms that I will outline tonight will be opposed by some of our nation's
most powerful special interests. That is because these interests have rigged our political and economic
system for their exclusive benefit.
Big business, elite media and major donors are lining up behind the campaign of my opponent because
they know she will keep our rigged system in place. They are throwing money at her because they have
total control over everything she does. She is their puppet, and they pull the strings.
That is why Hillary Clinton's message is that things will never change. My message is that things
have to change – and they have to change right now. Every day I wake up determined to deliver for
the people I have met all across this nation that have been neglected, ignored, and abandoned.
I have visited the laid-off factory workers, and the communities crushed by our horrible and unfair
trade deals. These are the forgotten men and women of our country. People who work hard but no longer
have a voice.
I AM YOUR VOICE.
I have embraced crying mothers who have lost their children because our politicians put their
personal agendas before the national good. I have no patience for injustice, no tolerance for government
incompetence, no sympathy for leaders who fail their citizens.
When innocent people suffer, because our political system lacks the will, or the courage, or the
basic decency to enforce our laws – or worse still, has sold out to some corporate lobbyist for cash
– I am not able to look the other way.
And when a Secretary of State illegally stores her emails on a private server, deletes 33,000
of them so the authorities can't see her crime, puts our country at risk, lies about it in every
different form and faces no consequence – I know that corruption has reached a level like never before.
When the FBI Director says that the Secretary of State was "extremely careless" and "negligent,"
in handling our classified secrets, I also know that these terms are minor compared to what she actually
did. They were just used to save her from facing justice for her terrible crimes.
In fact, her single greatest accomplishment may be committing such an egregious crime and getting
away with it – especially when others have paid so dearly. When that same Secretary of State rakes
in millions of dollars trading access and favors to special interests and foreign powers I know the
time for action has come.
I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people that cannot
defend themselves. Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it. I have
seen firsthand how the system is rigged against our citizens, just like it was rigged against Bernie
Sanders – he never had a chance.
But his supporters will join our movement, because we will fix his biggest issue: trade. Millions
of Democrats will join our movement because we are going to fix the system so it works for all Americans.
In this cause, I am proud to have at my side the next Vice President of the United States: Governor
Mike Pence of Indiana.
We will bring the same economic success to America that Mike brought to Indiana. He is a man of
character and accomplishment. He is the right man for the job. The first task for our new Administration
will be to liberate our citizens from the crime and terrorism and lawlessness that threatens their
communities.
... ... ...
We must have the best intelligence gathering operation in the world. We must abandon the failed
policy of nation building and regime change that Hillary Clinton pushed in Iraq, Libya, Egypt and
Syria. Instead, we must work with all of our allies who share our goal of destroying ISIS and stamping
out Islamic terror.
This includes working with our greatest ally in the region, the State of Israel. Lastly, we must
immediately suspend immigration from any nation that has been compromised by terrorism until such
time as proven vetting mechanisms have been put in place.
My opponent has called for a radical 550% increase in Syrian refugees on top of existing massive
refugee flows coming into our country under President Obama. She proposes this despite the fact that
there's no way to screen these refugees in order to find out who they are or where they come from.
I only want to admit individuals into our country who will support our values and love our people.
Anyone who endorses violence, hatred or oppression is not welcome in our country and never will
be.
Decades of record immigration have produced lower wages and higher unemployment for our citizens,
especially for African-American and Latino workers. We are going to have an immigration system that
works, but one that works for the American people.
On Monday, we heard from three parents whose children were killed by illegal immigrants Mary Ann
Mendoza, Sabine Durden, and Jamiel Shaw. They are just three brave representatives of many thousands.
Of all my travels in this country, nothing has affected me more deeply than the time I have spent
with the mothers and fathers who have lost their children to violence spilling across our border.
These families have no special interests to represent them. There are no demonstrators to protest
on their behalf. My opponent will never meet with them, or share in their pain. Instead, my opponent
wants Sanctuary Cities. But where was sanctuary for Kate Steinle? Where was Sanctuary for the children
of Mary Ann, Sabine and Jamiel? Where was sanctuary for all the other Americans who have been so
brutally murdered, and who have suffered so horribly?
These wounded American families have been alone. But they are alone no longer. Tonight, this candidate
and this whole nation stand in their corner to support them, to send them our love, and to pledge
in their honor that we will save countless more families from suffering the same awful fate.
We are going to build a great border wall to stop illegal immigration, to stop the gangs and the
violence, and to stop the drugs from pouring into our communities. I have been honored to receive
the endorsement of America's Border Patrol Agents, and will work directly with them to protect the
integrity of our lawful immigration system.
By ending catch-and-release on the border, we will stop the cycle of human smuggling and violence.
Illegal border crossings will go down. Peace will be restored. By enforcing the rules for the millions
who overstay their visas, our laws will finally receive the respect they deserve.
Tonight, I want every American whose demands for immigration security have been denied – and every
politician who has denied them – to listen very closely to the words I am about to say.
On January 21st of 2017, the day after I take the oath of office, Americans will finally wake
up in a country where the laws of the United States are enforced. We are going to be considerate
and compassionate to everyone.
But my greatest compassion will be for our own struggling citizens. My plan is the exact opposite
of the radical and dangerous immigration policy of Hillary Clinton. Americans want relief from uncontrolled
immigration. Communities want relief.
Yet Hillary Clinton is proposing mass amnesty, mass immigration, and mass lawlessness. Her plan
will overwhelm your schools and hospitals, further reduce your jobs and wages, and make it harder
for recent immigrants to escape from poverty.
I have a different vision for our workers. It begins with a new, fair trade policy that protects
our jobs and stands up to countries that cheat. It's been a signature message of my campaign from
day one, and it will be a signature feature of my presidency from the moment I take the oath of office.
I have made billions of dollars in business making deals – now I'm going to make our country rich
again. I am going to turn our bad trade agreements into great ones. America has lost nearly-one third
of its manufacturing jobs since 1997, following the enactment of disastrous trade deals supported
by Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Remember, it was Bill Clinton who signed NAFTA, one of the worst economic deals ever made by our
country.
Never again.
I am going to bring our jobs back to Ohio and to America – and I am not going to let companies
move to other countries, firing their employees along the way, without consequences.
My opponent, on the other hand, has supported virtually every trade agreement that has been destroying
our middle class. She supported NAFTA, and she supported China's entrance into the World Trade Organization
– another one of her husband's colossal mistakes.
She supported the job killing trade deal with South Korea. She has supported the Trans-Pacific
Partnership. The TPP will not only destroy our manufacturing, but it will make America subject to
the rulings of foreign governments. I pledge to never sign any trade agreement that hurts our workers,
or that diminishes our freedom and independence. Instead, I will make individual deals with individual
countries.
No longer will we enter into these massive deals, with many countries, that are thousands of pages
long – and which no one from our country even reads or understands. We are going to enforce all trade
violations, including through the use of taxes and tariffs, against any country that cheats.
This includes stopping China's outrageous theft of intellectual property, along with their illegal
product dumping, and their devastating currency manipulation. Our horrible trade agreements with
China and many others, will be totally renegotiated. That includes renegotiating NAFTA to get a much
better deal for America – and we'll walk away if we don't get the deal that we want. We are going
to start building and making things again.
Next comes the reform of our tax laws, regulations and energy rules. While Hillary Clinton plans
a massive tax increase, I have proposed the largest tax reduction of any candidate who has declared
for the presidential race this year – Democrat or Republican. Middle-income Americans will experience
profound relief, and taxes will be simplified for everyone.
America is one of the highest-taxed nations in the world. Reducing taxes will cause new companies
and new jobs to come roaring back into our country. Then we are going to deal with the issue of regulation,
one of the greatest job-killers of them all. Excessive regulation is costing our country as much
as $2 trillion a year, and we will end it. We are going to lift the restrictions on the production
of American energy. This will produce more than $20 trillion in job creating economic activity over
the next four decades.
My opponent, on the other hand, wants to put the great miners and steel workers of our country
out of work – that will never happen when I am President. With these new economic policies, trillions
of dollars will start flowing into our country.
This new wealth will improve the quality of life for all Americans – We will build the roads,
highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, and the railways of tomorrow. This, in turn, will create millions
more jobs. We will rescue kids from failing schools by helping their parents send them to a safe
school of their choice.
My opponent would rather protect education bureaucrats than serve American children. We will repeal
and replace disastrous Obamacare. You will be able to choose your own doctor again. And we will fix
TSA at the airports! We will completely rebuild our depleted military, and the countries that we
protect, at a massive loss, will be asked to pay their fair share.
We will take care of our great Veterans like they have never been taken care of before. My opponent
dismissed the VA scandal as being not widespread – one more sign of how out of touch she really is.
We are going to ask every Department Head in government to provide a list of wasteful spending projects
that we can eliminate in my first 100 days. The politicians have talked about it, I'm going to do
it. We are also going to appoint justices to the United States Supreme Court who will uphold our
laws and our Constitution.
The replacement for Justice Scalia will be a person of similar views and principles. This will
be one of the most important issues decided by this election. My opponent wants to essentially abolish
the 2nd amendment. I, on the other hand, received the early and strong endorsement of the National
Rifle Association and will protect the right of all Americans to keep their families safe.
"... Krugman has joined the ranks of the neocons, as well as the neoliberals, and they're terrified that they're losing control of the Republican Party. For the last half-century the Republican Party has been pro-Cold War, corporatist. And Trump has actually, is reversing that. Reversing the whole traditional platform. And that really worries the neocons. ..."
"... But finally came Trump's speech, and this was for the first time, policy was there. And he's making a left run around Hillary. He appealed twice to Bernie Sanders supporters, and the two major policies that he outlined in the speech broke radically from the Republican traditional right-wing stance. And that is called destroying the party by the right wing, and Trump said he's not destroying the party, he's building it up and appealing to labor, and appealing to the rational interest that otherwise had been backing Bernie Sanders. ..."
"... So in terms of national security, he wanted to roll back NATO spending. And he made it clear, roll back military spending. ..."
"... Well, being realistic has driven other people crazy. Not only did Krugman say that Trump would, quote, actually follow a pro-Putin foreign policy at the expense of America's allies, and he's referring to the Ukraine, basically, and it's at–he's become a lobbyist for the military-industrial complex. But also, at the Washington Post you had Anne Applebaum call him explicitly the Manchurian candidate, referring to the 1962 movie, and rejecting the neocon craziness. This has just driven them nutty because they're worried of losing the Republican Party under Trump. ..."
"... In economic policy, Trump also opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the TTIP trade and corporate power grab [inaud.] with Europe to block public regulation. And this was also a major plank of Bernie Sanders' campaign against Hillary, which Trump knows. ..."
"... And this may be for show, simply to brand Hillary as Wall Street's candidate. But it also seems to actually be an attack on Wall Street. And Trump's genius was to turn around all the attacks on him as being a shady businessman. He said, look, nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it. Now, what that means, basically, as a businessman, he knows the fine print by which they've been screwing the people. So only someone like him knows how to fight against Wall Street. After all, he's been screwing the Wall Street banks for years [inaud.]. And he can now fight for the population fighting against Wall Street, just as he's been able to stiff the banks. ..."
"... When it comes–he also in that sense appealed to, as you said, the Bernie Sanders people when he talked about the trade deals. You know, he's been talking about NAFTA, TTIP, TTP, and these are areas that really is traditionally been the left of the left issues. And now there's this, that he's anti-these trade deals, and he's going to bring jobs home. What does that mean? ..."
"... I think that the most, the biggest contradiction, was you can look at how the convention began with Governor Christie. Accusing Hillary of being pro-Russian when she's actually threatening war, and criticizing her for not helping the Ukrainians when it was she who brought Victorian Nuland in to push the coup d'etat with the neo-nazis, and gave them $5 billion. And Trump reversed the whole thing and said no, no, no. I'm not anti-Russian, I'm pro-Russian. I'm not going to defend Ukrainians. Just the opposite. ..."
"... All of that–you've had the Koch brothers say we're not going to give money to Trump, the Republicans, now. We're backing Hillary. You've got the Chamber of Commerce saying because Trump isn't for the corporate takeover of foreign trade, we're now supporting the Democrats, not the Reepublicans. ..."
"... So this is really the class war. And it's the class war of Wall Street and the corporate sector of the Democratic side against Trump on the populist side. And who knows whether he really means what he says when he says he's for the workers and he wants to rebuild the cities, put labor back to work. And when he says he's for the blacks and Hispanics have to get jobs just like white people, maybe he's telling the truth, because that certainly is the way that the country can be rebuilt in a positive way. ..."
Trump's divergence from the conventional Republican platform is generating indignant punditry
from neocons and neoliberals alike
SHARMINI PERIES, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, TRNN: It's the Real News Network. I'm Sharmini Peries coming
to you from Baltimore.
On Friday, just after the Republican National Congress wrapped up with its presidential candidate,
Donald Trump, Paul Krugman of the New York Times penned an article titled "Donald Trump: The Siberian
Candidate." He said in it, if elected, would Donald Trump be Vladimir Putin's man in the White House?
Krugman himself is worried as ludicrous and outrageous as the question sounds, the Trump campaign's
recent behavior has quite a few foreign policy experts wondering, he says, just what kind of hold
Mr. Putin has over the Republican nominee, and whether that influence will continue if he wins.
Well, let's unravel that statement with Michael Hudson. He's joining us from New York. Michael
is a distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri Kansas City. His
latest book is Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroyed the Global Economy.
Thank you so much for joining us, Michael.
MICHAEL HUDSON:
It's good to be here, Sharmini. It's been an exciting week.
PERIES:
So let's take a look at this article by Paul Krugman. Where is he going with this analysis
about the Siberian candidate?
HUDSON:
Well,
Krugman has joined the ranks of the neocons, as well as the neoliberals, and
they're terrified that they're losing control of the Republican Party. For the last half-century
the Republican Party has been pro-Cold War, corporatist. And Trump has actually, is reversing that.
Reversing the whole traditional platform. And that really worries the neocons.
Until his speech, the whole Republican Convention, every speaker had avoided dealing with economic
policy issues. No one referred to the party platform, which isn't very good. And it was mostly an
attack on Hillary. Chants of "lock her up." And Trump children, aimed to try to humanize him and
make him look like a loving man.
But finally came Trump's speech, and this was for the first time, policy was there. And he's
making a left run around Hillary. He appealed twice to Bernie Sanders supporters, and the two major
policies that he outlined in the speech broke radically from the Republican traditional right-wing
stance. And that is called destroying the party by the right wing, and Trump said he's not destroying
the party, he's building it up and appealing to labor, and appealing to the rational interest that
otherwise had been backing Bernie Sanders.
So in terms of national security, he wanted to roll back NATO spending. And he made it clear,
roll back military spending.
We can spend it on infrastructure, we can spend it on employing
American labor. And in the speech, he said, look, we don't need foreign military bases and foreign
spending to defend our allies. We can defend them from the United States, because in today's world,
the only kind of war we're going to have is atomic war. Nobody's going to invade another country.
We're not going to send American troops to invade Russia, if it were to attack. So nobody's even
talking about that. So let's be realistic.
Well, being realistic has driven other people crazy. Not only did Krugman say that Trump would,
quote, actually follow a pro-Putin foreign policy at the expense of America's allies, and he's referring
to the Ukraine, basically, and it's at–he's become a lobbyist for the military-industrial complex.
But also, at the Washington Post you had Anne Applebaum call him explicitly the Manchurian candidate,
referring to the 1962 movie, and rejecting the neocon craziness. This has just driven them nutty
because they're worried of losing the Republican Party under Trump.
In economic policy, Trump also opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the TTIP trade and
corporate power grab [inaud.] with Europe to block public regulation. And this was also a major plank
of Bernie Sanders' campaign against Hillary, which Trump knows.
The corporatist wings of both
the Republican and the Democratic Parties fear that Trump's opposition to NAFTA and TPP will lead
the Republicans not to push through in the lame duck session after November. The whole plan has been
that once the election's over, Obama will then get all the Republicans together and will pass the
Republican platform that he's been pushing for the last eight years. The Trans-Pacific Partnership
trade agreement with Europe, and the other neoliberal policies.
And now that Trump is trying to rebuild the Republican Party, all of that is threatened. And so
on the Republican side of the New York Times page you had David Brooks writing "The death of the
Republican Party." So what Trump calls the rebirth of the Republican Party, it means the death of
the reactionary, conservative, corporatist, anti-labor Republican Party.
And when he wrote this, quote, Trump is decimating the things Republicans stood for: NATO, entitlement
reform, in other words winding back Social Security, and support of the corporatist Trans-Pacific
Partnership. So it's almost hilarious to see what happens. And Trump also has reversed the traditional
Republican fiscal responsibility austerity policy, that not a word about balanced budgets anymore.
And he said he was going to run at policy to employ American labor and put it back to work on infrastructure.
Again, he's made a left runaround Hillary. He says he wants to reinstate Glass-Steagall, whereas
the Clintons were the people that got rid of it.
And this may be for show, simply to brand Hillary as Wall Street's candidate. But it also seems
to actually be an attack on Wall Street. And Trump's genius was to turn around all the attacks on
him as being a shady businessman. He said, look, nobody knows the system better than me, which is
why I alone can fix it. Now, what that means, basically, as a businessman, he knows the fine print
by which they've been screwing the people. So only someone like him knows how to fight against Wall
Street. After all, he's been screwing the Wall Street banks for years [inaud.]. And he can now fight
for the population fighting against Wall Street, just as he's been able to stiff the banks.
So it's sort of hilarious. On the one hand, leading up to him you had Republicans saying throw
Hillary in jail. And Hillary saying throw Trump in the [inaud.]. And so you have the whole election
coming up with-.
PERIES:
Maybe we should take the lead and lock them all up. Michael, what is becoming very clear
is that there's a great deal of inconsistencies on the part of the Republican Party. Various people
are talking different things, like if you hear Mike Pence, the vice presidential candidate, speak,
and then you heard Donald Trump, and then you heard Ivanka Trump speak yesterday, they're all saying
different things. It's like different strokes for different folks. And I guess in marketing and marketeering,
which Trump is the master of, that makes perfect sense. Just tap on everybody's shoulder so they
feel like they're the ones being represented as spoken about, and they're going to have their issues
addressed in some way.
When it comes–he also in that sense appealed to, as you said, the Bernie Sanders people when he
talked about the trade deals. You know, he's been talking about NAFTA, TTIP, TTP, and these are areas
that really is traditionally been the left of the left issues. And now there's this, that he's anti-these
trade deals, and he's going to bring jobs home. What does that mean?
HUDSON:
Well, you're right when you say there's a policy confusion within the Republican Party.
And I guess if this were marketing, it's the idea that everybody hears what they want to hear. And
if they can hear right-wing gay bashing from the Indiana governor, and they can hear Trump talking
about hte LGBTQ, everybody will sort of be on the side.
But I listened to what Governor Pence said about defending Trump's views on NATO. And he's so
smooth. So slick, that he translated what Trump said in a way that no Republican conservative could
really disagree with it. I think he was a very good pick for vice president, because he can, obviously
he's agreed to follow what Trump's saying, and he's so smooth, being a lawyer, that he can make it
all appear much more reasonable than it would.
I think that the most, the biggest contradiction, was you can look at how the convention began
with Governor Christie. Accusing Hillary of being pro-Russian when she's actually threatening war,
and criticizing her for not helping the Ukrainians when it was she who brought Victorian Nuland in
to push the coup d'etat with the neo-nazis, and gave them $5 billion. And Trump reversed the whole
thing and said no, no, no. I'm not anti-Russian, I'm pro-Russian. I'm not going to defend Ukrainians.
Just the opposite.
And it's obvious that the Republicans have fallen into line behind them. And no wonder the Democrats
want them to lose.
All of that–you've had the Koch brothers say we're not going to give money to
Trump, the Republicans, now. We're backing Hillary. You've got the Chamber of Commerce saying because
Trump isn't for the corporate takeover of foreign trade, we're now supporting the Democrats, not
the Reepublicans.
So this is really the class war. And it's the class war of Wall Street and the corporate sector
of the Democratic side against Trump on the populist side. And who knows whether he really means
what he says when he says he's for the workers and he wants to rebuild the cities, put labor back
to work. And when he says he's for the blacks and Hispanics have to get jobs just like white people,
maybe he's telling the truth, because that certainly is the way that the country can be rebuilt in
a positive way.
And the interesting thing is that all he gets from the Democrats is denunciations. So I can't
wait to see how Bernie Sanders is going to handle all this at the Democratic Convention next week.
"... "On the one hand he says something that sounds good to non-interventionists…On the other hand he says something like 'Obama went in there and bombed Libya and just walked away.'" ..."
Following Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump's exploratory foreign policy
speech on Wednesday, political analyst Daniel McAdams speaks with Radio Sputnik's Loud & Clear to
discuss what, exactly, the candidate's worldview encompasses.
"It is clear that in Washington he has aligned himself with foreign policy advisors that are not
the usual neocons. So that's good news, to a degree. That's why you have so much gnashing of the
teeth in Washington," McAdams, of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, tells
Loud & Clear,
referring to billionaire Donald Trump.
"On the other hand, the people that he does have around him are realists, to a degree, but that
is not super satisfying to a non-interventionist and an anti-war person because realists…lack the
philosophy…of avoiding war and avoiding entangling alliance."
"…The specific plans that he outlined a) were not very well hashed out, and b) they don't make
a lot of sense," says McAdams.
While Trump does recognize the failure of Washington's insistence on pursuing a Cold War-era strategy,
the candidate does not see American imperialism as part of the problem.
One example is his opposition to the Iran nuclear agreement.
"This groveling to Israel, this blind condemnation of the Iran nuclear deal…I don't get his beef
and I don't think he gets his beef. It just makes him sound good, it makes him sound tough."
On the issue of the Iraq and Syria, the Republican frontrunner seemed to offer contradictory positions.
"This is where I think he's either very clever or fairly goofy," McAdams says.
"On the one hand he says something that sounds good to non-interventionists…On the other hand
he says something like 'Obama went in there and bombed Libya and just walked away.'"
"That's the whole point," states McAdams. "Not walking away means staying in and doing nation
building. So he doesn't understand what caused the problem. He also promises to use military force
to contain radical Islam, and he talks about 'Why are we not bombing Libya right now?'"
Trump also spoke of restoring the military superiority of America, the country with the largest
military budget in the world, shortly after stating that he would pursue peace.
"Rebuild our military from what? We spend more than most of the rest of the world combined. We
have an enormous military, we're involved in over 120 countries," McAdams says.
"What he means by 'rebuild' the military is keep Washington and its environs extraordinarily rich,"
he adds, describing the military-industrial complex, which Trump appears to support.
He did, however, offer a surprisingly insightful take on US-Russia relations.
"Here's what he said exactly. 'We should seek common ground based on shared interest with Russia.'
He said he'd, 'Make a deal that's good for us and good for Russia.' That sounds terrific. If he follows
through with that I think we should be very optimistic."
"... Trump has done much to trigger the scorn of neocon pundits. He denounced the Iraq War as a mistake based on Bush administration lies, just prior to scoring a sizable victory in the South Carolina GOP primary. In last week's contentious GOP presidential debate, he defended the concept of neutrality in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is utterly taboo on the neocon right. ..."
"... "It serves no purpose to say you have a good guy and a bad guy," he said , pledging to take a neutral position in negotiating peace. ..."
"... This set off his rival Marco Rubio, who replied, "The position you've taken is an anti-Israel position. … Because you cannot be an honest broker in a dispute between two sides in which one of the sides is constantly acting in bad faith." The Jerusalem Post suggested that Rubio's assault on Trump's views on the Middle East was designed to win Florida . If that's the case, it's apparently not working - in the Real Clear Politics ..."
"... In his quest to take up George W. Bush's mantle, Rubio has arrayed a fleet of neoconservative funders, ranging from pro-Israel billionaire Paul Singer to Norman Braman , a billionaire auto dealer who funds Israeli settlements in the West Bank. His list of advisers is like a rolodex of Iraq War backers, ranging from Bush administration alumni Elliot Abrams and Stephen Hadley, to Kagan and serial war propagandist Bill Kristol. ..."
"... Kristol also sits on the board of the Emergency Committee for Israel - a dark money group that assails candidates it perceives as insufficiently pro-Israel. The group started airing an ad this weekend against Trump portraying him as an ally to despots like Bashar Assad, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Qaddafi - mostly because he argued that military invasions of Libya and Iraq left those countries worse off. ..."
"... The guy who accelerated the process of reducing the middle east to chaos ran on a platform of a 'humbler' foreign policy, condemning nation-building. How'd that work out for us? ..."
"... The pain and anguish of the neo cons is highly entertaining, and so damn warranted, but let's not get taken in. ..."
"... isn't robert kagan the husband of state diplomat and cheney/h.clinton appointee victoria nuland? hillary is already as neocon as it gets. ..."
"... If Trump can survive the nomination process, in spite of what the MSN can muster-up against him, it will represent first time in the past 60 years that the Establishment did not choose and own the candidates of both parties. ..."
"... TRUMP's opponents offer nothing but their arrogant condescending attitudes towards the voting population. Their use of scare tactics on voters will no longer work. These cookie-cutter politicians and their obsolete powerful old-boy establishment handlers are wrong for today's challenges and tomorrows solutions. Stop wasting voter's time and energy trying to make this election about personalities, gender, race, minorities, religion, fear and hatred. TRUMP has faith and trust in the voters; TRUMP is the only candidate who doesn't insult, scare or lie to voters; TRUMP offers voters hope and a future ALL Americans can believe in and deserve. ..."
"... All of Trump's establishment opponents are begging for just one more chance. These opponent candidates squandered thousands of opportunities, for the past fifty years, at the expense of All Americans in America and abroad. Powerful corrupt insiders', of every party affiliation, who discredit TRUMP, or any candidate, are also discrediting American voters', the American voting process and the freedoms of democracies and republics everywhere. These discrediting efforts, to take down any candidate, will fail because this is America and in America the peoples' choice for their next president must and will always prevail. American voters' rights and choices must always be protected, respected and never ignored. Because America is not a dictatorship voters' choices' still count. We are lucky to live in a country where we can agree to disagree. This is the essence of freedom. Every American and every candidate should be upset when this kind of corruption goes on. Thank you, Donald Trump, and every candidate, for running for President and offering informed voters an opportunity out of this nightmare and a path to a better America for ALL Americans! ..."
"... The debates heading into Super Tuesday continues to show voters TRUMP's presidential qualities. Eminent Domain didn't stick to TRUMP, neither will groundless tax allegations nor outrageous innuendos. TRUMPS opponents are doing themselves a disservice attacking TRUMP. TRUMP offers voters hope and a future ALL Americans can believe in. TRUMP will own Super Tuesday. ..."
"... This explains the virulent dislike of Trump by the lamestream media. Hillary, an unindicted war criminal based on her central role in instituting the Khaddafi overthrow and her role in starting the Syrian war, is without a doubt the greater evil in comparison with Trump. Since Trump in the fall campaign won't hesitate to highlight the fact that the jihadis in Libya put in as largely as a result of Hillary's initiative liquidated tens or hundreds of thousands of black Africans who had settled in Khaddafi's Libya as hostile to Jihadi elements, this will likely dampen Afro-American ardour for Hillary's campaign. Hopefully this will be a torpedo which sinks her campaign. ..."
"... Truth is the enemy of the Zionist serial liars. ..."
"... I've been saying for awhile that Trump is probably the least bad of the Republican candidates. He's definitely not as bad as Rubio or Cruz would be. For one thing, he's opposed to the TPP and similar crap. Now this. ..."
"... Make no mistake, the only candidate left who wouldn't continue the same awfulness would be Sanders, who doesn't stand a chance (for those who don't understand how the 15% super delegates rigs the election for Clinton and other establishment candidates, do the math, not to even mention the money and power behind Clinton). ..."
"... Bernie and Donald are simply two-fisted middle fingers enthusiastically directed at the paid enforcers of the oligarchy's desired status quo, the Republican and Democrat political machines. ..."
"... And who did HRC appoint as SecState? Marc Grossman, Bush inner circle guy and Bush family relative; Victoria Nuland, former defense policy advisor to Dick Cheney, and her husband, Robert Kagan. This has to be a WTF moment for anyone with a brain? ..."
"... I believe the neoconservatives may have had some self-esteem issues and perhaps tended to overcompensate by splurging on vanity wars. Trump will return the Republican party to its conservative roots of fiscal responsibility and insist on getting good value for his wars. A Trump campaign will completely dispense with 'shock and awe'. Instead, he'll cut straight to the chase: "Where are the oilfields and how long will it take to pump them dry?" The neoconservatives could benefit from that sort of discipline. ..."
"... It be fitting for the neocons who were originally leftist followers of Trotsky to go back home to the Democratic party. Maybe then the old non-interventionist anti-war right can rise again in amongst the Republicans. ..."
"... Perhaps worth noting that the Neocons originally found influence with interventionist Democrats like Dan Moynihan, they went on to develop alliances with fiercely nationalistic Reaganites (like Cheney and Rumsfeld), but only truly came to the fore as policy-makers within the GW Bush presidency. ..."
"... The Neocons are like parasites that jump from host to host. When they've killed one host they move on to the next. I'm reminded of the old Sci-Fi movie, "The Hidden". ..."
"... … just in case y'all are not aware, the view from outside the walls of Empire U$A, when we see the audience holding up placards declaring "MAKE AMERICA'S MILITARY GREAT AGAIN" we're all thinking – 'you guys are truly the most manipulated, compromised and fucked up people on the planet'. ..."
"... "And what about Russia? Washington's talking like the west bank of the Dnieper is our east coast.", Surrounding and dismantling Russia has been the goal since the collapse of the USSR. And Killary and the neocons (including the large contingent she and Obama installed at State) are definitely crazy enough to push it. ..."
"... In the short tem it means replacing Putin by another Eltsin-like stooge. In the middle term, it meant dismantling the USSR. In the long term it means defending Capital against the threat of Socialism. ..."
"... The chaos Trump will bring to the neocon's imperialist project is probably the only good thing that might come out of a Trump presidency. ..."
"... You mean US "corporate" interest and Israel's interest don't you? For the past 30 years, both parties have pursued policies that are in direct conflict with the interest of the American people. ..."
"... Neoconservative historian Robert Kagan - one of the prime intellectual backers of the Iraq war and an advocate for Syrian intervention - announced in the Washington Post last week that if Trump secures the nomination "the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton.", Truly, this tells you all you need to know about Hillary Clinton… ..."
"... Fascinating that Trump has the warmongers nervous. Heading Hillary's way where they know their rearrangement of the middle east (PNAC, JINSA) no matter how many thousands are killed or refugees are displace is safe with Hillary. She has demonstrated her commitment to the death and destruction in the middle east. ..."
"... Good to see that all those neoconservative prayer breakfasts Sen. Hillary Clinton attended at the Geo. W. Bush White House aren't going to waste. Of course, the neocons embrace "Wall Street Hillary" as they always have, regardless of all the silly political theater to the contrary. ..."
"... It's good to see that Hillary is finally being openly welcomed into the fold of neo-conservatives. Also, pardon my lack of modesty for a certain pride in having been proven right about her. She is not a progressive, not liberal, but rather a fascist in the true sense of representing the corporatists. ..."
"... Good call on the timing of the NYT series, Jeff. And kudos on having recognized her early on for the fascist she has always been. ..."
"... Kagan was hand picked to be on Hillary Clinton's defense policy board while at the State Dept and for those who don't know who Kagan is, he's the husband of the assistant secretary of state for eurasian affairs, Victoria Nuland. ..."
Donald Trump's runaway success in the GOP primaries so far is setting off alarm bells among neoconservatives
who are worried he will not pursue the same bellicose foreign policy that has dominated Republican
thinking for decades.
Max Boot, an
unrepentant supporter of the Iraq War, wrote
in
the Weekly Standard that a "Trump presidency would represent the death knell of America
as a great power," citing, among other things, Trump's objection to a large American troop presence
in South Korea.
Trump has done much to trigger the scorn of neocon pundits. He
denounced the
Iraq War as a mistake based on Bush administration lies, just prior to scoring a
sizable victory in the South Carolina GOP primary. In last week's contentious GOP presidential
debate, he defended the concept of neutrality in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is utterly
taboo on the neocon right.
"It serves no purpose to say you have a good guy and a bad guy,"
he said, pledging to take a neutral position in negotiating peace.
This set off his rival Marco Rubio, who replied, "The position you've taken is an anti-Israel
position. … Because you cannot be an honest broker in a dispute between two sides in which one of
the sides is constantly acting in bad faith." The Jerusalem Post suggested that Rubio's assault
on Trump's views on the Middle East was
designed to win Florida. If that's the case, it's apparently not working - in the Real Clear
Politics averaging of GOP primary polls in the state, Trump is
polling higher than he ever has.
In his quest to take up George W. Bush's mantle, Rubio has arrayed a fleet of neoconservative
funders, ranging from
pro-Israel billionaire
Paul Singer to
Norman Braman, a billionaire auto dealer who funds Israeli settlements in the West Bank. His
list of advisers
is like a rolodex of Iraq War backers, ranging from Bush administration alumni Elliot Abrams and
Stephen Hadley, to Kagan and serial war propagandist Bill Kristol.
Kristol also sits on the board of the Emergency Committee for Israel - a dark money group
that assails candidates it perceives as insufficiently pro-Israel. The group started airing an ad
this weekend against Trump portraying him as an ally to despots like Bashar Assad, Saddam Hussein,
and Muammar Qaddafi - mostly because he argued that military invasions of Libya and Iraq left those
countries worse off.
John D, Mar. 3 2016, 6:31 a.m.
I love what Trump's saying from time to time and don't believe it for a second. How short are
our memories? The guy who accelerated the process of reducing the middle east to chaos ran
on a platform of a 'humbler' foreign policy, condemning nation-building. How'd that work out for
us? Trump is a demagogue, and this is what they do: say whatever gets them support, just
like other politicians, but on steroids. Huey Long is an example of this, and he also took some
positions that we would all have supported over that of the two major parties of the time.
The pain and anguish of the neo cons is highly entertaining, and so damn warranted, but
let's not get taken in. The man's a monster, and the only good that might come of his election
would be his impeachment. I know, that leaves us with horrible choices, and what else is new.
But don't be suckered by Trump. The degree really is worthless.
vidimi, Mar. 2 2016, 8:55 a.m.
isn't robert kagan the husband of state diplomat and cheney/h.clinton appointee victoria
nuland? hillary is already as neocon as it gets.
M Hobbs -> vidimi, Mar. 3 2016, 2:25 p.m.
Robert Kagan told the NYT last June that he "feels comfortable" with Hillary on foreign policy–and
that she's a neocon. "If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue," he added, "it's
something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call
it that; they are going to call it something else."
The people behind this ad don't get it- this video could easily have been issued and approved
by the Trump campaign. To a lot of people, what this video accuses Trump of saying is the absolute,
utter truth. The world would be a far, far better place, Iraq would be better off, Libya would
be better off, and the United States would have a lot more money, and a lot less dead soldiers,
if Saddam and Khadaffi were still alive.
They should have focus grouped this. Because it likely increases Trump's numbers.
Joe F -> Duglarri, Mar. 1 2016, 1:53 p.m.
If Khadaffi were still alive Ambassdor Stevens and several more Americans would still be alive
also. But then the press would have one less thing to whinge about and the MIC would have one
less hotzone to expliot.
Carroll Price, Mar. 1 2016, 11:10 a.m.
If Trump can survive the nomination process, in spite of what the MSN can muster-up against
him, it will represent first time in the past 60 years that the Establishment did not choose and
own the candidates of both parties.
Which leads me to believe that if history serves as a guide, and I think it does, the Establishment
will have him assassinated, while the resources are still available and in place to cover it up
and have it white-washed by an official inquiry similar to the fake 9/11 Commission & Warren Commission
Report.
Clark, Mar. 1 2016, 10:28 a.m.
Trump worries/offends the neo-cons in his perversity, but the neo-cons know they can rely on
Hillary Clinton.
M Hobbs -> Clark, Mar. 3 2016, 2:30 p.m.
So if HRC gets the nomination, all the neocon Rs will vote for her and lots of the lefty Ds
and independents will vote for Trump. This is getting confusing.
Gene Poole -> M Hobbs, Mar. 4 2016, 4:32 a.m.
Yep. And ain't it sweet!?
SeniorsForTrump, Mar. 1 2016, 9:57 a.m.
TRUMP's opponents offer nothing but their arrogant condescending attitudes towards the
voting population. Their use of scare tactics on voters will no longer work. These cookie-cutter
politicians and their obsolete powerful old-boy establishment handlers are wrong for today's challenges
and tomorrows solutions. Stop wasting voter's time and energy trying to make this election about
personalities, gender, race, minorities, religion, fear and hatred. TRUMP has faith and trust
in the voters; TRUMP is the only candidate who doesn't insult, scare or lie to voters; TRUMP offers
voters hope and a future ALL Americans can believe in and deserve.
All of Trump's establishment opponents are begging for just one more chance. These opponent
candidates squandered thousands of opportunities, for the past fifty years, at the expense of
All Americans in America and abroad. Powerful corrupt insiders', of every party affiliation, who
discredit TRUMP, or any candidate, are also discrediting American voters', the American voting
process and the freedoms of democracies and republics everywhere. These discrediting efforts,
to take down any candidate, will fail because this is America and in America the peoples' choice
for their next president must and will always prevail. American voters' rights and choices must
always be protected, respected and never ignored. Because America is not a dictatorship voters'
choices' still count. We are lucky to live in a country where we can agree to disagree. This is
the essence of freedom. Every American and every candidate should be upset when this kind of corruption
goes on. Thank you, Donald Trump, and every candidate, for running for President and offering
informed voters an opportunity out of this nightmare and a path to a better America for ALL Americans!
The debates heading into Super Tuesday continues to show voters TRUMP's presidential qualities.
Eminent Domain didn't stick to TRUMP, neither will groundless tax allegations nor outrageous innuendos.
TRUMPS opponents are doing themselves a disservice attacking TRUMP. TRUMP offers voters hope and
a future ALL Americans can believe in. TRUMP will own Super Tuesday.
Carroll Price -> SeniorsForTrump, Mar. 1 2016, 11:15 a.m.
Very well stated. I agree whole-heartedly.
john p. Teschke, Mar. 1 2016, 2:28 a.m.
This explains the virulent dislike of Trump by the lamestream media. Hillary, an unindicted
war criminal based on her central role in instituting the Khaddafi overthrow and her role in starting
the Syrian war, is without a doubt the greater evil in comparison with Trump. Since Trump in the
fall campaign won't hesitate to highlight the fact that the jihadis in Libya put in as largely
as a result of Hillary's initiative liquidated tens or hundreds of thousands of black Africans
who had settled in Khaddafi's Libya as hostile to Jihadi elements, this will likely dampen Afro-American
ardour for Hillary's campaign. Hopefully this will be a torpedo which sinks her campaign.
dahoit -> john p. Teschke, Mar. 1 2016, 8:22 a.m.
Truth is the enemy of the Zionist serial liars.
Jeff, Mar. 1 2016, 2:05 a.m.
I've been saying for awhile that Trump is probably the least bad of the Republican candidates.
He's definitely not as bad as Rubio or Cruz would be. For one thing, he's opposed to the TPP and
similar crap. Now this.
Make no mistake, the only candidate left who wouldn't continue the same awfulness would
be Sanders, who doesn't stand a chance (for those who don't understand how the 15% super delegates
rigs the election for Clinton and other establishment candidates, do the math, not to even mention
the money and power behind Clinton). I don't support Trump in any way, but I also find it
laughable how some so-called progressives are wetting their pants over him. Yes he's racist, but
so are the Republicans in general. At least Trump has a few good positions, making him about the
same as Clinton.
Winston, Feb 29, 2016, 7:48 p.m.
Bernie and Donald are simply two-fisted middle fingers enthusiastically directed at the paid
enforcers of the oligarchy's desired status quo, the Republican and Democrat political machines.
Donald, unlike poor Bernie, has the advantage of being able to avoid the oligarchy's mega-cash-fueled
vetting process intended to weed out true boat rockers by funding his own campaign.
When Reps threaten to vote for Dems and I see headlines like "Democratic National Committee
Vice Chair Tulsi Gabbard resigned from her post on Sunday to endorse Democratic presidential candidate
Bernie Sanders, following months of rising tensions within the group," I have hope that both party
machines will, deservedly, become increasingly irrelevant. The facade has come off and we finally
see the truth, which is there is no loyalty within the establishment of either political party
to anything but the continued power of the oligarchy they BOTH defend.
Election 2016 is turning out to be a rare popcorn worthy event because voters are now TOTALLY
fed up with THIS:, From the 2014 Princeton University study:, Testing Theories of American Politics:
Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, Excerpts:, A great deal of empirical research speaks
to the policy influence of one or another set of actors, but until recently it has not been possible
to test these contrasting theoretical predictions against each other within a single statistical
model. We report on an effort to do so, using a unique data set that includes measures of the
key variables for 1,779 policy issues.
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business
interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens
and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial
support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not
for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.
In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule-at least not in the
causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with
economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong
status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans
favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
…the preferences of economic elites (as measured by our proxy, the preferences of "affluent"
citizens) have far more independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average
citizens do. To be sure, this does not mean that ordinary citizens always lose out; they fairly
often get the policies they favor, but only because those policies happen also to be preferred
by the economically-elite citizens who wield the actual influence.
-–, From "Post-Soviet Lessons for a Post-America Century" by Dmitry Orlov, someone who experienced
the collapse of the Soviet Union and the various effects of that collapse on life there:, People
in the United States have a broadly similar attitude toward politics with people of the Soviet
Union. In the U.S. this is often referred to as "voter apathy", but it might be more accurately
described as non-voter indifference. The Soviet Union had a single, entrenched, systemically corrupt
political party, which held a monopoly on power. The U.S. has two entrenched, systemically corrupt
political parties, whose positions are often indistinguishable, and which together hold a monopoly
on power. In either case, there is, or was, a single governing elite, but in the United States
it organized itself into opposing teams to make its stranglehold on power seem more sportsmanlike.
Although people often bemoan political apathy as if it were a grave social ill, it seems to
me that this is just as it should be. Why should essentially powerless people want to engage in
a humiliating farce designed to demonstrate the legitimacy of those who wield the power? In Soviet-era
Russia, intelligent people did their best to ignore the Communists: paying attention to them,
whether through criticism or praise, would only serve to give them comfort and encouragement,
making them feel as if they mattered. Why should Americans want to act any differently with regard
to the Republicans and the Democrats? For love of donkeys and elephants?, -–, "Now [the United
States is] just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the
nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and
U.S. senators and congress members. So now we've just seen a complete subversion of our political
system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves
after the election's over. … The incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited
money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody's who's already in Congress has a lot more to
sell to an avid contributor than somebody who's just a challenger. – - Jimmy Carter, former president,
in 2015.
sgt_doom, Feb 29, 2016, 6:58 p.m.
So one of the principal founding members of PNAC, or the Project for a New American Century (and
Victoria Nuland's husband), R. Kagan, says vote for Hillary?
And this just weeks after Hillary is bragging about receiving complements from Henry Kissinger,
mass murderer?
Are there still fools in America who believe HRC is some kind of liberal?
And who did HRC appoint as SecState? Marc Grossman, Bush inner circle guy and Bush family
relative; Victoria Nuland, former defense policy advisor to Dick Cheney, and her husband, Robert
Kagan. This has to be a WTF moment for anyone with a brain?
Benito Mussolini, Feb 29, 2016, 6:46 p.m.
I don't think the neoconservatives should purchase a one way ticket into the Hillary camp. Trump
could be quite amenable to the 'Ledeen Doctrine' that: "Every ten years or so, the United States
needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show
the world we mean business". My understanding is that Trump has no objections in principle, but
as a prudent businessman, questions whether it's worth shelling out 1 trillion dollars just to
show you mean business.
I believe the neoconservatives may have had some self-esteem issues and perhaps tended
to overcompensate by splurging on vanity wars. Trump will return the Republican party to its conservative
roots of fiscal responsibility and insist on getting good value for his wars. A Trump campaign
will completely dispense with 'shock and awe'. Instead, he'll cut straight to the chase: "Where
are the oilfields and how long will it take to pump them dry?" The neoconservatives could benefit
from that sort of discipline.
However, if the neoconservatives decide to return to the party they abandoned in the 1960s,
then I wish them well. They had a good run with the Republicans and certainly left their mark
on foreign policy. Sometimes a change of scenery is good; it may be all they need to rekindle
their enthusiasm for the third (or is the fourth?) Iraq war.
Lawrence, Feb 29, 2016, 6:05 p.m.
It be fitting for the neocons who were originally leftist followers of Trotsky to go back
home to the Democratic party. Maybe then the old non-interventionist anti-war right can rise again
in amongst the Republicans.
eddie-g, Feb 29, 2016, 5:21 p.m.
Perhaps worth noting that the Neocons originally found influence with interventionist Democrats
like Dan Moynihan, they went on to develop alliances with fiercely nationalistic Reaganites (like
Cheney and Rumsfeld), but only truly came to the fore as policy-makers within the GW Bush presidency.
So they've never exactly had a set ideological compass, they're happy to back anyone who'll
do their bidding on Israel and the Middle East. With Trump, I can't imagine they (or anyone else)
knows what they're getting; Hillary meanwhile is a known quantity, and hawkish enough for their
tastes.
craigsummers -> eddie-g, Feb 29, 2016, 6:47 p.m.
"……..Perhaps worth noting that the Neocons originally found influence with interventionist Democrats
like Dan Moynihan, they went on to develop alliances with fiercely nationalistic Reaganites (like
Cheney and Rumsfeld), but only truly came to the fore as policy-makers within the GW Bush presidency….."
True, but they lost favor in the Bush White House after the invasion of Iraq turned south.
dahoit -> craigsummers, Mar. 1 2016, 8:38 a.m.
Somewhat true, but how does that explain the demoncrats embracing them in Obombas administration?
Craigsummers -> dahoit, Mar. 1 2016, 7:21 p.m.
I don't believe that Obama has embraced the neocons.. Obama has alienated our allies in the ME
including Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. His large disagreements with Netanyahu flag Obama as
anything but a neocon.
Duglarri -> eddie-g, Mar. 1 2016, 11:37 a.m.
The Neocons are like parasites that jump from host to host. When they've killed one host they
move on to the next. I'm reminded of the old Sci-Fi movie, "The Hidden".
owen, Feb 29, 2016, 4:53 p.m.
… just in case y'all are not aware, the view from outside the walls of Empire U$A, when we
see the audience holding up placards declaring "MAKE AMERICA'S MILITARY GREAT AGAIN" we're all
thinking – 'you guys are truly the most manipulated, compromised and fucked up people on the planet'.
Dave Fisher, Feb 29, 2016, 4:38 p.m.
"Neoconservative historian Robert Kagan announced that if Trump secures the nomination "the only
choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton.", i hope Sanders runs with that, uses it in his ads,
cites that quote during the debates, makes the electorate aware of the fox (weasel?) in the chicken
coop…
Balthazar, Feb 29, 2016, 3:58 p.m.
The US has become the laughing stock of the world. Oh wait, we've been that for decades.
star, Feb 29, 2016, 3:52 p.m.
"worried he will not pursue the same bellicose foreign policy"
No, he will pursue a different
bellicose foreign policy relying on banning Muslims from the US, torture, filling up Guantanamo,
threatening Mexico and 'hitting' the families of 'terrorists'. The Intercept is actually starting
to scare me.
Robert -> star, Feb 29, 2016, 6:01 p.m.
So drone warfare killing thousand+ innocent people isn't "starting to scare" you? Overthrowing
governments in Iraq, Libya, and Syria isn't "starting to scare" you? ISIS forming out of those
overthrows isn't "starting to scare" you?
dahoit -> star, Mar. 1 2016, 8:42 a.m.
Wow, the only guy to critique the Iraq war, Libya, trade steals, getting along with Russia and
stop being the policeman of the world gets critiqued by alleged liberals as the bad choice in
a world of crazy Ziomonsters.
Hang it up children, you've lost your minds.
nfjtakfa -> Roy David, Feb 29, 2016, 5:49 p.m.
Um, I think Vivek Jain's assertion is the destruction of Iraq and destabalization of the region
was 100% intentional, i.e. "wasn't a mistake."
Roy David -> nfjtakfa, Mar. 1 2016, 5:25 p.m.
Thanks nfjtakfa. Sometimes the written word can be misinterpreted.
Christopher -> Vivek Jain, Feb 29, 2016, 5:47 p.m.
Remind me just where and when we found the nukes Iraq was supposed to have, then. Or the mobile
bioweapons labs. Or Hussein's al-Qaeda collaborators.
coram nobis -> Christopher, Feb 29, 2016, 6:13 p.m.
As you see, the Iraq war wasn't a mistake, but a deliberate fake.
reflections, Feb 29, 2016, 3:40 p.m.
They created Donald Trump and thanks to the Supreme Court any rich ass-- can run for office they
don't need to fund a particular political republican bigot.
Bob, Feb 29, 2016, 3:25 p.m.
Trump is a professional actor as are all the cons but he is better at it. Read his book, TAoTD
and you may change your mind a lot on him as POTUS. He certainly is no conbot and IMHO would make
a much better POTUS than any of the dwarf wall st. sucking varlets competing against him. I'm
still hoping Senator Bernie Sanders will take the gloves off and start attacking the war mongering,
wall st. courtier Clinton before it's too late but, if my choice was Clinton vs. Trump I would
hold my nose and vote Trump. Rubio is so hollow he is unqualified for his present job. Good luck
USA.
coram nobis, Feb 29, 2016, 2:31 p.m.
It's an interesting shift of perspective in this crazy year, although the question with the Donald
is (1) whether he has a coherent ideology from one speech to the next and (2) whether the GOP
would become more dovish (or less neocon) under a Trump administration, or whether the GOP would
simply abandon him.
As for Hillary, sir, your coda begs another article: " … and Clinton moving the Democrats towards
greater support for war.", With whom?, Okay, Iran is a definite possibility, given her pro-Israel
stance. But what about China? That situation in the South China Sea is ratcheting up. And what
about Russia? Washington's talking like the west bank of the Dnieper is our east coast.
Doug Salzmann -> coram nobis, Feb 29, 2016, 3:19 p.m.
"And what about Russia? Washington's talking like the west bank of the Dnieper is our east
coast.", Surrounding and dismantling Russia has been the goal since the collapse of the USSR.
And Killary and the neocons (including the large contingent she and Obama installed at State)
are definitely crazy enough to push it.
On the list of Big Dumb Mistakes, this would be very close to the top.
Dave Fisher -> Doug Salzmann, Feb 29, 2016, 4:26 p.m.
"dismantling Russia", what exactly does that mean?
Si1ver1ock -> Dave Fisher, Feb 29, 2016, 5:26 p.m.
Ask the Syrians or the the Libyans, or the Iraqis or the Sundanese, or the Yemenis or … or ….
Doug Salzmann -> Dave Fisher, Feb 29, 2016, 8:18 p.m.
"dismantling Russia", what exactly does that mean?, It means exactly what I said, Dave. Surrounding,
weakening and (ultimately, hopefully) dismantling and absorbing the pieces of the Russian Federation
has been at the core of American foreign policy aims since the collapse of the USSR.
See, for instance, the pre-revised version of the 2/18/1992 Wolfowitz (and Scooter Libby) Memo:
Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory
of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly
by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy
and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources
would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.
And then, refer to Zbigniew Brzezinski's Grand Chessboard:
Given the enormous size and diversity of the country, a decentralized political system, based
on the free market, would be more likely to unleash the creative potential of both the Russian
people and the country's vast natural resources. In turn, such a more decentralized Russia
would be less susceptible to imperial mobilization.
. . . and . . .
A loosely confederated Russia-composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic, and a Far
Eastern Republic-would also find it easier to cultivate closer economic relations with Europe,
with the new states of Central Asia, and with the Orient, which would thereby accelerate Russia's
own development. Each of the three confederated entities would also be more able to tap local
creative potential, stifled for centuries by Moscow's heavy bureaucratic hand.
Hope this helps. ;^)
Gene Poole -> Dave Fisher, Mar. 4 2016, 5:13 a.m.
In the short tem it means replacing Putin by another Eltsin-like stooge. In the middle term,
it meant dismantling the USSR. In the long term it means defending Capital against the threat
of Socialism.
Patricia Baeten, Feb 29, 2016, 2:30 p.m.
Great article. I wrote something similar in my blog post last week titled, NATO, Turkey and Saudi
Arabia's Worst Nightmare President Donald Trump.
Excerpt:, The beneficiaries of Bush and Obama's Evil American Empire invading and destroying
nations throughout the world have been Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Along with their NATO allies,
America has spent trillions of dollars on the military industrial complex while our roads and
bridges fail and jobs have been shipped to third world countries.
The unparalleled destruction of Syria as well as all of the Middle East, Eurasia and Africa
will come to an end under President Donald Trump and the world is taking note.
My greatest fear is that a full hot war against Russia and China will commence before the election.
Love your writing, thanks.
Patricia
Bob -> Patricia Baeten, Feb 29, 2016, 3:29 p.m.
I hope you meant NOT commence. I really don't want to die and these things have a habit of escalating.
dahoit -> Bob, Mar. 1 2016, 9:00 a.m.
She is intimating the Zionists will start war with Russia before Trump takes office, a quite possible
scenario when dealing with the insane Zionists.
Jose -> Patricia Baeten, Feb 29, 2016, 3:32 p.m.
The chaos Trump will bring to the neocon's imperialist project is probably the only good thing
that might come out of a Trump presidency.
The Shame Chamber -> Patricia Baeten, Feb 29, 2016, 7:19 p.m.
Trump said he would declassify the 28 pages on foreign government ties to 9/11. Why hasn't that
happened yet?, http://28pages.org/
dahoit -> The Shame Chamber, Mar. 1 2016, 9:02 a.m.
Uh, he's not in government? sheesh.
dahoit -> Patricia Baeten, Mar. 1 2016, 8:58 a.m.
Good comment, don't mind the idiots stuck in their false narrative.
craigsummers, Feb 29, 2016, 2:22 p.m.
Mr. Jilani, "……Neoconservative historian Robert Kagan - one of the prime intellectual backers
of the Iraq war and an advocate for Syrian intervention - announced in the Washington Post last
week that if Trump secures the nomination "the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton."…..",
The Intercept is clearly confused on quite a few issues. First, the Republican Party generally
supports a strong leadership role for the US in foreign policy (as do the Democrats). Both parties
will ensure that the US pursues our geopolitical interests. Of course, this is not limited just
to the Neocons. Second, the entire Republican establishment opposes Trump for obvious reasons.
Again, this is not limited to the Neocons, and it is not too surprising that Republicans may cross
party lines to vote for Hillary who more closely mirrors some of their foreign policies. She is
a hawk. Third, the Republican and Democratic Parties are strong supporters of Israel – not just
the Neocons. In general, Republicans support Israel even to a greater degree than the Democrats
– and again, this is not limited to the Neoconservatives.
Finally, how important is the Israel-Palestinian conflict to the Intercept? Obviously very
important since the Intercept seems willing to forget that Trump has been called a xenophobe and
an anti-Muslim bigot by many on the left. Have you ever heard the saying: the enemy of my enemy
is my friend?
sgt_doom -> craigsummers, Feb 29, 2016, 4:20 p.m.
I fully agree with Jilani and this Summers is an obvious neocon sycophant of Wall Street.
craigsummers -> sgt_doom, Feb 29, 2016, 5:03 p.m.
sgt_doom, What is extraordinary to me is that Jilani seems to value the Israel-neutral stance
of Trump over Hillary (and her obvious support for Israel) despite Trump (initially) not even
being able to disavow support from the KKK. Maybe that is not so remarkable considering that Jilani
tweeted the term "Israel firsters".
Christopher -> craigsummers, Feb 29, 2016, 5:50 p.m.
"Both parties will ensure that the US pursues our geopolitical interests.", Jesus. Have you been
in a coma since 2003? Or I guess maybe since the 1980's, cough Iran-Contra cough cough.
craigsummers -> Christopher, Feb 29, 2016, 6:44 p.m.
I'm not saying there aren't differences, but generally speaking both the Democrats and the Republicans
have maintained strong policies which favor US interests. Obama had some confusing policies which
alienated long term allies like Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt.
Carroll Price -> craigsummers, Mar. 1 2016, 8:30 p.m.
You mean US "corporate" interest and Israel's interest don't you? For the past 30 years, both
parties have pursued policies that are in direct conflict with the interest of the American people.
Gene Poole -> Carroll Price, Mar. 4 2016, 5:31 a.m.
Bravo. I was going to reply to his first post, in which he said " Both parties will ensure that
the US pursues our geopolitical interests", and ask just who "we" are.
Boaz Bismuth: Mr. Trump, yesterday, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio tried to question your support
for Israel. How is his commitment to Israel stronger than yours?, Donald Trump: "My friendship
with Israel is stronger than any other candidate's. I want to make one thing clear: I want
to strike a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. It is what I aspire to
do. Peace is possible, even if it is the most difficult agreement to achieve. As far as
I understand, Israel is also interested in a peace deal. I'm not saying I'll succeed, or
even that an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is within reach, but I want to
try. But in order for an agreement to happen, the Palestinians need to show interest. It's
a little difficult to reach an agreement when the other side doesn't really want to talk
to you.
"Don't get confused there in Israel: I am currently your biggest friend. My daughter
is married to a Jew who is an enthusiastic Israel supporter, and I have taken part in many
Israel Day Parades. My friendship with Israel is very strong."
Yes, an especially bitter sop to those who harbor the manufactured illusion that trump is concerned
with the sovereign rights of the individual.
avelna2001, Feb 29, 2016, 1:45 p.m.
Neoconservative historian Robert Kagan - one of the prime intellectual backers of the Iraq
war and an advocate for Syrian intervention - announced in the Washington Post last week that
if Trump secures the nomination "the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton.", Truly,
this tells you all you need to know about Hillary Clinton…
Doug Salzmann -> avelna2001, Feb 29, 2016, 3:24 p.m.
"Truly, this tells you all you need to know about Hillary Clinton…", Well, that and the fact that
Killary and Obama named Kagan's wife, Victoria Jane "Cookie" Nuland to the post of Assistant Secretary
of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, where she led the sponsorship and underwriting of
a coup against the elected leadership of Ukraine.
avelna2001 -> Doug Salzmann, Feb 29, 2016, 3:51 p.m.
Well yeah, true enough.
Kathleen, Feb 29, 2016, 1:43 p.m.
Fascinating that Trump has the warmongers nervous. Heading Hillary's way where they know their
rearrangement of the middle east (PNAC, JINSA) no matter how many thousands are killed or refugees
are displace is safe with Hillary. She has demonstrated her commitment to the death and destruction
in the middle east.
This is no bs…know some multi millionaire Republicans here in Colorado who are going with
Hillary if Trump gets nomination. They know their capital gains are safe with her. Yes indeed...
sgt_doom, Feb 29, 2016, 1:33 p.m.
Good to see that all those neoconservative prayer breakfasts Sen. Hillary Clinton attended
at the Geo. W. Bush White House aren't going to waste. Of course, the neocons embrace "Wall Street
Hillary" as they always have, regardless of all the silly political theater to the contrary.
BTW, isn't Robert Kagan the hubby of Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European
and Eurasian Affairs appointed by then Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton?, I believe so
. . .
Of course, we haven't had a legitimate government in the USA since the Coup of 1963 (the JFK
assassination, reinforced by the murders of Rev. King and Bobby Kennedy), so evidently Trump represents
the first break in a long line of illegitimate administrations.
Trump really appears to be giving the nervous willies to the oligarchs – – – glad to see those
swine who gave us - and profited from - the global economic meltdown being shaken up for a change!,
With Hillary they have nothing to fear, she's the perfect Wall Street running dog lackey, but
with Trump they could end up in jail - or worse . . . .
24b4Jeff, Feb 29, 2016, 1:20 p.m.
It's good to see that Hillary is finally being openly welcomed into the fold of neo-conservatives.
Also, pardon my lack of modesty for a certain pride in having been proven right about her. She
is not a progressive, not liberal, but rather a fascist in the true sense of representing the
corporatists.
Does anyone else find it ironic that the New York Times has chosen now to start a series on
her role in the overthrow of Qaddafi and the subsequent conversion of Libya into a failed state?
Had the articles started appearing a couple of weeks ago, it might have helped Sanders in Iowa
and Nevada. No, it would not have helped Sanders in South Carolina, and he is foredoomed in the
rest of the deep south as well, not only because of his being a social democrat (on domestic issues)
but also because he is a Jew.
Doug Salzmann -> 24b4Jeff, Feb 29, 2016, 4:15 p.m.
Good call on the timing of the NYT series, Jeff. And kudos on having recognized her early
on for the fascist she has always been. I've not caught up with the Times series; does each
installment open with this video clip?
ghostyghost, Feb 29, 2016, 1:16 p.m.
"With Trump's ascendancy, it's possible that the parties will re-orient their views on war and
peace, with Trump moving the GOP to a more dovish direction and Clinton moving the Democrats towards
greater support for war."
Right because "bomb the shit out of them" is a well known rallying
cry of pacifists.
coram nobis -> ghostyghost, Feb 29, 2016, 2:37 p.m.
You've got a point; the Donald isn't exactly another Gandhi. The diff between him and Hillary
is that she would act according to longstanding neocon policy, concerted war. The Donald would
attack impulsively. Picture him as the Groucho Marx character in "Duck Soup" and there's a possible
simile, but not funny.
ghostyghost -> coram nobis, Feb 29, 2016, 2:49 p.m.
What scares me the most about President Trump is him taking a look at the nuclear arsenal and
thinking "we have these awesome weapons and they are just sitting here collecting dust. Well lets
show everyone that a real leader isn't afraid to use his best tools!" and then wiping Mosul and
and Raqqa off the map.
coram nobis -> ghostyghost, Feb 29, 2016, 4:36 p.m.
Glad Robert Kagan's neoconservative re-branding attempts have started to garner headlines.
Kagan was hand picked to be on Hillary Clinton's defense policy board while at the State
Dept and for those who don't know who Kagan is, he's the husband of the assistant secretary of
state for eurasian affairs, Victoria Nuland.
Or, Victoria "let's spend $5 billion to overthrow the democratically elected administration in
the Urkaine" Nuland.
Lin Ming, Feb 29, 2016, 1:13 p.m.
These people will do anything to further their cause – just as they always have – up to and including
eliminating an opponent in the most forceful permanent manner…
"... Leaping from this incident to the Iranian nuclear agreement that has essentially decreased the likelihood of Iran ever building nuclear weapons, Trump continued his litany of lies by portraying the agreement as virtual surrender to unnamed dark forces. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton's campaign promises more of the same corporatist politics in the service of the Goldman-Sachs of the nation. The primary difference may be found in her social stances, which are more liberal and tolerant than those expressed by Trump's ticket. ..."
"... In short, we are witnessing a serious split in the US ruling class. Both elements recognize capitalism is in crisis and has been for decades. The two main solutions to this crisis as represented by the campaigns will not solve this crisis, because it is essentially unsolvable. ..."
"... Militarily, there is also a split between the rulers. Neither Trump's combination of fear-ridden America First bluster nor the corporate world order represented by Clinton's campaign will prevent war or terrorism. Both will guarantee the continued waste of monies that the permanent war economy is. Both will also guarantee the continued domination of the US economy by the war industry. Donald Trump knows this and so does Hilary Clinton. ..."
More importantly, however, was his take on history, which went no further back
then 2008, at best. By pretending that history began when Barack Obama was
elected president, all the decades of jobs being sent overseas because
corporations want cheap labor became the fault of more recent free trade
agreements. While these agreements certainly expedited the desire/need of the
capitalist overlords to go for the cheap labor, this process was taking place
before such agreements were passed. Furthermore, Trump and his businesses
benefited from them and he did nothing to oppose them then. In short, it is how
monopoly capitalism works: capital goes to where it can accumulate greater
profits, utilizing the military and "free" trade to cajole and force its will
on nations and peoples around the world.
Continuing his litany of America
wronged, Trump referred to the Iran nuclear agreement. He related the FoxNews
version of some US sailors being held by Iranian military after their ship
sailed into Iranian waters. According to this version, the sailors were
humiliated hostages who were wrongly held. In actuality, the sailors were
treated well and were in the wrong. Their captain surely knew this when he
sailed where he sailed. Leaping from this incident to the Iranian nuclear
agreement that has essentially decreased the likelihood of Iran ever building
nuclear weapons, Trump continued his litany of lies by portraying the agreement
as virtual surrender to unnamed dark forces.
Of course, the presence of "dark" forces and the threat they represent to
Trump and his followers are essential to understanding his appeal. Indeed, the
local Gannett broadsheet here in Vermont, introduced Trump's acceptance speech
in the next day's paper with this quote from the speech "safety will be
restored." I first noted this emphasis on safety while listening to an argument
between a young anti-Trump protester and an even younger Trump supporter at the
end of a Vermont anti-Trump action. Besides the obvious fact that his proposed
policies based on fear, hate, and US triumphalism are no more likely to restore
safety than Clinton's policies of brinksmanship and subterfuge, this statement
begs the question about whose safety Mr. Trump is referring to.
... ... ...
While Trump pretends that his millennialist rhetoric will bring the US back to a time my
father grew up in-when father knew best and was whiter than Ivory Snow soap, Hillary
Clinton's campaign promises more of the same corporatist politics in the service of the
Goldman-Sachs of the nation. The primary difference may be found in her social stances, which are
more liberal and tolerant than those expressed by Trump's ticket.
In short, we are witnessing a serious split in the US ruling class. Both elements recognize
capitalism is in crisis and has been for decades. The two main solutions to this crisis as
represented by the campaigns will not solve this crisis, because it is essentially unsolvable.
Trump's approach hopes to move the capitalist economy back to a time before World War One,
when production of goods was almost as important as the financial manipulation of monies for
profit and national economies were the primary and dominant macro economy. Clinton's approach
would continue the trend of the last few decades that has seen capital move beyond national
boundaries to create what Lenin called "the formation of international monopolist capitalist
associations which share the world among themselves." This latter phenomenon is what the
so-called free trade agreements are about. Trump's belief that he can buck this trend runs
counter to history, although he seems to think that he is beyond history, except for that which
he makes.
Militarily, there is also a split between the rulers. Neither Trump's combination of
fear-ridden America First bluster nor the corporate world order represented by Clinton's campaign
will prevent war or terrorism. Both will guarantee the continued waste of monies that the
permanent war economy is. Both will also guarantee the continued domination of the US economy by
the war industry. Donald Trump knows this and so does Hilary Clinton.
"... While many neocons and fellow travelers may be anxious to demonstrate their power and influence, it would seem, based on Trump's
electoral performance, that the Republican Party electorate is not very interested in what they have to offer. ..."
"... The neocons best bet to have a seat at the table in 2017 is Hillary Clinton. ..."
2016It is now official: the neoconservatives are united against Donald Trump. A new open letter organized by Project for the New
American Century (PNAC) co-founder Eliot Cohen states the signatories
oppose
a Trump presidency and have committed to "working energetically" to see that he is not elected.
PNAC was, notoriously, the neoconservative
group that called for increased US imperialism in the Middle East, especially Iraq. Many of those who signed PNAC's statement of
principles and various letters went on to serve in the Bush Administration.
The letter comes after Trump's ferocious attacks on neocon policies and narratives, such as the Iraq War and the idea
that President George W. Bush kept the country safe despite being in office on 9/11. Those attacks were most pronounced just prior
to the South Carolina primary when former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and the Bush Administration was the focus of Trump's fire.
Trumps' foreign policy has long been in the neocon cross-hairs. It already appeared as though
many of the neocons were
against Trump; now it's impossible to deny.
Journalist Josh Rogin, after talking to Trump advisors,
lamented that "The practical
application of that doctrine plays out in several ways. Trump's narrow definition of 'national interest' does not include things
like democracy promotion, humanitarian intervention, the responsibility to protect people from atrocities or the advocacy of human
rights abroad. Trump believes that economic engagement will lead to political opening in the long run. He doesn't think the U.S.
government should spend blood or treasure on trying to change other countries' systems."
The other co-founder of PNAC, Robert Kagan,
went even further, comparing Trump to a monster and
claiming that, "For this former Republican, and perhaps for others, the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The
party cannot be saved, but the country still can be."
Military historian Max Boot, also a signatory to the letter, has denounced Trump,
saying, "A Trump presidency threatens
the post-World War II liberal international order that American presidents of both parties have so laboriously built up." He claimed
that "A Trump presidency would represent the death knell of America as a great power."
Many of those who signed the latest letter were also among those that signed PNAC communications including; Kagan, Boot, Cohen,
Robert Zoellick, Daniel Blumenthal, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Thomas Donnelly, Aaron Friedberg, Randy Scheunemann, Jeffrey Gedmin, Gary
Schmitt, and Dov Zakheim.
While many neocons and fellow travelers may be anxious to demonstrate their power and influence, it would seem, based on Trump's
electoral performance, that the Republican Party electorate is not very interested in what they have to offer.
The neocons best bet to have a seat at the table in 2017
is Hillary Clinton.
"... Other neoconservatives say Trump's foreign policy stances, such as his opposition to the Iraq war and the U.S. intervention in Libya, are inconsistent and represent "completely mindless" boasting. "It's not, 'Oh I really feel that the neoconservatism has come to a bad end and we need to hearken back to the realism of the Nixon administration,' " said Danielle Pletka, senior vice president for foreign and defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute. ..."
"... Despite the opposition he faces in some corners of the GOP, polls indicate that Trump's message is in line with the public mood. ..."
"... Experts say the isolationist sentiment is prevalent in the Democratic Party as well. ..."
"... "The [Bernie] Sanders supporters charge Hillary Clinton Hillary with never seeing a quagmire she did not wish to enter, and basically with not just complicity, but a leading role in contriving some of the worst disasters of American foreign policy in this century," said Amb. Chas Freeman, a senior fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, and a former Nixon and George H.W. Bush official. ..."
"... Some experts say neoconservatives are fighting hard because they have the most to lose. "They're losing influence inside the foreign policy establishment in general, and they have definitely lost influence inside the Republican party, which was their home base," Mearsheimer said. ..."
"... Some neoconservatives are even throwing in their lot with likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, most prominently Kagan and Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. ..."
"... Julian Hattem contributed to this story. ..."
The rise of
Donald Trump
is threatening the power of neoconservatives, who find themselves at risk of being marginalized
in the Republican Party. Neoconservatism was at its height during the presidency of George W. Bush, helping to shape
the rationale for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But now the ideology is under attack, with Trump systematically rejecting each of its core
principles. Whereas neoconservatism advocates spreading American ideals through the use of military force,
Trump has made the case for nationalism and a smaller U.S. military footprint. In what Trump calls an "America First" approach, he proposes rejecting alliances that don't
work, trade deals that don't deliver, and military interventionism that costs too much. He has said he would get along with Russian President Vladimir Putin and sit down with North
Korean dictator Kim Jong Un - a throwback to the "realist" foreign policy of President Nixon.
As if to underscore that point, the presumptive GOP nominee met with Nixon's Secretary of
State and National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, earlier this week, and delivered his first
major foreign policy speech at an event last month hosted by the Center for National Interest,
which Nixon founded.
Leading neoconservative figures like Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan have assailed Trump's
foreign policy views. Kagan even called Trump a "fascist" in a recent Washington Post
op-ed. "This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes (although there have
been salutes, and a whiff of violence) but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a
textbook egomaniac 'tapping into' popular resentments and insecurities, and with an entire
national political party - out of ambition or blind party loyalty, or simply out of fear -
falling into line behind him," wrote Kagan, who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Other neoconservatives say Trump's foreign policy stances, such as his opposition to the Iraq
war and the U.S. intervention in Libya, are inconsistent and represent "completely mindless"
boasting. "It's not, 'Oh I really feel that the neoconservatism has come to a bad end and we need to
hearken back to the realism of the Nixon administration,' " said Danielle Pletka, senior vice
president for foreign and defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute.
... ... ...
"[Neoconservatives] are concerned for good reason," said O'Hanlon, a Democratic defense hawk
"These people don't think that Trump is prepared intellectually to be president." "It's not just that their stance of foreign policy would be losing .. .all foreign policy
schools would be losing influence under Trump with very unpredictable consequences," he added.
Despite the opposition he faces in some corners of the GOP, polls indicate that Trump's
message is in line with the public mood. A
recent Pew poll found that nearly six in 10 Americans said the U.S. should "deal with its own
problems and let other countries deal with their own problems as best they can," a more
isolationist approach at odds with neoconservative thought.
John Mearsheimer, a preeminent scholar in realist theory, says there's a parallel in history
to the way America turned inward after the Vietnam War. "There's no question that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger went a considerable ways to pursue
a less ambitious foreign policy, and they talked about allies doing more to help themselves, and
they began to pursue detente with the Soviet Union." "And this was all a reaction to Vietnam. Vietnam of course was a colossal failure. The body
politic here in the United States was deeply disenchanted with American foreign policy,
especially in its most ambitious forms and the end result is we ended up backing off for awhile,"
he said. "We have a similar situation here."
Experts say the isolationist sentiment is prevalent in the Democratic Party as well.
"The [Bernie] Sanders supporters charge
Hillary ClintonHillary with
never seeing a quagmire she did not wish to enter, and basically with not just complicity, but a
leading role in contriving some of the worst disasters of American foreign policy in this
century," said Amb. Chas Freeman, a senior fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute for
International and Public Affairs, and a former Nixon and George H.W. Bush official.
"This is the principle reason that Hillary Clinton is having so much trouble putting
Bernie Sanders away," said Mearsheimer, who supports the Vermont senator. "Sanders is
capitalizing on all that disenchantment in the public, and Hillary Clinton represents the old
order."
But the ideological battle over foreign policy is playing out more forcefully in the GOP. While some members of the Republican foreign policy establishment are coming to terms with
Trump becoming their party's nominee, including lawmakers like Sens.
John McCain (R-Ariz.) and
Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), neoconservatives remain staunch holdouts.
Some experts say neoconservatives are fighting hard because they have the most to
lose. "They're losing influence inside the foreign policy establishment in general, and they have
definitely lost influence inside the Republican party, which was their home base," Mearsheimer
said.
Some neoconservatives are even throwing in their lot with likely Democratic nominee
Hillary Clinton, most
prominently Kagan and Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
With Republican foreign policy figures split, influential Republican donors such as
Charles and David Koch are trying to shape the GOP's new direction.
The Charles Koch Institute recently launched a daylong conference that featured Mearsheimer
and another prominent realist Stephen Walt that questioned U.S. foreign policy since the end of
the Cold War.
"This has meant the frequent use of force, a military budget the size of the next seven to
eight countries combined, and an active policy of spreading American power and values," said
William Ruger, vice president of research and policy at the Charles Koch Institute.
"After a quarter century of this approach, it's time to ask: Has our foreign policy been
working? Is it making America safe? Should we continue on this path? And if not, what do
alternative approaches look like?"
"... Theodore Roosevelt, whom Max and his neocon buddies love, issued a whopping 1,006 executive orders (when his immediate predecessors had issued a handful) and treated Congress contemptuously. He said that he, after all, was the unique representative of the American people, so it was his job to implement their will, regardless of what any other body had to say about it. ..."
"... We can only imagine their response if Trump had said such a thing. In fact, Trump says that executive orders are terrible and that the president should govern by consensus. ..."
"... Trump is boorish. Oh, sure. Too bad we can't have more refined candidates like John McCain, who sing, "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran." ..."
"... Trump betrays conservative values. This supposedly disqualifies him. To the contrary, hasn't it been the role of the GOP nominee to betray conservative values? In 1996, Bill Kristol - who's just so overcome with concern about the betrayal of conservative values, remember - enthusiastically endorsed Colin Powell for president. ..."
"... And by the way, just what are these "conservative values"? The leftist project of bringing democracy to faraway lands - the exact opposite of what Edmund Burke (who knew a little something about conservatism) would have recommended? Creating Medicare Part D? No Child Left Behind? Auto bailouts? Bank bailouts? Keynesian stimulus? ..."
"... Had George W. Bush been eligible for a third term, would the same people who demand Trump debase himself in sackcloth and ashes for his betrayals of conservatism have done anything remotely similar to Bush? ..."
"... The alleged reasons for disliking Trump do not match the neocons' actions. Therefore, they are not the real reasons. ..."
"... They don't trust him on foreign policy. He makes fun of their interventions and says the world would be much better off, and we'd be a lot richer if none of it had been done. ..."
"... They can't control him. He isn't owned by anyone. He can't be bought. The neocons, along with the GOP establishment they pretend to oppose, are control freaks. They can't deal with someone who may be independent of them. ..."
"... If you want to oppose Trump, knock yourself out. But at least, be honest about it. The neocons have repeatedly endorsed candidates whose deviations from orthodoxy are much more severe than Trump's. So they're lying. ..."
Now before I tell you how I figured that out - apart from the fact that their
lips are moving - I need to begin by parrying any manifestations of Trump
Derangement Syndrome.
I do not support or endorse Donald Trump, who is not a libertarian and who
appears to have no clear philosophy of any kind. He would no doubt do countless
things that I would deplore.
Just like all the other candidates, in other words.
My point is not to cheer for him. My point is that the neocons' stated reasons
for opposing him so hysterically don't add up.
(1) Max Boot worries that Trump will rule like a "strongman." Right - quite
unlike the restrained, humble executors of the law whom Max has endorsed over the
years. In fact, Max has spent his career calling for a strong executive. Now he's
worried about a "strongman." I'd say that horse has already left the stable, Max.
You might want to look in the mirror to figure out how that happened.
Theodore Roosevelt, whom Max and his neocon buddies love, issued a whopping
1,006 executive orders (when his immediate predecessors had issued a handful) and
treated Congress contemptuously. He said that he, after all, was the unique
representative of the American people, so it was his job to implement their will,
regardless of what any other body had to say about it.
We can only imagine their response if Trump had said such a thing. In fact,
Trump says that executive orders are terrible and that the president should govern
by consensus.
Now maybe he doesn't mean that, and maybe he'd use executive orders
anyway. But what if he'd said what their hero Teddy said?
Remember the last time Max, or any neocon, or anyone in the GOP establishment,
warned us that Teddy wasn't a good role model?
Me neither.
(2) Trump is boorish. Oh, sure. Too bad we can't have more refined
candidates like John McCain, who sing, "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran."
(3) Trump betrays conservative values. This supposedly disqualifies him. To
the contrary, hasn't it been the role of the GOP nominee to betray conservative
values? In 1996, Bill Kristol - who's just so overcome with concern about the
betrayal of conservative values, remember - enthusiastically endorsed Colin Powell
for president.
(4) And by the way, just what are these "conservative values"? The leftist
project of bringing democracy to faraway lands - the exact opposite of what Edmund
Burke (who knew a little something about conservatism) would have recommended?
Creating Medicare Part D? No Child Left Behind? Auto bailouts? Bank bailouts?
Keynesian stimulus?
Had George W. Bush been eligible for a third term, would the same people
who demand Trump debase himself in sackcloth and ashes for his betrayals of
conservatism have done anything remotely similar to Bush?
Sure, we'd get the wringing of hands and the occasional anguished newspaper
column, but then we'd get the stern lecture that if we don't vote for Bush,
civilization comes to an end.
See what I mean? Something is fishy here. The alleged reasons for disliking
Trump do not match the neocons' actions. Therefore, they are not the real reasons.
Know what I think the real reasons are?
(a) They don't trust him on foreign policy. He makes fun of their
interventions and says the world would be much better off, and we'd be a lot
richer if none of it had been done.
Now it's true, here as elsewhere, that Trump is not consistent. He's now
calling for ground troops against ISIS, for instance. But his primary message is:
we have too many problems at home to be traipsing around the world destroying
countries. This is not music to a neocon ear.
(b) They can't control him. He isn't owned by anyone. He can't be bought.
The neocons, along with the GOP establishment they pretend to oppose, are control
freaks. They can't deal with someone who may be independent of them.
If you want to oppose Trump, knock yourself out. But at least, be honest
about it. The neocons have repeatedly endorsed candidates whose deviations from
orthodoxy are much more severe than Trump's. So they're lying.
As usual.
Tom Woods, Jr. [send him mail; visit his website], hosts the Tom Woods Show, a libertarian
podcast, Monday through Friday, and co-hosts Contra Krugman every week. He is the New York Times
bestselling author of 12 books, a course creator for the Ron Paul homeschool curriculum, and
founder of Liberty Classroom, a libertarian education site for adult enrichment.
"... The fact however remains that Trump has challenged the ideological foundations upon which US foreign policy is built whilst offering an alternative that has elicited a powerful response from the US public. ..."
"... The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do notnecessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik. ..."
Donald Trump's recent speech on foreign policy
has been roundly condemned by the US foreign establishment.
It has also been ridiculed as confusing and contradictory.
This is a
misrepresentation. Whilst Trump did not provide a detailed programme - to have done so in the
middle of
an election would have been unwise - his underlying message is clear enough.
Instead of a foreign policy based on an ideology centered on US world hegemony, "exceptionalism"
and "democracy promotion" Trump promises a foreign policy straightforwardly based on the pursuit
of US national interests.
To understand what that would mean in practice consider the contrast between what the US public
wants and what the US has actually done under successive US administrations.
Whereas the US public since 9/11 has been overwhelmingly focused on jihadi terrorism as the greatest
threat to the US, the US foreign policy establishment is only minimally interested in that question.
Its priority is to secure US world hegemony by reshaping the world geopolitical map.
First and foremost that has meant confronting the two great powers -
Russia and China - the US sees as the primary obstacle to its hegemony. It has also meant
a series of geopolitical adventures in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, a protracted
confrontation with Iran, and head on collisions with Russia and China in Ukraine and the South China
Sea. The US public for its part has shown little or no enthusiasm for any of these projects. By contrast
the US foreign policy establishment has show little enthusiasm for confronting the Islamic State/Daesh.
The military campaign it is purporting to wage against the Islamic State is essentially a "going
through the motions" public relations exercise. The real fight against the Islamic State is being
fought by Iran and Russia. Elsewhere - in Chechnya, Libya and Syria - the US has willingly collaborated
with jihadi terrorists to achieve its geopolitical goals.
Trump threatens to turn all this on its head. In place of confrontation with Russia and China
he says he wants to cut deals with them calculating - rightly - that they are no threat to the US.
In place of collaboration with jihadi terrorism he promises a single-minded focus on its destruction.
Other pillars of current US foreign policy are also challenged.
Whereas the ideologues
currently in charge of US foreign policy treat US allies as ideological soulmates in a quest to spread
"Western values" (ie. US hegemony), Trump sees the US's relationship with its allies as transactional:
the US will help them if they help themselves, with no sense of this being part of some ideological
common cause.
Having dumped the ideology and the foreign policy that goes with it Trump,
promises to focus on sorting out the US's internal problems, which is where the US public's priorities
also lie. Trump expresses himself in often crude language eg. threatening to "carpet
bomb" the Islamic State. He is not coherent. He continues to talk of Iran as an enemy - ignoring the fact that it is as
much a potential partner of the US as Russia and China are. Some of the things Trump says - for example his talk of embracing torture
- are frankly disturbing. It remains to be seen whether a President
Trump if elected would be either willing or able - as he promises - to change the entire foreign
policy direction of the US.
The fact however remains that Trump has challenged the ideological foundations upon which US foreign
policy is built whilst offering an alternative that has elicited a powerful response from the US
public.
That is why the US political establishment is so alarmed by him.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do notnecessarily reflect
the official position of Sputnik.
Trump seems less willing than his opponent to engage in adventurous missions abroad under
neoconservative "world domination" banner
Notable quotes:
"... As Donald Trump is splitting off blue-collar Democrats on issues like America's broken borders and Bill Clinton's trade debacles like NAFTA, Hillary Clinton is trying to peel off independents and Republicans by painting Trump as "temperamentally unfit" to be commander in chief. ..."
"... In portraying Trump as an intolerable alternative, Clinton will find echoes in the GOP establishment and among the Kristol-Kagan neocons, many of whom have already signed an open letter rejecting Trump. ..."
"Clinton to Paint Trump as a Risk to World Order." Thus did page one of Thursday's New
York Times tee up Hillary Clinton's big San Diego speech on foreign policy.
Inside the Times, the headline was edited to underline the point: "Clinton to Portray Trump as
Risk to the World." The Times promoted the speech as "scorching," a "sweeping and fearsome
portrayal of Mr. Trump, one that the Clinton campaign will deliver like a drumbeat to voters in
the coming months."
What is happening here?
As Donald Trump is splitting off blue-collar Democrats on issues like America's broken
borders and Bill Clinton's trade debacles like NAFTA, Hillary Clinton is trying to peel off
independents and Republicans by painting Trump as "temperamentally unfit" to be commander in
chief.
Clinton contends that a Trump presidency would be a national embarrassment, that his ideas are
outside the bipartisan mainstream of U.S. foreign policy, and that he is as contemptuous of our
democratic allies as he is solicitous of our antidemocratic adversaries.
In portraying Trump as an intolerable alternative, Clinton will find echoes in the GOP
establishment and among the Kristol-Kagan neocons, many of whom have already signed an open
letter rejecting Trump.
William Kristol has recruited one David French to run on a National Review-Weekly Standard line
to siphon off just enough votes from the GOP nominee to tip a couple of swing states to Clinton.
Robert Kagan contributed an op-ed to a welcoming Washington Post saying the Trump campaign is
"how fascism comes to America."
Yet, if Clinton means to engage on foreign policy, this is not a battle Trump should avoid.
For the lady has an abysmal record on foreign policy and a report card replete with failures. As
senator, Clinton voted to authorize President Bush to attack and invade a nation, Iraq, that had
not attacked us and did not want war with us. Clinton calls it her biggest mistake, another
way of saying that the most important vote she ever cast proved disastrous for her country,
costing 4,500 U.S. dead and a trillion dollars.
That invasion was the worst blunder in U.S. history and a contributing factor to the deepening
disaster of the Middle East, from which, it appears, we will not soon be able to extricate
ourselves.
As secretary of state, Clinton supported the unprovoked U.S.-NATO attack on Libya and joked of
the lynching of Moammar Gadhafi, "We came. We saw. He died." Yet, even Barack Obama now agrees
the Libyan war was started without advance planning for what would happen when Gadhafi fell. And
that lack of planning, that failure in which Clinton was directly involved, Obama now calls the
worst mistake of his presidency.
Is Clinton's role in pushing for two wars, both of which resulted in disasters for her country
and the entire Middle East, something to commend her for the presidency of the United States? Is
the slogan to be, "Let Hillary clean up the mess she helped to make?"
Whether or not Clinton was complicit in the debacle in Benghazi, can anyone defend her
deceiving the families of the fallen by talking about finding the evildoer who supposedly made
the videotape that caused it all? Even then, she knew better. How many other secretaries of state
have been condemned by their own inspector general for violating the rules for handling state
secrets, for deceiving investigators, and for engaging, along with that cabal she brought into
her secretary's office, in a systematic stonewall to keep the department from learning the truth?
Where in all of this is there the slightest qualification, other than a honed instinct for
political survival, for Clinton to lead America out of the morass into which she, and the failed
foreign policy elite nesting around her, plunged the United States?
If Trump will stay true to his message, he can win the foreign policy debate, and the election,
because what he is arguing for is what Americans want.
They do not want any more Middle East wars. They do not want to fight Russians in the Baltic or
Ukraine, or the Chinese over some rocks in the South China Sea.
They understand that, as Truman had to deal with Stalin, and Ike with Khrushchev, and Nixon with
Brezhnev, and Reagan with Gorbachev, a U.S. president should sit down with a Vladimir Putin to
avoid a clash neither country wants, and from which neither country would benefit.
The coming Clinton-neocon nuptials have long been predicted in this space. They have so much in
common. They belong with each other.
But this country will not survive as the last superpower if we do not shed this self-anointed
role as the "indispensable nation" that makes and enforces the rules for the "rules-based world
order," and that acts as first responder in every major firefight on earth. What Trump has
hit upon, what the country wants, is a foreign policy designed to protect the vital interests of
the United States, and a president who will - ever and always - put America first.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book "The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon
Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority." To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read
features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at
www.creators.com.
This is one of the few articles when you can see anger at neocons from rank-and-file
republicans. Especially in comments.
Notable quotes:
"... Trump's steadfast support from paleoconservative icon and Kristol arch-nemesis Pat Buchanan clearly terrified the neoconservative wing of the party, which still remembers how Buchanan drummed up three million votes against George Bush in the 1992 Republican primary by blasting globalist trade policy. ..."
"... The people are speaking and Hillary will not win. Every single tactic employed to derail Trump has backfired and only made him more popular. ..."
"... The Neo-Cons like Kristol are addicted to power and donor skims. He is why we are now on the verge of rebellion. Vote Trump. ..."
"... CIA Operation Mockingbird....to infiltrate and control all news reporting, see.... "New Think Progress and the Ozzard of Wiz".... Multilevel Information Racketeering.... ..."
"... The establishment media is showing their RINO-ness. They are being exposed in the light. ..."
"... The National Review and Weekly Standard have become bird-cage liner as a result of Messrs. Kristol, Wills, etc. ..."
"... Bill Kristol ... GO AWAY ... Republicans have REJECTED you ... ..."
"... "Let me hasten to admit: I underestimated your skills as a demagogue and the credulity of some of the American public." Let me translate: "Hey, America, you're too stupid to vote. I'm an elite and know better than you!" ..."
"... Donald --- deny his access and take his room card. I imagine he'll be more pissed about that then selling out. Fat slob. He reminds me of the corrupt Monks under the Medici, stuffing gold under their tunics while the poor died in the streets. ..."
"... Latter Day Republicans.. LOL ..."
"... fine use of words... as in latter day saints, Glenn Beck, Romney etc. ..."
"... Neocons have always been Trotskyites and are conservative in name only. It is because of this that I believe that we the people should hold state conventions to enact several amendments to curtail the donor class, removing of political parties, enacting Vigilance Committees, and enforcing Article I Section XI Clause VIII of the Constitution of the United States. ..."
"... Campaign donations and raising money for PACs is unconstitutional and is treason as defined by the Constitution. An emolument is a fee or payment for services rendered. By removing the donor class and the lobbyists we can return the government back to the people. ..."
"... One can only conclude that the neocons want to splinter the vote, and they want the Democrats to win. No other conclusion seems possible. This is a betrayal that should be taken quite seriously. ..."
Kristol recently met with #NeverTrump champion
Mitt Romney to discuss a third-party campaign, but Kristol has hinted that Romney will not be
the independent "White Knight." Kristol
tweeted Saturday,
"If Mitt decides he can't, someone will step forward to run" then quoted William Gladstone to declare,
"The resources of civilization are not yet exhausted."
This is not the first time Trump and Kristol
have sparred on Twitter. When Trump asked last week why networks continue to employ Kristol's punditry
services, Kristol admitted that he had been wrong to have underestimated Trump's political appeal:
Kristol's neoconservative inner circle has reason to fear the threat posed by a populist outsider,
especially one who could gain anti-Establishment traction by attacking the legacy of the Kristol-supported
Iraq War. Kristol's "Weekly Standard" magazine and his son-in-law Matt Continetti's blog "Free Beacon"
hammered Trump throughout the Republican primaries to little avail. The "Beacon" blog's writers and
editors flogged the "small hands" insult that infamously made it into Marco Rubio's campaign stump
speech in Rubio's desperate final days.
Trump's
steadfast support from paleoconservative icon and Kristol arch-nemesis Pat Buchanan clearly terrified
the neoconservative wing of the party, which still remembers how Buchanan drummed up three million
votes against George Bush in the 1992 Republican primary by blasting globalist trade policy.
Tryle N Error
It's time for an intervention. Get him into rehab and off the Kristol Meth, or whatever
that deluded lunatic is injecting.
dtom2 > Tryle N Error
Kristol has become unhinged faced with the reality that he has lost what little influence
he had on the republic electorate. His all out promotion of Jeb Bush failed and this is
nothing more than sour grapes. So, instead of conceding defeat, he launches all out war on our
nominee. My question is this... if he wants Hillary instead of Trump, which will be the
eventual outcome if he follows through with his plan, why not just come out of the closet and
support her. La Raza and the Chamber of Commerce both get their wish, more hordes of criminal
illegals to undermine American workers, and an increased democrat parasitic voter
base...see...so much simpler than a third candidate launch...same outcome. America slides
closer to the third world cesspool of their dreams. Trump 2016!
Ann > dtom2
The people are speaking and Hillary will not win. Every single tactic employed to
derail Trump has backfired and only made him more popular.
bucketnutz > Tryle N Error
The Neo-Cons like Kristol are addicted to power and donor skims. He is why we are now
on the verge of rebellion. Vote Trump.
FauxScienceSlayer
CIA Operation Mockingbird....to infiltrate and control all news reporting, see.... "New
Think Progress and the Ozzard of Wiz".... Multilevel Information Racketeering....
Be Still
The establishment media is showing their RINO-ness. They are being exposed in the
light.
Bill the Cat > Robert Tulloch
The National Review and Weekly Standard have become bird-cage liner as a result of
Messrs. Kristol, Wills, etc. Their next stop is the HuffPo and motherjones.
Patriot
Kristol needs to be brought down from his perch. He thinks he is smarter than the voters.
If he pushes this nonsense and the GOP does not censor him, it will be the time for the
millions of sane Americans to join the GOP and then destroy it from within. It is time for
average Americans to control their destiny as opposed to the elites.
darwin
Kristol is an anti-American traitor. He's actively engaged in fighting the will of the
people to keep himself and the people he works for in power and wealth.
Archimedes
Bill Kristol is destroying the Republican party ... he is a globalist who believes in
spending trillions while deploying AMERICANs in the Middle East ... he believes in open
borders ... he believes in unfettered "free trade" ...
Bill Kristol ... GO AWAY ... Republicans have REJECTED you ...
#NeverHillary
ljm4
Billy, work on your Cruise ship offerings. As you are failing in journalism are you also
trying to take down the GOP party yourself?
Doctor Evil
"Let me hasten to admit: I underestimated your skills as a demagogue and the credulity
of some of the American public." Let me translate: "Hey, America, you're too stupid to vote.
I'm an elite and know better than you!"
Lee Ashton > Doctor Evil
On the other hand...
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that. -
George Carlin US comedian and actor (1937 - 2008)
Douglas Rowland > Lee Ashton
Those would be the ones voting for Hillary.
WaylonII
Splitting the Republican vote would be a sure way to get Hillary elected. What is wrong with these people?
Avatar
timdb > WaylonII
Maybe Kristol expects President Hillary Clinton will appoint him as ambassador to Israel.
Lee Ashton > TheLastPlainsman
Neocon - deficit spending via the warfare state
Leftist - deficit spending via the welfare state.
The right and left wings of the same vulture.
MrnPol725
... Donald --- deny his access and take his room card. I imagine he'll be more pissed about that then selling out. Fat slob. He reminds me of the corrupt Monks under the Medici, stuffing gold under their tunics while the poor died in the streets.
SPQR_US
Another turd exposed...Kristol Meth...time to arrest and jail the neocons...
Pitbulls LiL Brother
Kristol has been wrong so many times for so many years how does he get a voice in the
process?
Amberteka > Pitbulls LiL Brother
MONEY. His relatives Own USA Media.
Roadchaser
Latter Day Republicans.. LOL
James > Roadchaser
fine use of words... as in latter day saints, Glenn Beck, Romney etc.
gladzkravtz
The founding publisher of the Weekly Standard is News Corp!! Just found it on wiki! I
didn't know that and now it makes sense that Kristol gets to mug on FNC so much. I have stock
in News Corp, bought it back long before there was a Megyn Kelly, but now it's time to go
ahead, sell and take the loss.
Those creeps.
PreacherPatriot1776
Neocons have always been Trotskyites and are conservative in name only. It is because
of this that I believe that we the people should hold state conventions to enact several
amendments to curtail the donor class, removing of political parties, enacting Vigilance
Committees, and enforcing Article I Section XI Clause VIII of the Constitution of the United
States.
That clause states, "No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person
holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress,
accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King,
Prince, or foreign State."
Campaign donations and raising money for PACs is unconstitutional and is treason as
defined by the Constitution. An emolument is a fee or payment for services rendered. By
removing the donor class and the lobbyists we can return the government back to the people.
Since the government is not self-policing itself like it should then it's time for the Fourth
Branch of the government to step up and exercise their power to hold these individuals
accountable. A Vigilance Committee would be comprised of citizens of a single state and
oversee everything their elected/appointed representatives adhere to their oaths of office.
Failure to adhere to the oath would be an automatic charge of treason and a trial of said
individual for violating their oath. Once enough of these traitors are executed the rest of
them will behave and follow their oaths plus the Constitution of the United States.
Another amendment could be the requirement that every child must learn the Declaration of
Independence, Constitution of the United States, Bill of Rights, and their state
constitutions. This way we as a people can stop dangerous ideologies that are antithetical to
liberty, like Marxism and communism, can never be used in the United States.
jackschil
Its about time the real conservative Republicans took a stand. They could start by ignoring
the Rockefeller wing of the Republican party and start paying attention to the
Goldwater/Reagan wing. The Chamber of Commerce, the Wall Street Journal, Bill Kristol, Carl
Rove, George Will, and Charles Krauthammer do not represent conservative values, but pretend
establishment values. They would be better served joining with the Democrats. Trump has these
establishment jackals, along with the K Street lobbyists, scared to death. For the first time
since 1984, the people aren't stuck voting for a Republicrat candidate.
SpeedMaster
The Globalists have been exposed for what they really are. Thank You Mr. Trump.
Ohiolad
One can only conclude that the neocons want to splinter the vote, and they want the
Democrats to win. No other conclusion seems possible. This is a betrayal that should be taken
quite seriously.
Gene Schwimmer
If Kristol does, indeed, produce an independent candidate and if "President Hillary" is a
real problem for Trumpists, we of #NeverTrump invite them to abandon Trump and join us in
supporting the independent candidate. If you choose not to, blame yourselves if Trump loses. #NeverTrump
warned you well before you voted for Trump that we would never vote for him and it's still not
too late to nominate someone else at the convention. Not our problem if you thought you could
win without us and nominated Trump, anyway.
PrinceLH > Gene Schwimmer
Are you for real? Why would we turn our backs on the candidate that has garnered the most
votes, in Republican Primary history? You people don't get it! It's not the Republicans vs the
Democrats. It's the people vs the Establishment. We don't want any more of your ruling class
garbage. We don't want any more of stagnant wages and job loses to other countries, so you can
expand your Globalist agenda. You people need to be stopped. Bill Kristol, George Will, Glenn
Beck, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, George Soros, the Bush family, the Koch Brothers and
the list goes on, are our enemies.
You will be soundly defeated, this fall, and you can hand in your membership to the Human
Race, on the way out the door to your European Liberal Utopia.
Zolt
No more THIRD-WORLD IMMIGRATION
No more GLOBAL TRADE
No more ENDLESS WARS FOR ISRAEL AND THE NWO
God bless ASSAD, protector of Syrian Christians!
Get on board with the #PALEOCONS!
billsv
You just don't get it. Middle class jobs have been given to foreigners through H2B
programs, globalist policies, etc. why is this conservatism? Why do illegal aliens get more
benefits than US citizens? Is this conservatism? We just don't like Bill Kristol's view of
conservatism that de stories the Middle Class, let' s those in the bottom percentiles languish
and caves to the wishes of the Chamber of Commerce.
Please back off and give what many if
Americans want. We have suffered enough.
"... A year ago, Trump was a joke. A media circus. A novelty. We assumed – I assumed – he was in it for the giggles. I thought he'd drop out like he'd down twice before. I thought his total lack of experience, his profanity and his recklessness would count against him in a primary among conservatives. But the very nature of conservatism has changed. ..."
"... Trump didn't just defy the establishment. He defied what we thought for years were the outsiders: the ideological conservatives who hitherto cast themselves as the rebels. By beating Ted Cruz, Trump actually ran an insurgency against the insurgent. He demonstrated that what people wanted wasn't something more ideologically pure – as Cruz assumed – but something that was totally different. ..."
"... That is one big positive we can take from this campaign. If Trump can win when challenging the Republican position on trade and war, maybe someone in the future can win while challenging their positions on other things. ..."
"... Donald Trump did, in fact, beat the hell out of the GOP Establishment. But let's also note here that the GOP Establishment beat itself. If you haven't yet, check out conservative writer Matthew Sheffield's evisceration of the Republican Industrial Complex. It was e-mailed to me by a Republican friend who until fairly recently was part of that world, and knows about it intimately. ..."
"... Consider the conservative nonprofit establishment, which seems to employ most right-of-center adults in Washington. Over the past 40 years, how much donated money have all those think tanks and foundations consumed? Billions, certainly. (Someone better at math and less prone to melancholy should probably figure out the precise number.) Has America become more conservative over that same period? Come on. Most of that cash went to self-perpetuation: Salaries, bonuses, retirement funds, medical, dental, lunches, car services, leases on high-end office space, retreats in Mexico, more fundraising. Unless you were the direct beneficiary of any of that, you'd have to consider it wasted. ..."
"... Pretty embarrassing. And yet they're not embarrassed. Many of those same overpaid, underperforming tax-exempt sinecure-holders are now demanding that Trump be stopped. Why? Because, as his critics have noted in a rising chorus of hysteria, Trump represents "an existential threat to conservatism." ..."
"... It turns out the GOP wasn't simply out of touch with its voters; the party had no idea who its voters were or what they believed. For decades, party leaders and intellectuals imagined that most Republicans were broadly libertarian on economics and basically neoconservative on foreign policy. That may sound absurd now, after Trump has attacked nearly the entire Republican catechism (he savaged the Iraq War and hedge fund managers in the same debate) and been greatly rewarded for it, but that was the assumption the GOP brain trust operated under. They had no way of knowing otherwise. The only Republicans they talked to read the Wall Street Journal too. ..."
"... On immigration policy, party elders were caught completely by surprise. Even canny operators like Ted Cruz didn't appreciate the depth of voter anger on the subject. And why would they? If you live in an affluent ZIP code, it's hard to see a downside to mass low-wage immigration. Your kids don't go to public school. You don't take the bus or use the emergency room for health care. No immigrant is competing for your job. (The day Hondurans start getting hired as green energy lobbyists is the day my neighbors become nativists.) Plus, you get cheap servants, and get to feel welcoming and virtuous while paying them less per hour than your kids make at a summer job on Nantucket. It's all good. ..."
"... Trump hasn't said anything especially shocking about immigration. Control the border, deport lawbreakers, try not to admit violent criminals - these are the ravings of a Nazi? ..."
"... This year, and this week, in Republican Party politics and in American conservatism has been about nothing but moral, intellectual, and institutional decadence. It did not happen because of Donald Trump. Donald Trump emerged because the institutions were rotten. It is an almost Shakespearean twist that Roger Ailes is being defenestrated from atop the Fox News empire even as Trump receives his crown in Cleveland. ..."
It's mostly how I feel, though the one consolation I take from this debacle is that genuine creativity
may emerge out of Trump's destruction of the old GOP. It's a small bit of comfort, but I'll take
what I can. If Marco Rubio or any other of the GOP bunch were being nominated now, I would not be
excited at all, or even interested. I prefer that to being freaked out by the prospect of a Trump
presidency, but I would prefer to have someone to vote for , instead of against.
But then, I've wanted that for years.
Because I'm feeling contrarian, I want to give Donald Trump his due in this, his hour of triumph.
He pulled off something that nobody imagined he would do. I remember watching him give a political
speech for the first time - my first time watching him, I mean. He was addressing a big crowd in
Mobile. I watched the thing nearly gape-mouthed. I could not believe the crudeness, the chaos, and
the idiocy of the speech. This won't go anywhere, I thought, but it's going to be fun
watching him implode.
I laughed a lot at Donald Trump back then. Who's laughing now?
A year ago, Trump was a joke. A media circus. A novelty. We assumed – I assumed – he was in
it for the giggles. I thought he'd drop out like he'd down twice before. I thought his total lack
of experience, his profanity and his recklessness would count against him in a primary among conservatives.
But the very nature of conservatism has changed.
It was likely the rise of Sarah Palin in 2008 that made this possible – a candidate who suggested
there was a choice to be made between intellectualism and common sense, and who inspired deep
devotion among those who identified with her. Folks don't identify with Trump in the same, personal
way as they did with the hockey mom from Alaska. How can they? He flies everywhere in a private
jet and has a model as a wife. But his issues did strike a chord. The Wall cut through.
Trump didn't just defy the establishment. He defied what we thought for years were the outsiders:
the ideological conservatives who hitherto cast themselves as the rebels. By beating Ted Cruz,
Trump actually ran an insurgency against the insurgent. He demonstrated that what people wanted
wasn't something more ideologically pure – as Cruz assumed – but something that was totally different.
That is one big positive we can take from this campaign. If Trump can win when challenging
the Republican position on trade and war, maybe someone in the future can win while challenging
their positions on other things.
American presidential elections usually amount to a series of overcorrections: Clinton begat
Bush, who produced Obama, whose lax border policies fueled the rise of Trump. In the case of Trump,
though, the GOP shares the blame, and not just because his fellow Republicans misdirected their
ad buys or waited so long to criticize him. Trump is in part a reaction to the intellectual corruption
of the Republican Party. That ought to be obvious to his critics, yet somehow it isn't.
Consider the conservative nonprofit establishment, which seems to employ most right-of-center
adults in Washington. Over the past 40 years, how much donated money have all those think tanks
and foundations consumed? Billions, certainly. (Someone better at math and less prone to melancholy
should probably figure out the precise number.) Has America become more conservative over that
same period? Come on. Most of that cash went to self-perpetuation: Salaries, bonuses, retirement
funds, medical, dental, lunches, car services, leases on high-end office space, retreats in Mexico,
more fundraising. Unless you were the direct beneficiary of any of that, you'd have to consider
it wasted.
Pretty embarrassing. And yet they're not embarrassed. Many of those same overpaid, underperforming
tax-exempt sinecure-holders are now demanding that Trump be stopped. Why? Because, as his critics
have noted in a rising chorus of hysteria, Trump represents "an existential threat to conservatism."
Let that sink in. Conservative voters are being scolded for supporting a candidate they consider
conservative because it would be bad for conservatism? And by the way, the people doing the scolding?
They're the ones who've been advocating for open borders, and nation-building in countries whose
populations hate us, and trade deals that eliminated jobs while enriching their donors, all while
implicitly mocking the base for its worries about abortion and gay marriage and the pace of demographic
change. Now they're telling their voters to shut up and obey, and if they don't, they're liberal.
It turns out the GOP wasn't simply out of touch with its voters; the party had no idea who
its voters were or what they believed. For decades, party leaders and intellectuals imagined that
most Republicans were broadly libertarian on economics and basically neoconservative on foreign
policy. That may sound absurd now, after Trump has attacked nearly the entire Republican catechism
(he savaged the Iraq War and hedge fund managers in the same debate) and been greatly rewarded
for it, but that was the assumption the GOP brain trust operated under. They had no way of knowing
otherwise. The only Republicans they talked to read the Wall Street Journal too.
On immigration policy, party elders were caught completely by surprise. Even canny operators
like Ted Cruz didn't appreciate the depth of voter anger on the subject. And why would they? If
you live in an affluent ZIP code, it's hard to see a downside to mass low-wage immigration. Your
kids don't go to public school. You don't take the bus or use the emergency room for health care.
No immigrant is competing for your job. (The day Hondurans start getting hired as green energy
lobbyists is the day my neighbors become nativists.) Plus, you get cheap servants, and get to
feel welcoming and virtuous while paying them less per hour than your kids make at a summer job
on Nantucket. It's all good.
Apart from his line about Mexican rapists early in the campaign, Trump hasn't said anything
especially shocking about immigration. Control the border, deport lawbreakers, try not to admit
violent criminals - these are the ravings of a Nazi? This is the "ghost of George Wallace" that
a Politico piece described last August? A lot of Republican leaders think so. No wonder their
voters are rebelling.
Read the whole thing. Let it sink in that Carlson wrote this before a single vote had been cast
in the GOP primaries.
This year, and this week, in Republican Party politics and in American conservatism has been about
nothing but moral, intellectual, and institutional decadence. It did not happen because of Donald
Trump. Donald Trump emerged because the institutions were rotten. It is an almost Shakespearean twist
that Roger Ailes is being defenestrated from atop the Fox News empire even as Trump receives his
crown in Cleveland.
Trump didn't steal the Republican Party. It was his for the taking, because the people who run
it and the institutions surrounding it failed.
When Trump loses in November, maybe, just maybe, some new blood and new ideas will rebuild the
party.
And if he wins? We will have far bigger things to worry about than the fate of the Republican
Party. We will be forced to contemplate the fate of the Republic itself.
"... Shell-shocked, his foes, unwilling to admit their politically correct system has tanked, failed to understand that political incorrectness is to Trump what spinach is to Popeye. ..."
"... "So many 'politically correct' fools in our country," Trump tweeted. "We have to all get back to work and stop wasting time and energy on nonsense!" ..."
"... Trump's candidacy is about so much more than personality. Once the media are forced to report Trump's positions, instead of his persona, even more Americans will see that Trump is the sole Republican who rejects a "free trade" that gives away the keys to the store and opposed the ill-fated Iraq war. He is the type of candidate Americans always wanted but the party establishments are too afraid to provide. ..."
"... The last time America saw a strong paleo-conservative was Pat Buchanan in 1996. An early win in Louisiana caused Buchanan to place second in Iowa and first in New Hampshire. Lacking money, Buchanan was steamrolled by the establishment in Arizona and, in terms of paleo-conservatism, many thought he was the Last of the Mohicans. Trump's campaign is Buchananesque with one difference: Trump has money, and loads of it. He can fend off any attack and self-finance his campaign. He is establishment kryptonite. ..."
"... This reality is what makes him the new face of paleo-conservativism. It might also make him president. ..."
Political incorrectness is to Trump what spinach is to Popeye: Columnist. When the term paleo-conservative
is floated in conversation, most folks imagine a creature out of Jurassic World. But paleo-conservatism
- a near extinct brand of conservatism that heralds limited government, nonintervention, economic
nationalism and Western traditions - is finding a comeback in an unlikely spokesperson.
The history-making campaign of
Donald Trump is turning the clock of U.S. politics back to a time when hubris was heroic and
the truth, no matter how blunt, was king. It is resurrecting a political thought that does not play
by the rules of modern politics.
And as the nation saw the top-tier
GOP candidates take the stage for the first time, they saw Trump, unapologetic and confident,
alongside eight candidates clueless on how to contain him and a tongue-lashed Rand Paul.
The debate itself highlighted the fear a Trump candidacy is creating throughout the political
establishment. The very first question asked the candidates to pledge unconditional support to the
eventual GOP nominee and refrain from a third-party run. Trump refused.
Those in the Beltway resumed drafting Trump's political obituary. But while they were busy scribbling,
post-debate polls showed Trump jumped in the polls. Republicans are ignoring their orders from headquarters
and deflecting to the Donald.
Shell-shocked, his foes, unwilling to admit their politically correct system has tanked, failed
to understand that political incorrectness is to Trump what spinach is to Popeye.
"So many 'politically correct' fools in our country," Trump tweeted. "We have to all get back
to work and stop wasting time and energy on nonsense!"
Is he not correct? Days before the nation started debating Kelly's metaphorical blood, an unauthorized
immigrant in New Jersey pleaded guilty to actually spilling the blood of 30-year-old Sviatlana Dranko
and setting her body on fire. In the media, Dranko's blood is second fiddle. This contrast is not
lost on the silent majority flocking to Trump.
Trump's candidacy is about so much more than personality. Once the media are forced to report
Trump's positions, instead of his persona, even more Americans will see that Trump is the sole Republican
who rejects a "free trade" that gives away the keys to the store and opposed the ill-fated Iraq war.
He is the type of candidate Americans always wanted but the party establishments are too afraid to
provide.
The last time America saw a strong paleo-conservative was
Pat Buchanan in 1996. An early win in Louisiana caused Buchanan to place second in Iowa and first
in New Hampshire. Lacking money, Buchanan was steamrolled by the establishment in Arizona and, in
terms of paleo-conservatism, many thought he was the Last of the Mohicans. Trump's campaign is Buchananesque
with one difference: Trump has money, and loads of it. He can fend off any attack and self-finance
his campaign. He is establishment kryptonite.
This reality is what makes him the new face of paleo-conservativism. It might also make him
president.
Joseph R. Murray II is a civil-rights attorney, a conservative commentator and a former official
with Pat Buchanan's 2000 campaign.
"... Donald Trump has raised three issues of real concern to paleoconservatives and traditional conservatives like myself." ..."
"... These three stances that Trump hits on to Buchanan's contentment are border security, economic nationalism, and being "skeptical of these endless wars and interventions." ..."
"... "I think many folks who agree with me have welcomed Trump into the race," Buchanan said. He added while laughing, "the very fact that the neocons seem so disconsolate is the icing on the cake." ..."
"... "Neocons offer nothing more than more wars," he said, before adding that their support for free trade is "almost a religious belief." ..."
"... The person who will lead America to its end is Hillary Clinton. I don't know how to say it any clearer - Bill and Hillary are pure evil. All the stories about them while in Arkansas are true - murders, cocaine smuggling, money laundering and they continued their evil activities when Bill got into the White House. ..."
"... They continue today with their Foundation which is nothing but a front for money laundering. It is not right wing conspiracies which Hillary continues to imply and the people whose deaths are connected to the Clinton's will never have justice. ..."
Buchanan ran in 1992 for the Republican party nomination on a platform opposing globalization,
unfettered immigration, and the move away from social conservatism. He has been harping on these
views ever since.
"What we've gotten is proof that we were right," Buchanan told The Daily Caller Tuesday. While
he said, "I would not say that Donald Trump is a paleoconservative," and, "I don't think [Trump's]
a social conservative."
Buchanan told TheDC, "I was just astonished to see him raise the precise issues on which we ran
in the 1990s… Donald Trump has raised three issues of real concern to paleoconservatives and
traditional conservatives like myself."
These three stances that Trump hits on to Buchanan's contentment are border security, economic
nationalism, and being "skeptical of these endless wars and interventions."
"I think many folks who agree with me have welcomed Trump into the race," Buchanan said. He
added while laughing, "the very fact that the neocons seem so disconsolate is the icing on the cake."
Buchanan is not only opposed to immigration and trade, he is also a staunch social conservative.
Trump has had two divorces and has previously held pro-choice views, making it tough for some to
support him. Buchanan though said, "I think Trump respects the position of the social conservatives."
"I do think he would appoint the type of justices that would unite the Republican Party," he said.
The conservative commentator continued on to say, "I think the great emperor Constantine converted
to Christianity but he may have killed one of his sons as well."
Buchanan told TheDC, "we don't have any perfect candidates," but the other options besides Trump
are more frightening.
"Neocons offer nothing more than more wars," he said, before adding that their support for
free trade is "almost a religious belief."
Richard
The person who will lead America to its end is Hillary Clinton. I don't know how to say
it any clearer - Bill and Hillary are pure evil. All the stories about them while in Arkansas
are true - murders, cocaine smuggling, money laundering and they continued their evil activities
when Bill got into the White House.
They continue today with their Foundation which is nothing but a front for money laundering.
It is not right wing conspiracies which Hillary continues to imply and the people whose deaths
are connected to the Clinton's will never have justice.
Why is it that every time a Grand Jury was to be convened and people were subpoenaed to testify
against the Clinton's, it never happened and some of those people ended up in prison, dead or
disappeared. Anyone who has ever had files implicating the Clinton's of illegal activities either
commits suicide or was murdered, and the files have disappeared. People if your voting for or
have voted for Hillary - do your homework and learn about who you vote for?
"... Though he has been a hugely successful builder-businessman, far more successful than, say, Carly Fiorina, who has been received respectfully, our resident elites resolutely refuse to take Trump seriously. ..."
"... Trump's success comes from the issues he has seized upon - illegal immigration and trade deals that deindustrialized America - and brazen defiance of Republican elites and a media establishment. ..."
"... The reaction of Trump's Republican rivals has been even more instructive. Initially, it was muted. But when major media began to demand that GOP candidates either denounce Trump or come under suspicion or racism themselves, the panic and pile-on began. ..."
"... What Trump has done, and [Ted] Cruz sees it, is to have elevated the illegal immigration issue, taken a tough line, and is now attacking GOP rivals who have dithered or done nothing to deal with it. ..."
"... Trump intends to exploit the illegal immigration issue, and the trade issue, where majorities of middle-class Americans oppose the elites. And he is going to ride them as far as he can in the Republican primaries. ..."
Since Trump's presidential
announcement last month including controversial comments about illegal immigrants from Mexico,
Buchanan has written two editorials on his website lauding Trump's efforts.
Though he has been a hugely successful builder-businessman, far more successful than, say,
Carly Fiorina, who has been received respectfully, our resident elites resolutely refuse to take
Trump seriously.
They should. Not because he will be nominated, but because the Trump constituency will represent
a vote of no confidence in the Beltway ruling class of politicians and press.
Votes for Trump will be votes to repudiate that class, whole and entire, and dump it onto the
ash heap of history.
Votes for Trump will be votes to reject a regime run by Bushes and Clintons that plunged us
into unnecessary wars, cannot secure our borders, and negotiates trade deals that produced the
largest trade deficits known to man and gutted a manufacturing base that was once "the great arsenal
of democracy" and envy of mankind.
A vote for Trump is a vote to say that both parties have failed America and none of the current
crop of candidates offers real hope of a better future.
Trump's success comes from the issues he has seized upon - illegal immigration and trade
deals that deindustrialized America - and brazen defiance of Republican elites and a media establishment.
By now the whole world has heard Trump's declaration:
"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. … They're sending people that
have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems to us. They're bringing drugs. They're
bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."
Politically incorrect? You betcha.
Yet, is Trump not raising a valid issue? Is there not truth in what he said? Is not illegal
immigration, and criminals crossing our Southern border, an issue of national import, indeed,
of national security?
. . .
The reaction to Trump's comments has been instructive. NBC and Univision dropped his Miss USA
and Miss Universe contests.
Macy's has dropped the Trump clothing line. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is talking of terminating
city contracts with Trump.
The reaction of Trump's Republican rivals has been even more instructive. Initially, it
was muted. But when major media began to demand that GOP candidates either denounce Trump or come
under suspicion or racism themselves, the panic and pile-on began.
. . .
What Trump has done, and [Ted] Cruz sees it, is to have elevated the illegal immigration
issue, taken a tough line, and is now attacking GOP rivals who have dithered or done nothing to
deal with it.
Trump intends to exploit the illegal immigration issue, and the trade issue, where majorities
of middle-class Americans oppose the elites. And he is going to ride them as far as he can in
the Republican primaries.
In the coming debates, look for Trump to take the populist and popular side of them both. And
for Cruz to stand by him on illegal immigration.
Americans are fed up with words; they want action. Trump is moving in the polls because, whatever
else he may be, he is a man of action.
Trump later
retweeted
and thanked a follower who cited to Buchanan's labeling of Trump as "a man of action."
"... From a Paleo-Conservative perspective what is there to lose with Trump as POTUS? In the absence of a Trumpian paradigm shift in American politics, the status quo will indeed change, quite dramatically, but not in the direction favorable to the principles of 1776 and 1861. At least with a President Trump there is a chance, possible but not necessarily probable, for change in the right direction. As the presidential campaigning heats up, Middle America is bound to rise up. The collective wisdom of Middle America seems to understand that Trump is not the perfect candidate, but they also seem to realize (to paraphrase M. E. Bradford) "that all of us who will not take half a loaf will get a stone." ..."
There are several attributes of Donald Trump's bid for the U.S. Presidency that this Paleo-Conservative
finds to be interesting. To follow is an adumbration of the more salient.
His campaign style is refreshing. The absence of teleprompters, which results in spontaneity,
which in turn reveals the unvarnished candidate in contradistinction to the coached, stale, and
unconvincing political hacks, is refreshing. Trump's campaign speeches and debate performance
have actually juiced up political discourse, making politics interesting not simply for the political
class but also for Middle American.
The engagement of Middle American into this presidential election cycle have the political
class spooked. It is this same political class responsible for the removal of all things Confederate
from the public square, not Middle American. It is Middle America that has catapulted Trump into
the lead. In other words, Middle America may actually have some meaningful input into the election
of the next POTUS.
The spooking of the political class has exposed what it thinks of Middle America. Its
charge against Trump is that the bulk of his support rests upon the inherent racism, national
jingoism and stupidity of average Americans. Some have even claimed that Trump is a closet fascist
and that his supporters are inherently supportive of fascism. This is nonsense. Middle America's
detestation of ruling elites is not fascist, but it is an acknowledgment that it will take a strongman,
statesman if you prefer, to knock out the ruling elites.
Trump's detractors may be his best campaign weapon. Without knowing much about Trump's
policy positions, immigration notwithstanding, there is logic in supporting Trump based upon knowing
who his political enemies are. This may be the best voting cue Middle America has. The enemy (Trump)
of my enemy (the ruling class) is my friend. In other words, the more Trump agitates the ruling
class the more he endears himself to Middle America.
Trump appears to be more the pragmatist than ideologue, and that's a good thing. The
American federative republic's original blueprint is nomocratic (a Southern characteristic), but
has been replaced with a teleocratic (New England Puritanism) one. It is the latter that has resulted
in the unitary US of A, nation-building abroad and the welfare state domestically.
For any Southern patriot the status quo in American politics is totally unacceptable.
One thing is fairly certain; if Trump were to be the next POTUS, the status quo would be in for
quite a shock. At this point it matters little how the status quo might be changed. Middle America
wants change and it wants it now. Moreover, if Trump were to succeed in his bid to be the next
POTUS, he would be much more likely to expose the fraud and corruption inside the beltway than
any of his presidential campaign competitors. Unlike the latter, he would not be held captive
to the interests that funnel money and votes to sustain the status quo, but to the average American
voter, i.e., Middle America.
The disruptions, if not chaos, Trump might affect in Washington may result in preoccupying
the ruling class to the extent that the focus on things Southern, e.g., the Battle Flag, may dissipate.
This might just provide Southern patriots with the space to regroup and be better prepared for
the next assault on their culture.
Trump's campaign slogan is Make America Great Again. As an intelligent man he must know that to
achieve that goal he must remove the government shackles, e.g., taxation, regulations, and centralization,
holding Americans and America down, both domestically and internationally.
From a Paleo-Conservative perspective what is there to lose with Trump as POTUS? In the absence
of a Trumpian paradigm shift in American politics, the status quo will indeed change, quite dramatically,
but not in the direction favorable to the principles of 1776 and 1861. At least with a President
Trump there is a chance, possible but not necessarily probable, for change in the right direction.
As the presidential campaigning heats up, Middle America is bound to rise up. The collective wisdom
of Middle America seems to understand that Trump is not the perfect candidate, but they also seem
to realize (to paraphrase M. E. Bradford) "that all of us who will not take half a loaf will get
a stone."
Marshall DeRosa received his Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Houston and his B. A. from
West Virginia University, Magna Cum Laude. He has taught at Davis and Elkins College (1985-1988),
Louisiana State University (1988-1990), and Florida Atlantic University (1990-Present). He is a Salvatori
Fellow with the Heritage Foundation and full professor in the Department of Political Science. He
has published articles and reviews in professional journals, book chapters, and three books. He resides
in Wellington, FL, with his wife and four children. More from Marshall DeRosa
"... "In many countries today, moral and ethical norms are being reconsidered." ..."
"... "They're now requiring not only the proper acknowledgment of freedom of conscience, political views and private life, but also the mandatory acknowledgment of the equality of good and evil." ..."
"... President Reagan once called the old Soviet Empire "the focus of evil in the modern world." President Putin is implying that Barack Obama's America may deserve the title in the 21st century. ..."
"... Nor is he without an argument when we reflect on America's embrace of abortion on demand, homosexual marriage, pornography, promiscuity, and the whole panoply of Hollywood values. ..."
"... Unelected justices declared abortion and homosexual acts to be constitutionally protected rights. Judges have been the driving force behind the imposition of same-sex marriage. Attorney General Eric Holder refused to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act. ..."
"... America was de-Christianized in the second half of the 20th century by court orders, over the vehement objections of a huge majority of a country that was overwhelmingly Christian. ..."
"... Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of " Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? " Copyright 2013 Creators.com . ..."
Is Vladimir Putin a paleoconservative? In the culture war for mankind's future, is he one of us?
While such a question may be blasphemous in Western circles, consider the content of the Russian
president's state of the nation address.
With America clearly in mind, Putin declared, "In
many countries today, moral and ethical norms are being reconsidered."
"They're now requiring not only the proper acknowledgment of freedom of conscience, political
views and private life, but also the mandatory acknowledgment of the equality of good and evil."
Translation: While privacy and freedom of thought, religion and speech are cherished rights, to
equate traditional marriage and same-sex marriage is to equate good with evil.
No moral confusion here, this is moral clarity, agree or disagree.
President Reagan once called the old Soviet Empire "the focus of evil in the modern world."
President Putin is implying that Barack Obama's America may deserve the title in the 21st century.
Nor is he without an argument when we reflect on America's embrace of abortion on demand,
homosexual marriage, pornography, promiscuity, and the whole panoply of Hollywood values.
Our grandparents would not recognize the America in which we live.
Moreover, Putin asserts, the new immorality has been imposed undemocratically.
The "destruction of traditional values" in these countries, he said, comes "from the top" and
is "inherently undemocratic because it is based on abstract ideas and runs counter to the will of
the majority of people."
Does he not have a point?
Unelected justices declared abortion and homosexual acts to be constitutionally protected
rights. Judges have been the driving force behind the imposition of same-sex marriage. Attorney General
Eric Holder refused to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act.
America was de-Christianized in the second half of the 20th century by court orders, over
the vehement objections of a huge majority of a country that was overwhelmingly Christian.
And same-sex marriage is indeed an "abstract" idea unrooted in the history or tradition of the
West. Where did it come from?
Peoples all over the world, claims Putin, are supporting Russia's "defense of traditional values"
against a "so-called tolerance" that is "genderless and infertile."
While his stance as a defender of traditional values has drawn the mockery of Western media and
cultural elites, Putin is not wrong in saying that he can speak for much of mankind.
Same-sex marriage is supported by America's young, but most states still resist it, with black
pastors visible in the vanguard of the counterrevolution. In France, a million people took to the
streets of Paris to denounce the Socialists' imposition of homosexual marriage.
Only 15 nations out of more than 190 have recognized it.
In India, the world's largest democracy, the Supreme Court has struck down a lower court ruling
that made same-sex marriage a right. And the parliament in this socially conservative nation of more
than a billion people is unlikely soon to reverse the high court.
In the four dozen nations that are predominantly Muslim, which make up a fourth of the U.N. General
Assembly and a fifth of mankind, same-sex marriage is not even on the table. And Pope Francis has
reaffirmed Catholic doctrine on the issue for over a billion Catholics.
While much of American and Western media dismiss him as an authoritarian and reactionary, a throwback,
Putin may be seeing the future with more clarity than Americans still caught up in a Cold War paradigm.
As the decisive struggle in the second half of the 20th century was vertical, East vs. West, the
21st century struggle may be horizontal, with conservatives and traditionalists in every country
arrayed against the militant secularism of a multicultural and transnational elite.
And though America's elite may be found at the epicenter of anti-conservatism and anti-traditionalism,
the American people have never been more alienated or more divided culturally, socially and morally.
We are two countries now.
Putin says his mother had him secretly baptized as a baby and professes to be a Christian. And
what he is talking about here is ambitious, even audacious.
He is seeking to redefine the "Us vs. Them" world conflict of the future as one in which conservatives,
traditionalists, and nationalists of all continents and countries stand up against the cultural and
ideological imperialism of what he sees as a decadent west.
"We do not infringe on anyone's interests," said Putin, "or try to teach anyone how to live."
The adversary he has identified is not the America we grew up in, but the America we live in, which
Putin sees as pagan and wildly progressive.
Without naming any country, Putin attacked "attempts to enforce more progressive development models"
on other nations, which have led to "decline, barbarity, and big blood," a straight shot at the U.S.
interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Egypt.
In his speech, Putin cited Russian philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev whom Solzhenitsyn had hailed
for his courage in defying his Bolshevik inquisitors. Though no household word, Berdyaev is favorably
known at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal.
Which raises this question: Who is writing Putin's stuff?
"... "The U.S., as paleos have claimed for decades, was only meant to be a constitutional republic, not an empire-as Buchanan's 1999 foreign policy tome A Republic, Not an Empire nostalgically states," Scotchie explains. "Republics mind their own business. Their governments have very limited powers, and their people are too busy practicing self-government to worry about problems in other countries. Empires not only bully smaller, defenseless nations, they also can't leave their own, hapless subjects alone…. Empires and the tenth amendment aren't friends…. Empires and small government aren't compatible, either." ..."
"... If anti-interventionism and a commitment to the Old Republic defined by strict-construction constitutionalism and highly localized and independent social and political institutions defined one major dimension of paleoconservatism, its antipathy to the mass immigration that began to flood the country in the 1980s defined another. Indeed, it was ostensibly and mainly Chronicles' declaration of opposition to immigration that incited the neoconservative attack on Rockford and its subsequent defunding. Scotchie devotes a special but short chapter to paleoconservative thought on immigration and makes clear that to paleos, America was an extension of Western civilization. It was intended by the Founding Fathers to be an Anglo-Saxon-Celtic nation also influenced by Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem. Large-scale immigration from non-Western nations would, as Fleming (and most other paleos) maintained, forever spoil a distinct American civilization. ..."
"... The implication of this passage is that paleoconservatives, unlike libertarians, most neoconservatives, and many contemporary mainstream conservatives, do not consider America to be an "idea," a "proposition," or a "creed." It is instead a concrete and particular culture, rooted in a particular historical experience, a set of particular institutions as well as particular beliefs and values, and a particular ethnic-racial identity, and, cut off from those roots, it cannot survive. Indeed, it is not surviving now, for all the glint and glitter of empire. ..."
Joseph Scotchie's Revolt from the Heartland is not, as some readers might guess from the title,
about the terrorism of right-wing militias in the Midwestern United States, although some readers
might also say that guess was close enough. In fact, Revolt from the Heartland deals with the emergence
of "paleoconservatism," a species of conservative thought that despite its name ("paleo" is a Greek
prefix meaning "old") is a fairly recent twist in the cunningly knotted mind of the American Right.
While paleos sometimes like to characterize their beliefs as merely the continuation of the conservative
thought of the 1950s and '60s, and while in fact many of them do have their personal and intellectual
roots in the conservatism of that era, the truth is that what is now called paleoconservatism is
at least as new as the neoconservatism at which many paleos like to sniff as a newcomer.
Paleoconservatism is largely the invention of a single magazine, the Rockford Institute's Chronicles,
as it has been edited since the mid-1980s by Thomas Fleming, and Scotchie's book is essentially an
account of what Fleming and his major colleagues at Chronicles mainly, historian Paul Gottfried,
book review editor Chilton Williamson Jr., professor Clyde Wilson, and I believe, and what the differences
are between our brand of conservatism and others.
Scotchie's first three chapters are a survey of the history of American conservatism up until
the advent of Chronicles, including an account of the "Old Right" of the pre-World-War-II, pre-Depression
eras (for once, an account not confined to the libertarian "isolationists" but encompassing also
the Southern Agrarians), as well as the emergence of the "Cold War conservatism" of National Review
and the neoconservatism of the Reagan era and after. Scotchie's overview of these different shades
of the Right is useful in itself and necessary to clarify the differences between these colorations
and the paleos who constitute his main subject, though he may underestimate the differentiation between
the current, paleo "Old Right" and earlier "Old Rights."
Although Scotchie does not put it quite this way, contemporary paleoconservatism developed as
a reaction against three trends in the American Right during the Reagan administration. First, it
reacted against the bid for dominance by the neoconservatives, former liberals who insisted not only
that their version of conservative ideology and rhetoric prevail over those of older conservatives,
but also that their team should get the rewards of office and patronage and that the other team of
the older Right receive virtually nothing.
... ... ...
Paleos and those who soon identified with them almost spontaneously rejected U.S. military intervention
against Iraq. It was a moment, falling only a year after the neoconservative onslaught on the Rockford
Institute, that solidified the paleoconservative identity.
"The U.S., as paleos have claimed for decades, was only meant to be a constitutional republic,
not an empire-as Buchanan's 1999 foreign policy tome A Republic, Not an Empire nostalgically states,"
Scotchie explains. "Republics mind their own business. Their governments have very limited powers,
and their people are too busy practicing self-government to worry about problems in other countries.
Empires not only bully smaller, defenseless nations, they also can't leave their own, hapless subjects
alone…. Empires and the tenth amendment aren't friends…. Empires and small government aren't compatible,
either."
If anti-interventionism and a commitment to the Old Republic defined by strict-construction
constitutionalism and highly localized and independent social and political institutions defined
one major dimension of paleoconservatism, its antipathy to the mass immigration that began to flood
the country in the 1980s defined another. Indeed, it was ostensibly and mainly Chronicles' declaration
of opposition to immigration that incited the neoconservative attack on Rockford and its subsequent
defunding. Scotchie devotes a special but short chapter to paleoconservative thought on immigration
and makes clear that to paleos, America was an extension of Western civilization. It was intended
by the Founding Fathers to be an Anglo-Saxon-Celtic nation also influenced by Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem.
Large-scale immigration from non-Western nations would, as Fleming (and most other paleos) maintained,
forever spoil a distinct American civilization.
The implication of this passage is that paleoconservatives, unlike libertarians, most neoconservatives,
and many contemporary mainstream conservatives, do not consider America to be an "idea," a "proposition,"
or a "creed." It is instead a concrete and particular culture, rooted in a particular historical
experience, a set of particular institutions as well as particular beliefs and values, and a particular
ethnic-racial identity, and, cut off from those roots, it cannot survive. Indeed, it is not surviving
now, for all the glint and glitter of empire.
Trump is essentially a paleoconservative and as such is hostile to neocons that dominate
Washington establishment. That's' why they hate him so much and blackmail him so much.
Notable quotes:
"... Trump is millions of Republican voters' judgment against a party that failed them, and the fact that Trump is thoroughly unqualified for the office he seeks makes that judgment all the more damning. ..."
Trump officially
secured the Republican nomination last night:
Mr. Trump tallied 1,725 delegates, easily surpassing the 1,237 delegate threshold needed to
clinch the nomination. The delegate tally from his home state of New York, announced by Mr. Trump's
son Donald Jr., put him over the top.
Like
Rod Dreher, I see Trump's success as proof that "the people who run [the GOP] and the institutions
surrounding it failed." They not only failed in their immediate task of preventing the nomination
of a candidate that party leaders loathed, but failed repeatedly over at least the last fifteen years
to govern well or even to represent the interests and concerns of most Republican voters.
Had the Bush administration not presided over multiple disasters, most of them of their own making,
there would have been no opening or occasion for the repudiation of the party's leaders that we have
seen this year. Had the party served the interests of most of its voters instead of catering to the
preferences of their donors and corporations, there would have been much less support for someone
like Trump. Party leaders spent decades conning Republican voters with promises they knew they wouldn't
or couldn't fulfill, and then were shocked when most of those voters turned against them.
Trump is millions of Republican voters' judgment against a party that failed them, and the
fact that Trump is thoroughly unqualified for the office he seeks makes that judgment all the more
damning.
"... the best explanation of Trump's surprising success is that the constituency he has mobilized has existed for decades but the right champion never came along. ..."
"... Trump's platform combines positions that are shared by many populists but are anathema to movement conservatives-a defense of Social Security, a guarantee of universal health care, economic nationalist trade policies. "We have expanded the Republican Party," Trump claimed the night of his Super Tuesday victories. ..."
"... Buchanan, in a recent interview , characterized Trump as his populist heir. "What Trump has today is conclusive evidence to prove that what some of us warned about in the 1990s has come to pass," he said. But the evidence is that Trump doesn't see it that way. Trump even competed briefly with Buchanan for the presidential nomination. T he year was 2000 , and Trump, encouraged by his friend Jesse Ventura, then governor of Minnesota, was considering a run for the presidential nomination of Perot's Reform Party, on the grounds that the Republican Party of George W. Bush and Karl Rove had "moved too far toward the extreme far right." Trump and Ventura hoped to rescue the Reform Party from the conservative allies of Buchanan, of whom Trump said: "He's a Hitler lover; I guess he's an anti-Semite. He doesn't like the blacks, he doesn't like the gays." Trump floated the idea of Oprah Winfrey as his running mate . In his 2000 manifesto The America We Deserve , Trump proposed a platform that included universal employer- based health insurance, gays in the military and a one-time 14.5 percent tax on the rich that would reduce the federal deficit and help eliminate the shortfall in Social Security. ..."
"... Compared to Trump, Buchanan was a flawed vehicle for the Jacksonian populism of the ex-Democratic white working class. So was another Pat, the Reverend Pat Robertson, television evangelist, founder of the Christian Coalition, and, like Buchanan, a failed candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. But while the mainstream conservative movement marginalized Buchanan, it embraced Robertson and other evangelical Protestant leaders like Jerry Falwell and James Dobson of Focus on the Family. ..."
"... On social issues like abortion and gay rights, Buchanan shared the agenda of the religious right. But his advocacy of tariffs to protect American industry and immigration restriction threatened the mainstream right's consensus in favor of free trade and increased legal immigration. And his neo-isolationism threatened the post-Cold War American right's support of high military spending and an assertive global foreign policy. ..."
"... Many of the rank-and-file members of the religious right shared the traditional populist suspicion of bankers and big business ..."
"... But even before the unexpected success of Trump in the Republican primary race beginning in 2015, there were signs that this generation-old bargain was coming undone. Hostility to both illegal immigration and high levels of legal immigration, a position which free-market conservatives had fought to marginalize, has moved very quickly from heresy to orthodoxy in the GOP. ..."
"... There were other signs of populist discontent with establishment conservative orthodoxy, for those who paid attention. No project is dearer to the hearts of mainstream movement conservatives than the goal of privatizing Social Security, a hated symbol of the dependency-inducing "statism" of the allegedly tyrannical Franklin D. Roosevelt. But George W. Bush's plan to partly privatize Social Security was so unpopular, even among Republican voters, that a Republican-controlled Congress did not even bother to vote on it in 2005. ..."
Trump, in fact, has more appeal to the center than the conservative populists of the last half century.
Before Trump's rise in this year's Republican primary elections, the best-known populist presidential
candidates were Alabama Governor Wallace and tycoon Ross Perot, along with Buchanan. Yet none of
these past figures had broad enough appeal to hope to win the White House. Despite his folksy demeanor,
Perot was more of a technocrat than a populist and did poorly in traditionally populist areas of
the South and Midwest, where Trump is doing well. Wallace was an outspoken white supremacist, while
Trump tends to speak in a kind of code, starting with his "birther" campaign against President Obama,
and his criticism of illegal immigrants and proposed ban on Muslims may appeal to fringe white nationalists
even if it has offended many if not most Latinos. Nor has Trump alienated large sections of the electorate
by casting his lot with Old Right isolationism, as Buchanan did, or by adopting the religious right
social agenda of Robertson.
Indeed, the best explanation of Trump's surprising success is that the constituency he has
mobilized has existed for decades but the right champion never came along. What conservative
apparatchiks hate about Trump-his insufficient conservatism-may be his greatest strength in the general
election. His populism cuts across party lines like few others before him. Like his fans, Trump is
indifferent to the issues of sexual orientation that animate the declining religious right, even
to the point of defending Planned Parenthood. Trump's platform combines positions that are shared
by many populists but are anathema to movement conservatives-a defense of Social Security, a guarantee
of universal health care, economic nationalist trade policies. "We have expanded the Republican Party,"
Trump claimed the night of his Super Tuesday victories.
He may well be right, though it's not clear what that Republican Party will look like in the end.
... ... ...
Buchanan, a former Nixon aide and conservative journalist, ran unsuccessfully for
the Republican presidential nomination in 1992 and was awarded with a prime-time speech at the Republican
National Convention that nominated George Herbert Walker Bush for a second term in the White House.
Buchanan's speech focused almost entirely on the "religious war" and "culture war" to save America
from feminism, legal abortion, gay rights, and "the raw sewage of pornography."
In his 1996 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, and in his 2000 campaign as the
Reform Party nominee, Buchanan emphasized populist themes of economic nationalism and immigration
restriction. But he was too much of a member of the Old Right that despised FDR and sought a return
to the isolationism of Robert Taft and Charles Lindbergh to have much appeal to former New Deal Democrats.
Buchanan's history of borderline anti-Semitic remarks led William F. Buckley Jr. to criticize him
in "In Search of Anti-Semitism," (1992) and some of his associates like Samuel Francis were overt
white racial nationalists.
For Reagan Democrats and their children and grandchildren, World War II showed America at its
best. But Buchanan concluded a long career of eccentric World War II revisionism in 2009 with "Churchill,
Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost its Empire and the West Lost the World," arguing
that Hitler should have been appeased by Britain and the U.S.
Buchanan,
in a recent interview, characterized Trump as his populist heir. "What Trump has today is conclusive
evidence to prove that what some of us warned about in the 1990s has come to pass," he said. But
the evidence is that Trump doesn't see it that way. Trump even competed briefly with Buchanan for
the presidential nomination. The
year was 2000, and Trump, encouraged by his friend Jesse Ventura, then governor of Minnesota,
was considering a run for the presidential nomination of Perot's Reform Party, on the grounds that
the Republican Party of George W. Bush and Karl Rove had "moved too far toward the extreme far right."
Trump and Ventura hoped to rescue the Reform Party from the conservative allies of Buchanan, of whom
Trump said: "He's a Hitler lover; I guess he's an anti-Semite. He doesn't like the blacks, he doesn't
like the gays." Trump floated the idea of Oprah Winfrey as his running mate . In his 2000 manifesto
The America We Deserve, Trump proposed a platform that included universal employer- based
health insurance, gays in the military and a one-time 14.5 percent
tax on the rich
that would reduce the federal deficit and help eliminate the shortfall in Social Security.
In his press release announcing
his withdrawal from the race for the presidential nomination of the Reform Party, Trump wrote: "Now
I understand that David Duke has decided to join the Reform Party to support the candidacy of Pat
Buchanan. So the Reform Party now includes a Klansman-Mr. Duke, a Neo-Nazi-Mr. Buchanan, and a Communist-Ms.
[Lenora] Fulani. This is not company I wish to keep."
Compared to Trump, Buchanan was a flawed vehicle for the Jacksonian populism of the ex-Democratic
white working class. So was another Pat, the Reverend Pat Robertson, television evangelist, founder
of the Christian Coalition, and, like Buchanan, a failed candidate for the Republican presidential
nomination. But while the mainstream conservative movement marginalized Buchanan, it embraced Robertson
and other evangelical Protestant leaders like Jerry Falwell and James Dobson of Focus on the Family.
On social issues like abortion and gay rights, Buchanan shared the agenda of the religious
right. But his advocacy of tariffs to protect American industry and immigration restriction threatened
the mainstream right's consensus in favor of free trade and increased legal immigration. And his
neo-isolationism threatened the post-Cold War American right's support of high military spending
and an assertive global foreign policy.
Unlike Buchanan, Robertson and other religious right leaders did not deviate from the Republican
Party line on trade, immigration, or tax cuts for the rich. Many of the rank-and-file members
of the religious right shared the traditional populist suspicion of bankers and big business.
But in the 1990s there was a tacit understanding that religious right activists would focus on issues
of sex and reproduction and school prayer, leaving economics to free-marketers. In foreign policy,
the Christian Zionism of many Protestant evangelicals made them reliable allies of neoconservatives
with close ties to Israel and supportive of the Iraq War and other U.S. interventions in the Middle
East.
From the 1980s until this decade, the religious right was the toothless, domesticated "designated
populist" wing of the Republican coalition, and mainstream conservative politicians took it for granted
that as long as they said they opposed abortion and gay marriage, evangelical voters would support
free-market conservative economics and interventionist neoconservative foreign policy.
But even before the unexpected success of Trump in the Republican primary race beginning in
2015, there were signs that this generation-old bargain was coming undone. Hostility to both illegal
immigration and high levels of legal immigration, a position which free-market conservatives had
fought to marginalize, has moved very quickly from heresy to orthodoxy in the GOP. The opposition
of populist conservatives killed comprehensive immigration reform under George W. Bush in 2007 and
also killed the Gang of Eight immigration reform effort led in part by Senator Marco Rubio in 2013.
The defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the 2014 Republican primary for the 7th District
of Virginia by an unknown conservative academic, David Brat, was attributed largely to Cantor's support
for the immigration reform effort.
There were other signs of populist discontent with establishment conservative orthodoxy, for
those who paid attention. No project is dearer to the hearts of mainstream movement conservatives
than the goal of privatizing Social Security, a hated symbol of the dependency-inducing "statism"
of the allegedly tyrannical Franklin D. Roosevelt. But George W. Bush's plan to partly privatize
Social Security was so unpopular, even among Republican voters, that a Republican-controlled Congress
did not even bother to vote on it in 2005. And a Republican-controlled Congress passed Medicare
Part D in 2003-the biggest expansion of a universal middle-class entitlement between the creation
of Medicare in 1965 and the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. Blue collar Republican voters
applauded, as libertarian think-tankers raged.
Conservative populists cannot be accused of inconsistency. Like New Deal Democrats before them,
they tend to favor universal benefits for which the middle class is eligible like Social Security,
Medicare and Medicare Part D, and to oppose welfare programs like Medicaid and the ACA which feature
means tests that make the working class and middle class ineligible. The true inconsistency is on
the part of the mainstream conservative movement, which has yoked together left-inspired crusades
for global democratic revolution abroad with minimal-state libertarianism at home.
It remains to be seen whether Trump can win the Republican nomination, much less the White House.
But whatever becomes of his candidacy, it seems likely that his campaign will prove to be just one
of many episodes in the gradual replacement of Buckley-Goldwater-Reagan conservatism by something
more like European national populist movements, such as the National Front in France and the United
Kingdom Independence Party in Britain. Unlike Goldwater, who spearheaded an already-existing alliance
consisting of National Review, Modern Age, and Young Americans for Freedom, Trump has followers but
no supportive structure of policy experts and journalists. But it seems likely that some Republican
experts and editors, seeking to appeal to his voters in the future, will promote a Trump-like national
populist synthesis of middle-class social insurance plus immigration restriction and foreign policy
realpolitik,through conventional policy papers and op-eds rather than blustering speeches and tweets.
That's looking ahead. Glancing backward, it is unclear that there has ever been any significant
number of voters who share the worldview of the policy elites in conservative think tanks and journals.
In hindsight, the various right-wing movements-the fusionist conservatism of Buckley, Goldwater and
Reagan, neoconservatism, libertarianism, the religious right-appear to have been so many barnacles
hitching free rides on the whale of the Jacksonian populist electorate. The whale is awakening beneath
them, and now the barnacles don't know what to do.
"... Trump advances core paleoconservative positions laid out in "The Next Conservatism" - rebuilding infrastructure, protective tariffs, securing borders and stopping immigration, neutralizing designated internal enemies and isolationism. ..."
"... I don't like what I see happening to America. The infrastructure of our country is a laughingstock all over the world. Our airports, our bridges, our roadways - it's falling apart. It's terrible thing to see. Our politicians are all talk, no action. Millions of people are flowing across our Southern border. We've got to build a real wall… Let's make America great again. ..."
"... He says Republicans (along with Democrats) have aided the deindustrialization of America and the dispossession of the middle class, wasted the national treasure on idiotic wars (such as in Iraq) and enabled the dramatic expansion of repressive federal power. ..."
"... As far as Trump's campaign platform goes, he appears to be capitalizing on the ideas of some of America's most astute right-wing thinkers, Weyrich and Lind, who have crafted a new breed of conservatism with far broader populist appeal than the increasingly discredited trickle-down economics, big government, interventionist, corporate capitalism-beholden style of conservatism that's become dominant in the years since Reagan. Think of the power of the platform. Prior to the election, it was taken for granted that funding from plutocratic billionaires - the Kochs, Adelson, and so on - would shape the GOP primary outcome. Now, Trump has unique talents that set him apart, sure - but without the paleocon program, Trump would be just another Republican in the pack. ..."
The corporate media haven't been able to make much sense of Donald Trump. One thing they've said
is that he's non-ideological, or at least at odds with "true conservatives." But you've pointed he
has strong affinities for paleoconservative ideas, particularly as laid out in the 2009 book, "The
Next Conservatism" by Paul Weyrich and William Lind - a copy of which Lind recently gave to
Trump. You wrote, "Trump could have derived most of his 2016 primary positions from a two-hour session
with Lind's and Weyrich's book." Could you elaborate?
Trump advances core paleoconservative
positions laid out in "The Next Conservatism" - rebuilding infrastructure, protective tariffs, securing
borders and stopping immigration, neutralizing designated internal enemies and isolationism.
For example, an eleven-minute pro-Trump infomercial from August 2015, "'On
Point' With Sarah Palin and Donald Trump" - which now has over 3,800,000 views - begins with
a mini-Trump speech that could have been ghostwritten by William Lind:
I don't like what I see happening to America. The infrastructure of our country is a laughingstock
all over the world. Our airports, our bridges, our roadways - it's falling apart. It's terrible
thing to see. Our politicians are all talk, no action. Millions of people are flowing across our
Southern border. We've got to build a real wall… Let's make America great again.
... ... ...
Lind says they're intellectually vacuous, and that the current conservatism is "rubbish" and filled
with "'I've got mine' smugness." He says Republicans (along with Democrats) have aided the deindustrialization
of America and the dispossession of the middle class, wasted the national treasure on idiotic wars
(such as in Iraq) and enabled the dramatic expansion of repressive federal power.
... ... ...
As far as Trump's campaign platform goes, he appears to be capitalizing on the ideas of some
of America's most astute right-wing thinkers, Weyrich and Lind, who have crafted a new breed of conservatism
with far broader populist appeal than the increasingly discredited trickle-down economics, big government,
interventionist, corporate capitalism-beholden style of conservatism that's become dominant in the
years since Reagan. Think of the power of the platform. Prior to the election, it was taken for granted
that funding from plutocratic billionaires - the Kochs, Adelson, and so on - would shape the GOP
primary outcome. Now, Trump has unique talents that set him apart, sure - but without the paleocon
program, Trump would be just another Republican in the pack.
Paul Rosenberg is a California-based writer/activist, senior editor for Random Lengths News,
and a columnist for Al Jazeera English. Follow him on Twitter at @PaulHRosenberg.
"... The term "paleoconservatism" is a retronym coined in the 1980s to characterize a brand of conservatism that was by then going extinct, a brand exemplified by Robert Taft, the Ohio senator and legendary isolationist who lost the 1952 Republican nomination to Dwight Eisenhower. In its day it was often referred to as the "Old Right." ..."
"... Republican isolationists prevented the US from participating in the League of Nations, led a largely non-interventionist foreign policy in the '20s, and were skeptical of the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine in the early years of the Cold War. ..."
"... The increasing interest of American business in trade abroad made the anti-internationalism of the Old Right increasingly unviable in the party of capital. ..."
"... The losses kept coming. In the 1980s, the rise of neoconservatism both threatened the anti-internationalist, America-first mentality of the paleocons and enraged them due to the prominence of Jewish writers in the neoconservative movement. ..."
"... They nearly universally opposed the war in Iraq and war on terror more broadly, and were deeply skeptical of Bill Clinton's humanitarian interventions in the Balkans. ..."
"... "We are getting out of the nation-building business, and instead focusing on creating stability in the world," he declares. "Our moments of greatest strength came when politics ended at the water's edge." That's pure paleocon. ..."
"... Whether the establishment likes it or not, and it evidently does not, there is a revolution going on in America. The old order in this capital city is on the way out, America is crossing a great divide, and there is no going back. Donald Trump's triumphant march to the nomination in Cleveland, virtually assured by his five-state sweep Tuesday, confirms it, as does his foreign policy address of Wednesday. ..."
"... Donald Trump has raised three issues of real concern to paleoconservatives and traditional conservatives like myself." ..."
"... Trump is an imperfect paleocon. He's unrefined, a recent convert, and not as socially conservative as they may like. But on the important stuff, the term fits him better than any other. ..."
One of the strangest allegations leveled against Donald Trump by his Republican critics is that
he's not a conservative - or even, in the most extreme version of this critique, that he's actually
a liberal.
"People can support Donald Trump, but they cannot support him on conservative grounds," former
George W. Bush aide
Peter Wehner writes at Commentary. "The case for constitutional limited government is the case
against Donald Trump," declares Federalist founder
Ben Domenech. "Instead of converting voters to conservatism, Trump is succeeding at converting
conservatives to statism on everything from health care and entitlements to trade," complained
National Review's Jonah Goldberg.
Insofar as these commentators are criticizing the recency of Trump's conservative convictions,
well, fair enough. In an earlier life he was indeed a big fan of
universal
health care,
wealth taxation,
and legal
abortion - and if his general election
pivoting on taxes and the minimum wage is any indication, conservative fears that he would return
to his more liberal roots in the general election may yet be vindicated.
But the ideological vision Trump put forward during the Republican primary campaign was deeply
conservative, and, more specifically, deeply paleoconservative.
The paleoconservatives were a major voice in the Republican Party for many years, with Pat Buchanan
as their most recent leader, and pushed a line that is very reminiscent of Trump_vs_deep_state.
They adhere to the normal conservative triad of nationalism, free markets, and moral traditionalism,
but they put greater weight on the nationalist leg of the stool - leading to a more strident form
of anti-immigrant politics that often veers into racism, an isolationist foreign policy rather than
a hawkish or dovish one, and a deep skepticism of economic globalization that puts them at odds with
an important element of the business agenda.
Trump is an odd standard-bearer for paleocons, many of whom are conservative Catholics and whose
passionate social conservatism doesn't jibe well with Trump's philandering. His foreign policy ideas
are also more interventionist than those of most paleocons. But the ideas that have made him such
a controversial candidate aren't ones he got from liberals. They have a serious conservative pedigree.
A brief history of paleoconservatism
The term "paleoconservatism" is a retronym coined in the 1980s to characterize a brand of
conservatism that was by then going extinct, a brand exemplified by Robert Taft, the Ohio senator
and legendary isolationist who lost the 1952 Republican nomination to Dwight Eisenhower. In its day
it was often referred to as the "Old Right."
There was a time when these positions were normal for the Republican party. Leaders like William
McKinley supported tariffs as a way of supporting domestic industries and raising revenue outside
of an income tax. Smoot and Hawley, of the infamous Great Depression tariff, were both Republicans.
Republican isolationists prevented the US from participating in the League of Nations, led a largely
non-interventionist foreign policy in the '20s, and were skeptical of the Marshall Plan and the Truman
Doctrine in the early years of the Cold War.
But starting in the first decade of the 1900s and continuing gradually through the '50s, this
balance began to be upset, especially on trade but also on issues of war and peace. Progressives
within the Republican Party began to challenge support for trade protection and argue for a more
hawkish approach to foreign affairs. The increasing interest of American business in trade abroad
made the anti-internationalism of the Old Right increasingly unviable in the party of capital.
The two defining moments that led to paleocon decline were Taft's defeat and the suppressing of
the John Birch Society by William F. Buckley and National Review in the early 1960s. The Birch Society
differed strongly from the most isolationist of paleocons on foreign affairs; it was named after
an American missionary killed by Chinese communists in 1945, whom the group claimed as the first
casualty of the Cold War.
The organization advocated an aggressive, paranoid approach to the Soviet Union. But on other
issues they were right in sync: extremely anti-immigration, hostile to foreign trade, supportive
of limited government (except where trade, immigration, and anti-communism are concerned).
Buckley, along with Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) and others, issued a series of attacks on the
society, which were successful in marginalizing it, and establishing Buckley and National Review's
brand of conservatism as the ideology's public face in America. "The attack established them as the
'responsible Right,'" according to
Buckley biographer John Judis, "and moved them out of the crackpot far Right and toward the great
center of American politics." It was a key victory for the New Right, and a key loss for the Old
Right.
The losses kept coming. In the 1980s, the rise of neoconservatism both threatened the anti-internationalist,
America-first mentality of the paleocons and enraged them due to the prominence of Jewish writers
in the neoconservative movement. While not everyone in the paleoconservative movement was an
anti-Semite, it certainly had an anti-Semitism problem, which its attacks on the neocons revealed
frequently.
From the Sobran purge to Pat Buchanan
The saga of Joseph Sobran is a case in point. A longtime columnist at National Review, he was
fired by William F. Buckley in 1993 following years of open clashes about his attitude toward Israel
and Jewish people in general. In 1991, Buckley had dedicated an entire issue of the magazine to a
40,000-word essay he wrote,
"In Search of Anti-Semitism," in which he condemned Buchanan (then challenging President George
H.W. Bush in the GOP primaries) and his employee Sobran for anti-Jewish prejudice.
Buckley had a point. Sobran really was a world-class anti-Semite, writing in one National Review
column, "If Christians were sometimes hostile to Jews, that worked two ways. Some rabbinical authorities
held that it was permissible to cheat and even kill Gentiles."
After leaving NR, Sobran's writing, in the words of fellow paleocon and
American Conservative editor Scott McConnell, "deteriorated into the indefensible." He started
speaking at conferences organized by famed Holocaust denier David Irving and the denial group
Institute for Historical Review,
asking at the latter, "Why on earth is it 'anti-Jewish' to conclude from the evidence that the standard
numbers of Jews murdered are inaccurate, or that the Hitler regime, bad as it was in many ways, was
not, in fact, intent on racial extermination?"
While Sobran was purged, Buchanan continued his rise. His ability to distinguish himself from
the non-paleoconservatives was enhanced by the end of the Cold War. Many paleocons made an exception
to their isolationism for the unique evil of the Soviet Union. With that boogeyman gone, they retreated
to a stricter non-interventionism. They nearly universally opposed the war in Iraq and war on
terror more broadly, and were deeply skeptical of Bill Clinton's humanitarian interventions in the
Balkans.
The '90s anti-immigrant panic, and the era's high-profile trade deals, made Buchanan and the paleocons'
views on those issues appealing to base Republicans tired of pro-trade, pro-migration GOPers.
... ... ...
Paleocons love Trump
Trump fits into this tradition quite well. He's less stridently anti–welfare state, and less socially
conservative than most paleoconservatives. But he is a great exemplar of the movement's core belief:
America should come first, and trade and migration from abroad are direct threats to its way of life.
"We are getting out of the nation-building business, and instead focusing on creating stability
in the world," he declares. "Our moments of greatest strength came when politics ended at the water's
edge." That's pure paleocon.
Whether the establishment likes it or not, and it evidently does not, there is a revolution
going on in America. The old order in this capital city is on the way out, America is crossing
a great divide, and there is no going back. Donald Trump's triumphant march to the nomination
in Cleveland, virtually assured by his five-state sweep Tuesday, confirms it, as does his foreign
policy address of Wednesday.
…Whether the issue is trade, immigration or foreign policy, says Trump, "we are putting the
American people first again." U.S. policy will be dictated by U.S. national interests.
"I would not say that Donald Trump is a paleoconservative. … I don't think [Trump's] a social
conservative,"
he elaborated in an interview with the Daily Caller. But he added, "I was just astonished to
see him raise the precise issues on which we ran in the 1990s. … Donald Trump has raised three
issues of real concern to paleoconservatives and traditional conservatives like myself."
It's not just Buchanan, either.
Derbyshire
has said that Trump is "doing the Lord's work shaking up the GOP side of the 2016 campaign," and
in another column
volunteered
his services as a speechwriter.
Virgil Goode, a former Congress member who was the paleocon Constitution Party's 2012 nominee,
has endorsed Trump as the only candidate serious about immigration. Taki has featured reams of pro-Trump
coverage, like
this piece praising his economic nationalism.
Trump is an imperfect paleocon. He's unrefined, a recent convert, and not as socially conservative
as they may like. But on the important stuff, the term fits him better than any other.
"... Trump is a paleoconservative who preaches the reduction of the U.S. presence and engagement throughout the world. His precursors were active in the America First movement, which wanted American neutrality during World War II. He can identify with Robert Taft, a Republican senator who was against NATO and the expedition to North Korea at the beginning of the Cold War. He also shares Pat Buchanan's nationalism, who was a candidate before him. ..."
"... Although Trump's political philosophy is not entirely insubstantial, his campaign stances do not have the same ideological coherence. He accuses President Bush of having lied to invade Iraq, but wants to confiscate Iranian oil to compensate the war's American victims. He has expressed his admiration for Vladimir Putin, but wants to build a wall at the Mexican border and close military bases in ally countries. He intends to ally with Russia to bomb the Islamic State group, but is contemplating a tariff war against China to protect jobs. He adheres to the Iran deal and dismisses a change of regime in Syria, but is suggesting killing North Korea's leader and the families of terrorist leaders. ..."
Published in Le Devoir (Canada) on 14 March 2016 by Charles Benjamin
[link to original]
After having shaken up the American establishment, Donald Trump's unexpected success is sowing
panic in the neoconservative camp. Known for the failed crusade they led against Iraq, the neoconservatives
are looking for a new icon to bring their ideals back to life. The announced defeat of their favorite,
Marco Rubio, has not convinced them to join forces with the lead candidate, whose populism goes against
their political convictions.
The controversial candidate's nomination could thus lead to a neoconservative exodus to the Hillary
Clinton clan, who is embodying their ideological stance more and more. This break-off would reveal
the cleavage that separates the presidential candidates. Besides the personalities, the primary elections
are the setting for a showdown between the deeply engrained political traditions of American history.
Marco Rubio: The Neoconservative Hope
Neoconservatives stem from former Democrats who were opposed to the nomination of George McGovern,
who advocated détente with the Soviet Union during the 1972 primary election. They were seduced by
the ideological zeal with which Ronald Reagan was fighting "the evil empire." The Sept. 11 attacks
sealed their grip on George W. Bush's presidency. Taken over by the missionary spirit bequeathed
by Woodrow Wilson, they wanted to free the Middle East at gunpoint and export democracy there as
a remedy to terrorism. They had a nearly blind faith in the moral superiority and military capabilities
of their country. Iraq was like a laboratory for them, where they played wizards-in-training without
accepting defeat.
In a hurry to undo Barack Obama's legacy, neoconservatives are advising Marco Rubio in regaining
the White House. They are thrilled with the belligerent speech by the candidate, who is reminiscent
of Reagan. Settled on re-affirming the dominance of the U.S., Rubio has committed to increasing the
defense budget, toughening the sanctions against Moscow, providing weapons to Ukraine, and expanding
NATO to the Russian border. He intends to increase troops to fight the Islamic State group, revive
the alliance with Israel, and end the nuclear disarmament deal with Iran. The son of Cuban immigrants,
he also promises to end all dialogue with the Castro regime and to tighten the embargo against the
island.
Donald Trump: The Paleoconservative
Donald Trump's detractors describe him as an impostor who has a serious lack of understanding
of international affairs. Yet, he has set himself apart by cultivating a noninterventionist tradition
that goes back to the interwar period. Trump is a paleoconservative who preaches the reduction
of the U.S. presence and engagement throughout the world. His precursors were active in the America
First movement, which wanted American neutrality during World War II. He can identify with Robert
Taft, a Republican senator who was against NATO and the expedition to North Korea at the beginning
of the Cold War. He also shares Pat Buchanan's nationalism, who was a candidate before him.
Although Trump's political philosophy is not entirely insubstantial, his campaign stances
do not have the same ideological coherence. He accuses President Bush of having lied to invade Iraq,
but wants to confiscate Iranian oil to compensate the war's American victims. He has expressed his
admiration for Vladimir Putin, but wants to build a wall at the Mexican border and close military
bases in ally countries. He intends to ally with Russia to bomb the Islamic State group, but is contemplating
a tariff war against China to protect jobs. He adheres to the Iran deal and dismisses a change of
regime in Syria, but is suggesting killing North Korea's leader and the families of terrorist leaders.
Hillary Clinton: The Democratic Hawk
Will Donald Trump's noninterventionist temptation and unpredictable character lead the neoconservatives
to make up with their former political group? Two figures of the movement have already repudiated
the Republican lead and announced their future support of Hillary Clinton.
The Democratic candidate boasts a much more robust and interventionist position than Obama. Annoyed
with her boss's caution while she was secretary of state, Clinton was pleading early on to send massive
reinforcements in Afghanistan. She believes in U.S. humanitarian imperialism and persuaded the president
to use force against Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. Her call to help Syrian rebels at the dawn of the
Arab Spring was ignored. Now, she is giving faint support to the agreement negotiated with Iran and
supports the creation of a military exclusion zone over Syria. Her platform offers a new base for
neoconservatives, who will have to decide if they will stay loyal to their ideals or to their party.
"... Trump has been a vocal opponent of bad trade deals, while Cruz is a supporter of "free trade," even vocally backing Trade Promotion Authority for months before opportunistically voting against it when it no longer mattered ..."
"... Trump is opposed to raising the retirement age for Social Security while Cruz supports it ..."
"... Trump has famously promised he'd get along with Vladimir Putin, praised Putin's actions in Syria and has received compliments from the Russian leader; Cruz sticks to the usual anti-Russian rhetoric of the conservative movement calling Putin a "KGB thug" and saying America should undertake more intervention in the Middle East to confront Russia ..."
"... Ted Cruz notoriously called a group of Middle Eastern Christians "consumed with hate" for being insufficiently pro-Israeli while Trump has defended Middle Eastern Christians as a group that is "under assault" from Islamic terrorism ..."
But Donald Trump has changed everything. He has created the potential for a different movement
altogether. Not only is immigration at the center of his campaign, it's part of a larger agenda
that is genuinely different from the "movement conservatism" of Ted Cruz:
Trade.Trump has been a vocal opponent of bad trade deals, while Cruz is a supporter
of "free trade," even vocally backing Trade Promotion Authority for months before opportunistically
voting against it when it no longer mattered [Cruz reverses support for TPA trade bill,
blasts GOP leaders, by Manu Raju, Politico, June 23, 2015]
Safety Net. Trump is opposed to raising the retirement age for Social Security
while Cruz supports it [Where the presidential candidates stand on Social Security, by
Steve Vernon, MoneyWatch, November 23, 2015] Trump is also placing the protection of Medicare
at the center of his campaign, defying conservative movement dogma [Debate over Medicare, Social
Security, other federal benefits divides GOP, by Robert Costa and Ed O'Keefe,Washington Post,
November 4, 2015]
Russia.Trump has famously promised he'd get along with Vladimir Putin, praised
Putin's actions in Syria and has received compliments from the Russian leader; Cruz sticks
to the usual anti-Russian rhetoric of the conservative movement calling Putin a "KGB thug"
and saying America should undertake more intervention in the Middle East to confront Russia
[Ted Cruz: Russia-US tensions increasing over weak foreign policy, by Sandy Fitzgerald,Newsmax,
October 7, 2015]
Christianity. Ted Cruz notoriously called a group of Middle Eastern Christians
"consumed with hate" for being insufficiently pro-Israeli while Trump has defended Middle Eastern
Christians as a group that is "under assault" from Islamic terrorism [Trump: Absolutely
An Assault on Christianity, by Joe Kovacs, WND, August 25, 2015]. At the same time, while Trump
has been quick to defend American Christians from cultural assaults, he is also probably the
Republican "most friendly" to gay rights, as homosexual columnist Mark Stern has mischievously
noted [Of course Donald Trump is the Most Pro-Gay Republican Presidential Candidate, Slate,
December 18, 2015]
http://www.unz.com/article/whither-the-american-right/
Military coup sounds awfully good to me right about now!
xxx
Christianity. Ted Cruz notoriously called a group of Middle Eastern Christians "consumed with
hate" for being insufficiently pro-Israeli while Trump has defended Middle Eastern Christians
as a group that is "under assault" from Islamic terrorism
Maybe, I'm misunderstanding something; maybe I'm just not sure what "insufficiently pro-Israeli"
means, but Ted Cruz didn't condemn the group of Middle Eastern Christians for being "pro-Israel".
He condemned them for being anti-Israel, and said he wouldn't stand with them if they didn't stand
with Israel.
Neoliberalism is self-defeating social system, which creates the mechanism of redistribution of
wealth up, that takes that whole system down.
Notable quotes:
"... The Republicans weren't interested in inequality-but inequality was interested in them. The
conservative elite told us that we were a center-right country, that we didn't do class warfare, that
envy was un-American. But the voters, invertebrates that they are, disagreed. In fact, they thought
Obama was on to something when he said that secretaries shouldn't have to pay a higher tax rate than
their billionaire bosses. ..."
In Kennedy's day, Republicans worried more about budget deficits than economic growth and therefore
opposed his tax cuts. When the legislation came up for a final vote in the House of Representatives,
only 48 Republicans supported it and 126 voted against it, and it passed only because 223 liberal
Democrats voted for it. Remember, we are talking about a top marginal rate of 91 percent, which the
bill reduced to a still very high 65 percent.
... Trump, while he is not the poster child of inclusiveness when it comes to immigrants, has
nonetheless revived the old Reagan coalition by bringing formerly Democratic voters to the voting
booths to support him. They have left a Democratic Party whose leaders think them ignorant rednecks
who cling to their guns and religion, and they're not made to feel especially welcome when Cruz supporters
call them invertebrates and bigots: that's a good way to win an election, said no one ever.
... ... ...
What Obama had spoken to were the classically liberal themes of equality and mobility, of the
promise of a better future. The Republicans weren't interested in inequality-but inequality was
interested in them. The conservative elite told us that we were a center-right country, that we didn't
do class warfare, that envy was un-American. But the voters, invertebrates that they are, disagreed.
In fact, they thought Obama was on to something when he said that secretaries shouldn't have to pay
a higher tax rate than their billionaire bosses.
... ... ...
Our mobility problem results from departures from and not our adherence to capitalism. Rising
inequality in America has been blamed on the "1 percent," the people in the top income centile making
more than $400,000 a year. They alone don't explain American income immobility, however. Rather,
it's the risk-averse New Class-the 1, 2, or 3 percent, the professionals, academics, opinion leaders,
and politically connected executives who float above the storm and constitute an American aristocracy.
They oppose reforms that would make America mobile and have become the enemies of promise.
The New Class is apt to think it has earned its privileges through its merits, that America is
still the kind of meritocracy that it was in Ragged Dick's day, where anyone could rise from the
very bottom through his talents and efforts. Today's meritocracy is very different, however. Meritocratic
parents raise meritocratic children in a highly immobile country, and the Ragged Dicks are going
to stay where they are. We are meritocratic in name only. What we've become is Legacy Nation, a society
of inherited privilege and frozen classes, and in The Way Back I explain how we got here and what
we can do about it.
If Trump is the price we have to pay to defeat Clintonian neoliberalism – so be it.
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal
With these words the revolutionary journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal offers a bold challenge to those
who circulate the fear of a Trump presidency to drum up a mandate for voting for Clinton.
Mumia's words were shared with me just a month ago in a prison visit with him. They are a timely
challenge to Bernie Sanders' endorsement this week of Hillary Clinton's drive for the presidency.
Sanders mantra is anchored in the fear of Trump: "I will do everything possible to help defeat Trump."
But it is not just a Trump presidency that needs defeating. It is just as important to defeat
the very "Clintonian neoliberalism" whose party Sanders now joins.
"... Just as George W. Bush was "wholly ill-suited" so is Mrs. Clinton. It was her policy which is mostly responsible for the refugee flood into Europe from both Libya and Syria. She treats foreign policy like it's a board game. She gets ideologically convinced that overthrowing Assad or Quadifi is a grand idea and starts the process. Neither she nor her advisers ever ask, basic questions about the mechanics of the "process." For example, as part of this "process" the population of Allepo (just Allepo without respect to all the other towns, villages and hamlets) will be reduced from a population of 1.1 million to less than 100,000 with the difference being refugees conscripts or dead. What do we plan to do with the 750,000 plus refugees? Talk about "wholly ill-suited." ..."
"... I don't want to see Trump as President, however, the Dems have picked the one candidate who might actually lose to him. Clinton is not only demonstrably inept and widely recognized as dishonest, she has also contributed a great deal to the mess in the Middle East. ..."
"... The only people currently doing the heavy lifting with cogent and perceptive commentary on serious issues and the systemic inability of political and economic institutions to embrace reality are professional comedians. John Oliver, Jim Jeffries et al are continuing the George Carlin tradition of pointing out the abject lunacy of our "leaders", whose words are reported by the mainstream media (corporate media that is, let's not forget to "follow the money") as if they were something other than delusional drivel. ..."
George W Bush showed himself wholly ill-suited to the presidency within nine months of his
inauguration. Those of us who covered his campaign should have seen that moment coming, even if
we had no idea about Osama bin Laden's plotting.
On board his campaign plane, all Candidate Bush wanted to talk about was baseball statistics. If
he talked about the world, it revolved around his vacations. Perhaps we should have realized he
would find it hard to distinguish Afghanistan from Iraq, and Sunni from Shia.
A charming cut-up as Texas governor, Bush's superficial grasp of policy didn't matter nearly as
much as the fact that he seemed more entertaining than that earnest, wonkish Al Gore. At least
that was the tenor of much of what passed for news analysis of the 2000 campaign.
Bush projected the notion that he understood leadership; that his guts were greater than the
facts. As Tony Blair discovered within a year of 9/11, Bush's leadership was reckless playacting,
and the facts on the ground in Iraq were far more formidable than his gut instincts.
FugitiveColors
Another,be afraid of Donald Trump article. Lets settle this crap right here. Donald trump
is a horrible SOB, even his supporters agree.
Which matters not one iota. Much of America wants crap to change, even if it means using a
wrecking ball.
Bogdanich
Just as George W. Bush was "wholly ill-suited" so is Mrs. Clinton. It was her policy
which is mostly responsible for the refugee flood into Europe from both Libya and Syria. She
treats foreign policy like it's a board game. She gets ideologically convinced that
overthrowing Assad or Quadifi is a grand idea and starts the process. Neither she nor her
advisers ever ask, basic questions about the mechanics of the "process." For example, as part
of this "process" the population of Allepo (just Allepo without respect to all the other
towns, villages and hamlets) will be reduced from a population of 1.1 million to less than
100,000 with the difference being refugees conscripts or dead. What do we plan to do with the
750,000 plus refugees? Talk about "wholly ill-suited."
legalimmigrant
Message to Richard Wolffe - you may enjoy sounding off in your echo chamber but that's all
you're doing. The elites have had their day. The people demand something "different" and if
that "different" is orange colored with a strange folicular arrangement then so be it. You can
get back to frenziedly typing about what a devil DJT is now.
Benjohn6379 -> legalimmigrant
"People in this country have had enough of experts" - Brexit campaigner/propagandist and
huge liar Michael Gove
The anti-establishment movement is real and healthy and global. I can totally understand, as
I'm also sick and tired of being lied to and told that the status quo is the only way. But
don't kid yourself, Trump is one of these elites.
He may seem "different" as you say, but that's only because he's a piece of shit openly as
opposed to trying to hide it, like Hillary.
Neither candidate has any desire to help the middle class.
Confess -> Benjohn6379
Open is good. Americans are sick and tired of being lied and having facts hidden from us.
How can we progress when everything is covered up? Just give us the facts or a real god damn
opinion. All the double talk and cover ups are tearing the country apart. Soon BLM will have
the same amount of power as Muslims, no one can say anything bad about them, even when it's
true. That is what's dangerous.
Obelisk1
I don't want to see Trump as President, however, the Dems have picked the one candidate
who might actually lose to him. Clinton is not only demonstrably inept and widely recognized
as dishonest, she has also contributed a great deal to the mess in the Middle East.
Moreover, her refusal to speak about the ideological basis for so many of the terrorist
atrocities in recent years should be enough to bar her from office.
The US, and the world, is in danger as a result of the failures of both parties to pick
reasonable candidates.
Benjohn6379 -> ohyesHedid
The "war-hawk" meme
It's not a meme, it's reality. Her neo-conservative record speaks for itself. There is a
very real fear that she will take us to war in Syria, as a no fly zone would require tens of
thousands of ground troops in direct opposition to Russia, Assad and numerous terrorist cells.
ISIS has to be stopped, absolutely, but war in Syria will be just another tragic foreign
policy mistake.
I think all this "Hillary hate" is disproportional, possibly sexist.
Some of the "Hillary hate" is sexist, sure, but don't use this excuse as a blanket
statement that covers people that have intelligent and well thought out criticisms of her
policies and voting record.
There are legitimate concerns with both candidates, come at it rationally and intelligently.
Tom Jones
Not a Trump fan. But he called out Bush in the debates.
He wouldn't have invaded Iraq or Libya. War has caused most of these problems. The real scary
part is that he is less of a war monger then Clinton!
Gaurdian applogist pieces are almost as vile as the bigotry from Trump. In fact the bias in th
MSM has led to a Trump.
gunnison 5h ago
Perhaps the voters are confused about how to rate these candidates because there is
almost no coverage of national security and foreign policy. Nobody – except for rarities
like NBC's Andrea Mitchell – wants to produce a block of TV on something that sounds as
complicated as how to fight Isis in Syria.
The only people currently doing the heavy lifting with cogent and perceptive commentary
on serious issues and the systemic inability of political and economic institutions to embrace
reality are professional comedians. John Oliver, Jim Jeffries et al are continuing the George
Carlin tradition of pointing out the abject lunacy of our "leaders", whose words are reported
by the mainstream media (corporate media that is, let's not forget to "follow the money") as
if they were something other than delusional drivel.
Our much-vaunted "free press" has degenerated into becoming a transcription service for power
and privilege, with "journalists" now blatantly finessing the truth for fear of losing the
"access" without which they would be consigned to the outer reaches of internet blogworld.
Hell, if one sifts through the comment threads here or on other "reputable" news sites to
eliminate the usual dross, there's one hell of a lot more accurate and thoughtful commentary
happening down here in the cheap seats than in most of the articles to which those thread are
appended.
Trump is a showman and a conman and a buffoon, and Mike Pence is a rabid ideologue driven by
religious zealotry and a profound misogyny and sexual squeamishness. Neither is the sort of
person who should ever be placed in a position of authority. (None of this should be taken as
covert support for Hillary Clinton. My comment history here exculpates me from any accusations
of being a Clinton shill.)
That's the reality. Presenting the evidence for that, and there is mountains of it, is the
true function of a media which serves the public interest.
Benjohn6379 -> gunnison
Hell, if one sifts through the comment threads here or on other "reputable" news sites to
eliminate the usual dross, there's one hell of a lot more accurate and thoughtful commentary
happening down here in the cheap seats than in most of the articles to which those thread are
appended.
Your whole comment being a prime example of this, very well said.
John Wilson
And so what are you saying here Wolfe. That the alternative is Clinton? She'll be even
faster to push the red button.
"That empowerment must be both economic and political. Workers deserve
to be compensated fairly for their work, and have generous social support
programs to rely upon when economic changes that are out of their control
throw them out of work or force them to accept lower paying jobs.
We should not hesitate to ask those who have gained so much from
globalization and technological change to give something back to those
who have paid the costs of their success."
All this would have been especially great, say, forty or even thirty
years ago.
"... Much of this has to do with Peronism's founder, and his ability to bring in broad sectors of Argentine society into his political program, broadly against imperialism and for nationalist workers rights and political sovereignty. ..."
"... It is an idea founded on Christian social values that has three basic principles: social justice, political sovereignty and economic independence. ..."
"... It was under Peron that a version of nationalized state capitalism, and an elimination of foreign investors was initiated in Argentina. He used nationalism, unlike his European counterparts, as a weapon of anti-imperialism. Peronism under Peron was Bonapartist in its manipulation of the social classes on behalf of industrializing an underdeveloped country and challenging dominant American imperialism. His style of leadership was one of a leader who took power in a power vacuum when no single class is in the position do so, and using reformist measures to win the radical support of the more populous class. ..."
"... Peron and Peronism also has to be viewed as a stage in the battle of Latin America for economic independence which is still yet to be achieved with at home the oligarchical structures still intact, and foreign manipulation in the country. ..."
Juan Peron is the most important political figure in Argentina, with reams of paper dedicated to
himself and his followers, but surprising little ink has been spilled over his, and the movement
named after him, Peronism's ideology. Perhaps because of its near undefinable nature, that it neither
sits comfortably on the left, right nor center or because of the number of ideological disperse groups
and politicians that call themselves Peronist.
Much of this has to do with Peronism's founder, and his ability to bring in broad sectors
of Argentine society into his political program, broadly against imperialism and for nationalist
workers rights and political sovereignty.
However there are a few key points behind the ideology of Peron himself and Argentina's most political
movement Peronism that can be gleaned.
Peron called his movement "Justicialism", a blending of the Spanish words for social justice and
this is also the name of the party of Argentina's current president Cristina Fernandez.
It is an idea founded on Christian social values that has three basic principles: social justice,
political sovereignty and economic independence. To do this Peron said his movement was in a
"third position" which counterposed itself equally to capitalism and communism. He also aimed to
create a social model of an organized community with direct state intervention to mediate between
labor and capital. Although not the same as a traditional Scandinavian welfare state, the model has
similarities in its mixed economy and a central role for Unions.
In a speech in the Congress in 1948, Peron himself said, "Peronism is humanism in action; Peronism
is a new political doctrine, which rejects all the ills of the politics of previous times; in the
social sphere it is a theory which establishes a little equality among men… capitalist exploitation
should be replaced by a doctrine of social economy under which the distribution of our wealth, which
we force the earth to yield up to us and which furthermore we are elaborating, may be shared out
fairly among all those who have contributed by their efforts to amass it."
The populist program of higher wages and better working conditions, which was actually developed
by the Public Works minister Juan Pistarini could well be the classic ideological core of Peronism,
but it was always dependent on the structural circumstance of Argentina. For example, in the late
1940s, Peronism was more concerned with the women's vote and the export market, and in the 1990s
attempting to rebuild Argentina under a neo-liberal pro market guide.
Indeed, over time it has been an odd mix of socialism, liberalism and populism Peron himself,
and therefore the movement became a symbol of and a champion of what he called the "shirtless ones,"
(descamisados) appealing to the dispossessed, labor, youth and the poor.
Peronism accepts that the state should coordinate society for the common good and that it can
do this without serving class interests.
Peron, and Peronism is hostile to many of the tenets of classic liberalism, although at times
concedes such as considering that democratic and republican institutions are the only ones that can
guarantee freedom and happiness for the people, and a political opposition is admitted as necessary.
But Peron was also hostile to Marxism, thinking that "forced collectivism" robs individuals of
their personality, even though he garnered many supporters from the communist left during the seventies
thinking that he, and his ideology would be the only way for Argentina to implement a communist state.
Yet Peron thought that class conflict could be transcended by a social collaboration mediated by
the state.
It was mostly through this ideological and structural blend that Peron was able to split every
party and political formation from the extreme Catholic Right to the Communist Left and line up the
dissidents behind his banner. As Carleton Beals wrote, his leading opponents had nothing to offer
except to complain of the lack of civil liberties. Their cry for freedom was somewhat suspect, however,
as they had never respected it when in office.
It was under Peron that a version of nationalized state capitalism, and an elimination of
foreign investors was initiated in Argentina. He used nationalism, unlike his European counterparts,
as a weapon of anti-imperialism. Peronism under Peron was Bonapartist in its manipulation of the
social classes on behalf of industrializing an underdeveloped country and challenging dominant American
imperialism. His style of leadership was one of a leader who took power in a power vacuum when no
single class is in the position do so, and using reformist measures to win the radical support of
the more populous class.
Peron and Peronism also has to be viewed as a stage in the battle of Latin America for economic
independence which is still yet to be achieved with at home the oligarchical structures still intact,
and foreign manipulation in the country.
"... The new regime sought to implement a change in the country's social and economic structures, based on strong State intervention, where the long-term goals of the workers coincided with the nation's need for economic development. Perón's work from the Labour Secretariat helped organise the workers' movement (until then divided into Communist, Socialist, and Revolutionary factions) into strong, centralised unions that cooperated with the government in solving labour disputes and establishing collective bargaining agreements, and whose leadership was under government influence. ..."
"... It was during this time that Perón would establish a strong alliance with the unions, who would later become the backbone of peronism. Workers started seeing that many of their historic demands were finally being attended to, including severance pay, retirement benefits, and regulation for rural labour. ..."
"... This new economic paradigm was based around the development of labour-intensive, light industry to create jobs and produce domestic goods for the internal market. The State played an important role in channelling income from agricultural exports to industry, raising import tariffs, and nationalising foreign-owned companies such as the railways, gas, phone and electricity. ..."
"... The political model that accompanied these economic changes was based on a class alliance between the workers, industrial employers, the Armed Forces and the Catholic Church. However, this alliance excluded the old landowners -"the oligarchy" -- who would become the number one enemy of the new government. ..."
"... In political terms, the heterogeneous support base of peronism started to disintegrate. Without Evita, the more combative unionists and political leaders were ousted by the conservative, bureaucratic sectors of the movement. ..."
The coup d'etat that brought the so-called "Década Infame" to an end in 1943, was headed by a
group of Army officials known as GOU (Grupo de Oficiales Unidos). General Pedro Ramírez became president
after the coup, but was removed in 1944 and replaced by General Edelmiro Farrell. During Farrell's
presidency, Colonel Juan Domingo Perón -- who was a member of the GOU -- became vicepresident, Minister
for War and Labour Secretary (simultaneously).
The new regime sought to implement a change in the country's social and economic structures, based
on strong State intervention, where the long-term goals of the workers coincided with the nation's
need for economic development. Perón's work from the Labour Secretariat helped organise the workers'
movement (until then divided into Communist, Socialist, and Revolutionary factions) into strong,
centralised unions that cooperated with the government in solving labour disputes and establishing
collective bargaining agreements, and whose leadership was under government influence.
It was during this time that Perón would establish a strong alliance with the unions, who would
later become the backbone of peronism. Workers started seeing that many of their historic demands
were finally being attended to, including severance pay, retirement benefits, and regulation for
rural labour.
These measures earned him the loyalty and support of the working masses, but strong opposition
from the local bourgeoisie and existing political parties, whose core voters were largely middle
class. The political opposition organised itself around the figure of US Ambassador Spruille Braden
and found enough support from dissident groups within the Armed Forces to pressure Farrell into removing
Perón. Eventually, Perón lost Farrell's support, resigned from all his positions on the 9th October
1945 and was jailed at the Martín García Island, then famous for hosting deposed politicians.
The Federal Workers Confederation (CGT) had called for a strike for the 18th October to support
Perón. However hundreds of thousands of workers spontaneously decided to gather at Plaza de Mayo
a day earlier. On a symbolic level, the images of the workers taking over the heart and soul of Argentine
political life -Plaza de Mayo-, making it their own, washing their feet in the fountains, became
the expression of a new era in the country's social and political history. The relegated masses had
made a triumphal entry into Argentina's political life, leaving behind decades of political isolation.
The images of 17th October 1945 continue to depict the deeper historical meaning of peronism:
the inclusion of the working class in the country's social, political and economic life.
Due to popular pressure, Perón was released that same day and addressed the people from the balconies
of the Casa Rosada in the evening, launching his presidential candidacy for the forthcoming elections.
Perón's First Government (1946-1951)
Perón was elected president in February 1946, winning 56% of the vote. He had the support of the
Labour Party (which was formed by the unions after the 17th October) and a faction of the Radical
party called UCR Junta Renovadora (Perón's eventual vicepresident, Hortensio Quijano, was from this
breakaway). He'd run the presidential campaign around the slogan "Braden or Perón" -where Braden
and the opposition parties centred around the Unión Democrática represented imperialism, while Perón
maintained a nationalist stance.
The period 1946-1955 marked a turning point in the economic development of the country. Up until
that point, the economy had been characterised by a model based around agricultural exports, dominated
by large landowners and a strong intervention of foreign companies-British, and increasingly from
the US. This model had started to weaken during the 1930's, but it was not until the mid-1940s that
it was replaced by what became known as "import substitution industrialisation" (ISI).
This new economic paradigm was based around the development of labour-intensive, light industry
to create jobs and produce domestic goods for the internal market. The State played an important
role in channelling income from agricultural exports to industry, raising import tariffs, and nationalising
foreign-owned companies such as the railways, gas, phone and electricity.
The political model that accompanied these economic changes was based on a class alliance between
the workers, industrial employers, the Armed Forces and the Catholic Church. However, this alliance
excluded the old landowners -"the oligarchy" -- who would become the number one enemy of the new government.
During this period, Perón's charismatic wife, Eva Perón (or "Evita" as her followers called her)
played a prominent role, and it is widely acknowledged that she was the main link between the president
and the workers' movement. Evita also had an active role in the development of womens' rights, such
as the right to vote (1947) and the equality of men and women in marriage and in the care of children
-- even fighting internal opposition to achieve these goals. The Eva Perón Foundation channelled the
social policies of the government, emphasising the concept of social justice as opposed to charity.
Evita was loved and admired by the people as much as she was derided by the opposition and by the
more conservative factions within the peronist movement, whose power and influence in government
were being diminished by her growing profile.
The new role of the State and the rights acquired during this period were articulated in a new
Constitution, adopted in 1949, which put social justice and the "general interest" at the centre
of all political and economic activities. The new constitutional text included a range of "social
rights" (the so-called second generation rights), related to workers, families, the elderly, education
and culture.
Perón's Second Government (1951-1955)
Perón was re-elected in 1951, obtaining a massive 62% of the vote (which, for the first time,
included the female voters). His second term, however, proved to be much more complicated than the
first. The day he took office, 4th June 1952, was the last public appearance of Evita, who died of
cancer the following month. The economic situation worsened, with a drop in the international price
of agricultural products and severe droughts between 1949 and 1952 affecting domestic production.
This prompted Perón to embrace austerity measures, putting the brakes on consumption and wealth
redistribution, and improving the relationship with foreign companies -- such as the Standard Oil,
which was awarded new contracts. All these measures contradicted the model that Perón himself had
implemented, and divided opinion among his followers.
In political terms, the heterogeneous support base of peronism started to disintegrate. Without
Evita, the more combative unionists and political leaders were ousted by the conservative, bureaucratic
sectors of the movement. At the same time, the relationship with the Church became increasingly frosty,
before turning into an open conflict in 1954. In addition, some members of the industrial bourgeoisie,
less favoured by the new economic reality, also started to abandon this alliance and join the ranks
of the opposition, which now included some hardline sectors in the military. All these groups united
against what was perceived as the increasingly authoritarian tendencies of the government, which
had by this point closed down several media outlets and utilised public radio, television and print
media for its own propaganda.
On the 16th June 1955, the political opposition (conservative, radicals and socialists) together
with the Navy and with the support of the Church, carried out a botched coup d'etat against Perón.
Navy planes bombed Plaza de Mayo, where a rally was taking place, killing more than 300 people. Perón's
attempt to appease the crowd failed and that very same night groups of peronist activists took to
the streets of Buenos Aires and burnt several churches.
After the failed coup, Perón tried to keep the situation under control and called for a truce
with the opposition. However on 31st August, after talks with the opposition failed, the president
hardened his position when, during a public speech, he pronounced the now famous phrase: "for each
one of us who fall, five of them will follow". Seventeen days later, on the 16th September, a new
military uprising -- led again by the Navy -- succeeded in deposing Perón, who asked for political refuge
in Paraguay and left the country on the 20th of September. It would be 17 years until he stepped
on Argentine soil again.
Contradictions and Resistance: Peronism Without Perón (1955 – 1960's)
By this time, the peronist movement was made up of a mixture of factions from different backgrounds:
socialists, catholic nationalists, anarchists, yrigoyenist radicals, and conservatives, among others.
From the beginning they co-existed in constant tension -a tension that could only be overcome by
the dominant and unifying figure of Perón.
With Perón in exile, the contradictions between all these factions bubbled to the surface. In
a country now deeply divided by the peronism/anti-peronism dichotomy, new divisions started to emerge
within the peronist side. These would not only mark the evolution of the peronist movement, but would
also play a major role in Argentina's political life to this day. Perón's legendary pragmatism and
political ability became very evident during these years, as even in exile he managed to mantain
an important level of control over the situation, playing the different factions to his advantage.
Two months after the coup, the liberal faction of the self-proclaimed "Liberating Revolution"
took over the government and started a process of "de-peronisation". This involved dissolving the
peronist party and banning any of its members from running for public office, banning the display
of all the peronist symbols and any mention of the names of Perón or Evita, intervening in the CGT,
and proscribing the unions' old leadership. The persecution of the CGT leaders and the weakening
of the peronist unions left many workers once again unprotected and exposed to the abuses of some
employers.
It was in this context that the Peronist Resistance was born-an inorganic protest movement that
carried out clandestine actions of sabotage (ranging from breaking machinery at the workplace to
placing home-made bombs). The Resistance was an expression of the grassroots of the peronism: the
workers who wanted their leader back and were fighting to protect the legacy of his government.
One of the main organisers of the Resistance was John William Cooke, a left-wing peronist deputy
who had been named by Perón as his personal representative whilst in exile. In 1956, peronist General
Juan José Valle led an unsuccessful uprising against the government, which ended up with 30 people
-- many of them civilians -- executed. The violent suppression of the uprising caused Perón and the Resistance
to abandon the idea of armed struggle and focus on reorganising the unions.
If Trump secures the Republican nomination, now an increasingly imaginable prospect, the party
is likely to implode. Whatever rump organization survives will have forfeited any remaining claim
to represent principled conservatism.
None of this will matter to Trump, however. He is no conservative and Trump_vs_deep_state requires no party.
Even if some new institutional alternative to conventional liberalism eventually emerges, the two-party
system that has long defined the landscape of American politics will be gone for good.
Should Trump or a Trump mini-me ultimately succeed in capturing the presidency, a possibility
that can no longer be dismissed out of hand, the effects will be even more profound. In all but name,
the United States will cease to be a constitutional republic. Once President Trump inevitably declares
that he alone expresses the popular will, Americans will find that they have traded the rule of law
for a version of caudillismo. Trump's Washington could come to resemble Buenos Aires in
the days of Juan Perón, with Melania a suitably glamorous stand-in for Evita, and plebiscites suitably
glamorous stand-ins for elections.
That a considerable number of Americans appear to welcome this prospect may seem inexplicable.
Yet reason enough exists for their disenchantment. American democracy has been decaying for decades.
The people know that they are no longer truly sovereign. They know that the apparatus of power, both
public and private, does not promote the common good, itself a concept that has become obsolete.
They have had their fill of irresponsibility, lack of accountability, incompetence, and the bad times
that increasingly seem to go with them.
So in disturbingly large numbers they have turned to Trump to strip bare the body politic, willing
to take a chance that he will come up with something that, if not better, will at least be more entertaining.
As Argentines and others who have trusted their fate to demagogues have discovered, such expectations
are doomed to disappointment.
In the meantime, just imagine how the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library, no doubt taller than
all the others put together, might one day glitter and glisten -- perhaps with casino attached.
"... That assumption, he says, may stem from the sense of status that comes from being in academe. The idea that "if you're in this room, you're an elite - so you're not going to respond to things like trade policy and illegal immigration because these things largely don't affect you." ..."
"... The academics who support Mr. Trump acknowledge that many of his ideas are dangerous. Outweighing that concern is the conviction that something has to change, and that there's no better alternative than a Trump presidency. ..."
"... Compounding their support for the billionaire is a lack of other options. Mr. Van Horn says he would be open to voting for a Democrat, but he thinks the proposals of the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders are unrealistic. As for Hillary Clinton, he neither likes her nor trusts her. (When confronted with the fact that he also says he neither likes nor trusts Mr. Trump, Mr. Van Horn says the former secretary of state is more likely to be beholden to a "very narrow set of society.") ..."
"... But two and a half years into the program, he has found that some academics can be even more closed-minded than people he grew up with. "I was this very liberal person where I was from, and then I come out here and they're all very, very liberal, and they're all very, very rigid." ..."
"... And in political science, where this year's election is particularly relevant, the popular treatment of the Trump candidacy as a joke has made Mr. Van Horn wonder about the costs to scholarship: "How can you do objective scholarly research? You don't even treat American voters as people who are qualified to cast a ballot." ..."
"... Mr. Van Horn still loves studying political science, and he still wants to be a professor. But he watches what he says, and he's more cynical about higher education. "It's a very closed community," he says. "It's like the smallest town in the world." ..."
Conventional wisdom says poorly educated voters have fueled Mr. Trump's improbable rise. "I love
the poorly educated,"
he proclaimed after winning Nevada's primary last month (though he also boasted of winning the
votes of the well educated). "The single best predictor of Trump support in the GOP primary is the
absence of a college degree,"
wrote Derek Thompson in
The Atlantic this month.
In academe - where professionals can have three, four, five degrees - Trump supporters may be
hard to find. But they're out there.
Like many people, Joseph Van Horn first treated Mr. Trump's candidacy as a joke. But as more-traditional
candidates failed to outpace the billionaire, Mr. Van Horn, a Ph.D. student in political science
at the University of California at Los Angeles, listened more closely.
What he heard excited him - among other things, that Mr. Trump was willing to talk about narrow
policy proposals rather than harp on conservative social issues. That willingness, coupled with his
lack of attachment to the political establishment, made Mr. Van Horn think, "When's the last time
I heard a candidate and thought, 'That could really happen'?"
Mr. Van Horn doesn't like Donald Trump personally. And he doesn't find him all that trustworthy.
"I wouldn't give him the key to my apartment," he says. But he's excited about the Trump movement,
particularly how it has spurred higher turnout and more engagement with the election.
When he brings up that sense of excitement in an academic setting, however, he gets shut down,
he says. "I was kind of shocked at how staunchly anti-Trump people are," he says. Many of his peers
are willing to issue a blanket condemnation of Mr. Trump's candidacy as racist and nativist, Mr.
Van Horn says, but "shouting 'racists' and 'bigots' and 'he's Hitler' is just not productive."
"The reaction of everyone in the audience was, you know, chuckling, the implication being that no
one in this room could possibly take Trump seriously."
It's not as if those terms are not warranted at times. Mr. Trump has been shocking and crass,
suggesting, for example, that Mexican immigrants are responsible for widespread rape. "He's certainly
playing to people's prejudices," Mr. Van Horn says, adding that he doesn't share those prejudices.
He hates the proposal to bar Muslims from entering the country ("I think it's really shameful that
we have Muslims in the armed forces that have to listen to this stuff") but thinks such extreme proposals
are unlikely to become policy.
Sharp rhetoric aside, he says, shouldn't a political-science department be willing to take seriously
the merits of a formidable political movement? Mr. Van Horn says the popular dismissal of the Trump
campaign has been disheartening and reflective of a broader bias against right-leaning ideas.
Linda Grochowalski, a Trump supporter who teaches English part time at Assumption College and
Quinsigamond Community College, in Worcester, Mass., encountered that bias once upon moving into
a new office. A previous occupant's poster still hung on the back of the door.
"It essentially said, You have to be pretty stupid to vote for a Republican," she says. "I guess
the writing's on the wall, or the door."
That bias manifests itself in large groups, too. Mr. Calautti recalls attending a colloquium on
civility in public discourse at which the speaker used as an example of uncivil discourse - surprise!
- Mr. Trump's performance in the Republican debates. "The reaction of everyone in the audience was,
you know, chuckling," he says, "the implication being that no one in this room could possibly take
Trump seriously."
That assumption, he says, may stem from the sense of status that comes from being in academe.
The idea that "if you're in this room, you're an elite - so you're not going to respond to things
like trade policy and illegal immigration because these things largely don't affect you."
Gina Marcello, an assistant professor of communication at Georgian Court University, in New Jersey,
says she hasn't often heard the election come up as a topic of conversation on her campus. "If it
does come up," she says, "it's dismissive of Donald Trump." The subtext, which helps prevent her
from talking politics with her colleagues, comes through loud and clear: "You'd have to be out of
your mind to support a Trump candidacy."
Why Trump?
The academics who support Mr. Trump acknowledge that many of his ideas are dangerous. Outweighing
that concern is the conviction that something has to change, and that there's no better alternative
than a Trump presidency.
Ms. Grochowalski says eight years of the Obama administration left her with $8,000 in medical
bills. The Affordable Care Act, she says, forced her and her husband off their preferred health-insurance
plan. And she's been disturbed by President Obama's use of executive orders to bypass Congress.
Ms. Grochowalski, who worked as a marketing and communications director in the private sector,
acknowledges that Mr. Trump lacks experience in public office. But she trusts that he would surround
himself with smart people because of his business experience.
His lack of political experience could be an asset, Ms. Marcello says, enabling him to appoint
the "very best people" to advise him instead of bestowing political patronage.
Compounding their support for the billionaire is a lack of other options. Mr. Van Horn says he
would be open to voting for a Democrat, but he thinks the proposals of the Vermont senator Bernie
Sanders are unrealistic. As for Hillary Clinton, he neither likes her nor trusts her. (When confronted
with the fact that he also says he neither likes nor trusts Mr. Trump, Mr. Van Horn says the former
secretary of state is more likely to be beholden to a "very narrow set of society.")
As for those of Mr. Trump's ideas that Ms. Grochowalski calls "pretty outrageous," legal and constitutional
checks are there to stymie any truly devastating plans, she says. "He probably can't do 30 percent
of them, even if he wanted to."
'The Smallest Town'
For Mr. Van Horn, academe's reaction to the Trump candidacy has been a particularly disappointing
sign of a larger problem. The 29-year-old grew up in Louisville, Ky., which he calls a "small city in the South." He enrolled
in the University of Kentucky when he was 18, but struggled and dropped out after two years. He then became an electrician, but after a few years of doing that, he wasn't satisfied. "You
can always make a lot of money as an electrician, but learning about the world is something different,"
he says.
"I was this very liberal person where I was from, and then I come out here and they're all very,
very liberal, and they're all very, very rigid."
So he returned to school, finishing his undergraduate education at Indiana University-Southeast.
He then applied to the political-science program at UCLA. He was over the moon about getting to follow
his passion for a living - and to broaden his horizons beyond what his upbringing had restricted
him to.
But two and a half years into the program, he has found that some academics can be even more closed-minded
than people he grew up with. "I was this very liberal person where I was from, and then I come out
here and they're all very, very liberal, and they're all very, very rigid."
And in political science, where this year's election is particularly relevant, the popular treatment
of the Trump candidacy as a joke has made Mr. Van Horn wonder about the costs to scholarship: "How
can you do objective scholarly research? You don't even treat American voters as people who are qualified
to cast a ballot."
Mr. Van Horn still loves studying political science, and he still wants to be a professor. But
he watches what he says, and he's more cynical about higher education. "It's a very closed community," he says. "It's like the smallest town in the world."
"... "Sanders is not just a 'lesser evil'. His proposals and policies are good In addition, Sanders seeks to change the current electoral process based on money coming from corporations, political action committees and wealthy individuals. Changing this system is the first step...." ..."
"... The November election will be a referendum on the neolibcon establishment in the U.S. as much as the Brexit vote was for the EU. The Brexit vote showed that people are so fed up that they aren't listening to establishment fear-mongering. ..."
"... No matter how Democratic Party loyalists try to spin it, the blame for a Trump win will fall on the corrupt Democratic Party establishment. It is no accident that the vast majority of Super-delegates have steadfastly stood by Hillary, warts and all. ..."
"... Bernie the sheepdog has failed his movement but the Greens and true progressives will continue. ..."
"... It says a great deal about both Warren and the Democratic Party, in which she is the most high-profile "left" politician, that she never endorsed Bernie and has now enthusiastically endorsed Hillary. It would not be a stretch to say that had Warren endorsed and campaigned for Sanders, it could well have been the difference needed to defeat Clinton in the primary. But she did not. ..."
"... Because of course the problem is much larger than just Warren, Clinton, or Debbie Wasserman Schultz. At the heart of the matter is a political party that is thoroughly undemocratic and corrupt to its very core – one that answers to Wall Street, not working people. It's the second most pro-capitalist party in the world, after the Republican Party. ..."
"... Yes it is the Washington Post, but the point stands: it is a strange place for a 'revolutionary' to deliver his message. Unless that message is one of capitulation (it is) . ..."
Seems you mean the Washington Post, not the WSJ.
Alternet seems to like it.
"What do we want? We want to end the rapid movement that we are currently experiencing toward
oligarchic control of our economic and political life," Sanders concluded. "As Lincoln put it
at Gettysburg, we want a government of the people, by the people and for the people. That is what
we want, and that is what we will continue fighting for."
rufus magister | Jun 24, 2016 8:02:34 AM |
86 rufus magister | Jun 25, 2016 9:11:21 AM |
94
This post at
Countepunch takes on the "dog" analogy, arguing that "Sanders is not just a 'lesser evil'.
His proposals and policies are good In addition, Sanders seeks to change the current electoral
process based on money coming from corporations, political action committees and wealthy individuals.
Changing this system is the first step...."
There are any number of arguments that Sanders has changed and will continue to change the
political dyanmics. More and in a different direction might be nice. But after decades of neo-liberal
assaults on the working class, let's not have the best be the enemy of the good.
Sanders' meteoric rise is evidence that unabashed progressive politics is an effective antidote
to the far-right xenophobia on the rise across the developed world. "Every time we have a spasm
of capitalism, whether this is the 1930s or now, the seeds of vulgar ultra-right-wingness sprout
into a very ugly tree," Varoufakis said....
"I am very impressed by his capacity to rise from almost complete marginality to the center
of the debate," Varoufakis continued. "And if you look at the discussion he has invigorated,
or reinvigorated, in the Democratic Party, that just goes to show that it is perfectly possible
to excite young people....
Yeah, he botched with Syriza in Greece. But he was principled enough to resign and move on
politically. I don't know with what sort of success his proposed organization met.
Alternet offers a handy list of things Sanders has already changed about American politics.
I particulary note points 5 and 6, on princples and issues, but the author notes he has brought
progressives together, shown popularly-funded campaigns to be viable, and made socialism respectable.
"Not too shabby."
Politics isn't for the meek, but it doesn't have to be all mud all the time like the GOP's
nominating contest, and Sanders has shown that in state after state....
The passion and public purpose of his campaign has struck deep and wide notes precisely
because of that. More than anything, Sanders has reminded vast swaths of the country that his
democratic socialist agenda is exactly what they want America to be-a fairer and more dignified,
tolerant, responsible and conscientious country.
I have previously noted, the consensus amongst the pundit class is that Sanders is a principled
politician. The conduct of his campaign reflects these principles. I do not agree with them, but
I respect that he has been consistent in their application throughout his political career.
Ah, but "what is to be done" with all of the passion aroused? Sanders clearly intends to keep
the pressure on within the Democratic Party. Though doubtless, it will not all remain there.
I keep hearing that "things" are different, post-Occupy, etc., and that some sort of Green/Libertarian/Trump
miracle is possible. It is also possible, and historically conditioned, that these pressures will
in fact push the Democrats to the left.
This would be good, in and for the short-term. Revolutionary change takes patient work,
especially in early stages. We're quite a "Long March" away, and these are useful baby-steps.
So this whole notion that but the hopes of the masses and left wing of the Democratic Party,
we'd have our Utopia by now, us a cheap alibi as to why the divided left
(as "b" very accurately describes) can't make any headway, even after the economy nearly repeated
the Great Depression.
The nerve of those damn proles, hoping for short-term improvement! What about the intersectionality?
You know, I don't think "Suck it up and butch it out 'til after The Revolution, you ignorant,
evil, unenlightened over-privileged sell-outs" is really that attractive as politics. Maybe that
overstates this argument, but probably not too much. "The Greens know that someone is in the
buff but the Sanders gang has yet to catch on that their emperor has no clothes" does strike a
rather condescending tone, sure to win friends and influence people.
Somewhat at odds with the next paragraph, though. But is topic is the "Green Machine."
Second, and more importantly, Marsh has left out a key point in his analysis. The Greens just
passed a major benchmark to gain federal funding.
Your dismissing of 'collusion' for lack of a smoking gun ignores much circumstantial evidence:
> Sanders has been a Democrat for many years in all but name;
- he has an arrangement with the Democratic Party whereby he runs in Vermont Democratic
Primaries but will not accept the Democratic nomination and the Democratic Party will not
fund candidates that oppose him;
- Obama campaigned for him, Schumer and Reid endorsed him, he calls Hillary "a friend",
etc.
> He pulled punches in his campaign - refusing to attack Hillary or Obama on issues that
could've made a big difference for his campaign, like:
- when Hillary defended taking money by pointing to Obama who has clearly been pro-Wall
Street;
- Obama's record on the economy and black issues (Obama's support has helped Hillary
to win over blacks) ;
- his slowness to criticize Hillary-DNC collusion;
- on Hillary's emails after the State Dept IG report;
- he all but endorsed Hillary from the start.
The November election will be a referendum on the neolibcon establishment in the U.S. as much
as the Brexit vote was for the EU. The Brexit vote showed that people are so fed up that they
aren't listening to establishment fear-mongering.
No matter how Democratic Party loyalists try to spin it, the blame for a Trump win will
fall on the corrupt Democratic Party establishment. It is no accident that the vast majority of
Super-delegates have steadfastly stood by Hillary, warts and all.
If Bernie refuses to break from the Democratic Party, our movement should back Jill Stein
as the strongest left alternative in the presidential election ... Stein deserves the strongest
possible support from Sandernistas .... With Bernie stepping out of the race, and likely
endorsing Clinton, it will be up to us to continue the political revolution and to stand up
against both Clintonism and Trump_vs_deep_state.
And drives home the point with:
It says a great deal about both Warren and the Democratic Party, in which she is the most
high-profile "left" politician, that she never endorsed Bernie and has now enthusiastically
endorsed Hillary. It would not be a stretch to say that had Warren endorsed and campaigned
for Sanders, it could well have been the difference needed to defeat Clinton in the primary.
But she did not.
It says a great deal about the whole of the Democratic Party leadership – which claims that
its key priority is to defeat Trump – that it has fiercely backed Clinton in spite of the fact
that the polls have shown Sanders to be the far stronger candidate in every matchup.
Because of course the problem is much larger than just Warren, Clinton, or Debbie Wasserman
Schultz. At the heart of the matter is a political party that is thoroughly undemocratic and
corrupt to its very core – one that answers to Wall Street, not working people. It's the second
most pro-capitalist party in the world, after the Republican Party.
<> <> <> <> <> <> <>
@86 Yes it is the Washington Post, but the point stands: it is a strange place for a 'revolutionary'
to deliver his message. Unless that message is one of capitulation (it is) .
While Trump's proposed blanket ban on Muslim travelers is both constitutionally and ethically
wrongheaded and, in my opinion, potentially damaging to broader U.S. interests, his related
demand to temporarily stop travel or immigration from some core countries that have serious
problems with militancy is actually quite sensible. This is because the United States has only a
limited ability to vet people from those countries. The Obama administration claims it is
rigorously screening travelers and immigrants-but it has provided little to no evidence that its
procedures are effective.
The first step in travel limitation is to define the problem. While it is popular in Congress and
the media to focus on countries like Iran, nationals of such countries do not constitute a
serious threat. Shi'a Muslims, the majority of Iranians, have characteristically not staged
suicide attacks, nor do they as a group directly threaten American or Western interests. The
Salafist organizations with international appeal and global reach are all Sunni Muslim. In fact,
al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban, and al-Nusra all self-define as Sunni Muslim and regard Shi'as as
heretics. Most of the foot soldiers who do the fighting and dying for the terrorist groups and
their affiliates are Sunnis who come from Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, and
Somalia, and even the homegrown Europeans and Americans who join their ranks are Sunni.
It is no coincidence that the handful of Muslim countries that harbor active insurgencies have
also been on the receiving end of U.S. military interventions, which generate demands for revenge
against the West and the U.S. in particular. They would be the countries to monitor most closely
for militants seeking to travel. All of them represent launching pads for potential attacks, and
it should be assumed that groups like ISIS would be delighted to infiltrate refugee and immigrant
groups.
U.S. embassies and consulates overseas are the choke points for those potential terrorists.
Having myself worked the visa lines in consulates overseas, I understand just how difficult it is
to be fair to honest travelers while weeding out those whose intentions are less honorable. At
the consulate, an initial screening based on name and birth date determines whether an applicant
is on any no-fly or terrorism-associate lists. Anyone coming up is automatically denied, but the
lists include a great deal of inaccurate information, so they probably "catch" more innocent
people than they do actual would-be terrorists. Individuals who have traveled to Iran, Iraq,
Sudan, or Syria since 2011, or who are citizens of those countries, are also selected out for
additional review.
For visitors who pass the initial screening and who do not come from one of the 38 "visa waiver"
countries, mostly in Europe, the next step is the visitor's visa, called a B-2. At that point,
the consulate's objective is to determine whether the potential traveler has a good reason to
visit the U.S., has the resources to pay for the trip, and is likely to return home before the
visa expires. The process seeks to establish that the applicant has sufficient equity in his or
her home country to guarantee returning to it, a recognition of the fact that most visa fraud
relates to overstaying one's visit to disappear into the unregistered labor market in the U.S.
The process is document-driven, with the applicants presenting evidence of bank accounts,
employment, family ties, and equity like homeownership. Sometimes letters of recommendation from
local business leaders or politicians might also become elements in the decision.
"... "It's either you stick with the establishment or you go for change. People want change. A guy like Donald Trump, he's pushing for change." ..."
"... The blue-collar counties of western Pennsylvania have largely swung Republican as unions have grown weaker and evangelical churches stronger. Despite overwhelmingly endorsing Hillary Clinton, labor unions face a big challenge with frustrated workers like Mr. Haines. That many white male union members are embracing Mr. Trump doesn't necessarily mean overall union membership is moving right, however. In recent years, as unions have organized more government employees and low-wage workers, the percentage of union members who are black, Hispanic or female has risen - and those groups are solidly anti-Trump. ..."
"... The A.F.L.-C.I.O. has endorsed Mrs. Clinton, calling her "an unstoppable champion for working families" while dismissing Mr. Trump as "an unstable charlatan who made his fortune scamming them." ..."
"... On Tuesday, Mr. Trump spoke to applauding workers at a scrap-metal plant in Westmoreland County. He denounced "failed trade policies," saying he would renegotiate Nafta and scrap the proposed Trans-Pacific trade deal. He also borrowed Mr. Sanders's arguments to attack Mrs. Clinton from the left, saying she "voted for virtually every trade agreement." He added that she has betrayed American workers in favor of "Wall Street throughout her career." ..."
"... Mike Podhorzer, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s political director, estimated that around one-third of union members back Mr. Trump. ..."
"... ...some voters are reluctantly backing Mr. Trump simply out of frustration with the status quo. "We need someone who will say things are wrong and will push hard to fix them," said Paul Myers, a 50-year-old steelworker. "Trump might be lying about bringing jobs back, but at least he'll try to." ..."
Greensburg, Pa. - THIS faded mining town east of Pittsburgh seems right out of "The Deer
Hunter," one of many blue-collar, gun-loving communities that dot western Pennsylvania. For
Donald J. Trump, such largely white, working-class towns are crucial to his hopes in the
presidential campaign - and that's one reason he campaigned in this region on Tuesday. By rolling
up large enough margins in former industrial strongholds like Greensburg - not just in
Pennsylvania, but also in Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin - he might offset expected losses in
cities like Philadelphia, Detroit and Cleveland, enabling him to capture those pivotal states.
Mr. Trump's "Make America Great Again" message resonates with many of this region's workers,
whose wages - and hopes - have been tugged downward by the abandoned steel mills and coal mines.
Take Dennis Haines, 57, thrown out of work in January when the printing plant where he worked for
30 years closed. Mr. Haines, a member of the machinists union, said: "It's either you stick
with the establishment or you go for change. People want change. A guy like Donald Trump, he's
pushing for change."
... ... ...
The blue-collar counties of western Pennsylvania have largely swung Republican as unions
have grown weaker and evangelical churches stronger. Despite overwhelmingly endorsing Hillary
Clinton, labor unions face a big challenge with frustrated workers like Mr. Haines.
That many white male union members are embracing Mr. Trump doesn't necessarily mean overall union
membership is moving right, however. In recent years, as unions have organized more government
employees and low-wage workers, the percentage of union members who are black, Hispanic or female
has risen - and those groups are solidly anti-Trump.
... ... ...
The A.F.L.-C.I.O. has endorsed Mrs. Clinton, calling her "an unstoppable champion for
working families" while dismissing Mr. Trump as "an unstable charlatan who made his fortune
scamming them."
... ... ...
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump spoke to applauding workers at a scrap-metal plant in Westmoreland
County. He denounced "failed trade policies," saying he would renegotiate Nafta and scrap the
proposed Trans-Pacific trade deal. He also borrowed Mr. Sanders's arguments to attack Mrs.
Clinton from the left, saying she "voted for virtually every trade agreement." He added that she
has betrayed American workers in favor of "Wall Street throughout her career."
Late this
summer, unions will mobilize a nationwide campaign to knock on doors, mail out pro-Clinton
literature and speak to members at their workplaces.
Tim
Waters, the political director of the United Steelworkers, said his Pittsburgh-based union will
warn its members that Mr. Trump isn't pro-worker: "He's a wolf in sheep's clothing."
Unions
have compiled a long list of objections to Mr. Trump. In one debate, he said wages were too high.
Many workers have sued his companies for cheating them on wages. His Las Vegas hotel is battling
unionization.
"Every
opportunity he's had to help American workers or American jobs, he did the opposite," Mr. Waters
said. "He has had Trump-brand suits, shirts and ties made in Bangladesh, China and Honduras,
everywhere but the U.S. He has imported workers to work at his facilities in Florida."
Mike
Podhorzer, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s political director, estimated that around one-third of union
members back Mr. Trump.
...
... ...
...some voters are reluctantly backing Mr. Trump simply out of frustration with the status quo.
"We need someone who will say things are wrong and will push hard to fix them," said Paul Myers,
a 50-year-old steelworker. "Trump might be lying about bringing jobs back, but at least he'll try
to."
John Quiggin (
previously ) delivers some of the most salient commentary on the Brexit
vote and how it fits in with Syriza, Podemos, Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders
(etc) as well as Trump, French neo-fascists, and other hypernationalist
movements.
The core of this analysis is that while neoliberalism(s) (Quiggin argues
that US and non-US neoliberalism are different things) has failed the majority
of the world, and while things were falling apart after the financial crisis,
the left failed to offer real alternatives. The "tribalist" movements --
Trump, Leave, Golden Dawn, etc -- are anti-neoliberal, but in the absence
of any analysis, have lashed out at immigrants (rather than bankers and
financial elites) as the responsible parties for their suffering.
The US political system gives us a choice between neoliberals who hate
brown people, women, and gay people; and neoliberals who don't. Trump offers
an anti-neoliberal choice (and so did the Leave campaign). Bernie also offered
an anti-neoliberal platform (one that didn't hate brown people, women, and
lgtbq people), but didn't carry the day -- meaning that the upcoming US
election is going to be a choice between neoliberalism (but tolerance) and
anti-neoliberalism (and bigotry). This is a dangerous situation, as the
UK has discovered.
The vote for Britain as a whole was quite close. But a closer look
reveals an even bigger win for tribalism than the aggregate results
suggest. The version of tribalism offered in the Leave campaign was
specifically English. Unsurprisingly, it did not appeal to Scottish
or Irish voters who rejected it out of hand. Looking at England alone,
however, Leave won comfortably with 53 per cent of the vote and was
supported almost everywhere outside London, a city more dependent than
any other in the world on the global financial system.
Given the framing of the campaign, the choice for the left was, even
more than usually, to pick the lesser of very different evils. Voting
for Remain involved acquiescence in austerity and an overgrown and bloated
financial system, both in the UK and Europe. The Leave campaign relied
more and more on coded, and then overt, appeals to racism and bigotry,
symbolised by the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox, stabbed to death by a
neo-Nazi with ties to extreme tribalist organizations in both the UK
and US. The result was a tepid endorsement of Remain, which secured
the support of around 70 per cent of Labour voters, but did little to
shift the sentiment of the broader public.
The big problem for the tribalists is that, although their program
has now been endorsed by the voters, it does not offer a solution to
the economic decline against which most of their supporters were protesting.
Indeed, while the catastrophic scenarios pushed by the Remain campaign
are probably overblown, the process of renegotiating economic relationships
with the rest of the world will almost certainly involve a substantial
period of economic stagnation.
The terms offered by the EU for the maintenance of anything like
existing market access will almost certainly include maintenance of
the status quo on immigration. In the absence of a humiliating capitulation
by the new pro-Brexit government, that will mean that Britain (or England)
will face a long and painful process of adjustment.
Britain has voted to leave the EU. The reason? A large section of the working class, concentrated in towns and cities that have
been quietly devastated by free-market economics, decided they'd had enough.
Enough bleakness, enough ruined high streets, enough minimum wage jobs, and enough lies and fearmongering from the political class.
The issue that catalysed the vote for Brexit was the massive, unplanned migration from Europe that began after the accession of
the A8 countries and then surged again after 2008 once the Eurozone stagnated while Britain enjoyed a limp recovery.
It is no surprise to anybody who's lived their life at the street end of politics and journalism that a minority of the white
working class are racists and xenophobes. But anyone who thinks half the British population fits that description is dead
wrong.
Tens of thousands of black and Asian people will have voted for Brexit, and similar numbers of politically educated, left-leaning
workers too. Birmingham, Nottingham, Sheffield and Coventry - multi-ethnic university cities - they too went for Leave.
Neither the political centre or the pro-remain left was able to explain how to offset the negative economic impact of low-skilled
migration in conditions of (a) guaranteed free movement (b) permanent stagnation in Europe and (c) austerity in Britain.
Told by the government they could never control migration while inside the EU, just over 50% of the population decided controlling
migration was more important than EU membership.
So the problem for Labour is not, yet, large numbers of its own voters "deserting the party". They may still do so if Labour plays
this wrong - but even as late as the May council elections Labour's core vote held up.
Instead Labour's heartland voters simply decided to change the party's policy on migration from below, and forever, by
leaving the EU.
The party's front bench tried, late and in a muddled way, to come up with micro-economic solutions - more funds for areas where
the NHS and schools come under strain; a new directive to prevent employers shipping entire workforces from East Europe on poor terms
and conditions. And a promise to renegotiate the free movement pillar of the Lisbon Treaty in the future.
Because it was made late, and half-heartedly, this offer was barely heard. And clearly to some it did not seem plausible - given
the insistence of the Labour centre and the liberal bourgeoisie that migration is unmitigatedly good and "there's nothing you can
do about it". And also given the insistence of Jean Claude Juncker that there could be no renegotiation at all.
Ultimately, as I've written before, there is
a
strong case for "Lexit" on grounds of democracy and economic justice. But this won't be Lexit. Unless Labour can win an early
election it will be a fast-track process of Thatcherisation and the breakup of the UK.
Unlike me, however, many people who believe in Lexit were prepared to vote alongside right wing Tories to get to first base.
The task for the left in Britain now is to adapt to the new reality, and fast. The Labour right is already trying to pin the blame
on Corbyn; UKIP will make a play for Labour's voters. Most likely there'll be a second independence referendum in Scotland.
Corbyn was right to try and fight on "remain and reform" but his proposed reforms were never radical enough. He was also right
to devote energy to other issues - making the point that in or out of the EU, social justice and public services are under threat.
But the right and centre of Labour then confused voters by parading along with the Tory centrists who Corbyn had promised never to
stand on a platform with.
The Blairite Progress group is deluded if it thinks it can use this moment to launch a coup against Corbyn. The neoliberal wing
of the Labour Party needs to realise - it may take them a few days - that their time is over.
Ultimately it looks like Labour still managed to get 2/3 of its voters to voter Remain [I'll check this but that's what YouGov
said earlier]. So the major failure is Cameron's. It looks like the Tory vote broke 60/40 to Brexit.
It's possible Cameron will resign quickly. But that's not the issue. The issue is the election and what to fight for.
Labour has to start, right now, a big political reorientation. Here is my 10 point suggestion for how we on the left of Labour
go forward.
1. Accept the result. Labour will lead Britain out of EU if it wins the election.
2. Demand an election within 6–9 months: Cameron has no mandate to negotiate Brexit. The parties must be allowed to put their
respective Brexit plans to the electorate and thereafter run the negotiations. In that Labour should:
3. Fight for Britain to stay in the EEA and apply an "emergency brake" to migration under the rules of the EEA. That should be
a Labour goverment's negotiating position.
4. Labour should fight to keep all the EU's progressive laws (employment, environment, consumer protection etc) but scrap restrictions
on state aid, trade union action and nationalisation. If the EU won't allow that, then the fallback is a complete break and a bilateral
trade deal.
5. Adopt a new, progressive long-term migration policy: design a points based system designed to respond annually to demand from
employers and predicted GDP growth; make parliament responsible for setting the immigration target annually on the basis of an independent
expert report; the needs of the economy - plus the absolute duty to accept refugees fleeing war and torture - is what should set
the target, not some arbitrary ceiling. And devote massively more resources than before to meeting the stresses migration places
on local services.
6. Continue to demand Britain honours its duty to refugees to the tune of tens of thousands. Reassure existing migrant communities
in Britain that they are safe, welcome and cannot be expelled as a result of Brexit. Offer all those who've come here from Europe
under free movement rules the inalienable right to stay.
7. Relentlessly prioritise and attack the combined problems of low wages, in-work poverty and dead-beat towns.
8. Offer Scotland a radical Home Rule package, and create a federalised Labour Party structure. If, in a second referendum, Scotland
votes to leave the UK, Labour should offer a no-penalty exit process that facilitates Scotland rejoining the EU if its people wish.
In the meantime Labour should seek a formal coalition with the SNP to block a right wing Tory/UKIP government emerging from the next
election.
9. Offer the Republic of Ireland an immediate enhanced bilateral deal to keep the border open for movement and trade.
10. The strategic problem for Labour remains as before. Across Britain there have crystallised two clear kinds of radicalism:
that of the urban salariat and that of the low-paid manual working class. In Scotland those groups are aligned around left cultural
nationalism. In England and Wales, Labour can only win an election if it can attract both groups: it cannot and should not retreat
to becoming a party of the public sector workforce, the graduate and the university town. The only way Labour can unite these culturally
different groups (and geographic areas) - so clearly dramatised by the local-level results - is economic radicalism. Redistribution,
well-funded public services, a revived private sector and vibrant local democracy is a common interest across both groups.
11. If Labour in England and Wales cannot quickly rekindle its ties to the low-paid manual working class - cultural and visceral,
not just political - the situation is ripe for that group to swing to the right. This can easily be prevented but it means a clean
break with Blairism and an end to the paralysis inside the shadow cabinet.
From my social media feed it's clear a lot of young radical left people and anti-racists are despondent. It seems they equated
the EU with internationalism; they knew about and sympathised with the totally disempowered poor communities but maybe assumed it
was someone else's job to connect with them.
I am glad I voted to Remain, even though I had to grit my teeth. But I underestimated the sheer frustration: I'd heard it clearly
in the Welsh valleys, but not spotted it clearly enough in places like Barking, Kettering, Newport.
I am not despondent though. The Brexit result makes a radical left government in Britain harder to get - because it's likely Scotland
will leave, and the UK will disingegrate, and the Blairites will go off and found some kind of tribute band to neoliberalism with
the Libdems.
But if you trace this event to its root cause, it is clear: neoliberalism is broken.
There's no consent for the stagnation and austerity it has inflicted on people; there's nothing but hostility to the political
class and its fearmongering - whether that be Juncker, Cameron or the Blairites. As with Scotland, given the chance to disrupt the
institutions of neoliberal rule, people will do so and ignore the warnings of experts and the political class.
I predicted in Postcapitalism that the crackup of neoliberalism would take geo-strategic form first, economic second. This is
the first big crack.
It is, geopolitically, a victory for Putin and will weaken the West. For the centre in Europe it poses the question point blank:
will you scrap Lisbon, scrap austerity and boost economic growth or let the whole project collapse amid stagnation? I predict they
will not, and that the entire project will then collapse.
All we can do, as the left, is go on fighting for the interests of the poor, the workforce, the youth, refugees and migrants.
We have to find better institutions and better language to do it with. As in 1932, Britain has become the first country to break
with the institutional form of the global order.
If we do have a rerun of the 1930s now in Europe, we need a better left. The generation that tolerated Blairism and revelled in
meaningless centrist technocracy needs to wake up. That era is over.
"... Class, nationalist, and ethnic elements are all involved in the Brexit vote in a complex integration of protest. ..."
"... Press and media emphasize the nationalist and ethnic (immigrant-anti-immigrant) themes but generally avoid discussing or analyzing
the event from a class perspective. But that perspective is fundamental. What Brexit represents is a proxy vote against the economic
effects of Free Trade, the customs union called the European Union. Free trade deals always benefit corporations and investors. ..."
"... Free trade is not just about goods and services flows between member countries; it is even more about money and capital flows
and what is called direct investment. UK corporations benefit from the opportunity to move capital and invest in cheap labor elsewhere
in Europe, mostly the newly added members to the EU since 2000, in eastern europe. Free trade also means the unrestricted flow of labor.
Once these east european countries were added to the EU treaty, massive inflows of labor to the UK resulted. Just from Poland, more
than a million migrated to the UK alone. ..."
Class, nationalist, and ethnic elements are all involved in the Brexit vote in a complex integration of protest.
Press and media emphasize the nationalist and ethnic (immigrant-anti-immigrant) themes but generally avoid discussing or analyzing
the event from a class perspective. But that perspective is fundamental. What Brexit represents is a proxy vote against the economic
effects of Free Trade, the customs union called the European Union. Free trade deals always benefit corporations and investors.
Free trade is not just about goods and services flows between member countries; it is even more about money and capital flows
and what is called direct investment. UK corporations benefit from the opportunity to move capital and invest in cheap labor elsewhere
in Europe, mostly the newly added members to the EU since 2000, in eastern europe. Free trade also means the unrestricted flow of
labor. Once these east european countries were added to the EU treaty, massive inflows of labor to the UK resulted. Just from Poland,
more than a million migrated to the UK alone.
In the pre-2008, when economic conditions were strong and economic growth and job creation the rule, the immigration's effect
on jobs and wages of native UK workers was not a major concern. But with the crash of 2008, and, more importantly, the UK austerity
measures that followed, cutting benefits and reducing jobs and wages, the immigration effect created the perception (and some reality)
that immigrants were responsible for the reduced jobs, stagnant wages, and declining social services. Immigrant labor, of course,
is supported by business since it means availability of lower wages. But working class UK see it as directly impacting wages, jobs,
and social service benefits. THis is partly true, and partly not.
So Brexit becomes a proxy vote for all the discontent with the UK austerity, benefit cuts, poor quality job creation and wage
stagnation. But that economic condition and discontent is not just a consequence of the austerity policies of the elites. It is also
a consequence of the Free Trade effects that permit the accelerated immigration that contributes to the economic effects, and the
Free Trade that shifts UK investment and better paying manufacturing jobs elsewhere in the EU.
So Free Trade is behind the immigration and job and wage deterioration which is behind the Brexit proxy vote. The anti-immigration
sentiment and the anti-Free Trade sentiment are two sides of the same coin. That is true in the USA with the Trump candidacy, as
well as in the UK with the Brexit vote. Trump is vehemently anti-immigrant and simultaneously says he's against the US free trade
deals. This is a powerful political message that Hillary ignores at her peril. She cannot tip-toe around this issue, but she will,
required by her big corporation campaign contributors.
Another 'lesson' of the UK Brexit vote is that the discontent seething within the populations of Europe, US and Japan today is
not accurately registered by traditional polls. This is true in the US today as it was in the UK yesterday.
The Brexit vote cannot be understood without understanding its origins in three elements: the combined effects of Free Trade (the
EU), the economic crash of 2008-09, which Europe has not really recovered from having fallen into a double dip recession 2011-13
and a nearly stagnant recovery after, and the austerity measures imposed by UK elites (and in Europe) since 2013.
These developments have combined to create the economic discontent for which Brexit is the proxy. Free Trade plus Austerity plus
economic recovery only for investors, bankers, and big corporations is the formula for Brexit.
Where the Brexit vote was strongest was clearly in the midlands and central England-Wales section of the country, its working
class and industrial base. Where the vote preferred staying in the EU, was the non-working class areas of London and south England,
as well as Scotland and Northern Ireland. Scotland is dependent on oil exports to the EU and thus tightly linked to the trade. Northern
Ireland's economy is tied largely to Scotland and to the other EU economy, Ireland. So their vote was not surprising. Also the immigration
effects were far less in these regions than in the English industrial heartland.
Some would argue that the UK has recovered better than most economies since 2013. But a closer look at the elements of that recovery
shows it has been centered largely in southern England and in the London metro area. It has been based on a construction-housing
boom and the inflow of money capital from abroad, including from China investment in UK infrastructure in London and elsewhere. The
UK also struck a major deal with China to have London as the financial center for trading the Yuan currency globally. Money capital
and investment concentrated on housing-construction produced a property asset boom, which was weakening before the Brexit. It will
now collapse, I predict, by at least 20% or more. The UK's tentative recovery is thus now over, and was slipping even before the
vote.
Also frequently reported is that wages had been rising in the UK. This is an 'average' indicator, which is true. But the average
has been pulled up by the rising salaries and wages of the middle class professionals and other elements of the work force in the
London-South who had benefited by the property-construction boom of recent years. Working class areas just east of London voted strongly
for Brexit.
Another theme worth a comment is the Labor Party's leadership vote for remaining in the EU. What this represents is the further
decline of traditional social democratic parties throughout Europe. These parties in recent decades have increasingly aligned themselves
with the Neoliberal corporate offensive. That's true whether the SPD in Germany, the Socialist parties in France, Spain, Italy, Portugal,
and Greece, or elsewhere. As these parties have abdicated their traditional support for working class interests, it has opened opportunities
for other parties–both right and left–to speak to those interests. Thus we find right wing parties growing in Austria, France (which
will likely win next year's national election in France), Italy, Netherlands, and Scandinavia. Hungary and Poland's right turn should
also be viewed from this perspective. So should Podemos in Spain, Five Star movement in Italy, and the pre-August 2015 Syriza in
Greece.
Farther left more marxist-oriented socialist parties are meanwhile in disarray. In general they fail to understand the working
class rebellion against free trade element at the core of the recent Brexit vote. They are led by the capitalist media to view the
vote as an anti-immigrant, xenophobic, nationalist, right wing dominated development. So they in a number of instances recommended
staying in the EU. The justification was to protect the better EU mandated social regulations. Or they argue, incredulously, that
remaining in the free trade regime of the EU would centralize the influence of capitalist elements but that would eventually mean
a stronger working class movement as a consequence as well. It amounts to an argument to support free trade and neoliberalism in
the short run because it theoretically might lead to a stronger working class challenge to neoliberalism in the longer run. That
is intellectual and illogical nonsense, of course. Wherever the resistance to free trade exists it should be supported, since Free
Trade is a core element of Neoliberalism and its policies that have been devastating working class interests for decades now. One
cannot be 'for' Free Trade (i.e. remain in the EU) and not be for Neoliberalism at the same time–which means against working class
interests.
The bottom line is that right wing forces in both the EU and the US have locked onto the connection between free trade discontent,
immigration, and the austerity and lack of economic recovery for all since 2009. They have developed an ideological formulation that
argues immigration is the cause of the economic conditions. Mainstream capitalist parties, like the Republicans and Democrats in
the US are unable to confront this formulation which has great appeal to working class elements. They cannot confront it without
abandoning their capitalist campaign contributors or a center-piece (free trade) of their neoliberal policies. Social-Democratic
parties, aligning with their erstwhile traditional capitalist party opponents, offer no alternative. And too many farther left traditional
Marxist parties support Free Trade by hiding behind the absurd notion that a stronger, more centralized capitalist system will eventually
lead to a stronger, more centralized working class opposition.
Whatever political party formations come out of the growing rebellion against free trade, endless austerity policies, and declining
economic conditions for working class elements, they will have to reformulate the connections between immigration, free trade, and
those conditions.
Free Trade benefits corporations, investors and bankers on both sides of the 'trade' exchange. The benefits of free trade accrue
to them. For working classes, free trade means a 'leveling' of wages, jobs and benefits. It thus means workers from lower paid regions
experience a rise in wages and benefits, but those in the formerly higher paid regions experience a decline. That's what's been happening
in the UK, as well as the US and north America.
Free Trade is the 'holy grail' of mainstream economics. It assumes that free trade raises all boats. Both countries benefit. But
what that economic ideology does not go on to explain is that how does that benefit get distributed within each of the countries
involved in the free trade? Who benefits in terms of class incomes and interests? As the history of the EU and UK since 1992 shows,
bankers and big corporate exporters benefit. Workers from the poor areas get to migrate to the wealthier (US and UK) and thus benefit.
But the indigent workers in the former wealthier areas suffer a decline, a leveling. These effects have been exacerbated by the elite
policies of austerity and the free money for bankers and investors central bank policies since 2009.
So workers see their wages stagnant or decline, their social benefits cut, their jobs or higher paid jobs leave, while they see
immigrants entering and increasing competition for jobs. They hear (and often believe) that the immigrants are responsible for the
reduction of benefits and social services that are in fact caused by the associated austerity policies. They see investors, bankers,
professionals and a few fortunate 10% of their work force doing well, with incomes accelerating, while their incomes decline. In
the UK, the focus and solution is seen as exiting the EU free trade zone. In the US, however, it's not possible for a given 'state'
to leave the USA, as it is for a 'state' like the UK to leave the EU. And there are no national referenda possible constitutionally
in the US.
The solution in the US is not to build a wall to keep immigrants out, but to tear down the Free Trade wall that has been erected
by US neoliberal policies in order to keep US jobs in. Trump_vs_deep_state has come up with a reactionary solution to the free trade-immigration-economic
nexus that has significant political appeal. He proposes stopping labor flows, but proposes nothing concrete about stopping the cross-country
flows of money, capital and investment that are at the heart of free trade.
One of the most best stories so far, both from the perspective of the granularity of the reporting and the caliber of the writing,
is the Guardian's
'If you've got money, you vote in … if you haven't got money, you vote out' (hat tip PlutoniumKun). It gives a vivid, painful
picture of the England that has been left behind with the march of Thatcherism and neoliberalism.
From the article :
And now here we are, with that terrifying decision to leave. Most things in the political foreground are finished, aren't
they? Cameron and Osborne. The Labour party as we know it, now revealed once again as a walking ghost, whose writ no longer
reaches its supposed heartlands. Scotland – which at the time of writing had voted to stay in the EU by 62% to 38% – is already
independent in most essential political and cultural terms, and will presumably soon be decisively on its way…
Because, of course, this is about so much more than the European Union. It is about class, and inequality, and a politics
now so professionalised that it has left most people staring at the rituals of Westminster with a mixture of anger and bafflement.
Tangled up in the moment are howling political failures that only compounded that problem: Iraq, the MPs' expenses scandal,
the way that Cameron's flip from big society niceness to hard-faced austerity compounded all the cliches about people you cannot
trust, answerable only to themselves (something that applied equally to the first victims of our new politics, the Liberal
Democrats).
Most of all, Brexit is the consequence of the economic bargain struck in the early 1980s, whereby we waved goodbye to the
security and certainties of the postwar settlement, and were given instead an economic model that has just about served the
most populous parts of the country, while leaving too much of the rest to anxiously decline. Look at the map of those results,
and that huge island of "in" voting in London and the south-east; or those jaw-dropping vote-shares for remain in the centre
of the capital: 69% in Tory Kensington and Chelsea; 75% in Camden; 78% in Hackney, contrasted with comparable shares for leave
in such places as Great Yarmouth (71%), Castle Point in Essex (73%), and Redcar and Cleveland (66%). Here is a country so imbalanced
it has effectively fallen over….
What defines these furies is often clear enough: a terrible shortage of homes, an impossibly precarious job market, a too-often
overlooked sense that men (and men are particularly relevant here) who would once have been certain in their identity as miners,
or steelworkers, now feel demeaned and ignored. The attempts of mainstream politics to still the anger have probably only made
it worse: oily tributes to "hardworking families", or the the fingers-down-a-blackboard trope of "social mobility", with its
suggestion that the only thing Westminster can offer working-class people is a specious chance of not being working class anymore.
This much-watch segment with Mark Blyth (hat tip
Gabriel U) also focuses on the class warfare as a driver of the Brexit vote and how that plays into the broader EU political and
economic context:
Our Richard Smith echoed these themes from his own observations:
In (for instance) North Lincolnshire, manufacturing is most likely to be the biggest EU export. That might get nuked a bit
if the terms of trade with EU countries get stiffer.
But the locals upcountry clearly feel they have been ignored, and now have nothing to lose. M and I bumbled through Wisbech
and Boston a few years ago, expecting cute East Anglian port towns, and found instead murderously tense run-down ghettoes.
You get this kind of story:
Unless, improbably, around 700,000 such stories turn up, which would imply they swung the vote, this is another portrayal
of the "Leave" voters as idiots.
Brexit's lesson for the US - and other democracies - is that fear mongering is not enough. Western elites must build a positive
case for reforming a system that is no longer perceived to be fair. The British may well repent at leisure for a vote they
took in haste. Others can learn from its blunder.
But even this is weak tea. Luce isn't advocating a Sanders-style economic regime change. Indeed, his call for action is making
a case for reform, implying that the more realistic members of the elites need to take on the reactionary forces. As we've said,
the Clintons are modern day Bourbons: they've learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Luce's warning to Hillary Clinton, firmly
ensconced in her bubble of self-regard, deeply loyal to powerful, monied interests and technocrats, is destined to fall on deaf
ears.
Because coverage for Trump, as with Sanders, has been vile piece of
jobbery by our Acela-rising
press
scorps, I'm going to quote great slabs from Trump's remarks. I'll briefly compare
and contrast what the press said to what Trump's words were. I may add brief commentary
of my own. I'm not going to quote the whole speech. Instead, I'm going to quote
three topic areas[2] from his
prepared remarks. (The transcript of the speech
as delivered, sadly in ALL CAPS,
is here). The topics:
Diversity and Multiculturalism
Blowback
War and Peace
So let's look at what Trump has to say;
1. Diversity and Multiculturalism
After calling for a moment of silence, Trump says[3] this:
TRUMP: Our nation stands together in solidarity with the members of Orlando's
LGBT Community.
This is a very dark moment in America's history.
A radical Islamic terrorist targeted the nightclub not only because he wanted
to kill Americans, but in order to execute gay and lesbian citizens because
of their sexual orientation.
It is a strike at the heart and soul of who we are as a nation.
It is an assault on the ability of free people to live their lives, love
who they want and express their identity.
It is an attack on the right of every single American to live in peace and
safety in their own country.
We need to respond to this attack on America as one united people – with
force, purpose and determination.
Let's put aside the question of sincerity: that would require us to treat whatever
Manafort and Stone have cooked up, versus whatever Clinton's focus groups have
emitted, as commensurate; but that's not possible. Let's focus on the fact that
Trump, remarkably for a Conservative Republican, puts "solidarity" (!!!) with "the
members of Orlando's LGBT Community" up front, and treats the ability of people
to "love who they want" at "the heart and soul of who we are as a nation." That's
what we used to call, back in the day at Kos,
performative speech; it changes who the Republicans are as a party by virtue
of having been said.[4] Now, politically I'd guess that Trump won't be winning
a lot of votes in the LGBT community over this any time soon, let alone turning
around
his unfavorables. I'd also guess there will be real, and more subtle, effects:
Trump is disempowering certain Republican factions (especially the "Christian"
right, proven losers), and empowering his own base not to act hatefully
toward gays (and if you believe that Trump voters are authoritarian followers,
that's important)[5].
That said, it's quite remarkable to hear the presumptive nominee of the Republican
Party say that he "stands together in solidarity with the members of Orlando's
LGBT Community." I'd even go so far as to say it's newsworthy.
WaPo did;
Bloomberg did; the conservative hive mind managed to emit
a "viral" pro-Trump letter by an anonymous gay person; but Times stenographers
Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, in an Op-Ed somehow misfiled as reporting,
omit to mention this portion of the speech altogether. Sad!
More seriously,
Dylann Matthews of Vox does real reporting, connecting Trump ideologically
to the European right, starting with the Netherlands' Pim Fortuyn, gay himself,
who combined support for LGBT rights with a blanket ban on Muslim immigration,
and moving on through Marine LePen, concluding that Trump's support is "a smokescreen
through which to advocate anti-Muslim policies."
But Fortuyn was open about his support of gay rights; and open about banning
Muslim immigration, so isn't "smokescreen" itself a smokescreen, begging the question?
What Matthews really seems to mean is that Fortuyn's support for LGBT
rights is incompatible with Fortuyn's support for banning Muslim immigration. Empirically,
that doesn't seem to be the case; Matthews certainly doesn't document any decrease
in LGBT rights after Fortuyn's rise. So where is the incompatibility? At this point,
we note that Trump shares, with Clinton's liberals, and apparently with Fortuyn,
although not with the left, the idea that to "express identity" is the essence
of a "free people." Speculating freely, we might imagine that Matthews believes
that Muslims, like LGBT people, must also to be free to express their
identities, and that to prevent them from doing so is "Islamophobia," along the
lines of homophobia.
Here identity politics founders on its own contradictions, as identities clash
on both values and interests; identities cannot all be silo-ed in their own "safe
spaces." For example, immigration, like globalization, creates public goods but
has economic costs that some classes disportionately bear, and economic benefits
that some classes disproportionately accrue, as blue collar workers know but professional
economists are only belatedly discovering. Does the expression of identity trump
those costs? Why? And whose identity? One does not sense, for example, that liberals
are fired with concern for heartlanders who identify as Christians (unless Christians
serve a geopolitical purpose in faraway Syria), or with men who identify as gunowners.
So if what liberals (and conservatives) mean by identity politics is really just
power politics and the upward distribution of wealth, straight up, that's fine
and clarifying, but wasn't the alpha and omega supposed to be justice? Even love?
Of course, by now we are far afield from Trump; but as far as accepting LGBT
people as fully human, can't liberals take yes for an answer?
2. Blowback
Trump says:
America must do more – much more – to protect its citizens, especially people
who are potential victims of crimes based on their backgrounds or sexual orientations.
It also means we must change our foreign policy.
The decision to overthrow the regime in Libya, then pushing for the overthrow
of the regime in Syria, among other things, without plans for the day after,
have created space for ISIS to expand and grow.
These actions, along with our disastrous Iran deal, have also reduced our
ability to work in partnership with our Muslim allies in the region.
For instance, the last major NATO mission was Hillary Clinton's war in Libya.
That mission helped unleash ISIS on a new continent.
(I think the Iran deal is one of the few good things that Obama has done.) Trump
is describing what
Chalmers Johnson called "blowback." Isn't it remarkable the Trump is the only
candidate - including, AFAIK, Sanders - who's even mentioning it? (See here for
Clinton's pivotal role in promoting the LIbya debacle in the Obama administration.)
And if you want a good view into the heart of the foreign policy establishment,
try the Foreign Policy podcast.
They think Obama was weak because
he didn't put "boots on the ground" in Syria; they love Clinton because they think
she'll be "muscular"; and they hate Trump, and think hes's a lunatic. Well, what's
more lunatic then setting the Mediterranean littoral on fire, and provoking a refugee
crisis in the European Union? Moar blowback, anyone?
3. War and Peace
With respect to a military response to "radical Islamism," the difference between
Trump and Clinton can be summed up most effectively in the form of a table. (I've
taken
Clinton's words from this transcript.)
Figure 1: Recommended Military Action Against "Radical Islam"
Trump
Clinton
The attack in Orlando makes it even more clear: we cannot contain
this threat – we must defeat it.
The good news is that the coalition
effort in Syria and Iraq has made real gains in recent months.
So we should keep the pressure on ramping up the air campaign,
accelerating support for
our friends fighting to take and hold ground, and pushing our partners
in the region to do even more.
(Clinton's speech was
delivered at a Cleveland company that makes military helmets. Military Keynesianism,
anyone?)
AP [***cough***] labels Trump's speech as "aggressive," by contrast to Clinton's,
without mentioning (a) that Trump is conscious of blowback and (b) only Clinton
recommends airstrikes and an "accelerated" ground war; ditto
Politico; ditto
The Economist.
WaPo, omitting the same two points, labels Clinton as "sober." I guess a couple
three more
Friedman Units should do it…
Conclusion
Just as a troll prophylactic, let me say that this post is not an endorsement
of any candidate (not even
Sanders, who snagged an F-35 base for Vermont). I'm not sure how to balance
charges of racism, fascism, and corruption in the context of identity politics,
when clearly all three are systemic, interact with each other, and must be owned
by all (both) candidates. (Do the bodies of people of color char differently because
they are far away? Doesn't a
"disposition matrix" sound like something
Adolf Eichmann might devise?)
Rather, this post is a plea for citizens to "do their own research"[6] and listen
to what the candidates actually say, put that in context, and try to understand.
The press, with a few honorable exceptions, seems to be gripped by the same "madness
of crowds" that gripped them in 2008 (except for Obama, against Clinton) or in
2002-2003 (for WMDs, and for the Iraq War). Only in that way can we hope to hold
candidates accountable.
APPENDIX I
Some brief remarks on Trump's advance work:
1) Trump still needs practice with his teleprompter;
2) The mike was picking up Trump's breathing;
3) The staging looks like Dukakis (that is, provincial). It should look like
Reagan (national);
4) Trump's website is simple and easy to use and looks like it was designed
for a normal person, not a laid-off
site developer. However, it looks low budget. Hmm.
APPENDIX II
Here's why I skipped Trump on guns and the NRA. To frame this in partisan terms:
From Democrats, what I consider to be a rational policy on guns -
taxing gun owners for the externalities of gun ownership combined with Darwin
Awards over time, and ridicule - is not on offer, so it's foolish to waste time
with whatever ineffective palliative they propose, especially while they continue
to take money from private equity firms that own gun manufacturers, and arrange
overseas contracts for those same manufacturers. As for Republicans, it's impossible
to see how the country could be more awash in guns than it already is. So if you
want to argue about guns, don't do it here. There's plenty of opportunity in both
Links and Water Cooler.
[2] Except for Section 3, "War and Peace," I'm not going to compare Clinton's
foreign policy speech today to this speech by Trump, because I've analyzed several
Clinton speeches already, and presumably NC readers already know how to parse her.
[3] I'm not going to analyze Trump's rhetoric in in this post, but note the
anaphora: "It is… It is.. It is…." Notice also
the simple, declarative sentences, which Trump uses very effectively as hammer
blows; the most complicated sentence we get in this passage is the parallel construction
of "not only because… not because." And note the sound patterning from the sentence
containing that phrase, gutturals like gunfire: "A radical Islamic
terrorist targeted the nightclub not only because
he wanted to kill Americans, but in order to execute
gay and lesbian citizens because of their sexual orientation."
Whoever Trump hired to write his speeches, they're doing an excellent, and unobtrusive,
job.
[4] That's not to give the parties, let alone Trump, credit; they follow and
don't lead. LGBT people led, in particular the now almost erased ACT-UP, with its
non-violent direct action.
[5] And if you're extremely cynical, you might see Trump as posthumously rehabilitating
Roy Cohn. But today is my day to be kind.
[6] See
PBS,
CBS, and *** cough ***
AP on fact-checking. Sometimes, of course, facts are "facts"; more importantly:
WANTED: CEO
Must be detail oriented
Said no search firm ever.
Which is better: The candidate who gets the big picture right, and details wrong,
or the candidate who's great with detail, and bounces from one clstrfck to another?
You tell me.
The third-party nominee Gary Johnson believes former Republican candidates for president, Jeb
Bush and Lindsey Graham among them, will defect at the polls this November rather than vote for
Donald Trump. He expects they'll vote Libertarian instead.
"When it's all said and done, they'll pull the Johnson-Weld lever because it's a real choice,"
the former governor of New Mexico told the Guardian in a wide-ranging interview this week.
Johnson said he founded his prediction "on instinct", but that he was confident that he had
high-profile Republican votes – "whether they say so or not is another story".
Johnson may already have at least one Republican leader knocking on his door. Mitt Romney, the
party's 2012 nominee, told CNN on Friday that he was considering casting his lot with the
Libertarians.
"If Bill Weld were at the top of the ticket, it would be very easy for me to vote for Bill Weld
for president," he said. Weld is Johnson's running mate and preceded Romney as governor of
Massachusetts.
Johnson, who is at 12% in a recent national poll, hopes that by winning voters disaffected by
Trump and Hillary Clinton, he can establish his party as a political force to be reckoned with.
In particular, Johnson insisted that he is a fit for supporters of a Democrat – the Vermont
senator Bernie Sanders – who may be less than enthused about Clinton's nomination for the party.
He cited an online quiz in which he sided with the Vermont senator 73% of the time, adding:
"We're on the same page when it comes to people and their choices."
"Legalizing marijuana, military intervention and that crony capitalism is alive and well," he
said, rattling off issues of concern that he and the progressive Sanders share. "People with
money are able to pay for privilege, and they buy it."
"... The position Trump is now taking on Libya is not that different from the one that liberal hawks took when the Iraq war started to go badly. They wanted "credit" for supporting regime change and war, but also wanted to be able to second-guess how Bush managed the war. So once things started going wrong, they said they favored invading but disagreed with the way Bush had gone about it. Ritual paeans to the importance of multilateralism usually followed. That put them in the rather absurd spot of attacking Bush for mishandling the illegal, unnecessary war that he started, as if it would have been all right if it had just been managed more competently. ..."
"... This sort of criticism, like Trump's complaint about Libya, takes for granted that there was nothing inherently destabilizing and dangerous in overthrowing a foreign government that better management couldn't have fixed. That misses the crucial point that forcible regime change and its consequences can't be "managed" successfully because so many of its effects are out of the control of the intervening government(s) and some can't be anticipated in advance. ..."
comments on Trump's latest position on the Libyan war:
I'm sure the Libya hawks in the Hillary camp would also prefer a timeline
where their war went off without any bad bits. But if Trump has any ideas
about how the Pentagon could have "take[n] out Qaddafi and his group" without
creating a situation where Libya is "not even a country anymore," he didn't
share them. Instead he's basically saying I'm for a Libya war that worked
out better, without Benghazi and all that. Which is a bit like saying The
Iraq war was a great idea, except for the insurgency or Going into Vietnam
was wise, as long as we could've had a quick victory.
The position Trump is now taking on Libya is not that different from the
one that liberal hawks took when the Iraq war started to go badly. They wanted
"credit" for supporting regime change and war, but also wanted to be able to
second-guess how Bush managed the war. So once things started going wrong, they
said they favored invading but disagreed with the way Bush had gone about it.
Ritual paeans to the importance of multilateralism usually followed. That put
them in the rather absurd spot of attacking Bush for mishandling the illegal,
unnecessary war that he started, as if it would have been all right if it had
just been managed more competently.
This sort of criticism, like Trump's complaint about Libya, takes for granted
that there was nothing inherently destabilizing and dangerous in overthrowing
a foreign government that better management couldn't have fixed. That misses
the crucial point that forcible regime change and its consequences can't be
"managed" successfully because so many of its effects are out of the control
of the intervening government(s) and some can't be anticipated in advance. If
Trump was fine with removing Gaddafi from power by force, and he admits that
he was, he
can't credibly complain about the chaos that followed when the U.S. did
exactly that. Trump has the same problem on Libya that Romney and all other
hawkish candidates have had, which is that he cannot challenge Clinton on the
decision to intervene because he ultimately agreed with that decision and supported
joining the conflict at the time.
Goldwater girl was virtually on a par with John Kasich among big Republican donors
Notable quotes:
"... The thing about the Clintons is that they are, as politicians, honest. When bought, they stay bought. Hence their popularity with businesses. Trump is far too much of a wheeler dealer to stay bought, this is what seems to worry the oligarchy. ..."
"... Later, I developed an alternate theory for why Obama and Clinton were pushed front. As President, either could be trusted to betray their base and lose badly, divide their base (and give them no motive to energize them) setting the stage for zombie resurrection of the Republicans in 2010 - and also, continue the Republican militaristic anti-civll-liberties, shadow-bank friendly, torture-friendly Bush policies. I have no idea if either theory was correct. ..."
"... 2016: A year ago, we had the media pushing Clinton hard, as this implacable juggernaut, with opponents portrayed as annoying gnats at her heels. Sanders came up and got coverage, perhaps because of his major fundraising, perhaps because he was another candidate they could trust. Other candidates got minimal coverage. ..."
"... So: are they being set up for the Fall again? Or is Clinton being engineered as our next President? ..."
"... Does anyone *really* believe that Clinton will break up the huge shadow banking system? Prosecute the fraudclosers, prosecute the banksters, prosecute the torturers, stop the "humanitarian bombing" and so forth? ..."
"... Does anyone *really* believe that Clinton will break up the huge shadow banking system? Prosecute the fraudclosers, prosecute the banksters, prosecute the torturers, stop the "humanitarian bombing" and so forth? ..."
"... The only people who believe that are the people who also believe that is what Obama will do. ..."
Politico reported in early May, when Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee,
that the Clinton campaign started calling major Republican donors almost immediately , pitching
her as the natural candidate for them. Many of the recipients were cool to the appear, reasoning
that Clinton would probably prevail regardless. But that was before the polls showed that Trump becoming
the virtually official Republican nominee meant he quickly moved in national polls to score a mere
few points behind Clinton, when the widespread assumption had been that he would top out at a much
lower level.
And it's not as if Clinton didn't already have real pull among big Republican givers.
This chart from Time Magazine shows as of late 2015 where 2012 Romney donors were sending their
Presidential bucks in this cycle. You can see that Clinton was virtually on a par with John Kasich
The Financial Times surveyed major US business groups and found
they greatly prefer Clinton . Mind you, "greatly prefer" translates as "loathes Trump, deems
her to be less obviously terrible." Clinton is a status quo candidate, and as much as she would probably
shake her finger at businessmen more than they'd like, she won't break any big rice bowls.
From the Financial Times :
In the most comprehensive survey to date of business views on the US election, half of the
trade groups who responded to the FT said they would break from the traditional party of business
to back Mrs Clinton - despite reservations about the Democratic front-runner's candidacy.
Only a quarter of respondents preferred Mr Trump, who has run a caustic campaign marked by
populist attacks on business. But support for Mrs Clinton was often lukewarm, sparked more by
alarm over the presumptive Republican nominee than enthusiasm for her..
The FT polled 53 Washington-based trade associations and received responses from 16 of them
that lobby for nearly 100,000 businesses with combined annual revenues of more than $3.5tn. A
quarter of respondents said they could not decide which candidate would be best for business because
it was too early to judge their policy platforms, or replied "none of the above".
Several trade groups expressed dismay that for the first time in living memory they faced a
presidential race without a clear pro-business candidate, dashing their hopes of a new dawn after
nearly eight years of what they see as over-regulation by the Obama administration.
Mr [Bill] Reinsch, speaking shortly before retiring from his trade group [companies ranging
from Cisco to General Electric to Procter & Gamble ] this month, added: "The other thing [companies]
want is predictability, which is the antithesis of Trump, who brags about being unpredictable."…
The business groups that said they would prefer Mrs Clinton tended to represent more internationally-minded
members in fast-moving or technology-dependent sectors. The smaller core of Trump support came
from more domestic-oriented sectors and those hurt by the Democratic causes of environmentalism
and trade unions.
The thing about the Clintons is that they are, as politicians, honest. When bought, they stay
bought. Hence their popularity with businesses. Trump is far too much of a wheeler dealer to stay
bought, this is what seems to worry the oligarchy.
I've been wondering… What will really happen in the Fall? All I know is that things will be
interesting, as in cursed. Past history, as I remember: In 2000, the media was quite nice to Candidate
Bush - someone they could sit down and have a beer with. He was the front-runner before a single
primary or caucus was held. Contrast with the serial lying about Candidate Gore, accompanied by
serious coverage of third-party Candidate Nader's campaign.
2008: on the Democratic side, Obama and Clinton were front-runners before a single primary
or caucus was held. My idea back then was that whoever would win would be set up for the Fall
(note the pun). Clinton was subject to the Clinton Rules. Obama had the worst post-9/11 name possible
for a Presidential candidate, not to mention being black.
Of course, economic reality intervened. Later, I developed an alternate theory for why
Obama and Clinton were pushed front. As President, either could be trusted to betray their base
and lose badly, divide their base (and give them no motive to energize them) setting the stage
for zombie resurrection of the Republicans in 2010 - and also, continue the Republican militaristic
anti-civll-liberties, shadow-bank friendly, torture-friendly Bush policies. I have no idea if
either theory was correct.
In 2012, we had minimal coverage of primarying Obama, or of third-party candidates.
2016: A year ago, we had the media pushing Clinton hard, as this implacable juggernaut,
with opponents portrayed as annoying gnats at her heels. Sanders came up and got coverage, perhaps
because of his major fundraising, perhaps because he was another candidate they could trust. Other
candidates got minimal coverage.
So: are they being set up for the Fall again? Or is Clinton being engineered as our next
President?
Does anyone *really* believe that Clinton will break up the huge shadow banking system?
Prosecute the fraudclosers, prosecute the banksters, prosecute the torturers, stop the "humanitarian
bombing" and so forth?
Does anyone *really* believe that Clinton will break up the huge shadow banking system?
Prosecute the fraudclosers, prosecute the banksters, prosecute the torturers, stop the "humanitarian
bombing" and so forth?
The only people who believe that are the people who also believe that is what Obama will do.
What is important that Hillary past provides so many powerful and easy
avenues of attack on her (and she in not a Democrat; she is a neocon, warmonger neoliberal, hell bent
on US world domination) that it is easy to be distracted by this excessive menu :-)
Notable quotes:
"... Then there's that Sanders factor. The Vermont senator has presented an unexpected challenge to Mrs Clinton. His attacks on her past support for trade deals and her ties to the current political establishment have drawn blood. ..."
"... It seems the Republican was already testing lines of attack in his victory speech on Tuesday night. He brought up Mrs Clinton's support for coal regulations that have caused unemployment in places like Pennsylvania and Ohio. He mentioned that Bill Clinton backed the North America Trade Agreement, which he called "the single worst trade deal". ..."
"... If Mr Trump can put the Midwest in play, that previously mentioned electoral tilt may not be so imposing after all. ..."
"... Facing off against Mr Trump is going to take a nimble, creative campaign and candidate. That hasn't always been a strength for the instinctively controlled and cautious Mrs Clinton. ..."
Mr Trump is going to present an unpredictable adversary for the former secretary of state. As
the Republican primary has shown, no topic is off the table for him and no possible line of attack
out of bounds.
"Her past is really the thing, rather than what she plans to do in the future," Mr Trump told the
Washington Post on Tuesday. "Her past has a lot of problems, to put it bluntly."
The day before making those comments, Mr Trump had lunch with Edward Klein, a journalist who has
made a career of writing inflammatory books about the Clintons and their sometimes chequered history.
Chances are, Mr Trump was taking notes.
That Bernie Sanders factor
Then there's that Sanders factor. The Vermont senator has presented an unexpected challenge to
Mrs Clinton. His attacks on her past support for trade deals and her ties to the current political
establishment have drawn blood.
Could some of his true loyalists stay home or vote for a third party? Could some of his working-class
supporters in the industrial mid-west cross over to Mr Trump?
It seems the Republican was already testing lines of attack in his victory speech on Tuesday
night. He brought up Mrs Clinton's support for coal regulations that have caused unemployment in
places like Pennsylvania and Ohio. He mentioned that Bill Clinton backed the North America Trade
Agreement, which he called "the single worst trade deal".
If Mr Trump can put the Midwest in play, that previously mentioned electoral tilt may not be
so imposing after all.
There's no playbook for how a Democrat can run against a Republican like Mr Trump. In some places,
such as immigration, he will be well to her right. In other areas, like foreign policy and trade,
he could come at her from the left.
Can abortion or the social safety net be wedge issues? Probably not against a man who defended Planned
Parenthood and Social Security on a Republican debate stage.
Facing off against Mr Trump is going to take a nimble, creative campaign and candidate. That
hasn't always been a strength for the instinctively controlled and cautious Mrs Clinton.
You know you've come to the end of a fireworks show when the shells start bursting all at once.
I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference
to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive
view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party
generally.
This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest
passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less
stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest
rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural
to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities,
is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.
The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and
repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing
faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes
of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.
Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely
out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make
it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It
agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of
one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign
influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the
channels of party passions.
Priority A in this letter is cyber and jihad strategy? Puh-lease. WTAF, another clueless ideologue.
Here's my list:
1. End American Empire. We have 800 bases in 140 countries. Close them and send the personnel
back to the US, give them shovels and backhoes and make them start rebuilding our Third World
infrastructure.
2. Prosecute financial crime. No more "fines", we need perp walks by senior executives. That's
the only thing that will work.
3. Close the DHS. We already have the FBI and CIA Roll back the Patriot Act spying provisions.
4. Audit the Fed. Full transparency of what they own, what their market activities are, who
owns them. Fed chair to be appointed by the Executive branch, not just selected from a list of
"approved" candidates submitted by the Fed.
5. Remove capital gains taxation on physical gold and silver bullion. Americans need to build
more wealth, not more paper.
6. Remove corporate tax exemption for issuing dividends.
7. Tax all unearned income at the same rate as earned income.
8. Fire the entire staff of the FASB and start over. Plain vanilla GAAP accounting including
mark-to-market.
9. End pre-crime drone assasination policy effective immediately.
10. New Marshall Plan for the MidEast. Take 1/2 of the budget we spend blowing the place up
and put it in a fund for development of ME countries. Announce the end of the drone/invasion/occupation
policy and the new investment fund with huge fanfare. We get peace and prosperity and great new
markets full of people who like us again.
11. Putin, Xi and US pres to hold tri-lateral peace talks. End Cold War II. Invite the Eurozone
lapdogs if you must (but no Frenchmen
The pitiful part of that is, we created the jihad is, we support them, arm them, feed them.
They're our mercenaries. So we create a BOOGIEMAN, tell the country that we must do everything
possible to defend against them, send them into other nations to do our dirty work for us, thereby
increasing the fear and terror back home, as they follow orders and chop off heads on television?
Talk about "wagging the dog"? Then they say in order to protect the "HOMELANDS" from these monsters,
we'll, you'll have to sacrifice some rights? You'll have to sacrifice some security? You'll have
to accept some invasion of your privacy. You'll have to allow the government to spend hundreds
of billions of dollars on spying, making war, building killing machines, and you the American
public will have to accept austerity, so we can get through this together? BULLSHIT!
" The very nature of government - monopoly power - makes it the number 1 destination of the
psychosociopaths. "
Only in 'Murika, the government doesn't hold the monopoly power, private corporations do. They
have even bought your governement lock, stock and barrel. Obama is no more than a mouthpiece for
private companies. See how he is travelling salesman for the TTIP, NAFTA and such treaties that
are bad for the USA's population and all other countries' populations too.
Which means you don't have a government at all . You are ruled by a transnational private sector
through political puppets, banana republic style.
"...4. Our problems are huge right now, but one of the most obvious is that we've not passed
along the meaning of America to the next generation..."
Yes you did, Senator Sasse. America, American government and American politics means systemic
psychopathy. Sick, power-seeking and power-hoarding individuals. What you failed to pass on was
your fantasy of what you would like America to be. The next generation can't ignore the reality
of what they see and believe in your fantasy - if anything, they're realists. The meaning of America
to them is a tax-farming organization run for the benefit of the MIC, big ag,
big pharma, big oil, etc. They recognize that they are cattle, not snowflakes.
"...If we don't get them to re-engage..."
Holy crap... seriously? You sound like the MSM trying to figure out some marketing trick to
sell themselves to 'the next generation' - a generation that has already thrown the MSM on the
scrap-heap of history as a useless tool of the rich and powerful. The next generation has ABANDONED
dreams of your fantasy America. They just want to minimize the oppression and pain America causes
them. They want to be left the fuck alone and don't want to fix YOUR mess - it's unfixable to
them. They're not buying the bullshit of 'fixability' any more - that was your generation's weakness.
"...-- thinking about how we defend a free society in the face of global jihadis,.."
Jihadis the CIA created for their latest Middle East clownfuckery? The jihadi 'threat' as manufactured
by the FBI or MSM? Hey, guess what Senator: that's your fucking problem, not theirs. They're afraid
of cops and gangs of immigrants, not fake jihadis .
"...or how we balance our budgets after baby boomers have dishonestly over-promised for decades,..."
Why would they give a fuck? They know they are already 100% screwed - things will never be
as good for them as it was for their parents. They are going to suffer the consequences of shitty
fiscal policy for the next fifty years, and you expect them to somehow be interested in making
the government behave NOW? Fuck that... are you stupid or something? They didn't break it - YOU
did.
"...or how we protect First Amendment values in the face of the safe-space movement..."
Er... their First Amendment rights have already been whored out by your employer, Senator:
the U.S. Congress. And typical of your employer, you 'see' a problem were none exists: a few hundred,
maybe thousand whiney college students DOES NOT equate to a Constitutional problem for the other
five million or so members of that generation. If you want to debate safe spaces while Rome burns,
go ahead. They're not interested.
"...– then all will indeed have been lost..."
Yes, I agree. Congress and the rest of the U.S. government have been throwing away the American
dream for thirty-plus years. Yes, it's lost. That's what happens when you throw something away.
Don't expect them to go on a scavenger hunt for its decayed corpse now. It's worth saving to YOU,
not THEM. You fucked it up so bad that they have no illusions about 'finding' anything useable
again. They're not looking and not interested in being convinced to look, Senator. It's not there
for them any more.
"...One of the bright spots with the rising generation, though, is that they really would like
to rethink the often knee-jerk partisanship of their parents and grandparents. We should encourage
this rethinking..."
No, they are simply rejecting the failed mechanism of a usurped voting process and a failed
constitutional republic. That doesn't mean they're looking for replacement parts to fix that one
thing, because the rest of the republic is completely fucked up . They're not interested in band-aids
on a stinking, rotting corpse. They don't want to have anything to do with it.
A member of Congress trying to 'market' America to the next generation is exactly like the
MSM trying to market themselves to the next generation: it's pathetic and futile. 'America' is
just the name of their current prison and owner. They simply tolerate it. When it becomes intolerable,
they'll leave (if they're allowed to).
I know that's the meme being pushed, but I don't see it in reality. The two parties, supposedly
so polarized, offer minute differences in actual policy. The differences over which they'd claim
to take us to Civil War really boil down to which constituent and contributor group gets greased.
In dictionary definitions, every politician in America is a liberal. In terms of their dedication
to unifying corporate and State power, they're all Fascists. Some are smilier Fascists than others,
but they're all Fascists.
Wrong. America is not a Liberal nation. In a Liberal nation working class would have a say.
As inequality grows, their taxes would go up. Education and healthcare would be free. Labor wouldn't
be taxed.
Corporativism is to the right and not left. Its labor is to the left.
The excerpt below should help clarify the confusion between Democrats and Republicans:
….(Bakunin) predicted that there would be two forms of modern intellectuals, what he called
the 'Red Bureaucracy', who would use popular struggles to try to take control of state power and
institute the most vicious and ruthless dictatorships in history, and the other group, who would
see that there isn't going to be an access to power that way and would therefore become the servants
of private power and the state capitalist democracy, where they would, as Bakunin put it, 'beat
the people with the people's stick,' talk about democracy but beat the people with it. That's
actually one of the few predictions in the social sciences that's come true, to my knowledge,
and a pretty perceptive one." Chomsky On Democracy and Education, page 248.
"... The following is a preview of a chapter by Claudia von Werlhof in "The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century." (2009) ..."
"... To read more, order the book online. Help us spread the word: "like" the book on Facebook and share with your friends -- ..."
No one asks these questions because they seem absurd. Yet, no one can escape
them either. Until the onslaught of the global economic crisis, the motto of
so-called "neoliberalism" was TINA: "There Is No Alternative!"
No alternative to "neoliberal globalization"?
No alternative to the unfettered "free market" economy?
What Is "Neoliberal Globalization"?
Let us first clarify what globalization and neoliberalism are, where they
come from, who they are directed by, what they claim, what they do, why their
effects are so fatal, why they will fail and why people nonetheless cling to
them. Then, let us look at the responses of those who are not – or will not
– be able to live with the consequences they cause.
This is where the difficulties begin. For a good twenty years now we have
been told that there is no alternative to neoliberal globalization, and that,
in fact, no such alternative is needed either. Over and over again, we have
been confronted with the TINA-concept: "There Is No Alternative!" The "iron
lady", Margaret Thatcher, was one of those who reiterated this belief without
end.
The TINA-concept prohibits all thought. It follows the rationale that there
is no point in analyzing and discussing neoliberalism and so-called globalization
because they are inevitable. Whether we condone what is happening or not does
not matter, it is happening anyway. There is no point in trying to understand.
Hence: Go with it! Kill or be killed!
Some go as far as suggesting that globalization – meaning, an economic system
which developed under specific social and historical conditions – is nothing
less but a law of nature. In turn, "human nature" is supposedly reflected by
the character of the system's economic subjects: egotistical, ruthless, greedy
and cold. This, we are told, works towards everyone's benefit.
The question remains: why has Adam Smith's "invisible hand" become a "visible
fist"? While a tiny minority reaps enormous benefits from today's neoliberalism
(none of which will remain, of course), the vast majority of the earth's population
suffers hardship to the extent that their very survival is at stake. The damage
done seems irreversible.
All over the world media outlets – especially television stations – avoid
addressing the problem. A common excuse is that it cannot be explained.[1] The
true reason is, of course, the media's corporate control.
What Is Neoliberalism?
Neoliberalism as an economic policy agenda which began in Chile in 1973.
Its inauguration consisted of a U.S.-organized coup against a democratically
elected socialist president and the installment of a bloody military dictatorship
notorious for systematic torture. This was the only way to turn the neoliberal
model of the so-called "Chicago Boys" under the leadership of Milton Friedman
– a student of Friedrich von Hayek – into reality.
The predecessor of the neoliberal model is the economic liberalism of the
18th and 19th centuries and its notion of "free trade". Goethe's assessment
at the time was: "Free trade, piracy, war – an inseparable three!"[2]
At the center of both old and new economic liberalism lies:
Self-interest and individualism; segregation of ethical principles and economic
affairs, in other words: a process of 'de-bedding' economy from society; economic
rationality as a mere cost-benefit calculation and profit maximization; competition
as the essential driving force for growth and progress; specialization and the
replacement of a subsistence economy with profit-oriented foreign trade ('comparative
cost advantage'); and the proscription of public (state) interference with market
forces.[3]
Where the new economic liberalism outdoes the old is in its global claim.
Today's economic liberalism functions as a model for each and everyone: all
parts of the economy, all sectors of society, of life/nature itself. As a consequence,
the once "de-bedded" economy now claims to "im-bed" everything, including political
power. Furthermore, a new twisted "economic ethics" (and with it a certain idea
of "human nature") emerges that mocks everything from so-called do-gooders to
altruism to selfless help to care for others to a notion of responsibility.[4]
This goes as far as claiming that the common good depends entirely on the
uncontrolled egoism of the individual and, especially, on the prosperity of
transnational corporations. The allegedly necessary "freedom" of the economy
– which, paradoxically, only means the freedom of corporations – hence consists
of a freedom from responsibility and commitment to society.
The maximization of profit itself must occur within the shortest possible
time; this means, preferably, through speculation and "shareholder value". It
must meet as few obstacles as possible. Today, global economic interests outweigh
not only extra-economic concerns but also national economic considerations since
corporations today see themselves beyond both community and nation.[5] A "level
playing field" is created that offers the global players the best possible conditions.
This playing field knows of no legal, social, ecological, cultural or national
"barriers".[6] As a result, economic competition plays out on a market that
is free of all non-market, extra-economic or protectionist influences – unless
they serve the interests of the big players (the corporations), of course. The
corporations' interests – their maximal growth and progress – take on complete
priority. This is rationalized by alleging that their well-being means the well-being
of small enterprises and workshops as well.
The difference between the new and the old economic liberalism can first
be articulated in quantitative terms: after capitalism went through a series
of ruptures and challenges – caused by the "competing economic system", the
crisis of capitalism, post-war "Keynesianism" with its social and welfare state
tendencies, internal mass consumer demand (so-called Fordism), and the objective
of full employment in the North. The liberal economic goals of the past are
now not only euphorically resurrected but they are also "globalized". The main
reason is indeed that the competition between alternative economic systems is
gone. However, to conclude that this confirms the victory of capitalism and
the "golden West" over "dark socialism" is only one possible interpretation.
Another – opposing – interpretation is to see the "modern world system" (which
contains both capitalism and socialism) as having hit a general crisis which
causes total and merciless competition over global resources while leveling
the way for investment opportunities, i.e. the valorization of capital.[7]
The ongoing globalization of neoliberalism demonstrates which interpretation
is right. Not least, because the differences between the old and the new economic
liberalism can not only be articulated in quantitative terms but in qualitative
ones too. What we are witnessing are completely new phenomena: instead of a
democratic "complete competition" between many small enterprises enjoying the
freedom of the market, only the big corporations win. In turn, they create new
market oligopolies and monopolies of previously unknown dimensions. The market
hence only remains free for them, while it is rendered unfree for all others
who are condemned to an existence of dependency (as enforced producers, workers
and consumers) or excluded from the market altogether (if they have neither
anything to sell or buy). About fifty percent of the world's population fall
into this group today, and the percentage is rising.[8]
Anti-trust laws have lost all power since the transnational corporations
set the norms. It is the corporations – not "the market" as an anonymous mechanism
or "invisible hand" – that determine today's rules of trade, for example prices
and legal regulations. This happens outside any political control. Speculation
with an average twenty percent profit margin edges out honest producers who
become "unprofitable".[9] Money becomes too precious for comparatively non-profitable,
long-term projects,
or projects that only – how audacious! – serve a good life. Money instead
"travels upwards" and disappears. Financial capital determines more and more
what the markets are and do.[10] By delinking the dollar from the price of gold,
money creation no longer bears a direct relationship to production".[11] Moreover,
these days most of us are – exactly like all governments – in debt. It is financial
capital that has all the money – we have none.[12]
Small, medium, even some bigger enterprises are pushed out of the market,
forced to fold or swallowed by transnational corporations because their performances
are below average in comparison to speculation – rather: spookulation – wins.
The public sector, which has historically been defined as a sector of not-for-profit
economy and administration, is "slimmed" and its "profitable" parts ("gems")
handed to corporations (privatized). As a consequence, social services that
are necessary for our existence disappear. Small and medium private businesses
– which, until recently, employed eighty percent of the workforce and provided
normal working conditions – are affected by these developments as well. The
alleged correlation between economic growth and secure employment is false.
When economic growth is accompanied by the mergers of businesses, jobs are lost.[13]
If there are any new jobs, most are precarious, meaning that they are only
available temporarily and badly paid. One job is usually not enough to make
a living.[14] This means that the working conditions in the North become akin
to those in the South, and the working conditions of men akin to those of women
– a trend diametrically opposed to what we have always been told. Corporations
now leave for the South (or East) to use cheap – and particularly female – labor
without union affiliation. This has already been happening since the 1970s in
the "Export Processing Zones" (EPZs, "world market factories" or "maquiladoras"),
where most of the world's computer chips, sneakers, clothes and electronic goods
are produced.[15] The EPZs lie in areas where century-old colonial-capitalist
and authoritarian-patriarchal conditions guarantee the availability of cheap
labor.[16] The recent shift of business opportunities from consumer goods to
armaments is a particularly troubling development.[17]
It is not only commodity production that is "outsourced" and located in the
EPZs, but service industries as well. This is a result of the so-called Third
Industrial Revolution, meaning the development of new information and communication
technologies. Many jobs have disappeared entirely due to computerization, also
in administrative fields.[18] The combination of the principles of "high tech"
and "low wage"/"no wage" (always denied by "progress" enthusiasts) guarantees
a "comparative cost advantage" in foreign trade. This will eventually lead to
"Chinese wages" in the West. A potential loss of Western consumers is not seen
as a threat. A corporate economy does not care whether consumers are European,
Chinese or Indian.
The means of production become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, especially
since finance capital – rendered precarious itself – controls asset values ever
more aggressively. New forms of private property are created, not least through
the "clearance" of public property and the transformation of formerly public
and small-scale private services and industries to a corporate business sector.
This concerns primarily fields that have long been (at least partly) excluded
from the logic of profit – e.g. education, health, energy or water supply/disposal.
New forms of so-called enclosures emerge from today's total commercialization
of formerly small-scale private or public industries and services, of the "commons",
and of natural resources like oceans, rain forests, regions of genetic diversity
or geopolitical interest (e.g. potential pipeline routes), etc.[19] As far as
the new virtual spaces and communication networks go, we are witnessing frantic
efforts to bring these under private control as well.[20]
All these new forms of private property are essentially created by (more
or less) predatory forms of appropriation. In this sense, they are a continuation
of the history of so-called original accumulation which has expanded globally,
in accordance with to the motto: "Growth through expropriation!"[21]
Most people have less and less access to the means of production, and so
the dependence on scarce and underpaid work increases. The destruction of the
welfare state also destroys the notion that individuals can rely on the community
to provide for them in times of need. Our existence relies exclusively on private,
i.e. expensive, services that are often of much worse quality and much less
reliable than public services. (It is a myth that the private always outdoes
the public.) What we are experiencing is undersupply formerly only known by
the colonial South. The old claim that the South will eventually develop into
the North is proven wrong. It is the North that increasingly develops into the
South. We are witnessing the latest form of "development", namely, a world system
of underdevelopment.[22] Development and underdevelopment go hand in hand.[23]
This might even dawn on "development aid" workers soon.
It is usually women who are called upon to counterbalance underdevelopment
through increased work ("service provisions") in the household. As a result,
the workload and underpay of women takes on horrendous dimensions: they do unpaid
work inside their homes and poorly paid "housewifized" work outside.[24] Yet,
commercialization does not stop in front of the home's doors either. Even housework
becomes commercially co-opted ("new maid question"), with hardly any financial
benefits for the women who do the work.[25]
Not least because of this, women are increasingly coerced into prostitution,
one of today's biggest global industries.[26] This illustrates two things: a)
how little the "emancipation" of women actually leads to "equal terms" with
men; and b) that "capitalist development" does not imply increased "freedom"
in wage labor relations, as the Left has claimed for a long time.[27] If the
latter were the case, then neoliberalism would mean the voluntary end of capitalism
once it reaches its furthest extension. This, however, does not appear likely.
Today, hundreds of millions of quasi-slaves, more than ever before, exist
in the "world system."[28] The authoritarian model of the "Export Processing
Zones" is conquering the East and threatening the North. The redistribution
of wealth runs ever more – and with ever accelerated speed – from the bottom
to the top. The gap between the rich and the poor has never been wider. The
middle classes disappear. This is the situation we are facing.
It becomes obvious that neoliberalism marks not the end of colonialism but,
to the contrary, the colonization of the North. This new "colonization of the
world"[29] points back to the beginnings of the "modern world system" in the
"long 16th century", when the conquering of the Americas, their exploitation
and colonial transformation allowed for the rise and "development" of Europe.[30]
The so-called "children's diseases" of modernity keep on haunting it, even in
old age. They are, in fact, the main feature of modernity's latest stage. They
are expanding instead of disappearing.
Where there is no South, there is no North; where there is no periphery,
there is no center; where there is no colony, there is no – in any case no "Western"
– civilization.[31]
Austria is part of the world system too. It is increasingly becoming a corporate
colony (particularly of German corporations). This, however, does not keep it
from being an active colonizer itself, especially in the East.[32]
Social, cultural, traditional and ecological considerations are abandoned
and give way to a mentality of plundering. All global resources that we still
have – natural resources, forests, water, genetic pools – have turned into objects
of utilization. Rapid ecological destruction through depletion is the consequence.
If one makes more profit by cutting down trees than by planting them, then there
is no reason not to cut them.[33] Neither the public nor the state interferes,
despite global warming and the obvious fact that the clearing of the few remaining
rain forests will irreversibly destroy the earth's climate – not to mention
the many other negative effects of such actions.[34] Climate, animal, plants,
human and general ecological rights are worth nothing compared to the interests
of the corporations – no matter that the rain forest is not a renewable resource
and that the entire earth's ecosystem depends on it. If greed, and the rationalism
with which it is economically enforced, really was an inherent anthropological
trait, we would have never even reached this day.
The commander of the Space Shuttle that circled the earth in 2005 remarked
that "the center of Africa was burning". She meant the Congo, in which the last
great rain forest of the continent is located. Without it there will be no more
rain clouds above the sources of the Nile. However, it needs to disappear in
order for corporations to gain free access to the Congo's natural resources
that are the reason for the wars that plague the region today. After all, one
needs diamonds and coltan for mobile phones.
Today, everything on earth is turned into commodities, i.e. everything becomes
an object of "trade" and commercialization (which truly means liquidation, the
transformation of all into liquid money). In its neoliberal stage it is not
enough for capitalism to globally pursue less cost-intensive and preferably
"wageless" commodity production. The objective is to transform everyone and
everything into commodities, including life itself.[35] We are racing blindly
towards the violent and absolute conclusion of this "mode of production", namely
total capitalization/liquidation by "monetarization".[36]
We are not only witnessing perpetual praise of the market – we are witnessing
what can be described as "market fundamentalism". People believe in the market
as if it was a god. There seems to be a sense that nothing could ever happen
without it. Total global maximized accumulation of money/capital as abstract
wealth becomes the sole purpose of economic activity. A "free" world market
for everything has to be established – a world market that functions according
to the interests of the corporations and capitalist money. The installment of
such a market proceeds with dazzling speed. It creates new profit possibilities
where they have not existed before, e.g. in Iraq, Eastern Europe or China.
One thing remains generally overlooked: the abstract wealth created for accumulation
implies the destruction of nature as concrete wealth. The result is a "hole
in the ground" and next to it a garbage dump with used commodities, outdated
machinery and money without value.[37] However, once all concrete wealth (which
today consists mainly of the last natural resources) will be gone, abstract
wealth will disappear as well. It will, in Marx's words, "evaporate". The fact
that abstract wealth is not real wealth will become obvious, and so will the
answer to the question of which wealth modern economic activity has really created.
In the end it is nothing but monetary wealth (and even this mainly exists virtually
or on accounts) that constitutes a monoculture controlled by a tiny minority.
Diversity is suffocated and millions of people are left wondering how to survive.
And really: how do you survive with neither resources nor means of production
nor money?
The nihilism of our economic system is evident. The whole world will be transformed
into money – and then it will disappear. After all, money cannot be eaten. What
no one seems to consider is the fact that it is impossible to re-transform commodities,
money, capital and machinery into nature or concrete wealth. It seems that underlying
all "economic development" is the assumption that "resources", the "sources
of wealth",[38] are renewable and everlasting – just like the "growth" they
create.[39]
The notion that capitalism and democracy are one is proven a myth by neoliberalism
and its "monetary totalitarianism".[40]
The primacy of politics over economy has been lost. Politicians of all parties
have abandoned it. It is the corporations that dictate politics. Where corporate
interests are concerned, there is no place for democratic convention or community
control. Public space disappears. The res publica turns into a res privata,
or – as we could say today – a res privata transnationale (in its original Latin
meaning, privare means "to deprive"). Only those in power still have rights.
They give themselves the licenses they need, from the "license to plunder" to
the "license to kill".[41] Those who get in their way or challenge their "rights"
are vilified, criminalized and to an increasing degree defined as "terrorists"
or, in the case of defiant governments, as "rogue states" – a label that usually
implies threatened or actual military attack, as we can see in the cases of
Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, and maybe Syria and Iran in the near future.
U.S. President Bush had even spoken of the possibility of "preemptive" nuclear
strikes should the U.S. feel endangered by weapons of mass destruction.[42]
The European Union did not object.[43]
Neoliberalism and war are two sides of the same coin.[44] Free trade, piracy
and war are still "an inseparable three" – today maybe more so than ever. War
is not only "good for the economy" but is indeed its driving force and can be
understood as the "continuation of economy with other means".[45] War and economy
have become almost indistinguishable.[46] Wars about resources – especially
oil and water – have already begun.[47] The Gulf Wars are the most obvious examples.
Militarism once again appears as the "executor of capital accumulation" – potentially
everywhere and enduringly.[48]
Human rights and rights of sovereignty have been transferred from people,
communities and governments to corporations.[49] The notion of the people as
a sovereign body has practically been abolished. We have witnessed a coup of
sorts. The political systems of the West and the nation state as guarantees
for and expression of the international division of labor in the modern world
system are increasingly dissolving.[50] Nation states are developing into "periphery
states" according to the inferior role they play in the proto-despotic "New
World Order".[51] Democracy appears outdated. After all, it "hinders business".[52]
The "New World Order" implies a new division of labor that does no longer
distinguish between North and South, East and West – today, everywhere is South.
An according International Law is established which effectively functions from
top to bottom ("top-down") and eliminates all local and regional communal rights.
And not only that: many such rights are rendered invalid both retroactively
and for the future.[53]
The logic of neoliberalism as a sort of totalitarian neo-mercantilism is
that all resources, all markets, all money, all profits, all means of production,
all "investment opportunities", all rights and all power belong to the corporations
only. To paraphrase Richard Sennett: "Everything to the Corporations!"[54] One
might add: "Now!"
The corporations are free to do whatever they please with what they get.
Nobody is allowed to interfere. Ironically, we are expected to rely on them
to find a way out of the crisis we are in. This puts the entire globe at risk
since responsibility is something the corporations do not have or know. The
times of social contracts are gone.[55] In fact, pointing out the crisis alone
has become a crime and all critique will soon be defined as "terror" and persecuted
as such.[56]
IMF Economic Medicine
Since the 1980s, it is mainly the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) of
the World Bank and the IMF that act as the enforcers of neoliberalism. These
programs are levied against the countries of the South which can be extorted
due to their debts. Meanwhile, numerous military interventions and wars help
to take possession of the assets that still remain, secure resources, install
neoliberalism as the global economic politics, crush resistance movements (which
are cynically labeled as "IMF uprisings"), and facilitate the lucrative business
of reconstruction.[57]
In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher introduced neoliberalism
in Anglo-America. In 1989, the so-called "Washington Consensus" was formulated.
It claimed to lead to global freedom, prosperity and economic growth through
"deregulation, liberalization and privatization". This has become the credo
and promise of all neoliberals. Today we know that the promise has come true
for the corporations only – not for anybody else.
In the Middle East, the Western support for Saddam Hussein in the war between
Iraq and Iran in the 1980s, and the Gulf War of the early 1990s, announced the
permanent U.S. presence in the world's most contested oil region.
In continental Europe, neoliberalism began with the crisis in Yugoslavia
caused by the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) of the World Bank and the
IMF. The country was heavily exploited, fell apart and finally beset by a civil
war over its last remaining resources.[58] Since the NATO war in 1999, the Balkans
are fragmented, occupied and geopolitically under neoliberal control.[59] The
region is of main strategic interest for future oil and gas transport from the
Caucasus to the West (for example the "Nabucco" gas pipeline that is supposed
to start operating from the Caspian Sea through Turkey and the Balkans by 2011.[60]
The reconstruction of the Balkans is exclusively in the hands of Western corporations.
All governments, whether left, right, liberal or green, accept this. There
is no analysis of the connection between the politics of neoliberalism, its
history, its background and its effects on Europe and other parts of the world.
Likewise, there is no analysis of its connection to the new militarism.
NOTES
[1] Maria Mies and Claudia von Werlhof (Hg), Lizenz zum Plündern. Das Multilaterale
Abkommen über Investitionen MAI. Globalisierung der Konzernherrschaft – und
was wir dagegen tun können, Hamburg, EVA, 2003 (1998), p. 23, 36.
[2] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Part Two, New York, Oxford University
Press, 1999.
[3] Maria Mies, Krieg ohne Grenzen. Die neue Kolonisierung der Welt, Köln,
PapyRossa, 2005, p. 34.
[4] Arno Gruen, Der Verlust des Mitgefühls. Über die Politik der Gleichgültigkeit,
München, 1997, dtv.
[5] Sassen Saskia, "Wohin führt die Globalisierung?," Machtbeben, 2000, Stuttgart-München,
DVA.
[6] Maria Mies and Claudia von Werlhof (Hg), Lizenz zum Plündern. Das Multilaterale
Abkommen über Investitionen MAI. Globalisierung der Konzernherrschaft – und
was wir dagegen tun können, Hamburg, EVA, 2003 (1998), p. 24.
[7] Immanuel Wallerstein, Aufstieg und künftiger Niedergang des kapitalistischen
Weltsystems, in Senghaas, Dieter: Kapitalistische Weltökonomie. Kontroversen
über ihren Ursprung und ihre Entwicklungsdynamik, Frankfurt, 1979, Suhrkamp;
Immanuel Wallerstein (Hg), The Modern World-System in the Longue Durée, Boulder/
London; Paradigm Publishers, 2004.
[8] Susan George, im Vortrag, Treffen von Gegnern und Befürwortern der Globalisierung
im Rahmen der Tagung des WEF (World Economic Forum), Salzburg, 2001.
[9] Elmar Altvater, Das Ende des Kapitalismus, wie wir ihn kennen, Münster,
Westfälisches Dampfboot, 2005.
[10] Elmar Altvater and Birgit Mahnkopf, Grenzen der Globalisierung. Ökonomie,
Ökologie und Politik in der Weltgesellschaft, Münster, Westfälisches Dampfboot,
1996.
[11] Bernard Lietaer, Jenseits von Gier und Knappheit, Interview mit Sarah
van Gelder, 2006,
www.transaction.net/press/interviews/Lietaer 0497.html; Margrit Kennedy,
Geld ohne Zinsen und Inflation, Steyerberg, Permakultur, 1990.
[12] Helmut Creutz, Das Geldsyndrom. Wege zur krisenfreien Marktwirtschaft,
Frankfurt, Ullstein, 1995.
[13] Maria Mies and Claudia von Werlhof (Hg), Lizenz zum Plündern. Das Multilaterale
Abkommen über Investitionen MAI. Globalisierung der Konzernherrschaft – und
was wir dagegen tun können, Hamburg, EVA, 2003 (1998), p. 7.
[14] Barbara Ehrenreich, Arbeit poor. Unterwegs in der Dienstleistungsgesellschaft,
München, Kunstmann, 2001.
[15] Folker Fröbel, Jürgen Heinrichs, and Otto Kreye, Die neue internationale
Arbeitsteilung. Strukturelle Arbeitslosigkeit in den Industrieländern und die
Industrialisierung der Entwicklungsländer, Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1977.
[16] Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, Maria Mies, and Claudia von Werlhof, Women,
The Last Colony, London/ New Delhi, Zed Books, 1988.
[17] Michel Chossudovsky, War and Globalization. The Truth Behind September
11th, Oro, Ontario, Global Outlook, 2003.
[18] Folker Fröbel, Jürgen Heinrichs, and Otto Kreye, Die neue internationale
Arbeitsteilung. Strukturelle Arbeitslosigkeit in den Industrieländern und die
Industrialisierung der Entwicklungsländer, Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1977.
[19] Ana Isla, The Tragedy of the Enclosures: An Eco-Feminist Perspective
on Selling Oxygen and Prostitution in Costa Rica, Man., Brock Univ., Sociology
Dpt., St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada, 2005.
[20] John Hepburn, Die Rückeroberung von Allmenden – von alten und von neuen,
übers. Vortrag bei, Other Worlds Conference; Univ. of Pennsylvania; 28./29.4,
2005.
[21] Claudia von Werlhof, Was haben die Hühner mit dem Dollar zu tun? Frauen
und Ökonomie, München, Frauenoffensive, 1991; Claudia von Werlhof, MAInopoly:
Aus Spiel wird Ernst, in Mies/Werlhof, 2003, p. 148-192.
[22] Andre Gunder Frank, Die Entwicklung der Unterentwicklung, in ders. u.a.,
Kritik des bürgerlichen Antiimperialismus, Berlin, Wagenbach, 1969.
[23] Maria Mies, Krieg ohne Grenzen, Die neue Kolonisierung der Welt, Köln,
PapyRossa, 2005.
[24] Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, Maria Mies, and Claudia von Werlhof, Women,
the Last Colony, London/New Delhi, Zed Books, 1988.
[25] Claudia von Werlhof, Frauen und Ökonomie. Reden, Vorträge 2002-2004,
Themen GATS, Globalisierung, Mechernich, Gerda-Weiler-Stiftung, 2004.
[26] Ana Isla, "Women and Biodiversity as Capital Accumulation: An Eco-Feminist
View," Socialist Bulletin, Vol. 69, Winter, 2003, p. 21-34; Ana Isla, The Tragedy
of the Enclosures: An Eco-Feminist Perspective on Selling Oxygen and Prostitution
in Costa Rica, Man., Brock Univ., Sociology Department, St. Catherines, Ontario,
Canada, 2005.
[27] Immanuel Wallerstein, Aufstieg und künftiger Niedergang des kapitalistischen
Weltsystems, in Senghaas, Dieter: Kapitalistische Weltökonomie. Kontroversen
über ihren Ursprung und ihre Entwicklungsdynamik, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1979.
[28] Kevin Bales, Die neue Sklaverei, München, Kunstmann, 2001.
[29] Maria Mies, Krieg ohne Grenzen, Die neue Kolonisierung der Welt, Köln,
PapyRossa, 2005.
[30] Immanuel Wallerstein, Aufstieg und künftiger Niedergang des kapitalistischen
Weltsystems, in Senghaas, Dieter: Kapitalistische Weltökonomie. Kontroversen
über ihren Ursprung und ihre Entwicklungsdynamik, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1979;
Andre Gunder Frank, Orientierung im Weltsystem, Von der Neuen Welt zum Reich
der Mitte, Wien, Promedia, 2005; Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on
a World Scale, Women in the International Division of Labour, London, Zed Books,
1986.
[31] Claudia von Werlhof, "Questions to Ramona," in Corinne Kumar (Ed.),
Asking, We Walk. The South as New Political Imaginary, Vol. 2, Bangalore, Streelekha,
2007, p. 214-268
[32] Hannes Hofbauer, Osterweiterung. Vom Drang nach Osten zur peripheren
EU-Integration, Wien, Promedia, 2003; Andrea Salzburger, Zurück in die Zukunft
des Kapitalismus, Kommerz und Verelendung in Polen, Frankfurt – New York, Peter
Lang Verlag, 2006.
[34] August Raggam, Klimawandel, Biomasse als Chance gegen Klimakollaps und
globale Erwärmung, Graz, Gerhard Erker, 2004.
[35] Immanuel Wallerstein, Aufstieg und künftiger Niedergang des kapitalistischen
Weltsystems, in Senghaas, Dieter: Kapitalistische Weltökonomie. Kontroversen
über ihren Ursprung und ihre Entwicklungsdynamik, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1979.
[36] Renate Genth, Die Bedrohung der Demokratie durch die Ökonomisierung
der Politik, feature für den Saarländischen Rundfunk am 4.3., 2006.
[37] Johan Galtung, Eurotopia, Die Zukunft eines Kontinents, Wien, Promedia,
1993.
[38] Karl Marx, Capital, New York, Vintage, 1976.
[39] Claudia von Werlhof, Loosing Faith in Progress: Capitalist Patriarchy
as an "Alchemical System," in Bennholdt-Thomsen et.al.(Eds.), There is an Alternative,
2001, p. 15-40.
[40] Renate Genth, Die Bedrohung der Demokratie durch die Ökonomisierung
der Politik, feature für den Saarländischen Rundfunk am 4.3., 2006.
[41] Maria Mies and Claudia von Werlhof (Hg), Lizenz zum Plündern. Das Multilaterale
Abkommen über Investitionen MAI. Globalisierung der Konzernherrschaft – und
was wir dagegen tun können, Hamburg, EVA, 2003 (1998), p. 7; Maria Mies, Krieg
ohne Grenzen, Die neue Kolonisierung der Welt, Köln, PapyRossa, 2005.
[42] Michel Chossudovsky, America's "War on Terrorism," Montreal, Global
Research, 2005.
[43] Michel Chossudovsky, "Nuclear War Against Iran," Global Research, Center
for Research on Globalization, Ottawa 13.1, 2006.
[44] Altvater, Chossudovsky, Roy, Serfati, Globalisierung und Krieg, Sand
im Getriebe 17, Internationaler deutschsprachiger Rundbrief der ATTAC – Bewegung,
Sonderausgabe zu den Anti-Kriegs-Demonstrationen am 15.2., 2003; Maria Mies,
Krieg ohne Grenzen, Die neue Kolonisierung der Welt, Köln, PapyRossa, 2005.
[45] Hazel Hendersen, Building a Win-Win World. Life Beyond Global Economic
Warfare, San Francisco, 1996.
[46] Claudia von Werlhof, Vom Wirtschaftskrieg zur Kriegswirtschaft. Die
Waffen der, Neuen-Welt-Ordnung, in Mies 2005, p. 40-48.
[47] Michael T. Klare, Resource Wars. The New Landscape of Global Conflict,
New York, Henry Holt and Company, 2001.
[48] Rosa Luxemburg, Die Akkumulation des Kapitals, Frankfurt, 1970.
[49] Tony Clarke, Der Angriff auf demokratische Rechte und Freiheiten, in
Mies/Werlhof, 2003, p. 80-94.
[50] Sassen Saskia, Machtbeben. Wohin führt die Globalisierung?, Stuttgart-München,
DVA, 2000.
[51] Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire, Cambridge, Harvard Univ. Press,
2001; Noam Chomsky, Hybris. Die endgültige Sicherstellung der globalen –Vormachtstellung
der USA, Hamburg-Wien, Europaverlag, 2003.
[52] Claudia von Werlhof, Speed Kills!, in Dimmel/Schmee, 2005, p. 284-292
[53] See the "roll back" and "stand still" clauses in the WTO agreements
in Maria Mies and Claudia von Werlhof (Hg), Lizenz zum Plündern. Das Multilaterale
Abkommen über Investitionen MAI. Globalisierung der Konzernherrschaft – und
was wir dagegen tun können, Hamburg, EVA, 2003.
[54] Richard Sennett, zit. "In Einladung zu den Wiener Vorlesungen," 21.11.2005:
Alternativen zur neoliberalen Globalisierung, 2005.
[55] Claudia von Werlhof, MAInopoly: Aus Spiel wird Ernst, in Mies/Werlhof,
2003, p. 148-192.
[56] Michel Chossudovsky, America's "War on Terrorism," Montreal, Global
Research, 2005.
[57] Michel Chossudovsky, Global Brutal. Der entfesselte Welthandel, die
Armut, der Krieg, Frankfurt, Zweitausendeins, 2002; Maria Mies, Krieg ohne Grenzen.
Die neue Kolonisierung der Welt, Köln, PapyRossa, 2005; Bennholdt-Thomsen/Faraclas/Werlhof
2001.
[58] Michel Chossudovsky, Global Brutal. Der entfesselte Welthandel, die
Armut, der Krieg, Frankfurt, Zweitausendeins, 2002.
[59] Wolfgang Richter, Elmar Schmähling, and Eckart Spoo (Hg), Die Wahrheit
über den NATO-Krieg gegen Jugoslawien, Schkeuditz, Schkeuditzer Buchverlag,
2000; Wolfgang Richter, Elmar Schmähling, and Eckart Spoo (Hg), Die deutsche
Verantwortung für den NATO-Krieg gegen Jugoslawien, Schkeuditz, Schkeuditzer
Buchverlag, 2000.
"... If we are talking about foreign policy, she is definitely unqualified. Her tenure at State
Department was a disaster. No diplomatic skills, whatsoever. She was trying to imitate Madeleine Albright
not noticing that times changed. ..."
"... In case she is elected, she will be a real threat to world peace. It is just unclear what country
she will decide to invade next. But she will definitely invade. ..."
"... Hillary is running around imposing a neocon purity test on the US foreign policy agenda. ..."
"... A vote for Hillary is a vote for mediocrity; especially in the mid-terms. ..."
"... Its a long campaign. They are not suppose to be friends. Stuff gets said, gets misreported
..."
"... Hillary went negative and dragged the primary into the gutter. She said Sanders should apologize
for Sandy Hook. I don't really blame Sanders for getting angry. ..."
Bernie's remark that Hillary is unqualified to be president is immature and sexist.
If we are talking about foreign policy, she is definitely unqualified. Her tenure at State
Department was a disaster. No diplomatic skills, whatsoever. She was trying to imitate Madeleine
Albright not noticing that times changed.
Her appointment of Dick Cheney close associate Victoria Nuland first as State Department Spokesperson
and then Assistant Secretary of State was an act of betrayal of everything Democratic Party should
stand for. It was actually return to Bush II/Cheney (or should it be Cheney/Bush II) foreign policy.
In case she is elected, she will be a real threat to world peace. It is just unclear what
country she will decide to invade next. But she will definitely invade.
likbez said in reply to MIB...
they're not running around imposing some socialist purity test
Hillary is running around imposing a neocon purity test on the US foreign policy agenda.
Rune Lagman said in reply to MIB...
Without Bernie's revolution the mid-terms is just going to be even more dismal. The Democratic
establishment fail in the mid-terms because they don't run on a national program. They believe
it's about the competency of the individual candidate.
Elections should be about issues that voters care about; the Democratic establishment still
don't get that concept.
A vote for Hillary is a vote for mediocrity; especially in the mid-terms.
dd said in reply to MIB...
Hillary is no FDR although a comparison to JFK's father's wall street shenanigans is probably
apt. I particularly admire the tax-free donations to a tax-free entity with of course wall street
as a major donor. I'm sure under her leadership we will begin to explore even more innovative
tax avoidance to help the needy.
sherparick said in reply to jh...
Its a long campaign. They are not suppose to be friends. Stuff gets said, gets misreported
(in this case a WaPo headline that said something that Clinton did not say. The WaPo by the way
has been far more vicious about Bernie then Clinton and her surrogates on her worse day.)
Sanders is a remarkable politician and always has been. I am not in the end voting for him,
I still admire his campaign as one of the great achievements of the American Left in my lifetime.
Actually, Bernie and Jeff Weaver did Clinton a favor by taking the troll bait. She is at her
best counter-punching and fighting from the underdog position. You can say a lot of things about
Hillary, (I worry about her judgement and group think tendencies), but she is tough and courageous
and seems to actually enjoy a good knock down drag out political fight.
Peter said in reply to sherparick...
Hillary went negative and dragged the primary into the gutter. She said Sanders should
apologize for Sandy Hook. I don't really blame Sanders for getting angry.
Obama was much better at staying focused and on message. But then he made some policy mistakes
as President which I don't believe Sanders would have done.
"... Were it not for the DNC's Machiavellian planning of this primary and, had the states been ordered differently, we wouldn't be at roughly the halfway point with such skewed results. Were it not for the horrendous media bias shown Sanders, across mainstream corporate media, voters probably wouldn't be quite so disgusted and angry with the DNC's decision making. ..."
"... This is fundamentally the problem in our system. Each person enters the voting booth in November with two principal choices: Stinks and Stinks-Even-More. ..."
"... Instead, Bernie's chances are slim (#StillSanders), especially thanks to the major establishment outlets. Even if Clinton wins the nomination a lot of us aren't voting for her. She's hardly distinguishable from a Kissinger fangirl. ..."
"... To paraphrase Franklin, we choose not to have our vote manipulated by the fear of the lesser of two evils. We choose not to give up our "essential Liberty" to purchase a little safety because those that give that up deserve neither safety nor Liberty. ..."
"... We can hope that Sanders can come back and win the nomination because if we have Hillary for the Dem nominee Donald Trump will be a very unkind opponent. Sanders could handle the Donald in a debate. At this very moment the Trump campaign is doing their research on the Clintons. ..."
"... The Clintons define "corrupt." Bill Clinton: "It depends on what the definition of 'is' is." Hillary Clinton, who never traded commodities, made hundreds of thousands of dollars trading commodities with only several trades. Yet she claims she wasn't tipped. They leased the Lincoln Bedroom like it was their AirBNB. If someone can tell me where Clinton money ends and Clinton Foundation money begins, please let me know. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton refuses to release transcripts of her expensive speeches to Wall Street executives. I, a lifelong Democrat from a family of lifelong FDR Democrats, won't vote for Clinton until I know what she said in her speeches. The Clintons and I have come to the end of the road. ..."
"... I am a 76 year old life-long Democrat, and I would never vote for anyone who voted for the invasion of Iraq, or who supported NAFTA. These two issues have been the undoing of America - - along with Citizens United. ..."
I'm going for the longshot. In fact, I just donated to Bernie again yesterday. Even if he doesn't
win, we need him to have as many delegates as possible going into the convention so that we have
a strong voice against interventionist policies and pay to play government as the party platform
is crafted. We need to send a loud message to the Democratic establishment: Enough is enough!
#feelthebern
America needs him. A guy who stands up for everyone. A guy with no baggage. A honest politician
who wants to swim against the established norms and bring change. People are still living in recession.
Big corporation are still making big money. Why can't young people afford to go to college?, why
can't old people retired in peace?, why can't people not afford healthcare?, Why we need to bomb
n kill innocent people abroad? Change is hard to bring. Bernie has a vision, I hope everyone can
see it. Peace!
Rima Regas. is a trusted commenter Mission Viejo, CA
12 hours ago
Well, well...
That's exactly what the Sanders people have been saying will be the case.
Were it not for the DNC's Machiavellian planning of this primary and, had the states been
ordered differently, we wouldn't be at roughly the halfway point with such skewed results. Were
it not for the horrendous media bias shown Sanders, across mainstream corporate media, voters
probably wouldn't be quite so disgusted and angry with the DNC's decision making.
But here we are... Yes, we do have the other half of the primary to get through and it gets
Bernie-friendly from here on out.
Meanwhile, Democratic voter turn out is very low. When is the mainstream media going to stop
promoting Donald Trump and turn its attention to that? For all the talk about how scary a President
Trump would be, nothing much is being said to voters about the low turn out. Reading most papers,
one might be led to think everything is hunky dory in that respect. It isn't.
This is fundamentally the problem in our system. Each person enters the voting booth in
November with two principal choices: Stinks and Stinks-Even-More. By voting for Stinks, we
compromise our own passion only to send the wrong message that we somehow support the policies
and approach of the lesser-evil. This then just continues our decline, and encourages the press
to continue to ignore folks like Bernie who stand for truly profound, positive change. We can
collectively talk ourselves blue about income inequality, but failing to give Bernie his due time
and press coverage is a travesty.
Shameful. What good does it do for Kristof, Blow, Friedman and the Editorial Board to opine
about gross income inequality, only to turn around and deny Bernie his share of the press coverage.
The press has truly let America down. This includes the 24-hour news cycle, low-quality CNN types
and the presumably more deliberate and thoughtful NY Times. All of them have (for reasons that
the average citizen could probably guess) have decided Bernie wasn't worth the air time and print
space.
"Why? These states aren't as bad for him as those in the South, but they force him to confront
his two weaknesses: diversity and affluence."
These weaknesses could have been mitigated over time had the Times and the mainstream press
actually told its more diverse readers how Sanders' policies would in fact help them, and its
affluent readers that, by the way, their neighbors are starving.
Instead, Bernie's chances are slim (#StillSanders), especially thanks to the major establishment
outlets. Even if Clinton wins the nomination a lot of us aren't voting for her. She's hardly distinguishable
from a Kissinger fangirl. (Kissinger, as a reminder, had no trouble authorizing the murder
and systematic starvation of hundreds of thousands of East Timorese going into the 80s, which,
surprise, the Times didn't mention *at all* for at least a few years.) She disgusts me, and I
will never support her. I suspect it's the same for other Berniebros (as you would mockingly call
us). You've created a fascist beast, American press. Do your job.
Our family loves Bernie. We have waited so long for someone who we truly knew was leveling
with us. God help us if it comes to the disastrous consequences of 2000 when Bush won as some
people abandoned the Dems for an alternate choice but we must vote with our conscience and will
write his name in if that is what it comes to. We just hope the 'great beast' we see within the
hearts of so many Americans will not awaken yet again as it did in 2003 leading us into the obsenity
known as Iraq or worse .
To paraphrase Franklin, we choose not to have our vote manipulated by the fear of the lesser
of two evils. We choose not to give up our "essential Liberty" to purchase a little safety because
those that give that up deserve neither safety nor Liberty.
We stand or fall with Bernie and if the latter be true, it is with the hope that the next generation
finds its way into the light. It appears, from what I am seeing, that they may be better suited
to run this country than my generation has. My apologies to the Greatest Generation for failing
to deliver on their gift born of such great sacrifice.
We can hope that Sanders can come back and win the nomination because if we have Hillary
for the Dem nominee Donald Trump will be a very unkind opponent. Sanders could handle the Donald
in a debate. At this very moment the Trump campaign is doing their research on the Clintons.
If it ends up being a contest between Trump and Clinton the vulnerabilities of the Clintons will
be on full display. And Trump is not known for his kindness or restraint. It would not be pretty.
If Hillary is the candidate then Trump's path to the White House will be much easier. She's got
too many flaws.
The Clintons define "corrupt." Bill Clinton: "It depends on what the definition of
'is' is." Hillary Clinton, who never traded commodities, made hundreds of thousands of dollars
trading commodities with only several trades. Yet she claims she wasn't tipped. They leased the
Lincoln Bedroom like it was their AirBNB. If someone can tell me where Clinton money ends and
Clinton Foundation money begins, please let me know.
Hillary Clinton's brothers were influence peddlers. Hugh Clinton accepted a large amount of
money to influence Pres. Clinton to offer a pardon. Tony Clinton sells his connections to the
highest bidders.
Hillary Clinton refuses to release transcripts of her expensive speeches to Wall Street
executives. I, a lifelong Democrat from a family of lifelong FDR Democrats, won't vote for Clinton
until I know what she said in her speeches. The Clintons and I have come to the end of the road.
I will never understand why black voters would choose Hillary over Bernie when Bernie is the
one who actual has a tracjk record of fighting for civil rights.
The Democratic Party and its corporate affiliates' support for HRC has blinded them to a large
problem, viz. that HRC is very likely to be beaten in the general election. Whether earned or
not, there exists a very high level of antipathy for HRC, among Independents, and yes, Democrats.
Senator Sanders is widely regarded as honest and straightforward. If he is not nominated, the
legions of young Democrats and the large numbers of Independents that support the Senator, will
stay home on election day and/or the extremely disaffected will vote for Trump if he is nominated...very,
very few will vote for HRC (this is my anecdotal observation from many conversations with the
Senator's supporters). It is also well-known, but often suppressed information that Senator Sanders
does better against Trump than HRC in most national polls. The reality is that Senator Sanders
is by far the best choice for Democrats to beat Trump or any other Republican crazy.
I am a 76 year old life-long Democrat, and I would never vote for anyone who voted for
the invasion of Iraq, or who supported NAFTA. These two issues have been the undoing of America
- - along with Citizens United.
Yes, Sanders is down. Yes, his task is a daunting one, but less daunting than Kasich's path
to the Republican nomination, which is getting more media coverage than the 2.8 million votes
that Sanders drew on Tuesday. Sanders "revolution" is revolutionary only to those who accept the
current Republican view of government as our collective nightmare - an us vs. them fight to the
death over guns, immigration, abortion, deteriorating air and water, income inequality, student
debt, access to health care - funded by sacred and unlimited corporate and PAC dollars.
Sanders
proposes nothing that has not been done before, here or abroad, by representative governments
promoting the health, education, and welfare of all their people. I like to imagine Roosevelt,
Truman, and Eisenhower looking down on Sanders' proposals of what America should be able to do
for its people. Maybe the Ides of March got Sanders. Maybe not?
I keep reading in "The New York Times" that it's over. As I recall, a legendary figure, associated
with two legendary New York baseball teams, used to say that "It aren't over 'til it's over. .
. ."
Why "The New York Times" is so anxious to call the Election of 2016 seems to be a question
fit for an investigation. Where is "Woodstein" when we need them!?
Months before Sanders made any noise about running, I only hoped that we would have someone
besides a Bush or a Clinton as a candidate. In a country this big, don't we have any other qualified
candidates, I wondered. Politics aside, I just didn't think the idea of sending another Bush or
Clinton to the White House was good for (the appearance of) democracy.
Fast forward to today: Bush is out and Sanders is struggling to stay in. Look what happened
to the other democrats (and we won't even talk about third party candidates). They didn't have
a chance. It's an absolute miracle that Sanders has come this far given the toxic role of money
in American politics and the corporate control and neutralizing of American media.
Trump pushed Bush out of the race, but this was hardly a victory over the "establishment".
Trump's money and fame gave him instant access -- and he was quickly able to compete with establishment
candidates.
For me, Sanders is a glimmer of hope. I have no illusions about his chances of securing the
democratic nomination. But I find solace in the idea that, despite everything and everyone working
to get him out, he's still there and his campaign in resonating with young people. He has started
a movement, and that is what can lead to real change.
Rima Regas, is a trusted commenter Mission Viejo, CA
12 hours ago
I have to disagree with Cohn on his assessment of the Black vote. While it is true enough that
Clinton had a lock on the South, her narrow win in Illinois and a close look at the Black vote
there gives us a glimpse of what's to come and there are good ideological and factual reasons
for it as I explain in my essay. Mrs. Clinton, in her campaign, has shown a disdain for the new
civil rights movement. While it may not have swayed older voters, younger ones are not pleased.
Their power, as voters will be felt more in the coming primaries and caucuses:
A few more ways Bernie can win- 1)
the FBI or leaks show Hillary used classified server for emails that she didn't want seen by voters
or the press because they are damning to her election. 2) a larger stronger Yuan devaluation sets
off Wall Street volatility, exposing weaknesses in her economic policcies 3) transcripts of her
Wall Street talks are leaked exposing high level corruption 4) a book is written on how the global
leaders did not take her seriously as Secretary of State 5) polls show that independents don't
like or trust her and will not toe the DNC party line ) etc
Bernie Sanders has a better chance of beating Trump, as several polls show. Trump supporters
want an "outsider" who is not "owned" by either party. He has the advantage over Clinton and Trump
in that he is not corrupt. The Times has been biased through the campaign. They endorsed Clinton
a long time ago, and give her the benefit of coverage. But the REAL story is how Sanders has raised
money from small donors. Why aren't they interviewing those donors on a daily basis? Who are they?
Democrats? Republicans? Independents? The Times is not doing their job, such as conducting investigative
reporting on the Clinton Foundation, and asking will the Clintons close down the Clinton Foundation
if Hillary is elected? Will Bill Clinton continue to give $million dollar speeches when married
to the President? Will he be a co-president, back in the oval office that he disgraced? The Times
should be pushing for Hillary to not only publish the transcripts of her speeches to Wall Street,
but also her and Bill's speeches to Chinese billionaires, and others listed on Clinton Foundation
web site). The Times might also ask how the Clintons turned a nonprofit foundation into an engine
of personal wealth after leaving the White House claiming poverty. Do your job, NYT!!
It is tragic that what is oft referred to as 'the black vote' may well usher in a Donald J.
Trump Presidency. And It is ironic that votes for H. Clinton, as polling suggests, serves to do
a few things a.) it decreases Sen. Sanders chances to be POTUS, which is obvious, but it also
b.) will galvanize Republican voter turnout and may even c.) shift Independents and even some
Democrats to the Right during the generals. I hold accountable the media and its collusion with
DNC establishment and, honestly, the low-information voter.
H. Clinton offers very little, in stated policy goals, for the poor and middle-class, which is
in stark contrast to Sen. Sander's historical record and future policy goals. Sen. Sanders, even
if I were not a fan, is offering positions (e.g. education w/ out debt, single-payer health care,
combating crony capitalism, defeating citizens united, breaking up the largest banks) that have
clearly promoted equality in many other developed nations. There is a direct correlation between
these policy positions and bettering the lives of others. Piketty, Galbraith, Saez, Stiglitz,
and countless other elite economic minds all agree these measures level the playing field.
It is disheartening to witness, yet again, so many people voting against their own best interests
by responding to dog whistle appeals to the color of one's skin and not the truest needs of the
poor and middle-class. I am resigned to 8 more years of "hope and change" that does nothing for
equality.
Bernie Sanders gives the impression that he will achieve major changes soon. He'll bring about
single-payer health care (with everyone saving money). He'll end super PACs and huge corporate/billionaire
contributions in political campaigns. He'll redo our foreign trade agreements to protect American
jobs and bring manufacturing jobs back. He'll do away with income inequality and make labor unions
strong again. If he expressed these goals as dreams in the manner of Martin Luther King's "I have
a dream" speech, I'd say fine and good. Let's work towards these ends. But leading his followers
astray by claiming that a revolution is taking place now and that these things can be achieved
soon is just outright disgraceful. I'm not sure why African American don't support Senator Sanders,
but they definitely know better than anyone the difference between dreams and reality. They know,
as Dr. King did, that change takes hard work and a lot of time. The political pendulum may be
starting to swing leftwards again (I hope so). But a revolution? No way.
I have worked on too many campaigns to count, before I quit my addiction to pain and got a
real job. His was an odd campaign.
He expected the media to be a partner in helping him get elected. No candidate ever expects
help from the media. Sander got the third best media coverage of all who ran--and arguable the
most favorable given most of Clinton's coverage was the email scandal. At best you can get from
the media is benign neglect. But the minute you are winning expect a scrubbing that would make
a Brillo pad look gentle.
He assumed he would have inroads to groups without courting them believing success with one
group meant everyone would like him.
He never seem to understand Clinton's strengths. He then seemed surprised by them. You always
understand your oppotrengths at the very least to mitigate the damage.
He fought with the establishment despite running in the establishment. Not only are they voters
--they have business intelligence on local operatives and state level politics. He hit a brick
wall in Nevada and got his clocked cleaned in South Carolina despite outspending Clinton because
the apparatus that existed preferred Clinton.
And lastly, where everyone in this business pours over data--their relationship with data seems
foreign. There are several instances where you get the sense they made something up on the fly--and
honestly surprised at the result.
Oh dear. Another white person telling all those ungrateful and ignorant people of color, the African
Americans, the Hispanics, that they're doing this voting thing all wrong. Makes right thinking Bernsters
wonder why we even bother to let them vote, if they're just going to mis-use it so.
Sanders was involved, 60 years ago, in some civil rights activities. Since then, he's been the
elected official of some of the whitest sections of the country and has not depended on the black
or Hispanic vote to ge re-elected. If you want to tar Clinton with the '95 crime bill, even though
she wasn't a senator then, it ricochets to hit Sanders, who voted for it.
Clinton worked to develop connections and a reputation in the African American and Hispanic sectors.
Bernie Sanders, though a good man, did not. Nor did he work with the existing Democratic party to
support down-ticket elections or democratic events. He always ran as an outsider. Now, he wants to
be in the party and benefit from what the DNC has to offer. Funny that his supporters cry foul when
he, a non-Democrat, doesn't get the full breadth of support from the party he shunned.
So to all those Bernsters out there - please calm down. Everyone deals with favorite politicians
getting rejected, it's life. and the millennial vote is no more or less important than any other
group.
Now that the press and the political actuaries have crowned Clinton the presumptive nominee,
some of the passion that has sustained Sanders will ebb, and we'll see him do less well. Progressives
will slowly accept Clinton and either sit out the primary or curb their enthusiasm for the Bern.
Clinton has, from the beginning, garnered votes by presenting herself as inevitable, not inspirational.
Not so much "Yes We Can" but "Yes I Will."
It's a shame, because a transformational FDR-style Democrat is desperately needed at this point
in our history.
Here's the thing - general elections are part of the democratic process, but the nomination
process is controlled by the parties, who make the rules and call the shots. For 40 years or so,
Ms. Clinton has been involved in fund raising and campaigning for senators, congressmen, and governors.
She has been involved in the DNC and has been supported in return.
Sanders runs as a pure outsider. He shunned the party until he decided to join in order to
run. He has few supporters in the Senate, and little good will among down-ticket Democrats.
Clinton isn't winning on superdelegates, but on pledged delegates from the states. She has
earned a plurality of votes. Claiming otherwise demeans the millions who have already cast their
votes in her favor, and assumes that they are ignorant, stupid, or insane. Their decisions were
other than what you would want. That's democracy. Get over it.
The DNC has stacked the deck in Clinton's favor with its Superdelegate apparatchiks clogging
the arteries of a fair nominating process with 465 clots of greasy fat. Where is the Democracy
in the Democratic party when viable contenders are forced to run the race in hobbles? Not even
the Republicans have come up with Tammany Hall tactic - yet.
So yes, Hillary will most likely be the nominee of the Democratic Party. As an independent
I will not be voting for her or any members of the Republican Insane Clown Posse. More than likely
I will be writing in for the /bernie_sanders.Warren ticket as a protest to rigged elections.
While otherwise quite good, this article contains a factual error that continues to play into
the false Clinton narrative about racialized voting and the Sanders campaign.
According to exit polling, Oklahoma's Democratic Primary was only 74% white. Sanders won the
vote in that state by 10.5% points. This means that the following statement is false: "Mr. Sanders's
best showing in a state where less than 75 percent of voters were white was his two-point win
in Michigan."
And, while we do not have exit polling data from Colorado, the electorate there was almost
certainly less than 75% white. Sanders won by 18.5%. Take for instance Denver County. Denver County
is just 53% white only per United States Census's Quick Facts. 31% of Denver is Latina or Latino,
10% is African American, 2% is Native American, and 4% is Asian. Sanders won Denver County by
9.4%.
To pretend, as this article does, that Arizona (31% Latino) or even Washington State (70% white
only per US Census data) are "whiter" states than Tennessee (75%) and Arkansas (73%) is to betray
exactly the kind of anti-Sanders bias that Margaret Sullivan had to call out in another context
this morning.
At the very least, the Times owes it to its readers to correct the factual error here in a
prominent way.
It's actually shameful that black voters in SC refused to listen or engage with the second
candidate in two candidate race, even when he came to their church:
And can we please stop referring to a state where 60% of the primary voters were black as "diverse."
In a country with a 13% black population, it's more accurately described as "extremely unrepresentative"
"Diverse" does not mean "minorities overrepresented by a factor of 4." New Hampshire is far
closer to the racial mix in America than the electorate in any Democratic Primary in the south.
Bernie never said this would be easy. He has lost a few battles, but he will win the war. We
have to stay the course & get his message out to the people.
Democrats must realize that we can not win the presidency with only the support of southern blacks
& senior citizens. The way this election has been run by the DNC & media has totally alienated
Bernie supporters to the point that a great majority will go green or vote Rep. rather than back
Clinton & the DNC. This is becoming a reality more & more every day. I hope that the super delegates
figure this out by the time we reach the convention or all is lost.
The establishment media favoring the establishment candidate paints a rosy picture for HRC.
We get it. The Bernie Blackout marches along in lock-step with the Trump Trumpet. This scenario
is far more than mere perception. Empirical data will be mined for years to come to show the glaring
disparity. Future journalism majors will compose graduate theses using this fodder. Should we
end up, as currently appears likely, with President Trump, the "golly-how-did-that-happen?" crowd
will have it all explained later by some kid who is now in junior high school because today's
print news editors and broadcast news producers suffered from the "if-it-bleeds-it-leads" school.
Even the vaunted NY Times betrays its "all the news that's fit to print" motto and remains mesmerized
by the Trump con act. Hey fellas, how about a new motto? "Covering Carnival Barkers Since 2016"?
I have to be honest here; I don't see much hope for Bernie to get the nomination. I do hope
he wins my state, and yes, I'll be caucusing for him next weekend, but the numbers don't look
good and I'm feeling depressed.
I intend to vote in November for all races on the ballot. If my state is not in play--if we're
safely blue, like we usually are--I'm writing in Bernie. If there's a chance we might go red,
I'll hold my nose and vote for Hillary.
I didn't like her in 2008 and I don't like her in 2016. She's a neoliberal hawk and I don't
want her getting the US entangled in more wars we'll never get out of. I don't want her starting
negotiations with the Republicans already close to the center so we'll end up all the way to the
right. I don't think she's trustworthy and I think her only guiding principle is ambition.
Needless to say, I'm depressed, and frankly tuning out of the race at this point. The Republicans
are making the US a laughingstock around the world and the Dems appear to be saddled with a candidate
we don't particularly want. Any way you slice it this is going to be an ugly election, and while
I've been a political junkie all my life, I just don't have the enthusiasm to care about it. I
don't see a winning solution in this any way I look at it.
*This* is Hillary's big problem. People like me, who will grudgingly vote for her if we have
to, but who have absolutely no enthusiasm for it. How many of us will just stay home instead of
voting for the lesser evil?
If electability is your main criteria, you should be voting for Sanders.
Sanders does better against every Republican opponent, in every poll in the last month, because
he gets 3-1 support from independents (40% of the electorate), even if he doesn't get a majority
of democrats (30% of the electorate).
Sanders got 71% of the independent voters in Illinois, 72% of the independent voters in New
Hampshire, and 73% of the independent voters in Michigan (exit poll data)
Clinton has high favorability within the Democratic Party, but among all Americans, she has
a 55% NEGATIVE rating (versus only 42% positive), rivaling Trump. Nothing is red meat to Republicans
like Clinton, and she has no appeal to Independents (see above)
It's why in every poll for the last month among REGISTERED VOTERS, Sanders does better against
every Republican opponent than Clinton.
Bernie's most likely winning opportunity is the self-destruction of his opponent, whose high
unfavorability ratings could prove decisive if her email controversy or any number of other vulnerabilities
gains public attention.
There is much talk of a disqualifying event that will knock Hillary out of the race and allow
Bernie to receive the nomination. Talk of indictments, the content of the Wall Street speeches,
e-mail servers, Benghazi, and so on. The talk on both sides often seems to miss the mark. I agree
with those, generally Clinton supporters, who doubt she said or did anything appalling in any
of these regards. However, I agree with the Sanders supporters that she is not giving adequate
answers on these questions. There is really an element of "I'm not going to address such a ridiculous
question". The problem that I see is that Bernie Sanders, who for the most part is on the same
side as Hillary Clinton and her supporters, has been not forcing the issue- nor would it be appropriate
for him to do so. The Republican nominee will certainly do so, to great affect with the many people
who are not currently strong supporters of Clinton. I don't refer to the people who intensely
dislike her, or would never vote for Democrat/woman/centrist/non-conserative anyway. I mean the
people who when Trump/Cruz raises the question about her speeches or lack of e-mail security will
wonder whether there might be something to it. It is clear that there are many voters looking
for a fresh start away from the usual politics. The Clinton campaign needs to address these questions
with coherent and substantive answers now.
Bernie is the future of Democratic policy; Hillary the past.
Among voters younger than 45 Bernie wins big; by 40 points among millenials.
In 2008 Obama offered a new future of justice but most of his program was broken on the shoals
of mindless GOP hostility. Bernie is more of a fighter.
And now the Dem establishment wants to choke off the voices of the young, those paying the biggest
price for plutocracy and Wall Street government.
Bernie is offering a very limited version of the social democracy that has worked so well in minimizing
poverty and maximizing personal opportunity across Europe, Canada, Australia.
Mass grotesque life-killing poverty is destroying the American 100 million underclass as a parasitic
plutocracy is more and more engorged.
There is an alternative. Continue the Clinton-Sanders debates to the floor of the convention.
Should Hillary win, Bernie is committed to uniting the party behind her for he has actually made
her a better, more progressive candidate, shedding off the muck of triangulation.
Bernie is the hope and change candidate. And he also consistently does better than Hillary matched
up against Cruz/Trump in polling.
As one of those 69 year old millennials, I think I know how the system works. The political
parties put up candidates who take money from huge special interests, they get elected, nothing
is accomplished other than more Corporate control of our country: AKA the buying and selling of
elections and a commitment to becoming a total oligarchy. I recently read that some of the DNC's
super delegates are actually lobbyists. The Democrats and Republicans are running our country
into the ground: polluting the planet, killing our kids in wars for profit; jailing minorities
and thereby disenfranchising them from voting, dumbing down the education system, forcing families
into bankruptcy over medical bills, more rights taken away from citizens (out of fear that people
(like me)are going to take to the streets with their pitchforks). If I may quote Laurel and Hardy
(who this campaign often resembles) This is a fine mess you got me into. I'd like to remind the
Clintons and the DNC of how foolish G W Bush looked after standing under that MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
banner at the beginning of the Iraq War. When more than half the country has not yet voted I am
enraged by the arrogance.
The elephant in the room is the potential for an email indictment. Against Trump, Hillary would
be damaged beyond repair if the FBI investigation goes against her. The Clinton campaign is way
too sanguine about this and nobody in the commentariat is talking about it ... but the whole campaign
could turn on it. The FBI is said to be out for blood because Petraeus got off lightly ... and
lesser players getting immunity can't be a good sign.
Bernie needs to keep going if for no other reason than we need another option.
To the Clinton supporters who drone on about HRC's "experience" and track record of getting
things done, please provide citations/links to support your assertions.
The facts show that the bulk of her experience lies in her amazing talents of fabrication and
obfuscation of facts. As First Lady--her longest "political" role, she successfully covered up
and lied for her serially philandering husband, destroying the reputations of his victims in the
process.
During her stint as Senator of her adopted state, backed by Wall Street, big pharma and other
corporate interests, she succeeded in endorsing the disastrous and ongoing war in Iraq and the
repeal of Glass-Steagall, among other dubious votes.
Her time as Secretary of State can be characterized as inconsequential at best and disastrous
at worst, resulting in an FBI investigation and possible indictment.
Her private life, as an obscenely compensated speaker to the Wall Street firms directly responsible
for the financial meltdown, comprise the bulk of her actual accomplishments.
And her refusal to release transcripts of those speeches and the convenient wiping of her unauthorized
email server suggest major character, trust and honesty issues.
Again, citations of what practical experience at running the country she possesses would be
illuminating.
I am ready for a change. I am ready to elect Senator Sanders to be the next President. Let
us leave the establishment behind and make the necessary change for the better. Unlike those who
have been characterized as his mainstay supporters (the young), I am 68 and have waited my entire
grown up adult life for a leader of our country who was not a bought and paid for apparatchik
of the moneyed elite. Never before have I contributed to any political cause or candidate before
Bernie. Now I find someone worth nominating and electing!
The strength of Sanders candidacy has been less in "revelations" about Clinton, and more about
the recognition by voters that there is an alternative to Clinton. This is especially true for
younger voters who don't tend to see the 1990s through rose-colored glasses.
As more people have gotten to know Sanders, his numbers have gone up. The problem for Sanders
has been a question of time and the sequencing of the primary calendar.
Clinton has done exceptionally well with older party regulars, especially in the south. She
lost the 45 and under vote to Sanders 70-30 in Illinois; she is not growing the party.
If Clinton wins in November, she can thank Trump and/or Cruz for doing the work for her. She
can also thank Sanders for getting younger voters engaged in the process and for providing her
with her platform. Al Gore and John Kerry also dominated the primary process. That didn't mean
they were strong general election candidates.
I am a female, late baby boomer. I've voted a straight Democratic ticket my entire life. It
will be a real battle with my conscience to vote for Ms. Clinton. So, if there's any hope for
Bernie Sanders, I will be sending him more funds.
I think college should be provided for everyone who can't afford it. I think medical care should
be provided for everyone who can't afford it. In total, I think everyone should have a substantial
safety net, a floor beneath which no one should fall.
We think of food and shelter in the same way -- as liberals we believe in providing ample food
stamps and decent shelters for those who can't afford it. In our service economy, a formal education
is no longer a luxury but a necessity. As circumstances change, so should our thinking. That's
what true liberalism is all about.
Taxes should be raised on extreme wealth because inequality has already gotten way out of hand.
Joseph in Misoula
"I'm a liberal democrat. But I don't think college should be free for everyone. I do not want
my taxes to go up even more. I do not think Wall Street is an evil entity that should be dismantled.
In fact, I don't think we should try and force a far-left version of America on the large portion
of the population that clearly does not want it."
So who has a right to education? Who should reign in the excesses of the Wall Street casino,
which nearly destroyed the entire world economy? Who should pay more taxes - the broken middle
class, working class, the decimated unions, and the poor, who already all subsidize the exploitation
that fills the coffers of corporations and billionaires? The Democrats once vigorously and almost
universally supported these groups and the ideas that helped them succeed.
You're right. You should absolutely not support Bernie. Because you're not a liberal democrat,
and you're certainly not a progressive. But you are a great representative of Hillary Clinton's
voice, and the Republican lite that now calls itself the Democratic Party. And she's counting
on you.
It's disappointing that no enterprising investigative journalist has found somebody ready to
spill the beans and provide a pirated copy of the now almost legendary Wall Street speeches. But
it may well be that there is such a source, one insisting on substantial compensation, and most
journalists are forbidden from paying for information
It would not be surprising if Trump already has a source picked out, one who, if not subject
to the threat of exposure of some hidden misdeed or under direct obligation to The Donald, is
susceptible to outright bribery, and that Trump is holding that ammunition, waiting to fire after
Clinton has achieved the nomination and is his opponent in the general election.
If that should be the case: Look forward to a President Trump.
Matt Von Ahmad Silverstein Chong, Mill Valley, CA
9 hours ago
Sanders vs Kasich. Only sane choices on both sides.
Otherwise:
Clinton: liar, opportunistic, risk of indictment after nomination risking defeat
Cruz: liar, extremist, not accomplished anything other than shutting the government
Trump: liar, polarizing, risk of defeat as unable to unify party
Not that Sanders and Kasich don't have their own thorns, but in my opinion they are the most
fit to be elected.
Ms. Regas, you write: "Were it not for the DNC's Machiavellian planning of this primary and,
had the states been ordered differently, we wouldn't be at roughly the halfway point with such
skewed results."
The DNC approved and announced the 2016 primary schedule back in August 2014:
Senator Sanders announced his candidacy eight months later on April 30, 2015.
So the Senator and his inner circle of advisors went into this race with eyes wide open knowing
full well what the primary schedule would be and what they would face.
Perhaps you might consider dropping this complaint from your litany.
John S., is a trusted commenter Washington
4 hours ago
I ran the delegate numbers through 15 March excluding Missouri, which is basically a tie like
Illinois was and there will probably be one delegate difference between the winner and loser,
and if the win-to-lose ration stayed the same, then Mrs. Hillary Clinton would still be short
over 200 pledged delegates after all the voting is done.
But the win-to-lose ratio will not remain constant. It will move in favor of Senator Bernard
"Bernie" Sanders and against Mrs. Clinton. Consequently, her shortfall in pledged delegates could
rise to 300-500 pledged delegates.
Keep on running Bernie! I will continue to support your campaign right through Democratic Party
convention.
If Bernie Sanders wins, he would become president. If Hillary Clinton wins , in the White House
will enter Trump.For the success of cause of the change, which wants many Americans, and Bernie
Sanders, must become president ... Trump.
Only one single-minded Republican could exacerbate problems to burst the boil.
There are no simple answers to the very real issues this country faces on every level. Unfortunately,
the individual developed psychologies of voters combined with the natural desire to embrace the
easiest idea that promises to bring a comfortable conclusion to the problems has blinded voters
to the very flawed candidates they have to choose from. I am a Sanders supporter but not because
he can achieve any of his ideas. I support him because he is a brake on the current business as
usual. His qualms about why the two parties cannot get anything done is truth and before we can
fix anything we have to acknowledge what is broken and remove it from any solution we might strive
for. I don't care if the Sanders car breaks down the moment we get off the road. First thing is
first we need to get off the road.
The DNC and RNC are corrupt and liabilities. The Media is covering up their most important
flaws for the sake of business as usual. Too many people have much to lose if this 2 party gravy
train is derailed and that isn't just the billionaires and multi-national corps. An entire system
has compromised the Republic and it need to be cleansed over a period of a decade to just get
rid of the nepotism, corruption, and pay to play shenanigans.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are the poster children for this system. I do not favor Ted
Cruz but he is right when he says the former sells influence and the latter buys it. If those
are options, next time won't be so polite.
Every one should vote according to their convictions ignoring what the media has to say or
does not say. It is also important not to pay attention who is going to win in the general election.
I believe the economy is rigged. The political establishment and corporate America as well as
Banks and Wall Street are all in the same bed. They will have a long happy honeymoon until ordinary
folks cannot support their honeymoon expenses. That gives rise to people like Sanders and Trump,
who will disturb the political order. My vote is for Sanders. Here why? I believe free college
is an economic necessity that we cannot afford not have. I believe the economy is rigged and Main
street should regulate the Wall Street and not the other way around. I believe health care to
all is necessary pre-condition to define a human society. I believe we can afford and we must.
Vote what you believe in and the nation will in the right direction.
Sanders hasn't been allowed to debate, and has gotten little to no media coverage. Our society
picks it's leaders based on 2 things. 1) the candidate with the most royal blood connection to
King John (this is a real theory, may not be true, but 98% of U.S. Presidents are the great-great-great-great-great-great
grand children of Charlemagne and King John,) and 2) which candidate they see in the media the
most. If Bernie loses this nomination, Donald Trump will become our next (and possibly final)
commander in chief.
Your tone is absurdly condescending, as if many Sanders supporters aren't graduate school educated
professionals (doctors, lawyers, accountants, social workers, educators, etc…) In fact, educated
people in pro-social occupations make up one of his stronger demographics.
The differences between the leftists who left their hippie-dropout lifestyles disillusioned
and moved on to professional careers later, and the more youthful Sanders supporters a couple
generations younger are myriad. Foremost, very few of them are cultural dropouts; they didn't
take the "burn out or sell out" brat route of the Boomers. Most are educated, and many are saddled
with student debt loads difficult for older people to understand (the mechanisms that force students
into debt are especially difficult for affluent Boomers to grasp). They compete for jobs with
all those disillusioned brats who settled down to professional practices - and are still working!
Not to mention the fact that your bitter ones - those who never learned the folly of egalitarianism
- are presumably the same ones who never got graduate degrees and cushy jobs; they're still waiting
for representation, for a pro-labor, pro-working-class candidate who never comes.
Nobody has pulled the wool over anyone's eyes, except perhaps the Clinton, the DNC, and the
media outlets that prop them up by appealing to low information voters while engaging only with
policy that benefits affluent ex-leftists in high aging professional positions.
In past elections, I have admittedly voted for the "lesser of two evils." Now, I realize that
just perpetuated a system which is corrupt. If people got truly educated about the issues and
the candidates, there would be only one choice, Senator Bernie Sanders. Alas, as Senator Adlai
Stevenson once said, getting the vote of every right thinking American was not enough. He needed
a majority. Sadly, this is only more true today.
> "These weaknesses could have been mitigated over time had the Times and the mainstream press
actually told its more diverse readers how Sanders' policies would in fact help them"
ANYBODY who wanted to be consumers of Mr. Sanders' talking points had more than enough sources
for that.
Sadly, your complaint is exactly the same one that conservatives have be putting on the NYT since
the mid-70s
What an intelligent person 'might' complain about in relation to your concerns is that the
MSM spends far too little effort accurately 'telling the voters' how delusional Mr. Sanders' proposals
are, and how there is less than a 1% chance they could EVER be implemented under any imaginable
configuration of the Congress
Related to this, I remember sadly, who NYT, WaPo, and others pointed out the lunacy of GWB's
campaign proposals were in 2000
IMPACT: almost zero
The naked agenda of GWB was to take a roaring economy, running in surplus, and open it up for
the private gain of the highest bidder
The GWB/Cheney agenda was very similar to Mitt Romney's LBO scheme to - take control of organizations
- strip them of as many of their valuable assets as they could efficiently do in as short a time
frame as possible
- load them up with debt, that went back into their own pockets so that they had none of their
own assets at risk
- dump the operation as quick as possible so that they wouldn't be holding-the-bag when the feces-hit-the-fan
- look for the next target
I disagree. There has been a very disproportionate coverage of candidates by the media. In
fact, I would argue that the biggest story of this election cycle is the media's own influence
of the election. I find it quite disturbing. This in not my opinion. It's a conclusion based on
studies I've read in the past several days, one of which was published by the NYTimes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/upshot/measuring-donald-trumps-mammoth...
The mainstream media and its corporate owners are deeply troubled over the issue of Campaign
Finance Reform, which has been the most obvious point of Bernie Sanders' campaign--he has financed
his campaign through small donations from individual citizens, instead of SuperPacs like Hillary
has done, and this has been no small feat.
Corrupt campaign finance is a powerful tool the corporate elite uses to manipulate American voters
into voting against their own interests.
This is why the MSM has treated Sanders so shabbily. A glaring example of this problem was the
first Democratic debate put on by CNN. As it turns out, CNN is a subsidiary of Time-Warner, which
is a big donor to Hillary's campaign. Let that sink in.
So, sure enough, Anderson Cooper asked the candidates Zero questions about campaign finance reform,
Bernie Sanders' main issue, and Bernie had to stick the issue into an answer of his to a question
on a different topic near the end of the program. If not for that, the issue would not have been
raised at all.
The same syndrome has been evident, albeit in milder form, in most of the media, including the
NYT, the WaPo, MSNBC, and so on.
Corporate forces, including the corporate media, are loathe to have someone like Bernie Sanders
come along and take their corrupt financing of American politicians away from them.
Of course this latest interesting development must be giving Hillary palpitations; Can a felon
become President of the United States ??
See Business Insider and Link:
"The FBI is widening its investigation of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's
use of a private email account while she was U.S. secretary of state to determine whether any
public corruption laws were violated, Fox News reported on Monday.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been looking into whether classified material was mishandled
during Clinton's tenure at the State Department from 2009-2013.
It will expand its probe by examining possible overlap of the Clinton Foundation charity with
State Department business, Fox reported, citing three unidentified intelligence officials.
"The [FBI] agents are investigating the possible intersection of Clinton Foundation donations,
the dispensation of State Department contracts and whether regular processes were followed," Fox
quoted one of its unidentified sources as saying."
In my mind, the fact that the Clintons have in the past taken money from Donald Trump disqualifies
Hillary from the presidency. I'm on the Bernie train, and if he's railroaded away from the nomination
by anyone, including President Obama, I'm not going to vote in November. I can't vote for either
Trump or Hillary, as they are in cahoots to fleece the average American and criminalize for life,
those whom they don't like, and that is mostly those in economic distress or poor substance abusers
in our country.
Obama's backing of Hillary is a disappointment. The self claimed most transparent administration
in history we were to get, never materialized, rather just the opposite happened, the least transparent
administration in history. His is an administration that went after whistleblowers exposing crimes
against the public, embraced perpetual warfare and mass incarceration, supports the surveillance
state, and his Justice Department and FBI stood by while unarmed American men and children had
their human rights and lives taken away from them by municipalities in Ohio, Illinois, California,
Florida, Texas, etc. etc. ad nauseam, this includes Tamir Rice and the kids drinking leaded water
in Flint. The list of human and civil rights violations under his watch is a long one that goes
on and on and no better than Dubya's. By supporting Hillary over Bernie, the President has proven
that he too, got into politics for the money. How cynical are leaders are today excluding Sanders.
Note that Donald Trump has won 48% of the GOP delegates so far. He would have to win about
54% of the remain delegates to get a majority, and the pundits consider that to be pretty likely.
Bernie has won 42% of the Democratic delegates so far (not counting superdelegates) and would
need to win about 58% of the remaining delegates to win. The pundits seem to consider it to be
pretty unlikely.
Maybe, but I think the pundits might be wrong on this one.
This nonsense about Ralph Nader has been repeated so often that almost seems plausible (…not
unlike many another myth). The historical truth is as follows.
The 2000 election came down to Florida. Running as "independents" were Nader (progressive)
and Pat Buchanan (conservative). Each of them received almost exactly the same number of votes
-- i.e. they cancelled each other out, Buchanan taking as many votes from Bush as Nader did from
Gore.
The one who who gave Bush the election was his brother Jeb. Through his Florida Secretary of
State, he ordered the recount ended -- the excuse proffered was the fear of violence: precinct
stations where poll workers were counting the votes had been attacked by squads of goons (paid
for, as was later revealed) by Karl Rove. The issue of the recount was then thrown to the Supreme
Court, which issued one of the most partisan rulings in its history.
Gore's loss had absolutely nothing to do with Ralph Nader. And those who claim it did are either
woefully uninformed, or are deliberately (and cynically!) distorting history to push some different
agenda of their own.
As I see things, Sanders is a better bet for the fall and the future . Mrs. Clinton was a "Goldwater
Girl" back in her younger days and was/is actually proud of that. I have to wonder if the African
American population realizes what that meant and now means. It hard to believe that she is not
owned by big business. Her possible indictment and the Republican reaction to no indictment. I
do not trust her for so many reasons. Since the polls seem to show that Sanders could defeat the
Republicans it might just be a safer move. Our nation does not want (or should not want) another
mess with another 'Clinton'. Nor should our country have to endure the problems that may well
accompany Mrs. Clinton into office. And hey, does anyone know why Mrs. Clinton discontinued the
use of her maiden name altogether? Has she any identity on her own that is of real value in her
thinking or does she just have to try to ride on a wave created by her hubby----not a very sharp
move for a true feminist. Shame on Mr. Obama for his comments in her favor. I am with Sanders
and probably not bothering to vote for her in the fall if she get the Democratic nomination---just
too hard to justify. The voters
who send her into the fall election just deserve 4 four years of the likes of Mr. Trump. This
might not be the year for Sanders and his approach, but the future lies ahead as an college Professor
always said.
Nate you are delusional if you don't think Bernie will win big in the Bay Area, the days of
smoke filled back rooms with Willie Brown and Diane Feinstein carving up the spoils are thankfully
over. The Bay Area has a very diverse, intelligent populace who can spot a phony when they see
it, Hillary doesn't stand a chance.
Say what you will, Bernie Sanders has breathed life into the Democrat campaign with sound ideas.
He has resurrected some of the old labor friendly ways of a party drifted too far to the right.
His call for a "revolution" of participation in government and civic lifr will resonate past the
election.
I'm glad he's staying in the race. I'd like my chance to vote for him, even if it proves only
symbolicc.
ScottW, is a trusted commenter Chapel Hill, NC
8 hours ago
Still waiting for the release of Hillary's transcripts of speeches she gave to special interest
who lathered her with millions. If you support Hillary and you don't care about seeing what she
told special interests you either work for one, or have your head in the sand.
Hillary's favorability ratings are below 50% in every poll taken. She is considered trustworthy
by a much lower percentage than Bernie.
But she is the best candidate for the Dems because she supports big money in politics. No way
to avoid the FACT the Dem party loves big donors and has absolutely no interest in having it any
other way. They are competing with Repubs for big donors.
A vote for Hillary is a vote for continuing pay to play, which has ruined this country for
the past 3 decades. Another bought and paid for candidate.
If it's Clinton v. Trump (of whoever v. Trump), and we the citizenry choose Trump, I must say
that humankind has really not come very far. In our country, the wealthiest in the world, where
by all reasonable measures, we live in significantly better conditions than most (but not all)
of the world population, we will have proven ourselves not so different from the typical ups-and-downs
that third-world countries and banana republics experience. For all our riches and our advancements,
we, as humans, must be somehow consigned, as a collective, to make the same stupid mistakes. I
hope we prove ourselves better than that.
There are quite a few more ways Bernie can win: leaks expose Hilary's Wall Street speeches,
; FBI charges; a strong yuan devaluation causes significant stock market volatility; etc
It's sad that educated "affluent" voters will support Clinton ostensibly to try to hold onto
as much of their wealth as possible even when it's worse for the nation at large. It's the exact
confluence of money and politics that Clinton stands for and Sanders rejects. This race is about
one candidate who is well-liked, genuine, and looking to honestly help people versus another who
pretends to be working for the people, but who's track record is a virtual Frank Underwood guide
book of self-serving political maneuvers for wealth and power.
Sanders ideas to give power back to the people instead of back to the wealthy isn't as radical
as the media portrays him. It's the basic tenets of democracy most of us learned back in grade
school. Hopefully whatever magic spell Clinton has over the black vote will be broken and voters
will wake up to realize there is only one candidate fighting on their behalf.
Actually, public colleges USED to be free for every in-state student. In the flower of my mature
years, I can still remember that.
I also remember making a livable living as a woman with only a HS diploma, serving as an executive
secretary for the high-powered and well-connected.
Many of them were identical to the snarling Democratic women who serve as Hillary*s henchpeople.
Even as they worked for the *better good* in the non-profit and socially advanced universe, they
were more than happy to trample on people like me.
And *me* are, like, legion...
I will never vote for Hillary. I will write in Sanders* name if I have to, and sleep soundly
on Election Night, regardless of what happens, because I will have acted according to my own principles
and ethics. If we all do so Sanders can win. If others do the usual craven Democratic fold--you*ll
get what you deserve.
It is time for the NYTimes and the rest of the corporate media to recognize the very real and
terrifying possibility that Donald Trump will be our next president. It is time to drop their
mindless support of Hillary and to face the facts. Bernie defeats Trump in every poll by wider
margins than Hillary. Bernie has no baggage. He has never faced indictment. He is not owned by
Wall St. and super pacs. He has not been a cheerleader for endless war in the Middle East.
Hillary is vulnerable in a general election; Bernie is not. I don't think the Times bothered to
report it, but Bernie actually earned more votes in North Carolina than Trump did. Many Bernie
supporters will not vote for Hillary. Bernie, however, has higher positive ratings than any other
candidate this year. He won his home state by 87% because he is beloved by Republicans and Independents
as well as Democrats. It is time to explain to African-Americans, Latinos, etc. WHY he is so beloved.
There is no reason on earth for African-Americans not to support him except for the fact that
they know nothing about him. That is your fault, corporate media, and nobody else's.
The truth is that Sanders performs way better against Trump in general election and state-by-state
match-ups than Clinton. He has great appeal for Independents, and even garners 25% of the Republican
vote in his home state of Vermont. One can say that Sanders hasn't yet been "tested" against the
Republican spin machine in a general election, but honestly, the worst they can throw at him is
"socialist," a term that is actually very friendly to those who come to understand the meaning
of "Democratic socialism." Clinton has so many lies (think, for just one, of "landing under sniper
fire in Bosnia), flip-flops and evolutions in her history that the Republicans will have a field
day with her. Independents don't like her, millennials are apathetic to her, and her only real
appeal is with strong Democrats, most of whom she doesn't inspire. What I fear the most is a Trump
presidency, and that Clinton will end up being another John Kerry, Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale.
Cannot fathom why anyone would vote for Hillary
unless you want the "Same Old - Same Old":
The Rich get Richer and Poor get Poorer.
Do you really think someone who took $ 675,000 for making
3 speeches to Goldman Sachs is going to tame the Wall Street Wolves ?
I believe Sen Sanders is committing a terrible error that will cost him the nomination and
the Democrats the presidency.
While sparing HRC all the hovering questions by running a clean campaign
first, he is not only not using the possibility to highlight his superiority on political luggage
and history which could help him with minority groups, veterans and others ,
but also he is not preparing the public for the spectacle waiting the public when the duel with
Trump(or Cruz) starts.
When the issues such as her voting history on wars, Secretary of State
tragic mistakes such as Libya, endangering nation security with the use of a
private server , Bill grotesque history with women and her shaming of the women who went trough,
her past positions on LGBT,
profoundly racist comments as the Superpredators, weird insinuations as the gunfire in Kosovo
start being spit on her by towering, screaming bully of Trump it will be a
a BLOODBATH.
There is so many of them and even now she keep on making them
and when you hear them all spit one by one with a venom and conviction by the "other" candidate,
even diehard Dems will be appalled.
She will be destroyed and no whatsoever credibility will be accorded any
explanation she could give as the offences are BIGGER then anything we have ever witnessed in
president candidate.
Reps are stocking them like silver bullets and they will hit when the time comes.
So shoot now Sanders, otherwise other will use them to kill.
I am a psychiatrist, and I am terrified by the idea that someone with such a narcissistic,
and anti-social personality, would put the future and safety of our country at great risk, in
order to aquire another "property" that he desperately wants, as another trophy to add to his
list of buying everything he wants, no matter the cost or risk.
Unlike a real estate acquisition, you cannot (or should not) bankrupt this country, write it
off as a loss on your taxes, and move on to purchasing another "prize" you want, and feel you
are entitled to "collect/own". For a man who continually demonstrates the temper of a 5 y/o when
he is challenged, and has no political experience mixed with his "ballistic" temper, would you
really choose him to make decisions that involve the safety and welfare of our country, and to
make rationally based decisions in our current state of complex and fragile international affairs?
"... Trump is winning because he is NOT the establishment. Sanders, coming out of nowhere, with only PEOPLE rather than the establishment behind him, is running a fantastic race against a well oiled machine going on twenty years in the building of it. ..."
"... US will just follow the rest of the world's trend towards more extremist politicians and options. It is just a sign that these are not good times at least in peoples' minds. The extreme right is doing great in Northern and Central Europe, while the extreme left is doing the same in Southern Europe creating a rift in almost every issue, but specially the immigration policy. many countries are becoming difficult to govern at a time when separatism, both national (Scotland, Catalonia) and supranational (Brexit) is on the increase. ..."
"... "US will just follow the rest of the world's trend towards more extremist politicians and options. It is just a sign that these are not good times at least in peoples' minds." ..."
"... The odds are, you are right, about HRC being the nominee, but it is still a race, and it ain't over till it's over. I hope like hell you are right about TRUMP LOSING, regardless of who wins, but I have been following politics since the fifties, and HRC has had a hint of dead fish smell following her from day one. They used to talk about RR being the teflon prez, but compared to HRC, he was Velcro. ..."
"... She stinks in terms of the public's opinion of her, and elections are generally decided in the middle in this country. ..."
"... The Republican party is too far to the right for most Europeans, including me. And as of late it seems to even be going farther to the right (Tea party, Trump, etc). ..."
The MSM are doing their usual thing this morning, managing, like the referee at a pro wrestling
match, to miss the real action. It is true that a win is a win in a winner take all state when
it comes to delegates, but when the results are as close as three points, one or two voters out
of a hundred changing sides changes the results.
The people are obviously sick and tired of our old establishment politicians.
Trump is winning because he is NOT the establishment. Sanders, coming out of nowhere, with
only PEOPLE rather than the establishment behind him, is running a fantastic race against a well
oiled machine going on twenty years in the building of it.
When the actual election rolls around, the people who are pissed at the establishment, meaning
damned near everybody except the handful at the top of the economic and political heap, are going
to wish they could vote for an outsider.
The right wing outsiders will get their wish from the looks of things. They will be voting
AGAINST INSIDERS rather than FOR Trump. Their fires will be burning hot and bright, unless he
goes totally nuts campaigning.
This looks BAD for the country imo. The D's are in great danger of running a CLASSIC insider.
It's time for a change, and the younger people of this country feel it in their bones.
And about this old climate change issue, ahem. We can basically go to bed at night, not worrying
about it very much, in terms of people's beliefs, because all that is really left is a mopping
up operation as far as public opinion is concerned.
My generation will soon be either dead or in nursing homes, and the younger generation will
vote the scientific consensus, after a while.
I remember LOTS of people who were DEAD set, pun intended, in their belief that smoking is
a harmless pleasure. It has been a decade at least since I heard even an illiterate moron claim
that smoking is safe, although I do still hear an occasional smoker in denial say that when your
time comes, your time has come, and it does not matter about the WHY of it coming.
This is not to say we can abandon the fight, but that victory is assured, so long as we keep
it up.
After all, the actual EVIDENCE is accumulating that the world is warming up pretty fast.
I have no doubt at all than unless the last ten days of this month are very close to RECORD
COLD, we will be setting a regional record for the warmest March ever. My personal estimate is
that the odds of a frost kill of the tree fruit crop locally are among the highest ever. All it
takes is ONE good frosty night once the buds are too far advanced.
The Koch brothers and their buddies will continue to fight a dirty and ferocious rear guard
action of course, but in another decade, the issue will no longer be in doubt, as far as the general
public is concerned.
Trump is winning because he is NOT the establishment
Nobody is more establishment than Trump. He's a perfect example of a crony-capitalist. Again, this is the classic strategy of exploiting people's problems, and diverting their anger
towards scapegoats, like immigrants and foreign countries. Trump has proposed a massive tax cut for the 1%, and making life harder for immigrants only
helps business exploit them better, and undercuts wages even more for working people.
There is more than one way do define the word "establishment".
In one sense Trump IS the establishment, but in the sense I used it , he is the ANTI establishment,
no doubt, but he is also a new face on the political scene, running against the D party as WELL
as his own NOMINAL party.
No real republican thinks of Trump as a republican, if we define republican as somebody who
agrees with most or all of the positions and values of the republican party for the last couple
of decades.
What I am saying is that the foot soldiers of the R party have been ready to mutiny for a long
time now, and Trump has provided them the leadership necessary to do so.
The working class conservative voters are THOROUGHLY pissed at the R party establishment, feeling
betrayed at every turn.
People who used to work for a living in the industries sent overseas by the D and R parties
working in collusion have felt trapped until today, betrayed by the D party on the social consensus
they held dear, right or wrong, and fucked over by the R party they have been voting for as the
lesser of two evils.
Not many such people still believe in the American Dream, because they are simply not able
to get ahead anymore, no matter how hard they work.
And while they are mistaken to believe in Trump, at least Trump has not be been lying to them
continuously for the last few decades, AS THEY SEE IT.
( That he is lying to them now , in substantial ways, is irrevelant. He is a NEW face. )
Trump IS Wall Street, and HRC is in the vest pocket of Wall Street, except on cultural issues.
Now these comments may not make much sense to hard core liberals, because hard core liberals
have an incredibly hard time believing anybody who disagrees with them has a brain, or morals,
or a culture that suits THEM.
In actuality, at least half of the country disagrees with the D party social agenda, for reasons
that TO THEM are valid and more than adequate.
I agree: Trump has sold himself as an advocate for the working class.
It's the same strategy Republicans have been using for 40 odd years: using people's fears and
hopes to get them to vote for people who proceed to betray them.
Not that Democrats are enormously better, but, with our current political system they can't
be. If they get too progressive, the other party can move to the middle and cut them out.
It's nice to see you posting again. Your spot on. The Republican establishment has been exploiting
their base for the last 50 years with a whisper campaign of racism and bigotry for their own 1%
economic gain. The Donald has only removed the whisper from the campaign and increased the amount
of lies.
"Trump is the same ol', same ol', only worse"
"That's what puzzles me – this idea that fossil fuels are still valuable."
Nick, you over estimate the educated gray matter of your fellow humans. Most don't have your
vision and will not see it until EV's are the norm(10+ years from now). The fossil fuel Republican
parties base will be the last in the world to see the light. If they aren't already.
US will just follow the rest of the world's trend towards more extremist politicians and options.
It is just a sign that these are not good times at least in peoples' minds.
The extreme right is doing great in Northern and Central Europe, while the extreme left is
doing the same in Southern Europe creating a rift in almost every issue, but specially the immigration
policy. many countries are becoming difficult to govern at a time when separatism, both national
(Scotland, Catalonia) and supranational (Brexit) is on the increase.
If we move to the rest of the world we see the very negative result of the Arab Spring. Essentially
no single country that underwent those social revolutions has come better afterwards. Even Tunisia,
a moderate country, has seen its tourism badly damaged and it is now the biggest contributor to
Sirian foreign fighters. Saudi Arabia has a more extremist government that it is making a policy
out of foreign intervention, minority repression and confrontation against Iran, while its population
is cheering the change.
So don't be so surprised by developments in US politics that follow what is happening elsewhere.
It is a product of the times we live.
the world's trend towards more extremist politicians
There's nothing new about demagoguery, in the US or elsewhere, or revolutionary sentiment (I
guess I shouldn't have said Trump was "worse" – he's just a little less subtle about it than has
been the norm lately in the US).
Have you seen any actual data suggesting that there is a real change in "extremism", separatism,
social discontent or other similar things?
"Have you seen any actual data suggesting that there is a real change in "extremism", separatism,
social discontent or other similar things?"
Yes:
French National Front best results ever in 2014-2015 elections. They were the first party in
the last EU parliamentary elections in France with almost 5 million votes.
Alternative for Germany. New party in 2013. Best results ever in 2016 state elections, receiving
second and third place in the three states that held elections.
Freedom Party of Austria second best result ever in 2013 elections with 20,5% of the vote and
30% in Vienna.
Coalition of Radical Left (Syriza) best result ever in 2015 elections with 36.3% of the votes.
Podemos (Radical left in Spain). New party in 2014. Best result ever in 2015 elections with
21% of the votes.
Populism and demagoguery are taking the developed world by storm. New radical (right or left)
parties go from zero to taking second or third places in mere months.
"US will just follow the rest of the world's trend towards more extremist politicians and options.
It is just a sign that these are not good times at least in peoples' minds."
I don't have more than the foggiest idea about Javier's personal political beliefs, other than
that he occasionally makes a remark indicating he leans more to the left than to the right. I
don't think you do either.
Folks who are so TRIBALLY oriented that they cannot distinguish a skeptic from a partisan will
always of course assume that anybody who questions anything associated with their IN group is
a member of their OUT GROUP, and a fraud or a phony or an enemy of some sort.
I disagree with Javier's assessment of the potential risk of forced climate change, but he
on the other hand he never has anything to say, other than about the extent of forced climate
change, that sets off my personal alarm bells when it comes to environmental issues. On every
other environmetal question, unless I have overlooked something, he is very much in one hundred
percent agreement with the overall "big picture " environmental camp consensus.
It is GOOD politics to remember what RR had to say about a man who agrees with you just about
all the time. Such a man is a FRIEND, in political terms, and an ally, rather than an enemy.
Now about that fear card- both parties play it on a regular basis.
In case you haven't noticed, I support the larger part of the D party platform, except I go
FARTHER, in some cases, as in supporting single payer for the heath care industry. I have made
it clear that I am NOT a republican, and stated many times that I am basically a single issue
voter, that issue being the environment.
Now HERE is why I am supporting Bernie Sanders, nicely summarized, although I do not take every
line of this article seriously.
Any democrat who is not afraid to remove his or her rose colored glasses, and take a CRITICAL
look at HRC as a candidate, will come away with a hell of a lot to think about if he or she reads
this link.
I personally know a lot of people who have voted D most of their lives who would rather vote
for ANY other D than HRC. It is extremely hard for a lot of people to accept it, but she STINKS,
ethically, in the opinion of a HUGE swath of independents, and a substantial number of committed
democrats . A good many of them may stay home rather than vote for her, but they will vote for
Sanders, out of party loyalty and fear of Trump.
Sanders polls better,virtually across the board, in terms of the actual election, and he does
not have the negative baggage. I WANT a Democrat in the WH next time around.
Read this , and think, if you are not so immersed in party and personal politics that you can't
deal with it.
Millions and millions of D voters have digested it already, for themselves, over the last decade
or two, which is why Sanders is getting half the vote, excluding minorities in the south, even
though he is coming out of nowhere, without the support of the party establishment, without big
money backing him, against HRC who has been organizing and campaigning just about forever.
I am not saying this guy is right in every respect, but he has his finger on the pulse of many
tens of millions of D voters, or potential D voters.
If it comes down to Trump versus HRC, I am not at ALL sure HRC will win, but if Sanders gets
the nomination, I think he WILL, because even though he has been around forever, he is the NEW
face of the D party, and the PEOPLE of this country are SICK and TIRED of the old faces, D and
R both.
Trump and Sanders have in ONE important thing in common . Both of them are new faces, promising
to bring new life to their parties.
I like a lot about what Sanders is bringing to the table. But sorry Mac, I think its going to
be Clinton.
I'm non-aligned (anti-partisan), but I'd vote for Clinton a thousand times over Trump. And I think
a strong majority of the country will as well.
The odds are, you are right, about HRC being the nominee, but it is still a race, and it ain't
over till it's over. I hope like hell you are right about TRUMP LOSING, regardless of who wins, but I have been
following politics since the fifties, and HRC has had a hint of dead fish smell following her
from day one. They used to talk about RR being the teflon prez, but compared to HRC, he was Velcro.
Almost every regular in this forum seems to be mathematically literate. I challenge anybody
here to explain Cattle Gate as any thing except fraud, pure and simple, in realistic terms.
Hey, this ain't YET North Korea, where we actually believe our leader made a hole in one the
first time he ever tried golf, on a day so foggy nobody could see the green.
I absolutely will never vote for EITHER HRC or TRUMP.
If the D's run HRC, the best hope for the country is that the R's broker their convention,
and Trump gives up crashing the R party and his own personal hard core stays home. That would
make the election safe for HRC, assuming the FBI decides in her favor. Not many prez candidates
have ever had a hundred agents on their case.
Six months ago I was almost sure Trump was a flash in the pan, and would be forgotten by now.
I now fear that there is a very real possibility he may win.
The political waters are so muddy it is impossible to say what will happen a year from now.
Trump is the sort of fellow who successfully "aw shucks" away most of his nasty rhetoric once
he has the nomination, and then he will turn his guns on HRC. He won't have far to go to look
for ammo, and he will make damned sure everything smelly is on the front pages from day one, all
the way back to Arkansas.
Sanders is a far more desirable candidate in the actual election.
She stinks in terms of the public's opinion of her, and elections are generally decided in
the middle in this country.
If she can take her ten years plus campaigning advantage into a big industrial state, Obama's
political home, with the party establishment behind her, and win by only TWO POINTS points, what
does this tell you?She should have won by thirty points or more, if the people were really behind
her, rather than beholden to the party machine.
The deep south will vote for Trump in preference to HRC, with a couple of exceptions, maybe
three or four. So her big delegate lead from there doesn't prove a THING in terms of the actual
election. She is taking all the delegates elsewhere in winner take all states by only very narrow
margins. The BURN in D voter's hearts is mostly for Sanders.
Trump would likely be in worse shape in terms of public opinion, except he is a new face, politically,
and it takes a long time to build up such negatives, it doesn't happen overnight.
My personal opinion of HIS ethics is that he makes HRC look like an altar girl.
I am not too interested in politics, and even less in US politics. The Republican party is
too far to the right for most Europeans, including me. And as of late it seems to even be going
farther to the right (Tea party, Trump, etc).
I do not find myself much of a political space because I do not agree much with both left and
right parties in Europe. I am more of a traditional European liberal, which doesn't translate
well into a US political leaning, and even in Europe is very minoritarian. Let's just say that
I believe that individual rights are above collective rights and I believe in small government.
I also think that the economy should be strictly regulated to avoid dominant positions that always
go against the individual, and that medical care and education should be affordable to anybody.
But I am afraid all these belong to a pre-Oil Peak world and we are going to see very different
politics being played out as our economy starts to suffer from lack of affordable oil. Right now
oil is not affordable because producers cannot afford it, but if it goes up significantly in price
consumers will not be able to afford it.
"The main topic at the closed-to-the-press confab? How to
stop Republican front-runner Donald Trump,"
Huff Post writes
. Here's a list of attendees:
Apple CEO Tim Cook,
Google co-founder Larry Page,
Napster creator and Facebook investor Sean Parker,
Tesla Motors and SpaceX honcho Elon Musk
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.),
political guru Karl Rove,
House Speaker Paul Ryan,
GOP Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.), Cory Gardner (Colo.), Tim Scott
(S.C.), Rob Portman (Ohio) and Ben Sasse (Neb.),
Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Fred Upton (Mich.),
Rep. Kevin Brady (Texas)
Kevin McCarthy (Calif.),
Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.),
Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.),
Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (Texas)
Diane Black (Tenn.)
"
A specter was haunting the World Forum--the specter of Donald
Trump,
" the Weekly Standard founder Bill Kristol wrote in an
emailed report from the conference, borrowing the opening lines of the
Communist Manifesto. "There was much unhappiness about his emergence, a
good deal of talk, some of it insightful and thoughtful, about why he's
done so well, and many expressions of hope that he would be defeated."
Heading to AEI World Forum. Lots of interesting
guests. It's off the record, so please do consider my tweets from
there off the record!
Predictably Karl Rove, GOP mastermind, gave a presentation outlining
what he says are Trump's weaknesses. Voters would have a hard time seeing
him as "presidential," Rove said. Which we suppose is why they are
turning out in droves to vote for him.
yup - a group of billionaires meeting at an exclusive resort
debating how to circumvent the democratic process, failing to
consider that's the exact description of what's wrong with
America (and the GOP)
Tom Price'is one of the highest net worth Congressmen. His Georgia office is in Roswell, which is a corrupt little city in North Atlanta. Roswell city officials harassed and fined a mildly retarded man who refused to give up his ownership of about 20 chickens to the point that the guy was going to lose his paid for house, and he committed suicide. (Google Roswell Chicken Man). Tom Price fits right in with that bunch.
Napster creator and Facebook investor Sean Parker,
Tesla Motors and SpaceX honcho Elon Musk
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.),
political guru Karl Rove,
House Speaker Paul Ryan,
GOP Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.), Cory Gardner (Colo.), Tim Scott (S.C.), Rob Portman (Ohio) and Ben Sasse (Neb.),
Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Fred Upton (Mich.),
Rep. Kevin Brady (Texas)
Kevin McCarthy (Calif.),
Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.),
Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.),
Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (Texas)
Diane Black (Tenn.)"~
So work this out with me:
The top 4 people on the list are committed NWO leftists.
The next one and third are reknown RINOs, with the second being a political dirty tricks mechanic.
The rest of the group are owned outright by the banksters.
"Ladies and Gentlemen,
YOUR
REPUBLICAN PARTY LEADERSHIP!"
Maybe Reince Priebus should get a sworn oath out of these coniving little fucks to support the lead vote getter in the primaries. (Don't count on it.) Say..., where is ol' Reince anyway? Why isn't he out denouncing these weasels?
Flint is where I was born and raised. The Governor gave away billions of Detroit's assets for
pennies on the dollar with no one challah ginger that theft. Now he is stealing lives in Flint.
He needs to step down. I would provide a link for more info but I am not permitted.
Yep, as was likely. Sanders campaign is all about momentum and whether he can bring people on
side or whether they just think he has no chance. In that respect the early ballots were always
going to be tough, apart from NH and Vermont.
March 15 is probably the real decider. Big states, lots of delegates. Sanders really must win
a lot of them to keep going, assuming that the superdelegates stay strongly behind Hillary. He
has done well though this week, winning some smaller states and building some momentum towards
the larger ones. It's not over if he doesn't crush Hillary on the 15th in those big states, but
if he loses several of them it will probably be the end of the momentum he needs.
Sanders is still very much the underdog, but then that's kind of the way he likes it.
"... This BRILLIANT presentation should be heard (and I hope RNN runs it in print so that it can be copied, old-style, and distributed on 'paper')..absorbed as a concise, integrated history of globalization-the neo-imperialist policy that continues from the 19th-20thc. imperialism... and revealed as a continuation process of global capitalism & its "1%" class. ..."
"... One of the most important takeaways, though not a necessarily new one but one worth reiterating, is that national boundaries in terms of the US and the 1% are of no importance since a world domination economic empire is the goal. ..."
"... The bloated US imperial military budget reflects how the 99% at home fund this empire, of course they never voting for it. The military is not a US military--it is the military of the 1% and global capitalism. This actually should be the meme that those trying to raise consciousness put forth, since those on the left and the right from the middle and lower classes can begin to see the whole electoral mirage for what it is. ..."
"... Clearly the methods concerned human beings are using to address the madness of the elites and their corporate/military state have had absolutely no impact: Poverty is more rampant now than ever before, the gap between rich and poor very much wider and the number of wars keeps increasing, especially the race war against the Arab people. ..."
"... Big Brother's web of deception is weakening. The ranks of unbelievers grows daily. But does the cynicism beget People Power or Donald Trump? ..."
"... Dear DreamJoe. I think you're right that BB's web of deception is weakening, but I doubt that it's weakened enough. I'm sure you understand the 'deep state' concept. It does not matter which flunkeys the "people" elect; the deep state continues to run the show. What's going on now is all bread and circuses; it means nothing. ..."
"... Bernie and Donald are manifestations of a deeper systemic failures that have changed everything for millions of people. B & D will come and go, but that crisis will remain, and will become more acute. ..."
"... why do American politicians become incontinent when they mention Saudi Arabia ..."
"... recycling mechanism for capitalism ..."
"... there is a suicidal death pact between the West and Saudi Arabia ..."
"... Protecting oligarchs investments and rate of return on shareholders gains is worlds burden we are told a needed evil in order to advance GROWTH endlessly. Growth code word for consolidation of power and wealth by ownership consolidation globally by one percent. ..."
"... For many years I would have been agreeing with you...after 50 years I have recognized that in the scheme of things, no 'change' (from tribal to private property, from feudalism to capitalism) has 'just happened'...magically born clean & clear. The process is messy, no clear beginning or even END is really possible to see. History is filled with ironies and this time its the Dem Arm of the Duopoly letting Bernie in- as an artificial straw-man candidate to make Hillary's campaign appear to be a contest between the 'idealist' and 'the realist' and not the global coronation it is --- let in by mistake (just as every power elite has miscalculated & underestimated the powerful yearning for more justice & liberty& instinctive anger at the few that enslave the majority (thru history 'The 99%'...). ..."
"... So long as he rises to militarily protect "National Interests" abroad - read: imperial billionaire class interests - he's really one of them. ..."
"... He could be doing exactly what Trump is doing except from the populist left perspective: taking down the duopoly's both corporate mafia houses with uncompromising fervor. ..."
"... Excellent discussion and lecture. A very important part of the 'due diligence' of democratic participation and research by the people. ..."
Be nice to have a book called "The Foreign Policy of the 1%".
Maybe include references to GATT, TPP, oil wars as mentioned in the presentation.
Other questions:
1) How does Foreign Policy of 1%: tie to Economic Hitman, John Perkins?
2) How does Foreign Policy of 1%: tie to conservative founders like Jeane Kirkpatrick?
3) How does Foreign Policy of 1%: tie to rise to Regan Revolution? Trump?
This BRILLIANT presentation should be heard (and I hope RNN runs it in print so that it can be
copied, old-style, and distributed on 'paper')..absorbed as a concise, integrated history of globalization-the
neo-imperialist policy that continues from the 19th-20thc. imperialism... and revealed as a continuation
process of global capitalism & its "1%" class.
Deepest thanks to Vijay Prashad...and to others
like professor Bennis (present in the audience)... whose in-depth analysis of the system can, if
studied, contribute to putting the nascent 'political revolution' Bernie calls for...into a real
democratic movement in this country. We are so woefully ignorant as 'members of the 99%'- it seems
worst of all in America-- intentionally kept isolated from knowing anything about this country/corporation's
'foreign policy' (aka as Capitalist system policy or 'the 1% policy) that Bernie cannot even broach
what Vijay has given here. But he at least opens up some of our can of worms, the interrconnectdedness
of class-interests and the devastation this country's (and the global cabal of ) capitalist voracious
economic interests rains upon the planet.
The Mid-East is a product of Capitalism that will, if
we don't recognize the process & change course & priorties, will soon overtake all of Africa and
all 'undeveloped' (pre-Capitalist) countries around the globe--The destruction and never-ending
blur of war and annihilation of peoples, cultures and even the possibility of 'political evolution'
is a product of the profit-at-any-and-all-costs that is the hidden underbelly of a system of economics
that counts humanity as nothing. It is a sick system. It is a system whose sickness brings death
to all it touches... and we are seeing now it is bringing ITS OWN DEATH as well.
The '99% policy'
(again a phrase Prashad should be congratulated for bringing into the language) is indeed one
that understands that our needs --the people's needs, not 'national interests' AKA capitalist
corporate/financial interests --- are global, that peace projects are essentially anti-capitalist
projects.... and our needs-to build a new society here in the U.S. must begin to be linked to
seeing Capitalism as the root cause of so much suffering that must be replaced by true democratic
awakening a- r/evolutionary process that combines economic and civic/political -- that we must
support in every way possible. Step One: support the movement for changed priorities & values
by voting class-consciously.
The 1% or the oligarchy have completely won the world, our only way to fight against such power
is to abandon buying their products, take great care on who you vote for in any election, only
people who have a long record of social thinking should be considers. They can be diminished but
not beaten.
One of the most important takeaways, though not a necessarily new one but one worth reiterating,
is that national boundaries in terms of the US and the 1% are of no importance since a world domination
economic empire is the goal.
The bloated US imperial military budget reflects how the 99% at home fund this empire, of course
they never voting for it. The military is not a US military--it is the military of the 1% and
global capitalism. This actually should be the meme that those trying to raise consciousness put
forth, since those on the left and the right from the middle and lower classes can begin to see
the whole electoral mirage for what it is.
All of what's been said about the elites, the one percent, has already been said many years ago.
The conversation about the wealthy elites destroying our world has changed only in the area of
how much of our world has and is being destroyed. Absolutely nothing else has changed, nothing
else.
Clearly the methods concerned human beings are using to address the madness of the elites and
their corporate/military state have had absolutely no impact: Poverty is more rampant now than
ever before, the gap between rich and poor very much wider and the number of wars keeps increasing,
especially the race war against the Arab people. Meanwhile, as we continue to speak the ocean
is licking at our doorstep, the average mean temperature has ticked up a few notches and we are
all completely distracted by which power hungry corporate zealot is going to occupy the office
which is responsible for making our human condition even more dire. The circus that is this election
is merely a ploy by the elites to make us believe that we actually do have a choice. Uh-huh; yet
if I were to suggest what REALLY needs to be done to save the human race I would be in a court
which functions only to impoverish those of us who try to speak the truth of our situation objectively.
The 'Justice' system's only function is to render us powerless. Whether one is guilty or innocent
is completely irrelevant anymore. All they have to do is file charges and they have your wealth.
Good luck to all of us as we all talk ourselves to death.
Dear denden11: You get gold stars in heaven as far as I'm concerned for telling the exact truth
in the plainest possible terms. Bravissimo. "Talk/ing/ ourselves to death" is, I'm sorry to say,
what we are doing. I've been working on these issues for forty years, looking for an exit from
this completely interlocked system. I'm sorry to say I haven't seen the exit. I do understand
how we have painted ourselves into this corner over the past 250 years (since the so-called Enlightenment),
but without repentance on our part and grace on God's part, we're doomed because we all believe
the Big Lies pumped into us moment by moment by Big Brother. And it's the Big Lies that keep us
terminally confused and fragmented.
Don't Believe the Hype was an NWA rap anthem over twenty year ago.
I always liked the shouted line, "And I don't take Ritalin!"
Big Brother's web of deception is weakening. The ranks of unbelievers grows daily. But does
the cynicism beget People Power or Donald Trump?
In defeat, will Sander's campaign supporters radicalize or demoralize into apathy or tepid
support for Hillary - on the grounds that she's less of an evil than Trumpty Dumbty?
If not defeated, will Sanders and his campaign mobilize the People to fight the powers that
be? Otherwise, he has no real power base, short of selling out on his domestic spending promises
and becoming another social democratic lapdog for Capital- like Tony Blair.
Dear DreamJoe. I think you're right that BB's web of deception is
weakening, but I doubt that it's weakened enough. I'm sure you understand the 'deep state' concept.
It does not matter which flunkeys the "people" elect; the deep state continues to run the show.
What's going on now is all bread and circuses; it means nothing.
As material conditions change drastically for tens of millions of USAns, the old propaganda loses
effect.
New propaganda is required to channel the new class tensions. Still an opening may be created.
People can't heat their homes with propaganda, the kids are living in the basement and grandpa
can't afford a nursing home and he's drinking himself to death. That's the new normal, or variations
on it for a lot of people who don't believe the hype anymore.
Bernie and Donald are manifestations of a deeper systemic failures that have changed everything
for millions of people. B & D will come and go, but that crisis will remain, and will become more
acute.
Great work Vijay...got my "filters" back on. Cut and pasted original comment below despite TRNN
labeling of "time of posting" which is irrelevant at this point.
Wow...now that I got my rational filters back on this was a great piece by Vijay and succinctly
states what many of us who "attempt" to not only follow ME events but to understand not only the
modern history by the motives of the major players in the region. Thanks for this piece and others...looking
forward to the others.
Posted earlier while my mind was on 2016 election cycle watching MSM in "panic mode"
Thought this was going to be a rational discussion on US foreign policy until the part on ?
"Trumps Red Book". I had hoped to rather hear, "The Red Book of the American Templars" ...taking
from the Knights Templar in Europe prior the collapse of the feudal system. I will say that Vijay's
comment on Cruz was quite appropriate though it would also have been better to not only put it
into context but also illustrate that Cruz's father Rafael Cruz believes in a system contrary
to the founding ideals of the US Constitution: He states in an interview with mainstream media
during his son's primary campaign that [to paraphrase] "secularism is evil and corrupt". Here
is an excerpt of his bio from Wiki:
"During an interview conducted by the Christian Post in 2014, Rafael Cruz stated, "I think
we cannot separate politics and religion; they are interrelated. They've always been interrelated."[29]
Salon described Cruz as a "Dominionist, devoted to a movement that finds in Genesis a mandate
that 'men of faith' seize control of public institutions and govern by biblical principle."[30]
However, The Public Eye states that Dominionists believe that the U.S. Constitution should be
the vehicle for remaking America as a Christian nation.[31]"
Fareed Zakaria interviewed a columnist from the Wall Street Journal today on Fareed's GPS program
and flatly asked him [paraphrased], "Is not the Wall Street Journal responsible for creating the
racist paradigm that Trump took advantage of "? Let us begin with rational dialogue and not demagogy.
Quite frankly with regard to both Cruz and Trump [in context of the 2016 elections cycle] a more
insightful comment would have been...Change cannot come from within the current electoral processes
here in the US with Citizen's United as its "masthead" and "Corporations are people as its rallying
cry"!
Not the West....just the F.I.R.E industries...driving the housing bubble; shopping malls; office
buildings; buying municipal bonds [as they the municipalities bought and built prisons; jails;
SWAT vehicles and security equipment (developed by the Israelis); and keeping the insurance companies
afloat while AllState had time after Katrina to pitch their subsidiaries allowing these subsidiaries
to file for bankruptcy]...now all the maintenance expense is coming due and cities and counties
are going broke... along with the Saudi investments here in US.
Protecting oligarchs investments and rate of return on shareholders gains is worlds burden we
are told a needed evil in order to advance GROWTH endlessly. Growth code word for consolidation
of power and wealth by ownership consolidation globally by one percent. What about the 99 percent?
While populations simply need and want also income and investment security globally.
What about
populations in massive consumer debt for education, housing, etc. to fund one percent Growth.
Laborers across globe are all in same boat simply labor for food without anything else to pass
along to progeny but what is most important ethics. A world government established by corporatism
advantage by authority of law and advantage all directed toward endless returns to oligarchy family
cartels is not an acceptable world organization of division of resources because it is tranny,
exclusive, extraction and fraudulent. Such madness does NOT float all boats.
All this while oligarchs
control Taxation of government authority and hidden excessive investment and fraud return taxation.
While Governments in west don't even jail corporate criminals while west claims law is just while
skewed in favor of protecting one percent, their returns on investment and investments. Billionaires
we find in some parts of so called Unjust regions of world not yet on board with cartel game are
calling out fraud that harms individuals and society aggressively.
TEHRAN, Iran - An Iranian court has sentenced a well-known tycoon to death for corruption linked
to oil sales during the rule of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the judiciary spokesman
said Sunday.
Babak Zanjani and two of his associates were sentenced to death for "money laundering," among
other charges, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehi said in brief remarks broadcast on state TV. He did
not identify the two associates. Previous state media reports have said the three were charged
with forgery and fraud.
"The court has recognized the three defendants as 'corruptors on earth' and sentenced them
to death," said Ejehi. "Corruptors on earth" is an Islamic term referring to crimes that are punishable
by death because they have a major impact on society. The verdict, which came after a nearly five-month
trial, can be appealed.
So when Bernie winds up on the regime change band wagon (of mostly leftist governments) and stays
silent in the face of US aided and approved of coups (Honduras/Zelaya being the next most recent
before Ukraine) while railing against the billionaire class on Wall Street and the neoliberal
trade agreements, he's not only missing the elephant in the room; he's part of this elephant.
For many years I would have been agreeing with you...after 50 years I have recognized that in
the scheme of things, no 'change' (from tribal to private property, from feudalism to capitalism)
has 'just happened'...magically born clean & clear. The process is messy, no clear beginning or
even END is really possible to see. History is filled with ironies and this time its the Dem Arm
of the Duopoly letting Bernie in- as an artificial straw-man candidate to make Hillary's campaign
appear to be a contest between the 'idealist' and 'the realist' and not the global coronation
it is --- let in by mistake (just as every power elite has miscalculated & underestimated the powerful
yearning for more justice & liberty& instinctive anger at the few that enslave the majority (thru
history 'The 99%'...).
And as all past power-elites have done, our '1%' has misread the age-old
evolution of culture when an old system NO LONGER WORKS that makes freedom, imagination & rebellion
more acceptable more attractive, more exciting and NECESSARY. Then, once energized BY NEED, DESIRE,
and yes HOPE....change begins and can't be stopped like a slow-moving rain that keeps moving.
As with past eras & past changes, in our own day this 'millennial plus 60's' powerful generational
tide is JUST BEGINNING to feel our strength & ability. Turning what was supposed to be a globalist-coronation
into what right now certainly seems like a step towards real change, towards building a recognition
of the power, we 'the 99%' can --IF WE ACT WISELY & WITH COMMITTMENT begin the work of creating
a new world.
Criticising Bernie is criticizing the real way progress works...We need to get out
of an ego-centric adolescent approach to human problem-solving, understand we need to keep our
movement growing even if it doesn't look the WAY WE EXPECTED IT TO LOOK...keep clear on GOALS
that Bernie's campaign is just a part of. The 'left' needs to recognize its our historic moment:
to either move ahead or SELF-destruct.. Impatience needs to be replaced by a serious look down
the road for our children's future. If we don't, the power elite of the System wins again (vote
Hillary?? don't vote??). We need to take a breath & rethink how change really happens because
this lost opportunity Is a loss we can no longer afford. The movement must be 'bigger than Bernie'.
I just hope he does not get forced to resign which the L-MSM is now beginning to parrot so Hillary
can win given the huge turnouts the Repugs are getting in the primaries. I want to see four candidates
at the National Convention...in addition to Third parties.
No one can be elected Commander and Chief by stating they will not defend oligarchs interests
as well as populations interests. We agree populations interests are negated and subverted all
over earth . That cannot be changed by armed rebellion but it can be changed by electing electable
voices of reason such as Sanders. Sanders will fight to protect populations and resist oligarchy
war mongering while holding oligarchs accountable. Sanders will address corrupted law and injustice.
Vote Sanders.
You are probably correct in your thinking, but the real power will never allow any potential effective
changes to the system that is. People who try usually end up dead.
This is why we must as citizens become active players in government far greater then we are today,
we must do far more then voting. We must have time from drudgery of earning a substandard wage
that forces most to have little time for advancing democracy. Without such time oligarchs and
one percent end-up controlling everything.
We can BEGIN the march toward mountain top toward socializations
which will promote aware individualizations. We don't expect we will advance anything without
oppositions in fact we expect increased attacks. Those increased attacks can become our energy
that unites masses as we all observe the insanity they promote as our direction. We merely must
highlight insanity and path forward toward sanity. Nothing can make lasting change this generation
the march will take generations. The speed advance only will depend on how foolish oligarchs are
at attempts to subvert public awareness seeking change. As they become more desperate our movements
become stronger. We must refrain from violence for that is only thing that can subvert our movement.
He could be doing exactly what Trump is doing except from the populist left perspective: taking
down the duopoly's both corporate mafia houses with uncompromising fervor.
Instead he does the LOTE thing for the neoliberal-neocon party "D". That's just dishonest bullshit
opportunism.
Do not receives daily email for a long time without clue why? so haven't in contact with TRN's
daily report until subject video appears on youtube website. and impressed by the panelists's
congregated pivotal works done thru all these years.
"... Dewey and Ford emerged from a brokered convention to lose the general election. So why? Because the party elites and elders want to protect us and stop of from falling into the abyss?… Most of us working two or three jobs think we're already in the abyss. The Obama abyss… ..."
In a stunningly honest and frank rant, FOX News' Judge Jeanine unleashes anchor hell upon
Mitt Romney and the GOP establishment hordes.
She begins:
"There's an insurrection coming. Mitt Romney just confirmed it. We've watched
governors, the National Review, conservative leaders, establishment and party operatives trash
Donald Trump. But Mitt Romney will always be remembered as the one who put us over
the edge and awoke a sleeping giant, the Silent Majority, the American people.
Fact. The establishment is panicked. Mitt essentially called for a brokered
convention where the Republican nominee will be decided by party activists and delegates irrespective
of their state's choice… You want a brokered convention? A primer Mitt. Whenever we have
a brokered convention we lose.
Dewey and Ford emerged from a brokered convention to lose the general election. So why?
Because the party elites and elders want to protect us and stop of from falling into the
abyss?… Most of us working two or three jobs think we're already in the abyss. The Obama abyss…
We are sick and tired of legislators of modest means who leave Congress
multimillionaires, whose spouses and families get all the contracts from selling the post offices
to accessing insider information so they can buy property and flip it. You're so entrenched
that you're willing to give Hillary Clinton a win. It doesn't matter to you which party, crony
capitalism and its paradigm will not change for the elite."
And that is just the introduction... Grab a coffee (or something stronger) and watch...
"... Donald Trump represents a challenge to the status quo because he doesn't want to democratize the world through bombing raids, says Richard Spencer from Radix Journal. US Congressman Alan Grayson agrees, saying the Republicans are desperate to stop Trump. ..."
"... The Republican establishment as reflected in Mitt Romney and others is absolutely desperate to stop Donald Trump. But what really is underneath it all is the fact that Trump does not adhere to the Republican Orthodoxy: "they've never met a war they didn't like." ..."
"... After Donald Trump and Fox news journalist Megyn Kelly's previous meeting, comedians and politicians alike have taken quite a few shots at Trump. What should we expect further? ..."
"... From Senator Marco Rubio to Mitt Romney Trump doesn't seem to be afraid of any speeches condemning him. Why is he so self-confident? ..."
"... The fact is Trump's version of nationalism, this idea "it's not be the world's policeman," let's actually look after ourselves, let's use the government to help the people. This kind of nationalism that cuts across left and right, cuts across liberal and conservative, cuts across Democrats and Republicans. It is a new thing for Americans. Trump is leading it. I would never have predicted that, but Trump is leading it. And the fact is the status quo doesn't like it because this is upsetting some of their assumptions. It is upsetting what they take for granted and so they are all in unison attacking him. And in the US the so-called conservatives, the left, the liberals they are all attacking Trump of the exact same reasons. ..."
"... Is Trump likely to issue an apology after his offensive comments towards Megyn Kelly? ..."
Donald Trump represents a challenge to the status quo because he doesn't want to
democratize the world through bombing raids, says Richard Spencer from Radix Journal. US
Congressman Alan Grayson agrees, saying the Republicans are desperate to stop Trump.
US Congressman Alan Grayson: I have to agree, just
this once, with Donald Trump. I think it is irrelevant. Part of the
problem that we are facing this year is that the candidates want to
make this some kind of war of personalities rather than a discussion
of what is good for our country. I think that is very unfortunate. I
don't think the Trump candidacy should be determined on matters of the
value of a degree from Trump University, or any of these ad hominem
attacks that we are seeing by one candidate against the other – often,
by the way, perpetrated by Mr. Trump himself. I don't really think it
matters what the size of his fingers might be; I don't think it
matters that Rubio is definitely a thirsty young man. I don't think it
matters that Bush is low energy, although he is certainly is. These
are not the things that we should use to determine who our national
leaders should be. Obviously, they've all indulged in it from one time
or another. And I don't think the voters favor that. But the fact is
the voters are going to make up their minds based upon what's good for
the country, what's good for them individually. I think the voters
have this one right.
The
Republican establishment as reflected in Mitt Romney and others is
absolutely desperate to stop Donald Trump. But what really is
underneath it all is the fact that Trump does not adhere to the
Republican Orthodoxy: "they've never met a war they didn't like."
It is true that there are hawks within the Republican Party who
are dismayed by the fact that Donald Trump rightly points out that the
war in Iraq was a disaster in everyone's light. And they are
disconcerted by the fact that he is willing to criticize predecessors
like George W. Bush, and frankly, rightly so. America lost four
trillion dollars in the war in Iraq and we left a quarter of a million
of our young men and women with permanent brain abnormalities because
of injuries they suffered in that war. At least there is one
Republican candidate who is willing to actually address those issues
which has caused the hawks a great deal of consternation.
RT: After Donald Trump and Fox news journalist
Megyn Kelly's previous meeting, comedians and politicians alike have
taken quite a few shots at Trump. What should we expect further?
Richard Spencer from Radix Journal: I think we're
going to expect fireworks. In fact the mainstream media, the so-called
conservative movements and the Republican Party have all declared war
on Donald Trump. It was a silent war for many months, now it is an
explicit war. They want anyone but Trump; they want anyone else in the
Republican Party to win this nomination. It doesn't matter if Rubio is
a moderate and Ted Cruz is an extreme Libertarian or something. They
want anyone but Trump because Trump actually represents a different
ideology from traditional American conservatism. Trump actually
represents something closer to European nationalism. It is a version
of the right that is "let's look at the Americans first, let's use
the government to help the American people, let's actually have
friendly relations with great powers like Russia as opposed to: let's
democratize the world through bombing raids." So Trump really
represents something different. He represents a challenge to the
status quo. And that is why the conservative movement, the Republican
Party, the mainstream media are all out to get him.
RT: From Senator Marco Rubio to Mitt Romney
Trump doesn't seem to be afraid of any speeches condemning him. Why is
he so self-confident?
RS: Trump is self-confident because he is Trump;
he was born self-confident. But he is also self-confident because he
has so much popular support. He has brought so many new people into
the Republican Party and he has brought so many more people into the
Republican Party than Mitt Romney did who attacked him. The fact is
Trump's version of nationalism, this idea "it's not be the world's
policeman," let's actually look after ourselves, let's use the
government to help the people. This kind of nationalism that cuts
across left and right, cuts across liberal and conservative, cuts
across Democrats and Republicans. It is a new thing for Americans.
Trump is leading it. I would never have predicted that, but Trump is
leading it. And the fact is the status quo doesn't like it because
this is upsetting some of their assumptions. It is upsetting what they
take for granted and so they are all in unison attacking him. And in
the US the so-called conservatives, the left, the liberals they are
all attacking Trump of the exact same reasons.
RT: Is Trump likely to issue an apology after
his offensive comments towards Megyn Kelly?
RS: I couldn't imagine Donald Trump apologizing. I
don't think he said anything completely outrageous towards Megyn
Kelly. The fact is Megyn Kelly doesn't like Donald Trump. Megyn Kelly
wants the status quo to continue. Megun Kelly wants a neoconservative
candidate or a typical Republican candidate. Maybe Kelly doesn't like
this new kind of nationalism that Trump represents. So there's no way…
that Donald Trump will apologize to Megyn Kelly. What he said
effectively is that "Megyn Kelly is out to get me." … But the
fact is, Trump has proved that you don't need Fox News; Trump has
proved you don't need the GOP establishment; Trump has proved you
don't need the conservative movement establishment. Trump is Trump.
Trump has a populist base that's bigger than those forces.
"... In my view, Clinton wants to be President only because it is there and it is a powerful role. For her, I think it affirms her egotistical belief that she is the best person for the job. She is a by the numbers politician; lacking passion and a cause and is beholden to Wall St. ..."
"... Clinton is a warmonger. Most of the candidates are. I wouldnt vote for anyone who was, no matter what their politics. So, the field is greatly reduced for me. ..."
"... The media likes a simplistic narrative, and the media wants Clinton win, no matter what the Democratic base wants. Its annoying, but not surprising, that they are trying to cast the Democratic primary as they have. ..."
This disgraceful episode shows the dark side of the sexism arguments. Equality is about every
women having the same opportunities as men. But what gets lost in the debate, or conveniently
ignored, is that an incompetent woman has no place taking or claiming precedence over a competent
man. Margaret Thatcher wrought a trail of destruction in the UK - her Reagan-esque and neo-liberal
policies led to many more Britons living in poverty and being left with no prospect of any dignity;
instead being trapped in a life-long welfare-cycle. How is it plausible that she should not be
judged on her performance, rather on some esoteric and exaggerated feminist ideal. She was a female
PM, sure, but she was an awful PM. Her political salvation was the Argentine conflict over the
Falklands. Without that, she would have deservedly been confined to the political scrap-heap much
sooner.
In my view, Clinton wants to be President only because it is there and it is a powerful role.
For her, I think it affirms her egotistical belief that she is the best person for the job. She
is a "by the numbers" politician; lacking passion and a cause and is beholden to Wall St. That
surely makes her sound more like a conservative rather than a liberal (the equivalent of Tony
Blair). Sanders might be a silly old fool, but he has a passion for the American ideal - that
all men (and women) were indeed created equal and his policies support that ideal. Clinton has
no policies - she is essentially asking the American people to trust her, when in reality, they
don't - not because she is a woman, but because she has a history of duplicity.
Clinton is a warmonger. Most of the candidates are. I wouldn't vote for anyone who was, no
matter what their politics. So, the field is greatly reduced for me.
"I am increasingly dismayed that 'older, wiser, more mature' voters are portrayed as solidly in
Hillary's corner"
The media likes a simplistic narrative, and the media wants Clinton win, no matter what the
Democratic base wants. It's annoying, but not surprising, that they are trying to cast the Democratic
primary as they have.
"... A somewhat campy (okay, VERY campy) take on the French Revolution, it quite effectively depicts the way hopelessness and inequality corrode away the moral fabric of human relations. ..."
"... it was Mike Nichols who said, Funny is very rare. And I would add, very valuable, and slightly deadly. ..."
[BILL CLINTON:] "I understand why we've got a race on our hands, because a lot of people
are disillusioned with the system and a lot of young people want to take it down. … I understand
what it's like for people who haven't had a raise in eight years. There are a lot of reasons
[to be angry]. But this is not a cartoon. This is real life."
Don't rag on cartoons, Bill. Many are more worth paying attention to than you are. I recommend
the following:
Galaxy Express 999
A wonderfully grim satire of neoliberalism, globalization, and Kurzweil-ian narcissistic
techno-utopianism.
The Roses of Versailles
A somewhat campy (okay, VERY campy) take on the French Revolution, it quite effectively
depicts the way hopelessness and inequality corrode away the moral fabric of human relations.
Both can easily be streamed online with English subtitles.
They used to say that Hitchcock was, "damned with faint praise," by being called a master
of horror. I think the same thing tends to happen to those who are funny. I think it was
Mike Nichols who said, "Funny is very rare." And I would add, very valuable, and slightly deadly.
"... Political consultants by and large, and especially in the establishment tier, operate and strategize on the sole core premise that voters are a) stupid (in the Pavlovian sense), and b) unreliable. The idea that small donors would be reliable over the course of a campaign is inconceivable (the larger donors certainly aren't that reliable). And if you're willing to flip messages in a heartbeat, it is probably not a safe bet; Sanders is pulling it off in part (so far?) through his own massive (so far…) consistency (and legacy). Also, he's positioned so far from anybody else (except maybe Trump?!?) that it's difficult to slipstream him and steal his donor base. ..."
"... I think that some basic economic/market concepts (commitment bias, sunk costs) can be considered as well. But the establishment consultants (who generally do quite well, thank you) don't see a $20 donation as a significant commitment with an expectation attached; it's a restaurant tip. BTW, Sanders' three million donations come from over one million donors, that's a rough average of two follow-up donations. Some of these folks are living hand-to-mouth; they're almost literally all in, unlike any millionaire or billionaire who maxes out and gives the rest to PACs. ..."
"... And Clinton's not dumb; not dumb? mmm, Ok, is she smart? Personally, I don't think so. Conniving and persistent? absolutely. ..."
And Clinton's not dumb; she could have tried just the same strategy. Why didn't she?
Because of her consultants.
Think of it as a jobs program. Fundraising consultants are important assets throughout the
life of a campaign (including the period after the election).
The fundraisers get a cut of funds they raise (10%-20% is common, I've seen higher… even ActBlue
asks for a tip, but they ask and don't require it, and it doesn't come out of your donation, it's
on top). This is an industry, which also has vendors (NGP / VAN and other political data platforms
have fundraising modules, before merging with VAN, NGP was a stand-alone campaign accounting,
compliance, and fundraising tool).
And in case there is any lingering confusion or doubt in anyone's mind; the campaign fundraising
context is a major conduit for "constituent" input on policy. When candidates say "I've heard
from/spoken with my constituents", unless they just did a townhall meeting, they are talking about
conversations at fundraising events. The candidates feel that they are actually connecting with
their constituents… and they are, just not with all of them. Naturally, business owners and affluent
blowhards are well-represented.
Which means that backing out of the existing fundraising mechanisms would be wrenching for
campaign and candidate alike, on several levels. It would also be considered an overt act of disloyalty;
and loyalty is the coin of the realm.
Political consultants by and large, and especially in the establishment tier, operate and
strategize on the sole core premise that voters are a) stupid (in the Pavlovian sense), and b)
unreliable. The idea that small donors would be reliable over the course of a campaign is inconceivable
(the larger donors certainly aren't that reliable). And if you're willing to flip messages in
a heartbeat, it is probably not a safe bet; Sanders is pulling it off in part (so far?) through
his own massive (so far…) consistency (and legacy). Also, he's positioned so far from anybody
else (except maybe Trump?!?) that it's difficult to slipstream him and steal his donor base.
I think that some basic economic/market concepts (commitment bias, sunk costs) can
be considered as well. But the establishment consultants (who generally do quite well, thank you)
don't see a $20 donation as a significant commitment with an expectation attached; it's a restaurant
tip. BTW, Sanders' three million donations come from over one million donors, that's a rough average
of two follow-up donations. Some of these folks are living hand-to-mouth; they're almost literally
all in, unlike any millionaire or billionaire who maxes out and gives the rest to PACs.
optimader
And Clinton's not dumb; not dumb? mmm, Ok, is she smart? Personally, I don't think so.
Conniving and persistent? absolutely.
The vote count is currently 62% for Bernie and 32% for Hilary, yet she has scored 6 delegates
vs. zero for him. What am I missing (besides a functioning brain)?
Yeah but Super Delegates only exist in case commoner voters come up with the wrong answer.
Hahaha. Pathetic. I will write in Bernie regardless of how the Dems 'fix' the selection.
Super Delegates: part of the modern Dem machine. Carter was the first nominee and pres under
the super delegate system. (Started 1972 after the McGovern nomination, i.e 'wrong' answer.) Carter
was also the start of Dem presidents who de-regulate business. Super Delegates act as supporters
of the status quo, making the party less responsive to voters.
Notice the Republicans don't have super delegates. Which party is really more democratic? It's
a ratchet, there's a check on how far populist left movements go in this country, but maybe not
populist right ones.
So far the partially reported totals are from the hinterlands, which is the only possible explanation
I can offer for whoever the hell Greenstein is with 7% of the vote.
Also wrt phone banking/push polling in NH: those of us who live here know this is why caller
ID was invented, and act accordingly.
adding:
The Dems came up with the idea of super delegates after the McGovern nomination in 1972. The idea
was to keep the party bosses in control of the nominating process. Studebaker talks about Carter.
Carter was the first Dem nominee under the super delegate system.
The GOP does not have super delegates to their convention.
But just because Trump is an imperfect candidate doesn't mean his candidacy can't be instructive.
Trump could teach Republicans in Washington a lot if only they stopped posturing long enough to watch
carefully. Here's some of what they might learn:
He Exists Because You Failed
American presidential elections usually amount to a series of overcorrections: Clinton begat Bush,
who produced Obama, whose lax border policies fueled the rise of Trump. In the case of Trump, though,
the GOP shares the blame, and not just because his fellow Republicans misdirected their ad buys or
waited so long to criticize him. Trump is in part a reaction to the intellectual corruption of the
Republican Party. That ought to be obvious to his critics, yet somehow it isn't.
Consider the conservative nonprofit establishment, which seems to employ most right-of-center
adults in Washington. Over the past 40 years, how much donated money have all those think tanks and
foundations consumed? Billions, certainly. (Someone better at math and less prone to melancholy should
probably figure out the precise number.) Has America become more conservative over that same period?
Come on. Most of that cash went to self-perpetuation: Salaries, bonuses, retirement funds, medical,
dental, lunches, car services, leases on high-end office space, retreats in Mexico, more fundraising.
Unless you were the direct beneficiary of any of that, you'd have to consider it wasted.
Pretty embarrassing. And yet they're not embarrassed. Many of those same overpaid, underperforming
tax-exempt sinecure-holders are now demanding that Trump be stopped. Why? Because, as his critics
have noted
in a rising chorus of hysteria, Trump represents "an existential threat to conservatism."
Let that sink in. Conservative voters are being scolded for supporting a candidate they consider
conservative because it would be bad for conservatism? And by the way, the people doing the scolding?
They're the ones who've been advocating for open borders, and nation-building in countries whose
populations hate us, and trade deals that eliminated jobs while enriching their donors, all while
implicitly mocking the base for its worries about abortion and gay marriage and the pace of demographic
change. Now they're telling their voters to shut up and obey, and if they don't, they're liberal.
It turns out the GOP wasn't simply out of touch with its voters; the party had no idea who its
voters were or what they believed. For decades, party leaders and intellectuals imagined that most
Republicans were broadly libertarian on economics and basically neoconservative on foreign policy.
That may sound absurd now, after Trump has attacked nearly the entire Republican catechism (he savaged
the Iraq War and hedge fund managers in the same debate) and been greatly rewarded for it, but that
was the assumption the GOP brain trust operated under. They had no way of knowing otherwise. The
only Republicans they talked to read the Wall Street Journal too.
On immigration policy, party elders were caught completely by surprise. Even canny operators like
Ted Cruz didn't appreciate the depth of voter anger on the subject. And why would they? If you live
in an affluent ZIP code, it's hard to see a downside to mass low-wage immigration. Your kids don't
go to public school. You don't take the bus or use the emergency room for health care. No immigrant
is competing for your job. (The day Hondurans start getting hired as green energy lobbyists is the
day my neighbors become nativists.) Plus, you get cheap servants, and get to feel welcoming and virtuous
while paying them less per hour than your kids make at a summer job on Nantucket. It's all good.
Apart from his line about Mexican rapists early in the campaign, Trump hasn't said anything especially
shocking about immigration. Control the border, deport lawbreakers, try not to admit violent criminals
- these are the ravings of a Nazi? This is the "ghost of George Wallace" that a
Politico piece described last August? A lot of Republican leaders think so. No wonder
their voters are rebelling.
Truth Is Not Only A Defense, It's Thrilling
When was the last time you stopped yourself from saying something you believed to be true for
fear of being punished or criticized for saying it? If you live in America, it probably hasn't been
long. That's not just a talking point about political correctness. It's the central problem with
our national conversation, the main reason our debates are so stilted and useless. You can't fix
a problem if you don't have the words to describe it. You can't even think about it clearly.
This depressing fact made Trump's political career. In a country where almost everyone in public
life lies reflexively, it's thrilling to hear someone say what he really thinks, even if you believe
he's wrong. It's especially exciting when you suspect he's right.
A temporary ban on Muslim immigration? That sounds a little extreme (meaning nobody else has said
it recently in public). But is it? Millions of Muslims have moved to Western Europe over the past
50 years, and a sizable number of them still haven't assimilated. Instead, they remain hostile and
sometimes dangerous to the cultures that welcomed them. By any measure, that experiment has failed.
What's our strategy for not repeating it here, especially after San Bernardino-attacks that seemed
to come out of nowhere? Invoke American exceptionalism and hope for the best? Before Trump, that
was the plan.
Republican primary voters should be forgiven for wondering who exactly is on the reckless side
of this debate. At the very least, Trump seems like he wants to protect the country.
Evangelicals understand this better than most. You read surveys that indicate the majority of
Christian conservatives support Trump, and then you see the video: Trump on stage with pastors, looking
pained as they pray over him, misidentifying key books in the New Testament, and in general doing
a ludicrous imitation of a faithful Christian, the least holy roller ever. You wonder as you watch
this: How could they be that dumb? He's so obviously faking it.
They know that already. I doubt there are many Christian voters who think Trump could recite the
Nicene Creed, or even identify it. Evangelicals have given up trying to elect one of their own. What
they're looking for is a bodyguard, someone to shield them from mounting (and real) threats to their
freedom of speech and worship. Trump fits that role nicely, better in fact than many church-going
Republicans. For eight years, there was a born-again in the White House. How'd that work out for
Christians, here and in Iraq?
What is interesting is that Trump is 100% right... I think he has a marketing talent. One
thing for certain, he created a problem for Repugs establishment and all those yellow US MSM and their
owners...
"... "She should be in jail, by the way, for what she did," Trump said. "Everybody knows she should
be in jail. What she did with the emails is a disgrace," he added. ..."
He then blamed US President Barack Obama and his former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, for
the Islamic State's rise.
"They have a bunch of dishonest people," he continued. "They've created ISIS. Hillary Clinton
created ISIS with Obama - created with Obama. But I love predicting because you know, ultimately,
you need somebody with vision."
Trump and Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, have fiercely sparred in recent weeks. Trump
took particular exception to Clinton saying that his provocative campaign-trail statements had
become propaganda for the Islamic State, especially his proposal to bar Muslims from entering the
US.
The Republican billionaire demanded that Clinton apologize, but her campaign
replied at the time: "Hell no. Hillary Clinton will not be apologizing to Donald Trump for correctly
pointing out how his hateful rhetoric only helps ISIS recruit more terrorists."
After Clinton said Trump had generally displayed a
"penchant for sexism," Trump went after her husband, former US President Bill Clinton. Trump
recently proclaimed that the former president has
"a terrible record of women abuse," referring to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, among other things.
At his Saturday rally, Trump also blasted Hillary Clinton for
a report on her husband's paid speeches while she was secretary of state. As he has done frequently
before, Trump further asserted that Clinton "shouldn't be allowed to run" because of the private
email system she used for her State Department work.
"She should be in jail, by the way, for what she did," Trump said. "Everybody knows she should
be in jail. What she did with the emails is a disgrace," he added.
An interesting and plausible hypothesis: Trump as a candidate who answers voters frustration with
neoliberalism.
Notable quotes:
"... The data suggest theres some kind of connection. According to polls, whites with a high school
degree or less disproportionately favor Trump. These are the same people who have seen their economic
opportunities decline the most in recent years. This group also disproportionately favors tough restrictions
on immigration. ..."
"... A new study released this week showed that in Germany, the economic frustrations of trade nudged
many people into becoming right-wing extremists over the past two decades - throwing their support behind
the country's neo-Nazi parties. ..."
"... Still, these far-right parties have consistently earned a percentage point or two of the German
national vote. And the economists found that they have been particularly popular with people who have
been negatively impacted by trade. ..."
"... using German data on elections, employment, and commerce, they showed that places where trade
caused the most pain also had the largest increases in support for far-right parties. Over the past
20 years, Germanys exports and imports have both skyrocketed, first thanks to the fall of the Iron Curtain,
then due to Chinas rise as a major manufacturer. ..."
"... Workers whose industries were hurt by trade were were more likely to say they would start voting
for one of the extreme right parties. Even workers whose own industries were unaffected by trade were
more likely to support a neo-Nazi political party if they lived in a region hurt by trade. ..."
"... Christian Dippel, one of the authors of the study, says it's also important to look at the
context in each country. The neo-Nazi parties happen to be the voice of anti-globalization in Germany.
But in Spain, for instance, these views are the trademark of Podemos, a far-left party "known for its
rants against globalization and the tyranny of markets," according to Foreign Affairs. ..."
"... The larger lesson, Dippel says, is that globalization creates a class of angry voters who will
reward whoever can tap into their frustrations. These are usually extremist parties, because the mainstream
tends to recognize the overall benefits of trade. "When the mainstream parties are all, in a loose sense,
pro-globalization, there's room for fringe groups to latch onto this anti-globalization sentiment and
profit from it," he says. ..."
"... Author has shown that in America, recent trends in trade have hurt low-wage workers the most.
With his co-authors David Dorn, Gordon Hanson and Jae Song, he published a widely-cited 2014 paper measuring
the negative impacts of manufacturing imports from China, America's largest trading partner. Most of
those ill-effects - like unemployment and lower earnings - were borne by the workers with the lowest
wages. ..."
"... "Immigration always seems to be the most tangible evidence of the impingement of others on
your economic turf," Author adds. ..."
"... "In Germany, these three things get bundled up in these far-right platforms in a way that's
very difficult to unpack," he says. "It could be that you're bundling these ideas together for a reason.
It could be that you're bundling together what's really happening with an idea that's more tangible,
that you could sell more easily to angry voters." ..."
A popular theory for Donald Trump's success emphasizes the economic anxiety of less-educated whites,
who have struggled badly over the past few decades.
Hit hard by factory closings and jobs moving abroad to China and other places, the story goes,
blue-collar voters are channeling their anger at immigrants, who have out-competed them for what
jobs remain. Trump, with his remarks about Mexicans being rapists, has ridden this discontent to
the top of the polls.
The data suggest there's some kind of connection. According to polls, whites with a high school
degree or less disproportionately favor Trump. These are the same people who have seen their economic
opportunities decline the most in recent years. This group also disproportionately favors tough restrictions
on immigration.
But just because there appears to be a connection doesn't mean there is one. Has globalization
pushed working-class voters to the right? Nobody has proven that globalization has in fact pushed
working-class voters to the right or made them more extreme, at least not in the United States, where
the right kind of data aren't being collected. But unique records from Germany have allowed economists
to show how free trade trade changes people's political opinions.
A new study released this week showed that in Germany, the economic frustrations of trade
nudged many people into becoming right-wing extremists over the past two decades - throwing their
support behind the country's neo-Nazi parties. Written by economists Christian Dippel, of University
of California, Los Angeles, Stephan Heblich, of the University of Bristol, and Robert Gold of the
Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the paper was released by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Germany's far-right politicians, it should be noted, are not garden-variety nationalists. German
intelligence keeps tabs on these people, who frequently use racist and anti-Semitic language. They
say things like: "Europe is the continent of white people and it should remain that way." Many believe
in a global Jewish conspiracy. They are much more radical than, say, Marine Le Pen's National Front
party in France.
Still, these far-right parties have consistently earned a percentage point or two of the German
national vote. And the economists found that they have been particularly popular with people who
have been negatively impacted by trade.
How they measured the radicalizing power of trade
The economists took two different approaches to measure the connection between globalization and
right-wing extremism.
First, using German data on elections, employment, and commerce, they showed that places where
trade caused the most pain also had the largest increases in support for far-right parties. Over
the past 20 years, Germany's exports and imports have both skyrocketed, first thanks to the fall
of the Iron Curtain, then due to China's rise as a major manufacturer.
The researchers looked individually at Germany's 408 local districts, which are roughly equivalent
to counties in the United States. Each of these places was affected by increasing trade in different
ways. Areas that specialized in high-end cars, for instance, saw a happy boost from expanded exports.
Areas that specialized in, say, textiles, were stomped on by cheap Chinese and Eastern European imports.
This map shows changes in imports (bad!) compared to exports (good!). The dark blue regions are
places where imports increased a lot more than exports. These are the places where trade made things
worse, where people lost jobs and factories were shuttered.
These also happen to be the places where far-right parties made the most gains, on average. This
is true after controlling for demographics in each county, the size of the manufacturing sector,
and what part of the country the county was in.
The researchers argue that this relationship is more than just a correlation. To prove that trade
caused far-right radicalization, they only look at changes to the German economy inflicted by external
forces - say, a sudden increase in Chinese manufacturing capacity.
(Also, to get around the problem of German reunification, which happened in 1990, the researchers
split up the analysis into two time periods. From 1987 to 1998, they only looked at West Germany.
From 1998 to 2009, they looked at both regions.)
This evidence from patterns of trade and voting records is convincing, but there is one major
hole. The turmoil from trade caused certain counties to become friendlier to extremist parties -
but was it because the people living there became radicalized? Or did all the moderate voters flee
those places, leaving behind only the crusty xenophobes?
So, to follow up, the researchers used a special German survey that has been interviewing some
of the same people every year since the 1980s. This is a massively expensive project - the U.S. doesn't
have anything quite like it - and it allowed the researchers to actually observe people changing
their minds.
Workers whose industries were hurt by trade were were more likely to say they would start
voting for one of the extreme right parties. Even workers whose own industries were unaffected by
trade were more likely to support a neo-Nazi political party if they lived in a region hurt by trade.
In part this is because trade affects more than just the people who lose their jobs when the shoe
factory closes. Those assembly line workers need to find new jobs, and they put pressure on people
in similar occupations, say, at the garment factory or the tweezer factory.
What this means for the U.S.
All in all, the power of trade to radicalize people was rather small, measured in changes of a
fraction of a percent. This makes makes sense, because, again, Germany's far-right parties are way
out there. It takes a lot of economic suffering to cause someone to start voting with these neo-Nazis.
Christian Dippel, one of the authors of the study, says it's also important to look at the
context in each country. The neo-Nazi parties happen to be the voice of anti-globalization in Germany.
But in Spain, for instance, these views are the trademark of Podemos, a far-left party "known for
its rants against globalization and the tyranny of markets," according to Foreign Affairs.
The larger lesson, Dippel says, is that globalization creates a class of angry voters who
will reward whoever can tap into their frustrations. These are usually extremist parties, because
the mainstream tends to recognize the overall benefits of trade. "When the mainstream parties are
all, in a loose sense, pro-globalization, there's room for fringe groups to latch onto this anti-globalization
sentiment and profit from it," he says.
But is there an analogy between the far-right radicals in Germany and the wider group of disaffected
working class Americans who, say, support Donald Trump or the tea party? Certainly leaders on the
left also capitalize on anti-trade sentiment, but they usually use less harsh rhetoric or seldom
attack immigration.
David Autor, a labor economist at MIT, has been working to address the question of whether the
same dynamics are at play in the U.S. But it's a tough one, he says.
"What [Dippel and his colleagues] are doing is totally sensible, and I think the results are plausible
as well - that these trade shocks lead to activity on the extreme right, that they bring about ultranationalism,"
Autor says.
"We actually started on this hypothesis years ago for the U.S. to see if it could help to explain
the rise of angry white non-college males," he said. "But so far, we just don't have the right kind
of data."
Author has shown that in America, recent trends in trade have hurt low-wage workers the most.
With his co-authors David Dorn, Gordon Hanson and Jae Song, he published a widely-cited 2014 paper
measuring the negative impacts of manufacturing imports from China, America's largest trading partner.
Most of those ill-effects - like unemployment and lower earnings - were borne by the workers with
the lowest wages.
The higher-paid (and probably higher-skilled workers) were able to find new jobs when their companies
went bust. Often, they found jobs outside of the manufacturing industry. (An accountant, for instance,
can work anywhere.) But the lower-paid workers were trapped, doomed to fight over the ever-dwindling
supply of stateside manufacturing jobs.
China, of course, has been in Trump's crosshairs. He accuses the country of being a "currency
manipulator," which may have once been true, but not any more. He has threatened to impose a 25 percent
tax on Chinese imports to punish China.
But Trump has attracted the most attention for his disparaging remarks about immigrants - which
is something of puzzle. While it's true that non-college workers are increasingly competing with
immigrants for the same construction or manufacturing jobs, Author points out that there's little
evidence that immigrants are responsible for the woes of the working class.
"There's an amazing discrepancy between the data and the perception that I still find very hard
to reconcile," he says. "The data do not strongly support the view that immigration has had big effects
[on non-college workers], but I don't think that's how people perceive it."
"Immigration always seems to be the most tangible evidence of the impingement of others on
your economic turf," Author adds.
Dippel says that conflating these ideas could be a political strategy. He makes a distinction
between three different kinds of globalization - there's the worldwide movement of capital, goods,
and people.
"In Germany, these three things get bundled up in these far-right platforms in a way that's
very difficult to unpack," he says. "It could be that you're bundling these ideas together for a
reason. It could be that you're bundling together what's really happening with an idea that's more
tangible, that you could sell more easily to angry voters."
Jeff Guo is a reporter covering economics, domestic policy, and everything empirical. He's
from Maryland, but outside the Beltway. Follow him on Twitter: @_jeffguo.
...According to an Interfax report of his annual year-end news conference, Putin
called the Republican presidential candidate "a very bright and talented man," as
well as an "absolute leader" in the race for the presidency. (Another account,
from Reuters, translated Putin as saying Trump is "a very flamboyant man.")
"He says that he wants to move to another level of relations, to a deeper level
of relations with Russia. How can we not welcome that? Of course we welcome it,"
Putin said, according to Reuters' report.
The Russian president also said that it is none of his business "to assess
tricks Donald Trump [is] using to boost his popularity," according to Interfax.
Trump has repeatedly praised the Russian leader's toughness and said he would
be able to cut deals with him.
"He does not like Obama at all. He doesn't respect Obama at all. And I'm sure that Obama
doesn't like him very much," Trump said of Putin in October. "But I think that I would probably
get along with him very well. And I don't think you'd be having the kind of problems that you're
having right now."
Trump has also backed Russia's intervention in Syria, which Putin has said is aimed at
eradicating the Islamic State. "And as far as him attacking ISIS, I'm all for it," he told CBS
News' John Dickerson. "If he wants to be bombing the hell out of ISIS, which he's starting to do,
if he wants to be bombing ISIS, let him bomb them, John. Let him bomb them. I think we probably
work together much more so than right now."
"... The Rubes are mad at the state of the economy and blame Obama first but also believe that the GOP establishment has sold them down river. The squishy economy has caused the GOP elites to lose out to Trump and his antiestablishment we are not winning pitchfork toting mob. ..."
Could have been worse. Could have been shutdown or new round
of austerity. GOP intransigence is coming back to bite them.
The Rubes are mad at the state of the economy and blame Obama
first but also believe that the GOP establishment has sold
them down river. The squishy economy has caused the GOP
elites to lose out to Trump and his antiestablishment "we are
not winning" pitchfork toting mob.
The Dems need to get in
front of this parade before the General.
Billy Joe said...
I am hearing, adding on to Bakho's point above, this
was a 2 way deal. The Fed begins its modest tightening
schedule with Congress beginning a modest fiscal
loosening.
This is not a accident. It comes from a second hand source
related to a Republican Congressmen. Basically, Yellen
told Congress, if they loosen fiscal policy, they will
raise rates. That is what happened.......on a small scale.
Christine Todd Whitman fear mongering serves one purpose -- to support establishment
candidates. I do not remember her condemning Bush go killing million of Iraqis. She was
actually a part of this clique. So she should shut up and sit quietly (as any person belong to
criminal Bush II administration should)
The parallels are chilling. In pre-WWII Germany, the economy was in ruins, people were scared,
and they wanted someone to blame. Today we find ourselves with a nation of people who feel under
attack both physically and economically and are fearful. The middle class has never fully
recovered economically from the Great Recession. Income disparity is growing
...Language shapes behavior. Hateful language gives susceptible people permission to act on
their fears. Preying on the marginalized who are scared of the future is the time-honored tactic
of bullies and dictators. When times are difficult, people always look for someone to blame: It
is easy to pick out a target
Christine Todd Whitman is a former governor of New Jersey and former head of the
Environmental Protection Agency.
"... The argument began with Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, alone among the candidates a consistent voice against American intervention in the Mideast, who said the "majority" of his competitors for the nomination "want to topple Assad. And then there will be chaos, and I think ISIS will then be in charge." ..."
"... Mr. Cruz made the case for keeping dictators like Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt close. "Qaddafi was a bad man," he said., "Mubarak had a terrible human rights record. But they were assisting us" in the cause of "fighting radical Islamic terrorists." He argued that this was far better than "being a Woodrow Wilson democracy promoter." ..."
"... Mr. Cruz's argument was meant to differentiate him from Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who had supported the ouster of Mr. Qaddafi and Mr. Mubarak, and whose campaign has attracted some veterans of the George W. Bush White House. But along the way it exposed a significant rift in Republican thinking, and puts him in a much different place than where his party was a decade ago. ..."
"... Hizbolah is only a terrorist to IDF when they enter Lebanon, the Israelis cannot do in South Lebanon what they get way with in Gaza and the West Bank. Too many GOP playing for AIPAC. ..."
"... If you dont like Assad why do you like al Sisi? Aside from the Egyptian military dictator has promised not to use the $3B annual bribe from the US to attack Israel...... ..."
"... While Rubio wants to arm al Qaeda so they can run Syria to do more 9/11s. ..."
"... Trump is right the media lies all the time and his thuggee opponents take them up on their lies. ..."
The candidates took strong positions on the
need to use force, but at times seemed uncertain about America's past military and diplomatic
interventions in the region.
At Republican Debate, Straying Into Mideast,
and Getting Lost http://nyti.ms/1m7DUuE
NYT - DAVID E. SANGER - DEC. 16
WASHINGTON - In a surprisingly substantive debate on foreign policy Tuesday night, the upheaval
in the Middle East gave Republican presidential candidates a chance to show off alternatives to
what they portrayed as President Obama's failed approach, but at many moments, the politics and
history of the region eluded them as they tried to demonstrate their skills at analysis and leadership.
At times during the two-hour debate, several of the candidates seemed uncertain about America's
past military and diplomatic interventions in the region, and did not acknowledge Mr. Obama's
continuing attempts to negotiate a cease-fire in Syria. And for most of them – Jeb Bush seemed
an exception – the strategy to defeat the Islamic State largely seemed to boil down to this: Drop
your bombs first and figure out the diplomacy later, if at all.
In their efforts to show that they were skilled at realpolitik, putting national interests
ahead of ideals, almost all of them dismissed the stated goal of Mr. Bush's brother, the last
Republican president. It was George W. Bush who declared in his second inaugural address that
"the calling of our time" was to support "the growth of democratic movements and institutions
in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."
But to some in this generation of Republicans, democracy building is out; supporting dictators,
perhaps including Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who are willing to fight the Islamic State, is in.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the debate was long on the need to use military force, and short
on the question of how one gets at the roots of radical Muslim jihadism – or engages the Muslim
community in the United States and abroad in that effort. That discussion began with Senator Ted
Cruz of Texas defending, and expanding on, his recent vow to carpet-bomb the Islamic State, wherever
it may be.
"What it means is using overwhelming air power to utterly and completely destroy ISIS," said
Mr. Cruz, using an acronym for the Islamic State. He argued that in "the first Persian Gulf War,
we launched roughly 1,100 air attacks a day. We carpet-bombed them for 36 days, saturation bombing,"
and then sent in troops to mop up "what was left of the Iraqi army."
In fact, the Persian Gulf war was the first big testing ground for precision-guided munitions.
The last big "carpet bombing" was in the Vietnam War; military officials, including Britain's
defense minister, have noted recently that any such technique used in Syria would kill thousands
of innocent civilians living in places like Raqqa, the Islamic State's de facto capital.
But Mr. Cruz pressed on when challenged by Wolf Blitzer of CNN, the moderator. "The object
isn't to level a city," he said. "The object is to kill the ISIS terrorists." He never said how
that is possible without tremendous civilian casualties, which is why carpet bombing is often
considered a war crime.
In some ways the debate was remarkable for the fact that it delved into the politics of the
Middle East at all; many of the candidates on the stage Tuesday night in Las Vegas did not appear
interested in that discussion even a few months ago. But the terrorist attacks in Paris and San
Bernardino left them no choice: They had to pass the commander-in-chief test, and the first step
in that process is to be able piece together something that sounds like a strategy.
The result was that a few of them were testing out their thinking about longtime questions
like regime-change – and whether it is better to press for democracy, even if it creates chaos
and openings for terrorist groups, or to back reliable dictators.
Syria poses the most urgent test, and there was disagreement over whether Mr. Assad had to
go first, or whether the United States and its partners should focus first on defeating the Islamic
State, even if that means leaving in power a dictator under whom upward of a quarter-of-a-million
of his own people have been killed.
The argument began with Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, alone among the candidates a consistent
voice against American intervention in the Mideast, who said the "majority" of his competitors
for the nomination "want to topple Assad. And then there will be chaos, and I think ISIS will
then be in charge."
Though administration officials will not say so in public, they largely agree – which is why
getting rid of Mr. Assad has been pushed down the road, though Secretary of State John Kerry says
Mr. Assad's removal must be the eventual outcome if Sunni rebel groups are going to be enticed
into fighting the Islamic State.
Mr. Cruz made the case for keeping dictators like Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya and Hosni Mubarak
of Egypt close. "Qaddafi was a bad man," he said., "Mubarak had a terrible human rights record.
But they were assisting us" in the cause of "fighting radical Islamic terrorists." He argued that
this was far better than "being a Woodrow Wilson democracy promoter."
Mr. Cruz's argument was meant to differentiate him from Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who
had supported the ouster of Mr. Qaddafi and Mr. Mubarak, and whose campaign has attracted some
veterans of the George W. Bush White House. But along the way it exposed a significant rift in
Republican thinking, and puts him in a much different place than where his party was a decade
ago. ...
ilsm said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs...
Thuggee debates:
If your bombing (questionable whether it worked in WW II, utter failure against
VC/NVA) is failing eliminating "rules of engagement" and increasing civilian casualties is not
going to change the outcome. If the Germans had won WW II Bomber Harris would have been hanged,
and for Japan Le May would have been beheaded.
Hizbolah is only a "terrorist" to IDF when they enter Lebanon, the Israelis cannot do in South
Lebanon what they get way with in Gaza and the West Bank. Too many GOP playing for AIPAC.
Replacing a brutal dictator with a bunch of terrorists is insanity, the GOP has no other answer.
The mess in Lebanon and Iraq was caused by Reagan and worsened by GW.
If you don't like Assad why do you like al Sisi? Aside from the Egyptian military dictator
has promised not to use the $3B annual bribe from the US to attack Israel......
While Rubio wants to arm al Qaeda so they can run Syria to do more 9/11's.
Trump is right the media lies all the time and his thuggee opponents take them up on their
lies.
"... There's little doubt that what has happened to America's middle class has helped to create the climate that has fueled Trump's sudden rise. ..."
"... Those living in middle-class households no longer make up a majority of the population. ..."
"... The report is not entirely gloomy. Every category gained in income between 1970 and 2014. Those in the top strata saw incomes rise by 47 percent. Middle-income Americans saw theirs rise by 34 percent. Those at the bottom saw the most modest increases, at 28 percent. ..."
"... But the share of income accounted for by the middle class has plummeted over the past 4 1 / 2 decades. In 1970, middle-class households accounted for 62 percent of income; by 2014, it was just 43 percent. Meanwhile, the share held by those in upper-income households rose from 29 percent to 49 percent, eclipsing the middle class's share. ..."
"... For most families, the two recessions have wiped out previous gains and widened the wealth and income gap between the wealthiest and all others. "The losses were so large that only upper-income families realized notable gains in wealth over the span of 30 years from 1983 to 2013," according to the Pew study. ..."
"... Until the recession of 2007-2009, middle-income earners saw a significant rise in their overall wealth, but the economic calamity mostly wiped away those gains. Today, the median net worth of families in the middle (in 2014 dollars) is barely higher than it was in 1983. Those at the top have weathered the recession far better and, despite losses, have seen a doubling of their net worth over that same period. ..."
"... Politicians in both parties have sought for some time to appeal to middle-class voters who are economically stressed. President Obama made his 2012 reelection campaign about appealing to the middle class and casting Republican nominee Mitt Romney as out of touch and insensitive to their concerns. ..."
"... Trump, however, has tapped a vein of frustration and resentment among those who have suffered most from the economic maladies of the past decade and a half, and he has ridden it to the top of the GOP polls. He has done it by eschewing political correctness. ..."
"... Trump draws strong support from the kinds of voters who see illegal immigration as eroding the values of the country and who might worry that their jobs are threatened by the influx. About half of those Republicans who favor deporting immigrants who are here illegally back Trump for the party's nomination. ..."
"... Trump's campaign slogan is not just "Make America Great" but "Make America Great Again." He summons a time when the middle class was prosperous and incomes were rising. This was a time when the lack of a college degree was not the impediment to a more economically secure life that it has become - and a time when white people made up a higher share of the population. ..."
"... Whatever happens to Trump's candidacy over the coming months, the conditions that have helped make him the front-runner for the GOP nomination will still exist, a focal point in a divisive debate about the future of the country. ..."
"... He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you whos to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections ..."
"... Their replies were striking. Where merely affluent Americans are more likely to identify as Democrats than as Republicans, the ultrawealthy overwhelmingly leaned right. They are far more likely to raise money for politicians and to have access to them; nearly half had personally contacted one of Illinois's two United States senators. ..."
"... Probably the biggest single area of disconnect has to do with social welfare programs," said Benjamin I. Page, a political scientist at Northwestern University and a co-author of the study. "The other big area has to do with paying for those programs, particularly taxes on high-income and wealthy people. ..."
"... Where the general public overwhelmingly supports a high minimum wage, the one percent are broadly opposed. ..."
"... Where merely affluent Americans are more likely to identify as Democrats than as Republicans, the ultrawealthy overwhelmingly leaned right. ..."
"... That would explain the survey results discussed yesterday showing Clinton to be the preferred candidate among millionaires -- a category almost as factually broad and ambiguous as the middle class . The merely affluent -- AKA the liberal elite -- would be the Clinton supporters, whereas the ultrawealthy would support Rubio (or whatever other candidate they were sponsoring). ..."
"... it is not necessarily an endorsement of Trump but a relative statement - that he resonates with people more than the other contenders. This kind of thing (people rallying around alpha-type strongmen with supremacist narratives) has reliably happened anywhere and anytime there was a bad economy and serious lack of positive outlook. ..."
"... Trump 24%, Cruz 16% in South Carolina Poll ..."
"... Five Reasons Congress Hates Ted Cruz http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/09/30/Five-Reasons-Congre ..."
Charting Trump's rise through the decline of the middle class
By Dan Balz December 12 at 10:59 AM
For anyone trying to understand the emergence of Donald Trump as a force in this pre-election
year, the Pew Research Center this past week provided some valuable insight. There's little
doubt that what has happened to America's middle class has helped to create the climate that has
fueled Trump's sudden rise.
The Pew study charts the steady decline of the middle class over the past four decades. It
is a phenomenon often discussed and analyzed, but the new findings highlight a tipping point:
Those living in middle-class households no longer make up a majority of the population.
There has been a "hollowing out" of the middle class, as the study puts it. In 1971, the middle
class accounted for 61 percent of the nation's population. Today, there are slightly more people
in the upper and lower economic tiers combined than in the middle class.
The report is not entirely gloomy. Every category gained in income between 1970 and 2014. Those
in the top strata saw incomes rise by 47 percent. Middle-income Americans saw theirs rise by 34
percent. Those at the bottom saw the most modest increases, at 28 percent.
But the share of income accounted for by the middle class has plummeted over the past 4 1 /
2 decades. In 1970, middle-class households accounted for 62 percent of income; by 2014, it was
just 43 percent. Meanwhile, the share held by those in upper-income households rose from 29 percent
to 49 percent, eclipsing the middle class's share.
The past 15 years have been particularly hard on wealth and income because of the recession
of 2001 and the Great Recession of 2007-2009. For all groups, incomes rose from 1970 to 2000.
In the next decade, incomes for all groups declined. During the past four years, incomes rose
3 percent for the wealthiest, 1 percent for middle-income Americans, and not at all for those
with the lowest incomes. For those in the middle, the median income in 2014 was 4 percent lower
than in 2000, according to the study.
For most families, the two recessions have wiped out previous gains and widened the wealth
and income gap between the wealthiest and all others. "The losses were so large that only upper-income
families realized notable gains in wealth over the span of 30 years from 1983 to 2013," according
to the Pew study.
Until the recession of 2007-2009, middle-income earners saw a significant rise in their
overall wealth, but the economic calamity mostly wiped away those gains. Today, the median net
worth of families in the middle (in 2014 dollars) is barely higher than it was in 1983. Those
at the top have weathered the recession far better and, despite losses, have seen a doubling of
their net worth over that same period.
Within the overall trends of the middle class, there are winners and losers, according to the
Pew study. Winners included people older than 65, whose overall economic standing has increased
sharply over the past four decades. In 1971, more than half of all Americans ages 65 and older
were in the lowest income tier. Today, nearly half qualify as middle-income.
Those with college degrees have remained fairly stable in terms of their percentages in the
lower-, middle- and upper-income tiers. Then comes this telling finding from the Pew study: "Those
without a bachelor's degree tumbled down the income tiers, however. Among the various demographic
groups examined, adults with no more than a high school diploma lost the most ground economically."
This is where the report connects directly to what's happened politically this year. Pair those
last findings from the Pew study with what recent polling shows about who supports Trump.
A recent Washington Post-ABC News survey found Trump leading his rivals overall, with 32 percent
support among registered Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. Among white people with
college degrees, he was at 23 percent and led his nearest rival by only four percentage points.
Among white people without a college degree, however, his support ballooned to 41 percent - double
that of Ben Carson, who was second at 20 percent, and five times the support of Sens. Marco Rubio
(Fla.) and Ted Cruz (Tex.), who were tied for third.
Those without college educations have regressed economically. The Pew study shows that many
who have either a high school degree or at most two years of college have fallen out of the middle
class over the past four decades. Among those with high school degrees, the percentage in the
lowest-income tier has risen from 17 percent in 1971 to 36 percent in 2015. A similar pattern
exists for those with some college education but not a four-year degree.
Politicians in both parties have sought for some time to appeal to middle-class voters
who are economically stressed. President Obama made his 2012 reelection campaign about appealing
to the middle class and casting Republican nominee Mitt Romney as out of touch and insensitive
to their concerns.
In the absence of progress during Obama's presidency, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner,
and her principal challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.), have made issues of inequality and wage
stagnation central to their appeals. Clinton's team long has believed that the election will turn
on issues of middle-class economics.
Trump, however, has tapped a vein of frustration and resentment among those who have suffered
most from the economic maladies of the past decade and a half, and he has ridden it to the top
of the GOP polls. He has done it by eschewing political correctness.
Trump draws strong support from the kinds of voters who see illegal immigration as eroding
the values of the country and who might worry that their jobs are threatened by the influx. About
half of those Republicans who favor deporting immigrants who are here illegally back Trump for
the party's nomination. These are also the kinds of voters who agree most with Trump's call
to ban the entry of Muslims into the United States until security concerns are laid to rest.
Trump's campaign slogan is not just "Make America Great" but "Make America Great Again."
He summons a time when the middle class was prosperous and incomes were rising. This was a time
when the lack of a college degree was not the impediment to a more economically secure life that
it has become - and a time when white people made up a higher share of the population.
Whatever happens to Trump's candidacy over the coming months, the conditions that have
helped make him the front-runner for the GOP nomination will still exist, a focal point in a divisive
debate about the future of the country.
EMichael said in reply to Peter K....
Baker was too kind to Balz.
Amazing that appeals to racist imbeciles are considered to be appeals
to middle class America. Over two decades ago, Trump's platform(if you can call it that) was accurately
described in The American President:
"I've known Bob Rumson for years, and I've been operating under the assumption that the
reason Bob devotes so much time and energy to shouting at the rain was that he simply didn't
get it. Well, I was wrong. Bob's problem isn't that he doesn't get it. Bob's problem is that
he can't sell it! We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them.
And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested
in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of
it and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections."
Peter K. said in reply to EMichael...
Also the corporate media refuses to focus on the one percent.
"The rich families remaking Illinois are among a small group around the country who have
channeled their extraordinary wealth into political power, taking advantage of regulatory,
legal and cultural shifts that have carved new paths for infusing money into campaigns. Economic
winners in an age of rising inequality, operating largely out of public view, they are reshaping
government with fortunes so large as to defy the ordinary financial scale of politics. In the
2016 presidential race, a New York Times analysis found last month, just 158 families had provided
nearly half of the early campaign money.
...
Around the same time that Mr. Rauner began running for governor, a group of researchers
based at Northwestern University published findings from the country's first-ever representative
survey of the richest one percent of Americans. The study, known as the Survey of Economically
Successful Americans and the Common Good, canvassed a sample of the wealthy from the Chicago
area. Those canvassed were granted anonymity to discuss their views candidly.
Their replies were striking. Where merely affluent Americans are more likely to identify
as Democrats than as Republicans, the ultrawealthy overwhelmingly leaned right. They are far
more likely to raise money for politicians and to have access to them; nearly half had personally
contacted one of Illinois's two United States senators.
Where the general public overwhelmingly supports a high minimum wage, the one percent are
broadly opposed. A majority of Americans supported expanding safety-net and retirement programs,
while most of the very wealthy opposed them. And while Americans are not enthusiastic about
higher taxes generally, they feel strongly that the rich should pay more than they do, and
more than everyone else pays.
"Probably the biggest single area of disconnect has to do with social welfare programs,"
said Benjamin I. Page, a political scientist at Northwestern University and a co-author
of the study. "The other big area has to do with paying for those programs, particularly
taxes on high-income and wealthy people.""
EMichael said in reply to Peter K....
"Where the general public overwhelmingly supports a high minimum wage, the one percent
are broadly opposed."
Yep
So what they do is to distract people from the need to increase wages by altering the minimum
wage and make low wages the responsibility of illegal immigrants.
Plausible(if not true) story made believable if you are a racist.
"Where merely affluent Americans are more likely to identify as Democrats than as Republicans,
the ultrawealthy overwhelmingly leaned right."
That would explain the survey results discussed yesterday showing Clinton to be the preferred
candidate among "millionaires" -- a category almost as factually broad and ambiguous as "the middle
class". The merely affluent -- AKA the "liberal elite" -- would be the Clinton supporters, whereas
the ultrawealthy would support Rubio (or whatever other candidate they were sponsoring).
cm said in reply to EMichael...
"Amazing that appeals to racist imbeciles are considered to be appeals to middle class America."
etc.
Are you suggesting the survey percentages are not accurate? One can suspect a significant sampling
error, but if the numbers were off let's say 5-10 percentage points, would it really make much
of a difference in quality?
Also it is not necessarily an endorsement of Trump but a relative statement - that he resonates
with people more than the other contenders. This kind of thing (people rallying around alpha-type
strongmen with supremacist narratives) has reliably happened anywhere and anytime there was a
bad economy and serious lack of positive outlook.
The competition between GOP presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz heated up Sunday,
with Trump calling Cruz "a bit of a maniac."
Appearing on "FOX News Sunday," Trump said the Texas senator was not qualified to be president
because he doesn't have the right temperament and judgement to get things done.
"Look at the way he's dealt with the Senate, where he goes in there like a - you know, frankly
like a little bit of a maniac," Trump said. "You can't walk into the Senate, and scream, and call
people liars, and not be able to cajole and get along with people." ...
Previously: Ted Cruz Questions Donald Trump's 'Judgment' to
Be President http://nyti.ms/1XZ3RxD via @NYTPolitics
- Dec 10
"... Can you list all of the pro- or anti- Wall Street reforms and actions Bill Clinton performed as President including nominating Alan Greenspan as head regulator? Cutting the capital gains tax? Are you aware of Greenspan's record? ..."
"... The Tax Policy Center estimated that a 0.1 percent tax on stock trades, scaled with lower taxes on other assets, would raise $50 billion a year in tax revenue. The implied reduction in trading revenue was even larger. Senator Sanders has proposed a tax of 0.5 percent on equities (also with a scaled tax on other assets). This would lead to an even larger reduction in revenue for the financial industry. ..."
"... Great to see Bakers acknowledgement that an updated Glass-Steagall is just one component of the progressive wings plan to rein in Wall Street, not the sum total of it. Besides, if Wall Street types dont think restoring Glass-Steagall will have any meaningful effects, why do they expend so much energy to disparage it? Methinks they doth protest too much. ..."
"... Yes thats a good way to look it. Wall Street gave the Democrats and Clinton a lot of campaign cash so that they would dismantle Glass-Steagall. ..."
"... Slippery slope. Ya gotta find me a business of any type that does not protest any kind of regulation on their business. ..."
"... Yeah, but usually because of all the bad things they say will happen because of the regulation. The question is, what do they think of Clintons plan? Ive heard surprisingly little about that, and what I have heard is along these lines: http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/08/investing/hillary-clinton-wall-street-plan/ ..."
"... Hillary Clinton unveiled her big plan to curb the worst of Wall Streets excesses on Thursday. The reaction from the banking community was a shrug, if not relief. ..."
"... There is absolutely NO question Bernie is for real. Wall Street does not want Bernie. So theyll let Hillary talk as big as she needs to . Why should we believe her when an honest guy like Barry caved once in power ..."
"... Perhaps too often we look at Wall Street as monolithic whether consciously or not. Obviously we know its no monolithic: there are serious differences ..."
"... This all coiled change if Bernie surges. How that happens depends crucially on New Hampshire. Not Iowa ..."
"... I believe Hillary will be to liberal causes after she is elected as LBJ was to peace in Vietnam. Like Bill and Obomber. ..."
Hillary Clinton Is Whitewashing the Financial Catastrophe
She has a plan that she claims will reform Wall Street-but she's deflecting responsibility
from old friends and donors in the industry.
By William Greider Yesterday 3:11 pm
Hillary Clinton's recent op-ed in The New York Times, "How I'd Rein In Wall Street," was intended
to reassure nervous Democrats who fear she is still in thrall to those mega-bankers of New York
who crashed the American economy. Clinton's brisk recital of plausible reform ideas might convince
wishful thinkers who are not familiar with the complexities of banking. But informed skeptics,
myself included, see a disturbing message in her argument that ought to alarm innocent supporters.
Candidate Clinton is essentially whitewashing the financial catastrophe. She has produced a
clumsy rewrite of what caused the 2008 collapse, one that conveniently leaves her husband out
of the story. He was the president who legislated the predicate for Wall Street's meltdown. Hillary
Clinton's redefinition of the reform problem deflects the blame from Wall Street's most powerful
institutions, like JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, and instead fingers less celebrated players
that failed. In roundabout fashion, Hillary Clinton sounds like she is assuring old friends and
donors in the financial sector that, if she becomes president, she will not come after them.
The seminal event that sowed financial disaster was the repeal of the New Deal's Glass-Steagall
Act of 1933, which had separated banking into different realms: investment banks, which organize
capital investors for risk-taking ventures; and deposit-holding banks, which serve people as borrowers
and lenders. That law's repeal, a great victory for Wall Street, was delivered by Bill Clinton
in 1999, assisted by the Federal Reserve and the financial sector's armies of lobbyists. The "universal
banking model" was saluted as a modernizing reform that liberated traditional banks to participate
directly and indirectly in long-prohibited and vastly more profitable risk-taking.
Exotic financial instruments like derivatives and credit-default swaps flourished, enabling
old-line bankers to share in the fun and profit on an awesome scale. The banks invented "guarantees"
against loss and sold them to both companies and market players. The fast-expanding financial
sector claimed a larger and larger share of the economy (and still does) at the expense of the
real economy of producers and consumers. The interconnectedness across market sectors created
the illusion of safety. When illusions failed, these connected guarantees became the dragnet that
drove panic in every direction. Ultimately, the federal government had to rescue everyone, foreign
and domestic, to stop the bleeding.
Yet Hillary Clinton asserts in her Times op-ed that repeal of Glass-Steagall had nothing to
do with it. She claims that Glass-Steagall would not have limited the reckless behavior of institutions
like Lehman Brothers or insurance giant AIG, which were not traditional banks. Her argument amounts
to facile evasion that ignores the interconnected exposures. The Federal Reserve spent $180 billion
bailing out AIG so AIG could pay back Goldman Sachs and other banks. If the Fed hadn't acted and
had allowed AIG to fail, the banks would have gone down too.
These sound like esoteric questions of bank regulation (and they are), but the consequences
of pretending they do not matter are enormous. The federal government and Federal Reserve would
remain on the hook for rescuing losers in a future crisis. The largest and most adventurous banks
would remain free to experiment, inventing fictitious guarantees and selling them to eager suckers.
If things go wrong, Uncle Sam cleans up the mess.
Senator Elizabeth Warren and other reformers are pushing a simpler remedy-restore the Glass-Steagall
principles and give citizens a safe, government-insured place to store their money. "Banking should
be boring," Warren explains (her co-sponsor is GOP Senator John McCain). That's a hard sell in politics, given the banking sector's bear hug of Congress and the White
House, its callous manipulation of both political parties. Of course, it is more complicated than
that. But recreating a safe, stable banking system-a place where ordinary people can keep their
money-ought to be the first benchmark for Democrats who claim to be reformers.
Actually, the most compelling witnesses for Senator Warren's argument are the two bankers who
introduced this adventure in "universal banking" back in the 1990s. They used their political
savvy and relentless muscle to seduce Bill Clinton and his so-called New Democrats. John Reed
was CEO of Citicorp and led the charge. He has since apologized to the nation. Sandy Weill was
chairman of the board and a brilliant financier who envisioned the possibilities of a single,
all-purpose financial house, freed of government's narrow-minded regulations. They won politically,
but at staggering cost to the country.
Weill confessed error back in 2012: "What we should probably do is go and split up investment
banking from banking. Have banks do something that's not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, that's
not going to be too big to fail."
John Reed's confession explained explicitly why their modernizing crusade failed for two fundamental
business reasons. "One was the belief that combining all types of finance into one institution
would drive costs down-and the larger institution the more efficient it would be," Reed wrote
in the Financial Times in November. Reed said, "We now know that there are very few cost efficiencies
that come from the merger of functions-indeed, there may be none at all. It is possible that combining
so much in a single bank makes services more expensive than if they were instead offered by smaller,
specialised players."
The second grave error, Reed said, was trying to mix the two conflicting cultures in banking-bankers
who are pulling in opposite directions. That tension helps explain the competitive greed displayed
by the modernized banking system. This disorder speaks to the current political crisis in ways
that neither Dems nor Republicans wish to confront. It would require the politicians to critique
the bankers (often their funders) in terms of human failure.
"Mixing incompatible cultures is a problem all by itself," Reed wrote. "It makes the entire
finance industry more fragile…. As is now clear, traditional banking attracts one kind of talent,
which is entirely different from the kinds drawn towards investment banking and trading. Traditional
bankers tend to be extroverts, sociable people who are focused on longer term relationships. They
are, in many important respects, risk averse. Investment bankers and their traders are more short
termist. They are comfortable with, and many even seek out, risk and are more focused on immediate
reward."
Reed concludes, "As I have reflected about the years since 1999, I think the lessons of Glass-Steagall
and its repeal suggest that the universal banking model is inherently unstable and unworkable.
No amount of restructuring, management change or regulation is ever likely to change that."
This might sound hopelessly naive, but the Democratic Party might do better in politics if
it told more of the truth more often: what they tried do and why it failed, and what they think
they may have gotten wrong. People already know they haven't gotten a straight story from politicians.
They might be favorably impressed by a little more candor in the plain-spoken manner of John Reed.
Of course it's unfair to pick on the Dems. Republicans have been lying about their big stuff
for so long and so relentlessly that their voters are now staging a wrathful rebellion. Who knows,
maybe a little honest talk might lead to honest debate. Think about it. Do the people want to
hear the truth about our national condition? Could they stand it?
Can you list all of the pro- or anti- Wall Street "reforms" and actions Bill Clinton performed as
President including nominating Alan Greenspan as head regulator? Cutting the capital gains tax? Are you aware of Greenspan's record?
Yes Hillary isn't Bill but she hasn't criticized her husband specifically about his record and
seems to want to have her cake and eat it too.
Of course Hillary is much better than the Republicans, pace Rustbucket and the Green Lantern
Lefty club. Still, critics have a point.
I won't be surprised if she doesn't do much to rein in Wall Street besides some window dressing.
sanjait said in reply to Peter K....
"Can you list all of the pro- or anti- Wall Street "reforms" and actions Bill Clinton
performed..."
That, right there, is what's wrong with Bernie and his fans.
They measure everything by whether it is "pro- or anti- Wall Street".
Glass Steagall is anti-Wall Street. A financial transactions tax is anti-Wall Street.
But neither has any hope of controlling systemic financial risk in this country. None.
You guys want to punish Wall Street but not even bother trying to think of how to achieve useful
policy goals. Some people, like Paine here, are actually open about this vacuity, as if the only
thing that were important were winning a power struggle.
Hillary's plan is flat out better. It's more comprehensive and more effective at reining in the
financial system to limit systemic risk. Period.
You guys want to make this a character melodrama rather than a policy debate, and I fear the
result of that will be that the candidate who actually has the best plan won't get to enact it.
likbez said in reply to sanjait...
"You guys want to make this a character melodrama rather than a policy debate, and I
fear the result of that will be that the candidate who actually has the best plan won't get
to enact it."
You are misrepresenting the positions. It's actually pro-neoliberalism crowd vs
anti-neoliberalism crowd. In no way anti-neoliberalism commenters here view this is a
character melodrama, although psychologically Hillary probably does has certain problems as
her reaction to the death of Gadhafi attests.
The key problem with anti-neoliberalism crowd is the question "What is a realistic
alternative?" That's where differences and policy debate starts.
RGC said in reply to EMichael...
"Her argument amounts to facile evasion"
Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to RGC...
'The majority favors policies
to the left of Hillary.'
... The Democrats' liberal faction has been greatly overestimated by pundits who mistake
noisiness for clout or assume that the left functions like the right. In fact, liberals hold
nowhere near the power in the Democratic Party that conservatives hold in the Republican
Party. And while they may well be gaining, they're still far from being in charge. ...
Paine said in reply to RGC...
What's not confronted ? Suggest what a System like the pre repeal system would have done in
the 00's. My guess we'd have ended in a crisis anyway. Yes we can segregate the depository
system. But credit is elastic enough to build bubbles without the depository system
involved
Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Cracking Down on Wall Street
by Dean Baker
Published: 12 December 2015
The New Yorker ran a rather confused piece on Gary Sernovitz, a managing director at the investment
firm Lime Rock Partners, on whether Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton would be more effective
in reining in Wall Street. The piece assures us that Secretary Clinton has a better understanding
of Wall Street and that her plan would be more effective in cracking down on the industry. The
piece is bizarre both because it essentially dismisses the concern with too big to fail banks
and completely ignores Sanders' proposal for a financial transactions tax which is by far the
most important mechanism for reining in the financial industry.
The piece assures us that too big to fail banks are no longer a problem, noting their drop
in profitability from bubble peaks and telling readers:
"not only are Sanders's bogeybanks just one part of Wall Street but they are getting less
powerful and less problematic by the year."
This argument is strange for a couple of reasons. First, the peak of the subprime bubble frenzy
is hardly a good base of comparison. The real question is should we anticipate declining profits
going forward. That hardly seems clear. For example, Citigroup recently reported surging profits,
while Wells Fargo's third quarter profits were up 8 percent from 2014 levels.
If Sernovitz is predicting that the big banks are about to shrivel up to nothingness, the market
does not agree with him. Citigroup has a market capitalization of $152 billion, JPMorgan has a
market cap of $236 billion, and Bank of America has a market cap of $174 billion. Clearly investors
agree with Sanders in thinking that these huge banks will have sizable profits for some time to
come.
The real question on too big to fail is whether the government would sit by and let a Goldman
Sachs or Citigroup go bankrupt. Perhaps some people think that it is now the case, but I've never
met anyone in that group.
Sernovitz is also dismissive on Sanders call for bringing back the Glass-Steagall separation
between commercial banking and investment banking. He makes the comparison to the battle over
the Keystone XL pipeline, which is actually quite appropriate. The Keystone battle did take on
exaggerated importance in the climate debate. There was never a zero/one proposition in which
no tar sands oil would be pumped without the pipeline, while all of it would be pumped if the
pipeline was constructed. Nonetheless, if the Obama administration was committed to restricting
greenhouse gas emissions, it is difficult to see why it would support the building of a pipeline
that would facilitate bringing some of the world's dirtiest oil to market.
In the same vein, Sernovitz is right that it is difficult to see how anything about the growth
of the housing bubble and its subsequent collapse would have been very different if Glass-Steagall
were still in place. And, it is possible in principle to regulate bank's risky practices without
Glass-Steagall, as the Volcker rule is doing. However, enforcement tends to weaken over time under
industry pressure, which is a reason why the clear lines of Glass-Steagall can be beneficial.
Furthermore, as with Keystone, if we want to restrict banks' power, what is the advantage of letting
them get bigger and more complex?
The repeal of Glass-Steagall was sold in large part by boasting of the potential synergies
from combining investment and commercial banking under one roof. But if the operations are kept
completely separate, as is supposed to be the case, where are the synergies?
But the strangest part of Sernovitz's story is that he leaves out Sanders' financial transactions
tax (FTT) altogether. This is bizarre, because the FTT is essentially a hatchet blow to the waste
and exorbitant salaries in the industry.
Most research shows that trading volume is very responsive to the cost of trading, with most
estimates putting the elasticity close to one. This means that if trading costs rise by 50 percent,
then trading volume declines by 50 percent. (In its recent analysis of FTTs, the Tax Policy Center
assumed that the elasticity was 1.5, meaning that trading volume decline by 150 percent of the
increase in trading costs.) The implication of this finding is that the financial industry would
pay the full cost of a financial transactions tax in the form of reduced trading revenue.
The Tax Policy Center estimated that a 0.1 percent tax on stock trades, scaled with lower taxes
on other assets, would raise $50 billion a year in tax revenue. The implied reduction in trading
revenue was even larger. Senator Sanders has proposed a tax of 0.5 percent on equities (also with
a scaled tax on other assets). This would lead to an even larger reduction in revenue for the
financial industry.
It is incredible that Sernovitz would ignore a policy with such enormous consequences for the
financial sector in his assessment of which candidate would be tougher on Wall Street. Sanders
FTT would almost certainly do more to change behavior on Wall Street then everything that Clinton
has proposed taken together by a rather large margin. It's sort of like evaluating the New England
Patriots' Super Bowl prospects without discussing their quarterback.
Syaloch said in reply to Peter K....
Great to see Baker's acknowledgement that an updated Glass-Steagall is just one component
of the progressive wing's plan to rein in Wall Street, not the sum total of it. Besides, if Wall
Street types don't think restoring Glass-Steagall will have any meaningful effects, why do they
expend so much energy to disparage it? Methinks they doth protest too much.
Peter K. said in reply to Syaloch...
Yes that's a good way to look it. Wall Street gave the Democrats and Clinton a lot of campaign
cash so that they would dismantle Glass-Steagall. If they want it done, it's probably not
a good idea.
EMichael said in reply to Syaloch...
Slippery slope. Ya' gotta find me a business of any type that does not protest any kind of regulation
on their business.
Syaloch said in reply to EMichael...
Yeah, but usually because of all the bad things they say will happen because of the regulation.
The question is, what do they think of Clinton's plan? I've heard surprisingly little about that,
and what I have heard is along these lines:
http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/08/investing/hillary-clinton-wall-street-plan/
"Hillary Clinton unveiled her big plan to curb the worst of Wall Street's excesses on Thursday.
The reaction from the banking community was a shrug, if not relief."
pgl said in reply to Syaloch...
Two excellent points!!!
sanjait said in reply to Syaloch...
"Besides, if Wall Street types don't think restoring Glass-Steagall will have any meaningful
effects, why do they expend so much energy to disparage it? Methinks they doth protest too
much."
It has an effect of shrinking the size of a few firms, and that has a detrimental effect on
the top managers of those firms, who get paid more money if they have larger firms to manage. But it has little to no meaningful effect on systemic risk.
So if your main policy goal is to shrink the compensation for a small number of powerful Wall
Street managers, G-S is great. But if you actually want to accomplish something useful to the American people, like limiting
systemic risk in the financial sector, then a plan like Hillary's is much much better. She explained
this fairly well in her recent NYT piece.
Paine said in reply to Peter K....
There is absolutely NO question Bernie is for real. Wall Street does not want Bernie. So they'll
let Hillary talk as big as she needs to . Why should we believe her when an honest guy like
Barry caved once in power
Paine said in reply to Paine ...
Bernie has been anti Wall Street his whole career . He's on a crusade. Hillary is pulling a sham
bola
Paine said in reply to Paine ...
Perhaps too often we look at Wall Street as monolithic whether consciously or not. Obviously we
know it's no monolithic: there are serious differences
When the street is riding high especially. Right now the street is probably not united but
too cautious to display profound differences in public. They're sitting on their hands waiting
to see how high the anti Wall Street tide runs this election cycle. Trump gives them cover and
I really fear secretly Hillary gives them comfort
This all coiled change if Bernie surges. How that happens depends crucially on New Hampshire.
Not Iowa
EMichael said in reply to Paine ...
If Bernie surges and wins the nomination, we will all get to watch the death of the Progressive
movement for a decade or two. Congress will become more GOP dominated, and we will have a President
in office who will make Hoover look like a Socialist.
You should like the moderate Democrats after George McGovern ran in 1972. I'm hoping we have another
1964 with Bernie leading a united Democratic Congress.
EMichael said in reply to pgl...
Not a chance in the world. And I like Sanders much more than anyone else. It just simply cannot,
and will not, happen. He is a communist. Not to me, not to you, but to the vast majority
of American voters.
pgl said in reply to EMichael...
He is not a communist. But I agree - Hillary is winning the Democratic nomination. I have only
one vote and in New York, I'm badly outnumbered.
ilsm said in reply to Paine ...
I believe Hillary will be to liberal causes after she is elected as LBJ was to peace in Vietnam.
Like Bill and Obomber.
pgl said in reply to ilsm...
By 1968, LBJ finally realized it was time to end that stupid war. But it seems certain members
in the State Department undermined his efforts in a cynical ploy to get Nixon to be President.
The Republican Party has had more slime than substance of most of my life time.
pgl said in reply to Peter K....
Gary Sernovitz, a managing director at the investment firm Lime Rock Partners? Why are we listening
to this guy too. It's like letting the fox guard the hen house.
"... If memory serves me correctly the last time CNBC did a millionaires poll Hillary won. She is not a populist, barely a liberal. Two political parties, zero candidates I can vote for. Yuck. ..."
"... Rubinite neo liberal. She is also popular with PNAC and the Kagan's neocon favorite she would hire Wolfowitz ... Management in big war profiteer firms is not afraid of Hillary as they suspect the Donald. ..."
"... Rubinite neoliberal is a very good definition of what Hillary actually represent politically. Third Way is another term close in meaning to your Rubinite neoliberal term. ..."
"... But unlike the Third Way term your term captures an additional important quality of Hillary as a politician: On foreign policy issues she is a typical neocon and would feel pretty comfortable with most of Republican candidates foreign policy platforms. Her protégé in the Department of State Victoria Nuland was a close associate of Dick Cheney. ..."
"... Very true. Brad has been moving left for a couple years or more. It's now obvious. He lets krugman lead the way but he follows. Notice Summers too has moved left . Is this for real or just to cut the wind out of Bernie sails ? ..."
"... One thing is certain: the old Rubinite toxic line is no longer dominant in the. big D party top circles. We can call that progress if we need to ..."
"... Is this for real or just to cut the wind out of Bernie sails ? Even if it's the second, it legitimates Bernie's views and critique. Also DeLong here is criticizing Brookings and other centrist organizations specifically for working with AEI. ..."
"... Can you list all of the pro- or anti- Wall Street reforms and actions Bill Clinton performed as President including nominating Alan Greenspan as head regulator? Cutting the capital gains tax? Are you aware of Greenspan's record? ..."
"... I won't be surprised if she doesn't do much to rein in Wall Street besides some window dressing. ..."
If memory serves me correctly the last time CNBC did a "millionaires poll" Hillary won.
She is not a populist, barely a liberal. Two political parties, zero candidates I can vote
for. Yuck.
(Rubio was the top GOP choice, but Clinton still beat Rubio by a 21% margin.)
Syaloch -> EMichael...
Well, here are the issues millionaires indicated as being most important to them, and
presumably candidates of choice are based on their positions on these issues. Make of it what
you will.
Since she intends to be the Dem nominee, progressives expect she must be one of them. Only
when necessary. As someone has said, 'Run from
the left, rule from the center.' Always, always, run from the left.
ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs...
Rubinite neo liberal.
She is also popular with PNAC and "the Kagan's" neocon favorite she would hire Wolfowitz and
spend more trillions protecting the Saudis from their rising victims.
Clinton has said: Iran is the enemy.
She will keep fighting Iran while Sunni terrorists fund ISIS!
Trump is merely less nuanced in insanity.
Management in big war profiteer firms is not afraid of Hillary as they suspect the Donald.
likbez -> ilsm...
"Rubinite neo liberal. She is also popular with PNAC
and "the Kagan's" neocon favorite she would hire
Wolfowitz ... Management in big war profiteer firms is
not afraid of Hillary as they suspect the Donald."
Exactly --
"Rubinite neoliberal" is a very good definition of
what Hillary actually represent politically. Third Way
is another term close in meaning to your "Rubinite
neoliberal" term.
But unlike the "Third Way" term your term captures
an additional important quality of Hillary as a
politician: On foreign policy issues she is a typical
neocon and would feel pretty comfortable with most of
Republican candidates foreign policy platforms. Her
protégé in the Department of State Victoria Nuland was
a close associate of Dick Cheney.
She is probably more warmongering candidate then
Jeb! and a couple of other republican candidates.
But at the same time she does not look like
completely out of place as an establishment candidate
from Dems, which are actually are "Democrats only by
name" -- a typical "Third Way" party. From Wikipedia
=== quote ===
In politics, the Third Way is a position akin to
centrism that tries to reconcile right-wing and
left-wing politics by advocating a varying synthesis of
right-wing economic and left-wing social
policies.[1][2] The Third Way was created as a serious
re-evaluation of political policies within various
centre-left progressive movements in response to
international doubt regarding the economic viability of
the state; economic interventionist policies that had
previously been popularized by Keynesianism and
contrasted with the corresponding rise of popularity
for economic liberalism and the New Right.[3] The Third
Way is promoted by some social democratic and social
liberal movements.[4]
Major Third Way social democratic proponent Tony
Blair claimed that the socialism he advocated was
different from traditional conceptions of socialism.
Blair said "My kind of socialism is a set of values
based around notions of social justice ... Socialism as
a rigid form of economic determinism has ended, and
rightly".[5] Blair referred to it as "social-ism" that
involves politics that recognized individuals as
socially interdependent, and advocated social justice,
social cohesion, equal worth of each citizen, and equal
opportunity.[6] Third Way social democratic theorist
Anthony Giddens has said that the Third Way rejects the
traditional conception of socialism, and instead
accepts the conception of socialism as conceived of by
Anthony Crosland as an ethical doctrine that views
social democratic governments as having achieved a
viable ethical socialism by removing the unjust
elements of capitalism by providing social welfare and
other policies, and that contemporary socialism has
outgrown the Marxian claim for the need of the
abolition of capitalism.[7] Blair in 2009 publicly
declared support for a "new capitalism".[8]
It supports the pursuit of greater egalitarianism in
society through action to increase the distribution of
skills, capacities, and productive endowments, while
rejecting income redistribution as the means to achieve
this.[9] It emphasizes commitment to balanced budgets,
providing equal opportunity combined with an emphasis
on personal responsibility, decentralization of
government power to the lowest level possible,
encouragement of public-private partnerships, improving
labour supply, investment in human development,
protection of social capital, and protection of the
environment.[10] === end of quote ===
ilsm -> likbez...
H. Clinton is as likely to keep US out of the wrong quagmire as LBJ in 1964. Except, LBJ
may have actually changed his mind after he was elected.
Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs...
(Yes, There Will Be Triangulating. This is not a great example of it.)
Hillary Is Already Triangulating Against Liberals
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/11/hillary_clinton_triangulates_against_bernie_sanders.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_top
via @slate - Nov 18
The Hillary Clinton presidential campaign has begun using an odd new line of attack against
upstart Democratic primary rival Sen. Bernie Sanders: He's too liberal on taxes and universal
health insurance. Why is she doing this? After returning to the position in which she entered
the race-as the near-certain nominee-she seems to be setting herself up for the general
election. But it's strange to see her now, after the previously shaky ship has been steadied,
attacking a candidate whose supporters she'll need in any general election campaign over an
issue that his supporters care about very deeply.
Triangulating against Sanders (and, by proxy, the left wing of the Democratic Party) with
conservative attacks does make some sense. For one, she is a Clinton, and this is what they
do.
At issue is Sanders' support for a single-payer universal health care system, which he and
others brand as "Medicare for all." A single-payer bill he introduced in 2013 would have
levied a 2.2 percent tax on individuals making up to $200,000 or couples making up to
$250,000, and progressively increased that rate to 5.2 percent for income beyond $600,000. It
also would have tacked an extra 6.7 percent payroll tax on the employer side, at least some of
which employers would likely pass on to workers.
The Clinton campaign is suddenly quite upset about that proposal and wants everyone to know.
She has committed to the same (policy-constricting) pledge that President Obama took in 2008
and 2012, ruling out tax increases on individuals making less than $200,000 per year or joint
filers making less than $250,000. This neatly positions her camp to say, by contrast, that the
bug-eyed socialist Bernie Sanders wants to take all of your money. ...
(Where HRC will get a lot of votes & contributions will be among those in the $250K & below
set, so no need to antagonize THEM. Not when she can
practically smell the nomination.)
Paine -> Peter K....
Very true. Brad has been moving left for a couple years or more. It's now obvious. He
lets krugman lead the way but he follows. Notice Summers too has moved left . Is this for real
or just to cut the wind out of Bernie sails ?
One thing is certain: the old
Rubinite toxic line is no longer dominant in the. big D party top circles. We can call
that progress if we need to
Peter K. -> Paine ...
"Is this for real or just to cut the wind out of Bernie sails ?" Even if it's the
second, it legitimates Bernie's views and critique. Also DeLong here is criticizing Brookings
and other "centrist" organizations specifically for working with AEI.
Syaloch -> Paine ...
Just as the revolution within the Republican party was the result of the undue influence of
an out-of-touch elite, the Democratic coalition has been threatened by the influence of the
Brookings-Third Way wing which seems, for example, to imagine that they can sell to the base
cuts to Social Security, an elite priority that has nothing to do with the reasons
working-class people vote Democrat.
"We supported and helped pass into law the Simpson-Bowles commission that came close to
securing the bipartisan grand bargain budget agreement for which we fought. We proposed our
own Social Security fix plan that combined tax increases on upper income earners with
benefit cuts on well-to-do seniors and benefit increases to poor seniors. We first proposed
then brought Democrats and Republicans together on a Social Security Commission plan that
remains the only bipartisan legislation to fix Social Security. We became the lead
center-left organization to promote chain weighted CPI and eventually counted President
Obama as one of our supporters."
"Yielding to pressure from congressional Democrats, President Obama is abandoning a
proposed cut to Social Security benefits in his election-year budget...
"Democrats on Capitol Hill had pleaded with Obama to reverse course on the chained consumer
price index (CPI), fearing it could become a liability for the party in the upcoming
midterm elections, which typically bring high turnout among older voters.
"More than 100 House Democrats wrote to Obama on Wednesday urging him to drop the chained
CPI proposal, following a similar letter from 16 Senate Democrats that was led by Sen.
Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)."
RGC said...
Hillary Clinton Is Whitewashing the Financial Catastrophe
She has a plan that she claims will reform Wall Street-but
she's deflecting responsibility from old friends and
donors in the industry.
By William Greider
Yesterday 3:11 pm
Hillary Clinton's recent op-ed in The New York Times,
"How I'd Rein In Wall Street," was intended to reassure
nervous Democrats who fear she is still in thrall to those
mega-bankers of New York who crashed the American economy.
Clinton's brisk recital of plausible reform ideas might
convince wishful thinkers who are not familiar with the
complexities of banking. But informed skeptics, myself
included, see a disturbing message in her argument that
ought to alarm innocent supporters.
Candidate Clinton is essentially whitewashing the
financial catastrophe. She has produced a clumsy rewrite
of what caused the 2008 collapse, one that conveniently
leaves her husband out of the story. He was the president
who legislated the predicate for Wall Street's meltdown.
Hillary Clinton's redefinition of the reform problem
deflects the blame from Wall Street's most powerful
institutions, like JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, and
instead fingers less celebrated players that failed. In
roundabout fashion, Hillary Clinton sounds like she is
assuring old friends and donors in the financial sector
that, if she becomes president, she will not come after
them.
The seminal event that sowed financial disaster was the
repeal of the New Deal's Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which
had separated banking into different realms: investment
banks, which organize capital investors for risk-taking
ventures; and deposit-holding banks, which serve people as
borrowers and lenders. That law's repeal, a great victory
for Wall Street, was delivered by Bill Clinton in 1999,
assisted by the Federal Reserve and the financial sector's
armies of lobbyists. The "universal banking model" was
saluted as a modernizing reform that liberated traditional
banks to participate directly and indirectly in
long-prohibited and vastly more profitable risk-taking.
Exotic financial instruments like derivatives and
credit-default swaps flourished, enabling old-line bankers
to share in the fun and profit on an awesome scale. The
banks invented "guarantees" against loss and sold them to
both companies and market players. The fast-expanding
financial sector claimed a larger and larger share of the
economy (and still does) at the expense of the real
economy of producers and consumers. The interconnectedness
across market sectors created the illusion of safety. When
illusions failed, these connected guarantees became the
dragnet that drove panic in every direction. Ultimately,
the federal government had to rescue everyone, foreign and
domestic, to stop the bleeding.
Yet Hillary Clinton asserts in her Times op-ed that
repeal of Glass-Steagall had nothing to do with it. She
claims that Glass-Steagall would not have limited the
reckless behavior of institutions like Lehman Brothers or
insurance giant AIG, which were not traditional banks. Her
argument amounts to facile evasion that ignores the
interconnected exposures. The Federal Reserve spent $180
billion bailing out AIG so AIG could pay back Goldman
Sachs and other banks. If the Fed hadn't acted and had
allowed AIG to fail, the banks would have gone down too.
These sound like esoteric questions of bank regulation
(and they are), but the consequences of pretending they do
not matter are enormous. The federal government and
Federal Reserve would remain on the hook for rescuing
losers in a future crisis. The largest and most
adventurous banks would remain free to experiment,
inventing fictitious guarantees and selling them to eager
suckers. If things go wrong, Uncle Sam cleans up the mess.
Senator Elizabeth Warren and other reformers are
pushing a simpler remedy-restore the Glass-Steagall
principles and give citizens a safe, government-insured
place to store their money. "Banking should be boring,"
Warren explains (her co-sponsor is GOP Senator John
McCain).
That's a hard sell in politics, given the banking sector's
bear hug of Congress and the White House, its callous
manipulation of both political parties. Of course, it is
more complicated than that. But recreating a safe, stable
banking system-a place where ordinary people can keep
their money-ought to be the first benchmark for Democrats
who claim to be reformers.
Actually, the most compelling witnesses for Senator
Warren's argument are the two bankers who introduced this
adventure in "universal banking" back in the 1990s. They
used their political savvy and relentless muscle to seduce
Bill Clinton and his so-called New Democrats. John Reed
was CEO of Citicorp and led the charge. He has since
apologized to the nation. Sandy Weill was chairman of the
board and a brilliant financier who envisioned the
possibilities of a single, all-purpose financial house,
freed of government's narrow-minded regulations. They won
politically, but at staggering cost to the country.
Weill confessed error back in 2012: "What we should
probably do is go and split up investment banking from
banking. Have banks do something that's not going to risk
the taxpayer dollars, that's not going to be too big to
fail."
John Reed's confession explained explicitly why their
modernizing crusade failed for two fundamental business
reasons. "One was the belief that combining all types of
finance into one institution would drive costs down-and
the larger institution the more efficient it would be,"
Reed wrote in the Financial Times in November. Reed said,
"We now know that there are very few cost efficiencies
that come from the merger of functions-indeed, there may
be none at all. It is possible that combining so much in a
single bank makes services more expensive than if they
were instead offered by smaller, specialised players."
The second grave error, Reed said, was trying to mix
the two conflicting cultures in banking-bankers who are
pulling in opposite directions. That tension helps explain
the competitive greed displayed by the modernized banking
system. This disorder speaks to the current political
crisis in ways that neither Dems nor Republicans wish to
confront. It would require the politicians to critique the
bankers (often their funders) in terms of human failure.
"Mixing incompatible cultures is a problem all by
itself," Reed wrote. "It makes the entire finance industry
more fragile…. As is now clear, traditional banking
attracts one kind of talent, which is entirely different
from the kinds drawn towards investment banking and
trading. Traditional bankers tend to be extroverts,
sociable people who are focused on longer term
relationships. They are, in many important respects, risk
averse. Investment bankers and their traders are more
short termist. They are comfortable with, and many even
seek out, risk and are more focused on immediate reward."
Reed concludes, "As I have reflected about the years
since 1999, I think the lessons of Glass-Steagall and its
repeal suggest that the universal banking model is
inherently unstable and unworkable. No amount of
restructuring, management change or regulation is ever
likely to change that."
This might sound hopelessly naive, but the Democratic
Party might do better in politics if it told more of the
truth more often: what they tried do and why it failed,
and what they think they may have gotten wrong. People
already know they haven't gotten a straight story from
politicians. They might be favorably impressed by a little
more candor in the plain-spoken manner of John Reed.
Of course it's unfair to pick on the Dems. Republicans
have been lying about their big stuff for so long and so
relentlessly that their voters are now staging a wrathful
rebellion. Who knows, maybe a little honest talk might
lead to honest debate. Think about it. Do the people want
to hear the truth about our national condition? Could they
stand it?
"She claims that Glass-Steagall would not have limited the
reckless behavior of institutions like Lehman Brothers or
insurance giant AIG, which were not traditional banks."
Of course this claim is absolutely true. Just like GS
would not have affected the other investment banks,
whatever their name was. And just like we would have had
to bail out those other banks whatever their name was.
Peter K. -> EMichael...
Can you list all of the pro- or anti- Wall Street
"reforms" and actions Bill Clinton performed as President
including nominating Alan Greenspan as head regulator?
Cutting the capital gains tax? Are you aware of
Greenspan's record?
Yes Hillary isn't Bill but she hasn't criticized her
husband specifically about his record and seems to want to
have her cake and eat it too.
Of course Hillary is much better than the Republicans,
pace Rustbucket and the Green Lantern Lefty club. Still,
critics have a point.
I won't be surprised if she doesn't do much to rein in
Wall Street besides some window dressing.
"... Sanders says he is for "having a government which represents all people, rather than just the wealthiest people, which is most often the case right now in this country." But what that misses is the extent to which that has always been the case, and not by happenstance. ..."
"... Mortified by the threat to their wealth and power, the elite sought to reconfigure the government more to their liking, and to ensure that such an outburst of popular sentiment couldn't happen again. ..."
"... The main purpose of the new Constitution, then, was to preserve inequalities among individuals and the inequalities in the distribution of property among them. "Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society," Madison observes. Ever had it been, and ever under the Constitution would it be. The division of wealth and political power, between the haves and the have-nots, between (as the new Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan has put it) the makers and the takers, was to be carefully maintained. For Madison, in Federalist No. 10, the question was how to do so while at least nominally "preserv[ing] the spirit and the form of popular government." ... ..."
Conventional political wisdom says that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, however popular in certain
corners, can't possibly win election to the White House. Too radical, goes the thinking. Inspiring,
common-sense ideas, perhaps, but come Election Day, a majority of American voters won't back the
redistribution of wealth implicit in his proposals. Why is that?
Believe it or not, one place to look for an answer is the Constitution, crafted by the richest
and most powerful Americans of their day to perpetuate their own control over the government and
economy.
Sanders says he is for "having a government which represents all people, rather than just the
wealthiest people, which is most often the case right now in this country." But what that misses
is the extent to which that has always been the case, and not by happenstance.
In late 1786, a farmer and veteran of the Revolution named Daniel Shays led an armed insurrection
of debtors and veterans in the hills of Western Massachusetts. Objecting to an onerous regime of
taxes and confiscations the state imposed to pay its creditors, the rebels marched through the countryside,
threatening the new federal arsenal at Springfield and shutting down courthouses to stop foreclosure
proceedings. Bankers and merchants in Boston - the same parties who owned the state's debt - lent
Massachusetts more money to put the insurrection down.
In October of that year, General Henry Knox, secretary of war, summarized the rebels' philosophy:
"Their creed is 'That the property of the United States has been protected from the confiscations
of Britain by the joint exertions of all, and therefore ought to be the common property of all. And
he that attempts opposition to this creed is an enemy to equity and justice, and ought to be swept
off the face of the earth.' "
Mortified by the threat to their wealth and power, the elite sought to reconfigure the government
more to their liking, and to ensure that such an outburst of popular sentiment couldn't happen again.
As schoolchildren learn - and adults often forget - the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was
only tasked with amending the Articles of Confederation, the document that had governed the breakaway
Colonies since 1781. The convention wasn't supposed to rewrite them entirely. The progressive historian
Charles Beard, whose influential "An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution" was the first work
to reveal the class-based nature of our founding charter, stated the matter plainly when he called
it a coup d'etat.
Contrary to what many assume, the Constitution was never subjected to a popular referendum, but
to the votes of state ratifying conventions that were themselves largely elected by only white propertied
males; indeed, only about 150,000 Americans elected delegates, out of a population of some 4 million.
With the goal of persuading New Yorkers to elect pro-Constitution delegates to the state's convention,
James Madison, with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, wrote a series of 85 essays under the pseudonym
Publius that were published in local papers between November 1787 and August 1788 under the title,
The Federalist. Madison's most famous contribution, Federalist No. 10, is widely acclaimed for its
idea that factions of citizens with disparate interests should be balanced against one another in
order to create a republic that would neither succumb to what John Adams called "tyranny of the majority"
nor lose its responsiveness to the people as it grew larger in stature and scale.
Yet despite the attention Federalist No. 10 has received from political scientists, it ought to
be much better known among all who favor a more equal distribution of wealth, because it explains
how our political system, often described as rigged, has in fact been rigged from the start.
"Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens," Madison writes
near the beginning of the essay, gesturing, as he does throughout The Federalist, to the fallout
from Shays' Rebellion, "that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded
in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the
rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and
overbearing majority."
That majority, it slowly becomes clear, are the debtors and small landowners, those more recently
designated the 99 percent. "The diversity in the faculties of men," Madison explains, leads to different
"rights of property," and this difference represents "an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of
interests" in the political community. "The protection of these faculties is the first object of
government," he adds.
The main purpose of the new Constitution, then, was to preserve inequalities among individuals
and the inequalities in the distribution of property among them. "Those who hold and those who are
without property have ever formed distinct interests in society," Madison observes. Ever had it been,
and ever under the Constitution would it be. The division of wealth and political power, between
the haves and the have-nots, between (as the new Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan
has put it) the makers and the takers, was to be carefully maintained. For Madison, in Federalist
No. 10, the question was how to do so while at least nominally "preserv[ing] the spirit and the form
of popular government." ...
(Richard Kreitner is the archivist of the The Nation magazine.)
Some Republicans
are now worrying that Donald Trump could cost them the Senate
-- or even put their seemingly solid House majority in
danger.
Republicans have long known they were vulnerable in the
Senate in 2016. They currently hold a 54-46 majority, but far
more Republican seats are up in this cycle than Democratic
seats, and several of those are in tough states for
Republicans to hold (such as Wisconsin and Illinois). In the
House, Democrats stand to gain here and there because
Republicans won so many competitive seats in 2014, but few
analysts have considered the GOP's majority at risk.
If Trump actually wins the Republican nomination, the
question would be the scale of the disaster for the party.
The best-case possibility is that Trump tones things down
enough to be able to run as a mainstream conservative
Republican and the party can unite behind him. If that's the
case, the party would still likely do unusually badly with
the groups Trump has insulted so far, but the losses might be
contained. Trump might have little chance to win but he
wouldn't excessively drag down Republicans in races down the
ballot. Democrats would likely make modest gains in the House
and Senate.
Let's suppose, however, that Trump wins the nomination
while still proving unacceptable to many Republican elected
officials and other party actors. Then, yes, huge GOP losses
in Congress, state legislatures and other races are quite
plausible. If high-visibility Republicans denounce their own
nominee, plenty of GOP voters will wind up staying home in
November. Some might even cross party lines at the top of the
ballot and vote for Hillary Clinton, and won't cross back to
vote Republican for other contests. Republican candidates
will face a choice of pledging loyalty to a damaging nominee
or risk adding to the chaos in their party. ...
One potentially significant indirect effect, however, is
possible. Important decisions in House elections are being
made right now. Suppose disgust with the party or fear that
2016 will be a Republican debacle pushes some House
Republicans into retirement or hurts Republican recruitment
for quality candidates for seats that are open or currently
held by weak Democrats. The Trump factor could also be
affecting Democratic decisions today as well, possibly
encouraging better candidates to jump into congressional
races.
The upshot of all this is that Republican politicians and
all those who care about continuing Republican control of
Congress have strong incentives to ramp up their efforts to
defeat Trump. ...
'If high-visibility Republicans denounce their own
nominee, plenty of GOP voters will wind up staying home in
November.'
So why would he hand Hillary the job as prez by going
independent?
Faced with the rising clown shows of Donald Trump and
Ben Carson, the implosion of Jeb! Bush, and the fact that
everyone except his immediate family fates Ted Cruz, the
GOP establishment and the media tried very hard to give
Rubio a boost. The calculus makes sense: Rubio against
iether Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders would make a nice
"young vs. old" storyline for the 2016 election while
giving the Republicans a chance to dump the image of the
party of old, racist white fogies, This despite glaring
evidence that Rubio's policy positions are so far to the
right, they might make Barry Goldwater nervous.
"... life simply because she was married to a President like he would like us to believe. If that was the case there would've been more first ladies running for office. She was a political animal from the start and was involved in every political decision her husband made and shaped his policies dating back to Arkansas. She came in as first lady and immediately announced she was not going to be like other first ladies. I think Hitchens is sort of being lazy with his analysis on how the Clintons attain power and how they've cultivated the path to their success in the political arena ..."
"... I'm sure Hitch would have some very colourful remarks to make about Mrs. Clinton's e-mail shenanigans were he still with us. ..."
"... The woman is remarkably despicable and I hate to have such a jaded view of the average American voter but I'm afraid she is going to get the Presidency based in large part because of the potential for the first female President. ..."
What he failed to realize is how is she reaching these platforms to try and reach the
highest office in the land. Did she get where she is in life simply because she was
married to a President like he would like us to believe. If that was the case there would've
been more first ladies running for office. She was a political animal from the start and was
involved in every political decision her husband made and shaped his policies dating back to
Arkansas. She came in as first lady and immediately announced she was not going to be like
other first ladies. I think Hitchens is sort of being lazy with his analysis on how the
Clintons attain power and how they've cultivated the path to their success in the political
arena
juicer67 2 months ago
I'm sure Hitch would have some very colourful remarks to make about Mrs. Clinton's
e-mail shenanigans were he still with us. He was irreplaceable.
michael davis 1 month ago
+juicer67 And a lot more to say about Benghazi as well. The woman is remarkably
despicable and I hate to have such a jaded view of the average American voter but I'm afraid
she is going to get the Presidency based in large part because of the potential for the first
female President. From my experience with chatting with people before the 2008 election,
many were voting for Obama in large part because he had a chance to be the first black
President - people were excited about that regardless of his stances. I'm afraid the same will
happen with Clinton and she likely knows it too. Its sad that people vote in that way.
"... But never mind us - how does she manage? When you and your husband have banked $125 million in speaking fees from the odious malefactors of wealth, and you insist that you feel the pain of the middle class. How do you maintain the deadpan after you've cashed $300,000 for a half-hour speech at a state university - which fee comes from student dues - and then declaim against crippling student loans? ..."
"... Small lies are often more revealing, especially when there was no need for them. Claiming, say, that you were named after Sir Edmund Hillary when you were born six years before he became a household name; or that you sought to enlist in the US Marines after years of protesting against the Vietnam War, graduating from Yale Law School and working on the campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern; or that you dodged sniper fire on the tarmac in Bosnia, when TV footage shows you strolling across it, smiling. ..."
"... There's the Iraq War vote flip-flop; the gay marriage flip-flop; the Keystone Pipeline flip-flop; the legalising marijuana flip-flop; and most recently, the Trans-Pacific Partnership flip-flop. ..."
"... 'The case against Hillary Clinton for president is open-and-shut. Of course, against all these considerations you might prefer the newly fashionable and more media-weighty notion that if you don't show her enough appreciation, and after all she's done for us, she may cry.' Christopher, thou shouldst be living at this hour. ..."
"... She is a self-obsessed, me me me first totally political greaseball. ..."
The presidential campaign here in the land hymned by one of its earliest immigrants as a
shining 'city on a hill' looks more and more likely to boil down to electing Donald Trump or
Hillary Clinton.
It is of course possible that the party of Lincoln and Reagan will not go completely off its meds
and nominate Mr Trump. It's possible, too, that the wretched FBI agents tasked with reading Mrs
Clinton's 55,000 private emails will experience a Howard Carter/King Tut's tomb moment and find
one instructing Sidney Blumenthal to offer Putin another 20 per cent of US uranium production in
return for another $2.5 million donation to the Clinton Foundation, plus another $500,000 speech
in Moscow. Absent such, Mrs Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. As we say here: deal with it.
Only last summer, her goose seemed all but cooked. Every day she offered another Hillary-ous
explanation for why as Secretary of State she required two Blackberries linked to unclassified
servers. Eventually this babbling brook of prevarication became so tedious that even her Marxist
challenger, Comrade Bernie Sanders of the Vermont Soviet, was moved to thump the debate podium
and proclaim: 'I'm sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!' (He has since backtracked,
declaring himself now deeply interested in her damn emails.)
... ... ...
But never mind us - how does she manage? When you and your husband have banked $125
million in speaking fees from the odious malefactors of wealth, and you insist that you feel the
pain of the middle class. How do you maintain the deadpan after you've cashed $300,000 for a
half-hour speech at a state university - which fee comes from student dues - and then declaim
against crippling student loans?
Small lies are often more revealing, especially when there was no need for them. Claiming,
say, that you were named after Sir Edmund Hillary when you were born six years before he became a
household name; or that you sought to enlist in the US Marines after years of protesting against
the Vietnam War, graduating from Yale Law School and working on the campaigns of Eugene McCarthy
and George McGovern; or that you dodged sniper fire on the tarmac in Bosnia, when TV footage
shows you strolling across it, smiling.
... ... ...
Changing one's position on an issue isn't the same as lying, but along with the 'Which lie did
I tell?' thought bubble permanently hovering over Mrs Clinton's head, one sees too the licked
finger held aloft. The American lingo for this is 'flip-flop,' as in the rubber sandal thingies
you wear on the beach before going inside to give a $200,000 speech to Goldman Sachs.
Mrs Clinton's flip-flop closet has reached Imelda Marcos levels. There's the Iraq War vote
flip-flop; the gay marriage flip-flop; the Keystone Pipeline flip-flop; the legalising marijuana
flip-flop; and most recently, the Trans-Pacific Partnership flip-flop.
And yet, as you work your way down this bill of attainder you feel like an old village scold.
Another member of the 'vast right-wing conspiracy'. A tiresome ancient mariner, banging on at the
wedding.
There's nothing new there. It's all been gone into, again and again. This election isn't about
the past. It's about the future.
And before you know it, you too, like Comrade Bernie - the prior version, anyway - are sick and
tired of hearing yourself whinge. Because it has all been gone into before. It's all 'damn' stuff
now. Mrs and Mr Clinton have been with us since 1992, our political lares et penates - and after
all this time, less than half the electorate think she's honest.
During one of the 2008 Democratic debates, the moderator asked her about the, er, 'likeability
factor'. It was a cringey moment. One's heart (I say this sincerely) went out to the lady. The
shellac deadpan mask melted. She smiled bravely, tears forming, and answered demurely with a
hurt, girlish smile and said: 'Well, that hurts my feelings.'
Whereupon candidate Obama interjected, with the hauteur and sneer of cold command that we've come
to know so well: 'You're likable enough, Hillary.'
The nervous laughter in the auditorium quickly curdled into chill disdain. How could he! But,
lest we slip into sentimentality, let me quote Christopher Hitchens on this anniversary of his
death, who in 2008 wrote: 'The case against Hillary Clinton for president is open-and-shut.
Of course, against all these considerations you might prefer the newly fashionable and more
media-weighty notion that if you don't show her enough appreciation, and after all she's done for
us, she may cry.' Christopher, thou shouldst be living at this hour.
When the latest version of Hillary was rolled out like a new product by her campaign apparatus,
she was rebranded as a doting granny. What's more 'likeable' than a granny? Unfortunately for
her, the meme didn't stick. But then it's hard to look like a cooing old sweetie when you're
swatting away snarling congressmen on Benghazi and explaining that you're suddenly against a
trade treaty you promoted for years. None of this does much for the likeability or honesty
factor.
Mrs Clinton has her champions to be sure, but it's been a long slog for them, too, with an awful
lot of heavy lifting. When her choir cranks up to sing her praise, one detects the note of
obbligato, not genuine ardour.
If it does come down next November to Trump vs Clinton we will - all of us - be presented with a
choice even the great Hobson could not have imagined. And those of us who would sooner leap into
an active, bubbling volcano than vote for Mr Trump will have to try to convince ourselves that
really, she's not that bad. Is she?
... ... ...
Christopher Buckley is an American novelist, essayist and critic, and a former speechwriter
to George H.W. Bush.
Jack Rocks • 19 minutes ago
What a coincidence. I was just watching Christopher Hitchens talk about Hilary Clinton
(no, he's not been resurrected, these are clips from a while ago).
sidor
Someone once placed Cherie Blair in between lady Macbeth and madam Clinton. I wonder if in
this linearly ordered sequence Cherie was meant to be a nicer person than Hillary?
George > Toy Pupanbai
Considering Trump is the only candidate who has signaled any sort of desire to depart from
the accelerating march toward globalist corporate totalitarianism, the vote is between Trump
and Everyone Else.
Terry Field
She is a self-obsessed, me me me first totally political greaseball. Trump is
uncouth, loud, but lacks smoothness as he TELLS IT AS IT BLUDDEE WELL IS. There IS a massive
local Muslim worry and that is evidenced by the gore that ran through the transport system of
London courtesy of home grown muslim (NOT islamist) killlers.
He SHOULD get the GOP nomination, since the rest are gutless and dissembling.
He could well win against that dreadful woman. Clinton supported Morsi in Egypt. Blood on
her hands.
James Morgan
Ah yes. Christopher Hitchens. I do miss that man.
Randal > James Morgan
Yes, because yet another ageing neocon warmonger and "former communist" idiot is just what
we are missing around here these days.
freddiethegreat
Just as Goofy would have been better than Obama, even Lady Macbeth would be better than
Hilary
"... Clinton is also increasingly seen as the least honest in the field, with 46% of likely Democratic primary voters now saying she is least honest out of the three remaining candidates. ..."
Clinton is also increasingly seen as the least honest in the
field, with 46% of likely Democratic primary voters now
saying she is least honest out of the three remaining candidates.
That's up from 33% in September and 28% back in June.
As for the rest of the field, it is beginning to look somewhat grim:
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson continues to lose ground with 14 percent
of the Republican vote. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who still must be
considered an up and comer, is at 12 percent. All other candidates
currently have the support of less than 5 percent of the Republican
electorate, including former Florida governor Jeb Bush.
And in other news, Trump is favored to beat Clinton for the presidency via the Electoral College.
Clinton still has the popular votes, but as Gore found out, popular vote doesn't mean a thing
in US presidential elections.
I still don't think there is the slightest chance Trump is going to be President – he's just too
much of a loose cannon and too uncoupled from the political inside track. My money is still on
Rubio. I'm not surprised that Trump could beat Hillary, though. Even if she were not a warhag
nutjob, Barack Obama has poisoned the well for the Democrats for this election, and quite possibly
the next as well depending on how the Republicans play their first term.
"... No candidate, including Sanders, is going to confess that endless U.S. interventionism in the middle east serves the Lobby's objective of keeping Israel's enemies divided and destabilized. ..."
"... Of course, the fact that a nominated Sanders would not only drag the national dialog left, but almost certainly win the Presidency, is strong motivation for the corporate world to intervene vigorously in all the different ways it can. A Sanders candidacy frightens them far more than narcissistic neoliberal Trump who would have little to no chance of winning against a hyena and only slightly better prospects of winning against HIllary. A Sanders' nomination might even frighten them more than winning the Presidency itself, since the nomination would have the effect of opening the flood gates to actual alternatives to the status quo. Once opened, those would be very hard to close. ..."
"... Now where there may still be a choice is in the American colonies. How long could Washington's endless wars last without the support of the Quisling leadership of its allies? I'm talking about a leader saying: "you stop attacking other countries or we impose a trade embargo." Maybe that's unrealistic but any moral leader of a western country would make this stand. Too bad we only vote in psychopaths. But, unlike America where it is too late, other countries still have the possibility of electing anti-war leaders – like the UK Labour Party. ..."
"... My one cynical add is that just because the 'law' says the president can do this or that, doesn't mean Bernie will be able to. Most of the democratic party will be against him. And an immediate impeachment process could very easily happen against him. No, he doesn't have to die in a plane crash, or be (JKF was not )assassinated by the CIA …the powers that run this country could just impeach him. ..."
"... Still, I really want him to win. My hate is pure for the neo liberal democrats. My compromise ideologically is easy for me to stomach. Go Bernie. Meanwhile, lets organize for a better world, outside of the corrupt political machine. ..."
"... Speeches, schmeeches. Words are wind. Look at the record. Hillary Clinton is a monster. The issue is not Bernie vs. Hillary. The issue is how could any sane American even consider voting for Hillary Clinton, against any candidate, even Trump (yes really). ..."
"... Just because Sanders has pledged to support the Democratic candidate in the general election doesn't mean that his supporters are obligated to do so. If Sanders is not the Democratic nominee, I will very likely vote Third Party, as I did in 2012. And you can do the same. ..."
"... I don't think his pledge to support the nominee undermines his candidacy at all. First, it's pro forma and carries no force. Besides, it was also absolutely required to even join the contest at a high level. If he wanted to have any impact on this election cycle, he had very literally no choice about it. To think otherwise seems more than a little naive, which seems to be an ongoing problem generally with the American left. ..."
"... Sanders is *almost* everything one could realistically ever hope for in a legacy party candidate with a real shot, and yet a significant portion of the left inevitably goes straight into the back corner of the drawer looking for reasons not to support him–or even to go further and declare him unfit. Worse yet, those saying this stuff offer no viable plans or alternatives at all. It's really astonishing to me and perhaps explains why the left is ever so easy to marginalize and push around. ..."
"... Bernie Sanders was the first senator to announce that he would boycott Netanyahu's speech in Congress, and he is the only senator who does not take any money from the pro-Israel lobby. He was one of a small majority in the Senate who did not sign the resolution last summer to approve of Israel's bombing of Gaza - and he didn't vote for it (there was no vote) or otherwise agree to it. The "unanimous consent" thing that Chris Hedges jumps up and down about and others parrot as "proof" that Sanders is pro-Israel is a procedural rule in the Senate, and there was no way to "object" to it, other than not signing the resolution in the first place. That's what he did, even though more than three-fourths of this colleagues signed on. And he has criticized Israel. You'd just never know it by reading Hedges and the CounterPunch crowd. ..."
"... To be fair, there's the sheepdog scenario (again, a terrible metaphor, put about by the Greens, which implies conscious collusion by Sanders, for which there's very little evidence). If that comes true, is that so bad? No, because we're not any worse off than we were before, and see #4 and #5 above. ..."
"... I just don't see how Sanders running is anything other than a net positive. The left really does need to figure out how to take yes for an answer. ..."
"... It seems to me like the major sovereignty-violating actions of the US Gov't happen with the approval of the executive branch. The military and intelligence services generally don't speak out or publicly act against the president's policies. They do leak a bunch of shit everywhere (the mysterious "high-ranking anonymous Obama official" who seems to pop up whenever the president's policies need to be opposed), but that you can live with. It is a real problem, one that makes me nervous. We know exactly where corporations go when their iron grip on democracy loosens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot ..."
I mentioned near the end of a piece called "Blowback,
Money & the Washington War Party" that I would compare Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton with
respect to its main subject, America and its wars. For context, I'd like to repeat the start of that
piece:
Whatever your answer might be, or mine, I think Stockman's answer is Yes, and he details
that answer in an excellent looking-back and looking-forward essay about the U.S. and its Middle
East "involvement." I have excerpted several sections below, but the whole is worth a full top-to-bottom
read.
Before we turn to Stockman's points, though, I just want to highlight two semi-hidden ideas
in his essay. One is about money. What Stockman calls the "War Party" in Washington is really
the bipartisan Money Party, since the largest-by-far pile of cash looted from the federal budget
(in other words, from taxpayers) goes to fund our military and its suppliers and enablers. Which
means that most of it is stolen and diverted in some way. Which means that those who do the stealing
have a lot of "skin in the game" - the game that keeps the money flowing in the first place.
Recall that what's now called the Money Party was what
Gore Vidal called the "Property Party":
"There is only one party in the United States,
the Property Party … and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat."
Which means the Washington War Party is a bipartisan gig. Thus our bipartisan wars, which for
Stockman answers the first part of the imputed question above. Yes, America does have the wars
it seeks. …
It concludes with this:
How Will This End?
It's easy to see that this ends in either of two ways. It will end when we stop sending money
and arms into the region - i.e., when we impoverish our wealth-drunk arms industry and starve
the fighting - or it will not end.
Which means, it will lead to continuous tears, American ones. And when, again, you factor in
the continuing spiral toward chaos guaranteed by continuing global warming, we may look back and
say, "Paris was our generation's Sarajevo." It's hard to stop a war when only a nation's people
don't want it. It's almost impossible to stop a war when the people unite with the wealthy to
promote it.
Which brings me to Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, war, and speeches each gave recently. But
that's for later. …
Later is now. I'm providing this context because I don't want to leave the impression this piece
is about Sanders and Clinton. It's not. This piece is about us, our future, and that of our children
… the future of all of us, in other words, who may choose to live in Washington's endless war-profiteering
environment - until that war comes home with a vengeance.
Do we have I choice? I believe we do, for now. I don't think that choice will persist, will be
available forever.
Sanders, Clinton & America's Endless War
In a piece by Tom Cahill in
usuncut.com, which starts with a report of Bernie Sanders' "socialism" speech, we find this near
the middle, a comparison of the foreign policy statements in Sanders' speech with a speech given
at nearly the same time by Hillary Clinton.
First, about Sanders, Cahill writes:
Sanders Acknowledges Error of CIA-Sponsored Coups
Sanders' [socialism] speech also surprised many viewers with exhaustive foreign policy proposals
aimed at reaching peace in the Middle East, while letting Muslim countries lead the fight against
ISIS. the Vermont senator cautioned against using the military to force regime change, citing
past CIA-sponsored coups in Latin America and the Middle East as examples of forced regime change
gone wrong.
"Our response must begin with an understanding of past mistakes and missteps in our previous
approaches to foreign policy," Sanders said. "It begins with the reflection that the failed policy
decisions of the past – rushing to war, regime change in Iraq, or toppling Mossadegh in Iran in
1953, or Guatemalan President Árbenz in 1954, Brazilian President Goulart in 1964, Chilean President
Allende in 1973. These are the sorts of policies do not work, do not make us safer, and must not
be repeated."
To defeat ISIS, Sanders urged the US to form a new NATO-like coalition with Russia and enemies
of ISIS in the Middle East, and force Muslim countries to lead the fight with support from the
West. …
"Saudi Arabia has the 3rd largest defense budget in the world, yet instead of fighting ISIS
they have focused more on a campaign to oust Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen," Sanders said.
"Kuwait, a country whose ruling family was restored to power by U.S. troops after the first Gulf
War, has been a well-known source of financing for ISIS and other violent extremists. It has been
reported that Qatar will spend $200 billion on the 2022 World Cup, including the construction
of an enormous number of facilities to host that event – $200 billion on hosting a soccer event,
yet very little to fight against ISIS."
"All of this has got to change. Wealthy and powerful Muslim nations in the region can no longer
sit on the sidelines and expect the United States to do their work for them," Sanders continued.
Not perfect if you're strongly pro-peace, but this would nonetheless represent a major
shift in both policy and spending, if implemented - something that can be done, I remind you, by
our commander-in-chief, acting alone. It may take Congress, or the illusion of congressional approval,
to make war. It doesn't require a single Republican (or war-making Democratic) vote to make peace.
Now about Clinton, from the same piece (my emphasis):
Hillary Clinton: U.S. Should Lead War on ISIS
Sanders' Georgetown address was a stark contrast to Hillary Clinton's speech at the Council
of Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York[.]
The former Secretary of State outlined her proposal to fight ISIS, which primarily consisted
of the US military taking and maintaining a leading role for an undetermined period of time.
"It is time to begin a new phase and intensify and broaden our efforts to smash the would-be
caliphate and deny ISIS control of territory in Iraq and Syria," Clinton said early in the speech.
"That starts with a more effective coalition air campaign, with more allied planes, more strikes,
and a broader target set."
"The Iraqi national army has struggled. It is going to take more work to get it up to fighting
shape," Clinton continued. "As part of that process, we may have to give our own troops advising
and training the Iraqis greater freedom of movement and flexibility, including embedding in local
units and helping target airstrikes."
Clinton's entire speech (about 30 minutes)
is above.
Endless War or a Move Toward Peace - Last Chance to Decide?
I'm not suggesting to you what to want. If you really want to enrich billionaire arms manufacturers
and their enablers in and out of office, that's up to you. If you want to give a well-organized foreign
fighting force yet more reason to encourage the same acts in the U.S. as their local sympathizers
perform in Europe, that's also up to you. If you want to remove American fingerprints - and national
entanglement - from foreign feuds, that's also your choice as well.
I merely want to point out that for once, there is a choice, and you can make that choice by choosing
between these two candidates, just as you can choose, using these two candidates, whether to aggressively
reign in
carbon use or continue to serve the wealthy who serve up
global warming.
Withdraw from foreign wars, or expand into them? Sanders or Clinton? The day is coming soon when
this will have mattered, and not just on late-night comedy shows. It's entirely likely that within
the term of the next president, our foreign policy chickens will come home to roost.
Me, I'd prefer those chickens not be armed.
(Blue America has endorsed Bernie Sanders for President. If you'd like to help him,
click here. This page also lists every progressive incumbent and candidate who has endorsed him.
You can adjust the split in any way you wish.)
Jim Haygood, December 5, 2015 at 2:59 pm
'Sanders urged the US to form a new NATO-like coalition with Russia and enemies of ISIS in the
Middle East, and force Muslim countries to lead the fight with support from the West.'
*yawn* Same old, same old yankee interventionism.
The sole reason for supporting Sanders is not for his tired old interventionist shtick, but to
deprive the Sheldon Adelson Republiclown Party of across-the-board control of Kongress and the
presidency (a disturbingly likely prospect).
No candidate, including Sanders, is going to confess that endless U.S. interventionism in the
middle east serves the Lobby's objective of keeping Israel's enemies divided and destabilized.
susan the other, December 5, 2015 at 3:51 pm
When, why, and how did the brand of globalism we have now (supra national corporatism) become
an article of faith for the global economy? Why can't we have a different form of globalism, not
one based on profiteering which is just war in a different uniform, a suit and tie? The
environment could unite us, Naomi Klein style. Equality could too because a global effort against
inequality would eventually have to end the looting and aggression of international corporatism
and feudalism. Isn't it an irony that all the great corporations and capitalist geniuses
pretending to manage the world can't fix the mess they made without taxpayers?
And consumers? If citizens in every country stopped buying things we'd win the planet back in
a month. The only thing we need besides dedication is local survival safety nets.
Brooklin Bridge, December 5, 2015 at 11:28 am
Agreed. It's one thing to observe -factually- that Sanders' momentum has halted, by some mix
of his own devices and those of an antithetical MSM and a traitorous corporate centric DNC, it's
another thing not to at least try to get him nominated. If that were to happen, no matter how
unlikely, the national discussion would virtually have to deal with Sander's platform and it is
hard to even imagine just how healthy that would be.
Of course, the fact that a nominated Sanders would not only drag the national dialog left,
but almost certainly win the Presidency, is strong motivation for the corporate world to
intervene vigorously in all the different ways it can. A Sanders candidacy frightens them far
more than narcissistic neoliberal Trump who would have little to no chance of winning against a
hyena and only slightly better prospects of winning against HIllary. A Sanders' nomination might
even frighten them more than winning the Presidency itself, since the nomination would have the
effect of opening the flood gates to actual alternatives to the status quo. Once opened, those
would be very hard to close.
Lambert Strether, December 5, 2015 at 11:00 pm
FWIW, I think Sanders numbers have plateaued for a very simple reason: He's not reaching
enough voters. We'll see how that goes when we are nearer the caucuses, and after the Sanders
campaign has made more attempts to peel away from some of Clinton's constituencies (which it's
trying hard to do).
Again, my litmus test is this: Sanders has said it will take a movement to get his platform
accomplished. So where is it? A movement implies staff, branding, events, etc. And professionals
know how it's done; Dean 2004 and Obama 2008. So where is it?
Carla, December 5, 2015 at 1:30 pm
The Democrat Party will not nominate Bernie Sanders. Period. Not gonna happen so quit holding
your breath.
In my state, we declare party membership by requesting a ballot of our chosen party in the
primary. Obama cured me of ever - EVER - asking for a Democrat ballot again. I'm Green and clean
for life - thanks, Barry!
Vatch, December 5, 2015 at 4:14 pm
If the Green party has a primary in your state, I understand why you wouldn't want to vote in
the Democratic primary. But the Greens don't have primaries, so you're missing a chance to to
have a very small influence over the choice of the Democratic candidate (or the Republican
candidate). If enough leftists decide that it's not possible for the Democrats to choose Sanders,
it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
In 2008 I voted for Obama (a mistake, of course, but a vote for McCain would also have been a
mistake). In 2012, I changed my ways, first by voting in the Republican primary, mostly so I
could have a say in the nomination of candidates for some lesser offices. I voted for Huntsman in
the primary, because he wasn't a total lunatic like Santorum. In the general election I voted for
Green candidate Stein. In 2016, I will vote in the Democratic primary, and then I'll wait to see
who's been nominated by the various parties.
Lambert Strether, December 5, 2015 at 11:00 pm
Then if Sanders is strong enough, the party will split. That's a good thing.
Lambert Strether, December 5, 2015 at 11:07 pm
Sanders:
To defeat ISIS, Sanders urged the US to form a new NATO-like coalition with Russia and enemies
of ISIS in the Middle East, and force Muslim countries to lead the fight with support from the
West. …
If one accepts America's imperial role, that's a reasonable play. (If one imagines that our
ruling class is long conflict investment, then all that matters is conflict, period; there's no
policy reason for the conflict needed, except as window dressing.)
Of course, I don't accept that. Clinton v. Sanders reminds me of Freud's comment about
psychotherapy turning hysterical misery into ordinary unhappiness. But even so, there's a lot of
unhappiness to go around, and on a global, grandiose scale.
BEWARE: I may have to start moderating for outright endorsements. (Readers will note neither Yves
nor I have endorsed anybody). I've seen blogs torn apart by battles over candidates, and I don't
want that to happen to Naked Capitalism.
EoinW, December 5, 2015 at 8:32 am
Given the Obama experience, I'm not so sure there is a true choice. More like the illusion of
a choice. heck even if Rand Paul became President I'd expect him to go against his promises, as
Obama did and Sanders will do.
Now where there may still be a choice is in the American colonies. How long could
Washington's endless wars last without the support of the Quisling leadership of its allies? I'm
talking about a leader saying: "you stop attacking other countries or we impose a trade embargo."
Maybe that's unrealistic but any moral leader of a western country would make this stand. Too bad
we only vote in psychopaths. But, unlike America where it is too late, other countries still have
the possibility of electing anti-war leaders – like the UK Labour Party.
This in my opinion is the last chance to stop Washington democratically. An aggressive
anti-American stance which creates costs that even the War Party can't sustain. After all, those
who have started these wars going back to Yugoslavia have paid zero cost. Even in 2008 I thought
that Obama's election would be a blow for peace chances. Bush and the Republicans were making it
difficult for other leaders to obediently follow the Empire. Eight years of McCain might have
succeeded in finally isolating Washington. Instead we got Obama and the illusion of change. That
gave our Quislings the politcal cover to run back to the Empire. it's been full steam ahead ever
since then.
tommy strange, December 5, 2015 at 9:11 am
Well written thoughtful piece. I do hope Bernie gets through the fixed primary, cuz he can win
the general easily, especially since the economy is going to tank even deeper by then. I do know
that the only real change can happen through a bottom up libertarian mass force (anarchist,
democratic con federalist, etc), but we are NOT doing that now, and I am aghast we are not even
organizing for 'it'…and so…. Clinton has the record of a completely right wing arrogant fool that
would still even bomb Iran. Just imagine that one obvious possibility and what that would cause.
My one cynical add is that just because the 'law' says the president can do this or that,
doesn't mean Bernie will be able to. Most of the democratic party will be against him. And an
immediate impeachment process could very easily happen against him. No, he doesn't have to die in
a plane crash, or be (JKF was not )assassinated by the CIA …the powers that run this country
could just impeach him.
Still, I really want him to win. My hate is pure for the neo liberal democrats. My
compromise ideologically is easy for me to stomach. Go Bernie. Meanwhile, lets organize for a
better world, outside of the corrupt political machine.
JTMcPhee, December 5, 2015 at 10:11 am
The body– all the organs, fluids, nerves, hormones, etc. - of a person when some of whose
cells have turned on the whole, gone destructively rogue and metastatic - well, even as those
cells link and proliferate and multiply and trick the dying carcass into growing ever more and
larger conduits to deliver blood to the tumors, the "person" searches for treatments and
maintains hope and a grim determination and positive mental attitude, hoping for a cure that will
restore homeostasis and return the tissues to their proper function. Bear in mind that cancers
are cells that have shucked off the restraints on and regulation of growth, in favor of SIMPLY
MORE, unconcerned about the death of the body that feeds them. And those cells usually have
figured out how to hide from the body's regulatory processes. In the Actual World Battlespace,
aircraft and "units" carry devices that let them (nominally) Interrogate Friend or Foe, so they
won't or are at least less likely to be killed by "friendly fire." Somatic cells get identified a
similar way, and the immune system cuts the psychopathic cells out and recycles them. "The
Military" of course employs the same spoofing and fraud tricks that cancer cells use, in addition
to the ever-growing diversion of life resources into tumor growth, so the immune system is
suckered into thinking they are benign. The related disease processes, corporatization and
financialization, have pulled the same trick. (Cancerous livers and pancreases and pituitaries
keep sort of functioning, putting out hormones and converting nutrients and filtering and stuff,
until they don't, or they die with the rest of the body as some other essential-to-life function
fails and stops.)
There's what, maybe half a million "Troops" invested in the Imperial Project overseas and at
home. Their expertise is in killing, destabilization, raising up Sepoy armies and "national
police forces," on the idiotic assumption that the latter two will be under the orders of the
High Command. Even if these sh_ts did not just "bowstring" a Bernie Sanders, a hugely brave man
imo, if "we," whoever that is, speaking of agency, somehow arrange to "disengage" and demobilize,
these creatures that exist at all levels of the chain of command will then do what? Get good
paying jobs back home, become good citizens? Or go join up with the Eric Princes and other
private mercenary or "national" armies, to keep a paycheck and benefits and keep doing what so
many of the get off on? Let alone the other tumors like the rest of the Imperial and other-nation
state security types? And of course the Elites that rule us and happily will kill us because
"Apres nous le deluge…"
Yah, "We" as agents have to try, to "reform" the aberrant cells. But looking at the patient's
chart, the electrolytes are way out of whack, cachexia is well advanced, and the tumors are
pressing on and colonizing the vital organs… I personally don't think "we" can do better, but who
knows?
TG, December 5, 2015 at 10:30 am
Speeches, schmeeches. Words are wind. Look at the record. Hillary Clinton is a monster.
The issue is not Bernie vs. Hillary. The issue is how could any sane American even consider
voting for Hillary Clinton, against any candidate, even Trump (yes really).
As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton made America de-facto allies of extremist groups including
Al Qaeda. You know, the guys that blew up the trade center towers on 9/11? Yes really. No it's
not in her speeches – she just actually did it. And here was Libya, and it's leader wasn't a
saint, but he mostly did good for his people – highest standard of living in Africa! – and he'd
made nice with US the last few years, and helped against terrorism etc. And Hillary allied with
extremist jihadist nut jobs and trashed the place, and now it's like something out of a Mad Max
movie and the average Libyan sorely misses Gaddafi, and ISIS is spreading, and refugees are
spilling out all over and there is no end in sight etc.
Somehow we have to get past the notion that anyone treated as 'serious' by the New York Times is
actually serious, and look at their record. Press releases are not reality. Trump may be an
arrogant loudmouth, and Bernie not a saint, etc., but Hillary should be beyond the pale.
roadrider, December 5, 2015 at 10:56 am
Yeah, Sanders sounds more reasonable but he's still endorsing the "War on Terrah!" and making
it sound like we're engaged in some kind of noble effort but being undermined by our so-called
allies. The part about being undermined is true but his overall stance ignores the elephant in
the room – not only did our our military/covert paramilitary misadventures lead to the emergence
of Al-Qaeda an ISIS but our continued association with the repressive, oligarchic petro-states in
the Gulf fuel the growth of Islamic extremism and sectarian violence in that region. Sanders
recognizes part of that problem but his prescription is far from a cure.
This post encourages support for Sanders but count me out. I get that Sanders is better than
Clinton on many issues but I can't support him in the primary because 1) I'm no longer a Democrat
and can't vote in the primary even if I were so inclined (and no, I'm not going to re-register as
a Democrat just to do that) and 2) Sanders has already endorsed Clinton (he'll support her if she
wins the primary) so how seriously should we take their policy differences?
Carla, December 5, 2015 at 1:55 pm
I agree. The fact that Sanders has pledged to support Clinton fatally undermines his
candidacy. Here in Ohio, arguably the most "progressive" member of the U.S. Senate, Sherrod
Brown, endorsed Clinton several weeks ago.
I'm telling ya, the Democrats will never allow a Sanders win. Votes don't matter.
Lambert Strether, December 5, 2015 at 11:23 pm
Again, there's no way to win running as a Democrat without pledging to support the Democratic
candidate. There just isn't. (And nobody said the support couldn't turn out to be nothing more
than a ritual pledge, right?)
And what's the better option? Creating a third party is not on*, and the Greens have their own
candidate (and the Greens have also been ill-treated by star candidates parachuting in; if I were
a Green, I don't think I'd support Sanders).
So IMNSHO the whole "ZOMG!!!! He pledged to support Clinton!!!!" is a test of ritual purity,
nothing more. It has no relevance to electoral politics at all.
The more important issue is whether Sanders is building up a parallel structure to the Democrats.
The small donations says yes. A real movement (my litmus test) would shout yes.
That would bypass the whole endorse/not endorse discussion, and totally f2ck the Democrats, too,
a consummation devoutly to be wished.
* Start with ballot access.
Vatch, December 5, 2015 at 7:40 pm
Sanders has already endorsed Clinton (he'll support her if she wins the primary)
Bernie Sanders has been in the Congress for more than 2 decades as an Independent. This year,
he suddenly starts campaigning in the Democratic primaries for the Presidency. Some Democrats,
especially life long Democrats, view this with suspicion. "What's this carpet bagger doing in our
primaries?", they think. To alleviate their fears of an outsider poaching on their territory, he
pledges to support the ultimate Democratic candidate for President. This allows undecided
Democratic primary voters to feel a little more comfortable about voting for Sanders. If he
manages to win the nomination, the Clinton supporters will be more likely to vote for him in the
general election.
Just because Sanders has pledged to support the Democratic candidate in the general election
doesn't mean that his supporters are obligated to do so. If Sanders is not the Democratic
nominee, I will very likely vote Third Party, as I did in 2012. And you can do the same.
Kurt Sperry, December 5, 2015 at 9:08 pm
I don't think his pledge to support the nominee undermines his candidacy at all. First,
it's pro forma and carries no force. Besides, it was also absolutely required to even join the
contest at a high level. If he wanted to have any impact on this election cycle, he had very
literally no choice about it. To think otherwise seems more than a little naive, which seems to
be an ongoing problem generally with the American left.
Sanders is *almost* everything one could realistically ever hope for in a legacy party
candidate with a real shot, and yet a significant portion of the left inevitably goes straight
into the back corner of the drawer looking for reasons not to support him–or even to go further
and declare him unfit. Worse yet, those saying this stuff offer no viable plans or alternatives
at all. It's really astonishing to me and perhaps explains why the left is ever so easy to
marginalize and push around.
TedWa, December 5, 2015 at 12:14 pm
Since Bernie has voted against pretty much all our involvement in the ME, I wonder if what
he's saying is that if the ME doesn't care enough to get rid of ISIL, then why should we? For
those doubting his character, please do read up on him more. He's not there for show, he gets
things done and does it for the people. What more could you ask for than a candidate that refuses
to take Wall St money and dark money fomr Super-Pacs? I mean, really – what more could you ask?
If he wins out goes citizens united. The TBTF banks will be broken up. SS will be solid for a 100
years and the things that matter to the people the most – will be his goal. He's no phony and
he's no psychopath like the past 2 Presidents or his adversary in this run up. I see no guile in
the man. When he says he's going to do something he gets it done. No one in Congress has been
able to cross party lines and get things done for "we the people" like Bernie Sanders. Look up
his record.
I support Bernie on a monthly basis and will continue to do so. I voted Jill Stein last time and
while that was a vote with a clear conscience, I knew there was no chance. Here we the people
have a chance. Come on now, NO SUPER-PAC MONEY OR MONEY FROM WALL ST !! What does that say? Is he
for you or against you? I'd say it screams that he is on our side. Jill Stein? Great. But there's
no way she can win. The media and TPTB won't cover her and won't let her debate. I can vote for
Bernie with a clear conscience because I took the time to see what the man is about.
3.14e-9, December 5, 2015 at 6:37 pm
Bernie Sanders was the first senator to announce that he would boycott Netanyahu's speech
in Congress, and he is the only senator who does not take any money from the pro-Israel lobby. He
was one of a small majority in the Senate who did not sign the resolution last summer to approve
of Israel's bombing of Gaza - and he didn't vote for it (there was no vote) or otherwise agree to
it. The "unanimous consent" thing that Chris Hedges jumps up and down about and others parrot as
"proof" that Sanders is pro-Israel is a procedural rule in the Senate, and there was no way to
"object" to it, other than not signing the resolution in the first place. That's what he did,
even though more than three-fourths of this colleagues signed on. And he has criticized Israel.
You'd just never know it by reading Hedges and the CounterPunch crowd.
As for endorsing Hillary, that remains to be seen. He said that in the beginning when he and
everyone else thought maybe he'd get a few votes from the fringe. Circumstances have changed
dramatically, and he's got millions of supporters who have said they will not vote for Clinton,
period. So we'll see whether he sticks with the party - which, goddess knows, has done everything
in its power to block him and to which he owes nothing - or whether he'll find another
alternative.
Lambert Strether, December 5, 2015 at 11:39 pm
Of course Obama and the Democrats have consistently betrayed their voters. Heck, go back to
Pelosi in 2006 taking impeachment off the table, or the Democrats in 2000 rolling over when Bush
was selected in Bush v. Gore. I mean, water is wet.
I just don't see any downside in Sanders running as a Democrat. No downside at all.
1) Sanders wins the nomination. Is that so bad?
2) The regulars screw Sanders over so badly that the Democrats split. Is that so bad?
3) Sanders actually starts a movement. Is that so bad?
4) Sanders puts single payer and free college on the national agenda. Socialism gets on the
national agenda.* Is that so bad?
5) Sanders runs on small contributions ONLY, with no SuperPAC money, achieving unheard of success
totally against conventional wisdom. Is that so bad?
To be fair, there's the sheepdog scenario (again, a terrible metaphor, put about by the
Greens, which implies conscious collusion by Sanders, for which there's very little evidence). If
that comes true, is that so bad? No, because we're not any worse off than we were before, and see
#4 and #5 above.
I just don't see how Sanders running is anything other than a net positive. The left really
does need to figure out how to take yes for an answer.
* Please name another politician who has or could have achieved this.
GlassHammer, December 5, 2015 at 1:57 pm
Are we assuming that the Pentagon, DoD, etc… are just going to accept new guidance from the
top? (That sounds like wishful thinking to me.)
And if they (Pentagon, DoD, etc…) resist new guidance, what is going to be done about it?
Curretly more Americans trust the military than any institution or politician. I highly doubt
anyone could swing public opinion against the Deep State at this point in time.
Daryl, December 5, 2015 at 2:55 pm
It seems to me like the major sovereignty-violating actions of the US Gov't happen with
the approval of the executive branch. The military and intelligence services generally don't
speak out or publicly act against the president's policies. They do leak a bunch of shit
everywhere (the mysterious "high-ranking anonymous Obama official" who seems to pop up whenever
the president's policies need to be opposed), but that you can live with. It is a real problem,
one that makes me nervous. We know exactly where corporations go when their iron grip on
democracy loosens:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
McPhee, December 5, 2015 at 3:29 pm
Any Agent of Actual Change has to fear the "bowstring…"
I wonder if there is a real chance Jesse Ventura will be nominated by the Libertarian Party at
their convention in May or June and put him on the ballot in about 48 states. He says he's
interested and he's got my vote. I agree Bernie has no chance to win, partly because he's just
too humble and polite. He was a great athlete in high school, but he never talks about it. That
would get him some support in sports-minded Iowa.
"... "One thing with Hillary, she doesn't have the strength or the stamina to be president. She doesn't have it," Trump said at a Wednesday-night campaign rally in Manassas, Virginia. ..."
"... "Hillary shouldn't be allowed to run because what she did is illegal. What she did is illegal," Trump asserted Thursday. ..."
"... I don't know if Clinton privatizing her email server is illegal. I do know it's corrupt to the bone . ..."
"... However, the one line of attack that is substantial, and that she's had the most trouble dispelling, is her closeness to Wall Street . So is there anything Clinton can do to rid herself of the Wall Street albatross? Of course there is. She should say that if elected president, she'd subject the Wall Streeters to a higher tax rate than anyone else. (I'd exclude venture capitalists from this penalty, since they primarily fund innovation.) ..."
"Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Thursday lashed out at Donald Trump's comments suggesting that
Israel should offer 'sacrifices' to win a peace deal, telling a prominent Republican Jewish group
that conflict is the Middle East amounts to more than "a real estate deal."" [The
Hill]. Trump outflanks Clinton on Israel to the left. Hilarity ensues.
The Voters
Trump: "Think of it. Obama, your African-American youth - 51 percent unemployment, right? You
guys our age, they have unemployment that's double or triple what other people have. What the
hell has he done for the African-Americans? He's done nothing. He's done nothing. I don't think
he cares about them. He's done nothing. It's all talk, it's all words with this guy" [The
Hill]. Sadly, Trump is correct, on both counts. And he forgot to mention the foreclosure crisis,
which disproportionately affected Blacks.
"73% of Republican voters say Trump would win the general [Quinippiac].
Rubio: 63%; Cruz: 59%; Carson: 55%. So, not only a gigantic upraised middle finger to their own
party establishment and the entire political class, but pragmatic, too.
The Trail
"Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner, broke with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel
on Wednesday and called for a federal probe of the city police department following the release
of a video last week showing the death of a black teen, who was shot by a white police officer"
[Wall
Street Journal, "Hillary Clinton Calls for Federal Probe of Chicago Police Department"]. Say,
who is this "Rahm" character, anyhow? He just seemed to pop up one day, and now he's all over
the news. What gives? Where the heck did he come from?
"In a seven-page confidential memo that imagines Trump as the party's presidential nominee,
the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee urges candidates to adopt many of Trump's
tactics, issues and approaches - right down to adjusting the way they dress and how they use Twitter"
[WaPo].
"One thing with Hillary, she doesn't have the strength or the stamina to be president. She
doesn't have it," Trump said at a Wednesday-night campaign rally in Manassas, Virginia.
Trump's other lines that Clinton shouldn't even be "allowed" to run for president because
of her controversial email practices at the State Department. The FBI has said it is investigating
whether any material was mishandled in connection to Clinton's email account, which was run
using a private server in her home.
"Hillary shouldn't be allowed to run because what she did is illegal. What she did is illegal,"
Trump asserted Thursday.
I don't know if Clinton privatizing her email server is illegal. I do know it's
corrupt to the bone.
"How Hillary Clinton can shake the one charge that sticks to her" [Harold Meyerson,
WaPo].
However, the one line of attack that is substantial, and that she's had the most
trouble dispelling, is her
closeness to Wall Street.
So is there anything Clinton can do to rid herself of the Wall Street albatross? Of course
there is. She should say that if elected president, she'd subject the Wall Streeters to a higher
tax rate than anyone else. (I'd exclude venture capitalists from this penalty, since they primarily
fund innovation.)
"... One issue that is raised by Samwicks piece is the degree to which infrastructure spending should be connected with countercyclical policy. Certainly, it makes sense to have mechanisms available for dialing infrastructure spending up in response to slumps. ..."
Samwick points out that Hillary's infrastructure plan is a good start but too small.
The media portrays it as a bank buster.
Progressives need to start criticizing the Hillary plan as being too small, which it is. We should
aim for a much larger plan and maybe we could get what Hillary has suggested. It's a problem if
that is the starting point in the negotiation.
pgl said in reply to bakho...
I suggested the other day she should make it bigger. Andrew Samwick is one of the few honest Republican
economists.
pgl said in reply to bakho...
"It was almost eight years ago that I started writing about spending on infrastructure as a means
of countercyclical fiscal policy. There was an op-ed in The Washington Post, followed by an essay
in The Ripon Forum, as the Great Recession was beginning. I returned to it occasionally as the
weak recovery and inelegant policy discussions of economic stimulus continued the need for a sensible
plan to boost economic activity. This op-ed at U.S. News Economic Intelligence blog is a good
example."
I used to read Andrew's blog regularly but then I stopped. Too bad as he has been
all over the need for fiscal stimulus via infrastructure from the beginning. And Andrew is generally
considered right of center. So liberal and conservative economists have both been making this
argument.
Of course our resident gold bug troll JohnH insists that economists have not been calling for
such stimulus. OK - JohnH is not one to read Andrew's blog as Andrew writes some really high quality
posts which will not show up in JohnH's Google for Really Dumb Stuff program.
Seems Congress has passed a highway bill financed by gimmicks rather than raising the gasoline
tax. Speaker Ryan's dishonesty at its finest!
Peter K. said in reply to pgl...
I agree with Drum's main point.
However as I understand it Ryan had to pass this with votes from Democrats and some Republicans.
His supporters are framing it as continuing Boehner's parting deal to disgruntled Tea Partiers
who won't vote for anything.
Drum writes:
""Among other things, the measure would raise revenue by selling oil from the nation's emergency
stockpile and taking money from a Federal Reserve surplus account that works as a sort of cushion
to help the bank pay for potential losses." ... On the other hand, the revenue sources they're tapping in order to pass this bill are probably
pretty ill considered. "
The Fed can print up money so I don't understand why it has a "rainy day" fund. Sounds like
a budgetary gimmick which Drum glosses over.
Some of the money will come from the Federal Reserve. The bill cuts the Fed's annual dividend
payments to large commercial banks, redirecting that money to highway construction. It also drains
money from the Fed's rainy-day fund.
The banking industry opposed the dividend cut, but won only a partial victory. The Senate voted
to replace the current 6 percent dividend with a 1.5 percent dividend. The final version instead
ties the dividend to the interest rate on 10-year Treasury bonds, currently 2.2 percent, up to
a maximum of 6 percent.
The bill also requires the Fed to fork over $19 billion from a rainy-day fund that has ballooned
to $29 billion in recent years. The size of the rainy-day fund also would be limited to $10 billion.
A Fed spokesman declined to comment, but Fed officials have previously criticized both the
dividend cut and the draining of the rainy-day fund, arguing Congress should not use Fed funds
to bankroll specific programs.
...."
Peter K. said in reply to Peter K....
It's slightly ironic that Paul Ryan and John Taylor wrote an op-ed criticizing the Fed for "easing
the pressure" on fiscal policy with monetary policy, when that's exactly what the highway bill
does.
Do all of these lefty critics of monetary policy not want it to "ease the pressure" of
fiscal policy either?
Hillary Clinton Unveils $275 Billion Infrastructure Investment Plan
By Amy Chozick
Evoking the investment in American infrastructure by Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald
Reagan, Hillary Clinton on Monday unveiled the most sprawling - and costliest - government program
of her campaign to date.
Mrs. Clinton said her five-year, $275-billion federal infrastructure program was aimed at creating
middle-class jobs while investing heavily in improving the country's highways, airports and ports....
[ That would be $275 / 5 = $55 billion per year spending on infrastructure.
That comes to $55 / $18,065 = .3% of GDP infrastructure spending. ]
pgl said in reply to anne...
Then let's double her proposal to make it 0.6% of GDP! Dean Baker would love this calculation.
bakho said in reply to pgl...
I say multiply it by 10 and let the GOP win by whittling away 80%.
It is worth quoting Donald
Trump on this:
""I'm going to put this plan in front of lots of different people. It's going to go through lots
of scrutiny. There's room to negotiate. I'm a negotiator. There's room to negotiate.
Other people don't have any room to negotiate. But there's always going to be room to negotiate.
When I put something forward, I always have to leave something on the table, and if we have things
on the table. We can give up certain things.
ilsm said in reply to anne...
The pentagon is diverting $1,000B is resources into nuclear bombs to destroy the world.
How
about less militarist Keynesianism and some for the people?
It's hard to call a plan that spends $275 billion in taxpayer dollars over five years "modest"
and keep a straight face. But that may be the best way to describe the proposal Hillary Clinton
unveiled on Monday to upgrade the nation's ailing infrastructure.
Clinton's blueprint is certainly broad in scope: It aims to bolster not only roads and bridges
but also public transit, freight rail, airports, broadband Internet, and water systems. It's the
most expensive domestic policy proposal she's made to date. And when added to the nearly $300
billion Congress is poised to authorize in a new highway bill, the Clinton plan tops the $478
billion that President Obama sought for infrastructure earlier this year.
Yet the reaction from advocates of more robust infrastructure spending has been less than enthusiastic,
a nod to the fact that the size of the Clinton plan falls well short of what studies have shown
the country needs. "Secretary Clinton is exactly right to call her plan a 'down payment,'" said
Damon Silvers, the AFL-CIO's director of public policy. "The reality of our infrastructure deficit
is in the trillions, not billions."
Specifically, that deficit has been pegged at $1.6 trillion-the amount of additional money
governments at all levels would have to spend by 2020 to bring the nation's infrastructure up
to date, according to a widely-cited report issued two years ago by the American Society of Civil
Engineers. Even Bernie Sanders didn't make it that high, but he came a lot closer than Clinton
by introducing legislation to spend $1 trillion over the next five years on infrastructure.
The Clinton campaign has tagged the Sanders agenda as overly expensive, requiring either a
dramatic increase in the deficit or tax increases that hit not only the nation's wealthiest but
millions of middle-class families as well. Politically, the Sanders plan is only achievable with
the kind of the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate that Obama enjoyed briefly in 2009.
Clinton's proposal, by contrast, is pegged to the reality that barring an electoral tsunami in
2016, she would have to work with at least one chamber of Congress controlled by Republicans,
and maybe two. ...
Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to bakho...
(It could be larger if there were to be some aggressive financing, meaning not 'just' closing
corporate loopholes, taxing offshore cash, etc. Like the suggested income tax increase on the
top 3%. Unfortunately ALL of this is unlikely unless both House and Senate come under Dem control.)
Hillary Clinton previewed her $275 billion infrastructure plan during a campaign event in Boston
on Sunday with construction workers, labor leaders and Democratic Mayor Martin J. Walsh, who endorsed
her candidacy. "Investing in infrastructure makes our economy more productive and competitive
across the board," she said in kicking off a week of appearances and announcements geared to creating
new jobs.
Clinton's proposal is two-pronged: It would rely on $250 billion of direct federal expenditures
for highways, bridges, tunnels and other major projects, and $25 billion more for a national infrastructure
bank designed to leverage public and private investments into billions of dollars of fresh low-interest
loans and other incentives for construction projects.
The lion's share of this additional federal spending on infrastructure would be offset by closing
pricey corporate tax loopholes, including tax inversion provisions that allow major corporations
to avoid high U.S. tax rates by moving their headquarters overseas while retaining their material
operations in this country. The pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced last week that it was doing
just that in a planned merger with Allergan to take advantage of much lower corporate taxes in
Ireland.
The remainder of the financing for Clinton's infrastructure proposal would come from a new
infrastructure bank that would put up federal dollars to attract private investments to help bankroll
highway, bridge, mass transit and other construction projects to spur economic growth. ...
Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs...
Any such proposal from Dems is seen as a gift to union labor, and calls from labor leaders to
enlarge it only makes that seem more obvious.
This is entirely the wrong way to sell such a
plan.
But a larger (Trump-scale!) plan would raise further ire from GOPsters. So, must go with the
timid version.
This could be a very dubious strategy, unless one is *extremely* confident of victory in Nov.
Dan Kervick said in reply to bakho...
One issue that is raised by Samwick's piece is the degree to which infrastructure spending
should be connected with countercyclical policy. Certainly, it makes sense to have mechanisms
available for dialing infrastructure spending up in response to slumps. But it may be a mistake
to build too close a political connection between infrastructure goals and macroeconomic stabilization
goals.
If the main pitch the public hears is is that we need to build infrastructure to boost
the economy, then when the economy is no longer in need of a boost, the political pressure for
infrastructure spending will flag. But it doesn't have to be that way at all - and shouldn't be
that way. We are very far behind where we need to be as a nation in our public works, as is shown
by that civil engineers scorecard. The various components of the infrastructure agenda need to
be part of a long-term plan for national development. When the economy improves and revenues flow
in to government coffers, great. The government then has more money to build stuff. The fact that
the next president and congress needs to get really busy re-developing our country has little
to do with whether job growth has "crested" or whether we will or will not be in a more of a slump
in 2017.
Another potential drawback of yoking infrastructure policy too closely to countercyclical policy
is that it risks casting the infrastructure development movement as economic ambulance chasers,
secretly pining for recessions so they can push through the infrastructure spending, and constantly
proclaiming recessions so they can trigger the countercyclical policy.
The infrastructure development agenda should be part of a broader agenda of re-commitment to
goals for national development, national excellence or national greatness. People who read a lot
about economic conditions - like the folks here - know how far America has slipped. But I think
many Americans are still amazingly in the dark about how far the US has fallen behind in many
standard measures of national prosperity and success. Politicians still don't have the nerve to
tell the people that we ain't what we used to be.
"... The temptation to ignore or downplay wrongness on your own side is obvious. In fact it's a bit of a prisoners dilemma. Reasonable people on both sides of the aisle would be better off if all reasonable people spent more time arguing with unreasonable ideological allies. However, unreasonable ideological allies are useful fools because they share an enemy with you, and sling mud and win skirmishes for "your side". ..."
"... Rush Limbaugh has long been a popular source of misinformation, foolishness, and insanity on the right. And let's not forget Glenn Beck. But it does represent the continued growth of a know-nothing right-wing media and subculture. ..."
Trump's success is a coat of many colors, arising from a patchwork of economic, social, political,
and cultural conditions. Not to mention the part attributable to the extraordinary nature of Trump
himself. But I do think one piece of the blame lies with conservatives lack of willingness to argue
with themselves. This is a not a unique problem to conservatives, but it is having disastrous consequences
there more than anywhere else right now.
The temptation to ignore or downplay wrongness on your
own side is obvious. In fact it's a bit of a prisoners dilemma. Reasonable people on both sides of
the aisle would be better off if all reasonable people spent more time arguing with unreasonable
ideological allies. However, unreasonable ideological allies are useful fools because they share
an enemy with you, and sling mud and win skirmishes for "your side". This is why among all
ideologies and parties, almost nobody spend enough effort and time arguing among themselves.
Breitbart news, Sarah Palin, and other Trump defenders are not a new phenomenon. Rush Limbaugh
has long been a popular source of misinformation, foolishness, and insanity on the right. And let's
not forget Glenn Beck. But it does represent the continued growth of a know-nothing right-wing media
and subculture. Until the rise of Trump though, it was too rare that smart conservatives would argue
against this with the fervor, effort, and rhetorical seriousness that they reserve for Democrats.
As Donald Trump continues to insist that he saw "thousands" of Muslims cheering the destruction
of the World Trade Center - let's pause to remember that
several Israelis were arrested and eventually deported for acting suspiciously on 9/11.
Trump has said he personally witnessed large numbers of Muslims holding "tailgate parties" in
New Jersey on Sept. 11, 2001, and his campaign manager suggested that "special interests" who control
the media have conspired to bury video footage to back the Republican candidate's claims.
The GOP frontrunner has dug himself in so deep defending those claims - which are not supported
by law enforcement or media accounts - that he mocked a disabled reporter who questioned his recollection.
Police detained, questioned and eventually released a number of Muslims in the New York City area
who were accused of behaving suspiciously following the terrorist attacks - but investigators found
most of those claims to be unfounded.
A New Jersey woman, however, reported some suspicious men she saw recording video from a moving
van that actually did result in arrests.
The woman, identified by police and news reports only as Maria, said she spotted three men kneeling
on the roof of a white van outside her New Jersey apartment building as she watched the towers burn
through binoculars.
She called police, who arrested five men - identified as Sivan Kurzberg, Paul Kurzberg, Oded Ellner,
Omer Marmari and Yaron Shmuel - later that day near Giants Stadium while driving in a van registered
to Urban Moving.
Although it's never been confirmed, the company and the men are widely believed to have been part
of an undercover operation set up by Israel's intelligence agency, Mossad, and they have been the
subject of numerous conspiracy theories about the terrorist attacks.
Their case was transferred out of the FBI's Criminal Division and into its Foreign Counterintelligence
Section shortly after the men were jailed, and they were held ostensibly for overstaying their tourist
visas.
An immigration judge ordered them deported two weeks later, but
ABC News reported
that FBI and CIA officials put a hold on their case.
The men were held in detention for more than two months and given multiple lie detector tests,
and at least one of them spent 40 days in solitary confinement.
Intelligence experts suspect the men may have been conducting surveillance on radical Islamists
in the U.S., but Israeli officials have denied the men were involved at all in intelligence operations.
Investigators determined the men had no advance knowledge of the terrorist attacks, and they were
eventually sent back to Israel after 71 days.
One of the men denied Maria's claims that they had been laughing as they recorded video of the
doomed World Trade Center towers.
"The fact of the matter is we are coming from a country that experiences terror daily," the man
told investigators. "Our purpose was to document the event."
A lawyer for the men suggested at the time that Maria had exaggerated her claims because she mistook
the men for Muslims.
"One of the neighbors who saw them called the police and claimed they were posing, dancing and
laughing, against the background of the burning towers,"
said attorney Steve
Gordon. "The five denied dancing. I presume the neighbor was not near them and does not understand
Hebrew. Furthermore, the neighbor complained that the cheerful gang on the roof spoke Arabic."
"... Establishment Republicans, after initially dismissing Trump's appeal to the party base, have grown increasingly concerned with the durability his campaign has demonstrated. Trump has repeatedly issued the types of public statements that have been deemed gaffes, and proved fatal, in past campaigns. ..."
"... But he continues to enjoy a healthy lead both in New Hampshire and in national polling. ..."
WASHINGTON - Donald Trump has proven to be the GOP's summer fling gone awry: fun at first, when there
was no expectation of a commitment. But he's stuck around - long after the party establishment wishes
he were gone.
Now, concerned about lasting damage to the party's image, some in the Republican establishment
are plotting a full-scale attempt to torpedo his candidacy.
Fergus Cullen, former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party, on Monday filed a formal complaint
with the New Hampshire secretary of state challenging Trump's place on the first-in-the-nation primary
ballot, arguing in vain that the billionaire reality TV star did not provide proof he's a Republican.
Some Republican consultants are forming a group - Trump Card LLC - with the explicit goal of taking
out the brash-talking political neophyte. And the conservative Club for Growth has run anti-Trump
ads in Iowa.
"This is no longer a joke," said Cullen, who lost his bid before the state Ballot Law Commission
to knock Trump off the ballot. "Donald Trump is a dangerous demagogue. He's doing damage to the Republican
brand that will prevent us from running a competitive national election next year."
With less than three months before the nominating process begins, Trump is still leading in state
and national polls, seeming to gain strength from his divisive rhetoric, rather than collapsing under
it.
The concern, party leaders and strategists say, is not just winning the general election and reclaiming
the White House. In a year when the GOP is hoping to maintain control of the Senate, party leaders
are increasingly worried about the impact Trump's campaign could have on down-ballot candidates in
purple states such as the reelection bids by Senators Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Rob Portman
of Ohio.
"Kelly Ayotte is losing votes every day because of Donald Trump," Cullen said. "It's not like
Passover where voters make a distinction between good Republicans and bad Republicans. They will
throw them all out. Or they will reasonably ask, 'Why didn't you stand up to him? Was your silence
consent?' " ...
Donald Trump's popularity in New Hampshire seems to be seeping into Massachusetts, according to
a new poll.
Thirty two percent of likely Republican primary voters in the state called Trump their first choice
in the race for the GOP nomination for president, according to the survey by Suffolk University.
Eighteen percent picked Senator Marco Rubio in the poll. Senator Ted Cruz earned 10 percent, followed
by former Florida governor Jeb Bush at 7 percent, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 5 percent, and
Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey and former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina both
at 4 percent.
No other GOP candidate drew significant support ...
Former state GOP chairman tries, fails to kick Trump off NH ballot
http://fw.to/I4okFoh
Donald Trump supporters
can exhale: their man will be on the ballot in New Hampshire's Feb. 9 presidential primary.
Not that Trump supporters were holding their breath. A challenge by former state Republican chairman
Fergus Cullen to Trump's eligibility was quickly thrown out Tuesday by the New Hampshire Ballot Commission.
Cullen had filed a complaint Monday arguing Trump was ineligible to be on the Republican ballot
because his views are inconsistent with the Republican party platform. The complaint, filed on behalf
of GOP presidential candidate John Kasich's super PAC, A New Day for America, claimed the real estate
mogul had previously supported Democrats and therefore should not be allowed on the Republican ballot.
...
(Is this what will be cited as 'unfair treatment' by future independent candidate
Trump, or just a silly maneuver by pissant Kasich?)
... While Donald Trump continues to hang onto the first-place spot, everyone else continues to
shift positions. In the last two months, the second-place spot has belonged to Ben Carson, former
Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, Ohio Governor John Kasich and US Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.
But the battle for second place isn't even the GOP's most interesting contest. Republicans want
to know who will emerge among Rubio, Kasich, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, and New Jersey Governor
Chris Christie as the moderate/establishment choice (Some Republicans also include Fiorina in this
camp).
That question is anyone's guess. Ayotte is the only one who can provide the answer.
But to be sure, her decision is complicated.
Rubio ran television ads in her defense when she voted against the Manchin-Toomey amendment on
background checks for guns. As chairman of the Republican Governors Association, Christie spent millions
of dollars attacking Ayotte's foe, Governor Maggie Hassan, in her reelection bid last year (even
then, Republicans expected Hassan would challenge Ayotte in 2016).
However, endorsing Bush would give Ayotte access to his national fundraising base -- something
she will need for her own race. Kasich also seems like a safe bet: His Ohio background could mean
he is the most electable in a general election. What's more, Fiorina on top of the ballot could blunt
any energy female voters have to elect Democrat Hillary Clinton as the first female president, which
could have implications for Ayotte's own race.
Last but not least, Ayotte has a personal friendship with US Senator Lindsey Graham, with whom
she watches movies with her children.
The easiest thing for Ayotte is to not endorse. It is something of a New Hampshire tradition to
cheer from the sidelines when facing a major election in the upcoming year to avoid upsetting members
in their own party. ...
(It is likely that outgoing NH Dem governor
Maggie Hassan, who plans to run against
Kelly Ayotte in 2016 would be swept in
by a HRC landslide in NH.)
Donald Trump holds a commanding lead in the New Hampshire Republican primary, which is less than
three months away.
But the state party's chairwoman doesn't think the developer and television personality will ultimately
prevail there, calling his political style a poor fit for the first state to host a primary.
"Shallow campaigns that depend on bombast and divisive rhetoric do not succeed in New Hampshire,
and I don't expect that they will now," state GOP chair Jennifer Horn said Wednesday in a phone interview,
when asked about Trump's candidacy.
Establishment Republicans, after initially dismissing Trump's appeal to the party base, have grown
increasingly concerned with the durability his campaign has demonstrated. Trump has repeatedly issued
the types of public statements that have been deemed gaffes, and proved fatal, in past campaigns.
But he continues to enjoy a healthy lead both in New Hampshire and in national polling.
"In New Hampshire, historically, the truth is, people really don't make their final decisions
until very, very close until Election Day," Horn said, noting that US Senator Marco Rubio has been
climbing in state polls.
"People are probably underestimating [New Jersey Governor] Chris Christie. And, certainly, [former
Florida governor Jeb] Bush is working very, very hard in New Hampshire," she added. ...
WASHINGTON - Senator Marco Rubio is preparing a New Hampshire advertising blitz in the final weeks
before the first-in-the-nation presidential primary, challenging rival Republican Jeb Bush for airwaves
dominance and highlighting the Granite State's importance to his nomination hopes.
Rubio and an outside group supporting him have already reserved more than 1,900 spots - representing
$2.8 million worth of television ads - on Manchester-based WMUR-TV, the state's dominant television
station ...
ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs...
Someone is dumping Carson road signs all over the NH place.
US Is the Most Unequal Developed Economy Outside
Southern Europe http://bloom.bg/1NrQVeT
via @Bloomberg
Kasia Klimasinska - November 25, 2015
The developed world's most unequal economies are in struggling
southern Europe, closely followed by the U.S.
That's according to a new report from Morgan Stanley, where analysts looked at indicators including
the gender pay gap, involuntary part-time employment and Internet access. The bank also found
that the rise of economies such as China and India has helped drive down inequality between countries,
even though inequality within many individual has grown. Since the mid-1980s, income inequality
has risen the most in Sweden when looking at developed economies. Even after that increase, Sweden
(along with the rest of Scandinavia) still had the lowest levels of inequality. ...
Peter K. said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs...
And yet Hillary mocked Bernie Sanders for wanting the U.S. to be more like Denmark.
PPaine said in reply to Peter K....
Excellent example of her opportunism, unprincipled ambition and revolting sense of superiority
Among her peers those dangerous broiled creatures of middle class strivers domestic brimstone
She makes fellow victim turned brute [to the extent that] Dick Nixon look sympathetic
"... With less than 12 weeks to go before the New Hampshire primary, all Bernie Sanders has is New
Hampshire. ..."
"... In Iowa, Hillary Clinton leads him by 18 points. In South Carolina, Clinton is ahead of Sanders
by 54 points. Nationally, the latest poll had Clinton's lead at 33 percentage points. ..."
"... Over the past month it has become clear that New Hampshire is no longer Bernie Sanders's firewall,
but it remains the only reason he has an argument that there is a contest at all. Should Clinton ever
take a double-digit lead in the Granite State, there will be nothing for anyone to talk about in terms
of the Democratic contest. ..."
"... A substantial lead in the polls could prompt any candidate to look beyond the primary to try
to get a head start on the general election, but in Mrs. Clinton's case, gazing past Mr. Sanders to
next November is part of the intensified strategy to defeat him. ..."
"... "They are running on the same economic policies that have failed us before," Mrs. Clinton said
at a rally in Memphis on Friday. She did not mention Mr. Sanders, but his stances on wealth and income
have seemed to influence his rival's populist tone. "Trickledown economics, cut taxes on the wealthy,
get out of the way of big corporations," she said. "Well, we know how that story ends, don't we?" ..."
"... Mr. Sanders's campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, said Mrs. Clinton's obsession with the Republican
Party is a tactic to diminish her main Democratic primary opponent, whose economic message has attracted
enormous crowds and enthusiasm. ..."
"... "We are much closer to Secretary Clinton today than Senator Obama was in 2008," Mr. Weaver
said. "I don't think they think this is locked up." ..."
"... Among Democrats, Mrs. Clinton holds a 25 percentage point lead against Mr. Sanders nationally,
according to a Bloomberg Politics poll released on Friday, compared with a nine percentage point advantage
in the same poll conducted in September that also included Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who later
said he would not seek the nomination. ..."
"... The primary is by no means determined. Polls in Iowa, in particular, tend to undercount Mr.
Sanders's young supporters who do not have landline phones, his aides say. And he continues to lead
in some polls in New Hampshire, a state that was supposed to be a stronghold for Mrs. Clinton. ..."
"... Even as Mrs. Clinton focuses firmly on the Republicans, her campaign is increasing its indirect,
if aggressive, moves to squeeze Mr. Sanders. She has secured the backing of major labor unions, including
most recently the Service Employees International Union, which has two million members. Her campaign
has emphasized Mrs. Clinton's commitment to gun control, an issue that Mr. Sanders, as a senator from
a hunting state, has been less vehement about, and she delivered a major foreign policy speech on Thursday
in New York, the same day Mr. Sanders delivered a speech about Democratic socialism in Washington. ("Ah,
the attempted bigfoot," Mr. Weaver said of the timing of the two speeches. The Clinton campaign announced
its speech a day earlier than the Sanders team.) ..."
"... Hillary Clintons speech on ISIS to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) showed clearly what
to expect in a Clinton presidency: more of the same. In her speech, Clinton doubled down on the existing,
failed U.S. approach in the Middle East, the one she pursued as Secretary of State. ..."
"... The CIA-led policy in the Middle East works like this. If a regime is deemed to be unfriendly
to the U.S., topple it. If a competitor like the Soviet Union or Russia has a foothold in the region,
try to push it out. If this means arming violent insurgencies, including Sunni jihadists, and thereby
creating mayhem: so be it. And if the result is terrorist blowback around the world by the forces created
by the US, then double down on bombing and regime change. ..."
With less than 12 weeks to go before the New Hampshire primary, all Bernie Sanders has
is New Hampshire.
In Iowa, Hillary Clinton leads him by 18 points. In South Carolina, Clinton is ahead of
Sanders by 54 points. Nationally, the latest poll had Clinton's lead at 33 percentage points.
But in New Hampshire a poll this week showed the race tied. And last night, the state's largest
union decided to endorse him, bucking the national union which announced it was with Clinton.
Over the past month it has become clear that New Hampshire is no longer Bernie Sanders's
firewall, but it remains the only reason he has an argument that there is a contest at all. Should
Clinton ever take a double-digit lead in the Granite State, there will be nothing for anyone to
talk about in terms of the Democratic contest.
But so far Sanders is hanging on, even if there are some growing pains amid his campaign's
quick attempt to scale up with new campaign cash. Sanders now has more than 60 staffers, and he
opened his 14th campaign office, this one in Laconia, this week. ...
Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs...
There is also a chance that Dems will go with the First Secular Jewish Major Party Candidate,
if The Donald has his say.
Hillary Clinton Looks Past Primaries in Strategy to Defeat Bernie Sanders
By AMY CHOZICK
NOV. 23, 2015
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. - "Whenever Republicans get into the White House, they mess it up. They
mess it up, folks," Hillary Rodham Clinton told a crowd gathered in a field lined with trees covered
in Spanish moss here on Saturday.
At rallies these days, Mrs. Clinton criticizes the Republican presidential candidates for their
economic policies ("Our economy does better with a Democrat in the White House"); she knocks their
foreign policy approaches and says their positions on immigration and women's issues would set
the country "backwards instead of forwards."
What she does not do is mention her main Democratic primary opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders
of Vermont.
Mrs. Clinton has regained her footing in the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, and she has locked
in the support of major labor unions and over half the Democratic Party's superdelegates, party
leaders and elected officials, needed to secure the nomination. She is now acting as if she were
no longer running against one rival, Mr. Sanders, but 14: the Republicans who are still preoccupied
with cutting down one another.
A substantial lead in the polls could prompt any candidate to look beyond the primary to
try to get a head start on the general election, but in Mrs. Clinton's case, gazing past Mr. Sanders
to next November is part of the intensified strategy to defeat him.
Even voters who support Mr. Sanders often say that Mrs. Clinton appears more electable when
compared with a Republican nominee. And while her economic message, considering her ties to Wall
Street and the "super PAC" supporting her, can seem muddled when contrasted with Mr. Sanders's,
it sounds more forceful to Democratic voters compared with Republican proposals. And, as a campaign
aide points out, the Republican candidates consistently criticize Mrs. Clinton, so it makes sense
for her to punch back.
"I love Bernie, and I feel he'd get something done about the lopsided distribution of wealth
in this country," said Siobhan Hansen, 58, an undecided voter in Charleston. "But," she added,
"I hate to admit it but I just think Hillary has a better chance in the general election."
Even as Mrs. Clinton's campaign has invested heavily in Iowa and New Hampshire and her schedule
revolves around visiting states with early primaries, her message has become a broader rejoinder
reminding voters of the 2008 financial crisis and linking the Republican candidates to the foreclosures
and joblessness that President Obama inherited. It is a strategy her campaign believes will be
effective in a general election contest after having a dry run before the primaries.
"They are running on the same economic policies that have failed us before," Mrs. Clinton
said at a rally in Memphis on Friday. She did not mention Mr. Sanders, but his stances on wealth
and income have seemed to influence his rival's populist tone. "Trickledown economics, cut taxes
on the wealthy, get out of the way of big corporations," she said. "Well, we know how that story
ends, don't we?"
At a town-hall-style event in Grinnell, Iowa, this month, Mrs. Clinton, talking about the importance
of voter participation, even seemed to forget, albeit briefly, that the short-term goal was to
win the Iowa caucuses. "If not me, I hope you caucus for somebody," she said. She paused. "I hope
more of you caucus for me."
Mrs. Clinton is focused on capturing the nomination and has been contrasting herself with the
Republicans since she announced her candidacy in April, the campaign aide said.
Mr. Sanders's campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, said Mrs. Clinton's obsession with the Republican
Party is a tactic to diminish her main Democratic primary opponent, whose economic message has
attracted enormous crowds and enthusiasm.
As Mr. Sanders delivered his standard speech about inequality here on Saturday, Mr. Weaver
closely watched the voters in the front row who wore blue "H" T-shirts, indicating their support
for Mrs. Clinton, as they cheered for Mr. Sanders several times.
"We are much closer to Secretary Clinton today than Senator Obama was in 2008," Mr. Weaver
said. "I don't think they think this is locked up."
Mrs. Clinton may have been helped by the campaign's shift to foreign policy, where Mr. Sanders
is seen as weaker, in the aftermath of the Nov. 13 terrorist attack in Paris. Mrs. Clinton said
in a speech in New York on Thursday that the Republicans' approach to fighting the Islamic State,
compared with her own, amounted to "a choice between fear and resolve." She derided as un-American
the Republicans who said they would either bar Syrian refugees from resettling in the United States
or allow only Christian refugees.
"There are forces no candidate can control, and they can be detrimental," Representative James
E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, said when asked about the newfound focus on defeating
the Islamic State. "I believe in this case third-party forces are working in her favor."
Among Democrats, Mrs. Clinton holds a 25 percentage point lead against Mr. Sanders nationally,
according to a Bloomberg Politics poll released on Friday, compared with a nine percentage point
advantage in the same poll conducted in September that also included Vice President Joseph R.
Biden Jr., who later said he would not seek the nomination.
"By turning up the heat on Republicans, going after Trump, that's all part of the essence of
saying, 'I am the leader of the Democratic Party,' " said Robert Shrum, a strategist for Democratic
presidential candidates including John Kerry and Al Gore.
The primary is by no means determined. Polls in Iowa, in particular, tend to undercount
Mr. Sanders's young supporters who do not have landline phones, his aides say. And he continues
to lead in some polls in New Hampshire, a state that was supposed to be a stronghold for Mrs.
Clinton.
Even as Mrs. Clinton focuses firmly on the Republicans, her campaign is increasing its
indirect, if aggressive, moves to squeeze Mr. Sanders.
She has secured the backing of major labor unions, including most recently the Service Employees
International Union, which has two million members. Her campaign has emphasized Mrs. Clinton's
commitment to gun control, an issue that Mr. Sanders, as a senator from a hunting state, has been
less vehement about, and she delivered a major foreign policy speech on Thursday in New York,
the same day Mr. Sanders delivered a speech about Democratic socialism in Washington. ("Ah, the
attempted bigfoot," Mr. Weaver said of the timing of the two speeches. The Clinton campaign announced
its speech a day earlier than the Sanders team.)
Mrs. Clinton has also started to imply that Mr. Sanders's single-payer "Medicare for All" health
care plan would amount to a middle-class tax increase.
In recent days, she has unveiled a plan to give Americans with unexpected medical costs a tax
credit of $2,500 for an individual or $5,000 for a family. On Sunday in Iowa, she introduced another
tax credit to cover up to $6,000 of medical expenses for middle-class families caring for ailing
parents or grandparents. "I believe you deserve a raise, not a tax increase," she said in Memphis.
The Sanders campaign said that his plan would save the average family $5,000 a year through
the elimination of premiums, deductibles and co-payments, and it called Mrs. Clinton's plan "Republican-lite"
because it proposed short-term tax cuts over long-term benefits.
Mrs. Clinton's opponents point out that there is no more precarious place for her to be than
when she seems inevitable, as she did in the early months of the 2008 Democratic primary before
she finished third in the Iowa caucuses behind Senators Barack Obama and John Edwards.
This month, just after Mrs. Clinton had officially put her name on the ballot in New Hampshire,
she sat down to take some questions from the local reporters who gathered around her in a cramped
room at the State House in Concord. The first question: "How does it feel to once again be inevitable?"
Mrs. Clinton said she had put her name on the ballot in that very room in 2007. "I'm back again,"
she said. "I intend to do everything I can to work as hard as possible to be successful this time."
Hillary Clinton and the ISIS Mess
By Jeffrey D. Sachs
Hillary Clinton's speech on ISIS to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) showed clearly
what to expect in a Clinton presidency: more of the same. In her speech, Clinton doubled down
on the existing, failed U.S. approach in the Middle East, the one she pursued as Secretary of
State.
The CIA-led policy in the Middle East works like this. If a regime is deemed to be unfriendly
to the U.S., topple it. If a competitor like the Soviet Union or Russia has a foothold in the
region, try to push it out. If this means arming violent insurgencies, including Sunni jihadists,
and thereby creating mayhem: so be it. And if the result is terrorist blowback around the world
by the forces created by the US, then double down on bombing and regime change.
In rare cases, great presidents learn to stand up to the CIA and the rest of the military-industrial-intelligence
complex. JFK became one of the greatest presidents in American history when he came to realize
the awful truth that his own military and CIA advisors had contributed to the onset of the Cuban
Missile Crisis. The CIA-led Bay of Pigs fiasco and other CIA blunders had provoked a terrifying
response from the Soviet Union. Recognizing that the U.S. approach had contributed to bringing
the world to the brink, Kennedy bravely and successfully stood up to the warmongering pushed by
so many of his advisors and pursued peace, both during and after the Cuban Missile Crisis. He
thereby saved the world from nuclear annihilation and halted the unchecked proliferation of nuclear
arms.
Clinton's speech shows that she and her advisors are good loyalists of the military-industrial-intelligence
complex. Her speech included an impressive number of tactical elements: who should do the bombing
and who should be the foot soldiers. Yet all of this tactical precision is nothing more than business
as usual. Would Clinton ever have the courage and vision to push back against the U.S. security
establishment, as did JFK, and thereby restore global diplomacy and reverse the upward spiral
of war and terror?
Just as the CIA contributed to the downward slide to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and just as
many of JFK's security chiefs urged war rather than negotiation during that crisis, so too today's
Middle East terrorism, wars, and refugee crises have been stoked by misguided CIA-led interventions.
Starting in 1979, the CIA began to build the modern Sunni jihadist movement, then known as the
Mujahedeen, to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The CIA recruited young Sunni Muslim men
to fight the Soviet infidel, and the CIA provided training, arms, and financing. Yet soon enough,
this US-created jihadist army turned on the US, a classic and typical case of blowback.
The anti-U.S. and anti-Western blowback started with the first Gulf War in 1990, when the U.S.
stationed troops throughout the region. It continued with the Second Gulf War, when the U.S. toppled
a Sunni regime in Iraq and replaced it with a puppet Shia regime. In the process, it dismantled
Saddam's Sunni-led army, which then regrouped as a core part of ISIS in Iraq.
Next the U.S. teamed up with Saudi Arabia to harass, and then to try to topple Bashir al-Assad.
His main crime from the perspective of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia: being too close to Iran. Once
again, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia turned to Sunni jihadists with arms and financing, and part of
that fighting force morphed into ISIS in Syria. The evidence is that the covert U.S. actions against
Assad pre-date the overt U.S. calls for Assad's overthrow in 2011 by at least a couple of years.
In a similar vein, the U.S. teamed up with France and the UK to bomb Libya and kill Muammar
Qaddafi. The result has been an ongoing Libyan civil war, and the unleashing of violent jihadists
across the African Sahel, including Mali, which suffered the terrorist blow last week at the hands
of such marauders.
Thanks to America's misguided policies, we now have wars and violence raging across a 5,000-mile
stretch from Bamako, Mali to Kabul, Afghanistan, with a U.S. hand in starting and stoking the
violence. Libya, Sudan, the Sinai, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan are all cases where
the U.S. has directly intervened with very adverse results. Mali, Chad, Central African Republic,
Somalia are some of the many other countries indirectly caught up in turmoil unleashed by U.S.
covert and overt operations....
Jeffrey D. Sachs is the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.
pgl said in reply to anne...
Jeff Sachs is right to praise Kennedy for not falling in line with the anti Castro nutcases. But
he just skipped over Kennedy's blunder re Vietnam. It was the dumbest thing we had ever done.
But then came March 2003 and Iraq. Hillary Clinton may be too eager for regime change but the
Republicans want to redo the Crusades.
ilsm said in reply to pgl...
Lodge etc. were being lied to by the pentagon reps in RVN, but JFK kept the lid on advisors.
The big mistake on Vietnam was LBJ assuming Goldwater was right.
That said JFK helped usher in the concept of "flexible response" which moved US closer to fitting
out US forces for the past 50 years' quagmires.
Keenan's containment strategy was ruined by NSC 68 which put pentagon responses senior to State.
pgl said in reply to ilsm...
The big mistake on Vietnam was listening to Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara. The Dick Cheney and
Don Rumsfeld of the 1960's.
RGC said in reply to anne...
A Timeline of CIA Atrocities
By Steve Kangas
The following timeline describes just a few of the hundreds of atrocities and crimes committed
by the CIA (1)
CIA operations follow the same recurring script. First, American business interests abroad
are threatened by a popular or democratically elected leader. The people support their leader
because he intends to conduct land reform, strengthen unions, redistribute wealth, nationalize
foreign-owned industry, and regulate business to protect workers, consumers and the environment.
So, on behalf of American business, and often with their help, the CIA mobilizes the opposition.
First it identifies right-wing groups within the country (usually the military), and offers them
a deal: "We'll put you in power if you maintain a favorable business climate for us." The Agency
then hires, trains and works with them to overthrow the existing government (usually a democracy).
It uses every trick in the book: propaganda, stuffed ballot boxes, purchased elections, extortion,
blackmail, sexual intrigue, false stories about opponents in the local media, infiltration and
disruption of opposing political parties, kidnapping, beating, torture, intimidation, economic
sabotage, death squads and even assassination. These efforts culminate in a military coup, which
installs a right-wing dictator. The CIA trains the dictator's security apparatus to crack down
on the traditional enemies of big business, using interrogation, torture and murder. The victims
are said to be "communists," but almost always they are just peasants, liberals, moderates, labor
union leaders, political opponents and advocates of free speech and democracy. Widespread human
rights abuses follow.
This scenario has been repeated so many times that the CIA actually teaches it in a special
school, the notorious "School of the Americas." (It opened in Panama but later moved to Fort Benning,
Georgia.) Critics have nicknamed it the "School of the Dictators" and "School of the Assassins."
Here, the CIA trains Latin American military officers how to conduct coups, including the use
of interrogation, torture and murder.
The Association for Responsible Dissent estimates that by 1987, 6 million people had died as
a result of CIA covert operations. (2) Former State Department official William Blum correctly
calls this an "American Holocaust."
The CIA justifies these actions as part of its war against communism. But most coups do not
involve a communist threat. Unlucky nations are targeted for a wide variety of reasons: not only
threats to American business interests abroad, but also liberal or even moderate social reforms,
political instability, the unwillingness of a leader to carry out Washington's dictates, and declarations
of neutrality in the Cold War. Indeed, nothing has infuriated CIA Directors quite like a nation's
desire to stay out of the Cold War.
The ironic thing about all this intervention is that it frequently fails to achieve American
objectives. Often the newly installed dictator grows comfortable with the security apparatus the
CIA has built for him. He becomes an expert at running a police state. And because the dictator
knows he cannot be overthrown, he becomes independent and defiant of Washington's will. The CIA
then finds it cannot overthrow him, because the police and military are under the dictator's control,
afraid to cooperate with American spies for fear of torture and execution. The only two options
for the U.S at this point are impotence or war. Examples of this "boomerang effect" include the
Shah of Iran, General Noriega and Saddam Hussein. The boomerang effect also explains why the CIA
has proven highly successful at overthrowing democracies, but a wretched failure at overthrowing
dictatorships.
The following timeline should confirm that the CIA as we know it should be abolished and replaced
by a true information-gathering and analysis organization. The CIA cannot be reformed - it is
institutionally and culturally corrupt.
1929
The culture we lost - Secretary of State Henry Stimson refuses to endorse a code-breaking operation,
saying, "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail."
1941
COI created - In preparation for World War II, President Roosevelt creates the Office of Coordinator
of Information (COI). General William "Wild Bill" Donovan heads the new intelligence service.
1942
OSS created - Roosevelt restructures COI into something more suitable for covert action, the
Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Donovan recruits so many of the nation's rich and powerful
that eventually people joke that "OSS" stands for "Oh, so social!" or "Oh, such snobs!"
1943
Italy - Donovan recruits the Catholic Church in Rome to be the center of Anglo-American spy
operations in Fascist Italy. This would prove to be one of America's most enduring intelligence
alliances in the Cold War.
1945
OSS is abolished - The remaining American information agencies cease covert actions and return
to harmless information gathering and analysis.
Operation PAPERCLIP – While other American agencies are hunting down Nazi war criminals for
arrest, the U.S. intelligence community is smuggling them into America, unpunished, for their
use against the Soviets. The most important of these is Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler's master spy who
had built up an intelligence network in the Soviet Union. With full U.S. blessing, he creates
the "Gehlen Organization," a band of refugee Nazi spies who reactivate their networks in Russia.
These include SS intelligence officers Alfred Six and Emil Augsburg (who massacred Jews in the
Holocaust), Klaus Barbie (the "Butcher of Lyon"), Otto von Bolschwing (the Holocaust mastermind
who worked with Eichmann) and SS Colonel Otto Skorzeny (a personal friend of Hitler's). The Gehlen
Organization supplies the U.S. with its only intelligence on the Soviet Union for the next ten
years, serving as a bridge between the abolishment of the OSS and the creation of the CIA However,
much of the "intelligence" the former Nazis provide is bogus. Gehlen inflates Soviet military
capabilities at a time when Russia is still rebuilding its devastated society, in order to inflate
his own importance to the Americans (who might otherwise punish him). In 1948, Gehlen almost convinces
the Americans that war is imminent, and the West should make a preemptive strike. In the 50s he
produces a fictitious "missile gap." To make matters worse, the Russians have thoroughly penetrated
the Gehlen Organization with double agents, undermining the very American security that Gehlen
was supposed to protect.
1947
Greece - President Truman requests military aid to Greece to support right-wing forces fighting
communist rebels. For the rest of the Cold War, Washington and the CIA will back notorious Greek
leaders with deplorable human rights records.
CIA created - President Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947, creating the Central
Intelligence Agency and National Security Council. The CIA is accountable to the president through
the NSC - there is no democratic or congressional oversight. Its charter allows the CIA to "perform
such other functions and duties… as the National Security Council may from time to time direct."
This loophole opens the door to covert action and dirty tricks.
1948
Covert-action wing created - The CIA recreates a covert action wing, innocuously called the
Office of Policy Coordination, led by Wall Street lawyer Frank Wisner. According to its secret
charter, its responsibilities include "propaganda, economic warfare, preventive direct action,
including sabotage, antisabotage, demolition and evacuation procedures; subversion against hostile
states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-communist
elements in threatened countries of the free world."
Italy - The CIA corrupts democratic elections in Italy, where Italian communists threaten to
win the elections. The CIA buys votes, broadcasts propaganda, threatens and beats up opposition
leaders, and infiltrates and disrupts their organizations. It works -- the communists are defeated.
1949
Radio Free Europe - The CIA creates its first major propaganda outlet, Radio Free Europe. Over
the next several decades, its broadcasts are so blatantly false that for a time it is considered
illegal to publish transcripts of them in the U.S.
Late 40s
Operation MOCKINGBIRD - The CIA begins recruiting American news organizations and journalists
to become spies and disseminators of propaganda. The effort is headed by Frank Wisner, Allan Dulles,
Richard Helms and Philip Graham. Graham is publisher of The Washington Post, which becomes a major
CIA player. Eventually, the CIA's media assets will include ABC, NBC, CBS, Time, Newsweek, Associated
Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Copley News Service
and more. By the CIA's own admission, at least 25 organizations and 400 journalists will become
CIA assets.
1953
Iran – CIA overthrows the democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh in a military coup, after
he threatened to nationalize British oil. The CIA replaces him with a dictator, the Shah of Iran,
whose secret police, SAVAK, is as brutal as the Gestapo.
Operation MK-ULTRA - Inspired by North Korea's brainwashing program, the CIA begins experiments
on mind control. The most notorious part of this project involves giving LSD and other drugs to
American subjects without their knowledge or against their will, causing several to commit suicide.
However, the operation involves far more than this. Funded in part by the Rockefeller and Ford
foundations, research includes propaganda, brainwashing, public relations, advertising, hypnosis,
and other forms of suggestion.
1954
Guatemala - CIA overthrows the democratically elected Jacob Arbenz in a military coup. Arbenz
has threatened to nationalize the Rockefeller-owned United Fruit Company, in which CIA Director
Allen Dulles also owns stock. Arbenz is replaced with a series of right-wing dictators whose bloodthirsty
policies will kill over 100,000 Guatemalans in the next 40 years.
1954-1958
North Vietnam - CIA officer Edward Lansdale spends four years trying to overthrow the communist
government of North Vietnam, using all the usual dirty tricks. The CIA also attempts to legitimize
a tyrannical puppet regime in South Vietnam, headed by Ngo Dinh Diem. These efforts fail to win
the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese because the Diem government is opposed to true democracy,
land reform and poverty reduction measures. The CIA's continuing failure results in escalating
American intervention, culminating in the Vietnam War.
1956
Hungary - Radio Free Europe incites Hungary to revolt by broadcasting Khruschev's Secret Speech,
in which he denounced Stalin. It also hints that American aid will help the Hungarians fight.
This aid fails to materialize as Hungarians launch a doomed armed revolt, which only invites a
major Soviet invasion. The conflict kills 7,000 Soviets and 30,000 Hungarians.
1957-1973
Laos - The CIA carries out approximately one coup per year trying to nullify Laos' democratic
elections. The problem is the Pathet Lao, a leftist group with enough popular support to be a
member of any coalition government. In the late 50s, the CIA even creates an "Armee Clandestine"
of Asian mercenaries to attack the Pathet Lao. After the CIA's army suffers numerous defeats,
the U.S. starts bombing, dropping more bombs on Laos than all the U.S. bombs dropped in World
War II. A quarter of all Laotians will eventually become refugees, many living in caves.
1959
Haiti - The U.S. military helps "Papa Doc" Duvalier become dictator of Haiti. He creates his
own private police force, the "Tonton Macoutes," who terrorize the population with machetes. They
will kill over 100,000 during the Duvalier family reign. The U.S. does not protest their dismal
human rights record.
1961
The Bay of Pigs - The CIA sends 1,500 Cuban exiles to invade Castro's Cuba. But "Operation
Mongoose" fails, due to poor planning, security and backing. The planners had imagined that the
invasion will spark a popular uprising against Castro -– which never happens. A promised American
air strike also never occurs. This is the CIA's first public setback, causing President Kennedy
to fire CIA Director Allen Dulles.
Dominican Republic - The CIA assassinates Rafael Trujillo, a murderous dictator Washington
has supported since 1930. Trujillo's business interests have grown so large (about 60 percent
of the economy) that they have begun competing with American business interests.
Ecuador - The CIA-backed military forces the democratically elected President Jose Velasco
to resign. Vice President Carlos Arosemana replaces him; the CIA fills the now vacant vice presidency
with its own man.
Congo (Zaire) - The CIA assassinates the democratically elected Patrice Lumumba. However, public
support for Lumumba's politics runs so high that the CIA cannot clearly install his opponents
in power. Four years of political turmoil follow.
1963
Dominican Republic - The CIA overthrows the democratically elected Juan Bosch in a military
coup. The CIA installs a repressive, right-wing junta.
Ecuador - A CIA-backed military coup overthrows President Arosemana, whose independent (not
socialist) policies have become unacceptable to Washington. A military junta assumes command,
cancels the 1964 elections, and begins abusing human rights.
1964
Brazil - A CIA-backed military coup overthrows the democratically elected government of Joao
Goulart. The junta that replaces it will, in the next two decades, become one of the most bloodthirsty
in history. General Castelo Branco will create Latin America's first death squads, or bands of
secret police who hunt down "communists" for torture, interrogation and murder. Often these "communists"
are no more than Branco's political opponents. Later it is revealed that the CIA trains the death
squads.
1965
Indonesia - The CIA overthrows the democratically elected Sukarno with a military coup. The
CIA has been trying to eliminate Sukarno since 1957, using everything from attempted assassination
to sexual intrigue, for nothing more than his declaring neutrality in the Cold War. His successor,
General Suharto, will massacre between 500,000 to 1 million civilians accused of being "communist."
The CIA supplies the names of countless suspects.
Dominican Republic - A popular rebellion breaks out, promising to reinstall Juan Bosch as the
country's elected leader. The revolution is crushed when U.S. Marines land to uphold the military
regime by force. The CIA directs everything behind the scenes.
Greece - With the CIA's backing, the king removes George Papandreous as prime minister. Papandreous
has failed to vigorously support U.S. interests in Greece.
Congo (Zaire) - A CIA-backed military coup installs Mobutu Sese Seko as dictator. The hated
and repressive Mobutu exploits his desperately poor country for billions.
1966
The Ramparts Affair - The radical magazine Ramparts begins a series of unprecedented anti-CIA
articles. Among their scoops: the CIA has paid the University of Michigan $25 million dollars
to hire "professors" to train South Vietnamese students in covert police methods. MIT and other
universities have received similar payments. Ramparts also reveals that the National Students'
Association is a CIA front. Students are sometimes recruited through blackmail and bribery, including
draft deferments.
1967
Greece - A CIA-backed military coup overthrows the government two days before the elections.
The favorite to win was George Papandreous, the liberal candidate. During the next six years,
the "reign of the colonels" - backed by the CIA - will usher in the widespread use of torture
and murder against political opponents. When a Greek ambassador objects to President Johnson about
U.S. plans for Cypress, Johnson tells him: "Fuck your parliament and your constitution."
Operation PHEONIX - The CIA helps South Vietnamese agents identify and then murder alleged
Viet Cong leaders operating in South Vietnamese villages. According to a 1971 congressional report,
this operation killed about 20,000 "Viet Cong."
1968
Operation CHAOS - The CIA has been illegally spying on American citizens since 1959, but with
Operation CHAOS, President Johnson dramatically boosts the effort. CIA agents go undercover as
student radicals to spy on and disrupt campus organizations protesting the Vietnam War. They are
searching for Russian instigators, which they never find. CHAOS will eventually spy on 7,000 individuals
and 1,000 organizations.
Bolivia - A CIA-organized military operation captures legendary guerilla Che Guevara. The CIA
wants to keep him alive for interrogation, but the Bolivian government executes him to prevent
worldwide calls for clemency.
1969
Uruguay - The notorious CIA torturer Dan Mitrione arrives in Uruguay, a country torn with political
strife. Whereas right-wing forces previously used torture only as a last resort, Mitrione convinces
them to use it as a routine, widespread practice. "The precise pain, in the precise place, in
the precise amount, for the desired effect," is his motto. The torture techniques he teaches to
the death squads rival the Nazis'. He eventually becomes so feared that revolutionaries will kidnap
and murder him a year later.
1970
Cambodia - The CIA overthrows Prince Sahounek, who is highly popular among Cambodians for keeping
them out of the Vietnam War. He is replaced by CIA puppet Lon Nol, who immediately throws Cambodian
troops into battle. This unpopular move strengthens once minor opposition parties like the Khmer
Rouge, which achieves power in 1975 and massacres millions of its own people.
1971
Bolivia - After half a decade of CIA-inspired political turmoil, a CIA-backed military coup
overthrows the leftist President Juan Torres. In the next two years, dictator Hugo Banzer will
have over 2,000 political opponents arrested without trial, then tortured, raped and executed.
Haiti - "Papa Doc" Duvalier dies, leaving his 19-year old son "Baby Doc" Duvalier the dictator
of Haiti. His son continues his bloody reign with full knowledge of the CIA
1972
The Case-Zablocki Act - Congress passes an act requiring congressional review of executive
agreements. In theory, this should make CIA operations more accountable. In fact, it is only marginally
effective.
Cambodia - Congress votes to cut off CIA funds for its secret war in Cambodia.
Wagergate Break-in - President Nixon sends in a team of burglars to wiretap Democratic offices
at Watergate. The team members have extensive CIA histories, including James McCord, E. Howard
Hunt and five of the Cuban burglars. They work for the Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP),
which does dirty work like disrupting Democratic campaigns and laundering Nixon's illegal campaign
contributions. CREEP's activities are funded and organized by another CIA front, the Mullen Company.
1973
Chile - The CIA overthrows and assassinates Salvador Allende, Latin America's first democratically
elected socialist leader. The problems begin when Allende nationalizes American-owned firms in
Chile. ITT offers the CIA $1 million for a coup (reportedly refused). The CIA replaces Allende
with General Augusto Pinochet, who will torture and murder thousands of his own countrymen in
a crackdown on labor leaders and the political left.
CIA begins internal investigations - William Colby, the Deputy Director for Operations, orders
all CIA personnel to report any and all illegal activities they know about. This information is
later reported to Congress.
Watergate Scandal - The CIA's main collaborating newspaper in America, The Washington Post,
reports Nixon's crimes long before any other newspaper takes up the subject. The two reporters,
Woodward and Bernstein, make almost no mention of the CIA's many fingerprints all over the scandal.
It is later revealed that Woodward was a Naval intelligence briefer to the White House, and knows
many important intelligence figures, including General Alexander Haig. His main source, "Deep
Throat," is probably one of those.
CIA Director Helms Fired - President Nixon fires CIA Director Richard Helms for failing to
help cover up the Watergate scandal. Helms and Nixon have always disliked each other. The new
CIA director is William Colby, who is relatively more open to CIA reform.
1974
CHAOS exposed - Pulitzer prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh publishes a story about Operation
CHAOS, the domestic surveillance and infiltration of anti-war and civil rights groups in the U.S.
The story sparks national outrage.
Angleton fired - Congress holds hearings on the illegal domestic spying efforts of James Jesus
Angleton, the CIA's chief of counterintelligence. His efforts included mail-opening campaigns
and secret surveillance of war protesters. The hearings result in his dismissal from the CIA
House clears CIA in Watergate - The House of Representatives clears the CIA of any complicity
in Nixon's Watergate break-in.
The Hughes Ryan Act - Congress passes an amendment requiring the president to report nonintelligence
CIA operations to the relevant congressional committees in a timely fashion.
1975
Australia - The CIA helps topple the democratically elected, left-leaning government of Prime
Minister Edward Whitlam. The CIA does this by giving an ultimatum to its Governor-General, John
Kerr. Kerr, a longtime CIA collaborator, exercises his constitutional right to dissolve the Whitlam
government. The Governor-General is a largely ceremonial position appointed by the Queen; the
Prime Minister is democratically elected. The use of this archaic and never-used law stuns the
nation.
Angola - Eager to demonstrate American military resolve after its defeat in Vietnam, Henry
Kissinger launches a CIA-backed war in Angola. Contrary to Kissinger's assertions, Angola is a
country of little strategic importance and not seriously threatened by communism. The CIA backs
the brutal leader of UNITAS, Jonas Savimbi. This polarizes Angolan politics and drives his opponents
into the arms of Cuba and the Soviet Union for survival. Congress will cut off funds in 1976,
but the CIA is able to run the war off the books until 1984, when funding is legalized again.
This entirely pointless war kills over 300,000 Angolans.
"The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence" - Victor Marchetti and John Marks publish this whistle-blowing
history of CIA crimes and abuses. Marchetti has spent 14 years in the CIA, eventually becoming
an executive assistant to the Deputy Director of Intelligence. Marks has spent five years as an
intelligence official in the State Department.
"Inside the Company" - Philip Agee publishes a diary of his life inside the CIA Agee has worked
in covert operations in Latin America during the 60s, and details the crimes in which he took
part.
Congress investigates CIA wrong-doing - Public outrage compels Congress to hold hearings on
CIA crimes. Senator Frank Church heads the Senate investigation ("The Church Committee"), and
Representative Otis Pike heads the House investigation. (Despite a 98 percent incumbency reelection
rate, both Church and Pike are defeated in the next elections.) The investigations lead to a number
of reforms intended to increase the CIA's accountability to Congress, including the creation of
a standing Senate committee on intelligence. However, the reforms prove ineffective, as the Iran/Contra
scandal will show. It turns out the CIA can control, deal with or sidestep Congress with ease.
The Rockefeller Commission - In an attempt to reduce the damage done by the Church Committee,
President Ford creates the "Rockefeller Commission" to whitewash CIA history and propose toothless
reforms. The commission's namesake, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, is himself a major CIA
figure. Five of the commission's eight members are also members of the Council on Foreign Relations,
a CIA-dominated organization.
1979
Iran - The CIA fails to predict the fall of the Shah of Iran, a longtime CIA puppet, and the
rise of Muslim fundamentalists who are furious at the CIA's backing of SAVAK, the Shah's bloodthirsty
secret police. In revenge, the Muslims take 52 Americans hostage in the U.S. embassy in Tehran.
Afghanistan - The Soviets invade Afghanistan. The CIA immediately begins supplying arms to
any faction willing to fight the occupying Soviets. Such indiscriminate arming means that when
the Soviets leave Afghanistan, civil war will erupt. Also, fanatical Muslim extremists now possess
state-of-the-art weaponry. One of these is Sheik Abdel Rahman, who will become involved in the
World Trade Center bombing in New York.
El Salvador - An idealistic group of young military officers, repulsed by the massacre of the
poor, overthrows the right-wing government. However, the U.S. compels the inexperienced officers
to include many of the old guard in key positions in their new government. Soon, things are back
to "normal" - the military government is repressing and killing poor civilian protesters. Many
of the young military and civilian reformers, finding themselves powerless, resign in disgust.
Nicaragua - Anastasios Samoza II, the CIA-backed dictator, falls. The Marxist Sandinistas take
over government, and they are initially popular because of their commitment to land and anti-poverty
reform. Samoza had a murderous and hated personal army called the National Guard. Remnants of
the Guard will become the Contras, who fight a CIA-backed guerilla war against the Sandinista
government throughout the 1980s.
1980
El Salvador - The Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, pleads with President Carter "Christian
to Christian" to stop aiding the military government slaughtering his people. Carter refuses.
Shortly afterwards, right-wing leader Roberto D'Aubuisson has Romero shot through the heart while
saying Mass. The country soon dissolves into civil war, with the peasants in the hills fighting
against the military government. The CIA and U.S. Armed Forces supply the government with overwhelming
military and intelligence superiority. CIA-trained death squads roam the countryside, committing
atrocities like that of El Mazote in 1982, where they massacre between 700 and 1000 men, women
and children. By 1992, some 63,000 Salvadorans will be killed.
1981
Iran/Contra Begins - The CIA begins selling arms to Iran at high prices, using the profits
to arm the Contras fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. President Reagan vows that
the Sandinistas will be "pressured" until "they say 'uncle.'" The CIA's Freedom Fighter's Manual
disbursed to the Contras includes instruction on economic sabotage, propaganda, extortion, bribery,
blackmail, interrogation, torture, murder and political assassination.
1983
Honduras - The CIA gives Honduran military officers the Human Resource Exploitation Training
Manual – 1983, which teaches how to torture people. Honduras' notorious "Battalion 316" then uses
these techniques, with the CIA's full knowledge, on thousands of leftist dissidents. At least
184 are murdered.
1984
The Boland Amendment - The last of a series of Boland Amendments is passed. These amendments
have reduced CIA aid to the Contras; the last one cuts it off completely. However, CIA Director
William Casey is already prepared to "hand off" the operation to Colonel Oliver North, who illegally
continues supplying the Contras through the CIA's informal, secret, and self-financing network.
This includes "humanitarian aid" donated by Adolph Coors and William Simon, and military aid funded
by Iranian arms sales.
1986
Eugene Hasenfus - Nicaragua shoots down a C-123 transport plane carrying military supplies
to the Contras. The lone survivor, Eugene Hasenfus, turns out to be a CIA employee, as are the
two dead pilots. The airplane belongs to Southern Air Transport, a CIA front. The incident makes
a mockery of President Reagan's claims that the CIA is not illegally arming the Contras.
Iran/Contra Scandal - Although the details have long been known, the Iran/Contra scandal finally
captures the media's attention in 1986. Congress holds hearings, and several key figures (like
Oliver North) lie under oath to protect the intelligence community. CIA Director William Casey
dies of brain cancer before Congress can question him. All reforms enacted by Congress after the
scandal are purely cosmetic.
Haiti - Rising popular revolt in Haiti means that "Baby Doc" Duvalier will remain "President
for Life" only if he has a short one. The U.S., which hates instability in a puppet country, flies
the despotic Duvalier to the South of France for a comfortable retirement. The CIA then rigs the
upcoming elections in favor of another right-wing military strongman. However, violence keeps
the country in political turmoil for another four years. The CIA tries to strengthen the military
by creating the National Intelligence Service (SIN), which suppresses popular revolt through torture
and assassination.
1989
Panama - The U.S. invades Panama to overthrow a dictator of its own making, General Manuel
Noriega. Noriega has been on the CIA's payroll since 1966, and has been transporting drugs with
the CIA's knowledge since 1972. By the late 80s, Noriega's growing independence and intransigence
have angered Washington… so out he goes.
1990
Haiti - Competing against 10 comparatively wealthy candidates, leftist priest Jean-Bertrand
Aristide captures 68 percent of the vote. After only eight months in power, however, the CIA-backed
military deposes him. More military dictators brutalize the country, as thousands of Haitian refugees
escape the turmoil in barely seaworthy boats. As popular opinion calls for Aristide's return,
the CIA begins a disinformation campaign painting the courageous priest as mentally unstable.
1991
The Gulf War - The U.S. liberates Kuwait from Iraq. But Iraq's dictator, Saddam Hussein, is
another creature of the CIA With U.S. encouragement, Hussein invaded Iran in 1980. During this
costly eight-year war, the CIA built up Hussein's forces with sophisticated arms, intelligence,
training and financial backing. This cemented Hussein's power at home, allowing him to crush the
many internal rebellions that erupted from time to time, sometimes with poison gas. It also gave
him all the military might he needed to conduct further adventurism - in Kuwait, for example.
The Fall of the Soviet Union - The CIA fails to predict this most important event of the Cold
War. This suggests that it has been so busy undermining governments that it hasn't been doing
its primary job: gathering and analyzing information. The fall of the Soviet Union also robs the
CIA of its reason for existence: fighting communism. This leads some to accuse the CIA of intentionally
failing to predict the downfall of the Soviet Union. Curiously, the intelligence community's budget
is not significantly reduced after the demise of communism.
1992
Economic Espionage - In the years following the end of the Cold War, the CIA is increasingly
used for economic espionage. This involves stealing the technological secrets of competing foreign
companies and giving them to American ones. Given the CIA's clear preference for dirty tricks
over mere information gathering, the possibility of serious criminal behavior is very great indeed.
1993
Haiti - The chaos in Haiti grows so bad that President Clinton has no choice but to remove
the Haitian military dictator, Raoul Cedras, on threat of U.S. invasion. The U.S. occupiers do
not arrest Haiti's military leaders for crimes against humanity, but instead ensure their safety
and rich retirements. Aristide is returned to power only after being forced to accept an agenda
favorable to the country's ruling class.
EPILOGUE
In a speech before the CIA celebrating its 50th anniversary, President Clinton said: "By necessity,
the American people will never know the full story of your courage."
Clinton's is a common defense of the CIA: namely, the American people should stop criticizing
the CIA because they don't know what it really does. This, of course, is the heart of the problem
in the first place. An agency that is above criticism is also above moral behavior and reform.
Its secrecy and lack of accountability allows its corruption to grow unchecked.
Furthermore, Clinton's statement is simply untrue. The history of the agency is growing painfully
clear, especially with the declassification of historical CIA documents. We may not know the details
of specific operations, but we do know, quite well, the general behavior of the CIA These facts
began emerging nearly two decades ago at an ever-quickening pace. Today we have a remarkably accurate
and consistent picture, repeated in country after country, and verified from countless different
directions.
The CIA's response to this growing knowledge and criticism follows a typical historical pattern.
(Indeed, there are remarkable parallels to the Medieval Church's fight against the Scientific
Revolution.) The first journalists and writers to reveal the CIA's criminal behavior were harassed
and censored if they were American writers, and tortured and murdered if they were foreigners.
(See Philip Agee's On the Run for an example of early harassment.) However, over the last two
decades the tide of evidence has become overwhelming, and the CIA has found that it does not have
enough fingers to plug every hole in the dike. This is especially true in the age of the Internet,
where information flows freely among millions of people. Since censorship is impossible, the Agency
must now defend itself with apologetics. Clinton's "Americans will never know" defense is a prime
example.
Another common apologetic is that "the world is filled with unsavory characters, and we must
deal with them if we are to protect American interests at all." There are two things wrong with
this. First, it ignores the fact that the CIA has regularly spurned alliances with defenders of
democracy, free speech and human rights, preferring the company of military dictators and tyrants.
The CIA had moral options available to them, but did not take them.
Second, this argument begs several questions. The first is: "Which American interests?" The
CIA has courted right-wing dictators because they allow wealthy Americans to exploit the country's
cheap labor and resources. But poor and middle-class Americans pay the price whenever they fight
the wars that stem from CIA actions, from Vietnam to the Gulf War to Panama. The second begged
question is: "Why should American interests come at the expense of other peoples' human rights?"
The CIA should be abolished, its leadership dismissed and its relevant members tried for crimes
against humanity. Our intelligence community should be rebuilt from the ground up, with the goal
of collecting and analyzing information. As for covert action, there are two moral options. The
first one is to eliminate covert action completely. But this gives jitters to people worried about
the Adolf Hitlers of the world. So a second option is that we can place covert action under extensive
and true democratic oversight. For example, a bipartisan Congressional Committee of 40 members
could review and veto all aspects of CIA operations upon a majority or super-majority vote. Which
of these two options is best may be the subject of debate, but one thing is clear: like dictatorship,
like monarchy, unaccountable covert operations should die like the dinosaurs they are.
North Vietnam - CIA officer Edward Lansdale spends four years trying to overthrow the communist
government of North Vietnam, using all the usual dirty tricks. The CIA also attempts to legitimize
a tyrannical puppet regime in South Vietnam, headed by Ngo Dinh Diem. These efforts fail to win
the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese because the Diem government is opposed to true democracy,
land reform and poverty reduction measures. The CIA's continuing failure results in escalating
American intervention, culminating in the Vietnam War."
We should have let the elections of 1956 go forward. Had we - we could have avoided the entire
Vietnam disaster.
RGC said in reply to pgl...
When you look at that list and you realize that it was done in our name and we were funding it,
it might piss you off a little.
Fred C. Dobbs said...
'Thinking About the Trumpthinkable' - Paul Krugman
Alan Abramowitz reads the latest WaPo poll
and emails:
'Read these results and tell me how Trump doesn't win the Republican nomination? I've been
very skeptical about this all along, but I'm starting to change my mind. I think there's at least
a pretty decent chance that Trump will be the nominee.' ...
Related:
Is Hillary Clinton Any Good at Running for President?
http://nym.ag/1DwluuR via @NYmag - Jazon Zengerle
- April 5
... The election model that's most in vogue - that scored the highest when applied to presidential
elections since World War II, correctly predicting every outcome since 1992 - is one created by
Emory political scientist Alan Abramowitz called "Time for a Change." Abramowitz argues that the
fundamentals in a presidential election are bedevilingly simple: the incumbent president's approval
rating in late June or early July, the rate of real GDP growth in the second quarter, and how
many terms the party has been in the White House.
In 2012, for instance, Obama's relatively lopsided victory may have shocked Republicans on
Election Night, but by Abramowitz's reckoning it was practically preordained. Although second-quarter
real GDP growth was a relatively unimpressive 1.5 percent and Obama's approval rating was a good-but-not-great
46 percent that June, he was seeking reelection, and, according to Abramowitz, "first-term incumbents
rarely lose." In fact, he believes that being a first-term incumbent is worth 4 percentage points.
There was nothing in the Abramowitz model that looked good for John McCain in 2008 (bad economy,
bad approval ratings of a second-term president from McCain's party). In 1988, by contrast, George
H.W. Bush was also running to give his party a third term, but Q2 real GDP growth that year was
a booming 5.24 percent and Ronald Reagan's approval rating was above 50 percent.
Sound familiar? "If Obama's approval rating is close to 50 percent and the economy is growing
at a decent rate in the fall of 2016 - both of which seem quite possible, maybe even likely -
then I think Hillary Clinton would have a decent chance of winning," Abramowitz says. But then
there's the "Time for a Change" factor and those four extra points Obama enjoyed in 2012 that
Hillary won't have this time around. In other words, it would be an extremely close race.
Which brings us full circle. "What determines the outcome in 2016," Abramowitz says, "could
very well be the quality of the candidates." ...
Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs...
Tweet: @AlanIAbramowitz
Trump exploits a crack
in the GOP's foundation http://wpo.st/ZHHn0
Fareed Zakaria - Washington
Post - November 12
Today's conventional wisdom is that Donald Trump's best days are behind him and that his poll
numbers will soon descend. Maybe. But Trump has come to represent something fundamental about
the Republican Party: the growing gap between its leaders and its political constituency. Even
if he disappears, this gap is reshaping the GOP.
At the start, Trump's campaign was based largely on his personality. On the issues, he had
a grab bag of positions and lacked coherence and consistency. But like a good businessman, he
seems to have studied his customers - the Republican electorate - and decided to give them what
they want. And what they want is not what their party leaders stand for. ...
pgl said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs...
"On the issues, he had a grab bag of positions and lacked coherence and consistency. But like
a good businessman, he seems to have studied his customers - the Republican electorate - and decided
to give them what they want. And what they want is not what their party leaders stand for"
What
his customers want is racism. And guess what - the alleged party leaders are racing to the front
to see who can be the most racist. This party has become a dysfunctional disgrace.
"... Mrs. Clinton's windfalls from Wall Street banks and other financial services firms - $3 million
in paid speeches and $17 million in campaign contributions over the years - have become a major vulnerability
in states with early nomination contests. ..."
"... In the primaries, Mrs. Clinton's advisers privately concede that she will lose some votes over
her Wall Street connections. They declined to share specific findings from internal polls, but predicted
the issue could resonate in Democratic contests in Iowa, Nevada, Ohio and Michigan, where many have
lost homes and businesses to bank foreclosu ..."
"... Mr. Sanders zeros in on Wall Street donations to Mrs. Clinton in an aggressive new television
commercial that started running in Iowa and New Hampshire on Saturday: The truth is, you can't change
a corrupt system by taking its money, he warns. ..."
"... One of Mrs. Clinton's most prominent supporters in Ohio, former State Senator Nina Turner,
defected to Mr. Sanders this month in part, she said, because she felt he would be tougher on special
interests. And some Democratic superdelegates, whose backing is crucial, said Mrs. Clinton's ties to
big banks, and her invocation of 9/11 to defend her ties to Wall Street at the Nov. 14 debate, only
made them further question her independence from the financial industry. ..."
"... My parents had a saying in Spanish - 'Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres' - which means,
'Tell me who you're hanging with and I'll tell you who you are,' said Alma R. Gonzalez, an uncommitted
superdelegate from Florida. A lot of my Democratic friends feel that way about Hillary and Wall Street.
..."
"... Will she be another President Clinton who appoints a Treasury secretary from Wall Street? These
are major concerns. ..."
"... Indeed, Mr. Clinton's close relationships with Wall Street executives like Robert E. Rubin
of Goldman Sachs, whom he named his Treasury secretary, and his support for undoing parts of Glass-Steagall
have contributed to misgivings about Mrs. Clinton. ..."
"... While Mr. Sanders and another candidate for the Democratic nomination, former Gov. Martin O'Malley
of Maryland, have argued that big donors inevitably had influence with her, her campaign has pushed
back against suggestions that the financial services industry has bankrolled her campaign. Her aides
also said ads by a new group, Future 45, attacking Mrs. Clinton would only underscore her independence,
because the group's major donors include Wall Street magnates like Paul Singer. ..."
"... Bashing Wall Street is not an automatic win for Mr. Sanders, however. Ms. Gonzalez, the Florida
superdelegate, and some other undecided Democrats said they viewed Mr. Sanders as too hostile to banks
and corporations and too divisive in his remarks about American wealth. ..."
"... Ms. Turner, the former Ohio lawmaker, said the blocks of foreclosed homes in Cleveland were
a painful reminder that banks prioritize their own corporate interests. Mr. Sanders has been criticizing
the corrupt economy symbolized by Wall Street greed for decades, she said. ..."
Wall St. Ties Linger as Image Issue for Hillary Clinton
By Patrick Healy
Saturday, 21 Nov 2015 | 2:52 PM ET
The New York Times
John Wittneben simmered as he listened to Hillary Rodham Clinton defend her ties to Wall Street
during last weekend's Democratic debate. He lost 40 percent of his savings in individual retirement
accounts during the Great Recession, while Mrs. Clinton has received millions of dollars from
the kinds of executives he believes should be in jail.
"People knew what they were doing back then, because of greed, and it caused me harm," said Mr.
Wittneben, the Democratic chairman in Emmet County, Iowa. "We were raised a certain way here.
Fairness is a big deal."
The next day he endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders in the presidential race.
Mrs. Clinton's windfalls from Wall Street banks and other financial services firms - $3
million in paid speeches and $17 million in campaign contributions over the years - have become
a major vulnerability in states with early nomination contests. Some party officials who
remain undecided in the 2016 presidential race see her as overly cozy with big banks and other
special interests. At a time when liberals are ascendant in the party, many Democrats believe
her merely having "represented Wall Street as a senator from New York," as Mrs. Clinton reminded
viewers in an October debate, is bad enough.
It is an image problem that she cannot seem to shake.
Though she criticizes the American economy as being "rigged" for the rich, Mrs. Clinton has
lost some support recently from party members who think she would go easy on Wall Street excess
if elected. Even as she promises greater regulation of hedge funds and private equity firms, liberals
deride her for refusing to support reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act, a law that separated
commercial and investment banks until its repeal under President Bill Clinton. (Mr. Sanders favors
its restoration.) And for many Democrats, her strong support from wealthy donors and a big-money
"super PAC" undercuts her increasingly progressive rhetoric on free trade and other economic issues.
Her advisers say most Democrats like her economic policies and believe she would fight for
middle-class and low-income Americans. Most opinion polls put Mrs. Clinton well ahead of Mr. Sanders
nationally and in Iowa, and they are running even in New Hampshire, but she fares worse than him
on questions about taking on Wall Street and special interests. And even if Mrs. Clinton sews
up the nomination quickly, subdued enthusiasm among the party's liberal base could complicate
efforts to energize Democratic turnout for the general election.
In the primaries, Mrs. Clinton's advisers privately concede that she will lose some votes
over her Wall Street connections. They declined to share specific findings from internal polls,
but predicted the issue could resonate in Democratic contests in Iowa, Nevada, Ohio and Michigan,
where many have lost homes and businesses to bank foreclosures.
Mr. Sanders zeros in on Wall Street donations to Mrs. Clinton in an aggressive new television
commercial that started running in Iowa and New Hampshire on Saturday: "The truth is, you can't
change a corrupt system by taking its money," he warns.
One of Mrs. Clinton's most prominent supporters in Ohio, former State Senator Nina Turner,
defected to Mr. Sanders this month in part, she said, because she felt he would be tougher on
special interests. And some Democratic superdelegates, whose backing is crucial, said Mrs. Clinton's
ties to big banks, and her invocation of 9/11 to defend her ties to Wall Street at the Nov. 14
debate, only made them further question her independence from the financial industry.
"My parents had a saying in Spanish - 'Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres' - which
means, 'Tell me who you're hanging with and I'll tell you who you are,'" said Alma R. Gonzalez,
an uncommitted superdelegate from Florida. "A lot of my Democratic friends feel that way about
Hillary and Wall Street.
"Are the working people in this country going to be able to count on hard decisions being made
by President Hillary Clinton with regard to her Wall Street chums?" Ms. Gonzalez continued. "Will
she be another President Clinton who appoints a Treasury secretary from Wall Street? These are
major concerns."
Indeed, Mr. Clinton's close relationships with Wall Street executives like Robert E. Rubin
of Goldman Sachs, whom he named his Treasury secretary, and his support for undoing parts of Glass-Steagall
have contributed to misgivings about Mrs. Clinton.
Mrs. Clinton has proposed imposing risk fees on unwieldy big banks and empowering regulators
to break them up if necessary - though this is not the wholesale breakup that Mr. Sanders favors
under a return of Glass-Steagall. She also proposes to make sure fines for corporate wrongdoing
hit executive bonuses, and to pursue criminal prosecutions when justified.
Yet even though she has taken tough stands in the past, such as chastising banks for widespread
foreclosures in 2007 and 2008, some Democrats are skeptical that she would ever crack down hard
on the executives in her social circles in Manhattan, the Hamptons and Washington.
Jake Quinn, an uncommitted Democratic superdelegate from North Carolina, said he was concerned
about Mrs. Clinton's willingness to clamp down on Wall Street malfeasance. "The financial sector's
ongoing relative lack of accountability makes me suspicious of any candidate who sources it for
significant support," he said.
Mrs. Clinton's advisers say that she has advanced the strongest regulatory proposals of any
candidate, putting the lie to claims that she would protect Wall Street's interests as president.
Any political harm resulting from her Wall Street ties would be minimal, they maintain, because
she never took action in exchange for donations. They also play down the possibility that Mrs.
Clinton will face voter turnout and enthusiasm problems if she wins the nomination.
While Mr. Sanders and another candidate for the Democratic nomination, former Gov. Martin
O'Malley of Maryland, have argued that big donors inevitably had influence with her, her campaign
has pushed back against suggestions that the financial services industry has bankrolled her campaign.
Her aides also said ads by a new group, Future 45, attacking Mrs. Clinton would only underscore
her independence, because the group's major donors include Wall Street magnates like Paul Singer.
"When billionaire hedge fund managers are forming super PACs to run ads attacking her, it's
clear they fear she will take action as president to crack down on the industry's abuses," said
Brian Fallon, a Clinton campaign spokesman.
Bashing Wall Street is not an automatic win for Mr. Sanders, however. Ms. Gonzalez, the
Florida superdelegate, and some other undecided Democrats said they viewed Mr. Sanders as too
hostile to banks and corporations and too divisive in his remarks about American wealth.
But others said they were more concerned that Mrs. Clinton had not broken with Wall Street
in a clear way, noting the lengths she went to at the debate to explain the relationship.
"She was waving the bloody shirt of 9/11 to defend herself, which we're accustomed to seeing
with demagogues on the right, and it just didn't feel quite right," said Kurt Meyer, a co-chairman
of the Mitchell County Democrats in Iowa, who has not endorsed a candidate. "She connected two
things, 9/11 and her ties to Wall Street, that I didn't like her sewing together."
Ms. Turner, the former Ohio lawmaker, said the blocks of foreclosed homes in Cleveland
were a painful reminder that banks prioritize their own corporate interests. Mr. Sanders has been
criticizing "the corrupt economy symbolized by Wall Street greed" for decades, she said.
"He shows righteous indignation and speaks for the common woman and man in saying they have
a right to be outraged at Wall Street," Ms. Turner said. "He doesn't just talk the talk. He walks
the talk."
And Mrs. Clinton? "Her ties are her ties," Ms. Turner said.
Mark--The passage "As Paul Krugman points out" links not to PK, but to a Brad Plummer Vox
article. I assume that you wanted to link to PK's column in this AM's NYT.
BTW, you may want to point to this Jeb! Tweet:
http://bit.ly/1gVFixr I think that he may have set a record for the total number of
horribly bad policy positions that one can advocate in 140 characters or less.
...and apparently the buzz in the automotive world is that "everyone" was doing it...
Anybody who thinks Mr. Cook and Apple can't disrupt the automobile industry clearly isn't paying
attention to the automobile industry. It seems designed more by cads than CAD. Smart elegant design?
The auto industry is retrogressive: low hanging fruit. The whole damn kit: from CEOs to Dealers
to Mechanics you can't trust. It's a moral atrocity.
Apple can and will seize the wheel and make a ton of money doing so...
As Paul Krugman points out, the scandal makes a nice counterpoint with Jeb Bush's latest "anti-regulation"
rant.
Of course there are many others. And of course there are also many cases of over-regulation. But
you don't win an argument for smart regulation unless you have plenty of examples to draw from.
I suspect Mrs. Clinton will be well-armed that way come the big time debates with Jeb!
Brett
Fisher's reaction is so typical for many economic libertarians that I've met. They can't
really dismiss environmental problems altogether, so instead they diminish and minimize - "Oh,
it's just some marginal emissions/a small amount of forest land/a little pollution into the
river! What's the harm? And do you really want to hurt an important company that employs
thousands over it over a little bit of dirty air?"
Jarndyce
Mark is too easy on both VW and GM in this paragraph:
"That's not as bad as an ordinary murder, where the killer picks out a specific
victim, because being personally singled out to be killed is somehow worse than being a
random victim. But in both the GM case and the VW case, people wound up dead (or injured,
or sick) through the choice of someone else. In the GM case, the company's culpability was
mostly passive: it made a design or manufacturing mistake and then didn't disclose it or
act promptly or adequately to fix it. What VW did was much worse: the 'defeat software'
wasn't a defect, but a deliberate decision to break the law with the predictable
consequence of killing hundreds of people, at least twice as many as died of GM's
malfeasance. I don't think you need to live in Marin County to find that objectionable."
The pertinent question is whether VW or GM knew that people would die as a result of their
actions. If they did, then they are as culpable as an ordinary murderer, despite not having
picked out a specific victim or having acted "passively" in deciding not to disclose their
mistake. They are comparable to a person who randomly fires a machine gun in a crowd.
David T
One of the ICCT engineers who uncovered this seems to be telling every news shop that will
listen that people should be checking other automakers for the same problem. VW's behavior is
so appalling and frankly stupid (destroy a company to sell a few diesels? It's not even their
biggest product line) that it's hard to understand what they could have possibly been
thinking. The general amorality of corporate culture may be part of it. But I wonder if there
was a bit of "everybody else is doing it" going on here too. (BMW must be pretty happy that
their car passed.)
Keith_Humphreys
Perfect movie reference(The
Third Man, 1949). The sociopathic black marketeer
Harry Lime is played by Orson Welles and his moral American friend Holly Martins by Joseph
Cotten. As they ride in a Ferris wheel far above the people of Vienna, this exchange occurs:
Martins: Have you ever seen any of your victims?
Harry: You know, I never feel comfortable on these sort of things. Victims? Don't
be melodramatic. [gestures to people far below] Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if
one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every
dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you
calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of
income tax - the only way you can save money nowadays.
Ok. This may be an extremely stupid question, but how do we know that this was illegal?
Many regulations of this type in the electronics/telecommunications field are overspecified
and everybody knows the tests (and they cheat in similar fashions if not so explicitly and in
such wholesale fashion). If the regulation was written to state that an engine will pass the
following test then that's what would be built. Unless there was an explicit prohibition in
switching modes or a requirement that the test mode be comparable to driving mode then the
engineers may have just seen it as a game. So I'm not defending the amorality of this, but the
question of conspiracy is harder to prove if it may not be illegal except under the EPA's
theory. And if it wasn't obviously illegal, then what is the moral obligation of the worker to
trade-off their livelihood for exposing the fraud.
"... The sultan of Najd, Abdelaziz al-Saud bowed his head before the British High Commissioner in Percy Cox's Iraq. His voice quavered, and then he started begging with humiliation: "Your grace are my father and you are my mother. I can never forget the debt I owe you. You made me and you held my hand, you elevated me and lifted me. I am prepared, at your beckoning, to give up for you now half of my kingdom…no, by Allah, I will give up all of my kingdom, if your grace commands me! ..."
Never let it be said that Britain's leaders miss an opportunity to inflame
fear and loathing towards migrants and refugees. First David Cameron warned
of the threat posed by "a swarm of people" who were "coming across the Mediterranean
… wanting to come to Britain". Then his foreign secretary Philip Hammond upped
the ante.
The chaos at the Channel tunnel in Calais, he declared, was caused by "marauding"
migrants who posed an existential threat. Cheer-led by the conservative press,
he warned that Europe would not be able to "protect itself and preserve its
standard of living" if it had to "absorb millions of migrants from Africa".
With nightly television coverage of refugees from the world's worst conflicts
risking their lives to break into lorries and trains heading for Britain, this
was rhetoric designed to stoke visceral fears of the wretched of the Earth emerging
from its depths.
Barely a hint of humanity towards those who have died in Calais this summer
has escaped ministers' lips. But in reality the French port is a sideshow, home
to a few thousand migrants unable to pay traffickers for more promising routes
around Britain's border controls.
Europe's real refugee crisis is in the Mediterranean. More than 180,000 have
reached Italy and Greece by sea alone this year, and more than 2,000 have died
making the crossing, mostly from war-ravaged Libya. The impact on Greece, already
wracked with crisis, is at tipping point.
On the Greek island of Kos, 2,000 mostly Syrian and Afghan refugees were
rounded up on Tuesday and locked in a sports stadium after clashes with riot
police, who used stun grenades to maintain order. Numbers reaching the Greek
islands have quadrupled since last year.
But nothing in Europe matches the millions who have been driven to seek refuge
in Turkey, Lebanon, Pakistan or Jordan. Set against such a global drama, Calais
is little more than deathly theatre. Britain is not one of the main destinations
for either refugees or illegal migrants – the vast majority of whom overstay
their visas, rather than stow away in the Channel tunnel.
Last year 25,870 sought asylum in the UK and only 10,050 were accepted. By
contrast, Sweden accepted three times as many and Germany had more than 200,000
asylum and new asylum applicants. Nor is Britain's asylum seeker's benefit rate,
at £36.95 a week, remotely the magnet it is portrayed. France pays £41.42; in
Norway it's £88.65.
What does suck overwhelmingly legal migrant workers into Britain is a highly
deregulated labour market, where workplace protection is often not enforced
and which both gangmasters and large private companies are able ruthlessly to
exploit.
The case, reported in the Guardian, of the entirely legal Lithuanian farm
workers – who are suing a Kent-based gangmaster supplying high street supermarkets
over inhuman working conditions, debt bondage and violent intimidation – is
only the extreme end of a growing underbelly of harsh and insecure employment.
If ministers were remotely concerned about "rogue employers driving down
wages" by using illegal migrants, as they claim, they would be strengthening
trade unions and rights at work. But they're doing the opposite. And they're
using the language of dehumanisation to justify slashing support for asylum
seekers' children, locking up refused applicants indefinitely and targeting
illegal workers far more enthusiastically than the employers who exploit them.
But what risks dividing communities can also turn them against such anti-migrant
crackdowns. In recent months, flash protests have erupted in London and other
cities against UK Border Agency attempts to arrest failed asylum seekers or
undocumented migrant workers. In areas such as Elephant and Castle, riot police
have been called in after UKBA vans were surrounded and pelted with eggs by
angry locals and activists trying to prevent the detention of people seen as
part of the community.
The chaos at Calais and the far larger-scale upheaval and suffering across
Europe could be brought under control by the kind of managed processing that
northern European governments, such as Britain's, are so keen to avoid.
'If the current US and British-backed Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen continues,
expect Yemeni refugees to join the region's exodus in the months to come.'
'If the current US and British-backed Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen continues,
expect Yemeni refugees to join the region's exodus in the months to come.' Photograph:
Yahya Arhab/EPA
But that would only be a temporary fix for a refugee crisis driven by war
and state disintegration – and Britain, France and their allies have played
a central role in most of the wars that are fuelling it. The refugees arriving
in Europe come from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Sudan, Pakistan, Somalia
and Eritrea.
With the recent exception of the dictatorial Eritrean regime, those are a
roll-call of more than a decade of disastrous western-led wars and interventions.
In the case of Libya, the British and French-led bombing campaign in 2011 led
directly to the civil war and social breakdown that has made the country the
main conduit for refugee trafficking from Africa. And in Syria, the western
funding, arming and training of opposition groups – while fuelling the rise
of Isis – has played a crucial role in the country's destruction.
If the current American and British-backed Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen
continues, expect Yemeni refugees to join the region's exodus in the months
to come. So the first longer term contribution Britain and its allies could
make to staunching the flow of refugees would be to stop waging open and covert
wars in the Middle East and north Africa. That is actual marauding.
The second would be a major shift in policy towards African development.
Africa may not be leading the current refugee crisis, and African migrants certainly
don't threaten European living standards. But as a group of global poverty NGOs
argued this week, Africa is being drained of resources through western corporate
profit extraction, extortionate debt repayments and one-sided trade "partnership"
deals. If that plunder continues and absolute numbers in poverty go on rising
as climate change bites deeper, migration pressures to the wealthy north can
only grow.
There is a genuine migration crisis driven by war and neoliberal globalisation.
Despite the scaremongering, it hasn't yet reached Britain. But it's a fantasy
to imagine that fences, deportations and better security can protect fortress
Europe. An end to the real plunder and marauding would be more effective.
ID0049691 nadel 13 Aug 2015 10:55
Why don't you start with yourself? How many of your ancestors like millions
of other Europeans, went to Africa, the Americas, Australia, New Zealand
and elsewhere to "settle" there over the past centuries? Now that the tide
is turning you and your likes do nothing but whine and accuse others of
being "left wingers". The left wingers seem to be the only people left with
human feelings.
Beastcheeks 13 Aug 2015 10:55
Thank you Seamus - a beacon of light amongst the marauding dirge of mass
media ignorance and hatred that characterises the current mainstream British
position. When I read many of responses to your reasoned arguments - I hang
my head in shame. Mass delusion and hatred not dissimilar to Nazi Germany
I'm afraid. The very fact you have to spell out the obvious truth - that
you can't bomb the hell out of people and then cry foul when they come to
us for safe refuge - beggars belief. I am well and truly disgusted and am
in the process of relinquishing my British nationality. No longer am I willing
to tolerate such ignorant intolerance in my name.
rentierDEATHcult 13 Aug 2015 10:51
Shias are not joining ISIS ... but the vast majority of Sunnis are not
joining it, either !?
Kurds are Sunnis - they're fighting ISIS.
Sunni tribes in Iraq are collaborating with Shia (often Iranian) militias
to fight ISIS.
Even fellow Sunni Jihadists in the al-Nusra Front (& affiliated brigades)
regard ISIS as ignorant nihilists and want to have nothing to do with them.
Your thesis about a Shia + Sunni conflict driving the wave of migration
into Europe is, simply, flawed.
Its utter nonsence, in fact.
Moreover, Shia and Sunni have lived amongst each other, largely, in peace
during that 1400 years. Prior to the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, most
suburbs of Baghdad were mixed and a significant proportion of families shared
a dual Shia + Sunni tradition.
Rj H 13 Aug 2015 10:42
There are some good and bad points to all this as demonstrated on this
comments thread. There seems to be no real consensus and blame is shifted
from one side to the other (whether political, social, class or economic).
The only thing we (indigenous population) might all agree upon is; upon
stepping back and looking at the current state of the UK (formally Great
Britain) most of us will come to the conclusion that something has gone
wrong and the country and the UK is not enjoying good health. That fact
alone should demonstrate that those in charge are not doing their jobs properly.
Poor leadership across 40 years has damaged this country. A country that
once governed FOR its people now governs contrary to the majority of its
people's wishes. Those at the top are not capable (or indeed willing) to
look out for those at the bottom. We as a population are being hit and abused
by a government that cares only for the wealth and power of a select few.
Never have so many been owed so much by so few. The government has reduced
the people's voice to a hoarse whisper. We need to regain our voice and
SHOUT back that we won't stand for this situation any longer.
blueanchor rentierDEATHcult 13 Aug 2015 10:36
"How is Islam responsible ...?".
Aren't the battlelines across swathes of Islam's heartland in the Middle-East
drawn up broadly on Sunni v Shia lines? For instance I don't think you'll
find any Shia joining Isis. What you have now is an eruption of the Islamic
sectarian dispute which has been running on and off for 1,400 years, and
people are fleeing to escape it.
musolen David Hicks 13 Aug 2015 10:35
No, you're right, of course we don't, that's the point.
One sided trade deals are negotiated with massive distortion favouring
the big multinational corporations but listen to the IMF and all you hear
is we have to 'open up our markets to enable free trade'.
The US has more trade embargoes in place than any other nation and EU
is close behind and the irony doesn't even register on the faces at IMF
and World Bank trampling the world spreading their Neo-Liberal rubbish.
My point was that to have capitalism, if you are an advocate of capitalism
you have to accept those free movements of goods, money and people.
Paul Torgerson Rob99 13 Aug 2015 10:35
Well at least there is one person on here who has not swallowed the right
wing xenophobic crap. But the right wing press is doing a great job of brain
washing the populace. Examining the facts indicates a humanitarian problem
that will not in any way disadvantage Europe even if they allow ALL these
people to settle in Europe
wasson Bicbiro 13 Aug 2015 10:34
So you think if the UK minimum wage was lower than Poland they'd still
come? I'm afraid I'm going to have to to disagree with you there bic. They
come because they can earn in a week what they earn in 3 months in Poland.
Simple as.
rentierDEATHcult sludge 13 Aug 2015 10:32
If you know anything about Lawrence of Arabia (since you brought him
up), you would know that the British were collaborating against the Ottomans
by inciting Arab tribes to revolt against them.
The Ottoman state was seen as an Islamist bulwark against European colonialism,
especially, British imperialism.
So i'm not sure why you think the British would have undermined the Saudis
and handed territories they had seized back to the Ottoman Turks - against
whom the British were collaborating - (using the Saudis) !?
You need to understand and embrace this part of recent British history.
Because anyone that doesn't understand (or acknowledge) their history is
not to be trusted with the present.
bugiolacchi dragonpiwo 13 Aug 2015 10:28
UK is not part of Shengen. Non-EU migrants who work, live, travel freely,
and prosper in the rest of Europe need a visa to cross the few miles of
water between us and the continent.
As per the ID cards, every time they interview an 'illegal' immigrant,
one of the reasons given for coming here is that it is the only country
(in the world?) where one does no need to identify themselves when asked
(a 'utility bill' my socks...) and can drive without a driving licence or
car documentations with them, but to 'present' them later. A Christmas invitation
if one wants to 'blend' in the background'. Again, a 'utility bill' as an
idea.. hilarious!
rentierDEATHcult sludge 13 Aug 2015 10:19
The 'Gazzeteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman & Central Arabia' authored by
John Gordon Lorimer has now been declassified by the British government
and provides significant insight into the relationship between Abdulaziz
al Saud and the British colonial authorities.
The memoirs of HRP Dickson in his 1951 book "Kuwait and Her Neighbours"
provides further details on how Britain supported the rise of the Saudi
monarchy as de facto colonial agents of Pax Britannica.
Dickson was British envoy to the Gulf emirates and an aide to British
High Commissioner for Iraq - Sir Percy Cox
Dickson recounts this exchange between Sir Percy and Abdelaziz al Saud
during the conference in al-Aqeer in November 1922:
The sultan of Najd, Abdelaziz al-Saud bowed his head before the British
High Commissioner in Percy Cox's Iraq. His voice quavered, and then he started
begging with humiliation: "Your grace are my father and you are my mother.
I can never forget the debt I owe you. You made me and you held my hand,
you elevated me and lifted me. I am prepared, at your beckoning, to give
up for you now half of my kingdom…no, by Allah, I will give up all of my
kingdom, if your grace commands me!"
He'll be colorful, entertaining figure in the Republican's primary circus. He might be able to expose
the hypocrisy of other candidates. I hope he stays in it for a couple of debates...
I like one of his quotes: "I'm a free trader, but the problem is you need really talented people
to negotiate for you ... But we have people that are stupid." "
"I don't need anybody's money ... I'm using my own money, I'm not using the lobbyists,
I'm not using donors, I don't care. I'm really rich."
"The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else's problems."
"Nobody would be tougher on ISIS than Donald Trump. Nobody."
"When Mexico sends its people they're not sending their best ... They're sending people that
have lots of problems ... They are bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists."
"I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created. I will bring back our jobs from
China, from Mexico, from Japan, from so many places. I'll bring back our jobs and I'll bring back
our money."
"How stupid are our leaders? How stupid are the politicians to allow this to happen? How stupid
are they?"
"I'm a free trader, but the problem is you need really talented people to negotiate for you
... But we have people that are stupid."
"Saudi Arabia, without us, is gone. They're gone."
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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UK Toryism today is not so much a political party espousing an ideology as it is an ideology that has taken over a political party. It is the ideolgy of exploitation of a tiny clique over an entire society and has become, through extensive and relentless propoganda, embedded the fabric of UK society. It is a class ideology that requires a middle classes and poorer apirants to the middle classes to accept cuts to their influence and hence wealth by creating an demonising a constructed underclass. The underclass serves as:
1. a frightening lesson to those who do not conform
2. scapegoats for every kind of social and cultural ill
3. a fungible source of wandering labour who can be compelled to exploitation and discarded at will
It demands the destruction of the state that supports people and replaces it with a state that supports business interests only. Everything must become a commodity – especially humans. It is an ideology that decries income distribution to the less wealthy but in every instance creates laws that ensure distribution of vast majority of wealth to the wealthiest. It is the insurance company for the wealthy as well. The taxpayer is the insurer.
The greatest single example of wealth redistribution from the politically weak is the student loan wheeze. The mob in their greatest exploits could not have contrived a more elaborate form of extortion. As Tory idoeology 'crapifies' every job in the UK, they goad the young into what have become school factories, turning out people with certificates but often very little relevant qualification for a shrinking economy. Meanwhile the governement sells the loans to "investors" (themselves and their friends) for pence on the pound.
Create the law that create the conditions that create the cash flow, and never lift a finger to do a real days work.
What's not to like?
Given the over population of the island, that oil is running out, and that they have gutted any social and cultural cohesive factor, and even if Brexit evaporates, the long term bodes ill anyway.